Perspective of average low ranked/casual player

I think those players dont have the ability to notice the issue/or care enough to really talk about these issues, so i would like to mention it for their sake

expectation of player:

1. map should have a proper spread -> which allows me to learn and get better at game, by playing this map alone. introduce concepts and patterns gradually with foreshadowing in previous difficulties
2. map should have good enough meta so i can find the map, it doesnt have to be 100% correct and respect artist intention
3. map should not be complete garbage, it doesnt need to be a master piece either. just be playable
4. have as many ranked maps as possible, so more likely i find my favorite song

Problem 1: BN Availability

BN have lots of stress due to high expectation that map is perfect, from QA to Veto, and fact we cant fix a map after ranked.

proposed solution: allow edit of ranked map, with BN or a new group to oversee the changes. -> to fix small issues that's not caught during qualified process, and reserve DQ for only high impact issues to gameplay, fix small issues later. or simply don't care about them and accept the fact map is flawed.

this is not good for BN mental health, too short lifespan and frequent turnover

I dont think being a BN should be similar to becoming a doctor that's responsible for people's lives, none of use are paid or received proper training, the player is not even paying for anything why do they reserve perfect maps?

another possible solution: reduce number of BN required from 2 to 1

Most BNs just want nom the cool and high pp map they enjoy, this is against new mapper's interest of having someone experienced to help them learn and improve. -> if we reduce expectation of ranked quality, BN can afford to help those new mappers more since they dont have to spend as much time to fix all the problems, just fix the major issues

Problem 2: RC is very complex and gets worse each year

ranking a map requires lots of connections, experience, knowledge -> really not newbie friendly , too much learning curve

very limited by BN availability, which is low due to problem 1

its very sad feeling for new mappers who work days and weeks on their map just to end up in graveyard, the term graveyard just seem to indicate their map is trash cuz it is not ranked.

lots of time wasted on metadata --> in fact most of RC is about this , can we not have a team dedicated to metadata? this will give better consistency as well , and also improve the search engine to work better even if map doesnt have the keywoard user searched, it should be able to use synonyms and other tricks

use RC more as guideline how to improve, not as minimum requirement and bible to follow

reserve DQ for only major issues breaking gameplay, let small issues be left unfixed/fix later

Conclusion

im propose change in this direction to make ranking map easier and faster so we can grow our users by 100x, at cost of map quality

I don't think ranked category exist only for the purpose of PP, lots of player dont care about PP and leaderboard

solution 1:
editing ranked maps is counter to the architecture behind it. editing would mean wiping the leaderboards. qualified is there to catch the small issues you mention (tho admittedly there should be better incentives for actually doing that and checking it), i'd support ideas on how to do that cuz that's a good change

solution 2:
having a 4 eyes principle for pushing things is common practice for anything that is critical. reviewing stuff etc...

i dont think reducing the amount of people overseeing whether or not a map is rankable would make this any easier, it would probably just invite even more errors and dqs which you mention as a major point of stress

solution 2.5:
change expectation of ranked map quality: i think every bn has their own set of standards in regards to this so im not quite sure how you want to do that? bns are free to choose what they push after all and i hope you dont want to take that away for the purpose of helping more people rank stuff

problem 2
you dont actually propose any solution that makes sense to me here so:
rc is written with the idea of being baseline-not-broken in mind. making sure the metadata is correct is part of what would be expected from a bn.

making the ranking criteria optional for ranking a map seems completely backwards to me, if anything i agree we should make comprehending the RC easier and we've taken steps to that effect

@okoratu

1. editing ranked is not supported under current architecture, i get it. im suggesting if we can improve that and allow if would help a lot to reduce stress, make room for allowing mistakes. whether that will reset leaderboard or not is up to the devs implementation. some players would be fine with a reset.

this might be also too hard to do, which i propose alternative of allowing mistakes in ranked and dont fix it

qualified duration reserved to major issue, ignore minor issues

2. im not saying every bn has to lower their standard to help mapper rank faster. those who want to should be allowed to do so, and those who expect high quality can just not QA it, unless it has major issues affecting gameplay

