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[Rule Clarification] a complete set of custom diff names

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Doyak
osu! Alumni
2,621 posts
Joined November 2012
Topic Starter
Doyak
The subject is starting from http://osu.ppy.sh/forum/p/4725284 where I misinterpreted a sentence on RC:

Ranking Criteria wrote:

A difficulty's name must indicate its level of difficulty, with the exception of the hardest level of difficulty in a set. The mapset's hardest difficulty may use an appropriate custom difficulty name, unrelated to a username. Mapsets may also use a complete set of custom difficulty names that clearly indicate their level of difficulty to the player.
The meaning of "clearly indicating their level of difficulty" is ambiguous. I've all been interpreting it as they need to indicate each diff's "absolute" difficulty, but actually it's working as a "relative" difficulty between other diffs, as mapsets like https://osu.ppy.sh/s/340399 are still rankable. I also have seen many other people complaining "Why should we always use strict diff names except the hardest one?" since they were misunderstanding the rule too. So this rule needs a clarification.
Myxo
osu! Alumni
3,103 posts
Joined December 2012
Myxo
That rule doesn't just need a clarification, the content needs to change completely. The current difficulty naming rules allow for the weirdest things, for example as names for the highest difficulty, but disallows actual understandable difficulty naming. I will try to think of a possible proposal here.
Endaris
5,282 posts
Joined June 2010
Endaris
Imo that part
Mapsets may also use a complete set of custom difficulty names that clearly indicate their level of difficulty to the player.
should be deleted completely.
While this can be done in a nice way (like in this popular mapset)there's always the language barrier that keeps non-native speakers from understanding the difficulty names without taking a dictionary for help(I could only guess what "Bud" might mean). That shouldn't be a requirement if you ask me.
Even more so for topic-related difficulty names, for some animu/game theme like here.
A way to manage custom difficulty names properly would be something like https://osu.ppy.sh/s/323163 but it kind of takes the charm of custom diff names.
I don't see a way to ensure custom difficulty names being reasonable/understandable otherwise.
Myxo
osu! Alumni
3,103 posts
Joined December 2012
Myxo
In my opinion the star rating is today accurate enough to determine the order of difficulties. And the order of difficulties is all you can get from complete sets of custom difficulty names anyway, not the actual difficulty behind them. Furthermore the difficulty range of Easy, Normal, Hard and Insane (atleast in Standard Mode) is wide anyway, so the star rating, along with other settings, is a better way to determine a difficulty of a map than the difficulty names.

I would recommend to screw the current rule completely. We might only need a rule to prevent too long, sometimes stupid difficulty names that happened lately, but I can't think of a good wording for that at the moment.

I also think for the same reason that naming difficulties after mappers is not a problem anymore and can be allowed again.
Endaris
5,282 posts
Joined June 2010
Endaris
I'm not too sure about that, lurking in GnR a lot I still see a lot of new players mainly orientating via the diffname instead of star difficulty as the diffname is actually what you see first with the SR being one of many not-so-interesting details for a newbie.
Especially with SR being flawed itself, reasonable difficulty names can ensure that the expectations a player has from a map are fine.
An advanced diff I mapped for a low bpm song turned out to be 1.49* and saying that one is easy and suited for newbies just because it is E is bullshit.
At least for the 3 first categories Easy/Normal/Hard there is a distinctive usage of gameplay elements that can be used to tell them apart, something which SR is not capable of.
Natsu
8,076 posts
Joined September 2012
Natsu

Endaris wrote:

I'm not too sure about that, lurking in GnR a lot I still see a lot of new players mainly orientating via the diffname instead of star difficulty as the diffname is actually what you see first with the SR being one of many not-so-interesting details for a newbie.
Especially with SR being flawed itself, reasonable difficulty names can ensure that the expectations a player has from a map are fine.
An advanced diff I mapped for a low bpm song turned out to be 1.49* and saying that one is easy and suited for newbies just because it is E is bullshit.
At least for the 3 first categories Easy/Normal/Hard there is a distinctive usage of gameplay elements that can be used to tell them apart, something which SR is not capable of.
Not really, there are some real normal diffs, some easy normal diff and some hard normal diffs, basically you can't know just by looking at the name, there are some hard diff harder than some insanes and etc. Also the new players that I see always look at star rating as well, also remember play and test always is the best way to judge that.
In my opinion we just need something to avoid really long diff names or not related to the song.
Endaris
5,282 posts
Joined June 2010
Endaris
I guess that's what Ono talked about when he praised the consistency of Taiko's difficulty naming :o
Sonnyc
7,761 posts
Joined June 2008
Sonnyc

Natsu wrote:

Not really, there are some real normal diffs, some easy normal diff and some hard normal diffs, basically you can't know just by looking at the name, there are some hard diff harder than some insanes and etc.
I kinda disagree with this, since people can't look at the actual difficulty before looking the map itself.
Instead, other informations can be a reference how the beatmap would look like.

