Hello everybody, ztrot here! I have noticed as of late that there has been a serious issue in the osu!mania community in terms of activity on both the BN and QAT side. I feel that part of this has to deal with the strict entry level that we put on the tests. Given the state of the osu!mania modding community, there are only two QAT that I can think of, and the BNs are in the very low single or double digits (1-10). This isn't to say that modding isn't taking part in the mania community, but the jump to being a BN seems a bit out of reach for your average mania modder. Since we are moving forward, we want the community to be the core of the modding and mapping system. Then that being said, I do have some ideas I would like to discuss.

My first idea is to re-evaluate the tests and give those who took the osu!mania specific test a shot or a potential 30 day period at being a BN. I know that some people will say throwing more people onto it will not fix the problem, but given the size of the team, I think this is exactly what needs to be done. I have talked over a few things with some of the active members of the modding discord about users they felt would be suited and some of them may have taken the test and some not. We need to stimulate the mania community, and this is the best idea that I have at the moment.

I am open and willing to listen to any suggestions on how we can both improve and grow the osu!mania modding force, and I hope to work with members of the mania community who are passionate about seeing their game mode thrive. Feel free to discuss in this thread.

And have a wonderful day!

Love, ztrot

As we discussed on other places, a re-evaluation will not have the desired effect. Instead of throwing more people in to short-term patch issues, we rather want to educate current modders in osu!mania how to mod properly and to show them the ropes of osu!'s very own environment. There have been several lacks in basic knowledge (e.g. that you can not use red lines to alter the scroll speed/to perform gimmicks) or not detecting basic map flaws (drastic SV changes in Normals have not been seen).

If anything, there needs to be the initiative to raise the capabilties of modders, that do not just mod:

move 1
delete 3
add 45
add clap
^
^

And especially nuking the mentality that "DIS MY STYLE" is a valid statement and make people learn how to elaborate their points properly.

I believe there are only two active mania BNs right now, Freerum and -Kamikaze-

Loctav wrote:

And especially nuking the mentality that "DIS MY STYLE" is a valid statement and make people learn how to elaborate their points properly.

haha welcome to china


I wouldn't say that basically handing out free 30 day BN trials is a good idea, as couple of BNs arent very good at all, even after passing the test. Also, I'm just going to say this anyways despite being redundant, the "DIS MY STYLE" mentality is stupid. Any modder, mapper, or BN that supports this mentality needs to understand how maps should be ranked with a decently positive response from the community, not just the mapper.

Yes pls. O!m really needs more active BNs as of now there's a lot of mania mappers now.

I wouldn't call them free but after looking over the input it does seem the score gap was quite large from the highest failing person. I was talking with some mania guys about what things they look for when modding I still have a lot to learn about the mode but even i can see the need to fix this issue asap, things like getting clear rules and what is seen as invalid agreed upon with the masses. I hope to see results for these things soon.

BMS and Stepmania players teach you how to mapping

Nivrad00 wrote:

I believe there are only two active mania BNs right now, Freerum and -Kamikaze-

*cough cough*

And i will ready for that.

Although this isn't particularly about BN's, I want to point out that become a mania modder is very difficult in the beginning. There aren't a lot of guides for modding specific to mania, and so it's hard to know exactly what to do or what the editor is capable of doing.
edit: also the current mapping meta is very conflicting, as there is a clash of BMS, o2jam, stepmania, etc, and people who are new to VSRG

if this thing is really urgent problem, how about bring back old BNs? ofcourse they should pass the test that staff give. because i believe old BNs have capable skill and already experience ranking map sections. i'm just saying because i think this is fastest way to sort people you believe capable to solve this problem
edit: the repromoted-BNs also can be trial BN as ztrot's idea

Rizqy wrote:

if this thing is really urgent problem, how about bring back old BNs? ofcourse they should pass the test that staff give. because i believe old BNs have capable skill and already experience ranking map sections. i'm just saying because i think this is fastest way to sort people you believe capable to solve this problem
edit: the repromoted-BNs also can be trial BN as ztrot's idea

The problem is that nearly all of former BNs are not in the team because of inactivity which was caused by various things. Mostly though I've saw people just simply get tired of being spammed with requests and such. And bringing them back will not solve the inactivity issues.

