This is bound to be a hot topic. This is by no means a definitive solution, but rather a place to discuss and propose ideas given the recent current problems we've been facing in regards to Vetoes.

The goal of this post should be to reach a middle-ground most people can agree with. The solution to this problem is complicated, and simply "removing Vetoes" or "leaving things as they are" don't seem like sensible actions to be taken.

PD; The proposal was written by me. It is not meant to be a call made by the whole team. Those two carry different weights, so consider this —you, the reader— a personal proposal and place to discuss as a group!


The Problem
Community sentiment on Vetoes, in League of Legends terms, is pisslow.

Based on the multiple comments I've seen around other threads and modding discussion, this problem seems to stem from several places. One big one that I myself think is the biggest one so far is the impotence the community is faced when a map is Veto'd.

The Goal of Vetoes
The goal of Vetoes should be:

1. Resolve impasses to avoid discussing things Ad Nauseam.
2. Uphold mapping standards. Which maps does the community collectively believe that should be Ranked?
3. Collective common consensus. Vetoes transform an individual's subjective opinion into an intersubjective group consensus.

The goal of Vetoes should NOT be:

1. As a Trump Card to impose personal demands.
2. Willingly going against the community's opinions.
3. As a tool to skip discussions.

These are an oversimplification. But just so we are in the same page, any change proposed should try to adhere to these goals.

This proposal mainly aims to comply with the 2nd and 3rd goal. The system is built on trust. We trust Beatmap Nominators to be able to leverage their power and responsibility to make these kinds of judgement calls. However, the system cannot reliably gauge or prove whether these demands are really for the betterment or the game, or have the community's wellbeing in mind.

While I wholeheartedly trust in the usage BNs have given to the tool insofar, and I am not willing to throw anyone under the bus here, this proposal aims to bring the opinions of both the general playerbase and the Beatmap Nominator group closer together through quantifiable means.

The Proposed Solution
What if users where able to vote on the outcome of Vetoes? What if there was a way to quantify their voice as to have an impact on the result of any given Veto? We trust in our Beatmap Nominators, but is that enough to make a judgement call on the behalf of the community?

A solution and answer to these questions would be to let the community vote on Vetoes, just as beatmap Nominators do.

There's a lot of asterisks here. I don't believe a system like this would work if a BNs vote Vs. a non-BN were weighted the same weight. Given the current system, BNs should still have the bigger say, especially on calls as big and impactful as Vetos are.

Therefore, having a 20%/80% split (Numbers can change) between users and Beatmap Nominators would seem like a precondition for a proposal like this to ever be implemented. An undetermined amount of users could vote on the outcome. But the total weight on the final result would be limited. The rest, would be the result of the BN votes.

Note that we shouldn't discuss the implementation right now. Discussing the implementation without first discussing whether the proposal is reasonable will probably lead nowhere. We should first try to narrow down what kind of system would be needed for the proposal to work in practice.

Alternatives/Things to Discuss
The thread should focus on finding a way to bring both sides of the coin together. How can we weigh in the opinion of the community without undermining the power and responsibilities of the current BN group?

I always thought that a cascading vote system like used in the current Content Review would be a good way to go about community involvement in vetoes.

For reference, the current CR voting process is:

• If there is a consensus of 70% on a particular answer from the combined GMT and NAT votes, that answer is used as the outcome of the vote.
• If there is no consensus of 70% from the combined GMT and NAT vote, the BN vote is then merged into the total votes.
• If the merged vote is 70% yes or above, the content is considered acceptable and is allowed to be used.
• If the merged vote is below 70% yes, the content is judged to be not allowed for use and must be removed and changed immediately.

Interestingly enough these numbers also align with the proposed 70% vote threshold proposed to keep a veto upheld. So, I think a community-involved veto mediation would work like this:

• All NAT and BN members in the contested mode are called to vote in the mediation. Additionally, users can opt in to vote during the veto (may need a system to decide who is allowed or not allowed).
• If there is no consensus of 70% from the combined NAT and BN vote, the community vote is then merged into the total votes.
• If the merged vote is 70% yes or above, the veto is considered upheld and the map cannot be nominated.
• If the merged vote is below 70% yes, the veto is dismissed and the map may be renominated.

This would theoretically address the issues of both community opinion being completely disregarded right now, while still keeping the power of the NAT/BN to give insight based on mapping knowledge and experience.

The community should at least have some say in vetos since they are the target audience for the map and everything we do is for them no?

