Current rule:

Before opening this case, we performed a community poll (t/340082) which received over 1400 votes (thus around ~500 unique people).
As result, we observed that everything below 1 minute is not wanted to be played by the majority of community. We see no reason and rather receive quite a lot of complaints about beatmaps around 30 seconds drain-time being moved to Qualified, occupying slots in this section which could be filled with maps the majority of people actually want to see Ranked more likely.



We do not see a reason anymore to factually allow beatmaps to be Ranked that are not at least 1 minute long of active play time (aka drain time). Everything below 1 minute can still be submitted and played for sure, but they apparently do not require space in the Ranked section in osu!, labeling them as official osu! beatmaps we want to spread and support.

Therefore, we purpose to change the rule to the following:

I disagree with this. The poll does not indicate that people want no <1 minute beatmaps, it simply indicated that it's not their favourite length. All I can see this doing is destroy the diversity of beatmaps in osu!. I love some of the <1 minute beatmaps there are, Granat being an example. They are a refreshing change.
I think you should reconsider. Why don't you make a poll asking the community directly if they think <1 minute beatmaps should be unrankable instead of making assumptions?

agree for less than 1 minute or 2 minute
i hate long song

I can't agree with this either.
Maybe try something to discourage this, like a rule that shorter maps should include more difficulties (like 5-6/map). This should reduce the number of people who choose to map short (<60 seconds) songs or at least people couldn't be able to make beatmaps that fast.

I do agree 1 min is fair enough, 30 secs songs aren't fun to play, also seems a bit lazy to me to map 30 or 40 secs of song, specially if the mapper did cut it.

yeah i know short maps arent fun. because we are expert players. but lets think of it.. sometimes short maps gives a chance easy to get full combo for newest players in my opinion. i think, 30secs map still need to this game. we should offer to chance for newest players. lets remember that nice moments when we got fced short maps♥

Not supporting. Taking pokemon theme songs as an example, they are repetitive - people will possibly ending up copy pasting sections which does not lead to a wished quality either. Also, these songs would need to be looped, and that's not fun either. I mean, then you have the same sections 8 times or whatever.

Maybe add a rule that disallows cutting songs too much, like cutting a song should not result it being shorter than 90 seconds. I think that's a bigger problem than 30-60 sec maps in general

Nwolf wrote:

Maybe add a rule that disallows cutting songs too much, like cutting a song should not result it being shorter than 90 seconds. I think that's a bigger problem than 30-60 sec maps in general

Agree with this. If the song is <1 min, let it be, that's the way it is. But if the song is longer, then cut versions should be 1 min or longer. I've seen cases where mappers cut the kiai time from a song and make an entire mapset out of it and it's sickening.

B1rd wrote:

I disagree with this. The poll does not indicate that people want no <1 minute beatmaps, it simply indicated that it's not their favourite length. All I can see this doing is destroy the diversity of beatmaps in osu!. I love some of the <1 minute beatmaps there are, Granat being an example. They are a refreshing change.
I think you should reconsider. Why don't you make a poll asking the community directly if they think <1 minute beatmaps should be unrankable instead of making assumptions?

100% this
Just because its not the majority's favorite doesn't mean the majority want them to never exist (in the future).. Green is not my favorite color, but that doesnt mean i want green to never be used as a color for drawings.
This question should not be used as justification to remove the ranking of <1 minute songs.

B1rd wrote:

Why don't you make a poll asking the community directly if they think <1 minute beatmaps should be unrankable instead of making assumptions?

Please do this instead if you are going to consider never ranking <1 minute songs. Using this kind of data is useful for finding trends, not for removing unpopular ones simply because they're unpopular.

Honestly, i think looking at playcount and user ratings on these maps might be a good idea as well.

Who do you mean by "we"? Just adding "we" to anything doesnt make you look smarter or more official

If you knew anything about observation, youd see that the community "doesnt want" maps that are 6 minutes or longer. So lets put a cap on that and stop marathons too. After all, its only "logical". Additionally, much of the community expresses disdain for TV Size maps, and say to just map full versions. So lets ban those too, right??

Im curious to see what kind of complaints you get, and from which groups. Are high leveled players with respectable opinions complaining, or is it little kids that, while their opinion is appreciated, shouldnt be the cause of major change when a majority of the community has no issues.

