Recent discussions [1] [2] about popular graveyarded osu!mania maps and how they are not eligible for ranked has lead to discussions about what hinders them from being ranked. One of the prominent reasons stated is the need to have a difficulty spread.

I will copy over some of the discussion regarding that to have a starting point.

from community/forums/posts/8289058:

Playboi Carti wrote:

Not every one charts/maps to reflect ranked criteria, especially some of the requirements are just kind of silly. Basically forcing a mapper to create a difficulty spread of easy/hard/insane or whatever is kind of meaningless since the star rating is useless to a certain extent. Also tying into that is the time constraint, I don't really know if it's changed now, but I remember the difficulty spread being forced if the map was shorter than 5m. All in all, I don't think you consider this useful for the overall game since it's mainly an issue for osu!mania players and it's also one of the many reasons people aren't willing to migrate over.

from community/forums/posts/8290818:

Penguinosity wrote:

As for difficulty spreads, we have been constricted by an arbitrary system, based on arbitrary difficulty measurements.



I'm sure there was plenty of deliberation and reasoning that was put into these guidelines. However, they couldn't be further from what the majority of the mapping community feels is fair or sensible. I could make suggestions here to how they could be changed, but for now I will just say that the inclusion of these requirements have felt forced at best. A preference of difficulty spread should be left up to the mappers discretion, and not up to whether the song they chart fits within a predetermined time and difficulty range.

from community/forums/posts/8291159:

RandomeLoL wrote:

Keep in mind that I'm still an advocate for spreads myself. Accessibility has to be accounted for newer players. Spreads are going nowhere. But I believe the timings could probably be discussed and readjusted for Mania. Getting an exact timeframe now would be difficult as there's a lot of things to account for, such as where do we draw the line between making mapsets accessible to newer players and where do we draw it to alleviate the requirements for mappers.

I would like to elaborate a bit further on what I had to say from the quoted post.

I'm not asking for the abolishment of this spread criteria as a whole, even just for mania. There's clear reasoning to keep this there as to both avoid blatant low effort maps/sets from being nominated, and to also provide accessibility for players of different skill ranges when necessary. However, heavy emphasis on *when necessary*.

Referencing content migration as many of us did in the original forum post, it's one of the sources that has provided the most influential and important content to o!m over the years. The people who are responsible for said content are largely not interested in Ranking their maps, and these drain time and difficulty parameters are part of that reason.

Penguinosity wrote:

the inclusion of these requirements have felt forced at best. A preference of difficulty spread should be left up to the mappers discretion

What I said here falls in line with the sentiments of many of the people who put these maps together. I've heard the argument that "It's not hard or time consuming to just make another difficulty", however there is really no middle ground there which is what we want to create. To quote what IcyWorld said:

IcyWorld wrote:

ranked appears to be too many extra steps to do after I already feel like I'm done with a map

Is what he said not justified or fair? Why should all mappers need to force spread diversity in the maps that they have created? Especially in this case, which sees one of our most prolific members of the VSRG community, turned off from Ranking what he creates because of it. If we can be on the same page then and figure out a middle ground then let's do that. The question is just starting with which direction to go in.

Can we:
A. Significantly tolerize the numbers currently in place
B. Allow BNs the discretion to decide whether a map does or doesn't require more than one difficulty, based on its structure or history
C. Remove the parameters entirely (obviously the most unrealistic of the three)


If you have any other suggestions or incites then let's definitely talk about them. I'm only one person!

edit: I also want to add that anyone experienced in this community will tell you that it's incredibly common for blatantly low effort, sometimes literally copypaste difficulties to be tacked onto sets. If anyone wants to argue that spreads are not just about providing accessibility, but also providing quality then I would implore you to open up any number of Ranked sets to see what I'm talking about. This is not quality.

from community/forums/posts/8289058:

Playboi Carti wrote:

Basically forcing a mapper to create a difficulty spread of easy/hard/insane or whatever is kind of meaningless since the star rating is useless to a certain extent.

we don't use SR solely (or even at all?) as a measurement of difficulty

i want to reply to more of these, but i think i need some time. i guess i can ask two questions right now though:
1. can we guarantee that with these requirements relaxed, we can see significant increase of (good) ranked maps?
2. can we guarantee that with these requirements relaxed, it wouldn't be abused to the point where new players are completely alienated?

