hey so i know this is kinda a controversial topic but i think this really needs to be addressed.

for those unaware, the term "burai" is an osu slang for sliders whose bodies double back on themselves. these have been considered unrankable for years now because obscured sliderbodies are considered unsightreadable and can cause unfair combo breaks. however, as mapping has evolved more and more, it's become increasingly apparent that these sliders aren't actually that problematic for experienced players when they're integrated well.

there are many examples of burai sliders being completely readable by players:

1. various sliderart with intuitive paths based on the slidershape, such as letters and numbers, etc.
2. all aspire winners featured heavy use of burai sliders, and they were all considered readable and were popular among players and mappers
3. sliders with only tiny burai features are frequently allowed to be ranked atm despite being clear rule violations bc they don't inhibit gameplay at all
4. any slider without sliderticks is fcable on sightread bc players only need to click the sliderhead to hold combo, so those all practically don't inhibit gameplay
5. check out https://osu.ppy.sh/s/727568 02:25:154 (1) - for an example of a burai slider that's easily sightread and doesn't fit in any of the previous categories, showing lots of potential for exploration of a cool game mechanic being lost due to the current rc

we also know that soon burai sliders will actually be readable on sightread with osu!lazer, because a slider's body will disappear as the sliderball travels across it. so if there's still sliderbody behind the sliderball, it means it's a burai.

with all this considered, i really see no reason for these sliders to be locked behind a rule, especially when the current implementation of the rule is allowing for a lot of subjectivity, which is something hard rules should typically avoid. burai sliders were made unrankable in a time when players were way worse than they currently are. nowadays the rule seems outdated. i propose we repurpose the rule into a guideline for higher difficulties, and keep it a rule for lower difficulties.

if there is too much opposition to this for the game's current state, i propose we plan for the future and prepare a rulechange for when osu!lazer is fully integrated into the public. burai sliders will be a non-issue at this time, but i don't want to wait months after this time comes for ranking criteria to update itself.

tl;dr i think this rule:

rool wrote:

Every slider must have a clear and visible path to follow from start to end. Sliders which overlap themselves in a way that makes any section unreadable or ambiguous cannot be used, such as burai sliders and hold sliders without straightforward slider borders.

should be moved from the General criteria to the Easy, Normal, and Hard sections of the difficulty-specific criteria. It could also be included in Insane if people feel the need for it, and it can be reworded into a guideline for any higher difficulty if people feel the need for it.

and yes before you say anything im aware a similar thread exists for this already but that thread got no real traction and it's proposing a much weaker suggestion so im posting my own.

who is rool and why are they telling me what to do

please don't highlight everyone in the server to read your thread in the future

I feel like these types of things that were once rules shift to being guidelines because natural changes / innovations in the mapping meta ensure that such a change will be consistent across maps and is consistently received well by players. I dont feel like this is the case here though. shifting this completely over to be a guideline is unjustified.

Also, don't @everyone lol, there was like no discussion happening about this.

if its not the case here then give reasoning for why you think burai shouldnt be rankable

yknow, aside from "bc some people think it shouldn't be rankable." some people think big sv changes or perfect overlapping sliders shouldn't be rankable either, but here we are

also that hl was just me trolling

make burai rankable

I've never made a burai slider but make burai rankable







spread changes when

make burai rankable owo

Once lazer comes xd
Problem with burais is its pretty vertical dab emoji to judge if these done good or not and due to nature of burais i believe its a bit too soon to talk about these in current version of ozy.
But yeah, once we get lazer, why not

UndeadCapulet wrote:

these sliders aren't actually that problematic for experienced players when they're integrated well.

inb4
"This burai slider isn't intergrated too well, needs some changes for it to work"
"No it's my style"

TheKingHenry wrote:

UndeadCapulet wrote:

these sliders aren't actually that problematic for experienced players when they're integrated well.

inb4
"This burai slider isn't intergrated too well, needs some changes for it to work"
"No it's my style"

you can say this about any rule change ever, so..

personally I think putting them as a guideline wouldnt be the worst idea but realistically we're probably gonna end up waiting til lazer

Curious if people think this is rankable or not. I showed it to a few QAT's and the majority said it was questionable but not unrankable, and its actually rather clear where you're supposed to go, you just have to think a bit. Well, this one's a bit easy.