3. metadata doesnt affect gameplay and should be removed from bn concern allowing bn to focus more on map quality instead.

im suggesting to nuke general rc , not mode specific rc, to reduce complexity so its easier for people to become BN. just looking at the length of RC is enough to make many give up on become BN

rewrite of rc is good and helps reduce chance of mistake, but it doesnt reduce effort/time needed by bn to check the map

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let me also suggest some improvement we can do to speed up the process without sacrificing the baseline

all of these require dev effort, they should be more concerned about this than we are tbh, since they are paid but there's not many significant change in this aspect for last 10 years, only change is on website and modv2.

1. run Mapset Verifier when map is uploaded/updated by mapper -> run check on server side when pressing the submit button, return error messages of what needs to be fixed and block the update/upload-> saving some bn time

can also run this check and block nominate button if problems found (not warnings)

2. run metadata bot (chatgpt or something) trained using all osu ranked maps + RC + ability to search the internet for more reference -> use it as suggestions to mapper when uploading map.

3. improve search engine to find relevant results when the search term has typo,
when map has tags that's not present, but another map of same song has those tag, it should still show up in search result, with lower score, im not search expert but theres so many things that can be improved over here, right now is super basic search

4. automatic server-side audio/BG compression if the uploaded quality is higher than maximum allowed by RC. This doesn't need to be in RC.

5. automatic cut the HS files delay at start < 5ms -> this can also be removed from RC and handled when map is uploaded/updated on server side
for a large HS map with like 100+ HS, i need spend 1h to check this...

6. allow BN to make changes to the map, maybe with a PR review by the mapper -> mapper often make mistakes when agree and make a change suggested by BN. let BN make the change instead so no mistake

I think this is trying to tackle too many problems at a time. Out of all of the issues listed I think the biggest barrier to entry is:

ranking a map requires lots of connections, experience, knowledge -> really not newbie friendly , too much learning curve

Fix that and I think Problem 1 would lessen over time as the process becomes more accessible to people.

- The system should not require lots of connections
- The system should allow mappers with low experience to get their foot in

can we at least make some change to the min BN activity, nom 1 mapper's first 3 ranked map gives you enough activity for the whole evaluation cycle?

theres 0 motivation from the system perspective to nom a newbie map that takes 10x more effort compared to a yolo nom of experienced mapper with 0 mod


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Another idea

can we introduce some sort of use for kudosu?

consider it a tax u need pay for a BN to be able to nominate ur map -> this is not given to BN, just paid to peppy

example:

I have 10 ranked map, the cost of kudosu for BN to nom my map is i need pay 20 kudosu. if i dont have enough kudosu then no BN can nominate my map

if i have 20 ranked maps, the cost of kudosu for BN to nom my map increase to 30 or something.

the more ranked map i have, the more kudosu i need to rank next map -> since im experienced mapper i can get kudosu easier, and pay for my next ranked. which forces BN to choose less experienced mapper and also force experienced mapper to mod more, increase chance of new mapper getting mod since their map is full of mistakes

Drum-Hitnormal wrote:

can we at least make some change to the min BN activity, nom 1 mapper's first 3 ranked map gives you enough activity for the whole evaluation cycle?

theres 0 motivation from the system perspective to nom a newbie map that takes 10x more effort compared to a yolo nom of experienced mapper with 0 mod

imo a good idea. Given how low activity reqs are probably not relevant tho. Would encourage with something similar to like this BN mug event we had a while ago, a badge or some other cool incentive to help new people

imo something that people would just find cool or collect for the vanity of it would be better?

