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[Proposal] Spread ruleset draft

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Total Posts
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pishifat
osu! Paragon
3,812 posts
Joined August 2013
Topic Starter
pishifat
hi

As part of the Ranking Criteria's reconstruction, the United Beat-Knights of Ranking Criteria have been discussing subsections (such as timing, metadata, skinning, etc.) with the experts of each field. I'm here to announce what kind of rules and guidelines we agreed upon for the Spread (labeled as Mapset on the current RC) subsection in this draft. Notice this is not the final result, as we need the feedback of the community first before getting it officially bumped into the wiki!

Frequently Asked Questions

(read this in all cases before posting)
  1. Is it necessary to read the entire draft before commenting or asking questions?
    -> Yes, else you may complain about/mention things that are not related to this draft or are actually already present here.
  2. Is this the entire new Ranking Criteria? I feel like this is missing a lot of things...
    -> This is not the entire Ranking Criteria. This draft aims to be the rules and guidelines that end up under the Mapset header.

Before posting, please think through if what you want to add belongs in any game-mode specific drafts of the Ranking Criteria or should be part of another subsection of the general Ranking Criteria. Thanks!

The proposal starts with the glossary.


Glossary



Common terms


Mapset
  1. Drain time: The time during which the health-bar drains. Excludes break periods. Taiko mode’s drain time includes sliders and the intended length of spinners.
  2. Reasonable Spread: A mapset without drastically large differences between difficulties as dictated by difficulty-specific rules and guidelines.
  3. Game-mode: osu!, osu!taiko, osu!catch, and each of osu!mania’s key counts are considered individual game-modes.
  4. Single-mode mapset: A mapset which contains difficulties of only one game-mode.
  5. Hybrid mapset: A mapset which contains difficulties of multiple game-modes.
  6. Marathon: A mapset which does not require a full spread of difficulties.
  7. Mapset host: A user who uploads and manages a mapset.
  8. Guest difficulty: A difficulty added to a mapset which is not created by a mapset host.
  9. Collaborative difficulty: A single difficulty mapped by more than one mapper.


Spread


Rules

All rules are exactly that: RULES. They are NOT guidelines and may NOT be broken under ANY circumstance.

  1. Single-mode mapsets must include a reasonable spread of at least two difficulties. The lowest difficulty cannot be harder than a Normal and it must comply with its respective mode’s difficulty-specific ranking criteria.
  2. Hybrid mapsets without osu!standard difficulties must include a reasonable spread of at least two difficulties per mode. The lowest difficulty of each mode cannot be harder than a Normal and it must comply with its respective mode’s difficulty-specific ranking criteria.
  3. If a hybrid mapset includes osu!standard difficulties...
    1. A reasonable spread of at least two osu!standard difficulties must be included. The lowest difficulty cannot be harder than a Normal and it must comply with its respective mode’s difficulty-specific ranking criteria.
    2. Converted difficulties must form a reasonable spread. For example, a mapset with Easy and Normal osu!standard difficulties and an Insane osu!catch difficulty is not permitted. One or more additional difficulties may need to be added to fill the gap.
    3. Any two or more osu!taiko or osu!mania difficulties must be arranged in a reasonable spread. The lowest difficulty cannot be harder than a Hard.
    4. One or more osu!catch difficulties may be included. The lowest difficulty cannot be harder than an Insane.
  4. Mapsets must have a minimum drain time of 30 seconds. This ensures each ranked map has a practical play-time.
  5. Marathons must have a minimum drain time of 5 minutes. This excludes especially long mapsets from requiring a spread of difficulties.
  6. Excluding a mapset’s hardest difficulty, a difficulty’s name must accurately indicate its level of difficulty. Conventional difficulty names vary between modes, but any set of clearly progressive difficulty names can be alternatively used. Additionally, a mapset’s hardest difficulty should not use a name misrepresentative of its difficulty.
  7. A difficulty’s name must be unrelated to a username. Guest difficulties, however, may indicate possession with its mappers’ username or nickname. (e.g. Guest Mapper’s Insane). Words that happen to be usernames are acceptable within difficulty names as long as they relate to the song.
  8. Additionally, a mapset host cannot indicate possession in a difficulty’s name. (e.g. Mapset Host’s Insane). Metadata conflicts caused by mapping a song multiple times are the only exception.
  9. A mapset host must have equal or more drain time mapped than any guest difficulty mappers. This is to provide credit where credit is due.
  10. A mapset host and guest mappers can make changes to their respective difficulties as they wish. If there is a disagreement between both, the mapset host must delete the guest contribution upon request. If a guest mapper cannot be contacted for a month, they will be assumed to agree with any changes.


Guidelines

Guidelines may be violated under exceptional circumstances. These exceptional circumstances must be warranted by an exhaustive explanation as of why the guideline has been violated and why not violating it will interfere with the overall quality of the creation.

  1. Avoid incomprehensible username combinations to indicate possession of a collaborative guest difficulty. If it’s unclear whose usernames are combined, simplification is recommended.
  2. Avoid difficulty names with descriptive elements not clearly related to a guest difficulty mapper or a level of difficulty. (e.g. Mapper’s Tragic Love Extra)
  3. Usernames indicating possession of a guest difficulty should be consistent between multiple mapsets. Varying nicknames for one user makes interpreting who created a difficulty ambiguous or misleading.
  4. Avoid unicode characters in a difficulty’s name. These can cause errors with the beatmap submission system and problems for certain users when appearing in chat.



Once again, this draft is not the final result, as we need the feedback of the community first before getting it officially bumped into the wiki! It will be up to discussion for two weeks and close on the 31st of August!
Last edited by pishifat , edited 2 times in total.
pishifat
osu! Paragon
3,812 posts
Joined August 2013
Topic Starter
pishifat

pishifat wrote:

The lowest difficulty must be at least a Normal which complies with their respective mode’s difficulty-specific ranking criteria.
this refers to the new section proposed at the bottom of p/6054268 defining what is okay for a normal as a set's lowest difficulty. other modes will have a similar proposal if their diff-specific criteria doesn't already cover what's necessary

also, keep in mind that when this draft is amended, there will be 6 months of transition time for mappers to adapt to the changes
I Must Decrease
913 posts
Joined June 2013
I Must Decrease
Also, please, while we are working to change this stuff, can we address how arbitrary naming difficulties beyond "extra" is. Read my proposal here: p/5631273

TL:DR: Naming things "Extra", "Extreme", "Expert" is extreme arbitrary and does not quantify a real difference between difficulty as these terms are not objectively defined. These difficulties above "Extra" should be allowed free naming so long as its relevant towards the source.
Last edited by I Must Decrease , edited 3 times in total.
defiance
503 posts
Joined July 2015
defiance
rip large sets, tho i guess bns really hate checking them
HappyRocket88
4,322 posts
Joined May 2014
HappyRocket88
Will it be fine to have a Normal difficulty which is above 2 stars now? As they're no star limits for the lowest difficulty, what would be the requirements to be accepted as a Normal and not labeled as an Advanced?

