Hello everyone, some dicussion in the mania BN server following the RC rule reword regarding difficulty spread proposal uncovered additional ambiguities within mania RC regarding mania spread rules. This RC proposal, written by Tailsdk and I, aims to rectify this error.

It is common practice in osu!mania to have spreads containing intermediate difficulty levels such as normal+ and hard+, often referred to as Advanced and Hyper respectively. These difficulty levels are not explicitly defined in the ranking criteria, leading to confusion whether a spread consisiting of N+/H+/I+ should be considered rankable. The goal of this proposal is to formally incorporate these difficulty levels into the ranking criteria and clarify allowance for spreads where difficulty gap is linear but less than a whole currently defined difficulty level.

Before:

After:

This should help clarify the existence of these difficulty levels, as well as make spreads including them clearly rankable.

MadBricktree wrote:

After:

Difficulty-specific rules and guidelines do only apply to the difficulty level they are listed for and therefore do not apply to every osu!mania difficulty. Rhythm-related rules and guidelines apply to approximately 180 BPM beatmaps. If your song is drastically faster or slower, some variables might be different, as detailed in Scaling BPM on the Ranking Criteria.

Additional intermediate difficulty levels, which are too hard to strictly follow a lower difficulty levels' guidelines, but too easy to be considered a higher difficulty level, may exist as a difficulty level on their own. Rules and guidelines for these difficulties are to be flexibly interpolated between the nearest two difficulty levels defined below. Difficulty naming should clearly indicate that these difficulty levels are not those lower or upper.

Key mode-specific guidelines are constructed based on the most common Ranked key modes (4 key and 7 key). Any other key modes should apply these guidelines when applicable.

I guess this is good clarification, I know what you mean by intermediate difficulty levels but could you provide some examples to make it even more clear what are those? And also for everybody else to see regardless of game mode. Could be nice if you add it on the original post, or a reply works.

Also I think it would be good if you'd delete the word "intermediate" as it can cause more confusion. Additional difficulty levels should suffice in every aspect as an explanation of what you're trying to get at.

I don't disagree with adding some examples but what should I add as examples? Would it be appropriate to formally add advanced and hyper to mania RC?

I can't quite agree with dropping "intermediate" as it clarifies that the newly defined difficulty levels are to be between what are already defined. I guess I could use "in-between" instead of "intermediate" but that wouldn't be as formal. I am aware that "intermediate" itself is used as a difficulty name, but I think it is pretty clear for any English speaker to know that this is not what the word is referring to.

The way I've approached intermediate difficulties is by having two difficulties (one currently in RC, one not) per level. So as an example a full spread with intermediate difficulties might be

Easy Level - Beginner, Easy
Normal Level - Intermediate, Normal
Hard Level - Advanced, Hard
Insane Level - Hyper, Insane
Extra Level - Another, Extra, Expert, etc.

As a side note, maybe instead of calling them "intermediate difficulties" it could be "transitional difficulties"?

1. Think for the wording, instead of "Additional intermediate difficulty levels" , you should just put it "Additional difficulty levels" instead. the "Intermediate" sort of throw me off guard that i thought at first it's referring to intermediate as specific difficulty name, instead of intermediate that refers to the difficulty in-between 2 difficulty.

Edit : if you can't drop the intermediate, i think you really need to substitute the word into something else to avoid the confusion. "Additional in-between difficulty levels" maybe? or any other suggestion is fine.

2. I think for the last sentence "Difficulty naming should clearly indicate that these difficulty levels are not those lower or upper" , i think this can be made a bit more clearly as i felt it's bit ambiguous atm.

What i mean is that, in normal convention of difficulty, the normal case of difficulty naming would be "Easy, Normal, Hard, Insane, Extra"
So in this case it's pretty easy to know which one is upper and lower and which one is the in-between difficulty. If you have Advanced , that means it's between normal and hard, while if you have Hyper, it's between Hard and Insane.