Spy wrote:

BMS and Stepmania players teach you how to mapping

I'd rather tap arrows to be honest mate

EDIT: Oh fuck KK hi. Too lazy to edit my post below, just pretend your mentioned alongside Kami/Feerum.

I guess I can dump a small sphiel here.

As far as I can tell, other than Kami/Feerum, most modders/BNs currently basically fall under a few categories (I could name names, but I won't):
1. Doesn't want to do BN work anymore due to various reasons.
2. Doesn't have the modding capabilities to actually pass the BN test.
3. Doesn't have the time to be bothered with being a BN.

Point 1 is usually due to some set of personal reasons, typically not directly related to osu!, so there's not much that we can say about this point.

Point 2 was previously mentioned by Loctav, and for this point, I agree that (from what I can tell) based on the fact that basics are being missed out on, it would do better to instead try to help the mania community just become better at modding, in general. I believe this is what the initial goal of the MMT was (don't quote me on this), but this also kinda ties into...

Point 3. People don't have/don't want to invest the time into doing this. Currently, Kami/Feerum are being swamped with requests, and anybody new who would become a BN would be equally swamped. And some people can't be arsed to deal with that. This issue is particularly bad, as it results in a positive feedback loop, where due to the lack of BNs, less people would want to become BNs, which leads to lack of BNs....

I am almost certain that the whole point of having the BN test was designed to address the second category of people I mentioned above. I have no clue how hard said test is (having never seen it myself), but by simply having this test, it would hopefully encourage people to improve their modding skills in an effort to actually pass this. Since there has only been 1 round of BN apps so far, I have no clue what the effect of having this test here is now (nor have I had time to actually pay attention to the modding scene.) Hopefully, when apps open up again, if some people reapply and get a higher score (or hopefully even pass!), that would show that this helps at least.

In order to address the third point, it is worth noting how there previously was a fairly high activity requirement before one could apply to be a BN (admittedly, this was also before the test was introduced). If you want to possible let even more people attempt the BN test, you could consider lowering the required activity even more than it currently is (though it is already pretty low). This could potentially lead to a bunch more BNs joining, though it also puts more work on whoever is grading the tests, which might also not be fine.

Anyways, it's pretty late, latter half of this might be slightly incoherent. Sorry about that.

-Kamikaze- wrote:

The problem is that nearly all of former BNs are not in the team because of inactivity which was caused by various things. Mostly though I've saw people just simply get tired of being spammed with requests and such. And bringing them back will not solve the inactivity issues.

yes i agree, so that i said just ask the former they would to re-join or no first. their past inactivity not only because tired of being spammed but also because irl issues, so when they have time again to go back working BN job but unfortunately the are already kicked.

Hi!
I'm going to treat this thread as my personal blog.
I really hope you guys don't mind.
I'm going to possibly burn my account by being passive-agressive.

ztrot wrote:

I wouldn't call them free but after looking over the input it does seem the score gap was quite large from the highest failing person. I was talking with some mania guys about what things they look for when modding I still have a lot to learn about the mode but even i can see the need to fix this issue asap, things like getting clear rules and what is seen as invalid agreed upon with the masses. I hope to see results for these things soon.

Hi ztrot. Let me explain - osu!mania mappers and players come from several sources. The BMS community, the Stepmania community, the myo2 community, to name a few. Some others are veterans of other games, including the ridiculously ancient canmusic!

The mechanics of the game tends to favour o2jam because of the interpretation of LNs - and even then, not so much (this one is the best represented as far as I understand!)