Is it possible to rank a map with a diff of 11 stars now? Just as it was aimed for be played as tag 4?
Last edited by HappyRocket88 , edited 1 time in total.
Shiguma
476 posts
Joined May 2014
Shiguma
What happens if your song is less than 30 seconds of drain time? By these new rules you wouldn't be able to extend it would you?
Yuii-
2,501 posts
Joined July 2013
Yuii-

pishifat wrote:

Avoid unicode characters in a difficulty’s name. These can cause errors with the beatmap submission system and problems for certain users when appearing in chat.[/list]
If this is really that problematic, make it a rule. It makes little sense to have it as a guideline when it actually can "break the game" for specific people and/or when submitting a mapset.
Kilabarus
999 posts
Joined May 2015
Kilabarus
I remember that Loctav was trying to do smth like this, but...

inb4 new pishi's video theme
I Must Decrease
913 posts
Joined June 2013
I Must Decrease
"One osu!catch difficulty may be included. It must be at least an Insane difficulty."

change it to "The lowest difficulty"
Noffy
Nomination Assessment Team
1,685 posts
Joined April 2012
Noffy

pishifat wrote:

  1. Any two osu!taiko or osu!mania difficulties must be arranged in a reasonable spread. The lowest difficulty must be at least a Hard.
  2. One osu!catch difficulty may be included. It must be at least an Insane difficulty.

The phrasing for both of these is potentially confusing. At least a hard? Does that mean it has to be at least as easy as a hard or as difficult as a hard? Is it allowed to be easier or harder? I can't tell.
Same goes for the osu!catch rule, except with insane.
pishifat
osu! Paragon
3,812 posts
Joined August 2013
Topic Starter
pishifat

HappyRocket88 wrote:

Will it be fine to have a Normal difficulty which is above 2 stars now? As they're no star limits for the lowest difficulty, what would be the requirements to be accepted as a Normal and not labeled as an Advanced?
p/6054268 the bottom of this thread covers that. star limit will no longer be a thing to worry about, so long as it fits within other boundaries

HappyRocket88 wrote:

Is it possible to rank a map with a diff of 11 stars now? Just as it was aimed for be played as tag 4?
tag 4 is so irrelevant now that we thought it wouldnt even be necessary to mention. they already break half the rules/guidelines on the standard-specific ranking criteria lol

Noffy wrote:

The phrasing for both of these is potentially confusing.
yeah, we'll probably go with xexxar's wording there, since it is much clearer + clarifying the difficulty levelthing
celerih
617 posts
Joined July 2014
celerih

pishifat wrote:

Mapsets cannot include more than 8 total difficulties of a single game-mode. The highest difficulty of a game-mode is not required to fit within a reasonable spread, so long as no levels of difficulty are skipped.
While I understand that this rule was put into place to avoid huge pointless spreads, I don't think this is a good idea. There are plenty of large sets where every difficulty is able to bring something new and show off it's own creative way to interpret a song. Part of something great about mapping is how differently same songs can be approached, and there are sets that are able to pull it off amazingly.

  1. Camellia - crystallized
  2. Kana Nishino - Sweet Dreams (11t dnb mix)
  3. Lite Show Magic (t+pazolite vs C-Show) - Crack Traxxxx
  4. M2U & NICODE feat. Guriri & Lucy - Myosotis
  5. GRANRODEO - Can Do (TV Size)
I'm not very good with wordings for this type of thing, but a change allowing large mapsets with difficulties having clear and distinct characteristics between them to get ranked, instead of samey insanes and extras, would be a good change to the proposed ranking criteria.

In addition,

pishifat wrote:

Songs/maps cannot be modified to reach the minimum drain time. Abusing the 5 minute limitation removes its intended purpose. Types of abuse include:
  1. Lowering a song’s BPM
  2. Looping portions of a song
  3. Adding sounds before/after a song begins/ends
  4. Extending spinners/sliders over inaudible sounds
  5. Manually removing breaks
What does this mean for songs compilation? Are those still allowed?
Last edited by celerih , edited 1 time in total.
unko
517 posts
Joined March 2014
unko
not this difficulty limiting crap again
Arrival
1,418 posts
Joined June 2012
Arrival

pishifat wrote:

Single-mode mapsets must include a reasonable spread of at least two difficulties. The lowest difficulty must be at least a Normal which complies with their respective mode’s difficulty-specific ranking criteria.
So this suggest that the previous star rating limit at 2 is removed to something more lenient as long as it fits a Normal-level density right ?
Fubukicat
970 posts
Joined February 2012
Fubukicat
hi, uh here is something I guess ( focusing on the mania aspect of them, cause i have no clue how the others work tbh)

Songs/maps cannot be modified to reach the minimum drain time. Abusing the 5 minute limitation removes its intended purpose. Types of abuse include:

Lowering a song’s BPM
Looping portions of a song
Adding sounds before/after a song begins/ends
Extending spinners/sliders over inaudible sounds
Manually removing breaks

I personally think that might be a problem if the song time is 5 min but drain time appears to be 4:59 ,
as in that one second of drain time that trolls you and makes you rethink your existence because the song is actually 5 min it's sad : (
with the things above you can do nothing about it and just potentially lead to either make a full spread or give up the song entirely
less likely the first option tho :ç

Mapsets cannot include more than 8 total difficulties of a single game-mode. The highest difficulty of a game-mode is not required to fit within a reasonable spread, so long as no levels of difficulty are skipped.

