A Hard or above difficult mapset for songs above 4mins? Making a difficulty so simple for long songs might not be too entertaining, but if there are a few difficulties, starting from Hard, I think it might be better.

Soaprman wrote:

Ah, the glory days when lowering the tick rate to fall from approval into ranked was common enough that a mention was actually written into the ranking criteria not to do it.

I always wanted to do that with my first map.

neonat wrote:

A Hard or above difficult mapset for songs above 4mins? Making a difficulty so simple for long songs might not be too entertaining, but if there are a few difficulties, starting from Hard, I think it might be better.

For applying this, these Hards should be Singletappable with a regular mouse; otherwise, a Normal diff must be provided. Because the most of us aim entertainment and fun, not (necessarily) challenge and lustful proudness on human strength.

Garven wrote:

it led to bad design decisions because of the score requirements to avoid making a hybrid approval/rank set.

we can simply made guidelines/rules against that.

In fact using drain time as onliest approval metric isn't really stopped that: removing all breaks, for example,to achieve approve-able drain time isn't really better design choise.

Alarido wrote:

For applying this, these Hards should be Singletappable with a regular mouse; otherwise, a Normal diff must be provided.

what o_o

That never works, Kodora. Everyone loves pushing the envelope to the furthest possible to the point where the guideline is wasted breath. I still don't think score is a good metric regardless. Having the length is a nice and simple metric that works well.

To be honest, we could just make a compromise.

<old suggestions>

Editing this for clarity.
What I suggest:

0~4 minutes : ENHI required (or ENH depending on the song ofc)
4~5 minutes: NHI required (or NH)
5~6 minutes: HI required (if insane is really not appripriate NH required)
6+ minutes: anything (preferably a H or an I)

Star ratings for Normals don't have to be around 3 for NHI spread, but the normal diff needs to feel like a normal diff. Star ratings blow anyway.

Also this is just the minimum required. People can still map a full set for a 5 or 6 minute songs if they want to.

lolcubes wrote:

To be honest, we could just make a compromise.

For example:

Below 4 minutes, you need a full set (includes Easy though).
Between 4 and 5 minutes, Easy is not required, but a normal is.
Above 5 minutes only Hard and Insane are required (or a Hard and another difficulty which goes either way), because playing normals for 5 minutes is not challenging for almost anyone. It gets tedious (same with Easy for 4+ mins).
Above 6 minutes, we leave it as it is.

This way we still go towards somewhere and it's not too sudden.

We're using draining time here, right?
In that case, I agree completely with this.

I thought that easy isnt necessary when normal has around 3,0 star difficulty, lol.

Kodora wrote:

http://osu.ppy.sh/forum/t/4936

Just leaving it here. Actual reason why approval category exist.

Ah, I remember that! That was when I was just a newbie. I was also there for the hilarious day of 1.18x Flashlight.

Which was like 5.5 years ago. Things are a lot different now so that's not really worth mentioning.

lolcubes wrote:

To be honest, we could just make a compromise.

For example:

Below 4 minutes, you need a full set (includes Easy though).
Between 4 and 5 minutes, Easy is not required, but a normal is.
Above 5 minutes only Hard and Insane are required (or a Hard and another difficulty which goes either way), because playing normals for 5 minutes is not challenging for almost anyone. It gets tedious (same with Easy for 4+ mins).
Above 6 minutes, we leave it as it is.

This way we still go towards somewhere and it's not too sudden.

Fully agree as a minimum required for Ranking since people ask me for map the Hard GD for +5 min songs (:

Blue Dragon wrote:

lolcubes wrote:

To be honest, we could just make a compromise.

For example:

Below 4 minutes, you need a full set (includes Easy though).
Between 4 and 5 minutes, Easy is not required, but a normal is.
Above 5 minutes only Hard and Insane are required (or a Hard and another difficulty which goes either way), because playing normals for 5 minutes is not challenging for almost anyone. It gets tedious (same with Easy for 4+ mins).
Above 6 minutes, we leave it as it is.

