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.
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.