Drum-Hitnormal wrote:

Another idea

can we introduce some sort of use for kudosu?

consider it a tax u need pay for a BN to be able to nominate ur map -> this is not given to BN, just paid to peppy

example:

I have 10 ranked map, the cost of kudosu for BN to nom my map is i need pay 20 kudosu. if i dont have enough kudosu then no BN can nominate my map

if i have 20 ranked maps, the cost of kudosu for BN to nom my map increase to 30 or something.

the more ranked map i have, the more kudosu i need to rank next map -> since im experienced mapper i can get kudosu easier, and pay for my next ranked. which forces BN to choose less experienced mapper and also force experienced mapper to mod more, increase chance of new mapper getting mod since their map is full of mistakes

before hype train was a thing, you needed to donate kudosu to beatmaps (12 KD => someone can rank it) to "give the map priority and visibility".

It used to be what you describe, but other people could pay your tax.

Also I dont think all mappers are also modders and that would be somewhat weird.

mug and banner stuff is nice, can be like time limited events, but it doesnt solve the issue of time constraint, if BN only has time to nom 1 newbie map per eval cycle, no matter what u give them, theres no time to help another one, it would become a yolo nom for sake of activity.

those are extra rewards, but not related to ranking system.

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modding helps improve mapping,they go hand in hand, dont u find it weird that someone is only mapping and not modding? mapping for ranked means ur map is played by others, u should at least be able to understand other mapper intention, ranking process should be a community effort, not 1 mapper and 2 bn alone

it also increases the number of modders, which increase likelyhood of someone become BN

it also solves the issue of modding queues are mostly small mods by newer mapper, cuz the experienced ones already became BN, and once you become BN, ur modding time is mostly BN check, thats more efficient.

i think the purpose is very different from old system of others donate kudosu, that only affects visibility, u can just send map to all BN queue instead, it doesnt always motivate people to do more modding, just a garbage dump for extra kudosu thats has no use

lets say mapper only mod bn and other experienced mappers, that at least frees up some BN time who is checking those maps, then BN can have more time nom other maps

its just like real life, the people with higher income pay more tax, the experienced mapper need contribute more to give back to commumity

the current state is that the more experienced u become as mapper, easier it is to rank ur next map, u spend less time on mapping, less mod needed so it gets to BN faster which results to experienced mapper taking moore of BN time with more maps, this change would slow down that and give newer mapper high chance of being accepted due to less competition

+1 to a lot of stuff here. i feel like bn just need more incentive to nom variety of maps because without any payment or incentives aside from pride, nomming a newer mapper map is quite a lot of work and when it’s weighted the same as an easy nom from experienced mapper the incentive is even lower.

maybe bringing something back similar to the global queue on bnsite would be helpful. i did find it nice that it automatically listed a set of bns who may like ur set based on inputs (like genre and language etc) but it was also so inactive due to personal queues being a lot easier and better for bns. perhaps a revamped system of global queue can help newer mappers find bns? as well as adjusting nomination weight for newer mappers like dh mentioned

Shad0wStar wrote:

+1 to a lot of stuff here. i feel like bn just need more incentive to nom variety of maps because without any payment or incentives aside from pride, nomming a newer mapper map is quite a lot of work and when it’s weighted the same as an easy nom from experienced mapper the incentive is even lower.

maybe bringing something back similar to the global queue on bnsite would be helpful. i did find it nice that it automatically listed a set of bns who may like ur set based on inputs (like genre and language etc) but it was also so inactive due to personal queues being a lot easier and better for bns. perhaps a revamped system of global queue can help newer mappers find bns? as well as adjusting nomination weight for newer mappers like dh mentioned

Dunno im speaking from the standpoint of activity requirements to staying bn being very low (like 2 maps / month) so the incentive just isnt really there with saying "you push a map like that and you dont need to push as many"

IDK. one eval cycle is 3 months i'm not sure if waiving any sort of other activity because you helped one person push their map is reasonable?

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I'm indifferent towards the idea of forcing everyone to participate in the modding system, but it sounds like enshittification to me: you had certain freedoms (12KD in the past, donated by anyone / 5 hype from anyone) and then you take them away from the mappers to encourage something they didn't want to do to begin with

I think at best, this would just lead to people half-assing the bare minimum required to let other people push the button on their map again so i'm not really seeing how that would improve things

isnt it more unreasonable to treat every nom with same weight? theres clearly a huge gap in effort needed and time spent?

the alternative is scale it with number of mods made by BN?

a global queue is a good idea but its too hard to make it as flexible as personal queue, i remember it used to send u notification when someone reject but not when someone accept...

