hi



the proposal below aims to clarify what is acceptable for Normal difficulties used as the lowest difficulties of osu! standard mapsets.

the proposal:

addition to the proposal:

(if amended, this addition would be its own wiki article linked to from the ranking criteria)

*refers to Normal difficulty guidelines on https://osu.ppy.sh/help/wiki/Ranking_Criteria/osu!

if it passes, this proposal would be stuck in the ranking criteria like so. this means rhythm-related guidelines are based around 180bpm songs and the glossary defines some complex words, as per the rest of the standard ranking criteria.

if any part of this proposal is concerning, please provide feedback in the thread. this draft will be up for community input for one week -- until February 3rd.

Bpm kinda plays a huge role in this... Yes for 90 vs 180 bpm it should be doubled or halved, but there's unclear ground on 220 bpm, 140 bpm or 1/3 snap it's kind of a gray area.

Imo should be more similar to the ctb RC where milliseconds is used instead of snaps. It draws a clear line on what is and isn't acceptable, and leaves less up to discuss on what is ok for what bpm.
https://osu.ppy.sh/help/wiki/Ranking_Cr ... tch#-salad

That aside, spreads on sets with double bpm don't really follow spread rules in the same way at all. Would be interested to see how the RC handles 260+ bpm.

try to avoid stuff like specific sv settings, even tho it states that it's assumed the song is 180bpm, people end up rly confused about it, going on to even make statements like that sv is too high for 90bpm. since there's no way to judge what sv setting should be avoided for non180bpm songs, its better to leave it a bit vaguer, with something like "avoid relatively high sv settings" or smth idk

everything else seems ok, as long as its clear these are still guidelines and not rules

tbh some of these should be determined on a case-by-case basis, similar to Sinnoh’s concerns.

they would be added as guidelines, which indeed means that they will be determined on case-by-case basis...

i honestly think that most of these will be broken at a very frequent basis (especially points 2 and 3) that it's mostly a futile effort to use these specific rhythm restrictions as a "middle ground"..

most players will be able to play current normals in less than an hour of playtime anyway so this guideline proposal wouldnt really be helping players either

given that these guidelines only apply to a narrow, even if most common, tempo range, this entire endeavor seems fruitless to me. the RC quite clearly needs to be *and is* adaptable; it's up to the BNs to determine on a case-by-case level if such difficulties are suitable for beginner players.. so where and why does this quantification come in? for music with odd rhythms theses guidelines will be broken, and some of them even encourage rhythm choices that don't follow the music in favor of vague "beginner-friendly" ideas.

the RC is becoming far too bloated with vague rules about what is and isn't good in mapping, or what is and isn't suitable for the ranked section. its discouraging innovation, creativity, and new-ness in the ranked section. these rules implicate that there is a correct and very narrow way you may map rhythms and difficulty in the lowest difficulty of a beatmap when in reality there are many approaches you may have. a very high ratio of sliders-to-circles will make maps easier, and so will sparse rhythm selections with a higher ratio of circles to sliders. for maps with odd rhythms (i.e.: songs in "1/3", songs with predominantly 3/4 rhythms, songs with literal constant 1/2 [see pitch fucker], songs in x/8 time signatures, songs far outside the common bpm range, etc.) these rules *should* be broken.

all of these guidelines have cases where it would be in the best interest of the map to break them, and will have to be treated on a case-by-case interest given the inherently subjective role the BNs play, so why are these rules necessary if they will likely never be pointed to? there is no way to quantify perfectly what a "suitable" normal difficulty is, especially when it comes to rhythm choice. difficulty values and/or slider velocity choices are far more sensible as guidelines and have far more 'objective' value.

Sinnoh wrote:

clearly scale by bpm. double bpm stuff sucks

last time this was brought up, rc guys were opposed to it. it does make things easier to follow though so it could be worth discussing again, especially since the guys below your post also think it makes guidelines unclear

dsco wrote:

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valid concerns here. BNs should determine if a diff is suitable as the lowest diff case-by-case, i agree, though that kind of falls apart when there's nothing keeping BNs generally on the same page. the rc dictates what nominators can/can't rank, so if the rc says diffs with constant 1/2 rhythm, high spacing, and fast slider velocity are ok for rank, then there's a problem with the ranking criteria (which as you correctly said is because of how vague a lot of its content is). like for example, your hard diff for pitch fucker is technically okay as the lowest difficulty now that the 2 star rule is gone, while it's not beginner friendly considering it's uhh... a hard diff.