My general issue with the spread requirements is less so with spreads but more so how, while the guidelines are listed as guidelines to adhere to, I feel that most guidelines are being followed as rules rather than guidelines. In general, I don't use the ranking criteria as a reference at all and go by feel when it comes to making spreads, which generally works nicely, but I know many mappers who feel extremely boxed trying to follow the details of how each difficulty has to be designed. This isn't a problem inherent to RC, but I feel that BNs should judge more by feel rather than guidelines for assessing difficulty.

I have absolutely no issues with spread requirements and I think it's much better to have spread requirements than not, but I do think that the lengths themselves can be changed a little bit. I think a cutoff of 3:00/4:00/5:00 is best (for minimum difficulties of H/I/X respectively), but I know there are others who want the cutoffs to be shorter than that (something like 2:30/3:30/4:30 or something) -- though I disagree to a fairly strong extent.

At least for the circle of prolific mappers that I'm in, most people are generally for making difficulty spreads and ensuring that their mapset is made for a wider audience if they would like to move their content into an official part of the game (the ranked section), though the spread requirement is by definition a deterrent (it's literally extra steps). I do think that it's necessary regardless to have some sort of spread requirement, though the rules (or at least strict adherence to RC) can definitely be loosened.

The concern of people making half-assed lower difficulties to me is more of a ranking criteria problem than a spread problem, personally. In theory, I really don't think blatantly copy-pasted, tacked on difficulties should be permitted in spreads to begin with. A mapset that is curated for an official section of the game should have the most care put into the most relevant parts of it as possible, which includes the lower difficulties. Considering that the lower difficulties are going to make the bulk of the mapset's plays, I think that it's inexcusable to have abysmal lower difficulties in a mapset. I also don't think that removing the lower difficulties to increase the quality of the mapset at the expense of accessibility is a good idea either.

Shoegazer wrote:

I feel that most guidelines are being followed as rules rather than guidelines

That's a root of the issue I believe.

Penguinosity wrote:

Allow BNs the discretion to decide whether a map does or doesn't require more than one difficulty, based on its structure or history

I think if what you said truly is the root of the problem, and if most BNs are hesitant to budge on making the guideline more lenient, then this suggestion seems more than fair to me. If these really are just guidelines in the end then I'm not sure why all I've ever heard is that these parameters are clear cut and need to be followed. If it can be said explicitly that BNs are allowed to use their own discretion (as they do for most other aspects of the nomination process), to decide whether a map could use additional diffs or not, then that seems like a good start to me.

AncuL wrote:

can we guarantee that with these requirements relaxed, it wouldn't be abused to the point where new players are completely alienated?

For one, I strongly believe that spreads wouldn't be going anywhere no matter what, and two, the majority of what's being Ranked are for newer to mid level players anyways. It's always been that way. Now whether or not the people charting these maps are making spreads by their own volition or because they were told to would have to be taken case by case, but I don't think our community would suddenly see a drought in beginner maps due to a change in the "guidelines".

There's way too much good stuff left in the graveyard due to the spread requirements that could potentially go up for rankings if these were relaxed a bit.

I think the main issue is the 3:30 and 4:15 cutoffs. What are these based on even right now?

This has been said over and over in Mania mapping-related servers but I feel that a 2:30 cutoffs for Hards could be ideal (since this ensures a spread requirement for TV Sizes and rhythm game music), and then a cutoff of 3:30 or 3:45 for Insanes.

Komirin wrote:

This has been said over and over in Mania mapping-related servers but I feel that a 2:30 cutoffs for Hards could be ideal (since this ensures a spread requirement for TV Sizes and rhythm game music), and then a cutoff of 3:30 or 3:45 for Insanes.

I think this makes sense personally, a lot of extended mixes for rhythm game tracks also fall around the 3:30 mark which would make it ideal for those wanting to chart such. I dislike the idea of removing spread requirements entirely and more of a fan of relaxing the criteria instead. I'm really not a fan of having BNs decide whether maps could use additional difficulties or not since I really doubt that everyone in the (mania atleast) BNG would be able to agree on stuff like this. Especially when we can't even agree on the standard of quality that should be enforced into qualified section atm.

