I'm not familiar at all with the modding community, but there is this one argument that I've seen being disputed multiple times. This thread is to get the arguments out, and I'm in no way trying to change the rules, as I'm not even sure what the rules are about this, but I think this is worth having a discussion about.

The debate is, if people who make guest difficulties or skin elements should be getting a kudosu or not

Some claim that anything that isn't modding shouldn't get any kudosu, which to me is a rather wrong way of seeing what kudosu is. First off, let's get something out of the way. One thing we can't argue here is that guest diffs and skin elements aren't worth as much.

Of course, I've barely ever modded, but I can quite certainly say that making a difficulty or a skin element surely takes, on average, quite a lot more time than modding a map. A difficulty can easily take up to 5+ hours, whereas modding rarely goes above an hour AFAIK. I could be very wrong, feel free to correct me there.

They take more time to make, but another thing is, they also are contributing to the map. For the sake of this argument, let's assume that the skin or difficulty is actually of a good quality. They will add to the quality of the map, just like modding would.

Finally, let's not forget what kudosu is for. From what I can deduce, it's there so people don't go selfish working only on their on map, and it forces people to help eachother. I'm not sure what definition of helping you guys have, but making a skin or a difficulty for someone sure is helping to me. You're contributing to the community, and as a reward, you get to publicize your own map.

Again, feel free to correct me anywhere I went wrong, as I'm still new to modding, but I'd definitely like to hear the arguments people have for the opposite side.

So far, all I heard was either "It's the rule" or "it's not modding", which both sound like weak arguments to me. Also, like I said, this is just for the sake of arguing, and not for changing the rules or anything.

As someone who basically only makes guest diffs for people, I agree with just about everything you said.

Making a difficulty/skin/SB that takes hours and hours is worth nothing in terms of rewards while a new combo mod post that probably took 10 minutes tops gets kudosu? What a joke.

In a community where people toss around free stars like candy (and for the record I don't see a problem with this but that's irrelevant here), I don't see why kudosu should get such exclusivity. It's just a way of saying "thanks for your 5 hours of work you put in to help make my mapset complete and rankable" (if, say, it's a 2-difficulty mapset that was previously only one diff).

Maybe if the guest difficulty was full of errors or something then the kudosu wouldn't be merited because it would ultimately be detrimental to the mapset as a whole but in that case the creator could just decline to include that guest diff, I think that would be a big enough of a slap in the face to the mapper.

I couldn't have said it better myself, MegaManEXE. :T

We've been over this before.

Guest difficulties don't get kudosu, because they dont help a map out. it's just adding a map.

For once I must whole-heartedly agree with Ph0X.

RemmyX25 wrote:

We've been over this before.

Guest difficulties don't get kudosu, because they dont help a map out. it's just adding a map.

And what if the creator isn't good at making normals or insanes or what have you?

They recruit a guest mapper to help them out and make that difficulty that they don't want to make/are incapable of making.

The guest mapper's diff therefore completes the mapset and helps allow it to be considered for ranking. How is that not helping a mapset out?

MegaManEXE wrote:

And what if the creator isn't good at making normals or insanes or what have you?

Simply don't make it. If you aren't good at making whateverdifficulty, then learn watching maps and practice improving your style. Guest diffs are most of the times people that loves the song and wants to make a diff for it or people that makes a map in group (collab maps), imo. Same for Storyboards and skins.

RemmyX25 wrote:

We've been over this before.
Guest difficulties don't get kudosu, because they dont help a map out. it's just adding a map.

Sorry, must of been before my time because I don't remember a real discussion about this.
Also, please, do explain, because guest difficulties DO make a map better. I find a map with 4 difficulties of various style (not mapped by the same person), more entertaining than a map of only two diffs. Of course, like I said, we are assuming that the guest difficulty is good. Also, what about the skin elements?

Beuchi-chan wrote:

Simply don't make it. If you aren't good at making whateverdifficulty, then learn watching maps and practice improving your style. Guest diffs are most of the times people that loves the song and wants to make a diff for it or people that makes a map in group (collab maps), imo. Same for Storyboards and skins.

Kinda going off-topic saying that people have to learn it themselves and stuff. Also, I can understand how guest diffs can sometime be made for the fun of it, but sometimes, it's actually the creator asking for help, which is quite a different situation, imo.

Also, this argument does not stand for skin or stodyboard.

Also, kudosu is for MODDING. Not MAPPING.

I still fail to see why people who post two lines of modding that took them 5-10 minutes to find get a reward over someone who invested an entire afternoon to make a quality difficulty to make the mapset more fun and complete.

Seriously, it's one kudosu. One.

Say you mapped 3 difficulties and they all took you 3 hours apiece. That would be 3 kudosu, enough for one pink star.

In those same 9 hours you could easily get 5-10 times as much kudosu if you spent that time modding instead.

It's not like giving out a kudosu here and there for a guest diff is breaking the bank here, come on.