Stompy_ wrote:

The community should at least have some say in vetos since they are the target audience for the map and everything we do is for them no?

agree


i find it similar to ur parents telling u dont do this dont do that, but they aren't always right/thinking in your best interest.

sure not every player is as experienced as the BN, but ultimately they are the most impacted, if they care enough to do the vote i think we should listen.

in case of ranking a map, i dont think the worst case scenario is that bad if u let a "bad" map into ranked. We dont have to be so scared of letting community take control over this. who knows that something u consider bad today might turn to become a legend in future. taste is always subjective to person and time.

i would go as far to say BN = 20% , community = 80% , with no upper limit on how many user can vote, but there has to be a minimum amount for the community part to matter, say maybe 10x more than BN count.

Willingly going against the community's opinions. -> im not sure how u can prevent this when u say community is only 20%

also whats worse between ranking a map people think is bad, vs not ranking a map people think is good?

i find it less drama/problematic when a bad map is ranked. u can just not play it

when a good map is not ranked, theres not much u can do as player

Ryax wrote:

I always thought that a cascading vote system like used in the current Content Review would be a good way to go about community involvement in vetoes.

For reference, the current CR voting process is:

• If there is a consensus of 70% on a particular answer from the combined GMT and NAT votes, that answer is used as the outcome of the vote.
• If there is no consensus of 70% from the combined GMT and NAT vote, the BN vote is then merged into the total votes.
• If the merged vote is 70% yes or above, the content is considered acceptable and is allowed to be used.
• If the merged vote is below 70% yes, the content is judged to be not allowed for use and must be removed and changed immediately.

Interestingly enough these numbers also align with the proposed 70% vote threshold proposed to keep a veto upheld. So, I think a community-involved veto mediation would work like this:

• All NAT and BN members in the contested mode are called to vote in the mediation. Additionally, users can opt in to vote during the veto (may need a system to decide who is allowed or not allowed).
• If there is no consensus of 70% from the combined NAT and BN vote, the community vote is then merged into the total votes.
• If the merged vote is 70% yes or above, the veto is considered upheld and the map cannot be nominated.
• If the merged vote is below 70% yes, the veto is dismissed and the map may be renominated.

This would theoretically address the issues of both community opinion being completely disregarded right now, while still keeping the power of the NAT/BN to give insight based on mapping knowledge and experience.

Side note: The 70% threshold for upholding vetoes was proposed to match the threshold for CR, instead of doing plain 2/3.

I agree that a cascading vote system could work, but I do think that when merging in the community votes, some weighing/normalization has to be applied such that the BN/NAT vote doesn't become TOO irrelevant.

lets just face it, mainstream player community only cares about pp at this point and the only reason they will participate in this voting is to lift vetoes from maps that could potentially give them pp and ranks (see recent armin map veto, or anything involving sotarks basically) and they will do it even if the map contains significant issues, and disregard them even if they see them, for them veto is something that somehow will prevent the map from being ranked ever, lol. Don't believe that giving those people right to decide something on this scale is a good idea.

average player can't see the difference between what's considered rankable today and a jump practice, if you wanna move in that direction... sure? that will probably shift the perception of mapping for the new players and mappers, just how it happened with old-gen pp maps in 2017 and forward

agree w 228

it's easy to consume than reflecting on any piece of media, people who find maps to play are nothing different than browsing youtube for videos to watch, like 228 said, people are most likely influenced by people with a large follow count and just blindly follow that sentiment. You don't even need sotarks to tweet anything just wait until a top player tweet out a map is bad and see what event will unfold. Especially if the map was in their best interest to play it with the sole intention of gaining more ranks.

To address community bias in the veto system, I feel an additive user vote would be more ideal rather than a 20/80% split.

Something along the lines of tallying up the total BN votes with a weighted percentage of only users who disagree with the veto and if the combined percentage exceeds a certain threshold the veto won't be upheld.

As Drum-Hitnormal said it's less problematic when a "bad" map is ranked since users can just choose not to play it.

This should strike a balance between giving the playerbase more influence in the ranking process while also taking into account the preferences of the BNG and avoid negatively affecting less popular mapping styles.

Agree with Bloxi.

Involving players more will make them more interested in the mapping scene so nothing bad can come from it.

In the end player's votes should be taken at least a little into account but it's up to us in the end.

I think fully not allowing players to have any say will only continue to bring toxicity and continue the war between players and mappers which will never end.

What Drum and Bloxi said is a more open minded approach rather than assuming every player will just do whatever Sotarks or a top player says without having a mind of their own...

-1 for Arsalan, Sanch-KK

I'm not sure I understand how bloxi's idea would work, functionally. May need it re explained


I think, and wrote in my vote for the threshold system that I like the cascading votes.

For a veto consensus to be solely from BN NAT it has to be over 70% in either direction

And if it's not, community vote for tiebreaker, with the intro weighting or a different ratio

And even if some community is biased to pp or what popular people say... that doesn't change they want or don't want what they want and deserve to have additional voice in what's ranked.