I'd like to mention that a lot of the osu!mania community (especially in the late early game to mid-higher level of play) come from other VSRGs or rhythm game communities in general. We see this with popular stepmania charters having a wide audience in mania, a lot of BMS, iiDX, o2Jam making up a good portion of the 7K community, the huge influx of players from more softer and recent VSRGs like RoBeats or Friday Night Funkin' and many VSRG-esc arcade rhythm game (like SDVX, pop'n picnic, etc.) players that also play osu!mania. Yet, these games with community generated mapsets feature smaller spreads which requires lesser effort from the mappers. So to link back to the previous thread in a sense, why rank something on osu!mania when you can rank it on another game with less effort? I think this is a question a lot of mappers from other games run into when migrating to mania and I think the answer to most is to let their map get graveyarded (or loved) since the mania player base (at mid-higher end levels) prefer unranked content anyways. I think this creates less of an incentive to rank anything on osu!mania in general, however I think laxing spread requirements (for all modes or not) definitely would help bring more of an incentive for these popular "unranked" mappers to start ranking their mapsets (along with hitsound addition removal, but that's obviously another topic). Rhetoric like this has been reiterated for years among mania mappers and migrants alike, I think it's time for a change.

From the discussion in the BN server, I believe a group of us thought that even just shaving off 15-30 seconds off widens the scope of songs that would require less of a spread (or none at all) massively. And that programs such as Mapper's Guild can still promote the aspect of including full spreads in featured artist content. That being said, I suggest the following proposal(s):

proposed RC wrote:

If the drain time of each difficulty is...

1. ...lower than 2:45, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode cannot be harder than a Normal.
2. ...between 2:45 and 3:30, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode cannot be harder than a Hard.
3. ...between 3:30 and 5:00, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode cannot be harder than an Insane.

OR

proposed RC wrote:

If the drain time of each osu!, osu!taiko or osu!catch difficulty is...

1. ...lower than 3:30, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode cannot be harder than a Normal.
2. ...between 3:30 and 4:15, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode cannot be harder than a Hard.
3. ...between 4:15 and 5:00, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode cannot be harder than an Insane.

If the drain time of each osu!mania difficulty is...

1. ...lower than 2:45, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode cannot be harder than a Normal.
2. ...between 2:45 and 3:30, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode cannot be harder than a Hard.
3. ...between 3:30 and 5:00, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode cannot be harder than an Insane.

In my opinion, I don't really see an issue with having mania split off from the other game modes in this regard. I think due to the special circumstance we are in (having a player base made up with players from multiple different VSRGs) that it makes sense. Although, I think either or proposals work here, in the end it would also depend on what other modes want, so gathering other opinions from them is necessary.

I'd like to hear what others think of this! I collected opinions from across the osu!mania BNG as well as a couple notable mania mappers (in both ranked and unranked scenes) and I think a good middle ground was the 2:45 and 3:30, and that generally 5 minutes was fine for marathons.

I can see the rule about lengths being relaxed to 2:30 because lot of rhythm games got songs in those lengths but I don't see how it's mania specific thing, STD mappers would want such change as well because lot of people struggle with normal difficulties, so I think using different arguments could lead to relaxing rules for all modes

1. ...between 3:30 and 4:15, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode cannot be harder than a Hard.

I think the main reason why some enjoyable(good) beatmaps that left in the graveyard is that the spread rule of 3:30 ~ 4:15 cut off eventually holds their back. Even though project loved saves some of those graveyard beatmaps but, there's no doubt that there're still a lot of beatmaps that haven't been saved.

5 minutes cut off right now is totally fine but, the cutoff of 3:30 ~ 4:15 could be relaxed to increase the productivity of the ranked map.

1. ...lower than 3:30, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode cannot be harder than a Normal.

I think this current 3:30 cut off is limiting beatmaps that using some short 3-minute music. Even if the mapper really tried to complete the difficulty tailored to Normal, it'd likely be an empty difficulty without expression, forced by the pattern guidelines. Therefore, rather, in order to exclude the production of such meaningless difficulties, easing spread requirements of 3:30 cut off will help productivity.

Not going to elaborate too much but I always assumed the following:

Longer maps do not need easier difficulties since the drain time is already a big difficulty for newer players, right? If so, we could argue that we want the shorter maps to be more accessible.

