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Mapset and Spread Restructure (Proposed)

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SugKuken
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Anxient

Blue Dragon wrote:

Hi!
I am going to make a quite long post here about my opinions as I feel it is interesting to share my opinion as a mapper with 7 years of experience in the community. I HAVEN'T READ THE WHOLE THREAD SO PLEASE EXCUSE ME IF I END UP IGNORING SOME THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN SAID, there is too much going on and I need to make this post as soon as possible before the thread gets inevitably locked.
I'd really feel bad if the staff and the council members ignored this post in the swarm of insults this thread has - it makes up for a few interesting points other than "boohoo this map can't be ranked now" or "this sucks, fuck the staff' etc.
I'll be quoting the OP and going to argument over which points are the most hurtful for the playing community and especially the mapping community - tl;dr of my post: you're making things more practical to the players, but you are limiting a lot of creativity in some cases, and forcing unneeded creativity with barely doable practicity in other cases.



ztrot wrote:

Hello everyone, ztrot here with some exciting new news!

From today on, there will be a new format in which mapping beatmap sets will work. This falls in line with our goals to make as many of the maps here at osu accessible to all players of many skill types! This new rule might seem scary at first but, fear not as we don't want to forget our professional osu! players either!
The new restructure will not be retroactive as there a lot of maps with icons so far though the modding process. Therefore, if your map has any type of icon set - be it bubble pop, disqualification or bubble - it will not need to follow the new restructure. However, all new maps or maps without icons will be asked to make changes to their existing sets.


Hi ztrot, thanks for the news!~

I believe that making beatmaps *accessible* to the playerbase is not an issue anymore. It used to be an issue back in 2010-12 maybe, because we had a much lower skill curve than what we have today, and a much less significant amount of beatmaps. A new player has access to a database of 10,000+ ranked beatmaps (and as the current system doesn't have a huge problem related to this), and knowing there are several Easy difficulty beatmaps being ranked (and having contributed towards a good amount of ENH mapsets), I don't really see why these numbers wouldn't keep going.

There is a bigger problem with the retroactivity of this rule - beatmaps who have been submitted after the rule should be adapting to the rule changes. I understand that there is a good point where "if your map wasn't iconed yet, that means it still has to go through changes and this is a part of it", however there are, more often than not, cases where the beatmap has been waiting for months for a member of the BN, in a ready state, but with no availability. This becomes a big issue because you basically have to change a proper beatmap and make it more susceptible to having mistakes on it. The point of the rule is to make quality more appealing to players, but this will end up forcing changes that mappers don't agree with, and you know what makes up for half-assed changes and a great decline in quality of these maps. And yes, they will get ranked, because the quality control of the BN is not at a trustable level even after several conduct warnings by the staff.

Besides, another "exception" which is actually one of the most important cases: beatmaps which already have proper identities, such as Welcome to Tokyo, DeltaMAX and several others which can be much better examples than the ones I mentioned, will need to have several difficulties deleted. I will go into more detail about this later, but the retroactivity here is the biggest issue - as much as you can say "well, too bad, they can create new identities or something": A beatmap's identity is one of the most important things in osu!. Big Black is not exactly the hardest ranked map, but it has created an identity that has attracted several new players. A beatmap identity is caused by the song, or, in the case I am mentioning, the mapping of a certain difficulty. Again, I'll talk more about this later, but it causes a lot of trouble under current beatmap sets.

ztrot wrote:

We would recommend reading the reworked section in the Ranking Criteria, reflecting the changes we pushed through. To make every have an overview of what changes we have done, we created a few fancy pictures for you:

First of all, we reworded the current spread rule. All difficulties in each game mode have to align in a linear and progressive spread. You can add one Ultra difficulty past an Expert difficulty that does not have to increase linearly in difficulty with the rest of the spread. Keep in mind, that Ultra is a placeholder term, used to reflect a high end difficulty that has not been specified with a name yet. We put that name in place, so you guys know what we are talking about when we want to refer to the high end difficulties of a mapset.


I love fancy images!

