I feel like I've seen this requested before, but I couldn't find the thread, and search isn't working and I don't know, I think it's something that should be implemented soon (as there are already problems with it). So, sorry if this is a horrible duplicate of something that people are aware of, or if it's already been shot down.. Well, whatever
Currently on web and in game, the order difficulties appear in is based on star rating. This causes a lot of organizational issues and just looks really.. ugly. Especially when you have multiple game modes in one mapset.
examples:
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/79038
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/106212
http://puu.sh/5z25p.jpg
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/85802 -- eXtra is the hardest diff, but it appears in the position of a "hard" on the list
a lot of people will agree star rating is flawed, but I think even without flaws, it would be best to allow a manual override to difficulty sorting, rather than having the system do it automatically.
What I think would be a simple solution, is to just add the option to put a single line of code in the .osu file to denote a "sort order" -- basically specifying which order a specific difficulty appears in on the website and in game. The code would go under the [Metadata] section, it would look like this probably:
Where you can use any positive integer to denote sort order, the higher the number the further down on the list it appears.
In this way you can sort by map difficulty and game mode, putting each difficulty of each game mode together on the list (looks much nicer).
However, one problem that may arise is the situation with this map: https://osu.ppy.sh/s/85802
If you put eXtra as a higher sort order than another, the difficulty listing looks like this: ENIIH
So maybe it should also be a possibility to set map difficulty in beatmap metadata as well..
"Difficulty:E/N/H/I/X"
or something like that.
I think even if the star rating system is improved, a manual override for these things will always be helpful in some situations
Currently on web and in game, the order difficulties appear in is based on star rating. This causes a lot of organizational issues and just looks really.. ugly. Especially when you have multiple game modes in one mapset.
examples:
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/79038
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/106212
http://puu.sh/5z25p.jpg
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/85802 -- eXtra is the hardest diff, but it appears in the position of a "hard" on the list
a lot of people will agree star rating is flawed, but I think even without flaws, it would be best to allow a manual override to difficulty sorting, rather than having the system do it automatically.
What I think would be a simple solution, is to just add the option to put a single line of code in the .osu file to denote a "sort order" -- basically specifying which order a specific difficulty appears in on the website and in game. The code would go under the [Metadata] section, it would look like this probably:
[Metadata]
Title:Dimension tripper!!!!
TitleUnicode:Dimension tripper!!!!
Artist:nao
ArtistUnicode:nao
Creator:Silynn
Version:UniSane
Source:Choujigen Game Neptune
Tags:nepgear is the kawaiiest
BeatmapID:331510
BeatmapSetID:108611
SortOrder:4 <<<<<<<
Where you can use any positive integer to denote sort order, the higher the number the further down on the list it appears.
In this way you can sort by map difficulty and game mode, putting each difficulty of each game mode together on the list (looks much nicer).
However, one problem that may arise is the situation with this map: https://osu.ppy.sh/s/85802
If you put eXtra as a higher sort order than another, the difficulty listing looks like this: ENIIH
So maybe it should also be a possibility to set map difficulty in beatmap metadata as well..
"Difficulty:E/N/H/I/X"
or something like that.
I think even if the star rating system is improved, a manual override for these things will always be helpful in some situations