this proposal basically says "don't use rhythm that's too dense, spacing that's too high, or slider velocity that's too high for a conventional beginner-friendly normal" with values comparable to most normals as reference. it's not about good/bad mapping, but rather mapping that's more intense/straining than what newer players can handle. the hope for this is to not be as vague as the current normal diff guidelines, which only go to the extent of saying "use occasional 1/2 rhythms on normals" with no reference to spacing or sv, therefore allowing just about anything on a lowest diff.

inevitably, there are gonna be situations that don't align with the guideline examples (like the 3/4 based songs you mentioned), though not specifying anything about beginner-friendly lowest diffs because of those exceptions results in more vagueness. this could be somewhat better if scaling bpm were taken into account more clearly, though it definitely wouldn't be perfect

that last point probably applies to the other concern about the rc restricting too much about how to map normals now, but i really don't think this proposal is going to affect that (however other parts of the rc are definitely guilty). if a map is designed unconventionally and breaks some of these guidelines while being beginner-friendly, it could pass. if it's deemed too extreme, an easy could be added. if it's conventional, it most likely should be following the guidelines because it might be too difficult, or again, there should be a lower diff

hopefully these explanations make it clearer as to why this proposal is more than vague rc bloat. will be getting thoughts from other ubkrc people too.

Mishima Yurara wrote:

rhythm guidelines broken frequently, especially 2 and 3

most players will be able to play current normals in less than an hour of playtime anyway so this guideline proposal wouldnt really be helping players either

im not really sure about the first thing. the rhythm guidelines are based on like, the maximum rhythm density most ranked normal difficulties use, so if there are normal diffs that break these frequently with 5+ consecutive 1/2 sliders or 3+ measure 1/2 chains, i'd be interested in seeing them

as for the second thing, i also agree, but the new rule permits normal difficulties way harder than most current normals, which is where the problem is. most current normals fit within the proposed guidelines

It feels like some of these responses are forgetting that these are supposed to just be guidelines. They're not supposed to restrict creativity, and they are expected to be broken under special circumstances. These guidelines are supposed to give a general rule of thumb to what you should aim for in a lowest-diff Normal, rather than drawing hard lines on what is and isn't allowed.

Yes there may or may not be a time when spamming 1/2 sliders over two measures is suitable. But for most cases, it probably isn't, and especially so for the lowest diff in a set.

The current RC and guidelines don't really outline what is suitable for the lowest difficulty, so we needed some general middle ground for people to agree on for the regular cases, lest people start making things up and we start judging on vague unwritten rules.

Also note that even if these guidelines aren't too helpful to experienced mappers attempting to push boundaries, they will be most useful to newbie mappers who aren't sure what the expectations of mapping are.

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Judging based on millisecond timing would probably make things more clear cut, but I feel like it would transfer less well between tempos in standard mode. It feels better to base measurements on the number of beats, and scale for double or half BPM styled songs/maps. If you wanted to use maths and hard numbers to justify why 1/1 is too small of a gap at 270 BPM then you could, but it feels less clunky and more natural to just use beats for the guidelines.

shouldn't there be something about a limit to passive 1/2 too? or does it kinda tie in with the active 1/2 rhythm? feel like if it does become part of the guideline it should be about 3-4 (4's kinda pushing it tho lol)

this is basically saying "here are the bare minimums use common sense from there" because that's pretty much what a guideline is. these rules aren't restricting anything beyond the bare minimum of what the lowest diff normal should be, and from there its the BN's judgement as to whether the diff is appropriate. so it seems fine to me

One question, how can newbie play a map if easy don't have? 1,99 is really hard for newbie

closed for revision thanks everyone

we back

pretty much everyone who commented complained about a lack of clarity when a song's bpm isn't exactly 180. because of that, the guidelines were hard to interpret for other BPMs. this concern makes a lot of sense because uh... nobody's ever explicitly shown how ranking criteria BPM scaling stuff works -- especially around middling BPMs like 135 and 270 lol

as a solution, we created a short reference sheet explaining how we think about BPM scaling. like the rest of the proposal, its content is based on the upper limit of how mappers currently create their Normal difficulties.

here it is: https://gist.github.com/pishifat/14a624e79b70d4286e43777b9d2f0d24

if y'all find this okay, it would be linked on the ranking criteria as an external wiki article like this

with scaling info publicly accessible, it should be more obvious that a diff like this is acceptable, avoiding confusion from bns and qats regarding what would get dq'd and what would be rankable