This rule makes sense and was pretty much already set, it just never clarified what was up with difficulties past Extras (which weren't really around at the time and are quite common nowadays). There's no issue with this whatsoever. The difficulty gap is a really good addition, because Ultra difficulties are quite often much harder than their Extra counterparts. Good addition to the ranking criteria, doesn't change much but sets up for a standard which was never clarified to the community and depended on each BN/QAT opinion.

ztrot wrote:

Secondly, we limited the amount of difficulties of the same level per game mode. Every mapset is limited to one of each difficulty level per game mode. While this appears very limiting at the beginning, the hybrid set rules stay intact. Don't forget that every keycount in osu!mania is considered as individual game mode, too! If you wish to get your mapsets with multiple difficulties of the same level ranked, we advise you to split it off into a new mapset.



Oh no!
This is a bad idea, sorry. It limits a spoken guideline that was set years ago: mapping styles are what makes osu! interesting, and we should encourage everyone to be creative in their own way.
I know this is a problem that you're trying to fix now but it is not the right way: the only way you can actually discern properly a mapping style is by the Insane/Extra difficulties of the mapset. There aren't any cases where there are several Easy or Normal difficulties in the same mapset, while there are 2, 3, 5, 10 Insanes or Extras. The problem about this is...

...there's nothing, you're trying to fix what's fine.
I can see that in a way, lots of difficulties of the same range may cause confusion for newer players, but... newer players aren't really supposed to play these difficulties (yes, I know everyone goes and tryhards for 6* maps nowadays, doesn't matter now). You're trying to make things more accessible to the players, but what you're actually doing is changing nothing for the players and limiting the availability of different mapping styles in the same mapset. As I mentioned, you can only properly discern mapping styles on higher difficulties, so you'll have only Insane, Extra (and rarely Ultra) to do this. Not to mention this makes the spread much more complicated to do - A mapper may have a more reading-intensive Extra, while the Insane mapper has a symmetric, cleaned up mapping style. This created a big gap that isn't even caused by the star rating (reading maps rarely have high star ratings) and confuses any player who is going from each difficulty to another in a mapset.

I have already talked about mapping identity so I believe my point is clear here. This is a hard point to talk about though - I know the staff doesn't really care about which maps are the more proeminent to the players as they are always trying to enforce quality over identity, but this is an important issue which you are ignoring for not-such-a-great-cause-as-I-should-say. Most of these posts in this thread are mindless complaining about this exact point, and while most people don't really explain why they are angry, it's because of this. Beatmap identity is something really important to the players, and even though most people can't explain why (neither can I, it just looks like I'm fooling around with words here, sorry), it has caused quite an impact over osu! and the internet overall. Maffalda's song wasn't even known before osu! gave it an identity, Brain Power, etc. While Maffalda has a good spread and wouldn't really be an issue, in the case of Brain Power, the mapset has lots of different Extra/Insane diffs, and now it cannot be ranked because of this rule. I know ranking does not change the identity of the map because Brain Power is already pretty known even though it was never ranked.. but it is just improvement that you are barring. I literally cannot see why you would do something like this, especially to pending maps which haven't been iconed yet. As many people have said, this is the biggest issue and limits creativity and beatmap identity in several mapsets.


ztrot wrote:

At last, we altered the requirements for Approval beatmaps. Approval mapsets must have 1 difficulty that is either an Easy, Normal, Hard or Insane. Your mapset must contain an Insane difficulty if an Expert or Ultra difficulty is present. This means that every Approval containing only an Expert or Ultra difficulty must receive a second difficulty. If you do not wish to map more than one difficulty for your Approval sets, we would advise you to keep the single difficulty at Insane level or below.




The difficulty is not dependent on the star rating. The mapping techniques used within the difficulty and the spread to the surrounding difficulties define the category each difficulty level falls into. Difficulties must be named to reflect that.


Hi, uhm... sorry but I don't really have words to explain about this. I can only use examples to explain that you should at least add a sub-section to this rule talking about maps that are over 10 minutes. It is almost impossible to rank 10+ minutes songs right now because no one wants to mod these due to their length. Adding new difficulties to these songs will not only make things harder for the mapper, it will completely stop these maps from being ranked because barely anyone will even bother to check these maps, and, you know, considering the fact that there's an obvious BN circlejerk in the community... mappers who don't have connections will never rank a marathon map ever again.