This way we still go towards somewhere and it's not too sudden.

We're using draining time here, right?
In that case, I agree completely with this.

I agree on this too, as we'll be able to see better spreads in <4 min song, so yeah.

But in the bolded part maybe the Normal we could increase the star rating limit from 3.0 stars or lower to 3.5 stars or lower? (or no limit at all?). This would be better for some songs where the 3 stars Normal falls between the Easy and Normal difficulty, because this implies to simplify a lot, which can hurt the spread (this is more in mapper side but well).

Yes, no star limit, just a difficulty that feels and plays like a normal.
As I said, no new player will have the patience to click slow beats for 5 minutes. Well maybe some will, but Easy is there for the new players to learn the game. Not to play the game (well, thats the general idea, but some people enjoy playing Easy lol).
(it's still possible to include easy if the mapper wants it, in my idea at least)

Tidek wrote:

I thought that easy isnt necessary when normal has around 3,0 star difficulty, lol.

It's not currently. But my version of the rule would change that. The reason is people actually map easier normals as much as possible which creates a gap between a normal and a hard which is hard to close in. I'd call it "cheesing the difficulty" just to make the mapset rankable.
This way you really have no reason to do that and you can just map quality normals like you're normally supposed to.

lolcubes wrote:

To be honest, we could just make a compromise.

For example:

Below 4 minutes, you need a full set (includes Easy though).
Between 4 and 5 minutes, Easy is not required, but a normal is.
Above 5 minutes only Hard and Insane are required (or a Hard and another difficulty which goes either way), because playing normals for 5 minutes is not challenging for almost anyone. It gets tedious (same with Easy for 4+ mins).
Above 6 minutes, we leave it as it is.

This way we still go towards somewhere and it's not too sudden.

I'm completely okay with this actually

Good idea. We need to make sure the Hard is sensibly easier than the other difficulty, though.

the compromise seems like the best one I've seen in some time.

Mr Color wrote:

Good idea. We need to make sure the Hard is sensibly easier than the other difficulty, though.

I agree totally ♡

Nowadays, many Hards are barely easier than Another/Insane (in the same mapset), thus being more properly made Hyper. And a few even go to the limits of almost getting overmapped.

Mr Color wrote:

Good idea. We need to make sure the Hard is sensibly easier than the other difficulty, though.

AKA not have a big jump every 2 notes throughout the entire fucking map for no fucking reason.

You guys know who you are.

so 5 min would need 2 diffs with a minimum being a hard.

I can live with that

Purely lovely.

How are we going to determine the level of "Hard" that would be acceptable though? I've seen some pretty huge variances in the level of Hard difficulties, and if this is a pass to the whole giving more players an opportunity to enjoy the song, should we leave it at an actual Hard level to the point of if there's a batshit-Insane level map here, there will need to be 3 maps, a Hard, Insane, then the batshit-Insane?

An example of what I mean as far as what would be acceptable under this compromise here:
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/28705

so have we come to an agreement here? also i think that a hard should actually be a hard and not just to be another insane with a different name...

RatedNC17 wrote:

so have we come to an agreement here? also i think that a hard should actually be a hard and not just to be another insane with a different name...

What about using tp stars to determine difficulty? t/164057&start=0 They have much more range and seem more accurate than eyupStars.
Something like this, for example (numbers can be fine-tuned):

1. 0.0-1.2 Stars: Easy
2. 1.0-1.8 Stars: Normal
3. 1.6-2.3 Stars: Hard
4. 2.1-3.6 Stars: Insane
5. 3.4-4.0 Stars: Extra
6. 3.8 or more: Extra+

Garven wrote:

How are we going to determine the level of "Hard" that would be acceptable though? I've seen some pretty huge variances in the level of Hard difficulties, and if this is a pass to the whole giving more players an opportunity to enjoy the song, should we leave it at an actual Hard level to the point of if there's a batshit-Insane level map here, there will need to be 3 maps, a Hard, Insane, then the batshit-Insane?