My main concern basically is that the difficulty name convention isn't just based on that alone. There are various other "official" difficulty name convention that are used pretty often in mania that comes from different game.

wiki/en/Ranking_Criteria/Difficulty_naming Like in this wiki for example, let's say i want to make Beatmania IIDX difficulty name convention, which is "Beginner, Normal, Hyper, Another, Black Another" , and i want to add "Easy, Hard, Insane" in the additional difficulty spread as well. (So it becomes Easy, Beginner, Normal , Hard, Hyper, Insane , Hyper, Another, Black another"

In this case, "Easy, Hard , and Insane" Should become an "intermediary" difficulty level because they are not part of the official beatmania IIDX diff name convention. But since the terms are overlap with the original difficulty name, i'm afraid this will cause confusion of what constitutes as what's clearly indicate the difficulty names that are not lower or upper.

So the question is that, how do i differentiate between the difficulty levels that are intended to be in-between difficulty, and the difficulty levels that are intended to be the one from lower and upper assuming someone trying using difficulty name convention that's from different game but official in the wiki?

This clears up some intermediate difficulty issue. However, I'm concerned to some beatmap difficulty naming that follows other game's suit which don't have intermediate namings.

Maybe there is a way to incorporate them (such as appending level number?)

thanks lord the concerned words were just in the right place but I think the change's still far away from abbreviating the confusion; for example my peasant brain would have a hard time connecting that to spread rules i.e. Overall-Rules-(8)'If the drain time of each difficulty is...'

so why not also categorize the spread rules, and the other rule below, to difficulty-specific as they pertain more to the relationship between difficulties? imho it is much more clear when these rules are read right before the document proceeds to individual diffs?

I don't think using "intermediate" is that confusing. It's literally an English word that means "something between two other things". I guess "in-between" is an okay alternative as it means the same thing but I don't think this sounds formal enough for the RC. On the other hand, using "transitional" doesn't make too much sense as it doesn't quite mean the same thing. Difficulty levels aren't states that can transition.

I think "Difficulty naming should clearly indicate that these difficulty levels are not those lower or upper" is clear enough though? It just means "don't name a Normal+ Normal"

@MJH Making new rules and guidelines for every intermediate difficulty sounds like way more work than necessary.

It makes sense in relation to the linked thread in the OP, but wouldn't this create some level of conflict with the time based spread rules?

Hear me out

There have been instances where there are spreads where the lowest diffs can easily be classified as N+, H+, and I+ so in that case, would this the addition in terminology further restrict the upper bound of what is acceptable for the lowest diff in a spread?

@🤬🧱🌲 no, it was just about moving the current spread-related rules under the 'Difficulty-specific' tab.

lenpai wrote:

It makes sense in relation to the linked thread in the OP, but wouldn't this create some level of conflict with the time based spread rules?

Hear me out

There have been instances where there are spreads where the lowest diffs can easily be classified as N+, H+, and I+ so in that case, would this the addition in terminology further restrict the upper bound of what is acceptable for the lowest diff in a spread?

N+ is like mentioned considered its own difficulty level and is not a normal, but this is mostly for defining that these exists.

1. I think the problem with intermediate is that this difficulty name is being used pretty often in rythm game scenes. I can probably list plenty of example for maps that using that, but you get the point.

If you have other alternatives where it will avoid that confusion , i think you should prioritize that over worrying about being not too formal, especially what we want to prioritize when it comes to ruling is being as clear as possible. (Intermediate definitely is not clear if even Antalf and me mis-recognized it at first, let alone normal mappers.)

2. I think the problem with that is that there is overlap between difficulty name from different rythm game, and the one formally recognized in osu. (Read my example above).

So if for example we normally recognized Hyper as the in-between difficulty between Hard and Insane, it will causes confusion if for example we want to use Hyper as the "main difficulty" , while we want to use "Hard" as the "intermediary difficulty". It gives a vague line of what's constitute as "clearly indicate it's not upper and lower"

I think that should be made clear, if we want to avoid the overlap confusion.

Maxus wrote:

1. I think the problem with intermediate is that this difficulty name is being used pretty often in rythm game scenes. I can probably list plenty of example for maps that using that, but you get the point.

If you have other alternatives where it will avoid that confusion , i think you should prioritize that over worrying about being not too formal, especially what we want to prioritize when it comes to ruling is being as clear as possible. (Intermediate definitely is not clear if even Antalf and me mis-recognized it at first, let alone normal mappers.)

