Alright so, hello to everyone who decides to read this long post, I'd like to raise some points to get you into my perspective.
I apologize for the aggressiveness of my previous posts towards who ever gave their opinion, I'll get on why later.
So, let's start with - what exactly is a beatmap?
A map, or a beatmap, or mapping in general, is a really abstract subject. Different people will different thoughts of what it is, such as:
- A song.
- Something you can play.
- The mapper's song interpretation.
Obviously all of those are connected in some way, since they are what a beatmap is.
So, I'd say that generally a beatmap is a song that some mapper mapped to playable objects which the player could interact with.
What are those objects?
- Circles, which are simply pressed by the player to present a beat that exists in the music. (However in the current mapping-meta circles are starting to be used for different emphasizations, which I'll discuss later)
- Sliders, which can be used to present held instruments in the song, held vocals, or just a connecting point between two beats. I should add that sliders are manifold, you can do so much with them, the options are limited.
- Spinners, which well, you spin. (I don't really spinners that much, but they are useful)
- Hitsounds, which are a big core in the concept of a rhythm game such as osu!, personally it gives me huge satisfaction to hear them play perfectly with the rhythm. You could use them to enhance the way the map is played or the song is heard, hitsounds are not necessarily tied to the song and in my opinion should not be most of the time as well. Hitsounds are used to get the player in the rhythm and beat, to strengthen the song and many more.
- Timing points, which are a must, because well, you need to be tied to some rhythm the song creates, and yes, this is a critical thing in mapping, so it can't be anything less than perfect.
- Inherited Points (SV modifiers), which are not used every time and everywhere, but it helps the mapper to express himself a bit better.
This sums all (most?) of the objects generally without getting in too much detail.
Cool, so people are using those objects to present the song in their way, not necessarily the best way, but their way. As osu! had to start somewhere, the maps and the mappers did too, I don't know too much about the mapping-meta overall, but if you are interested you should read Hata-tan's post [url=Not necessarily]right here[/url], it's a good read.
Players evolved, mappers evolved, maps evolved and obviously the game itself did as well (thanks Peppy!), we are at a point in time where there's a huge variety in map and player levels, high-skilled players want to enjoy a big, diverse map-pool of mapped songs. I'll use an example:
- Rise Against - Prayer of the Refugee -
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/11090 - An old 2010 mapset submitted by Blatzk (with a Guest Difficulty created by Aqua92)
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/181689 - A relatively new mapset submitted by EvilElvis (collaborated with various mappers)
They are so different, the new mapset includes more difficulties to approach more players, it's great (and the old mapset was great by the terms of 2010).
There's nothing like the feeling of finishing the map(set?) of a song you like, does it end here? Nah. The player now need to choose if he wants to submit the map so everyone could find it on the website (or osu!direct), which most of the times, he'll do, afterwards he'll to pick between two routes:
- Leaving the map as it is, letting it die slowly and get to the beatmap graveyard (no worries you can still download and play those).
- Getting the beatmap more exposure by using the ranking system, if you'll get your beatmap ranked, leaderboards, performance points and ratings are going to be enabled, along with the appearance on the ranked section in the website.
So, what does it take for a beatmap to get ranked?
First of all, following the rules as seen
here, no exceptions (?), please note that rules are changed over time so maps from different times are attached to a different set of rules. And the second thing, community acceptance.
Although first time I see anyone use this term, community acceptance is pretty much everything needed to get a beatmap ranked, with the rules as exception. Therefore you might see a beatmap that is widely accepted and is fun to play, yet it cannot be ranked because of the rules.
Community acceptance goes through several levels in order to get your beatmap ranked:
- Self acceptance - Your map, your interpretation, you are pretty much the map itself, you should be able to accept yourself.
- Other mappers' acceptance, or modders / modding - Other mappers are taking a look at your map, they will point their dissatisfactions with your map, usually with their way of thought and a small explanation in order to get you to understand their perspective. Mappers will respond to the modders, usually if they accepted the notes / suggestions, and if not, usually an explanation is added (sadly this is not true to all cases).
- Experienced mappers' acceptance, or BNs / Beatmap Nominators - Those people volunteered and then picked by the community managers to stand in the way through the ranking process, they are doing the same thing as less experienced modders do, but usually have better understanding of beatmap terms such as flow, patterns or anything else to have a fun beatmap to play. In order to get your map ranked you need two beatmap nominators to accept your map, the first acceptance will be presented as a bubble icon, and the second acceptance will be your entrance to the qualified section with the heart icon. (please note that for approval maps - non-set mapsets the acceptance requires 3 BNs or 2 bubbles and 1 approval icon)
- Super-experienced mappers' acceptance, or QAT / a member in the Quality Assurance Team - You're just one step before getting to the ranked section, you are in the qualified section waiting to get through the qualified maps queue and having your desire come true. However, although experienced mappers' have accepted it, there might be unrankable issues in your map such as transgressing the criteria or a lot of 'quality' problems which in the QAT's opinion are ruining the experience of playing the beatmap.
If you got through all of those stages, hooray! Your beatmap is ranked
(although there are some cases where unrankable issues slipped through the qualified sections and when found are disqualified) and everyone can enjoy it completely!