Im all down for reviewing why we put a base line at 30 seconds, but id like to hear some actual reasoning that isnt twisting a poll around to support a personal agenda

Ill make a bigger post tomorrow if the discussion is still going on. Right now im on my phone about to go to work so i cant make this as eloquent as I want, nor can i really review the qualified/ranked section to see the general opinion of shorter beatmaps.

I just wanted to make it known that i disagree with your personal reasoning. Youre smarter than this.

Irreversible wrote:

Not supporting. Taking pokemon theme songs as an example, they are repetitive - people will possibly ending up copy pasting sections which does not lead to a wished quality either. Also, these songs would need to be looped, and that's not fun either. I mean, then you have the same sections 8 times or whatever.

I pretty much agree with Irreversible. That people like a bit longer songs doesn't mean short are bad in any way. Because community voted on this, which is mostly players, they will pick not too long, bu a length which will still give enough pp. Apart from that, there is still minority which is enjoying short maps, but because it is minority, it doesn't mean they are not important. That will only result in ugly loop songs.

This could be compared to Irreversible's maps to be honest. I believe there are many people who hate his maps for using CS7 and I guess many people would vote for forbidding the usage of CS7, but would that solve anything? No, people who enjoy that CS would end up disappointed and people whp don't enjoy that CS would not care or laugh as sadists to those who liked it. There are many pretty songs which could be mapped, but would sound pretty stupid afte loop. Unfortunatelly cannot agree with this change - majority liking certain length is one thing, but minorities liking others are second.

Also the provided screenshot is kind of irony. 30 - 60 are prefered by more people than all above 6 minutes but we are removing these, when the most "disliked" are different lengths.

And the last thing is, this won't really solve problems with slots being used. People might loop the song once or twice, copy, rotate and adjust the patterns and it can anyway fill the slot quickly afterwards. I would welcome to see really correct and well-constructed reasons for this group being forbidden.

This is ridiculous. Read what revenant and bird said. Please don't twist the results of your poll into something completely unsupported by the original question being asked. Everyone can see the blatant logical fallacy in your statement.

Also even if people actually said they dislike short maps, who said they shouldn't be ranked? Why is it okay to discriminate against minority preferences here? Don't pull the "taking up slots" excuse, how about you guys look at the recently reduced rank cap instead, or you might as well say non Japanese songs can no longer be ranked because they're taking rank slots of more popular songs.

Please no more patching orz >.<
I love short maps and I don't want them to go away from ranked status. Having at least 30 seconds of drain time is already fair enough imo

Ok so I'm back from work. It seems that most people pretty much are against this, but it doesn't hurt to give some more.

So let's take a look at the amount of maps that have been RANKED within the past week (Not using qualified because that changes a lot, and I don't track it since my days of following the ranking process are pretty much over.

So from July 25th to July 31st. . .

26 maps were ranked.

Out of those 26 maps

Below 1 minute: 3
1-2 minutes: 18
2-3 min: 2
3-4 min: 1
4-5 min:
Approval: 2

So we're seeing that the 2nd highest bracket is Below 1 minute.

Now, let's take a look at each of these maps

https://osu.ppy.sh/s/293233 : Mapped by Lanturn, 00:30 long. Bubbled by Kyubey, ranked by monstrata.

There's quite a few places to look for map opinions

Firstly, the rating, pictured here: http://puu.sh/jjQvN/a4c2fbafaa.png

We can see that while the map has some downvotes, it's primarily positive.

Secondly, the map thread: t/310139&start=0. The only one that has pointed out a problem is Sonnyc, and that's only if he's being sarcastic.

Thirdly, the trello comments:

http://puu.sh/jjQBX/1f29e099eb.png
http://puu.sh/jjQCE/1844c3d656.jpg

These are the only two negative comments that are in the trello thread. While this can be tied to "See there's my support", I'm moreso seeing the issues being the small CS styled mapping (and some other issues too. tbh I don't like this map, but I'm speaking in a neutral matter.)

Finally, the in-game replay. There are 4 comments in this particular map. The only negative one comes from here. https://osu.ppy.sh/ss/3466294 , and doesn't explicitly lead to the drain time being a factor.