However, while I am a heavy advocate that indeed, shorter maps benefit a lot from easier difficulties...(I do tend to include easy diffs on almost all my maps), I also think not every version of a song *needs* an easy diff. What do I mean by this:

Let's say you're mapping "Hips Dont Lie" by Shakira, which is 3:38 in full length. It'll most likely end up requiring a Normal. If this is the first time the song is being ranked, you could argue a new player who likes the song will want to learn how to play with this song, so we should keep the Normal in.

However, what if "Hips Dont Lie" is already ranked with a Normal diff? If that is the case, this newbie player doesn't really need two normals to progress, but rather moving into a Hard or an Advanced, which both sets could provide easily. So the second time the same song gets ranked, I feel the minimum requirement could be one diff harder.


Just a thought, I know it would be hard to keep track of how many times a song has been qualified, but honestly easier than keeping track of if the same song was in qualified when you wanted to qualify a set, which is something that had to be done before.

I'd like to point out that some players exclusively play low diffs (at least in standard), so by excluding these difficulties, you are excluding a dedicated portion of the osu! playerbase.

Some mappers don't care about this, however most lower diffs tend to be more interesting than higher ones (due to the additional complexity required to make a "quality" high diff).

Project Railgun wrote:

I'd like to point out that some players exclusively play low diffs (at least in standard), so by excluding these difficulties, you are excluding a dedicated portion of the osu! playerbase.

I'd like to point out that some mappers exclusively map high diffs (at least in standard), so by forcing them to map lower diffs, you are excluding a dedicated portion of the osu! mapperbase from the ranked section.

We could do this song and dance all day. Would you rather have a high quality map that breaks current spread rules sit in grave or be given a chance to rank? There are so many maps that are left in the dust because of these rules, it mostly comes down to opinion whether it's better to force people to map lower diffs with the side effect of leaving a bunch of sets "unrankable" or have the possibility of giving a leaderboard to any map a BN deems high quality.

To the argument of "mappers should stop being lazy": We genuinely need to consider this aspect when making rules. These are volunteers, people do not get paid for ranking their maps. Making this process easier on them should be considered whenever possible.

I believe there would still be a steady income of lower diffs even with this change. I don't even think the drop in lower diffs would be significant enough to be noticeable because of how it's just seen as "good mapping" to make a spread. I know I'd appreciate full spreads even more than now as a BN, since it shows the mapper went above and beyond with their set. However, it would still allow me to push sets with songs that are really difficult to make a full spread on, like hardcore electronic/variable BPM/crazy snapping, or just push sets where the mapper did not want to make lower diffs because they're either busy with their life or lack the motivation. All speculation, however.

The way I see this change is as an increase in the amount of high quality maps having leaderboards rather than a detriment to low diff players.

I'd love to hold a 1-month period of no spread rules and see what happens.

Just some thoughts.

nothing prevents people from playing graved hard maps that exist though - normal diffs not existing prevents people from playing them.

spread rules (and ranked in general) is a tradeoff between minimum required effort from mappers and quality and accessibility for players. not having low diffs harms accessibility. *for standard* (i dunno about mania but theres many more entry level games like piano tiles i guess...) having a bare minimum mandated level of accessibility is a good thing as it creates organic growth.

again, it's a tradeoff. so the higher the ranking requirements, the less maps would get ranked. if that calibration is not done well then too many maps will not get ranked - that seems to be the case with mania. incidentally that used to be the case with the hard 5:00 cutoff for low diffs being required, which is why a more lenient method for determining low difficulty requirements was adopted - to decrease the burden on mappers. it's very easy to just want to chuck all the rules out of the window, but keep in mind why they exist; the goal of osu is for anyone to be able to play any song they want, so maximizing the amount of songs mapped across all skill levels is the ultimate goal of the mapping and ranking process.

edit**: my intent is not to denigrate or invalidate the sentiments of your community - i acknowledge that mania is one of many similar games with a lot of overlap rather than a standalone game like osu, and that creates conflict with a homegrown ranking system. i just talked so much about standard because i wanted to explain the logic behind the current spread rules as i get the sense that many mania mappers look at them as unreasonable requirements being forced onto the gamemode specifically in the osu community (which is not that inaccurate of a characterization) from the perspective of someone who supports those rules existing.

Reminder that this thread, and the other thread for hitsounds are both subtitled "mania" for a reason.

Everyone is more than welcome to add to the discussion, but please keep this in mind. Changes can be made just to one gamemode.