However, we should remember that mapping is a huge abstract subject, some may find a specific map enjoyable while the other will find it awful (let's ignore the difficulty restriction for now), mapping is subjective and it comes in a lot of sizes and shapes, some will agree with the mapper's choices and some will not, some might find a specific pattern fun while some not. My point is that with the huge development maps have gone through the years, they are not static, they are not the same, they are versatile.
In order to support my plea, I'll list some known mappers in the community with some words and examples.
Monstrata - The god of hexagons, appeared exactly when this year began, he rose pretty quickly to be one of the famous mappers by having strong structs, fun flow, great movements and enjoyful pool of songs he maps,
and obviously the great pp everyone loves. Some notable maps:
- M.Iz - Kakenukeru Anime Song Medley IV
- AKINO from bless4 & CHiCO with HoneyWorks - MIIRO vs. Ai no Scenario
There's not too much to say on his maps, they are widely accepted and enjoyed by almost everyone.
Skystar (Previously Amamiya Yuko) - The god of irregularity and hitsounds. Gimmicky, creative, original beatmaps are Skystar itself, there are way too many words to describe Skystar's maps, there are a huge variety of different styles Skystar presented, each style might be favorable by different players. One bold thing I want to discuss is the fact that Skystar is one of the mappers that brought overmapping as an acceptable thing nowadays, the overmapping is expressed with mapping objects in a way that does not follow the music, and is generally hitsounded, the combination of those enhances the experience of playing the map, or at least that was Skystar's vision, it became somewhat accepted, yet still controversial. Some people may refer this to complete overmap, and some as artifical rhythm. Notable maps that possess the concept:
- EGOIST - Fallen (TV Edit) - Obviously I am referring just to the Extra difficulty, which is a collab with Irreversible, fanzhen and Skystar. This map spits out creativity and irregularity, some people find it really weird and not fun, some of those will ask why is it even ranked, while the others are enjoying it, perhaps because of differences in skill levels or other reasons. I will add and say, there are overmapped objects, notes that are not present in the song or artifical rhythms created by the mappers.
- Hanatan - Tengaku & Hanatan - Kagerou Variation, Starting @09:24:962 - Yeah, it's great in my opinion, but you can't ignore the huge use of circles in triplets, and I'll tell you something, they don't even exist, they're overmapped, and I think it's great.
Please note that the way I use the term god may be overexaggerating, there are many more great mappers which could replace the mappers I listed.There are so many differences between those 2 mappers and you could even create groups and categorize the mappers amongst others such as pishifat, Hollow Wings and many more, there are so many ways to go with it.
So, how does everything connect to the main subject - me, and this beatmap, and everything in general?
There are several problems with everything, and I want to give those stuff exposure:
- Mapping is abstract, subjective, huge, it can not be static, mostly it is not the same between different mappers, but it is possible. In addition to mapping, mappers, players and gameplay are pretty much the same.
- Ranking is not and cannot be objective, never.
- One problem which is derived from the previous statement - two mappers might be as good as each other, one might have some friends, connections, which could lead to easier ranking progression, this problem is not that easy to solve, amongst the pool of people that don't really have those 'connections' there are bad mappers and good mappers, BNs are doing their job volunteeringly and you bet they can't check everyone's map, I'm sure it's tough.
- An other problem - some people will dislike a mapper's choice, it can come in different ways: The song, the patterns, the hitsounds, the asthetics, anything. I'd like to refer to something BlueDragon said almost a year ago on Genryuu Kaiko's thread:
Blue Dragon wrote:
OH NO people have different opinions!
What if the maps that you consider good, are actually 1/2 spam with no spacing which people worship as "the best maps" such as some of caren's or silynn's maps, that barely follow anything in the ranking criteria and have zero technical qualify?
People should know that maps that get ranked are the ones who have rankable quality. If you don't like it, someone else does. That's why it got ranked in the first place. People should really acknowledge that other people have different opinions.
"This map is an overmapped piece of shit, it's not an opinion, it's a fact! just listen to the music guys, you're wrong and i'm right!!!!!"
This is pretty much the essence of this post, there's something completely wrong here.
@Irreversible:
- In relation to the previous problem, I feel like there's bias in the community, known mappers are passing through qualification with the same said 'problems' that other people have in their maps. I should say that the QATs went through different changes lately, more transpernancy, more discussion and such, yet the problem persists.
- @Irreversible:
Is it just me, or does it seem completely absurd? You are contradicting yourself, just the fact that other people are doing it yet are not addressed is a red flag.
I guess that as long as this gains exposure, people will present more problems, as I am sure they exist.
I disagreed and still do with the disqualification, I explained my thoughts, and I am still able to do so, as far as I know, people do enjoy the map, it represents the song and my intentions really well, yet it still got disqualified. The only reason I removed the 1/8 are because I thought I could just finish with it and avoid the headache involved, but it seems like I can't, so here I am.
I will appreciate comments and insight from players and mappers.
tl;dr:
read this holy shit it took me almost 4 hours to write this Take a look at the problems right above ^