Not to mention what has been already mentioned so many times, I can quite understand why 5-10 mapsets have to go through this rule with the constant abuse of 5:01 maps getting ranked with an Extra difficulty (and this is my fault as well, Worldwide Choppers falls under this rule). Just.. please be reasonable with longer beatmaps, I have a 60 minute song which has been divided into 3 parts and it's taking me 4 years to get these going, and finding mods is the biggest issue. I am quite tired and out of words at this moment, so I'm sorry if this doesn't really go across. I may edit the post later with more clarifications about this.

Remember: I know you guys are trying to keep lazy mapping and confused newbies from happening, but as it is now, you are creating more problems than what you are trying to eradicate. It is hard to keep a civilized conversation with the community but I'll be trying my best to present the points from people around the mapping community. Feel free to respond, add, or complain about anything in my post, I'll be glad about this.

Please don't ignore it. <3


BD's post coz refreshing the page is super dangerous rn
Spaghetti
#FREEMAPPERS2K16
Mismagius
hello, as I have already posted my constructive message, I am sorry but I really really have to post my fine dose of dank memes

J1NX1337
Was this year's April Fools a couple months early or something?
This is plain idiotic.

Golden rule: Don't try to fix something that's not broken!
Asahina Momoko
HAPPY VALENTINE BOIS
Nerova Riuz GX

Xilver wrote:

Hello!

As part of the Criteria Council we are currently gathering feedback from what people leave, and we will sort it out in the next couple of days. In the meantime, we are going to observe how the current changes work and how they turn out to be. Please leave your constructive feedback in order for it to be considered by us, and make sure to stand out and give your valid reasons as to what you agree or disagree on.
There are sooooooo much constructive feedback in those posts, and the momentum is quite obvious.

I don't think this change will be published with some CONSTRUCTIVE discussion.
AirOneBlack
Rule 2: NO! This is just stupid!
Cherry Blossom
If you, guys, think that quitting this community will make things changed then you're wrong.
Things are not definitive and we still need your opinions. If you quit and don't participate in adjusting this rule change, then never complain like a child.
Sylvette

Blue Dragon wrote:

hello, as I have already posted my constructive message, I am sorry but I really really have to post my fine dose of dank memes

Ayako

Blue Dragon wrote:

hello, as I have already posted my constructive message, I am sorry but I really really have to post my fine dose of dank memes

https://www.reddit.com/r/osugame/commen ... ove_ztrot/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyWpBkG ... e=youtu.be
gregest

Asahina Momoko wrote:

HAPPY VALENTINE BOIS
I <3 you Momoko let's play cute VNs together
aabc271


Pretty much describes the new rules
Kitami Erika

Blue Dragon wrote:

hello, as I have already posted my constructive message, I am sorry but I really really have to post my fine dose of dank memes

weldone
Sonnyc

aabc271 wrote:



Pretty much describes the new rules
weldone
Kiyohime
You want to lose mappers? This is how you lose mappers.
XII
Let's make osu! great again, vote ztrump 2016.

WE WILL BUILD A WALL

What kind of wall?

A WALL TO PREVENT QUALITY MAPPING
Cyclohexane
hey i didn't read the whole thread but if you're reading this chances are you probably already know your idea is borked.



but yeah i'm gonna try and explain why despite not having been around the game in a long time but hey my name's in black so that means if i'm not relevant well at least I was at some point

so this graph in the opening post is like this right



but really that's not what's happening and we all know this. the spread in difficulty is infinitely wider in the higher than lower levels. To me trying to chart this out is already pretty dumb because some maps will have a spread with easy easies, easy normals, easy hards and so on, other with hard easies (which uh good luck with that), hard normal, hard hards, etc. but if we were to chart it out this is what it would most likely look like



obviously this is all relative which is why i disagree with the idea of even charting it out but oh well it will do. so pretty much the idea is that it's actually very stupid to require such a spread when there is absolutely no leeway with how hard/easy difficulties can go. i still don't understand why 1/4 is outright banned from normals. other rhythm games less difficulties yet cover a higher range because hey some songs make easy maps and others make hard maps. (shoutouts to jubeat and REUNION with that lv10 normal)

if you want your difficulty spread to make more sense then you should allow more flexibility into how easy and hard the difficulties within that spread rank. By the way, we have a star rating system that (from what I can tell) works now, so even a name like "easy" and "normal" is kind of whatever because all that matters is that star rating in the end.