Now, let's look at the other two. Conveniently enough, I also modded both of these, so I'll be able to attest to their quality in terms of the mapping.

https://osu.ppy.sh/s/328691 : Map by Nhawak. Bubbled by Kuron-kun, ranked by appleeaterx

So let's go down the list again

1) http://puu.sh/jjQWL/4009a96004.png Overwhelmingly positive
2) t/342623&start=0 purely positive
3) Nothing on the trello
4) Nothing in map

Finally, this guy

https://osu.ppy.sh/s/331697 Mapped by blissfulyoshi, bubbled by Lanturn, re-bubbled by Gaia, ranked by Lanturn, disqualified over metadata, bubbled by Gaia, ranked by Lanturn

run down the list

1) http://puu.sh/jjR92/a72db9ac4e.png Very positive. I actually remember this map being the "Highest User Rating" for a few days when it was first ranked.
2) t/345147&start=0 Only negativity is the speed of the rank (Mostly coming from me being surprised xP), but nothing about length
3) http://puu.sh/jjRdR/eb6df27afa.jpg A request for the full diff. . . I don't really know if this counts as negative but if you're grasping for straws here's your single straw that you can bend in your favor
4) The only comments is something in korean and someone saying wtf. Nothing there.

So I'm not entirely sure where you're getting the idea that the community has backlash to short maps. And I'm not even saying this as a "ur stupid" kinda thing, I'd just like to see some sort of proof that this is a "community feeling" rather than trying to use clever wording to push a personal agenda, because from all that I can see, nobody is really complaining about this particular issue.

ZiRoX wrote:

Nwolf wrote:

Maybe add a rule that disallows cutting songs too much, like cutting a song should not result it being shorter than 90 seconds. I think that's a bigger problem than 30-60 sec maps in general

Agree with this. If the song is <1 min, let it be, that's the way it is. But if the song is longer, then cut versions should be 1 min or longer. I've seen cases where mappers cut the kiai time from a song and make an entire mapset out of it and it's sickening.

Agree. If they are going to do this then at the very least they should be able to label it "cut version" imo.

I completely disagree. The results for below 30 seconds and 30 seconds to 1 minute are 3% and 6% respectively. The results for 30 minutes or more and 10 minutes plus are 3% and 5% respectively. This could even be expanded to the 6 minute to 8 minute bracket too.

Going by the logic in the OP, maps longer than 10 minutes shouldn't be rankable either.

There are also songs out there that are shorter than 1 minute.

There is no reason this rule should change.

I agree with what B1rd has said. Just because sub-1 minute isn't the favorite length for many people, it doesn't mean we dislike sub-1 minute beatmaps at all.

Am fine with the limit of minimum 1 minute

B1rd wrote:

The poll does not indicate that people want no <1 minute beatmaps, it simply indicated that it's not their favourite length.

This this this. So much this. I would've voted 2-3 minutes on the poll, does that mean I would want songs under 2 minutes to be unrankable? Certainly not! Using a poll which determined a user's favourite length to set a rule of minimum drain time is a faulty practice.

Timorisu wrote:

B1rd wrote:

The poll does not indicate that people want no <1 minute beatmaps, it simply indicated that it's not their favourite length.

This this this. So much this. I would've voted 2-3 minutes on the poll, does that mean I would want songs under 2 minutes to be unrankable? Certainly not! Using a poll which determined a user's favourite length to set a rule of minimum drain time is a faulty practice.

That's pretty much it - there's no reason to inhibit these 10% of your playerbase whose favourite map length is sub-1 minute from participating on the rankings and pp system just because it's among the least highest percentages;

let's put this into context - currently, or now formerly (?), we have/had the chance to rank 30s+ maps, which, while making up for only a small part of the amount of maps submitted, are appreciated by a part of the playerbase. Not the majority of it, but a certain fraction of it nonetheless.
I don't see why we would take action to actively prevent this from happening in the future, specifically seeing how these sub-60s maps were not spamranked to begin with, at least for all I can recall during the past 4.5 years. All this is doing is deprive this fraction, although small, of your playerbase of their favourite length and type of map, for no reason other than "you are less than 10% of what our poll tested, so you shouldn't get a leaderboard".

While I that this is most likely not the way the staff and QAT thought about this matter, this is simply the only effect it has: it limits mapping diversity.