An example of what I mean as far as what would be acceptable under this compromise here:
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/28705

Maybe I'll provide a proper spread for this song. I'll be very glad of doing it ♡

Something like this one? https://osu.ppy.sh/s/13223

neonat wrote:

Something like this one? https://osu.ppy.sh/s/13223

neonat, I love you too ♡ (without dismissing jlfj coz he is my main ♥)
You gave the example of what we shouldn't do about diff spread.

Now let's do some example of proper diff spread: https://osu.ppy.sh/s/136425
Despite its low BPM overall, it might serve to display something, even though just a glimpse of the right and wrong.

under that system would longer single diff mapsets still be categorized under approval?

I'm just curious how this system would work because if it scales up that way why not just remove the approval categorization altogether, or how would we determine what gets approved and what gets ranked?

Full Tablet wrote:

RatedNC17 wrote:

so have we come to an agreement here? also i think that a hard should actually be a hard and not just to be another insane with a different name...

What about using tp stars to determine difficulty? http://osu.ppy.sh/forum/t/164057&start=0 They have much more range and seem more accurate than eyupStars.
Something like this, for example (numbers can be fine-tuned):

1. 0.0-1.2 Stars: Easy
2. 1.0-1.8 Stars: Normal
3. 1.6-2.3 Stars: Hard
4. 2.1-3.6 Stars: Insane
5. 3.4-4.0 Stars: Extra
6. 3.8 or more: Extra+

Disagreed. The difficulty just has to be considerably easier than your insane diff and play like a Hard normally would. I am pretty sure that if you see AR from 6 to 8 (and OD) and the map not being too dense on the timeline you could consider it a hard. You don't need silly math to do that for you. It would also make things more simple. Since you already have BATs checking the mapsets before they are ranked (or just unranking the qualified mapsets) I think it's pretty safe to leave it that way.

Also, there is no criteria for "Extra". While it's common practice to name hardest difficultes (harder than insane at least) as such, it's not required. It's still an Insane per-se. That's another topic though.

Garven wrote:

How are we going to determine the level of "Hard" that would be acceptable though? I've seen some pretty huge variances in the level of Hard difficulties, and if this is a pass to the whole giving more players an opportunity to enjoy the song, should we leave it at an actual Hard level to the point of if there's a batshit-Insane level map here, there will need to be 3 maps, a Hard, Insane, then the batshit-Insane?

An example of what I mean as far as what would be acceptable under this compromise here:
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/28705

That's really situational. To avoid drama, I'd rather have a proper hard and then an insane (can be batshit insane, I mean just look at towa yori ;D ) than create more issues within this issue we're trying to solve or find a compromise for. In most cases if the diff fits the song, all is well. If it's a bunch of crazy overmap, then the diff is bad and should get changed to reflect the song more instead.

As for Kokou no Sousei, yes that is something that I would find acceptable too (hard + one insane, can be more insanes if people want guests, collabs, w/e). It's just that we should be strict on the draining time rules.
I propose a strict 5:00 hard limit on the draining time, where even one second less will not count towards the H+I part of the rule (same goes for 4:00 and NHI and 6:00 and I). This is to avoid drama and have a really clear criteria about this.

As for what happens to approvals, they stay as they are. This rule doesn't change that, but it makes shorter than marathon songs easier to map/mod/rank as people seem to want that. I suggest we also fix the topic title but I'll wait on that for a bit.

As long as this rule will not affect slow short songs that are EN/NH mapsets (what I mean is that they are still allowed only 2 difficulties even if they are very short, because mapping such songs are limited in difficulty range; don't make it a must for short songs to have 3+ difficulties, or at least make exceptions for these)

YES

Sounds very much like laziness to me. Five minutes is a reasonable length, even for a pop song that would air on the radio (when that four-minute limit isn't being imposed clumsily). To me, "marathon" implies "really long" and a five-minute map shouldn't feel that way if it's paced decently.

