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[Proposal] Spread requirements based on song length

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:0 i didnt like it but 7 page discussion is huh bye GL
timemon
Reminder that you can still make a full spread marathon. It is just a choice.
But if you want to map anything 4:59 or lower, it is a rule.

I'm all for more choices for mappers who want to undertake on longer songs. And remember if you enjoy mapping full spread, you can continue to do that

From my experience my N/H makes up half of the playcounts. So I will continue to make them regardless of this proposal.
negusver
I think people are missing a lot of new incentives a system like the proposed could bring. Not only would the reduced workload enable experienced mappers make 4-4:59 songs avaible to a broader playerbase (since instead of one topdiff+R3 or the map not being ranked at all, the spread would actually be directed towards a 4 and 5* playerbase). 4 min hard or normal only spreads would be a great opportunity for new mappers to get their first map ranked more easily. That's great, since new mappers are most often mapping to share their own taste in music - thus broadening the ground of genres/artists being playable in the game.
So not only would 4-4:59 songs finally be mappable/playable for experienced mappers/players - also the mapping community could potentially grow more easily in terms of numbers in mappers and artists being ranked.
One downside I could see would be that a lot of fresh music/artists new players search for wouldn't be immediately playable for them - but apart from that being some motivation to become better, I think you could nudge new players into playing appropriately difficult maps by well placed highlighted sets or some algorithm to suggest maps based on their previous plays.

TL;DR: Total number of maps would increase, as well as the growth rate of the mapping community, since it'd be easier accessible for new mappers. New artists/genres would be mapped by new people trying to get their music into the game - often with hard or normal diffs (since easier rankable). New players will more likely find ranked songs they're looking for.
qwr
Agreed.
pimp
this proposal would just allow people to be more lazy, and would reduce even more the content targeted for the newer players. it's a regression for the ranking criteria rules. (but i think 4:30~4:45 length approval would be okay actually)

if the player enjoys the game he will play any length. let's not assume new players would only want to play short songs.

if the mapper is not interested in mapping a full set alone, he won't, doesn't matter if the song is 4 minutes long or only 30 seconds long (https://osu.ppy.sh/s/721039 https://osu.ppy.sh/s/663138) (https://osu.ppy.sh/s/158023 https://osu.ppy.sh/s/336471). why worry about this when you can have guest mappers completing the spread?

doesn't matter if getting mods/icons for longer songs is more difficult. if you want to rank longer songs it's expected that you will have to work harder to make it happen.

UndeadCapulet wrote:

and now people are even starting to use r3 music box extensions to avoid making them
this is the real problem, compilation maps should not be allowed anymore, or at least have reasonable restrictions, like allowing only compilations of the same album/artist/tv show/movie and don't allow compilations of less than 3 songs / less than 7 minutes, only allow compilations to be mapped as the same difficulty level each song ...
tatatat
This doesn't stop people from making r3 music box extensions. It'd only give them a very small incentive not to do it. Anyone lazy enough will still extend the mp3. What needs to happens is extensions repeating the same song need to be banned. Extensions are the problem. Lazy mappers are the problem. Sure this proposal might encourage 1 or 2 people not to extend their mp3, but other lazy people still will. If a song is 4:30, its 4:30. It shouldn't become 5:00 just because you're too lazy. Another problem is the BNs willing to rank it.
Zonthem
I didn't read the whole tread (sorry) but the main issue behind the reduction of diffs in mapsets is newbies can't enjoy long musics because no one whould map it with a low SR, am i right ?

Well what is we ask both BNs and QATs to rank (and nominate and so one) an equivalent number of high and low diffs ? I mean, mapping is a thing, ranking is another and there're already way much more Ex diffs maps than everything else, you can find countless sets having only one Ex diff not designed to be rank.

Imo we should let mappers do what they want and require BNs and QATs to regulate everything. Seems like actually BNs are obligated to nominate good mapsets even if they don't like the music, that's false but from my point of view it looks like it.

And also ban R3 musics, especially combined with dragonforce
LwL

tatatat wrote:

This doesn't stop people from making r3 music box extensions. It'd only give them a very small incentive not to do it. Anyone lazy enough will still extend the mp3. What needs to happens is extensions repeating the same song need to be banned. Extensions are the problem. Lazy mappers are the problem. Sure this proposal might encourage 1 or 2 people not to extend their mp3, but other lazy people still will. If a song is 4:30, its 4:30. It shouldn't become 5:00 just because you're too lazy. Another problem is the BNs willing to rank it.