As for this one,
let's say we do use the same key but map two spread in two really different style that both has 5 diffs each , well we cant
it happend before on a mapset wich had the good idea to make two different spread for two really different playstyle, and eventho we could make two maps for that
I just find it really questionable, as it's the same person and it's their idea so why not , just there is no real reason 'in that specific case' ,it's not like seeing 42 extras or something
UndeadCapulet
1,100 posts
Joined April 2013
UndeadCapulet
exciting new news

will make a big post soon
AruOtta
1,303 posts
Joined May 2012
AruOtta

pishifat wrote:

  1. Mapsets cannot include more than 8 total difficulties of a single game-mode. The highest difficulty of a game-mode is not required to fit within a reasonable spread, so long as no levels of difficulty are skipped.
I don't really see why this is a rule, the only benefit would be that there is less modding to do for the map.

For exemple, I wanted to make a set that started from Easy and ended with a 8,5* diff (in standard), and having low gaps of difficulty between 2 diffs (because it would be more enjoyable for players). But, if it's a rule, there's no way to change that (except going for love) and I don't understand why.

Maybe there should be a rule (or maybe a guideline) about having too much difficulties with quite the same star rating, but not if it's a reasonable spread.
I hope I was clear enough
Strategas
1,378 posts
Joined July 2013
Strategas

pishifat wrote:

Mapsets cannot include more than 8 total difficulties of a single game-mode. The highest difficulty of a game-mode is not required to fit within a reasonable spread, so long as no levels of difficulty are skipped.
"levels of difficulty" refers to normal/hard/insane/expert or just normal/hard/insane? question is - are normal->hard->insane->ultra spreads gonna be allowed since ultra is still an X icon
Natsu
8,076 posts
Joined September 2012
Natsu
Songs/maps cannot be modified to reach the minimum drain time.

mm what about things like adding a copy of the chorus?

Mapsets cannot include more than 8 total difficulties of a single game-mode. The highest difficulty of a game-mode is not required to fit within a reasonable spread, so long as no levels of difficulty are skipped.


Hey seemss you guys never listen to the community tbh, limiting the number of diffs just do more bad than good and you already know how much the community disagree with this.

On the other side, having a spread 2,0 normal 3,2, hard 4,5 Insane 5,3 Extra and 8 stars ultra, just ruin the spreads lol, I don't think is a good change in any way, rip 6 stars extras

Just remember the last time that this got proposed: p/4892052

Avoid incomprehensible username combinations to indicate possession of a collaborative guest difficulty

things Like Pantsu aren't allowed anymore? (pan and natsu)
Nivrad00
556 posts
Joined October 2012
Nivrad00
I agree with everyone about the 8-diff limit, especially in cases of mania sets with multiple keymodes. If you include two keymodes, the greatest amount of diffs per keymode is 4; and if you include four keymodes, the greatest amount of diffs per keymode is 2. Whether it's reasonable to have over 8 standard diffs or over 8 4k diffs can be debated, but I definitely think this rule should at least be edited to allow more diffs in the case of multiple keymodes.
Nao Tomori
osu! Alumni
3,107 posts
Joined December 2014
Nao Tomori
Songs cannot be modified to reach the minimum drain time.
I don't see the point of this. Nobody is going to want to map full spreads for 4:40 songs, and this will not have that effect. Instead you'll just get a bunch of people who won't try and rank their songs they like, since finding mods / BNs for such a big drain time is near impossible for non-BN/QAT/famous mapper type people.
Additionally, this is practically unenforceable, you can just do something like add in some random hi-hat track at the end and call it your remix and upload it anyway.

edit: this is also worded in a way that means that you can't make songs compilations. is this intended?
Mapsets cannot include more than 8 total difficulties of a single game mode.
I don't see the purpose of this rule. It's just making people split their map spreads up, which as we can tell by the enormous popularity of sets like Zen Zen Zense, No title, and Hitorigoto, is pretty dumb. Again, this rule just seems like it's opposing more maps being ranked for no reason, since splitting sets up = more diffs/mods/BN checks etc = harder to rank things.
The highest difficulty of a game-mode is not required to fit within a reasonable spread, so long as no levels of difficulty are skipped.
What you end up with here is that someone will map their 8 star super hard diff that nobody can play, a 2.2 star normal, a 3.5 star hard and then a 4.5 star insane. Which leaves nothing for all the people in between, which is completely opposite to what spread rules are supposed to do in the first place.
Last edited by Nao Tomori , edited 1 time in total.
Loctav
Popcorn Fairy
4,496 posts
Joined February 2009
Loctav

Nivrad00 wrote:

I agree with everyone about the 8-diff limit, especially in cases of mania sets with multiple keymodes. If you include two keymodes, the greatest amount of diffs per keymode is 4; and if you include four keymodes, the greatest amount of diffs per keymode is 2. Whether it's reasonable to have over 8 standard diffs or over 8 4k diffs can be debated, but I definitely think this rule should at least be edited to allow more diffs in the case of multiple keymodes.
Game-mode: osu!, osu!taiko, osu!catch, and each of osu!mania’s key counts are considered individual game-modes.
???????
Nivrad00
556 posts
Joined October 2012
Nivrad00
My bad, I didn't read the definition of game-mode
Seni
715 posts
Joined August 2014
Seni
no change to the retarded 5 min rule. no change to people cutting full songs to be 1-2 min long which is just about the most disgusting thing you can possibly do with a song

nice draft
anna apple
1,256 posts
Joined March 2014
anna apple
thoughts

pishifat wrote:

Mapsets cannot include more than 8 total difficulties of a single game-mode. The highest difficulty of a game-mode is not required to fit within a reasonable spread, so long as no levels of difficulty are skipped. how will this make maps more accessible to people? I think it won't. Some spreads can't get really hard and there are lots of difficulty techniques to grow between few amount of difficulties. This cap makes spreads like these be much harder to accomplish properly AND I think nobody will care to try to accomplish them since highest diff is not required to fit within a spread.
A mapset host must have equal or more drain time mapped than any guest difficulty mappers. This is to provide credit where credit is due. Drain times for collaborative difficulties must be listed in the creator’s words for via storyboarding. what part of mapping is hitsounding? this should be defined if its considered or not and how much its considered to avoid confusion.
Avoid incomprehensible username combinations to indicate possession of a collaborative guest difficulty. If it’s unclear whose usernames are combined, simplification is recommended. this is really ambiguous
Usernames indicating possession of a guest difficulty should be consistent between multiple mapsets. Varying nicknames for one user makes interpreting who created a difficulty confusing. I know this is a guideline because of name changes, but in this event there are usually links in the description to the creators profile in case of ambiguity, and usually anyone who really cares checks there. Though does this mean if the gd is NOT indicated in the diff name it will be a problem also?
Hydria
1,247 posts
Joined April 2011
Hydria

pishifat wrote:

hi hey I'm here to mod your draft to sort out clarifications as well as point out potential issues

Common terms


Mapset
  1. Game-mode: osu!, osu!taiko, osu!catch, and each of osu!mania’s key counts are considered individual game-modes. and the entire osu!mania community goes "what" as this is the first time in 5 years they've ever been referred to as individual game modes.