I'm going to strictly answer to Nao on the response as to give some insight on the Mania side of the problem:

First and foremost, this is quite Ironic. The Spread suggestion surged from another thread that was discussing changes on the Graveyarding system. So saying that maps should just be played whilst Graveyarded just looks like we're moving in circles. The proposal was started here, and I heavily suggest reading through it as it gives a LOT of insight on the situation and why it was adamantly specified that it was a Mania problem.

The short version of the thread linked above however is that Mania is not the only VSRG. Mania is but a Medium for the community of various VSRGs to come along. You probably are familiar with some, but popular examples that have vastly affected in the community have been Stepmania, o2Jam, FlashFlashRevolution, .BMS/.PMS, etc... The list goes on. The amount of maps objectively unable to be ranked are loads and loads. But that doesn't make them bad maps at all. Our first suggestion was to have more control over the Graveyard section and even offer a new category of permanent storage without leaderboards that would secure this legacy was not lost in time.

Secondly, as to discuss the Spread point just a little bit. I've glanced over just a bit through the Standard maps that have been going out as of late, and seemingly, the maps that could be affected by this change that would be exempt from mapping one difficulty are minimal. I do not know how much of an Issue is in Standard, but Spreading in Mania is extremely more restrictive. Not only because of certain song choices, but rather because of the way to pattern itself. We do not have the flexibility that Standard offers with Spreading. It's something that, whilst within certain limits, it's already hard to judge and pattern by de-facto.

At any point I believe however that the people backing the suggestion want to "chuck all the rules out of the window". There is a standard of Quality and that standard wants to be well kept all across the board. This wouldn't stop people from mapping MANY, MANY songs that would still require from lower diffs. This however would open up the doors for those that do want to partake in the Ranking section without having to do mental gymnastics about an extra difficulty and whatnot.

I want to also pinpoint, and this is something that most mania players can reiterate from their experience, is that the time we spend with Lower difficulties is abysmally low. It's quite an easy gamemode once people start with it, so the demand for Lower difficulties is not as high as it once used to be. You yourself said there were extra entry level games, and there indeed are. And yet they do not have such iron-fist ruling towards making lower difficulties a must, yet you see how people still map them even when they're not forced to. Stepmania/Etterna's packs are a great example of this, and newcomers there are probably more scared of the UI and accessibility of those games than the entry level of the packs as a whole.

This is basically my two cents on the matter. I personally I'm not much of an Advocate for this spreading change as I am with the parallel suggestion made to only require Basic Hitsounding as this would end up affecting the core values of the game.

My takeaway from this is that people have to stop looking Mania as a minigame mode. This very concern roots out from a long list of problems that have vetoed many, many mappers from trying out their luck in this game and VSRG community alike. While being a bad comparison, let me quote your "the goal of osu is for anyone to be able to play any song they want" by changing it into "the goal of osu should ALSO be for anyone to be able to map the song they want". If they cannot freely map a song without half-assing the lower difficulties and are discouraged by it, we're excluding people from the community that could otherwise have partaken in.

Nao Tomori wrote:

the goal of osu is for anyone to be able to play any song they want, so maximizing the amount of songs mapped across all skill levels is the ultimate goal of the mapping and ranking process.

I agree, but the problem precisely lies there: Mania is soaked from other games' cultures that don't have any spread requirements; in their current state, these limitations hinder the availability of good ranked charts instead of promoting it. This was something that could be appreciated when I only was a player, but being a Mania BN you realize how you are completely kept from ranking a concerning majority of the potentially good content due to restrictive general rules, mainly spread and hitsounds.

We do not propose to completely destroy these requirements because we acknowledge their importance. Most of the charts that willingly create full spreads are for content very osu-esque, such as seasonal anime stuff and a lot of game-size VSRG music, and our proposal would still protect this availability of spread content for new players and those that prefer lower difficulties. Achieving satisfactory spread requirements with drain times that actually make sense is something we've been needing for ages.


I must really reiterate this, in their current state spread rules in Mania are doing way more harm for the development of the mode than good.

