The current beatmap seems to be pretty useless in my opinion, or flawed at least.
From my experience, it seems that ratings go something like this:
9.5~10 - Recently ranked, or just an amazing beatmap
9.0~9.4 - Great beatmap
8.5~9.0 - Good beatmap
8.0~8.4 - Okay beatmap
6.0~7.0 - Really really crappy beatmap
6.0- - Probably a troll beatmap; shouldn't have been ranked in the first place.
The first thing I can see from this is that the other five star options are pretty much being wasted. 10 star options is a bit overkill. In my experience, I only rate maps that I truly love, and don't really bother to rate the rest. This could just be me, but I digress.
Also, this system seems to have a heavy bias towards brand new beatmaps; for example, if we disregard the fact that a rating won't show until a map has a certain amount of votes, a new map with only one rating of 10.0 wouldl be higher on the rating list than an amazing 9.5 beatmap that's been around for a couple of years.
What I propose is something similar to the forums' priority system, like this:
When a map is ranked, it starts with a rating of zero.
After playing the new beatmap, you'll have five options. Choosing an option will change the map's rating; maybe something like this:
How did you like this beatmap?
-Great! (+2)
-Good! (+1)
-Okay (No change)
-Not good (-1)
-Bad (-2)
So, if we really liked the beatmap, we'd choose "Great!' and the map's rating would move from zero to two. As more and more people play the map, its rating will climb higher and higher. Or, if the amount of people who liked the map vs. the amount of people who didn't like it is about equal, the map's rating will stay somewhere around zero. And of course, if most people think the map is bad, the map will have a negative rating.
To display ratings visually, you could have a bar that extends left into the red for negative ratings, and extends right into the green for positive ratings. The more positive ratings a map has, the longer the bar.
The advantage of this system vs. the old one, for starers, is that newly-ranked maps won't have a higher rating than older beatmaps that are truly amazing. This will also get rid of the somewhat redundant 1-5 star range that nobody really even clicks. Finally, this will give people a much better idea as to how good or bad a map is before they play it, and may even encourage people to rate more beatmaps in the future.
From my experience, it seems that ratings go something like this:
9.5~10 - Recently ranked, or just an amazing beatmap
9.0~9.4 - Great beatmap
8.5~9.0 - Good beatmap
8.0~8.4 - Okay beatmap
6.0~7.0 - Really really crappy beatmap
6.0- - Probably a troll beatmap; shouldn't have been ranked in the first place.
The first thing I can see from this is that the other five star options are pretty much being wasted. 10 star options is a bit overkill. In my experience, I only rate maps that I truly love, and don't really bother to rate the rest. This could just be me, but I digress.
Also, this system seems to have a heavy bias towards brand new beatmaps; for example, if we disregard the fact that a rating won't show until a map has a certain amount of votes, a new map with only one rating of 10.0 wouldl be higher on the rating list than an amazing 9.5 beatmap that's been around for a couple of years.
What I propose is something similar to the forums' priority system, like this:
When a map is ranked, it starts with a rating of zero.
After playing the new beatmap, you'll have five options. Choosing an option will change the map's rating; maybe something like this:
How did you like this beatmap?
-Great! (+2)
-Good! (+1)
-Okay (No change)
-Not good (-1)
-Bad (-2)
So, if we really liked the beatmap, we'd choose "Great!' and the map's rating would move from zero to two. As more and more people play the map, its rating will climb higher and higher. Or, if the amount of people who liked the map vs. the amount of people who didn't like it is about equal, the map's rating will stay somewhere around zero. And of course, if most people think the map is bad, the map will have a negative rating.
To display ratings visually, you could have a bar that extends left into the red for negative ratings, and extends right into the green for positive ratings. The more positive ratings a map has, the longer the bar.
The advantage of this system vs. the old one, for starers, is that newly-ranked maps won't have a higher rating than older beatmaps that are truly amazing. This will also get rid of the somewhat redundant 1-5 star range that nobody really even clicks. Finally, this will give people a much better idea as to how good or bad a map is before they play it, and may even encourage people to rate more beatmaps in the future.