This is quite a divergent topic and also was a hot item in the bat-area a few months ago.

Anyway this how I saw it then and how I see it now:
First of I see kudosu as a currency to improve the general workflow and speeding up the ranking process.
All the maps in pending have a opportunity to get to the ranking stage or get approved when the quality criteria are met and all the mistakes have been fixed.
There is a certain unknown variable amount of work required for each map to progress itself.All the modding that points out mistakes or improvements costs work but relieves a certain stress from the workstack needed to make the map reach it's ultimate goal and is therefor awarded by kudosu.
Adding new content however generally means adding more work (need more modding done) before the map can get to this stage.
This is why I think this should not be awarded for by kudosu.

RemmyX25 wrote:

Also, kudosu is for MODDING. Not MAPPING.

Well, again, this is just stating the current rule, and like I said, my point here is not to change the rules. Many seem to want that, but I'm just here to hear the arguments :<

Intermezzo wrote:

First of I see kudosu as a currency to improve the general workflow and speeding up the ranking process. All the maps in pending have a opportunity to get to the ranking stage or get approved when the quality criteria are met and all the mistakes have been fixed.

Now that makes sense, but there is one little problem in this system. From what I heard, you need at minimum 8 stars to get pubbled/bubbled or whatever it is. Thing is, this is in no way related to kudosus. From what I saw, these are the awards people get for helping, and not the thing that makes the current map better. Not sure if you get what I mean, but pretty much anyone who likes the map can come and give a star, without even modding. Therefore, you only need 8 friends in order to get to the bubblable status, which kinda defeats the purpose of getting your map modded by 8 people. But we're already far far from Kudosus, which again, don't really seem to have any effect on the map itself, rather, it just helps the modders to skip their maps from being modded as much.

So yea, correct me if I got anything wrong, but that's how it looks to me right now.

@Intermezzo: It would take roughly the same time to mod a map with (e.g.) 4 difficulties from one mapper as it would to mod 2 difficulties from the uploader and two guest diffs. Time really isn't a variable in this issue. :/

I still agree that when one helps another via a difficulty, skin, or storyboard, they should be rewarded (at least, if not) the same as one who simply mods the map.

MegaManEXE wrote:

I still fail to see why people who post two lines of modding that took them 5-10 minutes to find get a reward over someone who invested an entire afternoon to make a quality difficulty to make the mapset more fun and complete.

Seriously, it's one kudosu. One.

Kudosu are meant to encourage people to mod, not to map guest difficulties for other users. Assistance with skin elements and storyboarding is much the same as these are optional elements of the map and not something necessarily vital to the map's progress through the ranking cycle.

A map will survive without a guest difficulty from an upstart mapper, but it will not survive without some decent modding.

Kudosu will become a lot more important in the future. This is why we need to get it right in the present, so people know exactly what it is being used for and when it should be awarded. Awarding kudosu for guest difficulties and other posts unrelated to modding will cause a penalty once I get the new system in place, so it is a good idea to learn to use them correctly while you can.

Kudosu are awarded for helpful mod posts.

That is the one and only time they should be awarded. This does not include providing skin elements, storyboard content or more difficulties.

There is nothing to discuss here.

MegaManEXE wrote:

RemmyX25 wrote:

We've been over this before.

Guest difficulties don't get kudosu, because they dont help a map out. it's just adding a map.

And what if the creator isn't good at making normals or insanes or what have you?

Having someone else do it for you is a great way to learn.

Someone attach his/her guest diff in the post. I deemed it as helpful, so I may give him/her kudos. Is that allowed?

You will gain 1 kudosu for this post if it is deemed as helpful by the map's creator.

Maybe guest diff. can't count as a help to my map, but skin/SB help is one kind of mod
._. If someone gives me SB/Skin suggestion, am I supposed to give him/her kudosu?

awp wrote:

Having someone else do it for you is a great way to learn.

Fine, fair enough. A valid point I suppose, though for whatever reasons, some people only make one difficulty per song. Maybe they get bored or tired of it, maybe they just don't like making certain difficulty levels, maybe they don't have the time to finish the mapset but would love to see it ranked. Who knows. Things happen and sometimes guest difficulties are necessary to finish a mapset (note I'm not talking about those maps where there is like 1 easy and 4 guest insanes, I'm talking more about the ones that are an easy and an insane, one by the map creator and one by the guest mapper).

Let's put it this way then: say a person makes a normal and an insane. A BAT comes along and says, "this mapset needs an easier difficulty" and won't rank it until it has one. A guest mapper steps forth and produces said easy difficulty, allowing the mapset to get ranked without a hitch. How is that not helping the creator?

VanMoNky wrote:

Someone attach his/her guest diff in the post. I deemed it as helpful, so I may give him/her kudos. Is that allowed?

You will gain 1 kudosu for this post if it is deemed as helpful by the map's creator.