let me try to chart what i'm trying to say. we'll take Easy and Ultra as their logical maximum, aka how easy/impossibly hard a map can be.








that's basically my beef with the new set of rules you guys have been pushing, haven't really looked at the rest of the announcement and it's implications but if it makes as little sense to me as this does i'll make another post showing my glorious photoshop skills
Noffy
Do note that while ztrot stated previously that maps will be considered of different difficulties based upon how they feel and what techniques they employ and not their icons, making light insanes or advanced difficulties still possible to rank, this creates a giant blurred line of trying to determine what maps in a set are dissimilar enough in difficulty to qualify as passing for this rule. This will result in discussions on whether difficulties should be kept or not when before implementing this rule that would only happen if they are already similar enough that those working towards ranking a map set would already be questioning it.
In its current form and any potential future forms, this rule and determining whether a mapset follows it or not is too vague and subjective to be helpful rather than an unnecessary roadblock in the ranking process.
Enforcing a rule like this only restricts creativity and causes confusion when it is unneeded and does not accomplish anything positive for the community or game. Restricting variety of what's available in a mapset is not positive for players, splitting off similar level difficulties into seperate mapsets only makes it more difficult for players to download all the potential mapped difficulties of a song they wish to play and enjoy, and wastes computer space by having to download the same songs and videos multiple times taking up megabytes at a time instead of one set with all the difficulties together which would only be a few kilobytes larger than a set without these extra difficulties.
This is in addition to creating extra effort for mappers and BNs, who now have to deal with more sets of the same song that could have just been one set reviewed and ranked all at once. The rule of not having more than one difficulty in a set is ridiculous, if two difficulties are already similar enough to wonder whether they should both be their or not, this is the current job of modders and mappers to avoid. This rule does not make this a new topic, and appears to be a blunt force to fix a problem that wasn't even significant enough to be a problem.
Sotarks
How about no ?
Cyclohexane
oops the site being down made me post twice
Poi Panda

Asahina Momoko wrote:

HAPPY VALENTINE BOIS
<33
Sylvette

XII wrote:

Let's make osu! great again, vote ztrump 2016.

WE WILL BUILD A WALL

What kind of wall?

A WALL TO PREVENT QUALITY MAPPING
IM DYING HOLY SHIT LMAO
Nozhomi

Cherry Blossom wrote:

If you, guys, think that quitting this community will make things changed then you're wrong.
Things are not definitive and we still need your opinions. If you quit and don't participate in adjusting this rule change, then never complain like a child.
For the most of us who don't troll with meme here, it's already done, we just don't want that rule, like it was is good.
For approval map, just limit the new rule to song <10 min should be enough imo, because above this lengh, it's really pain in the ass.

Guess that's all.
Akasagarbha
This is bullshit
Ideal
Sunkiss
Let's fix the website first. It keeps crashing on me every time I reload.
Absolute Zero
Why not say like that ONE or TWO types of difficulty can have two maps in it or something, like an
ENHHIIX, ENNHIXX, ENHIIXX, ENHIIX spread?

Like EEENNHHIIIIXX wouldn't be allowed?


Just my two cents?
Riven 2
Its not April fools yet guys.. Like come on ...Rip mapping community
oink
Why do we want to change something, that isnt borken. If you look at a average or a new player, they will all have problems to improve. Why do you want people to improve in big steps, instead of little small ones?




Painketsu

XII wrote:

Let's make osu! great again, vote ztrump 2016.

WE WILL BUILD A WALL

What kind of wall?

