I share the same perspective as Monstrata.

When loved first came out, I was super excited for one beatmap in particular by 09kami. Since this map got loved after the criteria changes, it of course needed to meet the 100 SP criteria. I ended up shooting 45 kudosu (and a favorite ) at the map which didn't really bother me, but there were already 100+ favorites which left me wondering why I really needed to spend so much kudosu on something that was already so obviously appreciated.

I think Monstrata's concept of forcing a common denominator between kudosu and favorites is pretty spot on. If players love it, they can be the sole factor in getting a map loved. If mappers love it, they can be the sole factor in getting a map loved. Neither party has to rely on the other to get a map loved anymore, but it will take more appreciation from 1 single demographic than it will from 2 (obvious).
//idk if it really is this way or i just all of the maps i see work out like this, but if mappers like it then players generally like it as well. this isn't always the case vice versa tho...

Anyways with that said, I also think there are some serious issues in beatmap quality.

Syph wrote:

Perhaps a bit extreme but some maps look like people's first ever maps, and I don't think those belong there.

Yeah, I agree and have nothing more to add LOL

Yusomi wrote:

This new loved system treats favourites as if they are just freely given out. I think the cap of 100 should be increased, or a new favouriting system is introduced if this new loved system actually happens.

also a really good point LOL like 3 weeks ago i purged my favorites to open space and i felt terrible doing it.

I agree with Shiirn the issue with the current loved section is merely a symptom of a deeper rooted problem with the ranking system as a whole.

As far as I can tell the reason it took like 8 years for the loved section to come about is that to do it well you basically need a 2nd set of nominators to manage it who would be better used managing the ranked section.

I think the best results would come by taking Monstratas system and adding a runoff vote to it for all qualifying maps. Restrict first round voting to top players/mappers and toss the top 10 most popular maps from this voting each week into a full community vote like we had originally.

down with kudosu boosting.

I think perhaps the early voting to introduce the system to the game set an expectation for Loved content to be appropriately 'curated', when the system was never intended to be. Our thoughts in mind when making Loved were not to introduce a listing that contains high-skill, high-acclaim maps that were otherwise unsuitable for ranking, but rather to provide an alternate method for mappers with content that was widely appreciated regardless of what difficulty level or paradigm it was made under.

I'm not sure that pursuing a return to the same curated voting that started off Loved is particularly helpful - though if there is such a high demand for curated content in that regard, we could look at setting up something else to achieve the same end.

Xd I want my kds back

How many people actually like the fact that SP is being used?
I think you should try to find another use for kudosu than loved, because kudosu doesn't belong in loved.

I depends on the definition on what a "Loved" map means. It could be "unrankable but loved by many", or under "for maps of all types chosen by mappers and players", or all the way to "here is a fast way to get publicity without effort w[deleted]k".

If it is the first one, there needs to be a sharp increase in the favorite's minimum, since loved my many needs UNIQUE players to love it. This on it's own could suffice if that is the definition we are going for.
If it is the second one, then the current one needs a reform. Maybe have two systems to get loved: One operating under favorites, One operating under SP.
If it is the last one, well the current system seems to want to move that way, but only for mappers with publicity. While this makes sense, as it is at this stage a publicity contest, an automated system wouldn't be a problem since ALL maps are equal under this definition.

These are my 2 cents in an issue I have almost no qualifications in.

Maybe the good idea is to make group of mappers+players who can make a decision: is map deserve loved status or not. Mappers or players can request a map somehow and this group will decide what to do with this maps.

Ephemeral wrote:

What if the mapper is inactive or has left the game?

This poses a conundrum. What if a mapper does not consent to having their map deemed "complete" enough to have a scoreboard? What if they do not or never intended the map to have one in the first place?

At what point do we assume the mapper's intentions for the map in this process? Is this something we should consider at all?

I have no answers for these questions. It is a complicated topic, and we have deliberately erred away from adding very dated maps from the most part after this issue was raised VERY early on in the community voting for the first round of Loved.