Yes, sub-60s maps aren't necessarily a big piece to behold, but what does that matter? Are they dragging down the overall ranking standards by any chance? I surely don't think so, seeing how it's actually much easier to gain mods for them, even by more experienced people that have since moved on from playing osu! fulltime, which allows for them to gather a relatively high density of mods for the limited amount of objects they offer, hence even having higher chance of working out properly, so where is the issue?


If this is actually meant to improve the overall ranking quality, then frankly there are other ways to do so (i.e. spread informed modding to combat the endless amounts of "add NC"/"this feels weird idk?" free SP "mods" that have been flying around forever) - if this is meant to make the ranked and qualified sections exclusive for what will cater to at least 90% of the playerbase, then I can't say I agree with this.
Ranking is supposed to speak for a baseline of quality, rather than mass-compatibility; this is not a game that works off of selling song packs, there is no incentive to police anything on the basis that it won't be played/downloaded a whole ton.

Let the players decide what they want to play, and as long as it makes sense as part of the category of a rhythm game, and is properly executed, then what does the rest matter? It's not like these songs were bundled with the game anyway, so all of the "labeling them as official osu! beatmaps" is not even actually happening, is it? Because if you really were concerned about putting a "stamp of approval" on such "unfitting"/"undeserving" maps, then we should seriously revisit the approval process and modding in general, rather than putting up arbitrary rules like this one.

Plus, anything above 6 minutes should be unrankable aswell then, since it's less than 10% of the vote each. *cough*


Conclusively said, all this new rule does is to actively inhibit a part of your playerbase from seeing maps they enjoy ranked and competing on them, for no reason other than "well theres more people that dont love these maps as much??" - it's not productive in any way, really. Let's try to work on actual mapping quality, rather than the amount of seconds that it lasts. That'd be a nice change of pace.

I also disagree with increasing the minimum to 1 minute

(actually I didn't know there was a minimum in the first place o-o I know several maps under 30 seconds on other games that are fun to play)

This is absurd. There's no reason to change this.

I strongly disagree. Just because some mappers cut songs into <1min doesn't mean that we should ban all <1min songs which are in fact full versions to be ranked. This is just bad.
90% of tv size maps are worse than those 1 min maps anyway

Going to chime in and say that my point resonates with someone else's here: if a song provides less than 1 minute of drain time but the song itself is unmodified, I think it deserves to be played without modification. However, you could make this rule as a contingency that a song should be at least one minute of drain time if for any reason the song has been edited for length.

I disagree with this rule, I like it where it stands at about 30 seconds.

Loctav's conclusion of 'nobody wanting maps under a minute' form that poll is illogical.

https://osu.ppy.sh/s/84100

bad rule

Disallow to cut songs which aren't long in general would be a smarter thing.

https://osu.ppy.sh/s/280801
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/88299
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/79794

You don't have to ban -everything- shorter than one minute from ranking, just raise the minimum length a bit (to, say, 45 seconds).

Isn't it like "you shouldn't use anything below 45 seconds unless necessary"?

There are songs that aren't longer than 1 minute (Non-japanese cartoons and stuff), so I strongly disagree with this.

I'm agree that there are songs which are really cool and they get cut off badly (One of my ranked maps meet this criteria and until this very day I regret that) which thing should not happen, at least those songs should last 2 min or more.

TicClick wrote:

You don't have to ban -everything- shorter than one minute from ranking, just raise the minimum length a bit (to, say, 45 seconds).

Stefan wrote:

Isn't it like "you shouldn't use anything below 45 seconds unless necessary"?

Basically

Stefan wrote:

Isn't it like "you shouldn't use anything below 45 seconds unless necessary"?

Well technically its "30 is the minimum but 45 is the reccomended"

This thread has exactly the response I expected for such a proposition. There shouldn't be any reason to enforce an even longer minimum drain time, just as there should be no reason to enforce a maximum unless it breaks scoring.

Disallow sub 1 minute cut songs, yes.
Disallow songs that just arent 1 minute long? Why the heck would you?

I strongly disagree and I think many people have already said what I'd want to say, so there's that.

Disagree with this.
some game BGM is not long, with the same rhythm repeating, so mappers need to cut it
some songs is just short
and that's just favourtie time long, as a rhythm game we need different kinds and different long songs for players to choose.

Ok since this discussion is pretty much closed until Loctav replies. . .