A WALL TO PREVENT QUALITY MAPPING
glorious
DooM
[-Alice-]
404: intelligent decisions not found
Vuelo Eluko
i love when a game that doesn't create any of its own content, that should be thankful anyone is even making maps for their game at all, starts bringing the hammer down on the people that make their game a success.

no really, this 'snake eating its own tail' mentality is hilarious, i can't wait to see how this plays out. I legit can't believe this is real.
Doyak

Wafu wrote:

Meaning, if there is some very fast song, people tend to make somewhat normal-ish easy, so lower difficulty would be sometimes appropriate.
That's more of a problem with "lowest diff < 2.0 star" rule. We still need to make those diffs even with this change.
Enkidu

Mr Color wrote:

hey i didn't read the whole thread but if you're reading this chances are you probably already know your idea is borked.



but yeah i'm gonna try and explain why despite not having been around the game in a long time but hey my name's in black so that means if i'm not relevant well at least I was at some point

so this graph in the opening post is like this right



but really that's not what's happening and we all know this. the spread in difficulty is infinitely wider in the higher than lower levels. To me trying to chart this out is already pretty dumb because some maps will have a spread with easy easies, easy normals, easy hards and so on, other with hard easies (which uh good luck with that), hard normal, hard hards, etc. but if we were to chart it out this is what it would most likely look like



obviously this is all relative which is why i disagree with the idea of even charting it out but oh well it will do. so pretty much the idea is that it's actually very stupid to require such a spread when there is absolutely no leeway with how hard/easy difficulties can go. i still don't understand why 1/4 is outright banned from normals. other rhythm games less difficulties yet cover a higher range because hey some songs make easy maps and others make hard maps. (shoutouts to jubeat and REUNION with that lv10 normal)

if you want your difficulty spread to make more sense then you should allow more flexibility into how easy and hard the difficulties within that spread rank. By the way, we have a star rating system that (from what I can tell) works now, so even a name like "easy" and "normal" is kind of whatever because all that matters is that star rating in the end.

let me try to chart what i'm trying to say. we'll take Easy and Ultra as their logical maximum, aka how easy/impossibly hard a map can be.








that's basically my beef with the new set of rules you guys have been pushing, haven't really looked at the rest of the announcement and it's implications but if it makes as little sense to me as this does i'll make another post showing my glorious photoshop skills
Very nice visual explanation!
UndeadCapulet

Mr Color wrote:

hey i didn't read the whole thread but if you're reading this chances are you probably already know your idea is borked.



but yeah i'm gonna try and explain why despite not having been around the game in a long time but hey my name's in black so that means if i'm not relevant well at least I was at some point

so this graph in the opening post is like this right



but really that's not what's happening and we all know this. the spread in difficulty is infinitely wider in the higher than lower levels. To me trying to chart this out is already pretty dumb because some maps will have a spread with easy easies, easy normals, easy hards and so on, other with hard easies (which uh good luck with that), hard normal, hard hards, etc. but if we were to chart it out this is what it would most likely look like



obviously this is all relative which is why i disagree with the idea of even charting it out but oh well it will do. so pretty much the idea is that it's actually very stupid to require such a spread when there is absolutely no leeway with how hard/easy difficulties can go. i still don't understand why 1/4 is outright banned from normals. other rhythm games less difficulties yet cover a higher range because hey some songs make easy maps and others make hard maps. (shoutouts to jubeat and REUNION with that lv10 normal)

if you want your difficulty spread to make more sense then you should allow more flexibility into how easy and hard the difficulties within that spread rank. By the way, we have a star rating system that (from what I can tell) works now, so even a name like "easy" and "normal" is kind of whatever because all that matters is that star rating in the end.

let me try to chart what i'm trying to say. we'll take Easy and Ultra as their logical maximum, aka how easy/impossibly hard a map can be.








that's basically my beef with the new set of rules you guys have been pushing, haven't really looked at the rest of the announcement and it's implications but if it makes as little sense to me as this does i'll make another post showing my glorious photoshop skills
Great post, let's keep this visible.
Sylvette
Since pretty much every post has been "This is bullshit" (even my posts), I will attempt to post a reason why the second rule is horrible (if it wasn't obvious enough).

According to this, we can have a 3* Hard and a 5* Insane, but no way to make a Light Insane that is 4* for good difficulty spread
Please change..
Cheesecake

XxVivaxX wrote:

Why do we want to change something, that isnt borken. If you look at a average or a new player, they will all have problems to improve. Why do you want people to improve in big steps, instead of little small ones?




Good post
Sylvette

XxVivaxX wrote:

Why do we want to change something, that isnt borken. If you look at a average or a new player, they will all have problems to improve. Why do you want people to improve in big steps, instead of little small ones?




Best post.
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