This one might be trickier but should still be obvious with a bit of elimination, and operating under the assumption that one does not go back on itself unnecessarily. (ie, it's not logical to go directly to the slider-end, and then go back to play top and bottom sections)

whole burai thing highly depends on slider lenght and sv, really short ones wont be a problem even today, but longer ones can be, so as i stated it's a bit too soon for those immo (at least not for a baby ones) because judging playability of burais highly depends on person's opinion about how fast slider should be to be readable. No offence but i dont think there is a lot of people who can do this good enough to please at minimum half of the community. Hope to be mistaken thought

Giving more stuff to mappers when they can barely manage to make things with what they already have smh

Well, jokes aside, the whole burai concept is too subjective to make it a guideline imo. People will argue whether one of those is good or not (and we know how it usually ends).

I'd rather have a special category for maps implementing this stuff (you know, maybe making "approval" maps worth something).
Saying this I'm also accounting for the fact mappers WILL do some sort of shit and people will complain.
If you make a whole section for all of them people will know what they are going into at their own risk.

Hobbes2 wrote:

you can say this about any rule change ever, so..

That was exactly what I meant with my post lol ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

people already argue about just what circle placements are good or not, should we just make circles illegal too

saying "some integrations might be bad, so we should ban all of them" is a very flawed argument. if there are good integrations, those should not be banned

Circles placement and burais are slightly different things though. Second one is supposed be to hard to read edgy thing, while circles are in general standard object which you can put in a missleading way, but it doesnt makes it missleading by nature. So point is if you would make already screwed stuff even more screwed it would end with babyraging people. Just to be clear, personally im up to whatever shit if it fits well, so i wouldnt mind, but my opinion is far from being defining, so i have to be reasonable. Lazer when
As for integrations, if ut would be possible to make clear which burai slider can be considered acceptable and which is not i'll be the first saying my yes, i just dont see it coming

gut response here is no, followed by no followed again by NO

monstrata's cited examples don't look that bad upon a cursory appraisal of more than a few seconds, but when faced with that kind of pattern or placement in an actual track, it essentially almost forces an automatic drop in a large percentage of people

slider paths need to be clear and not ambiguous because ambiguous ones are absolutely awful to play almost universally. at least from my perspective anyway

i could see some relaxation of this rule with concessions given to readability and concept (also similar to what monstrata expressed), but i'm not sure i trust mappers enough to do this properly at the moment generally speaking

Ephemeral wrote:

gut response here is no, followed by no followed again by NO

monstrata's cited examples don't look that bad upon a cursory appraisal of more than a few seconds, but when faced with that kind of pattern or placement in an actual track, it essentially almost forces an automatic drop in a large percentage of people

slider paths need to be clear and not ambiguous because ambiguous ones are absolutely awful to play almost universally. at least from my perspective anyway

i could see some relaxation of this rule with concessions given to readability and concept (also similar to what monstrata expressed), but i'm not sure i trust mappers enough to do this properly at the moment generally speaking

If they're only allowed for the higher difficulties, then the fact that you have to look at them for a bit to process them isn't a problem. There are already patterns today that could be intentionally misleading (such as a loop) which just gets removed during the modding process, so players expect that sliders will follow their natural pathing (how else would you read something like notch hell? You could technically make sliders go in all kinds of directions without actually making a burai slider, but we do accept the most logical path. For burai's to be allowed all they have to do is to be unambiguous, which can be achieved in the same way we keep complex sliders unambiguous; to require them to follow whatever is the logical path.

I wrote a thingamathing a few years ago about burai sliders that kinda just got lost to time (t/369339), but I still stand by that any burai slider that does not cross itself more than once on the same spot are fine and completely readable by any player who's at a high enough level, given enough time to get used to the concept of burai sliders in general .

is every burai slider under this rule rankable? or does it still need the opinion of others to be considered as rankable cause both these options seem bad.
if you leave it up to the bn iconing to decide if a slider is rankable then itll just lead to way more discussions and controversial maps being popped.

you need an objective way to judge them being fair, and ofcourse there will be doable cases that will be judged as unrankable with this rule, but I'd rather have that than drama on tons of maps cause of it all being subjective

YES

PLEASE

this is good

as long as sliders are forbidden from going back on themselves more than one time in the same section they usually end up readable. The position of the sliderend also matters, if it's inside of the part that is overlapping it can create situations where the slider could also just overlap itself just once

i was thinking about proposing this but couldnt think of a wording that was not batshit abusable.

@UC: When making threads, please propose concrete alternatives. Pointing at something and saying "it shouldnt be X" and not stating what it should be just leaves everyone else to figure this out on their own all the time and that's annoying - i mean you want a change to begin with >_>

refer to t/720532/start=0 for more information and please adjust your opening post accordingly

So first you would want to define what non gamp lay inhibiting burai sliders are because you can clearly create something bonkers with burai mechanics which no one would be able to read (similar to obstructing reverse arrows with other objects).
You dont want to remove the rule you want to allow easially identifiable movement in sliders to be allowed.