(edited the op to include this as well)

reads nice enough, so long as people of power dont get too nitpicky about 121bpm having a stray 1/4 i think it's good

i think in general this is pretty good, since there are guidelines and can bend a decent amount. however, the line about objects overlapping seems a bit odd. since you acknowledged bpm scaling, i would honestly just remove that guideline and make an even more generic one, saying “ds should be more or less consistent and similar to the map’s sv.” i think this would be better for specifically lowest diff normals, without making bpm scaling a weird issue with overlaps and sv

Just saying but the lowest star rating should be set back, be it 2.00* or 1.99* (even tough it should be a bit lower than that) but please, now the mappers won't even try to make it easy enough as they only have to throw random 1/1 sliders with absurdely high spacing and they are going to set AR3-4 because it isn't as dense as Insane, and don't even try to tell me it is not happening as I am stating things in the most realistic way. As long as the star rating is not always the most reliable source of how the maps work we should have more factors than just a few words saying what a true easy/normal difficulty is. We used to make difficulties below 3* in the old star rating system, then that was 1.99* and even then the boundries have always been extended because the easy mappers and modders would say "okay it is acceptable" but it is not going to be the case anymore as the whole community is only going to keep going harder and harder and we will see normals being 3* in around a year time. I am being serious and grave at the very moment, no one is going to bother asking if maps are easy enough, mappers will say "hey, my map is high bpm so it is okay that I have 10 notes in a row as it makes perfect sense, it is countable and it fits the rhythm!", who cares that we have to simplify the map so it is both rhythmical AND beginner-friendly. Also, as we have some people working on the ranking criteria like in the United Knights stuff (I can't remember the whole name of the group, pardon me for that), how about we actually get people who are good at making and judging easier difficulties? Of course they will argue on what is acceptable and what is not, just like Okoratu and Irreversible may argue on what is appropriate for the Insane difficulties, it's the same analogy.

Moreover, that is sad but I do not believe that there are more people like ezek or Bakari that make more than 15% of the BNG and QAT groups counted together who understand how the lowest difficulty should look and play like, and some very particular QAT members know it very well from me first-hand. Just tell me how many mappers in the BNG and QAT we have like, let's say, MkGuh, me or the ones mentioned above who actually care to provide playable maps for the beginners and are in the QAT or in the BNG. Honestly, most of the people there do not care that much about the easies and normals as much as they care about the highest difficulties because "making the lowest difficulties is a pain and no one cares about them" just as said by pishifat. So, how about we change that?

Krfawy wrote:

Just saying but the lowest star rating should be set back, be it 2.00* or 1.99*

the sr thing was mainly removed because spread doesnt depend on sr but difficulty elements which is entirely different, putting it back would cause the same problem

Krfawy wrote:

how about we actually get people who are good at making and judging easier difficulties?

mapping and modding a pretty dissociated in terms of skill just like mapping and playing, you dont need to be a good mapper to be a good modder and vice versa. the qat and ranking criteria team thing are proficient at judging ( that is why they are in that position in the first place ), so they do not necessarily need to be good at making low diffs to judge what is acceptable or not

regarding the proposal, i have trouble understanding the third point. does it mean 1/2 sliders should not have more than 4 reverses in a row, or that the guideline applies regardless of whether or not the sliders have reverse arrows ? i think wording could be a bit more precise so as to avoid any potential confusion, especially for people using the rc as reference when modding beginners who are not necessarily familiar with basic low diff design

Krfawy wrote:

how about we actually get people who are good at making and judging easier difficulties?

"how about we actually get people who cannot/doesn't want to do this and neither wants to take this job"

This is how it sounds like and not how it works. The community preferably plays Normal and Insane difficulties, nothing you could change.

Hi! As someone who's makes a lot of stuff for newer players, Id like to add my two cents.
I think as long as it does a good job of undermapping higher difficulty patterns (or setting players up for what is present in higher difficulties) while not undermining the song itself, it should be fine. I dont know if this has been discussed or not, but I don't think star rating should be included in criteria for this just because I'm a firm believer that star rating isn't the best at judging difficulty. Especially since star rating is extra sensitive for lower difficulties in my experience. Just a bit of a notice though, I haven't read the thread because navigating is on mobile but I just thought I'd throw another stance into it to help!