Spread


Rules

All rules are exactly that: RULES. They are NOT guidelines and may NOT be broken under ANY circumstance.

  1. Single-mode mapsets must include a reasonable spread of at least two difficulties. The lowest difficulty must be at least a Normal which complies with their respective mode’s difficulty-specific ranking criteria. the use of the term "at least a Normal" can be quite confusing for new modders as it doesn't indicate a direction. Saying "The lowest difficulty must be a normal or easier" would be better clarification. This holds true for the below points as well.
  2. Hybrid mapsets without osu!standard difficulties must include a reasonable spread of at least two difficulties per mode. The lowest difficulty must be at least a Normal which does not break any difficulty-specific guidelines. ^
  3. If a hybrid mapset includes osu!standard difficulties...
    1. A reasonable spread of at least two osu!standard difficulties must be included. The lowest difficulty must be at least a Normal which does not break any difficulty-specific guidelines. ^
    2. Converted difficulties must form a reasonable spread. For example, a mapset with Easy and Normal osu!standard difficulties and an Insane osu!catch difficulty is not permitted. One or more additional difficulties may need to be added to fill the gap. See this with rule D send out conflicting messages when first read. "Oh you can't have an Insane with an Easy/Normal oh but rule D says it can be Insane and lower." I understand that this is for normal/hard converted spreads but better clarification should be used.
    3. Any two osu!taiko or osu!mania difficulties must be arranged in a reasonable spread. The lowest difficulty must be at least a Hard. same wording thing as first point
    4. One osu!catch difficulty may be included. It must be at least an Insane difficulty. extending from rule B, this should most likely read something along the lines of "One osu!catch difficulty may be included. It must be a hard or easier unless the converted osu!standard set is a normal &
      hard spread (and any other acceptable combinations), to which an insane diff would be allowed." This might sound somewhat confusing in itself, but it's at least less ambiguous and not conflicting as the current set of rules.
  4. Mapsets must have a minimum drain time of 30 seconds. This ensures each ranked map has a practical play-time.
  5. Marathons must have a minimum drain time of 5 minutes. This excludes especially long mapsets from requiring a spread of difficulties. does the new website have a fix for maps that end with a slider/spinner? that would be really nice
  6. Songs/maps cannot be modified to reach the minimum drain time. Abusing the 5 minute limitation removes its intended purpose. Types of abuse include:
    1. Lowering a song’s BPM
    2. Looping portions of a song
    3. Adding sounds before/after a song begins/ends so I get that these 3 here are meant to be there to preserve audio accuracy to the actual song at hand, but I feel like if they're used in the correct way (sound being slowed down enough to change how the song could be interpreted for instance,
      having perfect loops of a song to the point where it just sounds like an Extended Mix for lack of a better term, and well we have Pavor Nocturnus [2015] for the last point) it could potentially work but then that runs the risk of always being a case by case basis which is something you want to avoid as a ranking criteria council, so I'll leave this one up to further discussion
    4. Extending spinners/sliders over inaudible sounds this is fine
    5. Manually removing breaks this is already against the RC afaik (aka editing the .osu file)
  7. Mapsets cannot include more than 8 total difficulties of a single game-mode. The highest difficulty of a game-mode is not required to fit within a reasonable spread, so long as no levels of difficulty are skipped. see no I can't get behind this. I understand that mapsets containing 9 or more diffs are rare, but they're common enough that they already have a place in the game, and whilst I've seen people argue the point that "if they're so similar/different they should just be in separate spreads" but most people won't do that, definitely considering that most people that have spreads that high are mostly guest difficulties, and so the mappers of the guest difficulties in a very high number of scenarios will just not bother to rank another spread of that map as it's not in their interest, so what you're doing is taking a 12 diff spread, and instead of splitting it into 2 6 spread mapsets like you want, you'll just cut 4 diffs from the set, that's reality. Also in spreads that have a high SR top diff, an 8 diff count is very limiting in spread terms. For example, stuff like Doppelganger barely fits into the 8 diff criteria and its spread isn't exactly overdoing, in fact, any less and it would be questionably unrankable due to gaps in the SR. Please, for the love of god, reconsider this before you make a terrible mistake and injure potential massive projects, or even just decent sets throughout, I can't see any upside to this rule.
  8. Excluding a mapset’s hardest difficulty, a difficulty’s name must accurately indicate its level of difficulty. Conventional difficulty names vary between modes, but any set of clearly progressive difficulty names can be alternatively used. Additionally, a mapset’s hardest difficulty should not use a name misrepresentative of its difficulty. woo case by case basis on hardest difficulty naming woo time to argue over why a diffname is relevant woo (in reality no one is going to follow this rule after like 2 weeks)
  9. A difficulty’s name must be unrelated to a username. Guest difficulties, however, may indicate possession with its mappers’ username or nickname. (e.g. Guest Mapper’s Insane).
  10. Additionally, a mapset host cannot indicate possession in a difficulty’s name. (e.g. Mapset Host’s Insane). Metadata conflicts caused by mapping a song multiple times are an exception.
  11. A mapset host must have equal or more drain time mapped than any guest difficulty mappers. This is to provide credit where credit is due. Drain times for collaborative difficulties must be listed in the creator’s words for via storyboarding. <--- this wording at the end makes no sense. "for via storyboarding"? does that mean that the people's names have to be included in a storyboard? have to be included in the description for potential storyboarding?
    what if the mapset owner doesn't plan to have a storyboard is it still necessary then? I can't contribute more to this until it's rewritten to make more sense.
Guidelines

Guidelines may be violated under exceptional circumstances. These exceptional circumstances must be warranted by an exhaustive explanation as of why the guideline has been violated and why not violating it will interfere with the overall quality of the creation.