Why not to asuume that you have their permisson to move it to the loved until its proven not. I mean is this really different case from people taking copyrighted songs?

I would definitely discourage loved to become solely a shelter for maps that are in some way controversial, as I think all good and well playable maps should become ranked eventually, regardless of how they freely ignore the ranking criteria. Good and well playable maps should, the more controversial they are, help the ranking criteria to become more precise in determining potentially relevant factors when evaluating the maps as such. Holding it the other way around, that is the ranking criteria solely determining what can or cannot be ranked, will result in the ranked pool of maps becoming continuously dull and meaningless. I do not think you should encourage such development.

Now I had a look at some graveyarded beatmaps and it seems that the quality of the map - or at least the degree to which the map is interesting in some way - does not necessarily increase with the number of kudosu, but rather the amount of people the map received kudosu from. Now I thought about just have weighted kudosu on a map given by others more than ones given by the creator, but I think this is abusable too easily. Instead I think it's inevitable to ultimately have some kind of "loved"-score calculation that factors in the amount of people that gave kudosu, while at the same time have the creator not be able to get the required sp himself just by spamming his hoarded kudosu (which in my opinion doesn't represent what "loved" stands - or should stand - for).

Maybe the solution would be to just have a weighting similar to the pp-system; that is the first favourite counts relatively more than the second favourite and the second more than the third etc.. Similarly, the first kudosu from person x would then count more than the second kudosu from person x and more than the third kudosu from person x etc.. This would encourage maps that have received broad appreciation, thus be loved by the community, actually be "loved" by the community.

I think having kudosu weighted would ultimately discourage mappers hoarding them for their own maps to reach loved status, thus enabling kudosu to ultimately become for mappers just what favourites are for players: a way to express their appreciation towards a map. I also don't think you should have to rely on star priority to reach a certain threshold, as opinions on maps of the community of players and the community of mappers have proven to diverge on a lot of occasions. I think kudosu can be - if implemented properly - a great way to grant a voice to the mapping-community in the loved-process.

Thanks for creating this thread, I've been moaning about loved for the last few months.

Eph you and I have very different views of what "loved" should mean. It seems that to you that kudos mean as much as favorites regarding loved status (which I can never agree with). If we're going to be forced to use kudos then I love the idea of x kudos = y favs if. I think making kudos optional is much more true to the category. Kudos don't belong in the loved category and you probably know that, so let them be optional. Use a formula that weights kudos vs favs to accomplish this.

kudos + favs * x >= y (after reading through all the posts it appears monstrata reached the same conclusion with the EXACT same values I had in my mind)

Now just play around with the values of x and y until you find a nice outcome (and no please don't make x anything below 1, favorites SHOULD be worth more).

Another problem is the fact that the system is RETARDED for non-standard maps. There aren't going to be any mania maps that fit the new requirements after like one cycle if the requirements aren't made more dynamic somehow (I have no solution to this).

Now that we've gotten the "include kudos" version of the category out the way, I can give my own opinion and some better ideas:

Mappers shouldn't be able to strive for loved status and they shouldn't be able to get a map loved with minimal community involvement.

Involving kudos is retarded. ( I disagree than rankable maps shouldn't be loveable, that's not what the section is about, the effort a mapper puts towards achieving ranked or loved and the style of that map is completely unrelated to whether the community wants a scoreboard or not).

Loved is NOT a way for mappers to make their first steps into the community, it's the communities way of letting enjoyable maps in.

There are a lot of people who seem to think that loved should only be for unrankable style maps. While I would love this (all of the best maps in the sections are IMO the innovative unrankable ones), I don't think it's right. It's fallacious to think that this is a "this or that" scenario, in reality we should be asking "why can't we have both?". Legitimately, why the fuck can't we? In a proper system I believe that unrankable and rankable maps that the community loves would both float into the loved category without intervention from mappers and modders, we just need to set that system up.