These disagreements stem from the fact that people have different ideas of what makes a good chart. I'd say that a lot of people are just plain ignorant and try and yell the loudest they can.
Like me!

Spy wrote:

BMS and Stepmania players teach you how to mapping

Hi spy. Sorry that you're still in pain about things that happened ages ago and you can't let go.
Please, I recommend you to be the bigger man and stop.

***

So, I've got some personal experiences. They've built my expectations with respect to what to expect from doing modding, and what to expect when getting modding.

First of all, modding is usually motivated by the desire to rank a map.
Even if the finality to modding is, ideally, improving your map, it often is merely just means to an end.
To be fair, since people in my experience in charge of looking at maps usually look at an amount of mods or star power and are disallowed from ranking things that don't have
much time rotting on the sidelines because other people are salty that their own maps are not being looked at, often, you just want short mods that don't really
say a whole lot to fill this quota. By this, I believe we're led to want to give or get short, very precise mods of what to change to pretend we're making progress.

I know people though - someone by this point is probably saying "But I care about the mods I get being quality™!"
Sure, I believe you. But haven't you ever wanted to just get mods? Anything, regardless of quality, for the sake of getting to a quota?

Okay, I digress. What I would like to say about this is that, often, maps that require very little changes to be good often suffer from being graveyarded.
On the other hand, maps with many small mistakes or otherwise massive holes get more mods (since it's way easier to mod anyway!) of varying quality.
If you bring anything particularily personal at me regarding this please reconsider what you're doing.


BNs. I'm quite sorry to say that they'd be saturated if they're too few, and mappers are too many. Increasing the number will probably increase the number of beatmaps ranked.
Consider that there is no guarantee to their quality - we've seen bad maps get ranked only because of persistance and filling the numbers requested.

Now, I do know there's no perfect system. Bear with me - this is the point. There is no perfect system for everything ever related to human beings.

We agree, do we?

From this perspective, I believe the flaws I've presented (that are mostly emergent properties of the current system! Humans, I swear.) are quite related to the lack of activity on the modding side of things.

The low expectations for the mods you want to get, and the encouragement to spam many mods that are of some, but with not any particular, quality™ for the charter
quickly leads to burnout for people who want to invest their time on both better maps and better modding.

Whoa. Okay, that sounds like a big leap in logic. Read again if you're overwhelmed, please.

Look, if lazy mods are encouraged by the kudosu system, and modding of any kind is desired by the mappers that just want to get a map ranked, well, you should get what I mean.

***

Loctav wrote:

As we discussed on other places, a re-evaluation will not have the desired effect. Instead of throwing more people in to short-term patch issues, we rather want to educate current modders in osu!mania how to mod properly and to show them the ropes of osu!'s very own environment. There have been several lacks in basic knowledge (e.g. that you can not use red lines to alter the scroll speed/to perform gimmicks) or not detecting basic map flaws (drastic SV changes in Normals have not been seen).

If anything, there needs to be the initiative to raise the capabilties of modders, that do not just mod:

move 1
delete 3
add 45
add clap
^
^

And especially nuking the mentality that "DIS MY STYLE" is a valid statement and make people learn how to elaborate their points properly.

Dear Loctav. I wholeheartedly agree with your premise: there needs to be the initiative to raise the capabilities of modders. And if I made my point correctly, most of you should agree that you don't want to force beginners into BN positions just because they happen to be active.

What you want is committed people, of course. Pros of really understanding the game, on either artistical or technical merit.

***

I know "artistical" is a big red fat alarm of "PRETENTIOUS FUCKFACE IGNORE THIS PERSON" on the grounds of many people claiming their shitty maps "artistic" because of some sort of notion of a non-existing style.
But you guys know what I mean - do you? I mean the charts that for some reason are not technical, but still play hella good. Dumps, or something related to effects (like the ability to pull off a reverse measure line trick!) and such.
The "state of the art" guys. Those guys developing new ideas, with some good technical people guiding their decisions of what works and doesn't.