  1. Avoid incomprehensible username combinations to indicate possession of a collaborative guest difficulty. If it’s unclear whose usernames are combined, simplification is recommended.
  2. Avoid difficulty names with descriptive elements not clearly related to a guest difficulty mapper or a level of difficulty. (e.g. Mapper’s Tragic Love Extra). A mapset’s hardest difficulty may use free naming, but clear and appropriate relation to its song is recommended. Debatable being in the guidelines section considering you put a strict use of hardest diff naming in the rules
  3. Usernames indicating possession of a guest difficulty should be consistent between multiple mapsets. Varying nicknames for one user makes interpreting who created a difficulty confusing. I guess if a user changes name then a drastic name change is fine, might want to add that as an exception.
  4. Avoid unicode characters in a difficulty’s name. These can cause errors with the beatmap submission system and problems for certain users when appearing in chat.


Once again, this draft is not the final result, as we need the feedback of the community first before getting it officially bumped into the wiki! It will be up to discussion for two weeks and close on the 18th of June! feedback given kds plz xd
Sieg
3,981 posts
Joined February 2012
Sieg
Single-mode mapsets must include a reasonable spread of at least two difficulties. The lowest difficulty must be at least a Normal which complies with their respective mode’s difficulty-specific ranking criteria.

Hybrid mapsets without osu!standard difficulties must include a reasonable spread of at least two difficulties per mode. The lowest difficulty must be at least a Normal which does not break any difficulty-specific guidelines.
Shouldn't be the same?
Jerry
osu! Alumni
1,153 posts
Joined December 2010
Jerry
hi

pishifat wrote:

A mapset host must have equal or more drain time mapped than any guest difficulty mappers. This is to provide credit where credit is due. Drain times for collaborative difficulties must be listed in the creator’s words for via storyboarding.
uhm is that a typo on "or via storyboarding"? Because the "for" can cause quite a bit of a confusion since many people (the ones that I've asked, at least) will think that collaborations now requires storyboards that states each mapper's part lol


pishifat wrote:

Mapsets cannot include more than 8 total difficulties of a single game-mode. The highest difficulty of a game-mode is not required to fit within a reasonable spread, so long as no levels of difficulty are skipped.
Like what celerih said earlier, many songs can be interpreted in a lot of different ways due to the sheer number of different mapping styles that you can see varying from mapper to mapper. While I do see some sense to why this has been proposed (avoiding unnecessarily large mapsets and all that), I strongly think that this rule should be adjusted in a more flexible way and that it should only be applied in a case-by-case basis.

For example, let's say Mapper A has 9 guest difficulties on their map (along with maybe 4 of their own diffs), and each of these difficulties have a very distinct style to them that makes all of them unique and fun in their own way. And then we have Mapper B who also has 9 guest difficulties, however all 9 of them feels and plays in almost the same way that you can't really tell one apart from the other.
In this case, Mapper A's map should be allowed to pass through after being checked by the BNG/QATs while Mapper B will be asked to follow the "8 diff limit rule" that's stated above and remove some of their difficulties in order to proceed with the ranking process.

This seems like a better approach to this issue in my opinion rather than just completely disallowing mapsets to exceed a certain difficulty amount.
UndeadCapulet
1,100 posts
Joined April 2013
UndeadCapulet

update wrote:

Songs/maps cannot be modified to reach the minimum drain time. Abusing the 5 minute limitation removes its intended purpose.
If a mapper is going to go out of their way to have the mp3 edited to reach marathon length, this rule won't get them to make a full spread. This rule is choosing between "have a 5 minute map for a song that isn't 5 minutes" and "have no map". As long as the actual play experience of the map is still pleasant, it is better to have the map than not have the map. There is never anything bad about having more maps.
There are plenty of songs that really don't fit for a full mapspread, but just barely don't reach minimum drain time. My 4:45 300BPM death metal anthem is not going to make for a good experience as a Normal difficulty. Requiring a mapper to design a full spread for certain songs that clearly don't need it isn't beneficial to rank quality.
To be honest this rule is almost unenforceable anyway since the line between user remix and mp3 extending is super blurry. Right now I can't add sounds to the beginning or end, but I CAN add sounds consistently throughout the mp3, call it an Edit ver. and rank it that way. People will always find loopholes to unnecessary rules.
It's also unclear whether separate songs are included in the "adding sounds to the end of the mp3" or not. Song compilations can be considered unrankable with this current wording.

update wrote:

Mapsets cannot include more than 8 total difficulties of a single game-mode. The highest difficulty of a game-mode is not required to fit within a reasonable spread, so long as no levels of difficulty are skipped.
This idea has already been very vocally rejected by the community. Players love big sets because it gives lots of different difficulties in one easy-to-download bundle instead of having to dig through a bunch of different sets. Mappers love big sets because they create lots of community interaction and they are fun to build up with friends. They are harder to find bn's for but that's the mappers' risk to take.
There is literally no downside to more maps in ranked.

update wrote:

A mapset host must have equal or more drain time mapped than any guest difficulty mappers. This is to provide credit where credit is due. Drain times for collaborative difficulties must be listed in the creator’s words for via storyboarding.
change "for" to "or"
The mapset owner is in charge of not just mapping, but frequently also asking for every guest diff, finding mods, hitsounding, storyboarding, timing, balancing spread, and ensuring every other included difficulty is rankable. The set owner basically always deserves credit regardless of how much work they actually did.
If the guest difficulty mappers are okay giving mapset credit to a mapper who did "less work" than them, there should be no reason to not let them. If they weren't okay with it they wouldn't be in the set.

update wrote:

Usernames indicating possession of a guest difficulty should be consistent between multiple mapsets. Varying nicknames for one user makes interpreting who created a difficulty confusing.
If the mapper doesn't care whether they're credited or not then that's entirely on them. The real username will be in tags and description anyway for users to find them so it doesn't matter what nickname they use in the diff name. This is just a "No Fun Allowed" rule that doesn't affect map quality in any way.