2. I think the problem with that is that there is overlap between difficulty name from different rythm game, and the one formally recognized in osu. (Read my example above).

So if for example we normally recognized Hyper as the in-between difficulty between Hard and Insane, it will causes confusion if for example we want to use Hyper as the "main difficulty" , while we want to use "Hard" as the "intermediary difficulty". It gives a vague line of what's constitute as "clearly indicate it's not upper and lower"

I think that should be made clear, if we want to avoid the overlap confusion.

Maxus we are following these which are linked here wiki/en/Ranking_Criteria/Difficulty_naming what we mean is just don't call N+ a Normal

I agree with MBt here that "intermediate" to describe "additional intermediate difficulty levels" is not that problematic as it's quite obvious they're not referring to intermediate as in the difficulty, but as an adjective to describe a difficulty that falls between gaps in traditional ENHIX difficulties (e.g. Advanced falling between Normal and Hard usually).

lenpai wrote:

It makes sense in relation to the linked thread in the OP, but wouldn't this create some level of conflict with the time based spread rules?

Hear me out

There have been instances where there are spreads where the lowest diffs can easily be classified as N+, H+, and I+ so in that case, would this the addition in terminology further restrict the upper bound of what is acceptable for the lowest diff in a spread?

I guess this sort of goes back to the mania spread clarification proposal here. Under the first allowance, a Normal+ wouldn't be allowed for a <2:30 spread, but it is worth considering what this proposal entails for the second allowance, being "each keymode must provide a proper spread containing at least n difficulties (including the highest difficulty)" since we have to consider whether a spread of Insane, Hyper (between I and H), and Hard is acceptable, or if you would need a Normal there for a 2:30 to 3:15 spread. I believe if we allow these intermediate difficulties to act as their own difficulty levels though, that answers the question already (as in yes, the example I gave would be acceptable).

Some thoughts about this:

1. Although the idea of the wording:

MadBrickTree wrote:

Additional intermediate difficulty levels, which are too hard to strictly follow a lower difficulty levels' guidelines, but too easy to be considered a higher difficulty level, may exist as a difficulty level on their own. Rules and guidelines for these difficulties are to be flexibly interpolated between the nearest two difficulty levels defined below. Difficulty naming should clearly indicate that these difficulty levels are not those lower or upper.

Is considered fine, it does also come off a little vague in how you're trying to represent it.

I do think something along the lines of this might help:


The way it's worded above showed more coherent understanding as "relatively balanced" comes into play within most of the guidelines that include anything about difficulty. Relative meaning it can be judged to a point of clarity. As an example to why "relatively balanced" was used/supported


Interpolated seems too, advanced in description as not many people know that definition. So, by dumbing it down a little bit might create less confusion between each of their vocabularies.

_______________________________________________________________________

Maxus wrote:

In this case, "Easy, Hard , and Insane" Should become an "intermediary" difficulty level because they are not part of the official beatmania IIDX diff name convention. But since the terms are overlap with the original difficulty name, i'm afraid this will cause confusion of what constitutes as what's clearly indicate the difficulty names that are not lower or upper.

So the question is that, how do i differentiate between the difficulty levels that are intended to be in-between difficulty, and the difficulty levels that are intended to be the one from lower and upper assuming someone trying using difficulty name convention that's from different game but official in the wiki?

2. I do agree with Maxus here. When it comes to Difficulty Naming, I can see some concern that people will definitely get confused about it. But it's not as simple as it seems. Unfortunately something extra or a disregard for this until we have found a solution to fix it would be in session. But I do believe something as well might help in order to respect the games that these songs are from.



The wording is definitely scuffed, and should definitely need a workaround, but it's in relation to respect these game difficulties so we don't run into issues like these. (Plus considering the amount of times an easy, hard or insane is used inside a sound voltex or any other game source difficulty spread, I don't think this could cause much confusion) but is definitely a good additive.

_______________________________________________________________________

3. Examples would definitely be good. But to formulate these examples is a tall order. As we have explained that the definition of "additional difficulties with relative spread progression between the lower and higher difficulty", but what counts as one? Does it count if the difficulty is the lowest in the set? Does it count if there are two h+ h++ difficulties that are both GD's?