Honestly I think this is the wrong way to look at it. The R3 extensions aren't getting popular because all these mappers are super lazy and want to rank the song with no effort, they are getting popular because they want to rank it, but just don't want to put in the effort to make a million diffs for a proper spread leading up to a 7*. Sure they will still exist afterwards, but 1) There will be less of them and 2) tons of maps that would otherwise never get ranked might now have a better chance since they'd just require one or two additional diffs.

The point of this proposal also shouldn't be a crusade against R3 extensions, it should be to fix the underlying issue. "Banning mp3 extensions" is just fixing the symptoms and also completely unenforcable (it's now My Sweet Maiden (Riven's R3 Music Box Remix)), not an extension right?

Banning mp3 extensions, even if there was some way to make it work, will, if anything, have the opposite effect, getting even less 4:30 songs ranked because extending them is no longer an option.
CXu
Saying people should stop being lazy helps absolutely no one. You can't force people to "not be lazy", and what's being "lazy" or not is in relation to yourself anyway. A new mapper might've spent a week perfecting their tv size 4 diff mapset, meanwhile an experienced mapper could probably mindlessly make that same mapset in a few hours, have a better map in the end, and still have been "lazy" because they didn't spend the time making the best map they can. Decisions to the RC should not be decided on things like "they're lazy so just make them not lazy"; it's not like you're going to change their behavior with that. Rather, it should focus on what it can do to maximize the amount of content for all players, and this includes more experienced players as well.

If the concern is new players, then we can be sure that calmer 4:30min songs that would fit a NH spread better than a HX spread would still be ranked. If the details of the current proposal doesn't sound good, then suggesting changes that could work such as you still require a normal, or the spread needs to be 3 diff, or whatever, or maybe you believe the current situation is good as it is because x,y,z, but saying "no because they're just lazy" doesn't actually help the problem (if it is a problem) of less people mapping 4:30~4:59min songs, without extending them.
LwL

CXu wrote:

Saying people should stop being lazy helps absolutely no one. You can't force people to "not be lazy", and what's being "lazy" or not is in relation to yourself anyway. A new mapper might've spent a week perfecting their tv size 4 diff mapset, meanwhile an experienced mapper could probably mindlessly make that same mapset in a few hours, have a better map in the end, and still have been "lazy" because they didn't spend the time making the best map they can. Decisions to the RC should not be decided on things like "they're lazy so just make them not lazy"; it's not like you're going to change their behavior with that. Rather, it should focus on what it can do to maximize the amount of content for all players, and this includes more experienced players as well.

If the concern is new players, then we can be sure that calmer 4:30min songs that would fit a NH spread better than a HX spread would still be ranked. If the details of the current proposal doesn't sound good, then suggesting changes that could work such as you still require a normal, or the spread needs to be 3 diff, or whatever, or maybe you believe the current situation is good as it is because x,y,z, but saying "no because they're just lazy" doesn't actually help the problem (if it is a problem) of less people mapping 4:30~4:59min songs, without extending them.


I don't usually do this but

this.
pimp
once a map gets ranked it's expected that it will stay ranked for ever as long as the game is still alive, so just take your time to work on the map and stuff...

again, we can just include guest difficulties and tell the guest mapper to get at least one mod for his own difficulty/ask him to mod other difficulties. if you are able to make a very polished extra difficulty, there will be people interested in joining your mapset, and even if don't get that much attention you should be able to convince your friends to map a difficulty xD.

the truth is that most mappers don't even like to make low diffs. they will start finding excuses to not have to include them in their maps even on shorter songs if this kind of rule changes start to get applied.

lower diff's are way easier to do than hard and above... less objects, usually constant spacing, less rhythm variation...

i don't really have anything to suggest that could make the ranking process better than it currently is for longer songs, but i think this proposal would not fix anything and will create other problems, so yeah, just keep stuff the way it is... or just reduce a bit the minimum length required for approval maybe.
CXu

pimpG wrote:

i don't really have anything to suggest that could make the ranking process better than it currently is for longer songs, but i think this proposal would not fix anything and will create other problems, so yeah, just keep stuff the way it is... or just reduce a bit the minimum length required for approval maybe.
fwiw this proposal is basically a way to lower the minimum length requirement of approval, just not as a hard cut-off as it is right now, but instead in a more gradual matter.
Pennek
As I see it

Current System: Blatant cut-off --> Alienates a lot of mappers. (makes me not want to rank or map it at all, just because it's 4:30 or 4:50.)