Which brings me onto the discussion of what the loved system should actually be comprised of. For one it CAN'T involve kudos. Kudos just take all of my opinions and aggressively shits upon them. Involving kudos means that mappers must be actively involved in trying to get their map loved, they must ask for kudos from modders or dump enough of their own kudos onto their map. This does NOT show what the community wants, it shows what 4 or 5 modders want.

I can see 2 reasons that kudos are required. I believe that the people running the system aimed to solve the issue of a big circlejerk group moving their favorited beatmaps around from map to map in order to bulk move maps into the loved category (which is a legit problem). The obvious solution to this also allowed the elimination of the long standing issue of how useless kudos are. IMO this is a budget solution. I don't believe that favorites alone are an acceptable solution (it's abusable) but I also don't believe kudos are the solution. I've never seen anyone mention the abusability of favorites publicly but I'm pretty sure it's been discussed behind closed doors, so I'll propose a solution (if we're going to use favorites that is). Limit the amount of favorites a player can REVOKE in a given period of time (revoke one per week or so). Arguably this could be annoying, but people shouldn't be mass unfavoriting maps anyway if they really are a persons favorite maps. It's a simple and more effective solution than shitty kudos dumps and it stands as my favorite, simplest solution. With this limitation introduced, loved CAN be entirely based on favorites (which would be far better IMO).

But to be frank, I don't think any of the above solutions are good enough in the long term. I believe the solution should be a more seamless system integrated directly into the client. Essentially I don't believe a perfect solution should be the goal until the new client is released. Some thoughts on how the new client should handle everything:

Once a week people are awarded a certain amount of points based on their stats (let's call them vote points (vp)). Each player would be given vp based on multiple factors (arbitrary formulas like a players pp in a mode divided by 1000 plus maps modded in the last week divided by 2... etc..). vp would be MODE SPECIFIC and each player would receive a different amount in mode specific vp based on their stats related to the game-mode. Players would be able to vote on maps that they want to see loved using these points, once a week. A live list of the 100 most popular maps (by vp) would be available in game to make the process even easier. Every week to highest x amount of maps from each mode would be moved to loved (x being scaled based on the number of vp used that week in each given mode). At the end of the week, vp is completely reset for players and maps and then re-distributed.

I think a proper solution is a long way away and tackling this issue is going to be difficult, that doesn't mean the current system is acceptable though, something temporary needs to be done and I believe the system should be entirely based on favorites for now.

Imo the biggest issue here is that by making maps too frequently enter into the loved status eats away the novelty of being loved by the community when the map hasnt existed for more than a few months in the worst cases. Loved maps should be much more rare than ranked maps since time is the key factor in making something that is actually known by many and liked by many and when the system first came out people were most exited about these old classic maps that are several years old being able to have a category of their own as those were the maps that had gradually gained this widespread love for them.

Having 1-2 polls per year hosted through the client itself to help with the voting activity or having a roster of selected people to pick maps together for loved would be what I would suggest as now with the way the system is, getting loved even after changing the numbers on the system (whether it be 200 kds or 100 favs) is still much easier and preferred way to push maps forward instead of ranked (sadly) and will stay this way unless loved becomes something that is achieved and not "farmed". One only needs to look at current amount of qualified maps and compare the amount of loved maps added recently to see this trend.

If drastic changes like the one I suggested arent made to the purpose of loved then most likely the popular opinion on loved status wont change as the whole category is filled with maps that belong into ranked and the maps that deserve status of their own are being lost into the midst of these maps, making them unavoidably feel as "normal" or "unspecial" because of this same label on them. Basically loved right now is like what I think would happen if aspire contests were held as often. At first its new and exiting, everyone loves the idea as it is something we need and pushes the game forwards to a better direction. This would change quickly though as the oversupply of contests happening monthly compared to undersupply of great aspire entries due to lack of ideas and development in mapping would lead into inevitably lowering the bar on winning entries and therefore eating away the value that the initial contests had. In loveds case oversupply of loved cycles that are easier to achieve than ranked + undersupply of great maps due to lack of time and development in mapping = lowered bar and overall quality in maps that become loved, eating away the value from the initial maps that had had the time to become loved and deserving of the status.

tl;dr Make loved an actual achievement for a map that is in its own right harder to achieve than ranked, 1-2 picking/selection cycles per year done by community or selected panel of pickers, forget kds + fav reqs as they encourage to abandon going for ranked which is what all maps that arent breaking the criteria/lack something essential should do in the first place.

