"Not something you should be able to delete"

Well, gee, guess what? You can right now. When osz2 comes around, then it does. I don't mind either way, but stop complaining about everyone that doesn't play the game like you do.

CXu wrote:

"Not something you should be able to delete"

Well, gee, guess what? You can right now. When osz2 comes around, then it does. I don't mind either way, but stop complaining about everyone that doesn't play the game like you do.

"Boohoo, someone has a different opinion than me ?"

Well, gee, guess what ? I'll complain about cheaters all I want.

Okay, have fun with complaining about "cheaters", I'm off.

Not in the slightest is that cheating. Obnoxious annoying SBs and or videos (OR SKINS, dont forget those, I delete at least 40% of them too) shouldn't exist in the first place.

Unkind wrote:

Not in the slightest is that cheating. Obnoxious annoying SBs and or videos (OR SKINS, dont forget those, I delete at least 40% of them too) shouldn't exist in the first place.

That's why they should be removed before ranking a map, if they're really that bad - wasn't this even in the ranking criterias?

LOL

Glass wrote:

LOL

/thread

Glass wrote:

LOL

Nice sum-up even if the thread creator had stated he need serious discussion. (Because the 10th poll started 9 months ago is totally not serious enough)

One possible extreme solution would be increase the system requirements so every computer that's able to play this game at least can playing video/SB with ease. and remove the no-vid option altogether. But I can see this won't work at all.

It's like trying to do an exam whilst sitting next to someone who clicks their pen constantly, except the exam is the beatmap, and the pen clicking is a series of seizure-inducing strobes, consternation and dancing chibis.

Lets define cheating first...
On my opinion cheating is a way to gain an advantage by killing/avoiding certain parts of the gameplay.
For osu! I think gameplay involves clicking and aiming to a song-rythm and nothing else.
SB's, Skins and Videos are only an asthetic feature, provided by peppy, to make beatmaps more interesting and fun to play, hence why those elements are accessible through the "Design"-tab from the editor.
It's just design not involved in the gameplay itself therefore, avoiding it, isn't cheating.

However!
While deleting SB's and stuff isn't cheating, I think doing so is a pure disgrace because the mapper took the time to make those SB's and you just remove them because the beatmap is harder to play with?
I generally love any beatmap with a Storyboard, Skin, etc. because for me, it means the mapper was really engaged with his map and I got the privilege to enjoy it.

For videos:
Most of them are music-videos downloaded from youtube or elsewhere. Disabling those shouldn't hurt anybody. (And Mappers shouldn't care about their downloaded youtube-video just being disabled).
Exception of course: Beatmap-unique-videos, guess why.

tl;dr: If your PC has the power for SB's, don't touch them or accept the fact, that you're a hypocrite for removing content somebody else made for you while still playing that map.

Again, that's just my opinion.
I'm not a mapper but if I would make a map and some people just remove content I made for them, I would feel bad, somehow.

Ijah wrote:

I vote for it to stay the same as it is, here are a few god examples of why being able to remove SBs/Vids is good.

1. frequently, mappers include "strobe" effects in their storyboards.

Which may be addressed... in the talk about osz2, there's mention of the possibility of a special layer for flashes, which would make it possible to add a switch to the game. At least I hope this is true, because I have some photo sensitivity, and I'd really miss some maps if they had to be played with flashes. If it is, then this reason to remove SBs is gone... you can remove flashes now, and toggle them later.

For example the following beatmaps for me are pretty much unplayable without finishing with at least a headache:
http://osu.ppy.sh/b/80863 - Continuous white pulsing is horrible
http://osu.ppy.sh/b/63499 - ^
http://osu.ppy.sh/b/27473 - Insane has a horrible black/white fast strobe that literally makes my eyes hurt
Etc...

Not to belittle your examples, because I know it's hard to come up with the best ones on short notice... but the first two have never caused me any problem, because it isn't actually "white pulsing". What it is slightly brighter and blurrier... a bit annoying and quite distracting, but not enough of a "flash" (I wouldn't call these flashes at all) in a well lit room to cause an issue (and any one with photo sensitivity should quickly learn to play games in a well lit room to reduce the impact... it does have the disadvantage though of washing out contrast a bit, which can make hard to see colour combos even worse). That last example has potential (bursts were too short or the wrong frequency to affect me much, but could certainly get someone else)... that's actual white strobing.

Another example: Faith is for the Transient People (http://osu.ppy.sh/s/12119) hit me particularly hard. It's the reason I started fixing SB flashes.

2. Nightcore maps and alike all usually contain very suggestive/possibly NSFW backgrounds making it hard for the player to play in any semi public space.

And there's been talk about changing those backgrounds to meet the new tighter standard. So this might also be a non-reason... can remove it now, will be fixed later. Personally I'd like an option to keep the current images... I don't play in public, and I've come to associate the images to the maps.

3. Background videos (avi/flv) make most people lose around 15~20% of max FPS making the player's accuracy decrease and induce lag spikes at random.
They shouldn't even be allowed imo.

No problem with them being allowed if they can be turned off with No Video. And although the argument is well established for allowing that to reduce the system requirements to play, there is another reason... it allows photo sensitive people to turn off videos with flashes in them. Although I suppose that videos could be tagged on a case by case basis and tied to the same toggle as storyboard flashes... but keeping No Video kills both birds with one stone.

The one remaining issue I'd have (given the above are solved) would be bad combo colours. Combo colours and flashes have been the only reasons I've altered maps, save one map where I got annoyed because the combo break sound was skinned to be silent. That's simply not a sound that should be removed... the fact that it might make noise at a point when it might sound bad is completely appropriate for when the player makes a mistake.

