hi

after the success of this proposal from a few years ago, i think we can build on this by further relaxing the spread rules to make them more logical in terms of matching commonly mapped song types, and to encourage more maps (especially higher end in higher keymodes) to get ranked.

my suggestion is a 30s reduction in drain time across the board like this: (anything between // isn't part of the proposal)


lowering the marathon length is also a big improvement for high end maps giving them a larger selection of full songs

to briefly address a few common arguments/drawbacks from the last proposal:

- any variation of "this is motivated by laziness": mapping is not a job/responsibility/obligation. it's as legitimate of a way of engaging with the game as playing. so if mappers don't have fun making lower diffs why should they be forced to do something they don't enjoy?

- accessibility for newer players:

1) there is a massive amount of low diffs (easy/normal diffs) in ranked already, and these are the diffs players spend the least amount of time on as they quickly develop the skills to where they'd want to move onto harder content

2) many will still map full spreads regardless. hitsounds have been optional for years in mania, yet plenty of hitsounded maps still get ranked today. many maps with optional diffs have been and still get ranked. there are plenty of other motivations to map spreads such as playcounts/favorites, song popularity, or simply actually enjoying making these diffs

30s might not sound like a lot but due to how it affects different song types i think it can make a significant difference. this proposal isn't finalized, and is open to either modifying the amount of drain time reduction, or even changing spread rules entirely

edit: some data on currently ranked maps can be found here which supports the above assumptions

I agree (btw first time support my hater :fatworry:)

+1 all the way

I fully support this. osu!mania maps in general have a lot more objects that mappers have to take account for, and mappers have to also consider how each note plays with another note, long note, etc., so reducing drain time requirements would be beneficial for mappers.

Even when I try to map full spreads by choice, I would personally be glad to know that I won't have to make two maps to rank a mapset that's in between 3:30 - 4:00 in length. This proposal makes it much easier for osu!mania mappers to rank their mapsets by making the ranking process more approachable for new and veteran mappers alike.

If anyone mentions that 30 seconds might not make a significant difference, there is an ENORMOUS amount of songs out there in the range of 2:30 - 2:50 that could definitely benefit from this.

What I see from this is that mappers will be able to dish out maps quicker and have an actual incentive to have them ranked. The amount of tournament mappers that have amazing and great maps that span over one difficulty but can not be ranked due to the willingness of said mappers to complete a spread and the current RC stating the allowed spreads.

I feel like this is a benefit in a way for those type of mappers and as Scotty said, full spreads and hitsounds are still being ranked to this day so I don't see the problem.

The one thing that does worry me though, is what this will do long term to the mapping scene, will mappers get accustomed to only doing one difficulty and create a scarce roster of maps for the new players? Maybe, and that maybe is what concerns me.

huge +1

I'm not the type of person who usually chimes in on RC proposals but I strongly agree with this one so here I am I guess

So, first off, we will inevitably see the "but we won't have enough lower-level difficulties if this gets passed" argument. (...also the "you all are lazy" argument but that always struck me as super hyperbolic whenever I saw it in other proposals so it's not worth addressing)

I think this argument is invalid. I don't have specific statistics (and if anyone has the means to get them that would be fantastic!) but we still get a *lot* of full spreads that aren't required by the current RC, and we still get far, far more lower level sets/maps than higher level set/maps. I don't think we're going to "run out" of low level content for newer players any time soon. People who are passionate about making high quality low level diffs will still make them.

Not going to lie, I think passing this will be an uphill battle and I don't even know if it's possible. But it's worth noting that the last time mania spread requirements were relaxed it was one of the RC changes that revitalized the mania ranking scene. Mania still is arguably *the* mode with the lowest ratio of active mappers to mappers who actually rank stuff, and this proposal could help draw in more mappers from parts of the community who otherwise wouldn't rank things (a large part of the tournament scene, for example).

It's also worth noting that we got a lot more high level maps ranked after spread requirements were relaxed, but quite a few higher level players (again, no statistics this is just my observation) still believe that we don't have enough higher level content in ranked. Part of this is due to quality concerns which I think is extremely valid, but part of this is due to the spread rules making it more difficult for talented higher-level mappers to rank a large variety of songs. As Antalf mentioned, that 30 second difference will make a lot more songs more accessible to rank.

Fully agree. It will be beneficial in the long run.

Another thing to add on is that we can probably have a drain time leniency on top of this.

Currently, the drain time rule states that if a song does not meet the drain time required for the single diff requirement, mapper has to make an extra difficulty below that of the main difficulty. In a situation where a song is just a few seconds short of meeting the requirement can be frustrating for mappers, therefore I'd suggest that there can be some leniency when it comes to this, maybe something like 5 seconds max. For example, a song with the length of 3m55s to 3m59s can still be passed as a single difficulty. (The current minimum drain time for a single difficulty map in mania is 4 minute.)