The main concern here is how can I tell that my Hard is not a Hyper? What happens then?

The main things that should be pointed out if we choose to make an example is this. To show why something is a hyper, and not a hard. I don't know how to formulate this example, but with help we can definitely end up help and make this work <3

[ Decku ] wrote:

The main concern here is how can I tell that my Hard is not a Hyper? What happens then?

The main things that should be pointed out if we choose to make an example is this. To show why something is a hyper, and not a hard. I don't know how to formulate this example, but with help we can definitely end up help and make this work <3

I think the difficulty naming should be on its own proposal this is just for clarifying that these exists

It's good to have these definitions for said purpose. Though i think functionally, without a clear boundary between the current setup and the additional "+ diffs", its fair to assume that sets in general will be handled as they usually are with no significant changes. So yeah no more concerns for me on that regard.

i agree to add something to clarify the existence those diffs in between the current different level (ENHIX) in RC, but if we treat them equal levels with original things, it might cause some conflict with how spread rule works now

Take song length<2:30 as an example, and we have a H H+ I I+ spread, in current rule if should not be rankable because only two difficulty levels obviously, but if you treat those intermediate diffs equally then it will become four levels. For this point i think spread rule should be aiming for sufficient difficulty range, exactly how it works in practice now, so i think the new adding rule should not change this at least

Believe that the proposal is aiming to clarify the validity of spread like E+ N+ H+ I+but not to widen the spread rule as said above, so maybe it's needed to clarify those intermediate ones are just sth like 'sub-level' of original ENHIX

MadBricktree wrote:

I don't disagree with adding some examples but what should I add as examples? Would it be appropriate to formally add advanced and hyper to mania RC?

I can't quite agree with dropping "intermediate" as it clarifies that the newly defined difficulty levels are to be between what are already defined. I guess I could use "in-between" instead of "intermediate" but that wouldn't be as formal. I am aware that "intermediate" itself is used as a difficulty name, but I think it is pretty clear for any English speaker to know that this is not what the word is referring to.

Explained like that I actually understand the point of having it as intermediate, I’m certainly okay after this explanation, now the question I pose would be: is this clear enough for other people outside our game mode to be understood? I think if it is then we have come to a resolution regarding this.

gzdongsheng wrote:

i agree to add something to clarify the existence those diffs in between the current different level (ENHIX) in RC, but if we treat them equal levels with original things, it might cause some conflict with how spread rule works now

Take song length<2:30 as an example, and we have a H H+ I I+ spread, in current rule if should not be rankable because only two difficulty levels obviously, but if you treat those intermediate diffs equally then it will become four levels. For this point i think spread rule should be aiming for sufficient difficulty range, exactly how it works in practice now, so i think the new adding rule should not change this at least

Believe that the proposal is aiming to clarify the validity of spread like E+ N+ H+ I+but not to widen the spread rule as said above, so maybe it's needed to clarify those intermediate ones are just sth like 'sub-level' of original ENHIX

I mean a spread like H H+ I I+ to me would seem fine as long as the difficulty gaps make a proper spread with linear difficulty i dont see why this shouldnt be rankable. Pretty sure these have already been ranked before. Maybe like we have to specify the something like a H++ doesnt exist but like its just 1 in between level.

Tailsdk wrote:

I mean a spread like H H+ I I+ to me would seem fine as long as the difficulty gaps make a proper spread with linear difficulty i dont see why this shouldnt be rankable. Pretty sure these have already been ranked before. Maybe like we have to specify the something like a H++ doesnt exist but like its just 1 in between level.

