The problem with the difficulty system is simple, The stars do nothing other than saying "it MIGHT be a map you can play, but it might not". It also is deemed useless after you hit hards, as anything that is 5 stars can be right in your playing level or it could literally be the hardest song in the game. The star ranking is inaccurate and uninformative, so why don't we change it?

Here is a system I thought up, with the most important factor being on the left, going right.

Points per minute + approach rate/slider speed/circle size + Draining Time (leaving out life difficulty)

It is points per minute because a song like Late in Autuum (4:01) gives you a score of 3.6m on normal, and Hatsune Miku no Shoushitsu (2:22) on hard gives you roughly the same points. One song is A LOT more difficult than the other, so normal scoring doesn't gauge right. If we take the score per minute of both songs, we get the following.

Lets just add Strangeprogram's PPM in here too.

Late in Autuum's PPM: 898k
Hatsune Miku no Shoushitsu's PPM: 1.63m
Strangeprogram's PPM: 6m

It's not a perfect line of difficulty increase, but Late in Autuum's Normal is a 3 star and both of the others are 5 stars. Because it is not a perfect line, I decided to add the other factors already used in the rating process, plus the time in the song. Most of the time, if a song has a fast slider speed and approach rate, it is harder to read and is harder to play, and endurance is hard if there is a lot of draining time. These would have minimal effects, but it could raise or lower the rank by a little bit.

And now, how the rankings would be shown. In order to keep with the stars already used in skins, the number of stars will simply be doubled and made smaller, and this is how it would be figured out.

Star ratings are first found by the PPM, with a range of 50k to 5m Points per Minute. Anything below 50k could have a beginner tag on it with half a star, and anything above 5m would have an expert tag on it with 10 stars. After the rank has been found by the PPM, the other factors could raise or lower the rank by one and a half stars.

"Why do we need to change something that isn't broken?"
If it wasn't broken, Strangeprogram would not be a close rank to Made of Fire's normal+, with only a half star in between.

So please, if you are sick of the star difficulty system, or atleast you were as a newbie trying to find maps for your rise to greatness, help me out and show your support for this idea. Feel free to suggest changes if you think something in this system would work better a different way.

Most of us kinda know the star rating system is whack already. Although I guess it's good you're coming up with a suggestion

The problem being that the score is calculated off the star rating

Just raise the diff limit to something like 10 stars and make some system where players/mods/etc can decide how hard a map is before getting it ranked, don't know if it's really possible to get an accurate automatic star rating system since high AR doesn't mean hard, high leech doesn't mean impossible, and small circles don't mean the map's gonna be hard to FC.

Wishy22 wrote:

Just raise the diff limit to something like 10 stars and make some system where players/mods/etc can decide how hard a map is before getting it ranked, don't know if it's really possible to get an accurate automatic star rating system since high AR doesn't mean hard, high leech doesn't mean impossible, and small circles don't mean the map's gonna be hard to FC.

Exactly why instead of taking a huge role in the ranking process in my method, it takes a back seat and can only change a rank a little bit.

Huh, I didn't know that score was calculated off of the Difficulty Stars.

...Anyway, I was thinking a totally Linear System with no limit might work. Each Difficulty Criteria would add up and that would determine how many stars a song would have. Some songs would have 4 Stars, some 5... and then there would be 15 Star Maps. No difficulty confusion there.

Sakura Hana wrote:

The problem being that the score is calculated off the star rating

Objects per minute! :3
That wouldn't involve jumps though, or fast sliders.
Something like Average Objects per minute * Slider Velocity * Average Distance Spacing * HP Drain * OD = Difficulty or something?

If that isn't possible, then maybe BAT/MAT/User-defined star difficulty might be a good enough idea.

Set star rating by yourself

I agree with this, the fact that most have 2 5-star maps and one has double the score of the other. So something needs to be done. I think points per minute is a fine idea.

i think the system is good because it can read the difficulty itself. but maybe different ratings? 1-30 stars?
and i dont know if a mapper can judge the difficulty correct

Hanyuu wrote:

but maybe different ratings? 1-30 stars?

this

To tell the truth, I've never really taken the star rating for granted because Hard and Insane is always 5 Stars. So you have a point there. But normally, I'd read the difficulty in the bracket set by the mapper and I'd expect what to expect.

Why not a Elo rating like system for comparing difficulties. This way we can promise a relative difficulty between songs.