If certain people had their way, then we'd probably have Extra-only TV Sizes everywhere and a huge portion of less able players being alienated. Thankfully, that's why definition limitations such as this are in place.

DEEDIT: Looking back through the thread, the proposed compromise sounds fairly reasonable, but I worry that it'd be open to abuse. You know, people looking for songs which are only barely long enough to satisfy the two-diff requirement. Easies and normals don't have to be boring for novices--indeed, with mods in particular, they can feel pretty satisfying when made properly. Using "it's boring to play them for that long" sounds like a quick and nasty fix for the problem of people not knowing how to map those diffs well. I'm pretty sure that lots of people would enjoy longer easy maps, if the maps had suitable pacing with climaxes and tasty patterns in the right places.

What about just allow for easier diffs have less drain time with saving current approval criteria? This is not directly unrankable for now, but kinda unvanted. We can solve lots of problems by this - maps will still have proper diff spread, and mapping, for example, 1:30 of 5 min long song won't be too hard for mapper - also 1:30 long easy won't really be boring for anyone.

Thought?

Kodora wrote:

What about just allow for easier diffs have less drain time with saving current approval criteria? This is not directly unrankable for now, but kinda unvanted. We can solve lots of problems by this - maps will still have proper diff spread, and mapping, for example, 1:30 of 5 min long song won't be too hard for mapper - also 1:30 long easy won't really be boring for anyone.

Thought?

sound fair

Kodora wrote:

What about just allow for easier diffs have less drain time with saving current approval criteria? This is not directly unrankable for now, but kinda unvanted. We can solve lots of problems by this - maps will still have proper diff spread, and mapping, for example, 1:30 of 5 min long song won't be too hard for mapper - also 1:30 long easy won't really be boring for anyone.

Thought?

Sounds extremely contrived. Again, a map won't be boring for its target audience if it's mapped well. Mapping less than a third of the song is getting away with murder, simple as that.

D33d wrote:

Kodora wrote:

What about just allow for easier diffs have less drain time with saving current approval criteria? This is not directly unrankable for now, but kinda unvanted. We can solve lots of problems by this - maps will still have proper diff spread, and mapping, for example, 1:30 of 5 min long song won't be too hard for mapper - also 1:30 long easy won't really be boring for anyone.

Thought?

Sounds extremely contrived. Again, a map won't be boring for its target audience if it's mapped well. Mapping less than a third of the song is getting away with murder, simple as that.

But is a better option than asking for map hard and insane diff only.

Under that proposal, you're not forced to only Hard/Insane, you're free to map a 4 diff spread for a long song, Hard/Insane would be the minimum required.

Personally I'd prefer all diffs with the same length, regardless of duration.

DakeDekaane wrote:

Under that proposal, you're not forced to only Hard/Insane, you're free to map a 4 diff spread for a long song, Hard/Insane would be the minimum required.

Personally I'd prefer all diffs with the same length, regardless of duration.

The entire point is that people will take the excuse to omit [Easy] and [Normal]. This is what I don't like about it, because people will invariably pick songs which scrape five minutes and then only map [Hard] and [Insane]. I know this, because it's part of the general mentality of this place. That sort of thing already happens in #modhelp--people say, "This is just long enough to count as marathon, right? Right!? Pleeeeeeaaaase tell me it's long enough ;A;"

By extrapolation, we'll have people saying, "Hey is this enough drain time for hard/insane?" Then, "Hey I can just map insane for this 2:59 song, right?" It's a slippery slope which I'm exaggerating for the sake of argument, but it couldn't be more appropriate to quote the saying, "Give them an inch and they'll take a mile."

DEEDIT: To see what I've let myself in for, I decided to read more of the thread. Now I'm really at a loss. Oh well, suit yourselves.