RandomeLoL wrote:

My takeaway from this is that people have to stop looking Mania as a minigame mode. This very concern roots out from a long list of problems that have vetoed many, many mappers from trying out their luck in this game and VSRG community alike. While being a bad comparison, let me quote your "the goal of osu is for anyone to be able to play any song they want" by changing it into "the goal of osu should ALSO be for anyone to be able to map the song they want". If they cannot freely map a song without half-assing the lower difficulties and are discouraged by it, we're excluding people from the community that could otherwise have partaken in.

uberfazz said something similar to this too and i have to say there's still a key difference here. mappers aren't being "excluded" from ranking a map due to spread rules the same way a player is excluded from playing a song. in the former the mapper is willingly deciding to not take part in ranking their map (for understandable reasons) while in the latter if there's no diff available for said player's skill level, then there's pretty much nothing they can do. i think the player's interest should take precedence here due to this difference and this is what makes me against removing spread rules entirely.

that being said, i agree with komirin that the current cutoffs are pretty arbitrary. basing them off the type of songs that typically get mapped definitely makes more sense.

Scotty wrote:

uberfazz said something similar to this too and i have to say there's still a key difference here. mappers aren't being "excluded" from ranking a map due to spread rules the same way a player is excluded from playing a song. in the former the mapper is willingly deciding to not take part in ranking their map (for understandable reasons) while in the latter if there's no diff available for said player's skill level, then there's pretty much nothing they can do. i think the player's interest should take precedence here due to this difference and this is what makes me against removing spread rules entirely.

The key difference here is mapping/ranking is work since you're providing content for others (whether you're enjoying it or not), while playing a map is simply entertainment. You're essentially taking someone's work and saying it's "not enough" to be promoted because you "haven't done enough" according to some arbitrary rule. Creating additional difficulties does not affect the quality of other difficulties.

Additionally, I'd like to point out that these requirements restrict people who enjoy competing on leaderboards/submitting scores/gaining performance points/ranking up, which I'd argue is a huge majority of the playerbase.

It seems to me like the removal of spread rules is being treated as a removal of lower diffs entirely, which is definitely not the case. There will always be mappers that enjoy making full spreads and BNs that heavily prefer sets with lower diffs no matter what the rules are like. It simply gives more lenience and gives people more power to make decisions in cases like this mania one.

I do admit that my opinion is a bit extreme and probably isn't realistic considering how many people are against it (in standard at least), but I'm sure loosening the rules even more and/or loosening the rules for mania specifically could happen considering the huge growth the community has experienced since the creation of those rules. (Krisom's idea is pretty neat and relates to this growth, for example.)

UberFazz wrote:

I do admit that my opinion is a bit extreme...

Your opinion isn't extreme at all, in fact your take is more reasonable from my perspective. It seems much more extreme to force mappers into charting a song more than once just for inclusivity purposes. Also, I would like to talk about you saying this:

UberFazz wrote:

I know I'd appreciate full spreads even more than now as a BN, since it shows the mapper went above and beyond with their set..

This is what confounds me a bit, as it's something I feel most BNs would agree with and yet the proposed leniency to these current limits is seeing pushback from a good number of them. Keeping things the way that they are currently, just to avoid any risk of lower difficulties not getting as much representation isn't a sensible perspective to me. It's like some BNs don't understand the position of power that they are in. BNs no matter what, have the absolute benefit of choosing whatever maps they do and don't want to nominate. If your preference is to nominate only spreads, then your process will be exactly the same. However if you are a BN like Uber who wants to see where this venture could lead, then you will be missing out from any potential maps that will present themselves after more freedom is given to mappers. We can't keep things in a state of "what ifs" until we actually try something and see how it pans out.

If you are terrified of the prospects that lower difficulties will disappear, don't worry. If that were to somehow be the reality we see, then nothing is preventing us from reverting back to what worked better before. As I see it though, this is more than worth the experimentation to see how the Ranked field can diversify.

dunno why you are framing it like low diffs will still exist if you remove these guidelines. this situation exists because people don't even make low diffs for the express purpose of ranking their sets, you expect them to make them after they aren't needed? that's why your bns and nats are suggesting to loosen the criteria rather than remove them entirely.

the logic here is that the low diff output will remain the same (or very similar) while also allowing sets that *don't* have these low diffs to have leaderboards

to elaborate, the idea is that the majority of mappers/BNs who push low diffs for rank already will continue to push them while getting sets without low diffs to rank as well

yes, more likely than not it'll result in a decrease of ranked low diffs, but the argument is that this decrease will be too minor to offset the benefit of ranking sets without low diffs

again, we can't know what would happen for sure which is why a "test run" of sorts seems like a nice idea — we can gague the change in ranked low diffs and use that information to make a more "final" decision, and worst case scenario we go a month or 2 with very few low diffs