So whats the issue with cut songs? Besides "getting the full experience", i see no issue with cutting a song down manually if someone doesnt want to do the full thing.

Its what I did with my happy beatmap (at work, so hard to link and stuff). I cut the song because the end is boring and repetitive. I dont think many people want to play the same thing over and over again. Even when i map songs, i always copy-paste the 2nd chorus (if theres 3 or more) because its super repetitive and boring.

I for one thoroughly enjoy short maps. Just because a song's length isn't long doesn't mean it can't be challenging. And like others have said. Diversity is needed in a rhythm game.

As much as I hate ridiculously short maps, if that's how the song is, then yes, they're free to go ahead. If it's a blatant lazy ass cut, please don't even try, you're consuming time that could be used on maps that truly deserve it.

PS: If you're going to map short songs, please map stuff worth of it.

Yauxo wrote:

Disallow sub 1 minute cut songs, yes.
Disallow songs that just arent 1 minute long? Why the heck would you?

I strongly disagree and I think many people have already said what I'd want to say, so there's that.

Same here. Cutting longer songs to the point where they are just under 1 minute implies laziness, and then again I think there isn't really a point to cut a song that short.

However, songs that are originally <1 minute in length should be allowed, because it's the real version of the song, and it doesn't make sense to disallow us to rank the original version of a song (except when it is under 30 seconds, where it starts to get ridiculous).

I can't see why should we rely on a poll that doesn't even relate to the rule change you are proposing, to be really blunt...

No
Just No
I have one ranked and one dq'd map of less then 1 minute, 4 pending maps of less then one minute drain
Most of them are video game OSTs
They are loops.
Hey, let's loop the song a boring 8-9 times so it is +1 minute
No one is waiting for that

I however, do agree a cut shouldn't be made if it makes the songs under 1 minute

maybe corret the rule
"map below 1 min is only for ost game (loops and repeating).invalid for cutting song ( from 3 min cut to 50 second)"

idk what am i talking about -__-

baraatje123 wrote:

No
Just No
I have one ranked and one dq'd map of less then 1 minute, 4 pending maps of less then one minute drain
Most of them are video game OSTs
They are loops.
Hey, let's loop the song a boring 8-9 times so it is +1 minute
No one is waiting for that

I however, do agree a cut shouldn't be made if it makes the songs under 1 minute

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Plus, I have a 40s taiko map that was kinda close to rankablity :/

I disagree. Some songs are originally less than 1min. Why should we care about the length so much?

seems that everyone disagree, so what about a rule that discourage cutting and extending a song instead? for example to avoid having people cutting or extending a song to be really short or to archive 5 mins for a marathon diff. And allow legit <1 min songs (even tho is lazy lol)

I disagree as well.. there are plenty of songs that shorter than 1 min and i don't see why they wouldn't be rankable

At least I ranked U.N. Owen Was Yee before this, I know everyone wants to play that.

Reditum wrote:

Ok since this discussion is pretty much closed until Loctav replies. . .

So whats the issue with cut songs? Besides "getting the full experience", i see no issue with cutting a song down manually if someone doesnt want to do the full thing.

Its what I did with my happy beatmap (at work, so hard to link and stuff). I cut the song because the end is boring and repetitive. I dont think many people want to play the same thing over and over again. Even when i map songs, i always copy-paste the 2nd chorus (if theres 3 or more) because its super repetitive and boring.

from my side I really do not mind much that a song being to let's say 75% mapped but the examples I gave got exactly one verse and one refrain. Which is imo the issue we allegedly have for > 1 minute maps. There are indeed cases where people cut them until below one minute which isn't good but tbh I felt this issue everytime when I played a map to a song which isn't completely mapped and could have been done. Happy may be really repetitive but others did also managed it to map repetitive things well. And many people still enjoy playing them rather than just a "part" of it.

tl;dr: Naturally short songs should be rankable. Cut-offs to shorter songs (below five minutes) shouldn't.

I may open a thread to the point above after this one here.

I like short beatmaps they are funny to play with friends in multiplayer but my preference is longs beatmaps (5-7miin).
Please do not remove short beatmaps

All maps should have the right to be ranked no matter the length.
#mapequality #sizedoesntmatter

Stefan wrote:

I may open a thread to the point above after this one here.

That may be a good idea , as it seems that that's where the main issue seems to lie, rather than just all short mapsets.