Just bring the voting system back

Yeah agreed with probox... I mean, somebody put some perfectly rankable tv sizes and god-awful maps that nobody loves there!
I'd say bring back the voting system. You shouldn't be able to make your own map "loved", that is for somebody else to judge.

Monstrata wrote:

I would recommend a score system where each map must attain a certain "score" to be eligible for qualification.

Let's say,
1 Favorite = 20 points
1 Star Priority = 10 points

To be eligible for Loved, you must get at least 1000 points.

If the player base loves the map, then they usually express this through favoriting the map.
If the mapping community loves a map, then they usually express this through starring the map.

Combining both favorites and star priority into one score system allows mappers more freedom to get their map Loved. They can either get support from the player base, or they can get support from the mapping community, or a mixture of both. Of course, we can shift points around later, or even logarithmatize the point system to have diminishing returns for # of favourites and # of star priority.

THe current SP system only benefits active modders currently. Not all mappers also mod, actually some of the best mappers don't do a lot of modding at all (see RLC Skystar ProBox handsome etc...) so they rely on the mapping community to promote their stuff. I hope we can find a balance through integrating # of favorites into Loved eligibility, not just Loved requirement. Currently # of favorites is useless above 30, while SP is useless above 100. Removing a dual requirement allows mappers to overlook one area (perhaps # of SP, if the mapper is not a known mapper or modder) through a significantly higher value in another (say # of favorites) and vice versa.

this

Eraser wrote:

You shouldn't be able to make your own map "loved", that is for somebody else to judge.

I do not agree about this, if you're an unknown mapper, love section is a great way to promote your work.

The use of kudosu was interesting because it forced you to mod a lot to have your beatmap loved. I think it's fair because you get rewarded for helping the beatmapping community.

(encouraging modding is great thing tho).

Ovoui wrote:

Eraser wrote:

You shouldn't be able to make your own map "loved", that is for somebody else to judge.

I do not agree about this, if you're an unknown mapper, love section is a great way to promote your work.

The use of kudosu was interesting because it forced you to mod a lot to have your beatmap loved. I think it's fair because you get rewarded for helping the beatmapping community.

(encouraging modding is great thing tho).

If you're unknown then your maps aren't loved and they need to gtfo being viable for the category. Such a stupid argument.

People definitely need to understand that the relationship should go: popular -> loved; not: loved -> popular

I understand that using kudos encourages modding, but that doesn't make it GOOD. If we made it so that you had to purchase retries with kudosu in game I'm sure we would see an increase in the amount of mods, but that's also the worst idea ever. Kudos need their value to come from within the system in which they are awarded (the ranking system) not from being tagged onto some other unrelated topic.

Making great map which deserved to be loved by the community and being unknown is compatible.

I didn't see your edit btw

Ovoui wrote:

Making great map which deserved to be loved by the community and being unknown is compatible.

I didn't see your edit btw

Yeah sorry, I posted before I finished thinking.

If popularity is what you seek, then go for ranked. Loved is for maps that are loved by the community, doesn't matter good or bad, easy or hard. And the first step to be loved is to gain popularity.

Don't make loved the second and easier ranked section please. I don't want to see a regular pp jump map from an unknown mapper go there just because they can't get some bn to check on it.

Yusomi wrote:

This new loved system treats favourites as if they are just freely given out. I think the cap of 100 should be increased, or a new favouriting system is introduced if this new loved system actually happens.

I definitely think this is an issue that needs to be addressed, especially if from now on having favourites on a map will play a bigger role for the loved section and both mappers and players will be encouraged to do so. I usually rarely favourite maps, and I'm already at 81 favs, considering the enourmous amount of maps which are currently submitted 100 is definitely way too low and I can see it being a problem in the long run for the loved section.