Right now for regular mods they can be regular modders if they want, but when it comes to vetoes they're totally shut out of the final decision. And it's already obvious to me that the majority of us don't consider what players say on threads at all when casting personal veto votes. I'm not implying this is anyone's fault or problem, it's part of how BN privileges and voting is set up, but it's something I'm observing can be better even if it's through other methods like cascading, weighting, etc. to give average people a better chance to be heard.

This is also relevant for the many mappers, former bns, former nat we have etc that currently don't have a role so they have valuable opinions but can't add them in for the current veto voting...

would expect some sort of mapping proficiency from people involved in the veto process, so I'd limit it to people with at least 1 ranked map/gd to ensure they have sufficient mapping understanding

agree with noffy

id prefer if we dont poison any kind of discussion with "but muh pp maps, ze players cannot control zemselves..." when farm maps existing has never inherently harmed the game

and no the 2018-2020 jump slop era wasnt considered shit by players because of individual maps being farm or bad, it was considered shit because aim was pretty much the only meta skillset and u were forced to play these maps to be competitive, which is simply not the case anymore, if u dont want to u can literally just not play these maps

the fact is that players dont rly care as much about bad maps being ranked, they care far more about maps they see as perfectly fine being gatekept from ranked for reasons that no player actually believes in, hence why whenever theres some giga controversial annoying to play map like granat or uncanny long arms ranked half the comments are of the sort of "really?!! bns wanna push this garbage but veto some farm map?!?!?!? get ur priorities straight!!" and not actually about the maps themselves

no harm will be done by giving the general playerbase some amount of say in what ranked should actually be for considering they've had pretty much 0 impact since the game was created, farm maps not getting vetoed for reasons that very few players actually deem worthy seems like a perfectly fine tradeoff for the community having more say in what should be allowed or not in ranked

I actually agree with what Nekro said here.

If the problem is lack of experience then allowing people with at least a ranked map to have some voice in vetos would be nice.

Currently, mappers outside of BNG have no say in any of vetos even if some have good and valuable opinions that sadly get overshadowed simply because they aren't a BN no matter how much experience or knowledge they have which is a bit sad...

This would also maybe entice more people to learn about mapping.

I also believe if people outside of BNG had some voices on vetos that vetos would be seen as less scary or aggressive and more of as "an open debate"

So yeah +1 for Nekro's point

+1 for Noffy as that idea of tiebreaker involvements also seems decent.

What about ranked mappers, and modders with 150 kudosu as an option


If we did that I'd say to weigh it more heavily or even equal to BN percentage


My existing idea in my previous post would apply for making it all players wide if we went that route, but I think most of the concerns it's balancing don't exist if the target is changed


I think anyone voting in some way is still preferable, and wouldn't want it to be too complicated. But if others strongly want a filter that's how I think it could look.

I'd be more inclinded to have a kudosu requirement rather than forcing to rank maps. I agree this would, at the very least, open the doors to those minimally used to the mapping & modding workflows. Weight could be increased, though again I do still think the Beatmap Nominators should still carry most of the weight given their position and extra responsibilities & expectations imposed.

We have to be careful though, as doing something like this would only expand the "circle of influence" a bit further. The problem could still persist, but rather than BNs being the only ones blamed, it'd be them + the ones allowed to vote. The rest of the userbase would still not be able to have a voice in this decisions. Depending on how you want to argue it, either for better and/or worse.

kudosu threshold sounds like a great idea actually, this would allow for alot more people with different backgrounds backed up by some knowledge of the process to participate and have their voice being heard instead of just sinking in veto thread spam like it happens now usually, i believe that this is a step in a good direction

The issue here is a small part of a bigger issue. The misconception of player community and ranked section relationship.

The reality is that ranked section is maintained, both in terms of content as well as curation by mappers/modders primarily, not players who exclusively play the game. A player who just "plays the game" cannot contribute in any way to the ranked section, unless he himself starts to mod maps or even create maps themselves. I think we all know how that cycle works, that's how most modders/mappers start out.

The end result of ranked is aimed towards the community (a feature called leaderboards) but the contents were always apraised by the mapping/modding community and the trends of their time. Which is why contreversial gameplay maps were pushed even when the playerbase felt they were unplayable by the vast majority and vice versa, maps with a normal gameplay are blocked by the mapping community due to "low mapping quality" standards.

I can't say what the ranked section SHOULD BE, but I know what it is and we can be clean and clear about it. If changes are required to have a community element to the ranked section, a much deeper discussion needs to happen with the higher ups, because the current system gatekeeps ranked category to people who are either able to map or mod maps.