Still wonder why people think mapping or even playing a five minutes long EASY or NORMAL is fun for anyone.

I have failed to find any LONG EASY OR NORMAL DIFFICULTY with a high play count compared to the rest of the difficulties of the same mapset.

Some day people here will realize that the game is not gonna break or anything if you stop giving priority to lower difficulties, if anything it's gonna be better, most played difficulties from the information I've checked are Hards, then Insanes (exceptions exist, such as extremely mainstream maps like Guren no Yumiya, which are what super casuals play, their favorite anime song), there are no players whining about now having "a playable easy/normal" on some mapset, but instead there are indeed players whining about the maximum difficulty being boring, or the mapset not getting ranked because it lacks a [super easy] level, etc.

Also, if you check out recent maps (which usually have a high play count for a few days after they get ranked) you'll find out the most played difficulty is almost always the hardest one, while the other ones don't really get many plays at all (this happens for a number of reasons but what really matters is what people actually play and not really why).

It's been like 2 or 3 years since I started playing mainly unranked maps and it seems like it's gonna be like that forever since things don't look like they are ever gonna change. :/

Wishy wrote:

Still wonder why people think mapping or even playing a five minutes long EASY or NORMAL is fun for anyone.

I have failed to find any LONG EASY OR NORMAL DIFFICULTY with a high play count compared to the rest of the difficulties of the same mapset.

Some day people here will realize that the game is not gonna break or anything if you stop giving priority to lower difficulties, if anything it's gonna be better, most played difficulties from the information I've checked are Hards, then Insanes (exceptions exist, such as extremely mainstream maps like Guren no Yumiya, which are what super casuals play, their favorite anime song), there are no players whining about now having "a playable easy/normal" on some mapset, but instead there are indeed players whining about the maximum difficulty being boring, or the mapset not getting ranked because it lacks a [super easy] level, etc.

Also, if you check out recent maps (which usually have a high play count for a few days after they get ranked) you'll find out the most played difficulty is almost always the hardest one, while the other ones don't really get many plays at all (this happens for a number of reasons but what really matters is what people actually play and not really why).

It's been like 2 or 3 years since I started playing mainly unranked maps and it seems like it's gonna be like that forever since things don't look like they are ever gonna change. :/

for example:
https://osu.ppy.sh/b/277212&m=0
https://osu.ppy.sh/b/255655&m=0
https://osu.ppy.sh/b/225301&m=3

and almost every map have more play count in normal/easy diff

Kodora Idea is better than having maps with just hard/insane IMO

Actually Wishy is right about diffs more played Hard/Insane>Normal>Easy, in most of cases. Many casual players play either Normal or Hard.
As a mapper I don't find boring mapping long Easy (Normal maybe), but of course I may be the only one with this way of thinking.
As a player I usually play Hards or easy Insanes, but I also have fun with Normal difficulties when I don't feel like putting too much effort.

A shorter low diff is like giving players the leftovers of our lunch, one does better by mapping a collaboration or asking for a guest diff if one doesn't want to map the whole thing.

@D33d: I know that will likely happen, but if they want put that low ammount of effort and be happy with it, it's up to them. Obviously there will be some exceptions.

It's not that bad when a ENHI spread would be needed for songs shorter than 4 minutes. There are some songs that goes slightly above 4 minutes and will have at least a NHI or ENH. I'd only change that in lolcubes' proposal, either a ENH or NHI spread for 4-5 minutes songs. Not everything is that bad under that proposal, unless people try hard.

DakeDekaane wrote:

I'd only change that in lolcubes' proposal, either a ENH or NHI spread for 4-5 minutes songs. Not everything is that bad under that proposal, unless people try hard.

No need. You are just not required to have an easy. You can map 25 diffs if you wanted, including easy, but you're not required to do so.

Please re-read my proposal guys. You don't need an easy diff under those rules, but you are allowed to map one if you want.