Ephemeral wrote:

Our thoughts in mind when making Loved were not to introduce a listing that contains high-skill, high-acclaim maps that were otherwise unsuitable for ranking, but rather to provide an alternate method for mappers with content that was widely appreciated regardless of what difficulty level or paradigm it was made under.

I'm not sure that pursuing a return to the same curated voting that started off Loved is particularly helpful - though if there is such a high demand for curated content in that regard, we could look at setting up something else to achieve the same end.

Based on this and the current state of maps in the loved section I would like to ask everyone advocating changes to the current system, especially those that are aiming to raise the map quality in the section by one way or the other:

1. Favorites are already instrumentalised for loving maps now. They are given out with the only incentive that a map can get loved although it may not be one of your favourite map. Do you really want to completely invalidate the meaning favorites had in the last 10 years of osu! by inflating the requirement like that?

2. Assuming the loved maps were now required to be unrankable by design as proposed by Shiirn:
What is supposed to happen to the maps in loved that don't fulfill that requirement? Unlove, graveyard? Keep them? Both options are bullshit so you would better come up with a different one that doesn't make the people who put in effort to get their map loved feel betrayed.

Well.. there are a lot of posts and I wanted to reply to all, more or less, but rip.

The post I agree the most with is Shiirn's: the Loved section is treated as a side-ranking category, when for various reasons perfectly rankable maps go for loved instead. This is damn lame.

The proposal in the OP is quite interesting too, but not wide enough. Let me explain why...

As the proposal is set now, we have two sides (one from modders, one from players) that need to be raised to a certain value to make the map Loved.
This is good and I like it, because it means that a more varied part of the community agrees on a certain map.
What I not agree with is the fact that one mapper can simply shot many stars on it or the fact that many players can totally outclass modders and get the SP down to 25 only (which is really really low)

My counter-proposal for this would be to make the first SP requirement to be 75SP and decrease it to 50 using the formula provided in the op, this way we are sure modders are not completely wiped out by players.
On the other hand, make it so that every modder can shot at most 10 or 15 stars as someone already suggested. This way we can avoid a single modder to hold the power.
These are simply fixes to make things return to the concept that the COMMUNITY should love the map, and not a few people (I truly laughed at idke's proposal tbh)
(1000 favourites = insta Loved status seems totally fine, since that's quite a big portion of people imo)

The other thing I would like to see fixed is what maps actually get loved.
As Shiirn said, any map meeting the requirements passes. The solution for this is simply: either make the QAT, or maybe even the Spotlights team, take a look at the maps meeting the requirements and judge whether they are unrankable or not, because making perfectly rankable maps pass to the Loved category looks totally wrong here.


Last thing is about the favourites system mentioned just above this post: it should change if favourites start being an important part of the Loved processing.



Make the Loved category be truly for loved maps please, not for lazy mappers not being able to find BNs (no, more BNs is not the solution lol)

Ephemeral wrote:

What if the mapper is inactive or has left the game?

This poses a conundrum. What if a mapper does not consent to having their map deemed "complete" enough to have a scoreboard? What if they do not or never intended the map to have one in the first place?

At what point do we assume the mapper's intentions for the map in this process? Is this something we should consider at all?

I have no answers for these questions. It is a complicated topic, and we have deliberately erred away from adding very dated maps from the most part after this issue was raised VERY early on in the community voting for the first round of Loved.

There are maps that I would love to see in the category, but with their creative directors long vanished from the game (Larto is a good example of this), often times with unclear intent for their creations that are left behind, it will likely remain a very difficult issue to resolve fully.

Why exactly wouldn't they want their maps to be loved? Take a look at Charles' skeleton map for example, I'm pretty sure he doesn't mind having that map loved even though he drifted away from the community and game itself. The point of loved (or at least as it was suggested by the community before the category existed) was to give the old, classic graved maps that couldn't be ranked in any way get finally the place they deserved (biggest examples would be Groundhog and deltaMAX, and to be honest I don't think Takuma would've been able to submit it for loved as he's been away for quite some time). It feels a bit unfair that maps like Moskau and Konbini can't get loved because of 1. the current requirements; 2. because their respective mappers are inactive, even though the maps were exactly the reason why the section was created in the first place.