To be honest this can be said about every diffname rule/guideline. Is it really necessary to police them so strictly? With the new star rating the map difficulty can be somewhat reasonably determined without any difficulty name, so I don't see any reason to carry over old rules.
mangomizer
120 posts
Joined September 2012
mangomizer
Not really here to offer my thoughts, more to just make sure things are clear unambiguous, ie. do the generic grammar and sense check cuz I'm bored.

Mod Box

pishifat wrote:

hi

Spread


Rules

All rules are exactly that: RULES. They are NOT guidelines and may NOT be broken under ANY circumstance.

  1. Single-mode mapsets must include a reasonable spread of at least two difficulties. The lowest difficulty must be at least a Normal which complies with their respective mode’s difficulty-specific ranking criteria. The wording of "at least" is really confusing. I'm guessing you are saying that it is Normal or lower, but "at least" suggests "more", which you could interpret as being harder than Normal (rip Easy difficulties, because they are apparently unrankable now lol). I propose an alternative wording, "must be no higher than X difficulty"/"must not be higher than X diff". PLEASE FIX FOR ALL INSTANCES!
  2. Hybrid mapsets without osu!standard difficulties must include a reasonable spread of at least two difficulties per mode. The lowest difficulty Does this apply to both difficulties, or a singular difficulty? must be at least a Normal which does not break any difficulty-specific guidelines.
  3. If a hybrid mapset includes osu!standard difficulties...
    1. A reasonable spread of at least two osu!standard difficulties must be included. The lowest difficulty must be at least a Normal which does not break any difficulty-specific guidelines.
    2. Converted difficulties must form a reasonable spread. For example, a mapset with Easy and Normal osu!standard difficulties and an Insane osu!catch difficulty is not permitted. One or more additional difficulties may need to be added to fill the gap.
    3. Any two osu!taiko or osu!mania difficulties must be arranged in a reasonable spread. The lowest difficulty must be at least a Hard.
    4. One osu!catch difficulty may be included. It must be at least an Insane difficulty.
  4. Mapsets must have a minimum drain time of 30 seconds. This ensures each ranked map has a practical play-time.
  5. Marathons must have a minimum drain time of 5 minutes. This excludes especially long mapsets from requiring a spread of difficulties.
  6. Songs/maps cannot be modified to reach the minimum drain time. Abusing the 5 minute limitation removes its intended purpose. Types of abuse include:
    1. Lowering a song’s BPM
    2. Looping portions of a song
    3. Adding sounds before/after a song begins/ends
    4. Extending spinners/sliders over inaudible sounds
    5. Manually removing breaks
  7. Mapsets cannot include more than 8 total difficulties of a single game-mode. The highest difficulty of a game-mode is not required to fit within a reasonable spread, so long as no levels of difficulty are skipped. OKOKOK HOLD ON. If the highest difficulty is not bound by reasonable spread, so I can theoretically map an Easy bundled with an Insane? This conflicts with an earlier rule which says that both difficulties must adhere to a "reasonable spread". So which rule here takes precedence?
  8. Excluding a mapset’s hardest difficulty, a difficulty’s name must accurately indicate its level of difficulty. Conventional difficulty names vary between modes, but any set of clearly progressive difficulty names can be alternatively used. Additionally, a mapset’s hardest difficulty should not use a name misrepresentative of its difficulty.
  9. A difficulty’s name must be unrelated to a username. Guest difficulties, however, may indicate possession with its mappers’ username or nickname. (e.g. Guest Mapper’s Insane).
  10. Additionally, a mapset host cannot indicate possession in a difficulty’s name. (e.g. Mapset Host’s Insane). Metadata conflicts caused by mapping a song multiple times are an exception.
  11. A mapset host must have equal or more drain time mapped than any guest difficulty mappers. This is to provide credit where credit is due. Drain times for collaborative difficulties must be listed in the creator’s words for via storyboarding.
Guidelines

Guidelines may be violated under exceptional circumstances. These exceptional circumstances must be warranted by an exhaustive explanation as of why the guideline has been violated and why not violating it will interfere with the overall quality of the creation.

  1. Avoid incomprehensible username combinations to indicate possession of a collaborative guest difficulty. If it’s unclear whose usernames are combined, simplification is recommended.
  2. Avoid difficulty names with descriptive elements not clearly related to a guest difficulty mapper or a level of difficulty. (e.g. Mapper’s Tragic Love Extra). A mapset’s hardest difficulty may use free naming, but clear and appropriate relation to its song is recommended.
  3. Usernames indicating possession of a guest difficulty should be consistent between multiple mapsets. Varying nicknames for one user makes interpreting who created a difficulty confusing.
  4. Avoid unicode characters in a difficulty’s name. These can cause errors with the beatmap submission system and problems for certain users when appearing in chat.


Once again, this draft is not the final result, as we need the feedback of the community first before getting it officially bumped into the wiki! It will be up to discussion for two weeks and close on the 18th of June!
Ephemeral
Inland Empire
3,946 posts
Joined April 2009
Ephemeral
I ported OP rulesets with wording and adjustments (minor) to markdown:

https://gist.github.com/Ephemeralis/4aa ... a1a1ebc7c7

The hybrid set section in particular is extremely confusing in the OP and needs adjustment.
Okoayu
Nomination Assessment Team / Elite Nominator
4,959 posts
Joined May 2012
Okoayu
this is like modding someone's map by giving them a .osu file and saying here i modded

can you retry with actual reasoning for your changes thanks!
Ephemeral
Inland Empire
3,946 posts
Joined April 2009
Ephemeral
The adjustments are in wording only. The spirit of them should be pretty much identical, at least as far as I could discern them.
xxdeathx
2,661 posts
Joined July 2013
xxdeathx
I'm strongly opposed to the 8 difficulty limit per game mode rule and would not like to see it put into practice at all, but I have to hear your reasoning behind it. What good will it do that outweighs the current state?
Haskorion
533 posts
Joined September 2013
Haskorion
Just remove the wording of "the lowest difficulty" and make into something like "at least 1of the difficulties must be a normal (or hard/insane for standard hybrid wordings)".