New System: Gradual cutoff with a lower/difficulty spread

In general , there will be less workload for mappers who want to map long songs, which do not fit with the current Ranking Criteria. This also means that there will be more content for mappers to choose from, because as it is now, it can't be denied that some tracks just are a lot more troublesome to rank. This turns a lot of mappers off from ranking those songs (me included). If the changes are made, this will help introduce more new content to the game in general. BUT, this won't help new players as much, and it is undeniable that there will be less content for them as mappers who in the current system map 2-3 minute songs with a full spread, switch to longer songs that do not require a full spread.

This is a trade-off --> More content in general vs. Less content for new players. (how much less content is debatable)

Imo. this trade-off is fine. It isn't like everyone is just going to stop mapping their favorite anime TV-openings, their favorite FELT-songs and maps which are less than 3 minutes long. This will just bring more content for mappers to map, bring more new mappers in because they can map their favorite songs easier and bring more content to the game. If anything, not being able to play a song because you can only play Normals at the moment, and you have that one song you really like, which is a HIX-spread, should motivate you to become better at the game. I really don't understand why this has become an 8-page discussion. I fully support the proposal.
Akareh
I dislike mapping short vers/TV sizes, so I'm in favor of this, for what that may be worth.
As far as the cut goes, AncuL's proposal seems the most reasonable to me.

The song length proposal could also work if it was a gradual cut. Having NH be something like 2 minutes while I or X is 4:30 seems pretty unreasonable to me.
I could see something like a 2 minute N, a 3:smth H and a full 4:30 I work fine for a spread, though. We could maybe limit that via % of song that has to be mapped or something along those lines.

Still, more in favor of less difficulties but everything in the set having same length, personally.
pimp
if the drain time is <3:30 your set's lowest diff must be normal or lower
if the drain time is 3:30-4:30 your set's lowest diff must be hard or lower
if the drain time is 4:30-5min your set's lowest diff must be insane or lower
if the mapper picks a song that is 3 minutes long, he could easily eliminate the need of a normal difficulty by extending the song by 30 seconds, if he is not skilled enough to make a decent extention using only the original song he could just add harumachi clover to the mp3, there would be nothing preventing him from doing this... same applies for the other lengths to eliminate the need of the hard or insane...

unless more specific rules are added for compilations like i said, the hard cut-off will be the only reasonable way for dividing ranked and approval.

any song can be shortened if the mapper wants to do everything alone without guest difficulties.
Skubi
I agree
LwL

pimpG wrote:

unless more specific rules are added for compilations like i said, the hard cut-off will be the only reasonable way for dividing ranked and approval.

any song can be shortened if the mapper wants to do everything alone without guest difficulties.


But it would remove a lot of the incentive to do so. You can not reasonably regulate extensions because you can then just call it a remix and it's allowed (it could be left up to QAT discretion but that's just a recipe for drama tbh).

There's no benefit at having a hard cut off vs. a more gradual one. A hard cut-off makes certain song lengths far less desirable for mapping which is just bad for musical variety.

This isn't necessarily about making everything easier to rank (though I think that should be the way this goes), if it was "3 diffs for >4 mins, 2 diffs for >5 mins, 1 diff for >6mins" it'd still help with the problem, even though the workload for 5-6 minute maps would increase (by not that much if it just has to be one additional diff that's at least hard or below or something like that).
pimp
i don't even know why they allow compilations to get approved, osu! is probably the only relevant rhythm game that allows this... at least i don't remember seeing compilations in the other rhythm games i played.

if exploitable rules are added, people will exploit them the weirdest ways as possible. they already exploit the current hard cut-off. we should be thankful that we are even allowed to get maps approved with only one difficulty, because having a spread on every map ranked would be the best for the community in general and especially the new players...
AncuL

LwL wrote:

There's no benefit at having a hard cut off vs. a more gradual one. A hard cut-off makes certain song lengths far less desirable for mapping which is just bad for musical variety.