Are you sure this is rankable under current spread rule with length <2:30, which requires 4 difficulty levels? i just remember there was a discussion about this in bng before, and things like H/H+ would be considered as only one difficulty level based on current rule, i can be wrong tho

To clarify, i'm not saying spread like HH+II+ is not allowed or bad spread, simply it's not meeting the requirement of current RC (at least from my knowledge)

I mean like this one just got ranked beatmapsets/1943968#mania/4021490 HH+I so like they happen all the time with 3 and 2 difficulties i dont see why 4 difficulties should change that

Imo it should be fine as long as the spread makes sense

I think allowing intermediary difficulties like Advanced (normal/hard) or Hyper (hard/insane) should be allowed to fulfill spread requirements. I think current ENHIX guidelines leave quite a large gap between levels that actually make it really difficult to have proper progression between difficulties, e.g. a Normal has to have breaks during 1/2 streams, while Hard only needs breaks for 1/4 streams, and the difference between 1/2 and 1/4 is quite large. In those cases, I usually suggest an Advanced difficulty to utilize more frequent 1/4 bursts to bridge the gap.

If it turns out that intermediary difficulties can't be used to satisfy spread requirements, then it feels like this proposal is moot.

There are some edge cases where intermediate difficulties are needed. I'm not sure if there is an already-happening case, but consider this case: What will you do to satisfy a difficulty spread if you can't map harder difficulties, but it's impractical to borderline awful to map easier difficulties?

Intermediate difficulties.

Though there is a potential abuse like mapping something as short as TV Size with H H+ I I+ spread, I can think of potential way to resolve that.

I think I'm kinda sidetracking, but what if the existing spread requirements is relaxed by 1 level? For example:

Proper spread: N H I X
Proper spread w/ int. diff: H H+ I X

The requirements of "N difficulties in progression including top" can be relaxed by 1 difficulty, so for example a TV Size map requires 4 difficulties in progressive manner (N H I X), or 3 difficulties with progressive manner and 1 intermediate difficulty anywhere it can be placed (H I X, add N+/H+/I+/X+).

I'm all down with this proposal. It resolves a headache for me to forcefully map something easy that isn't suitable at first place, but can't be extended artificially.

might be unrelated, but personally i'd reword something the diff naming page wiki/en/Ranking_Criteria/Difficulty_naming

at least adding "Another" in Widely accepted alternatives as a substitute for Insane, and removing some game-specific diffspread naming as some conflict with the standard diffspread naming

keep in mind that the current diff naming scheme is the same as in osu! standard mode

also, how many diff names in between do y'all really need? can anyone name an example where that was a struggle? guest diffs afaik can also have diff names be the same, because GDer's name makes the diff name unique enough - "Insane" vs. "Guest's Insane"
Beginner
Easy
Normal
Advanced
Hard
Hyper
Insane
Another
Expert
Extra
Extreme
<top diff name>

h3oCharles wrote:

might be unrelated, but personally i'd reword something the diff naming page wiki/en/Ranking_Criteria/Difficulty_naming

at least adding "Another" in Widely accepted alternatives as a substitute for Insane, and removing some game-specific diffspread naming as some conflict with the standard diffspread naming

keep in mind that the current diff naming scheme is the same as in osu! standard mode

also, how many diff names in between do y'all really need? can anyone name an example where that was a struggle?
Beginner
Easy
Normal
Advanced
Hard
Hyper
Insane
Another
Expert
Extra
Extreme
<top diff name>

This has nothing to with difficulty naming currently there exists difficulties in between every listed guidelines for difficulties. We want to allow these to be rankable and count for difficulty in the spread rules.

But those difficulty names would not do it for a high star 7k spread which can have 5 extras with an even spread in between

hard agree then, as this is something that standard does sometimes, i remember this mod post from standard being a perfect example of this beatmapsets/874091/discussion/-/generalAll#/623669

As an enquiry, has anything come up that needs this addition? I think with proposals like this, it ends up becoming too focused on wording it correctly than actually discussing the necessity.

In other modes, this kinda thing is just expected and didn't need specific wording in RC to follow, most notably osu! and osu!taiko, in osu! similar names are used (Advanced, Hyper) so really that side of the mapping community should be included here, as this does not seem like a mania-specific issue.

As for osu!taiko, speaking from personal experience, we label ours in an easy to understand way, using Lite for difficulties below and Ura for difficulties below, for example, Lite Onis are a very common difficulty included for high BPM sets and ranking wise are treated as easier Onis so the same rules and guidelines apply but usually at a stricter level and the difficulty tends to be toned down.

Well with this it will be more clear that if you map something in between a normal and a hard it is ok to break some guidelines from normal and have it be considered a different difficulty level from hard.

