TL;DR
We need a method of promoting maps separate from ranked. "Featured" maps provide incentives for mappers and provides players with a better selection of maps to choose from, while allowing for more innovation or leniency in the ranking criteria.
In light of the recent discussions regarding certain RC proposals such as the removal of spread requirements (mania edition) and the removal of spread requirements (all gamemodes edition), I've thought up a proposal that I believe could not only alleviate these issues, but also provide additional benefits to the mapping scene.
Featured
This idea mostly revolves around attacking what I see as the core issue behind the current ranking system: Mixing immortalization with promotion.
Currently, ranking a map results in two separate outcomes: Your map becomes permanent, with a permanent leaderboard and a permanent place in the database. This is the process of "immortalization."
Additionally, this map gets promoted by way of the main "content feed," both in-game (with the form of osu!direct for example) and on the website (with "recently ranked" or "most popular" or even the old "most played"). This is the process of "promotion."
This often turns into a problem with discussions regarding the ranking criteria or the state of ranked. Many people see ranked as the main system of promotion, and believe that it's a privilege for the mapper to have their map ranked. Others see it purely as a form of immortalization, where any map that achieves the basics (i. e. times their map correctly and places objects in a manner that's enjoyable for one player or another), with promotion simply being an afterthought or a side-effect of the system.
This is where my proposal comes into play. I believe introducing a system that separates these two ideas into two separate "content streams" could be a massive upgrade in terms of how content is digested by the community.
"Okay, cool... but why should I care? Ranked is already in a great state and I have no issues with the current content stream"
First of all — answering the "why." What's the point of implementing this in the first place?Similar to what I've stated earlier, mixing "immortalization" and "promotion,"
- Slows down or even halts innovation in the form of ranking criteria changes (such as the threads on spread removal)
- Provides dissatisfaction for certain players or mappers when stumbling upon "low quality" maps — there's currently no way to tell the difference
- Bars people from experimenting with their maps or nominations, often going the "safe" route for the sake of avoiding controversy
- Removes the possibility of incentives being given to mappers to make their maps higher quality or higher effort (with the sole exception being Mapper's Guild)
- Forces the ranking process to be overwhelming, especially for newer mappers
"You've convinced me. But what would it look like?"
I've had a few ideas in the past, such as an entirely different section, but I don't believe this is really necessary. The category of all of these maps would still be "Ranked," as it always has. This is done for the sake of simplicity and dev time. However, "featured" maps could have a multitude of different features, including:- A "featured beatmap" tag, similar to the current "featured artist" or "explicit" tags (this is the "ground floor" of this feature, but the name might need a bit of a rework to reduce confusion... that's not too important right now tho)
- Some sort of "glow" or "outline" on the beatmap card on the website and in-game (lazer)
- A specific feed for these maps, possibly as a replacement for the current "ranked maps" feed on the home page. Could have something similar in the main menu of lazer as well, if possible.
That sounds great, but what would make me want to get a featured map? How difficult would it be?
The incentives above are the ones that I believe are the most feasible at the current moment, but I'm sure other great ideas are out there as well. To think of a very ambitious one, implementing something like Mapper's Guild but for high quality sets directly into the osu!site or osu!lazer with a point system that's integrated into an official leaderboard could be really cool.Regarding what would separate ranked from featured, here's what I came up with so far. To stay as objective as possible, I'd like to set certain guidelines for featured that would more or less guarantee you the status:
- Having a spread that appeals to a wide variety of people, or a spread that requires considerable effort to produce. Examples could include 15+ minute marathons or 5-6 difficulty spreads (all of varying difficulty, not just 3 or 4 Extra diffs) of songs that are 3 minutes or longer. This would also allow for a loosening of spread rules and address earlier issues, especially for the mania community.
- Having a map that's widely accepted as "high quality" by a notable portion of the community. This one could cause contention, but I believe if there's any disagreements over whether a map should be featured or not, it's better to err on the side of featuring the map. If enough people (likely BNs) agree with featuring the map, it should be featured.
- Mapping featured artist songs
- Mapping a "clean" style that most players would enjoy playing; something that genuinely benefits from being promoted to the wider community
- On the contrary, mapping in a "unique" style that goes out of its way to be different from the norm yet still enjoyable to a large playerbase
All other maps will stay in ranked, as is the case currently.
This is the category that I believe should reward effort. There's currently no real incentive for people to go out of their way to make something cool, interesting, or especially beneficial to ranked.
How would we prevent abuse? Are you sure BNs would be willing to do this?
Regarding "abuse," where BNs would go out of there way to vote up something that they don't actually believe is high quality, we'd deal with it in a similar manner as we do with nominations. Regarding BN motivation, I believe BNs would enjoy this system of promotion as much as they currently do with normal nominations. To be fair, I don't have much to go off of, but just thinking personally and observing the behavior of some BNs (posting their "favorite nominations" on social media for example), I believe this wouldn't be an issue.----
Giving people more freedom and more incentives in ranked while still providing players with a content stream of high quality content is something that I think would be a genuine improvement. Some players could play every map that gets ranked and enjoy all the weird maps, while others could stick to featured maps and enjoy that form of curation.As much as I love this idea, it ultimately comes down to the court of public opinion. Please share your thoughts on the topic if you have any and thanks for considering my proposal! There are lots of different numbers and features to discuss as it's a rather complex topic, so any and all ideas are welcome.
P.S. I understand that this would require dev time and that could be an issue. I'm trying to think of the mapping environment in the long run, and I'm optimistic that my ideas aren't too out of reach for an eventual implementation.