the first sentence is saying that there's no benefit while the second one tells that it has benefits. nice

PimpG wrote:

if the mapper picks a song that is 3 minutes long, he could easily eliminate the need of a normal difficulty by extending the song by 30 second

yea but by then there's less urge to do that. there's a difference between having to map 4 other diffs compared to 1
LwL

AncuL wrote:

LwL wrote:

There's no benefit at having a hard cut off vs. a more gradual one. A hard cut-off makes certain song lengths far less desirable for mapping which is just bad for musical variety.

the first sentence is saying that there's no benefit while the second one tells that it has benefits. nice


I don't see how having less variety is a benefit but ok
AncuL
I misunderstood sry
LwL

pimpG wrote:

because having a spread on every map ranked would be the best for the community in general and especially the new players...


I didn't see this before but I disagree with this almost entirely. Better for new players sure, hard to argue against that.

But overall? If that happened I can see myself losing interest in the game relatively quickly, it would mean very few long ranked maps, which happen to be the type I enjoy the most. It probably wouldn't even lead to more long difficulties ranked overall (making one diff for 5 different songs is a lot less tedious than 5 diffs for the same song), and the number of different songs at that length getting ranked would almost certainly decrease significantly.
pimp
was mostly refering to the players as "community in general", not the mappers

i don't want approval to be discontinued if that's what you were thinking
but i suppose having all songs mapped for every skill level would be the best thing from the staff's perspective, but they understand that mapping takes time, it's "voluntary work" so it gives no real reward for the content creators, and that's why the approval exists.
LwL
Yeah I can agree with that, in an ideal world every song would have a spread.
SenpaiKiseki
I'd say maps that are about 5-8 seconds short off of 300 seconds can be ranked on a case-to-case basis, but If someone did mp3 edits to extend it to barely hit this 5-8 seconds shortage, I feel like that shouldn't be rankable.

TL;DR being short 8 seconds makes me want to kill myself
qwr
Case-by-case basis is inviting people to complain about bias. Better to have a criteria everyone must follow.
Ambrew
I am absolutely behind this. I can say, with full confidence, that the extensions, mp3 editing, etc is based out of one thing: Laziness. It's stupid and completely pathetic. Seriously. This needs to STOP. How is this even allowed lol you guys are letting these esoteric people BEND the rules for the reasons that they're lazy, impatient or apathetic about making a full set. This is creating a CRISIS.

"it's his choice" "it's five minutes that's his choice"

His choice, his consequences.

This is a controversy amongst others that I feel is extremely perilous and actually quite sad. I could even conjecture that people who do this don't do it for the love of the music itself or that they genuinely care about the song, but that they want just "one map, one diff", say "It's 5 mins so I can get this ranked", and is even inviting other mappers to do the same. When I wanted to make a map of bassdrop Freaks 2018 Redrop version and tried to find people who to collab with, I was already aware it's only 4:30, but I was prepared to make a whole set. Mappers should realize THIS IS THE NORM. If this behavior continues, I feel like this kind of extending would increase to songs of 4 minute length, 3:30, and so on.

Say what you will, I firmly stand behind all my previous statements.
Krfawy
I will make it very clear that if my National Hangover Anthem aka Kac was looped to 4 minutes and people skipped mapping at least Normal difficulty for the song, I would be, putting it unbelievably lightly, pissed off to my very fucking death. If you make a spread, at least the standard one, and not a marathon map(set), then for God's sake, make it playable for noobs. We've already dropped the 1.99* star rating rule which is catastrophic in terms of how extreme so-called "easier" maps are nowadays and you want to take it to another level? God forbid, that is becoming a literal nonsense and pain in the back for the newer audience and I hope everyone agreeing on this issue starts thinking a little bit more soberly because that seems as if you all want to create only 5-10* content.

I'm crying for this proposal to die as soon as right now, I am not even going to hide how triggering that is.
LwL

Krfawy wrote:

I hope everyone agreeing on this issue starts thinking a little bit more soberly because that seems as if you all want to create only 5-10* content.


No, I want to create content I enjoy creating, and mapping the same song multiple times very rarely falls under that for me. And I'm most certainly not alone on this or we wouldn't see so many sets with 1 diff per mapper. And for many, mapping a long song probably invokes a similar feeling as most songs repeat themselves, which also makes it harder to fill a 4 minute set up with GDs in that manner.