About the other points, I believe jesse and Shiirn already said everything I had to say. It's sad to currently see perfectly rankable maps with 20 pages of mods get loved because "the mapper got tired of looking for mods" or the fact that some mappers are giving 50+ SP to their own maps so they get loved easily (ALIEN, Another Lie's map). If you want kudosu to be relevant, then go do something with ModdingV2 or actually make Kudosu/Mapper Ranking relevant again, bring some rewards to people who mod, I don't know, man, just don't ruin a section because kudosu isn't as useful as it could be.

I agree with the points based system. It will enable both popular graveyarded maps from beatmappers that have left to become loved, as well as those willing to contribute a massive amount to the modding community in order to give their own maps a leaderboard. It's basically a win-win.

It would seem that there is a big push for Loved to return to limited-criteria curated content - namely that it includes only maps that are both wildly popular, and are limited in some way or another from being ranked normally.

I'm not sure I can get behind the idea of removing SP qualification from the system entirely - the mapping and modding community should have some sort of investment in the system themselves given the work they both undertake to make it a thing in the first place. Perhaps limiting the total SP contribution from one person is part of this. Being able to add maps to Loved was kind of the prevailing reward planned for kudosu, at least in the short term, so removing that would require it to be replaced with something else entirely.

Ephemeral wrote:

the mapping and modding community should have some sort of investment in the system themselves given the work they both undertake to make it a thing in the first place.

You had me when you said mapping community but lost me when you said modding community. The modding community works to make the ranked section a thing. If a map is getting heavily modded it should be getting ranked not loved. As others have pointed out a lot of the more acclaimed mappers don't even mod much to begin with and hence do not get any benefit from SP being part of the system.

chainpullz wrote:

Ephemeral wrote:

the mapping and modding community should have some sort of investment in the system themselves given the work they both undertake to make it a thing in the first place.

You had me when you said mapping community but lost me when you said modding community. The modding community works to make the ranked section a thing. If a map is getting heavily modded it should be getting ranked not loved. As others have pointed out a lot of the more acclaimed mappers don't even mod much to begin with and hence do not get any benefit from SP being part of the system.

As mentioned earlier (and in the OP), the crystallization of their time investment (SP) means very little for actually influencing the ranking cycle at the moment. Beyond preparing maps for Ranked itself, they receive very little in the way of reward for essentially providing the rest of the community with content to enjoy.

if want to have both sp and curated sets going in loved, then have like, 5 slots in a vote for curated and 5 slots for sp/fav maps, then people vote
eg

1. curated old map
2. curated 10* map
3. curated map etc
4. curated map
5. curated map
6. +100 sp evening sv map
7. +100 sp song compilation
8. +100 sp map
9. +100 sp map
10. +100 sp map
community votes on what they want from there. old mappers and sp shooters both get loved from this. alternately could just have it so curated and sp sets are on different voting lists so they don't compete with each other

i dont really agree with the concept of dumping a whole lot of kds onto a set for it to be eligible just for the voting process, just for a not-at-all-guaranteed chance to get your set loved

what if your map fails the vote? 100sp down the toilet?

Ephemeral wrote:

As mentioned earlier (and in the OP), the crystallization of their time investment (SP) means very little for actually influencing the ranking cycle at the moment.

Yes, and that is an issue. With the ranked category. The core of the current issue with the loved category is that we are letting major issues with the ranked category spill into the loved category. There needs to be a line drawn and that is what seems to be getting lost in all this fixation about points/voting.

Due to the more objective nature of the ranked category and the need for strict rules/guidelines there are maps that are not rankable because they would set bad precedents that would lead to an overall decrease in map quality (not that I think too highly of the current cut/tv size mapping meta at the moment). Though sad because some masterpieces are hence unrankable, this is a completely necessary thing to do and is not really a problem with the ranking system. The loved category exists to provide a home for these maps.