Also rules should be read with the other rules in context. "Reasonable spread" applies to the other rules.
A "E N H I X" spread should be the base where additional X difficulties still follow the spread apart from the highest one.
On the lower end "E N" and "N H" spreads are the minimum spreads for any set to be elegible for ranking.
VINXIS
Featured Artist
3,161 posts
Joined April 2014
VINXIS
Broz y is the # of diffs allowed thing back in the Talkz when we all said No

like srs whos mans is this.
Okoayu
Nomination Assessment Team / Elite Nominator
4,959 posts
Joined May 2012
Okoayu
took me 3 tries to read the vinxis sentence

the only thing im against is not telling us what you find unclear and just dumping a text here which makes me go through everything again to compare what you changed and then guess why
Shad0w1and
1,586 posts
Joined April 2011
Shad0w1and
I just wonder if we could think about why people extend their mp3.
people are not afraid to make 1 or 2 more difficulties, but worried about making 5 more diffculties. would be nice if we could think about smt like this: t/432739

and for

xxdeathx wrote:

I'm strongly opposed to the 8 difficulty limit per game mode rule and would not like to see it put into practice at all, but I have to hear your reasoning behind it. What good will it do that outweighs the current state?
Agreed, better as it is.
Syph
Beatmap Nominator
848 posts
Joined August 2014
Syph
is there ANY benefit to limiting the amount of difficulties a set can have? seriously i don't understand lol
Krfawy
1,374 posts
Joined March 2012
Krfawy
The limitation is not a good idea because of three reasons:

  1. Firstly, not in all cases but when the bpm is higher (around 200 or higher) it is really hard to make a good spread like here https://osu.ppy.sh/s/326920 without creating so many diffs. Like it or not, but with the limitation you're going to have to worse spreads, not better.
  2. Secondly, isn't it becoming a tradition for everyone to actually enjoy multiple-difficulties sets? Once again, like it or not but the more maps we have, the bigger chance is we can find something that actually plays better for us. With the limitation you're only going to make people pissed because they will have to spend more time on creating their own sets for the song only because "someone created this rule so I can't give my difficulty to someone who can actually make their own good set. No, I am forced to actually learn myself how to create a full spread even thouhg I am unable to map myself anything different than Insanes." Like, really, do you want to tell me that you want to see 20 sets for one anime song instead of 1 set with many diffs? At least less people would be annoyed with the fact that the ranked section is being cluttered with the same song, wouldn't they?
  3. Thirdly, do I really have to remind someone that there are too many mapping styles that differ? Even that is an excuse to make monster sets: to show the variety. Surely, I have no idea how about other modes but the standard mode is really generous when it comes to the mapping styles and so should this stay this way.
About exdending/looping the song: ehem, but what is exactly wrong with it? If the song is beautiful/nice/meaningful/whatever the reason is but it's too short, then why not extending/looping it so it can become ranked? The rule says the drain time must be at least 30 seconds so people actually put their effort to meet the criteria? Surely, sometimes their piece of work might be off because they are not that skilled at editing mp3s but there can always be someone else to actually cut it for them in a professional way. So, again, why would that be bad to actually edit the mp3s?

And I have a question: the new rulest says that the lowest diff is supposed to be a Normal, at least. Does it mean that the 1.99-star rule is going to be removed or will that stay?
Ephemeral
Inland Empire
3,946 posts
Joined April 2009
Ephemeral
I don't really understand the difficulty amount limitation either. I vaguely recall us having this conversation a few years ago and it being conclusively decided that installing such a limit would essentially force set dispersion in most cases and dissuade people from working with each other for big, cohesive sets, instead opting to risk submission "fatigue" by splitting such things up into multiple smaller sets.

Curious to know what the rationale behind that one is.
Xinnoh
Elite Mapper
1,962 posts
Joined April 2014
Xinnoh
If a hybrid mapset includes osu!standard difficulties...

One osu!catch difficulty may be included. It must be at least an Insane difficulty.
so this means that overdose and deluge can be included without rain? that's how i'm interpreting it + no longer allowed to gd salads/platter/cup
Caput Mortuum
1,854 posts
Joined March 2016
Caput Mortuum
rip extending mp3

also what does "Manually removing breaks" mean?
Ephemeral
Inland Empire
3,946 posts
Joined April 2009
Ephemeral
I pried into the rationale behind the number of difficulties in a set limitation and found out that it was added with the following in mind:

There are concerns about a growing number of sets that are essentially uninspired ENHI spreads worked to the barest minimum quality required to actually pass the RC, and then those sets being padded and inflated with huge numbers of GD insanes or Extra/Experts.

The problem this causes is pretty big - the fat stack of similar yet subtly (or vastly) different tiered difficulties causes lots of fatigue in the review stage, namely the modders and the BN responsible for providing critical feedback during the modding stage. This has been supported by developer opinion in the past - namely that significantly smaller technical limits were suggested by the developers (5, if memory serves) which were too restrictive, and the attempt to limit this to 8 in the RC now is an effort to avoid such a restrictive limit in the future. It is also an attempt to encourage beatmap sets to be more "cohesive" and possessed of design and concept from top to bottom instead of simply encouraging sets which are constructed to a bare minimum to satisfy spread requirements and are then widely bloated at the higher end of the difficulty tiers.

Conversely, the set limitation can also be argued to squash a great deal of creative freedom and work that goes into these sets.

Arguably, the "displaced" difficulties from these sets have two places to go - into a new mapset of the same track which has another ENHI prepared to house them, a prospect which is often too great for many mappers to consider for themselves as adhering to spread is often a matter of "the RC requires me to do this so I have to". The difficulties are probably going to be "recycled" into the ranking cycle as new sets which require even more oversight during the review stage by virtue of having the four required ENHI difficulties to accompany them in the first place, often times equally as "uninspired" as the same set they came from. There's only so many ways you can spin the lower levels of difficulty in mapping.

That, or they simply get trashed and are never actually played again.

Either way, the players are left with fewer options. The systemic "friction" involved in imposing such a limitation is something that I ultimately think is toxic for the overall process, even if there is some merit in limiting it to improve the conditions of the reviewing phase and to encourage more cohesive creative design in beatmap sets as a whole.