Star diff would be one major aspect; beatmap score with its length; or perhaps also the mapper name.
But also the 'difficulty name' would be one of the most important information to expect the beatmap.
No such rules or even guidelines would be needed for this though.

More of this would be off-topic ;w;


Regarding the actual topic, I personally think that sentence of "clearly indicating their level of difficulty" is clear enough, since its range is wide enough. It totally allows relative difficulty names, not to mention an absolute difficulty name.

But if users are misunderstanding, a rewording might work better.
Sea_Food
484 posts
Joined September 2012
Sea_Food
The difficulty name system is pretty stupid as it is. In most (rhythm) games the difficulty name just puts multiple difficulties of the level in order. As in stage A on hard might be much easier than stage B on normal. Why does it have to work differently on osu! than on other games? And all things considered I think the star rating system in osu! works really well compared to what other games have.

We already have ranking criteria that says the difficulty jumps must not be too big between the difficulties. Why have the star ratings dictate the difficulty name aswell?

IMHO all ranked maps should have their difficulties named starting from [easy] and accending one by one to [extra (+++)]. Long maps with only one difficulty should not even have it named. I seriously dont understand why naming difficulties is a thing on this game, cant you satisfy your creative needs by making the beatmap itself?

What I think about guest difficulties is a whole another story.

Sorry if off topic
Sieg
3,981 posts
Joined February 2012
Sieg

Sea_Food wrote:

The difficulty name system is pretty stupid as it is.

IMHO all ranked maps should have their difficulties named starting from [easy] and accending one by one to [extra (+++)]. Long maps with only one difficulty should not even have it named. I seriously dont understand why naming difficulties is a thing on this game, cant you satisfy your creative needs by making the beatmap itself?
This is pretty much my thoughts.
PyaKura
2,084 posts
Joined January 2013
PyaKura

Endaris wrote:

I'm not too sure about that, lurking in GnR a lot I still see a lot of new players mainly orientating via the diffname instead of star difficulty as the diffname is actually what you see first with the SR being one of many not-so-interesting details for a newbie.
That's something I've been thinking about for a while but it's odd how there is not a clear in-game indicator to, well, indicate the map's intended difficulty. Right now I can think of games like StepMania, IIDX and pop'n, Cytus, and to be honest most rhythm games use stuff like gauges (our SR) AND color-coding (similar to what we have on the website for the ENHIX icons) together directly in-game, along with the optional arbitrary level of difficulty using numbers. This should be a feature request by the way. It'd clear up the current issue and make it clear for everyone what is easy and what is hard.

To stay on topic I'm all for free difficulty naming since the SR already sort the difficulties in a single mapset. It was obvious for me when I started out that the diff at the top is the easiest of the mapset and the bottom one the hardest. Being able to name diffs what we want to name them is one of the strong points of this game but shouldn't be solely relied on to give out a clear indication of the actual difficulty of the map.
Bara-
11,978 posts
Joined April 2013
Bara-
I agree with this
I honestly hated the rule which prevented custom diffnames
I know it's better, but still, why?
Or at least make it fine for 2 diff sets, as you can have 1 custom name, and one needs to follow the difficulty, that just makes no sense imo
Monstrata
Elite Mapper: Aspirant
4,642 posts
Joined May 2013
Monstrata
I like the idea of having custom names for each diff in a set. However, I think we should also implement this with some caution. Diff name sets should still hold some sort of cohesion to them, thus making them a "set" not a bunch of words and/or phrases. Lets not have stuff like " abcdefg / 123 / bubbleabsolutesoul / ULTRA LIGHT INSANE / Tragic Love EX" for a custom diff spread.

Guideline:
Custom difficulty names should contain a central theme and relate to other custom difficulty names in the set. They need not be in ascending difficulty order, but they should be relevant to one another.

I think a guideline should be enough. QAT's can then disqualify on their own discretion if they deem certain custom sets to be too random/nonsensical.

