Yo, just thought I'd post my personal thoughts on the new loved criteria, not sure if I'm supposed to post it here so just tell me if I'm not
In my opinion, using star priority as a ''currency'' for getting maps to the Loved category goes against the purpose of the category itself, and restricts many potential candidates from getting there for no reason. SP is gained in two ways:
1. Getting your map modded
2. Modding other people's mapsBoth of these things have very little to do with whether or not a map qualifies to make it to Loved status. Modding a map is an effort to help the mapper improve his or her map in order to get it closer to RANKING status. Modding other people's maps is well, an entirely different subject that has little to no relation to the map in question being qualified for loved.
As I understand from the introductory post to the Loved system, it is aimed mostly at maps which have been recognized by the community but do not adhere to the standard Ranking Criteria. There are no rules or guidelines regarding map quality or amount of mods. The sole purpose is to give community-recognized maps the spotlight they deserve.
I don't think the +100 SP criteria helps this purpose in any way. I understand there has to be some kind of regulation to not get this category spammed with silly memes and gimmicky shitfests, but I don't think this is the way to go. Not only is SP a bad indicator of map popularity (a person could shoot 100 stars on their own map), but it also restricts maps that have already been recognized by large parts of the community from getting to Loved status, only because they have to adhere to an obsolete standard and their creator has to do 100 blanket mods first in order to push it forward.
As an example, 90% of the first batch of loved maps did NOT meet the new SP requirements. To pull up a random example: Red like Roses (
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/129314) has 800+ favorites but only a handful of stars. The new criteria wouldn't have allowed the map to pass on to the Loved category. Another example: toby fox - Undertale Boss Themes (
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/389467) has over 400 favorites and obviously a lot of community recognition. However, this map would also not qualify for the category as it ''only'' holds +66 SP (which is still not easy to acquire..).
The other issue is that a large part of the community does not have access to SP because they have little to no knowledge about modding. Since the category was introduced as ''maps that have been recognized by a large part of the community'', doesn't that seem a little contradictory?
Yes, I also do understand that there had to be some purpose for SP, but using it as a currency for the loved category just seems like tying two vaguely related concepts together.
My personal (short term?) solution for this problem would be to develop the system in a way that for every favorite above the 30 favs threshhold, one less SP is needed to push the map forward to the Loved category. So for example a map with 70 favorites would need 60 more SP in order to push it to loved. This way we can still filter out the no effort/troll maps but in a way that it doesn't burn down the purpose of the system and restrict the genuine candidate maps.
TLDR: +100 SP requirement doesn't fulfil the purpose of the loved system, let's find a way to make it a less restrictive rule.