It also has the opportunity to provide a home for maps that are loved by the community but were never pushed forward for ranking, perhaps because the original mapper is long gone, or because the mapper would rather let the map grave than make a spread for it.

While it should certainly be acceptable for a mapper to aim for loved with a map of the former type, the mapper should have no say in whether a map of the latter type gets loved otherwise loved and ranked will overlap in undesirable ways.

chainpullz wrote:

Due to the more objective nature of the ranked category and the need for strict rules/guidelines

ha that's a funny joke good one

Okay, we pulled up some stats and spoke for a bit based on the feedback people have given us here, and we've come up with the following thresholds per gamemode based on the statistics of gamemode distribution among players (for reference, it is 77% osu!, 16% osu!mania, 4% osu!catch and 3% osu!taiko from users active within the past month):

Entering a map into Loved will cost 50SP across all modes.

Entering a map into Loved will also require the following favorites per dominant gamemode (where the dominant gamemode is the set with the highest requirements below):

osu!: 100
osu!taiko: 10
osu!catch: 10
osu!mania: 30

The SP requirement will be reduced by 1 every X favorites above the base favourites (down to a minimum of 25SP):

osu!: 16
osu!taiko: 2
osu!catch: 2
osu!mania: 4

This should be fair and representative of general population across all gamemodes, and at the very least, fairer than the current requirements for maps that are not osu!. Multimode mapsets may be a bit of a pain, but we'll see how they go.

We will also conduct voting for legacy beatmaps with high favourite count where the mapper may no longer be available to submit the maps for Loved themselves. This may be tied into Spotlights in the form of a "vintage Spotlight" occurring every few months or on certain dates of the year, complete with concurrent voting.

While I understand that keeping Loved exclusive is a concern for some users, it is important to note that we did not ever intend for it to be shrouded in the airs of exclusivity - the idea was to create an open category as an alternative means for mappers to get their work recognized and playable, for those who produce content that is not designed to fit within the Ranking Criteria. An avenue for curated content exists in the Spotlights - and we can certainly begin investing more resources and rewards into having maps featured by the Spotlights going forward.

Exclusivity is not necessarily the issue people take with it - it's the questionable nature of whether something belongs in the Loved category. Adding some curation requirements does not make it "exclusive", it simply makes the entire category more respectable. Be it either through voting, a few people "checking" maps, or some other step that involves actually looking at the map, something should be done to make sure that every Loved map is "Special" in some way. Otherwise, it's just a dumping ground for mappers that can't get the map ranked normally, popular songs with bad maps, or a mapper begging for favorites and dumping SP. Even with the new proposal.

The change you propose is nice and all, and backed by statistics, but the outliers that are just "normal maps" really taint the barrel. I'm sure everyone's aware of the good old rotten apple analogy.

When people look through the Loved category, they want to see uniqueness. Specialness. That hard-to-summarize quality that separates these maps from the peer-reviewed, highly specialized content control system the Ranked category has. Many maps in the section have this. But nowhere near "Most" of them.

They don't want to see otherwise normal maps like entire normal sets ("giving up on ranking") or four-minute regular maps that would just be a minor pain to make lower difficulties for ("lazy") or the like. They also don't really want to see actually crappy maps. (That crystallized set really stands out as being kind of full of shit, no hitsounding, no effort bullshit)

I understand that this is a much more major change than tweaking the thresholds of SP and Favorites, so I'm not surprised it was kind of politely pushed to the side, but it'd be nice to hear this kind of issue was being considered.

It is being considered, and I've said repeatedly that the demand for curated content (ie: exactly what you're asking for in regards to content that "belongs" in the communal expectations that the Loved category currently carries) is better undertaken elsewhere or in different domains rather than forcing the issue in the Loved category.

For example, Loved being open allows for maps that aren't that great to get in it. Curated content based on Loved maps (ie: the proposed "Vintage" spotlights) fulfills the need to have a way of marking or denoting truly excellent content within the category without closing it out to everyone else.