--

As for having all difficulty names reflect the star rating, some people don't mind, but others enjoy having custom difficulty names because yes, it actually makes your beatmap unique. This is especially true for marathon maps. Actually, I refer to many of my maps by their custom diff names instead of their song title (ie. my Celestial map, rather than my Kimi no Shiranai Monogatari map). Top Ranks also mention both the song's artist/title and the difficulty name so I like to have a unique diff name on all my mapsets xD.
PyaKura
2,084 posts
Joined January 2013
PyaKura

monstrata wrote:

I think a guideline should be enough. QAT's can then disqualify on their own discretion if they deem certain custom sets to be too random/nonsensical.
It really only comes down to this imho.
Garven
osu! Alumni
5,857 posts
Joined January 2010
Garven
The problem is that I find a lot of the custom names used in maps today are already random/nonsensical. "Candy" because that word shows up in the lyrics or it's the title? That doesn't really give any information to what kind of difficulty it is, and that's the point of having a difficulty name. If you can think of a theme and an ascending set of words to describe each difficulty, cool. Otherwise there's nothing wrong with using our established default names.
Okoayu
Nomination Assessment Team / Elite Nominator
4,959 posts
Joined May 2012
Okoayu
you basically just have to define what "The mapset's hardest difficulty may use an appropriate custom difficulty name, unrelated to a username." means in this context.
I oftentimes chose something related to the song, it's theme, it's lyrics etc because I like having a custom diffname in my sets, oftentimes these do not really reflect the difficulty of the beatmap behind it at all, but i interpreted appropriate as fitting to the song or the series it's from. The reason for that is quite logical, too, because this rule only allows the hardest difficulty to have a custom name. So whatever difficulty this custom difficulty name diff is, it's harder than the descriptively named preceding difficulty and thus guessing what diff it is should be pretty easy, SR and online icons help as well lol.

If you happen to interpret appropriate as reflecting actual difficulty you will automatically disagree with everything above.

but if you want to screw the whole rule anyways then you could just read above how i handled custom diffnames lool
HappyRocket88
4,322 posts
Joined May 2014
HappyRocket88
I may agree with this because there just few songs on osu! where's allowed the custom name spread among the diffs

  1. https://osu.ppy.sh/b/672199
  2. https://osu.ppy.sh/b/304602
  3. https://osu.ppy.sh/b/188939 Removed due OzzyOzrock's complains.
  4. https://osu.ppy.sh/b/330201
As long as the custom diff names make sense with song and the way the diffs get harder to differentiate each diff I don't see any problem to a player wouldn't be able to understand it.

Crawl | Walk | Run | Usain Bolt
Last edited by HappyRocket88 , edited 1 time in total.
Underforest
5,895 posts
Joined July 2015
Underforest
Same as Rocket said imo. You have my support :)
OzzyOzrock
5,185 posts
Joined August 2010
OzzyOzrock
You don't see how a player can't understand that? Language? Not knowing references? That last example you gave was terrible, being that [Orz] could be ANYTHING (not to mention that people will likely not even know that Orz is) and [Darri Style] gives NO insight as to how hard the map will be.

The one with 'Hard' or 'Extra' in the diff name along with whatever it is is fine, as now the player can identify the common words representing a difficulty and know how hard it'll be.
Natsu
8,076 posts
Joined September 2012
Natsu
seems you guys forgot: p/2962715 the agreement done so years ago.
To be honest the only thing you guys should discuss in my opinion is how to avoid some stupid difficulty names. Happyrocket examples are fine, you really need to be silly to don't get how the difficulties scale.
Even having Easy - Normal - Hard - Insane don't tell you what lvl of difficultie they represent you just have a clue and really you can't tell how hard it gonna be, ex:

https://osu.ppy.sh/b/188835&m=0
https://osu.ppy.sh/b/356727

and alot more, tbh is basically the same to have : Sleeping - Walking - Dancing and Easy - Normal - Hard, you need to test to see at any case.
Sea_Food
484 posts
Joined September 2012
Sea_Food
Guys guys. What if instead of having the difficulty name describe how hard it is, make it tell what kind of mapping it has? After all, it is the only information we dont get from song stats, except for SV.

For example "stream" "jump" or "insane streams". I see a lot of older maps doing it, and i find it really really useful. Not any of these im the newer maps thou.
Zare
1,512 posts
Joined March 2012
Zare

Endaris wrote:

Imo that part
Mapsets may also use a complete set of custom difficulty names that clearly indicate their level of difficulty to the player.
should be deleted completely.
While this can be done in a nice way (like in this popular mapset)there's always the language barrier that keeps non-native speakers from understanding the difficulty names without taking a dictionary for help(I could only guess what "Bud" might mean). That shouldn't be a requirement if you ask me.
i feel flattered

pls keep custom diffnames as long as they're working in context to other diffnames and the song itself
Myxo
osu! Alumni
3,103 posts
Joined December 2012
Myxo
With the change of how the Ranking Criteria Subforum works from now on, topics like these are obsolete.
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