Evidently not according to this thread.


And for the record, I honestly don't really care about changing the rule or not because I know people around here are so stalwart on certain things that it's like talking to a brick wall. I just think that if the map creator personally thinks my guest difficulty was helpful to the overall quality of their mapset and made it more well-rounded and fun as a whole and wants to give me kudosu as a token of appreciation, why should it get denied? It's not like I go around posting up my guest diffs and go "kudos plz". Sometimes they give me kudosu for it and sometimes they don't. It's nice to get but I don't bitch and moan if I don't.

If you happen to know me at all you'd know that I don't map to get things ranked because it's way too much of a hassle; I map for my friends or because I like the song or want to experiment with new patterns, so kudosu in general is fairly useless to me, but it's neat to have around to show extra support for a map I happen to like or something.

Well I think this pretty much sums up all the arguments from both sides.
Also, we obviously can't see every aspect of this problem since the system is going to change.
Lastly, I can see Kudosus only being used to encourage the modding community, but then, you might need something for the other stuff too, since without awards, people rarely do anything~

MegaManEXE wrote:

[...] for whatever reasons, some people only make one difficulty per song. Maybe they get bored or tired of it, maybe they just don't like making certain difficulty levels, maybe they don't have the time to finish the mapset but would love to see it ranked.

Unfortunately, I see every one of these points as a reason why the mapper should not map. Don't do a half-ass job. It just creates more work for everyone and isn't worth it. Go big or go home.

MegaManEXE wrote:

Let's put it this way then: say a person makes a normal and an insane. A BAT comes along and says, "this mapset needs an easier difficulty" and won't rank it until it has one. A guest mapper steps forth and produces said easy difficulty, allowing the mapset to get ranked without a hitch. How is that not helping the creator?

This is a bit more of an applied scenario, but I still think it's unreasonable.

You're not helping the mapper. You're just helping the map. The mapper should be learning how to make easier difficulties.



As a note to everybody, stop trying to get your map ranked. Focus on making a good map; the best you can make, not just some run-of-the-mill bare-minimum ranked map. Ranking is a byproduct of mapping effort and skill/talent, not the end result of it.

peppy wrote:

Awarding kudosu for guest difficulties and other posts unrelated to modding will cause a penalty once I get the new system in place

I'm interested to see how effective that will be... the community can't possibly be 100% policed.

Can I give kudosu if someone helps me to rip a video?

awp wrote:

You're not helping the mapper. You're just helping the map.

But you do agree that it's helping and that it takes effort?
Which means it's worth something, and a simple little kudosu would be the least you could give.
Of course, if the system changes and Kudosu becomes a pure modding currency, then that's another thing, but nonetheless, those other types of efforts should also be rewarded somehow.

Fucking lost my epic post. !@$!@#$

Short: Kudosu are awarded for posts which lead to improvement in the quality of a map set.

strager wrote:

Short: Kudosu are awarded for posts which lead to improvement in the quality of a map set.

Yea, no, that's exactly what I've been arguing during the entire thread which you obviously haven't read (althought I don't blame you, huge posts are huge). In my first post, I argued that skin/SB elements actually can add to the quality of the map (assuming that they are good). But like peppy and some others said, it's apparently ONLY the currency of MODDING, and further updates will reflect that even more.

Modding=1/2 kd
Guest diffs/SBs etc=1/2 or 1kd

That should be okay, actually.

Ph0X wrote:

But you do agree that it's helping and that it takes effort?

Yep

Ph0X wrote:

Which means it's worth something, and a simple little kudosu would be the least you could give.

Nope: why don't you give kudosu to mappers? They're doing the most work out of anyone. Shouldn't they be rewarded for the maps they make?

In many ways, kudosu'ing a guest difficulty has the same implications as kudosu'ing a mapper. The point of kudosu is to "force" (note, you're not actually forced, but people are tricked into believing they are!) mappers to mod.

If you consider mapping to be "receiving" from the community, then modding is "giving" to the community. Don't just take; give a lil' something back in return.

Someone commented the current kd system: "kds is only for measuring how many maps one has looked through".

If kd system is just used for comparing how many maps one has modded browsed, rather than helping improving the quality of the beatmaps, then it should be considered totally useless, and its rules should deserve no respect.

That's it.

awp wrote:

In many ways, kudosu'ing a guest difficulty has the same implications as kudosu'ing a mapper. The point of kudosu is to "force" (note, you're not actually forced, but people are tricked into believing they are!) mappers to mod.

Fair enough, but I still think the use of kudosus defeats the purpose of getting your own map modded.

ignorethis wrote:

If kd system is just used for comparing how many maps one has modded browsed, rather than helping improving the quality of the beatmaps, then it should be considered totally useless, and its rules should deserve no respect.

Hmm what? I was saying that guest diffs should get kudosus, not every single post. And I think by "looked through", they meant how many maps that person has modded.