5 seconds is just a temporary number, I think it'd be nice to get some feedback for this one.

Having this or not ill still do marathon spreads... +1 -1

But still great if implements... +1

+1 so i can rank my step by step

Totally agree, I think it would be beneficial to give a little more flexibility to the current drain time rules, allowing mappers to have the freedom in a wider range of songs.

I often create full spreads, and from my experience, a lot of effort is needed, which can be very time-consuming, especially in higher key modes with more objects.

Naturally, we do not expect everyone to put in the same amount of effort/time, especially if they do not enjoy charting easier difficulties or lack of motivation to do so.

With this proposal, the spread requirements could be eased, allowing mappers to create a more flexible range of map difficulties for shorter song.

I 100% agree with this proposal. This will definitely be beneficial for the long run, and maybe we could see this change in other game modes too.

+1

Usually rhythm game songs are shorter than 2:30 so even with this proposal, there'd still be a spread for those kinds of songs for a range of players to access. And even then like said already, there are still people out there willing to map full spreads for songs that don't require it.

It's hard to make a spread for certain kinds of patterns, especially LN sets on the higher end of the spectrum. This is even more true for 7k from what I've seen.

I've seen quite a lot of 4k sets as well that are really solid as a single diff, but the only reason they don't get pushed is because of the need for a spread, which would be difficult for the kind of chart they made. I can only imagine how difficult it'd be for the higher keymodes.

So I think this is a good step in the right direction.

+1

+1

let people do what they want do, forcing them do what they dont like is not making good results.

instead of making 1 new diff, mapping 1 new song is more benefitial

there's been multiple cases where it feels nearly impossible to make spreads for certain songs due to how the song represents itself, so i think along with all the other benefits this would be a great change

+1

Love it, +111111

+1

there are often times where issues arise during ranking and its all within the bottom 2-3 diffs, and its more demotivating for mapper to fix those issues especially if they didn't want to map those diffs to begin with. so this will be a big ease on everyone involved with ranking

+1

+1

Forcing people to do what they don't want to do would just produce more filler rather than quality content, and this surely will not stop people who want to make full spread anyway.

This is already been addressed to me many times before, and i think it's valid that mania tends to have difficulty of creating proper spread at higher difficulty spectrum due to the amount of notes they have compared with other gamemodes + have to arrange all those notes combination in proper manner, which adds up even more difficulty to keep things consistent and reasonable to play

So reducing this will improve the experience of high level mapping difficulty while not undermine lower level difficulty because from what i observe in ranked section, lower level difficulty maps are still a lot, so this won't be an issue.

+1

+1

I'm all for this, there have been so many times I've been put off mapping something with a cool concept because I would need a less-cool lower diff to make it rankable.

+1 this one ngl im 100% agree with it

yes please,

+1

I'm surprised by the amount of support this proposal has. As mentioned in the last drain time rule proposal, I think this directly harms the newer player base which sets generally cater to and am against it. I don't like making lower diffs for sets as much as the next guy, but I understand the importance of making stuff that newer players can actually play. I think the last drain time rule was a much needed change, but this one feels way too short.

As someone who generally maps easier stuff, this proposal would have affected literally half of my sets and knowing me, I would have 100% opted to making them single or 2 diff sets which is just pure laziness on my part so I disagree with the first point being made entirely. I'm happy those sets exist now, but at the time I would have 100% taken the easy road. Not all of us bloat sets with low effort lower diffs.

The 2nd point made is that "people are making sets already," but a handful of sets (some pretty important ones) being made at the moment are simply because the current rule exists. A handful of maps for tournaments only have sets because of the current set rule. We live in the era of full GD sets to begin with so what's the issue in just continuing this trend and continue to make easier diffs for newer players.



Plus people watching MWC might enjoy the fact they'd actually be able to play a map they saw.

would be hugely appreciated, especially for newer inexperienced mappers who feel that diff spreads are a pretty steep challenge

+1

I think 4 min is already short for a map to be a single difficulty and now 30 seconds lower I feel this would make spreads even less common, that being said i don't give a plus or a minus

need

+1

I'm going to be as reasonable as I can, unbiased by my personal preferences as a player/mapper and position in the community.

In short, I do (very partially to the point I'm neutral) agree with the change. However I believe it's important to contextualize that we do not have the same problems nor context that we found ourselves on the previous spread rule changes.