I don't give a fuck about what others think about my playstyle, I'll continue to replace every background with a gray background.

I think everyone here should have the right to play a map however they want. If a SB/BG/Skin takes away the pleasure of playing the map, then they should have all rights to delete it to be able to enjoy it more. As for cheating/unfair behaviour, everyone can access the beatmap folder and change whatever they want, so it's not "unfair behaviour" at all, and as for cheating... i'm not even going to bother explaining that one.

Personally i've never had any problems with BG's/SB's (maybe very very few ones) but as for skins, i can hardly play the game if there's a custom skin on the beatmap, so i usually end up deleting those.

This map distracts me and that's why I delete every bg/sb/.osb/skin from the songs... I play with the black ground in every map

Seriously what is this topic about? I thought spam section was somewhere else.

There is no rule against it, so no "cheating" or what so ever. If you like it, use it, you don't like it, don't use it. It is not that only few people can toggle it on/off. Everyone can so who cares if you have white or black background. If you like a skin, you use it, you don't call it a cheat if you use a custom skin. No video is even an option in the game itself so calling that cheating is just bullshit. It's the same as if you would call all players with a mouse unfair players/cheaters because you play with arrow keys. PRO!

I always play with Video, BG, SB and the map specific skin. I mean: they are part fo the map! Deleting any map elements is like deleting hitobjects for me: "wtf is this stream *deleting* haha now I can fc that shit".
Just because something in the map makes it harder to pass a it doesn't mean you have to delete it. As a mapper I would feel hurted since I put much work in this and did anything to improve the players experience for nothing. If you want to play steril maps, do them yourself.
Anyway it is neither cheating nor unfair behaviour since everyone got the option to do so, but I think people are looking to much on score and not on fun.

Tshemmp wrote:

I always play with Video, BG, SB and the map specific skin. I mean: they are part fo the map! Deleting any map elements is like deleting hitobjects for me: "wtf is this stream *deleting* haha now I can fc that shit".
Just because something in the map makes it harder to pass a it doesn't mean you have to delete it. As a mapper I would feel hurted since I put much work in this and did anything to improve the players experience for nothing. If you want to play steril maps, do them yourself.
Anyway it is neither cheating nor unfair behaviour since everyone got the option to do so, but I think people are looking to much on score and not on fun.

Hardrock + Hidden
Flashlight / Flashlight + Hidden
Double time + Hidden

If that is not "deleting" hitobjects...

People who want to play for fun, they play for fun. People who play for score, they are in the ranking. Also fun for me is also getting a higher score, so I do play more or less for fun when I do delete all the stuff about the map.

Ok let's do this:

Video = enter youtube, download it and include it in the map. No real work done.
BG = google images. No real work done.
SB = Usually some work here is actually done, and honestly I don't always delete SBs because they are not THAT annoying (sometimes) and they may even be useful (x2 warning).

Therefore the only real complaint from the pov of "mapper's work" should be the SB, which then again even peppy offered the community a toggle to disable it so... no cheating at all kthx.

PD: Playing maps with black BG and your own skin is the most damn fun thing you can do in this game.

What really rustles my jimmies is when a song has a video that cannot be disabled.

This map is completely unplayable for me unless I disable everything because it brings my FPS lower than vsync (not that I use vsync).

Having shader effects disabled takes away a lot of the SB elements too (afaik at least, people complain about maps I didn't have any problem with and the description of what shader effects do suggests so).

I don't delete anything or change anything though because I'm lazy as hell.

"Taking the time" to make something doesn't give anyone the right to shove them down our throats. We already have our own skin for the game, we shouldn't be obligated to use YOURS because you "took your time" to do it. I personally don't delete BGs and SBs most of the time, but skins are almost always an annoyance. And to be completely honest with you guys, most custom skins mappers make are terrible.

But yeah, if you want to make all those things so your map can look pretty, go ahead, just don't complain when some people delete those elements cause they don't like it. Remember, not everyone is annoyed by these things, so people will inevitably always see your work. And like Wishy said, the only thing that really can be considered hard work when making map elements is the SB.

I dont think that removing and/or novid are cheating, coz especially with videos sometimes osu hates my PC...
also happened rarely with SBs
and removing bgs/styleelements is no cheating too coz there are some (cant find a description) bad BGs or style elements
http://osu.ppy.sh/s/8073
-> the spinner in here is just a piece of shit and the bg is not better...

I think that you should add options to turn off SB beatmap skin and so on without always deleting, coz I am allways running after the mappers adding the sliderborder when they make s akin or removing it when they have no skin
coz if that happens everything is interfering with my skin

Further discussion in this topic is pointless with osz2 you wont be able to access the song folder of any ranked map at all.
Speculations of what will happen with osz2 are only speculations, there's no need to discuss something that isn't even out yet and is still being tested out.

There was a possible feature request here regarding a SB toggle, but you guys messed it up and it ended up getting locked.

If a Skin/Background/SB is really that interfering with gameplay it shouldn't be ranked, i still wonder why beatmappers want to use combo colors that are in the background rather than combo colors that constrast the background.

Videos got a toggle because of certain video codecs requiring more computer power and not taking into account the minimum requirements to play osu!.

If a beatmap makes your computer lag down (with all elements on) and your computer meets the minimum requirements it shouldnt be getting ranked either.

NSFW content for beatmaps is already being discussed here so please direct your opinions regarding this issue there.

With all that in mind, all points of discussion of this thread arent necessary, if you want to give out your opinion on osz2, wait until osz2 is out and running, rather than speculate when it isnt even out, thread locked.