Krfawy wrote:

I'm crying for this proposal to die as soon as right now, I am not even going to hide how triggering that is.


You can still force normals while helping with the problem if you just modify the precise rules a bit. It would still help as in terms of workload it's much less to map, say, N-I-X with the X being 6.5* or sth than a full spread that would almost certainly need an additional extra, or high star insane, as well as a hard.

Krfawy wrote:

I will make it very clear that if my National Hangover Anthem aka Kac was looped to 4 minutes and people skipped mapping at least Normal difficulty for the song, I would be, putting it unbelievably lightly, pissed off to my very fucking death.


And as it stands you could just loop the song to 5 minutes instead and map only one diff, yay so much better! The point of this proposal is precisely to reduce the excessive amount of looping that came up recently, because not having a gradual cutoff is just screaming for loops. The workload difference between N-H-I-X-X and N-I-X is decent, but if the first is 3:40 and the second is 4:10, it's not that bad. However having a 4:40 N-H-I-X-X spread vs. a 5:10 single diff is huge.
peppy
Hi I'm new to this thread.

I tend to agree with this direction. It is hard to map easier difficulties over longer periods of time because it is harder to keep things interesting.

The argument of not having enough beginner content doesn't really hold because we already have a huge library of easy difficulties.

We should probably also disallow extending songs for the only goal of hitting a length. Cutting shorter is fine; extending should not be.
Pachiru
thanks ppy
but if cutting a song is fine, why entending shouldn't be then?
Kyuunex
I agree with peppy.
including the part "Cutting shorter is fine"
peppy
Cutting shorter is done to make it more playable/suited to a rhythm game. Making longer is done to avoid mapping certain difficulties with basically no exception.
lewski

peppy wrote:

Cutting shorter is done to make it more playable/suited to a rhythm game. Making longer is done to avoid mapping certain difficulties with basically no exception.


Yeah, extending is almost always done just to hit five minutes, but I seriously doubt most people cut songs for any reason other than not wanting to map the whole thing lol
Mordred
People cut songs because they're lazy. Extension are done for the exact same reason, barely anyone likes to make a 4:59 spread
pimp

peppy wrote:

Making longer is done to avoid mapping certain difficulties with basically no exception.
are you just refering to mp3 loops?
including a song to the end of the mp3 counts as making longer or will it just be considered a "compilation"?
Kyuunex
before moving forward, we should decide what kind of extensions are a no-no.

are r3 ok? because it can be considered a compilation, one song after another.

another example are short ~29 second anime opening/ending songs, like Harumachi clover, where the song is under 30 seconds but mappers have been extending them to hit the 30 second mark.


as for cuts, i personally cut the song for playability and "not making the player bored" sake. Most songs have pretty much copy pasted rhythm.
The most common song structure is intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus (or refrain), verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge ("middle eight"), verse, chorus and outro, and then the song is pretty much over. pretty much copy paste with different vocals.

making a song shorter serves more purpose than just putting less work. in fact, it does not require that much work if i don't cut a song, i just copy paste items, change them up a little and etc.
Vacuous

Kyuunex wrote:

before moving forward, we should decide what kind of extensions are a no-no.

are r3 ok? because it can be considered a compilation, one song after another.

I'd say that r3 is not ok because in almost every circumstance where it has been put in a "compilation" it's been to extend a song past 5 min. If the compilation itself is all r3 music box songs that'd be fine but just pasting it onto a 4:40 song should not be acceptable imo
Nao Tomori
i think extending to meet 30s mark is different from meeting 5min mark. cuz otherwise its literally unrankable for 30s but for 5min its just to have less effort. extending to approval length with r3 or whatnot is what is being targeted here after all
Topic Starter
UndeadCapulet
eek thread derailing fast

@peppy thank you for your approval! will get the extension stuff drafted in soon

@everyone freaking out about extension ban, please do me a huge and favour and 1) reread the op, most reasons people have for extensions are irrelevant with this proposal, and 2) wait until the ban is drafted until you start heavily discussing, i already know all the things needed to consider like compilations, 30sec, 1sec extensions, etc. that will be accommodated for, it's just going to take some time for me to draft it up/oko to get back home from vacation to actually push it

things are happening now, i won't let those things hurt the game, just hold on
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