With that out of the way so you know what I'm talking about...

People without any titles have their opinions often overlooked when modding, in spite of how much respect they get from whoever. It's fine though, we're all human. We're free to do whatever.
But, this is the other kind of burnout that leads to many people not even pursuing modding-related titles. Can we fix it? Probably not, but it's good to mention.


I do not believe a test is the way to go. Even if you put trustworthy people in charge of it, it's going to lead to biasing towards certain forms.
I mean, if you give a group the ability to make a test, they'll put in what they know, what they feel about things (Imagine Spy putting his biases into it and having what he says be the correct answer, for instance.) Any further people that get in and get the power to change this will probably already been skewed by this test.
I don't think this is a good long-term solution.

I wish I could be more constructive about it, but I did say this was just a blog post.

One of the major problems that I see is that

- People that want to be BNs aren't qualified to be BNs
- People that are qualified to be BNs have no interest in being BNs

I guess we either teach people on how to mod like a BN or offer bonuses for being a BN because there's not that much of a reward for becoming a BN.

Edit: everyone else wrote like 12,000 words I feel ashamed

Agka wrote:

I do not believe a test is the way to go. Even if you put trustworthy people in charge of it, it's going to lead to biasing towards certain forms.
I mean, if you give a group the ability to make a test, they'll put in what they know, what they feel about things (Imagine Spy putting his biases into it and having what he says be the correct answer, for instance.) Any further people that get in and get the power to change this will probably already been skewed by this test.
I don't think this is a good long-term solution.

Quoting this for emphasis. This is potentially one of the most important points agka made in that post, and I implore everyone to read this critically and consider what exactly he's saying.

I would also like to add that style can be a legitimate reason to deny mods, or to defend pattern choices. the issue is that most mappers don't seem to understand what style really truly is. It's not just a catch-all reason for why you decided to put notes in one place. Style is about a consistent approach to mapping within a particular difficulty or mapset, which informs your pattern choices throughout the entire map. Did I mention consistency? Because that's how to tell the difference between a pattern based on a stylistic choice vs someone trying to justify their choice by using that word.

I am one of those people that think current methods of modding in mania don't really contribute to raising the quality of the chart.
There is a very critical flaw in modding maps: it's mostly looking at specific sections of the chart and not the whole chart itself.
The suggestions that people give in a mod are localized to certain timestamps, and this leads to modders writing things like "move to 4, ctrl+H for comfortability, delete note, etc"

Suggestions to fix technical errors are fine; however, localized suggestions do not help much in quality.

What mania modders need to learn is how to see a map holistically. They need to see the overall theme, the intentions of the mapper, and try to give feedback around that.

Here's a good example: p/4984354/
In this 'mod', Shoegazer gives extensive reasons on why certain patterns in the chart are not very suited for the beatmap, and gives feedback on the overall layering of the chart. Halogen's comment before that does that well, too. He does not use timestamps, but his comment definitely guides the map to the right direction.

I don't have much time to write, so I'll just end here for now.

I just want to mention that in regards to osu!mania BNs situation, actually the only really active BN right now is Feerum. I might've said in some chats that I'm active at some point, but truth be told, I'm doing just as much (if not less) as those who are treated as being semi-active/inactive. Just waned to put it out there, read Agka's post for more relevant opinions.

iJinjin wrote:

Here's a good example: p/4984354/

Quote for truth. We need more mods like those.

I want to throw my support behind agka, jinjin, and anyone else who posted in this thread. I sincerely hope modding and bn checks in the future will become more purposeful and effective, and that the system will be able to reconcile styles from different games (FtB represent)

But I believe the most pressing issue, an emergency even, is that there is 1 BN for dozens (hundreds?) of mappers. I'm tired of pouring hours of effort into maps with no chance of it getting out to the community. In the future I hope all our BNs are proficient and mindful, but right now I just want more BNs.