Food for thought, I guess.
Izzywing
osu! Alumni
2,251 posts
Joined March 2016
Izzywing
It is also an attempt to encourage beatmap sets to be more "cohesive" and possessed of design and concept from top to bottom
Why is doing this vs. not doing this an indication of higher quality in a mapset? People don't play every difficulty of the spread from bottom to top, they play what skill level they are at. I don't look at a set, notice how the hard and insane have some cool concept that's similar between them and think "wow that's neat" because I'm not going to be playing both diffs; if I'm at the level where I play Insanes, I'm only going to really be playing the insane.

The point about having barely rankable ENHI's and then a bunch of extras tacked on is a legitimate one, but how is this going to solve that? Isn't the solution a higher quality standard for ENHIs? Regarding this, anyway, you basically summed up why this isn't a solution to that problem in your post, Ephemeral, and I agree with it wholeheartedly; the extra diffs are just going to end up on another set with probably even lazier ENHI's because the only reason they're making those diffs is because the ranking criteria forces them to.

The 8 diff limit seems really stupid to me. I've yet to be convinced why this change needs to occur. I don't know much about the development side of this game, just the mapping side, so if there's a legitimate reason from that standpoint, maybe I'd understand. But I haven't see it yet.

EDIT - Just wanna say that I agree with literally everything in UndeadCapulet's post.
Ephemeral
Inland Empire
3,946 posts
Joined April 2009
Ephemeral
The main train of thought behind that is that people will construct all levels of their mapset with the same gimmick or theme in mind, thus producing a set which organically traverses difficulty without it needing to be a requirement, perse. Like, you introduce a concept in Easy at a toddler level and expand it in concert with the song's motif more and more thoroughly at higher difficulty levels, so that playing the set from E through to I reveals a deliberate progression.

Though as you say, barely anyone plays the sets bottom-up like that anyway.
Nao Tomori
osu! Alumni
3,107 posts
Joined December 2014
Nao Tomori
I have some issues regarding that construction stuff. First off, you're saying the fact that people might have DIFFERENT gimmicks means that each one is mutually exclusive to the set.
You're also ignoring the fact that gimmicks implemented at an insane / extra level very likely are simply not possible to do at a normal / hard level. Good luck making a hard to read Normal because your Extra is based on stacked sliders and confusing patterns (a la Kuroko's Extra, or Lasse's recent Extra on Streaming Heart) without a bunch of people jumping on you bitching about guidelines designed to make sure your normal is NOT hard to read.
Finally, regarding what you say at the review stage is true, about a bunch of people just sticking a ton of identical extras on a set. But that issue is not with the Ranking Criteria but rather with the BNs that keep nominating them, or rather who do not mind nominating them. While I personally don't support adding additional identical maps of the same song to the ranked system (which I hope more BNs start agreeing with) that issue should NOT be handled at the rankability level because there is nothing inherently wrong with similar maps of the same song being ranked, and how similar they are in the first place is inherently very subjective.

Not to sound jaded or anything, but we've seen time and time again that devs/very-high-up-staff can be quite disconnected from the mapping community as it exists at this time, and basing rules off of their judgement seems a bit odd.
Ephemeral
Inland Empire
3,946 posts
Joined April 2009
Ephemeral
I'm not saying I agree with any of this, mind, I'm just saying what I believe to be the some of the prevailing arguments of that school of thought.

We have discussions like this to debate these issues and find solutions to them. This is just a proposal, after all - nothing in it is concrete at the moment.
Nakano Itsuki
1,218 posts
Joined July 2014
Nakano Itsuki
The number of difficulties rule was very very heavily rejected by the community back when they were first introduced like, a year ago? Can't remember when it was.
Anyway I don't really see any benefit. Sure, there might be sets that might have a spread of lower quality, but then it's hurting sets with actually quality and thought put into them. Dunno if I'm allowed to link example mapsets here but I'm sure my opinion would be understood anyway.

Also, regarding the mp3 extension rule, I don't really see a reason to deny extensions if the mp3 is properly extended without any badly trimmed sections; plus I'd rather see an extension of a song rather than a crude 1-2 min cut. Imo those are even worse than extending an mp3 just by a few seconds. (Also the song compilations stuff that others have pointed out already so ya)

Shad0w1and's proposal seems interesting enough for consideration imo.
Loctav
Popcorn Fairy
4,496 posts
Joined February 2009
Loctav

StarrStyx wrote:

Also, regarding the mp3 extension rule, I don't really see a reason to deny extensions if the mp3 is properly extended without any badly trimmed sections; plus I'd rather see an extension of a song rather than a crude 1-2 min cut. Imo those are even worse than extending an mp3 just by a few seconds. (Also the song compilations stuff that others have pointed out already so ya)
In my personal opinion, either way is bad, cutting and extending alike. Extending stuff by a few seconds just to adhere to personal laziness to avoid mapping a fullspread and making the set accessible to the entire playerbase (instead of just to a small minority that can even play most Approvals, which are mostly Extreme level) is contradicting some core philosophy we have been trying to defend for years (make stuff accessible and enjoyable for the majority, not just to only the top players). Like it or not, but those who play Extreme level maps are in the sheer minority. Encouraging to circumvent the necessity to produce content for the majority of our playerbase is unwanted, because with that new people will eventually not find content they like and they can play.

While the argument usually pops up that there are "already loads of mid level content to play", don't forget that newcomers to this game usually look for music they already know. And as time goes on, new music gets produced and therefore new osu beatmaps on these tracks. If these tracks are all available but only for the top tier player segment, it discourages newcomers to actually stay in osu! and enjoy it with us together. (because if you are into the hottest newest Trash Metal album and beatmaps exists of that in osu!, I doubt you can be bothered to play 500 Anime opening maps first before you can even remotely play what you actually came for)

Cutting songs is horrible, too, especially if done poorly (like literally just cutting it) and is also some sort of epitome of laziness, because mapping a full spread on 4.49 minutes long songs is definitely tedious.

I understand both sides of the argument and I can relate, like every mapper, with the laziness that comes along with mapping fullspreads, but the limits get stretched more and more. First someone extends a 4.58 minutes song to 5 minutes, then they start with 4:50, then 4:40 and as longer this goes, we have 2:00 songs just being looped five times just to avoid the fullspread. This shouldn't be a thing, in my opinion.
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