I'm still not a fan of using the argument that "low difficulty content already exists" because seeing new interpretations of already mapped songs (hopefully either to more modern standards or with different ideas) is always a net positive. It is also worth adding that the vast majority of the playerbase plays casually. These changes would inadvertently favour more active users. If history taught us anything though, just by reducing the thresholds or removing hitsounds, sets with those are still being made. Knowing that, I'm more willing to see how this pans out.

However, if this change were to be put into effect and after some time the number of new content dropped by a substantial amount, I would be inclined to roll it back. All of this is being done under the precondition that there are willing mappers to push for spreads. If these were to stop and new players had a harder time coming by new sets, I'd roll the change.

Whataboutisms aside, we can give this a fair shot given the positive traction it has garnered. So I'll endorse it with all of the above in mind.

Overall neutral with this proposal, but to just add a few points that haven't been mentioned/discussed yet

1) While understanding the purpose of making mapper's life easier, i'm trying to understand what's the "final" goal of it, since apparently we're not having the issue of in short of ranked map like years ago, and aiming to remove spread rule entirely is both unrealistic and not good for the game's core interest

That is a huge logic jump i know, and we can always just find the balance between those two, but the trend i noticed is that ppl is always trying to reduce it further and further, so hence why this question

2) Give it a try and then roll back in the future sounds fine on paper, however it might not be really that smooth to do if community has been used to the "easy way", and it might do even more damage than just keeping it as it is now if said thing really happens

So while i'm not necessarily against the proposal, i'd really suggest to be cautious, and ideally some sort of survey like years ago should be done in place to get the general perception (there are already a lot of voice here but still majority of ppl won't even participate in the forum discussion)

+1 but also totally agree with what randome is saying with if this proves to be a negative I see rolling it back as a good move

instead we could apply a lax rule where it is needed really: having to have a reasonable difficulty gap in the spread. you all know this has been, and is barring certain songs so why not make it less of a requirement. beatmap nominators can still suggest a more complete spread when it seems achievable.

there is a rather signifcant amount of mappers on two sides who want to map spreads and those who push specialized / more difficult content

in this context, the proposal would be a very positive change

the concern i would raise is how would the change impact the mapping preferences of new / upcoming mappers? there is a balance to maintain between both preferences. Following this, i support randome's idea

lets not forget, low to medium difficulty charts that make good use of new, in-season tracks makes all the difference for new players to step up and potentially contribute to the game. so just relying on the already existing low level content is counterproductive.

sidenote: on the topic of spreading for I-X level diffs, we should open up the discussion of allowing "spreads" based on the raw difficulty of the chart rather than how I-X-X+ is coherent as a spread. This makes GDs a much more viable option when mappers at this level tend to have a concrete idea on how the song should be mapped. It can be difficult to scale spreads off certain styles of mapping.

Ballistic wrote:

As someone who generally maps easier stuff, this proposal would have affected literally half of my sets and knowing me, I would have 100% opted to making them single or 2 diff sets which is just pure laziness on my part so I disagree with the first point being made entirely. I'm happy those sets exist now, but at the time I would have 100% taken the easy road. Not all of us bloat sets with low effort lower diffs.

the point is that there's nothing wrong with not wanting to make extra diffs, whether that feeling is because of laziness or any other reason. in an ideal scenario mappers would never have to make diffs they don't want to make, but that will not be practical for the health of the game. so this is why the proposal advocates for optimizing the current rules instead of outright removing them

Ballistic wrote:

The 2nd point made is that "people are making sets already," but a handful of sets (some pretty important ones) being made at the moment are simply because the current rule exists. A handful of maps for tournaments only have sets because of the current set rule. We live in the era of full GD sets to begin with so what's the issue in just continuing this trend and continue to make easier diffs for newer players.

it's undeniable that many sets exist today simply because of the spread rules, and this change will obviously result in a reduction of sets in general. my reasoning is that the proposal won't completely cut off new players because 1) anime and rhythm game cuts are easily the majority of osu content, and they will fall under the 2 min threshold and 2) the 2nd point in the proposal

RandomeLoL wrote:

However, if this change were to be put into effect and after some time the number of new content dropped by a substantial amount, I would be inclined to roll it back. All of this is being done under the precondition that there are willing mappers to push for spreads. If these were to stop and new players had a harder time coming by new sets, I'd roll the change.

as gz mentioned rolling back could come at a significant cost once mappers get used to it, so we will have to proceed carefully before applying this change

If the impacts of the change are negative once applied and they can be proven, rolling back would be easy enough. That is not my concern. Yet again, I'd encourage getting data on the matter to be collected first as it was done in the past precisely because of that reason.