Nao Tomori wrote:

dunno why you are framing it like low diffs will still exist if you remove these guidelines

I think me framing it like low diffs will still exist if the criteria were removed, is much more reasonable than anyone framing it like they will completely disappear. Especially if certain BNs make it explicitly clear that they will not be nominating things without spreads. It would be kind of difficult to get your map nominated by a BN who doesn't nominate non-spreads no? Also I don't think anyone can reasonably argue that this point will be irrelevant because of the BNs who DO nominate non spreads, as it's clear many BNs will still favor difficulty spreading.

So, as someone who has ranked as many maps as yourself, as many spreads as yourself, would you no longer continue to make low difficulties if the guidelines were removed? If not, do you believe you are the only one? No, you wouldn't even be close to it. I'm all for loosening the criteria if that's all we can get, I even said it here:

Penguinosity wrote:

I'm not asking for the abolishment of this spread criteria as a whole, even just for mania. There's clear reasoning to keep this there as to both avoid blatant low effort maps/sets from being nominated, and to also provide accessibility for players of different skill ranges when necessary. However, heavy emphasis on *when necessary*.

However, if the potential exists to remove them entirely then that would obviously open up the most doors to map diversity in the Ranked section after I thought about it more.

Many replies have mentioned how the current rules are restricting mappers from ranking their maps and I’m surprised that there’re actually voices for removing spread requirement completely. I think the discussion seemed to forget the true purpose of ranking a map. The map being famous in other VSRG game or being approved as a good map isn’t enough for it to go for rank, the map have to also fulfil the basic coverage of players at different level so it can truly “serves for the community”. Ranked section shouldn’t be a stage for mappers to show off their mapping skill or to freely express their thoughts through mapping. Ranked section should be prioritised for players but not for mappers.

Loved section is already designed for maps that are created and widely approved in other VSRG game by the community but haven’t satisfied with the current requirements for rank. And there are mappers who don’t aim for ranked but loved as they wanted to map maps that are “unique/fun/outstanding” instead of “perfect” fitting the rules.

For lower diffs being relatively bad in quality because mappers may just copy and paste everything. I think we as modders should take the responsibility of avoiding these low-effort lower diffs going toward the ranked section. However I observed there are plenty of modders that are just willing to mod a map that reached certain difficulty, if that’s how the trend goes for the modding community, it well explained why some lower diffs goes unchecked.

Spread requirements had brought us many amazing mapsets, and it also indirectly encouraged GDing with I think greatly help with binding and strengthening the mappers community. Uncountable newcomers may choose to stay longer here simply because there’s new things also for them to play.

I’m fine with relaxing the time range by a bit, maybe let the cut off be 3:00/3:00-4:00/4:00-5:00, but I’m always against completely removing the spread requirements.

MCPXiaoBai wrote:

Many replies have mentioned how the current rules are restricting mappers from ranking their maps and I’m surprised that there’re actually voices for removing spread requirement completely. I think the discussion seemed to forget the true purpose of ranking a map. The map being famous in other VSRG game or being approved as a good map isn’t enough for it to go for rank, the map have to also fulfil the basic coverage of players at different level so it can truly “serves for the community”. Ranked section shouldn’t be a stage for mappers to show off their mapping skill or to freely express their thoughts through mapping. Ranked section should be prioritised for players but not for mappers.

The "true purpose" of ranking a map is totally up to interpretation. If you want to solely rank maps for players + you want to appeal to the largest possible audience, nobody is stopping you from doing so right now and continuing to do so without spread rules. This change is giving more freedom to people who believe that ranking a map is simply giving a map a leaderboard without necessarily appealing to a wide audience. You can "serve the community" in more ways that one.

The ranked section is prioritized for players and it will continue to prioritize players. Removing spread rules won't make low diffs disappear, nor will it reduce the amount of content ranked, nor will it make maps drop in quality — in theory, at least.

peppy wrote:

The point of ranking is to get maps that are solid and enjoyable into a permanently engraved state. That's literally why the whole system exists. It has obviously evolved into something more stringent and opinionated over the years, but it doesn't necessarily have to be.

I think if anyone needs clarification of the purpose of ranked it is important to consider the word of the man himself Peppy.