Recently there has been a lot of "normals" that are like 2.6 stars popping up which dont really fit normal so i think this change is valid

aceticke wrote:

In other modes, this kinda thing is just expected and didn't need specific wording in RC to follow, most notably osu! and osu!taiko, in osu! similar names are used (Advanced, Hyper) so really that side of the mapping community should be included here, as this does not seem like a mania-specific issue.

This proposal is in response to community/forums/topics/1746229?n=1 which was created in response to people from other gamemodes being confused by the term "difficulty levels" which is only supposed to mean ENHIX levels, making pre-existing X only spreads in mania unrankable. By explicitly mentioning that intermediate difficulties can count as their own "levels", that makes the aforementioned proposal no longer required so this is to kill two birds with one stone.

Protastic101 wrote:

I think allowing intermediary difficulties like Advanced (normal/hard) or Hyper (hard/insane) should be allowed to fulfill spread requirements. I think current ENHIX guidelines leave quite a large gap between levels that actually make it really difficult to have proper progression between difficulties, e.g. a Normal has to have breaks during 1/2 streams, while Hard only needs breaks for 1/4 streams, and the difference between 1/2 and 1/4 is quite large. In those cases, I usually suggest an Advanced difficulty to utilize more frequent 1/4 bursts to bridge the gap.

If it turns out that intermediary difficulties can't be used to satisfy spread requirements, then it feels like this proposal is moot.

i think i'm not directly against this, and it makes sense that sometimes it creates quite big diff gap between normal and hard. However just like i said it will loosen the current spread rule further, which should be properly considered as well imo

gzdongsheng wrote:

i think i'm not directly against this, and it makes sense that sometimes it creates quite big diff gap between normal and hard. However just like i said it will loosen the current spread rule further, which should be properly considered as well imo

I believe in practice, this is already what happens/how people interpret the rule, so I don't think it really loosens anything.

Aight, an update regarding this.

We are going to bring other game mode NATs to review this new wording and see if this one clears the confusion about the the o!m RC "difficulty levels" part in community/forums/topics/1746229?n=1 how it was stated.

If this is successfully clears up the misunderstanding then we are going to push this through a PR accordingly.

gzdongsheng wrote:

Protastic101 wrote:

I think allowing intermediary difficulties like Advanced (normal/hard) or Hyper (hard/insane) should be allowed to fulfill spread requirements. I think current ENHIX guidelines leave quite a large gap between levels that actually make it really difficult to have proper progression between difficulties, e.g. a Normal has to have breaks during 1/2 streams, while Hard only needs breaks for 1/4 streams, and the difference between 1/2 and 1/4 is quite large. In those cases, I usually suggest an Advanced difficulty to utilize more frequent 1/4 bursts to bridge the gap.

If it turns out that intermediary difficulties can't be used to satisfy spread requirements, then it feels like this proposal is moot.

i think i'm not directly against this, and it makes sense that sometimes it creates quite big diff gap between normal and hard. However just like i said it will loosen the current spread rule further, which should be properly considered as well imo

Protastic101 wrote:

gzdongsheng wrote:

i think i'm not directly against this, and it makes sense that sometimes it creates quite big diff gap between normal and hard. However just like i said it will loosen the current spread rule further, which should be properly considered as well imo

I believe in practice, this is already what happens/how people interpret the rule, so I don't think it really loosens anything.

To further address this, this has been in place for one and a half years regarding mania, this wouldn't loosen the spread rules further since this is mostly to clarify that this is a thing we do, and have been doing for quite a while already. It was already implied that we could do this but this is more for outsiders (different game modes) to more clearly understand what we are doing and how it does not break the current spread rules.

It's only a change in wording for clarification, everything will mostly stay the same and I don't believe this can cause the spread rules to loosen.

Another update to this thread.

Have been discussing with other game mode users that originally brought up this concern and it was decided since the use of intermediate difficulties has been implied for other game modes, it would be unnecessary to apply it only to mania when everyone else uses them (including us).

For now this proposal will stay in hold while this community/forums/topics/1746229?n=31 will be used as it seemed to clear the confusion between game modes. This can be revisited further down the line.