I don't usually pay much attention to RC suggestions, but I have to say this one.
I question whether these changes are really necessary.

The current ranked spread system is reasonable enough and there is no reason why it should be changed.

It closes the door for new players to play new songs, so it's hard to expect an influx of new players.
It's never the right thing to do to have such a closed direction.

If you've succeeded in creating a higher level of difficulty, creating a lower level of difficulty is simple. You just have to simplify the expression or reduce a few notes from the existing level of difficulty. It may be a boring and boring task, but it's a must for newbies who are new to osu.

" - any variation of "this is motivated by laziness": mapping is not a job/responsibility/obligation. it's as legitimate of a way of engaging with the game as playing. so if mappers don't have fun making lower diffs why should they be forced to do something they don't enjoy? "

-> Then settle for this in the pending or loved section, don't create for a ranked map

I don't sense any intent behind this post other than to 'save some people the trouble'.
ranking is not a given/privilege/necessity

Niks wrote:

The current ranked spread system is reasonable enough and there is no reason why it should be changed.

It is "reasonable" but definitely has room for improvement.

Niks wrote:

It closes the door for new players to play new songs, so it's hard to expect an influx of new players.
It's never the right thing to do to have such a closed direction.

I don't think this would be the case. I see it as something that gives mappers more freedom in picking difficulties they'd like to map the song in. It doesn't necessarily have to benefit just higher end maps, easy to slightly more advanced maps can benefit from this as well. Mappers will always make a spread if they want to, that has never changed since the beginning.

Niks wrote:

-> Then settle for this in the pending or loved section, don't create for a ranked map

This is not what a BN should say. What good is there telling people with actual good maps to not rank their maps? Just because they don't want to be forced to make another difficulty? The purpose of this proposal is to give mappers more option, rather than just outright removing the entire spread requirement.

Niks wrote:

I don't sense any intent behind this post other than to 'save some people the trouble'.
ranking is not a given/privilege/necessity

While ranking maps is not a necessity, a lot of mappers treat it as a goal. It's unwise to disregard this fact. There's no harm with 'save some people the trouble' when it aims to help everyone.

The Korean community also talked about the same topic earlier, but there was no one who said that my argument was reasonable and that my opinion was wrong.

Akasha is in this community, so you'll be able to check it out.

I want to convey this to you, but unfortunately, I am sorry that I cannot speak English fluently

Your answer was not a sufficient answer to my dissent
I bet every mapper, except the mapper who makes full spread, won't make low difficulty, and there will be fewer users coming into low difficulty. Even elementary school students who just started studying will see what I'm talking about in the future.

Also, the room for improvement you're talking about is only at greater disadvantage, as I said in the previous post.

I don't think there's any more reason for me to exist in this debate
I won't answer any more.
Just know that if this continues, Osumania's downturn will accelerate further.

----------
I'll correct it because I said something that could be misunderstood.

I wrote about talking to six mappers in one of the many Korean mapping communities.
This comment is not a representative comment from the Korean community sorry.

+ I'm working all night yesterday and today, so I'm not in the mood to fine-tune my English
I'm truly sorry if it felt a bit radical.

Good proposal for diversity

in all of the spread threads there's a few people that say to the effect of "new players will be harmed by this". aside from that low-difficulty maps won't stop being made by people who like to make them, I don't think a new player needs to be constantly catered to. people quickly move on from that phase, and if you were absolutely dependent on topical/recent songs to play the game, you probably weren't going to last long anyway. in mania, I'm a "new" player (to keyboard-focused 4K and 7K), have an overwhelming amount of low-difficulty maps to play, and I haven't even downloaded anything newer than 2018 or so.

clayton wrote:

in all of the spread threads there's a few people that say to the effect of "new players will be harmed by this". aside from that low-difficulty maps won't stop being made by people who like to make them, I don't think a new player needs to be constantly catered to. people quickly move on from that phase, and if you were absolutely dependent on topical/recent songs to play the game, you probably weren't going to last long anyway. in mania, I'm a "new" player (to keyboard-focused 4K and 7K), have an overwhelming amount of low-difficulty maps to play, and I haven't even downloaded anything newer than 2018 or so.

As you said, osu! mania already has enough easy difficulty for Newbie.
But what if there's no easy difficulty with new songs coming out over and over again?
Newbies who search for keywords in tag and encounter osu mania! can easily cool down by seeing that there is no easy difficulty of a new song they are interested in.

After all, Newbies should be the mapper and ranker of the future, but we should never be the first steps in the way of such a path.

Niks wrote:

But what if there's no easy difficulty with new songs coming out over and over again?

