pishifat wrote:
if i were running osu and had i an interest in expanding its audience, i'd think this kind of change isnt very good. out of ranked maps selection, there would be a smaller fraction of content available for lowest level of players, alienating the potential future of hte game or something along those lines. the idea that new players are already alienated with 5+min songs, so being lenient with other lengths should be fine sounds more like a reason to remove approval from game dev perspective (which i'm not interested in doing).
But back in the days maps even shorter than 5min were approved (like The Big Black). Didn't really hurt the game's future now did it? More like the opposite considering how popular and iconic it became. Imagine having to map a full spread for that song. lol
Anyway, I do think that doing
something about this is a good idea, rather than leaving it as it is with .mp3 extensions becoming ever more popular.
What might indeed seem as a problem is that as a new player, I would hate it if I couldn't play, say, my favourite pop or metal song because it's like 3:30 in length and has no easy/normal diffs available for it.
However, as was said before, most new players don't like playing very long maps right off the bat. If you think about it, the most popular genres in this community are things like anime and electronic music, not pop and metal really, they're more niche.
If there is a pop or metal song they'd really like to play but can't quite reach because the lowest diff is a hard, it should motivate them to improve their skills in the game enough to play it. If the only genres of music they listen to are niche in this game, and they're completely unable to tolerate playing easier maps of genres they don't really listen to, I don't think they'd last as a community member for very long to begin with.
With that in mind, and as much as it feels weird to let go of these spread rules I've gotten used to over the years,
something needs to be done, and as long as nobody comes up with a better alternative, I'm supporting this one.