Adding another category-within-a-category seems kind of silly.

It'd just be another layer for the actually-aiming-to-have-interesting-maps-get-a-scoreboard-and-played maps to pass, except it'd have an even more esoteric set of entry requirements. People wouldn't want to go for Loved just to get Vintage or whatever due to the added level of risk. Loved would still be a dumping ground.

Right now there are four separate types of maps in the Loved category:

1. 1. Maps that break some form of modern rule of rankability. Be it aesthetics, esoteric concept/theme, or outright breaking the rules for the sake of the song. This is what people look for.
2. 2. Ridiculously high-difficulty maps under 5 minutes that are otherwise perfectly rankable. Can include songs that genuinely struggle to have lower difficulties, such as What The Cat.
3. 3. Maps that are "dump sets", maps that are incomplete, low-effort, or otherwise just don't have the polish or focus necessary to get ranked. But totally could.
4. 4. Maps that are completely normal but are either Loved because the mapper has given up on Ranking, or because it's a normal map that didn't reach the 5 minute drain time and the mapper can't be assed to fill the rest. The "effort to get loved" is less than the "effort to extend >5min or fill with other difficulties"

What do we want to see in Loved?

It's not a real "category" perse (referring to Vintage), but rather a way of selecting the better maps in the category. Spotlights as a whole will be much more prevalent in osu! once lazer is complete, and it seems as if a good way to give them that initial traction would be to move the expectations for curated content away from Loved as a whole category, and into them instead.

Alright, let's add this to the list of "Stuff that'll be more relevant once lazer is complete" and call it a day, then.

I hope I'm not too late, but I'll dump everything on my mind.

I don't see why a map being ranked and a map being Loved have to be mutually exclusive. Aren't there plenty of maps out there already that are not only loved, but also are ranked? I'm probably projecting, but I think something like Freedom Dive should be Loved, even though its already ranked. It has 1000+ favorites, too. But for those Loved maps that can't be ranked, the warning with the "This Loved map will not give pp" can just flash before you play the map.

I agree with what several others have already said, including that the Loved category should be full of things that are genuinely loved, like a priceless treasure. That said, there could be two ways that a map can be Loved:

1. A point-based system, where a favorite counts as two points and a kudosu counts as one point. Additionally, any amount of kudosu from each user only counts once, only allowing anyone to contribute a maximum of three points to the map. I understand the important of kudosu, but allowing kudosu to have too much influence over whether a map enters Loved or not could be easily abused. Then, a map has to reach at least 250 points or so to be Loved.

2. A voting system, probably 2-4 times every year, allowing the community to put in any beatmap for entry and to vote on them. The primary purpose of this is to get loved older beatmaps that have little/no favorites and beatmaps with inactive creators to become Loved, if the community wants it.

There may be other ways that I'm not really thinking of, but any method of getting a beatmap into the Loved category should have a significant part of the community play a large role in determining the result and not by any small group of users.

That said, maybe there can also be a new category of beatmap, "Notable", to allow mappers who want exposure to get what they want. I'm not too confident about how this would work, but you could probably just rename the current Loved category to this and it'd be okay for a while. I think this would work because I am of the belief that the only reason Loved is a goal for mappers who want exposure is because its an entirely different category which much fewer maps than the Ranked & Approved category, allowing their work to stand out more against the incredible amount of ranked maps present. My belief could be entirely wrong, though.

Hi

Well.. even if I dont have "morality" to talk about (because I have a map in loved just because it was unranked many time ago and I was really tired of remapping), I wanna say my opinion:
The issue of perfectly rankable sets in loved section is responsibility of BNG, in the sense that they can push it to the ranking section yet!
As Eph said, loved is a good place to get some visibility right now.


I'm agree with that 30 favs is very low, and 75 favs feels more "relevant" for a loved map.
But I'm not agree with ignore SP, I think that limiting the amount of stars for person will avoid the abuse.