I think it's too early to immediately assume to such extreme. The previous spread rule changes did even more extreme changes back in 2021, and skepticality also exist 3 years ago, only to be proven that there are still a lot of lower level difficulties being made right now.

If you really felt that way, i recommend you to present factual evidence of data, on why you think the changes will lead to the scenario that you think, then it will be more productive discussion to continue on.

It's easy to immediately assume "the worst" out of changes, but it's not easy to present immediate data to prove why you really feel the way you feel.

Otherwise, i think constantly "assume the worst" won't lead to anywhere for anyone, and won't be a productive discussion either.

--------------------------

That aside, the NAT side also trying to ask ranked data from peppy before continuing the discussion, so i recommend for all of you to wait for additional data of mania ranked map from 2022-2024, and make "logical" analyzation and conclusion from those, before we continue the discussion.

what data are you looking for? the last time this happened, with OnosakiHito requesting unique playcounts grouped by difficulty level for a similar taiko spread discussion, there was (imo) very little value in the result because it only confirmed that low diffs get the majority of unique playcounts and everyone already assumed that. you can make a reasonable guess this is the case by looking at regular playcounts across diffs

I don't think there is any existing data that would help to understand the potential effect of reducing the amount of new incoming low diffs to Ranked. the best we can do is see a relationship between current low diffs and new player behavior, which depending on your perspective, may be entirely irrelevant because existing maps aren't going anywhere.

Last time both a mix of user surveyed data and a couple queries was of use when tackling a similar proposal.

I believe there is value in knowing where we currently are as to gauge whether the sentiment pushed in this post is reflected in the different maps ranked ever since the first proposal was made 2 years ago.

Hydria's data analysis:

ok so thanks to hydria we have some data regarding the number of diffs ranked relative to SR since the last major change in spread rules (graphs posted above by yyotta)

to conveniently categorize difficulties we are using SR (not the best metric but it should be an ok approximation) to make the following assumption:

- easy/normal diffs are all diffs below 2.5*

- hard diffs are all diffs between 2.5*-3.5*

- insane diffs are all diffs between 3.5*-5*

- expert diffs is everything above 5*

based on this the total number of diffs ranked for each drain time interval under current spread rules is:


my main takeaway here is that this data supports the original assumption that optional lower diffs will continue to be ranked at a high enough amount, even when they are not required.

another takeaway is that the vast majority of ranked maps fall towards the lower end of drain time in which spreads are required anyways

i think this proposal can be worth trying, and within 6 months to a year we can collect data again and see if the impact was detrimental to newer players or not

I am also not a big fan of "preserve low end diffs" but this proposal seems too radical and discussion isn't refined now for me

The proposal's pros and cons are very clear; however I was surprised nobody thinking backfire of this proposal

As a proposal said lower than 2 minutes songs are mostly a cut ver of other rhythm games but the trend changed; most rhythm game music songs exceed 2 minutes and very few or old songs are following this, if you doubt about this please search first "length<120" in ranked section. I can see more than a half is filled with tv size; I am very sure not every newbies like to play tv size for skill training or feel like dressurf or myuka

And the problem is if the propoosal make worsen the ranked section, is it possible to undo easily like now? Reality isn't. Nobody will agree to restrict themselves and pressure to do more effort, and it will withdrawed for sure

For now my opinion, I fully agree this opinion and its intention but the timing is very worst and too risky if the proposal was not a good option. This should be dealt more carefully imo

Rurvker wrote:

And the problem is if the propoosal make worsen the ranked section, is it possible to undo easily like now? Reality isn't. Nobody will agree to restrict themselves and pressure to do more effort, and it will withdrawed for sure

can agree with this part. if this or something similar is merged with the premise that it can be reverted later, then I think there should be an explicit time for later review set so that nobody is surprised when this discussion is raised again

Rurvker wrote:

As a proposal said lower than 2 minutes songs are mostly a cut ver of other rhythm games but the trend changed; most rhythm game music songs exceed 2 minutes and very few or old songs are following this, if you doubt about this please search first "length<120" in ranked section. I can see more than a half is filled with tv size; I am very sure not every newbies like to play tv size for skill training or feel like dressurf or myuka

This is based on the preassumption that a decreased threshold necessarily decrease the number of "rhythm game music" with lower difficulties. However as with data provided this is most likely not the case, and from experience a lot of "rhythm game music" maps have way more difficulties than their lowest requirement.

As mentioned before, my only precondition to accept the proposal now is that after 6-12 months the same data gathering efforts are carried out to see how impactful the proposal has been.

If it results in an unreasonably lopsided bias towards higher difficulties, then we'll have to agree on a revert.

+1

I agree +1, this will give us more maps to enjoy in ranked. The more the better