5 hype is so useless, if u can find 2 bn then finding 5 hype can easily be done.

nobody wants to do anything, human are lazy by nature, u just gotta push them a bit, new mapper has 0 benefit under current ranking system and they need help the most, give them something more worth than a nom of experienced mapper

i'd agree with u that we would probably benefit from weighting nominations (dada had a similar proposal) based on factors such as mapset length, but with the bar being so low i dont see it as a great incentive to look at those maps specifically is what i meant

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i tried using the global queue or whatever was built into bn site at some point and i just remember not liking it lol

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agree that 5 hype is useless, but the point i was making was that boht KD and hype can come from other people who are not the mapper

been saying this in various forms for a long time but I think the curative aspect of Ranked is way too tied into the functional aspect (host leaderboards, award pp, prevent changes). there is so much discourse and process concerning map quality that imo only really serves those with strong opinions about what "Ranked" should mean. I'm one of those people, so I get it -- but this design sucks now; I mean it kinda always did but it's just more clear to me now bc osu is so much larger and covers more diverse interests

there has to be some better way that people can promote, curate, share, and compete on maps they find relevant, than to uphold a singular consensus mechanism for the world's most vague definition of "quality". people clearly don't mind when some of the functional aspect of Ranked is applied to other systems without the whole QC thing, because Loved exists. imo this concept of splitting away the individual roles of Ranked to more specialized systems (possibly overlapping) should be explored further. there is still a place in osu for gatekeeping maps by quality, in fact I think there should even be spaces where more strict versions of that can happen, but it doesn't need to prevent e.g. leaderboard competition and earning pp and w/e

so in some sense I'm down with lowering standards, but I think it's a more complicated issue than can be solved by just relaxing the current system.

also pretty much agree with op analysis of what is causing contributors stress, but I don't like some of the mindset...

Drum-Hitnormal wrote:

I dont think being a BN should be similar to becoming a doctor that's responsible for people's lives, none of use are paid or received proper training, the player is not even paying for anything why do they reserve perfect maps?

to me all of the rules and structures around ranking a map are more for people who map than people who don't (kind of checks out bc mappers are the ones who write these rules). mappers/nominators aren't "workers" and players aren't "consumers", nobody "deserves" anything in this sense, it's a game the whole way through and this is just what we got after years of everyone making compromises about how they think the game should work.

Drum-Hitnormal wrote:

its very sad feeling for new mappers who work days and weeks on their map just to end up in graveyard, the term graveyard just seem to indicate their map is trash cuz it is not ranked.

I don't think new mappers need to be given special pity just for being new

Drum-Hitnormal wrote:

im propose change in this direction to make ranking map easier and faster so we can grow our users by 100x, at cost of map quality

idk if it was meant to be a joke given the hyperbole but this is a rly lame motivation and one that I think actively contributes to cool things turning into soulless mass-marketable crap

loved category feels harder than ranked, i dont think it solved anything

there isnt a category to say this map isnt trash beside ranked/loved

pending and wip both can be decided by mapper

graveyard is where has most trash map

if a player just wants a decent map for their fav song, it doesnt need to be perfect, they have to rely ranked/loved

most players cant even notice some issues

dealing with QA and unskilled mapper is more stressful than my actual job where they tell me release new feature fast and improve later as per customer feedback

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if u want introduce a higher tier for ranked for better pp balance , and purely competitive purpose, and lower such standard for general case of just enjoy song with decent map as ranked, it would be great. or just use ranked but new parameter set by mapper/bn if it can give pp or not this would avoid a lot of issues relates to pp


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its fine to reject my solutions, just hoping u see the problems and come up with some solutions

Agree that a mapper's 1st 3 ranks should count for more to some extent (2 nominations' worth of activity, not the whole month's worth).