The fact this discussion started talking about community voice and the conclusion is already going towards getting people with x ranked maps || y kudosu number proofs that. I like the idea and I'm in favor of it, but that is just broading up the voice and power to people of the mapping/modding community in general, not the big scope of the playerbase that scattered raises concerns with the maps in ranked which is what you brought up as a concern in the first post.

I agree with both Net0 and Arsalan to some extent.

The general player base are much more easily influenced in terms of mapping, but are also the biggest bloc of players.
Therefore, I propose a simple weighting system: If more players than mappers* vote, the players and mappers' vote percentages are simply directly merged, so they have equal influence in "the community"'s vote. Otherwise, the votes are counted equally.
*A mapper is defined as someone with either 1 ranked beatmap, 1 ranked Guest Difficulty, or 150 kudosu. The exact numbers can vary, but the aim is to verify someone has substantial knowledge of mapping concepts.

Ryax's cascading system idea, where the community (players/mappers) decide if the BNs/NAT don't have a 70% consensus either way, works in principle, but there are too few BNs/NATs for that to work with the direct cascading of votes.
Some people suggested that if there is no consensus from the BNs/NAT for 70% either way, their vote should be dropped entirely, but this would take their voice away entirely if they cannot agree, even if they are very close to 70%.
I agree with ZiRoX and believe they should have some influence on the community vote, as the experts.
Therefore, I propose that if they do not reach a 70% consensus, the BNs/NAT have 25% influence on the vote result, and the community has 75%. The community consensus is based on a simple 50% majority rather than 70%.

Also, there were discussions about turnout by the BNs/NAT. The consensus was that 60% of the group must vote. I believe this could be enforced as follows:

1. If a veto is on its 7th day and does not have the required turnout of 60%, the BNs are reminded to vote.
2. If, after 2 days after the initial reminder, the 60% bar is not reached, a second reminder is sent with a warning that voting may be required.
3. If, after another 3 days, the turnout requirement is still not met, the BNs that did not vote are recorded and may receive warnings in evaluations.
4. If the vote reaches 60% after it is due, voting is kept open for 24 hours after the turnout target is reached.

Some personal thoughts after the meeting:

Firstly i'd just mention that the suggesting CR-like-way of including community votes, would by default increase the possibility of a veto being upheld (since you'd only go for community vote when it's under 70%, and it would be just dismissed if you don't go for next step). While i don't mind with being a bit more strict with what should be passed since the threshold is going to be increased to 70%, but a potential worry is that some less popular content would just get more easily get denied due to that

If adding community votes are the way to go tho, i'd agree that certain requirement to vote and the weight between BNG and community needs to be taken care of, as a way of control to avoid it going too extreme, since most of the general community members have less proficiency and don't hold certain "responsibility" for the ranking process

Saying that players only care about pp or whatever is very reductive and simply not true, and excluding their opinion completely for this reason is absurd. Plus, all the non-BN mappers and modders currently don't have a say in vetoes either, not just "regular" players. Weighing their votes differently compared to BNs and NAT should be okay though.

Bloxi wrote:

To address community bias in the veto system, I feel an additive user vote would be more ideal rather than a 20/80% split.

Something along the lines of tallying up the total BN votes with a weighted percentage of only users who disagree with the veto and if the combined percentage exceeds a certain threshold the veto won't be upheld.

As Drum-Hitnormal said it's less problematic when a "bad" map is ranked since users can just choose not to play it.

This should strike a balance between giving the playerbase more influence in the ranking process while also taking into account the preferences of the BNG and avoid negatively affecting less popular mapping styles.

I disagree with the idea of only counting disagree votes, since their opinion should also matter if they agree with a veto, otherwise it's inherently biased/unfair. The argument "if they dislike a map, they can just not play it" doesn't make sense because following that logic, why do vetoes exist at all if bad maps can just be ignored?

gzdongsheng wrote:

Some personal thoughts after the meeting:

Firstly i'd just mention that the suggesting CR-like-way of including community votes, would by default increase the possibility of a veto being upheld (since you'd only go for community vote when it's under 70%, and it would be just dismissed if you don't go for next step). While i don't mind with being a bit more strict with what should be passed since the threshold is going to be increased to 70%, but a potential worry is that some less popular content would just get more easily get denied due to that

I think community votes should be included from the start to avoid this. Considering them only in cases where 70% isn't reached would only work if it goes both ways, meaning that a 70% majority would also be required to dismiss a veto, which I'm not sure is desired.

I was aiming for the following:

1. If a veto has >70% BN/NAT agree, it is upheld.
2. If a veto has <30% BN/NAT agree, it is dismissed.
3. Otherwise, the BN/NAT vote is merged with the community vote.
4. If the community vote is >50% agree, it is upheld.
5. Otherwise, if the community vote is <50% agree, it is dismissed.