I think we can trust palyers at an Extreme level to be able to identify visual cue' s on sliders to decipher their slider path. But what i am concerned with is if you take it too far and the reasoning becomes "it doesnt break the rules so its fine because its my style". Dont alienate players for the sake of being the sick mapper dude who does cool wierd slider in the editor. If you think that wont happen or get through into ranking ever then there is no reason to remove the rule in the first place because experienced mappers are already ranking these type of sliders as you have stated yourself.

Bottom line is making it a Guideline but that wouldnt change anything.
I would propose we wait for osu!lazor cause god knows how it will end up with all the twist and turns it has taken so far

I think it's better to wait to lazer.

Actually the game have a section for that kind of maps: Loved.

I agree that there are ways to do burai slider readable, but are they really fun?, I think not, and because it is not obvious how to deal with burais in a nice way, I don't see why allow this (except for people that love long discussions about subjective things).

something that should or shouldnt be rankable shouldnt be dependent on what u personally think is fun


heres a problem that comes from letting literally any burai sliders rankable



let me know how u read this (ur gunna read it wrong and i doubt its readable on osu!lazer either)

https://puu.sh/Akfc1/9459b9fe83.osz slider diff 03:54:021 -

it needs to be more clear as to what burai sliders are actually rankable

VINXIS wrote:

something that should or shouldnt be rankable shouldnt be dependent on what u personally think is fun


heres a problem that comes from letting literally any burai sliders rankable



let me know how u read this (ur gunna read it wrong and i doubt its readable on osu!lazer either)

https://puu.sh/Akfc1/9459b9fe83.osz slider diff 03:54:021 -

it needs to be more clear as to what burai sliders are actually rankable

Only the red arrows are unreadable if you follow what would be the logical path of the slider (similarly to how loops are treated)


If you're crisscrossing it, it's about as readable as allowing loops to not be actual loops, or doing weird pathing to notch hell sliders rather than what would look like the obvious path.

Since I guess no one really read the thing I linked (t/369339) I'll just copy what I proposed back then again since people seem to want some kind of definition for what would be okay and what wouldn't.

A slider should not be ambiguous. The sliderball can not travel across the same path more than 2 times in a row, and no slider head and tail can be on the same place. There can be no closed shapes if a slider has any burai segments or overlapping red points.

You can click on the link to read why I think it's appropriate, although it might be too simple in definition and might rule out things that would still be readable.

This thread seems to be about the same thing i was proposing like a week ago here.

I think the issue is simply about perfectly overlaping ends and red anchors.

before you guys say no I think you should look at a recently ranked map with burai sliders here: https://osu.ppy.sh/s/694402

Myxomatosis wrote:

This is kind of a loop hole in the RC though that needs to be fixed (the wording of the current rule is ambiguous).

Strange to see members of the QAT struggling with the current rule and even letting what we do consider burai sliders through the ranking system.

So no, we should not wait until lazer to talk about this when these maps are getting ranked right now

__

for the record I think it should move into guidelines to be some amount more lenient so maps like the one linked above are totally okay and we can have a discussion about burai's on map threads like we are having in this one

also the whole "this is what loved is for" thing , , BNs can't nominate maps into loved so not really, its just for popular maps rn like some cool maps and then other shitty maps where mapper doesn't want to improve so they push it for loved by guilting people into favoriting etc

There are a few other "loopholes" in the RC, but I think this one makes sense... The RC technically allows burai's as long as they are not "unreadable or ambiguous". The rule lists "burais" as an example of an unrankable issue, but only when they do not have "straightforward slider borders".

(Grammatically, "straightforward slider borders" modifies both "burais" and "hold sliders" so you should read it this way, not "burais (all) and hold sliders (but only when they don't have straightforward slider borders).)

Burai's with predictable slider paths have already seen use in the ranked section, but they are currently being used in very rare instances.

Some examples like:

It is not a stretch to extend some of these elements and create small bumps and grooves that are potentially burais but play well. Furthermore, using angle shifts would make the slider explicitly rankable as it is now mathematically not going over itself no matter how close to a burai it may appear.

Example of ranked sliders:

This is not a burai as the slider never actually goes back on itself due to angle change:


Similarly, sliders like this don't break the rule for burai's either because the slider never actually goes back on itself and doesn't qualify as burai to begin with.


People are pushing the boundaries of slider creation in part because the "tech map" meta is evolving to include more creative and unique slider patterns. That's one of the recent characteristic changes in "wub" or "experimental" mapping etc... Whether this rule is changed or not, there are already a lot sliders that technically do not break the rule to begin with.

Monstrata wrote:

There are a few other "loopholes" in the RC, but I think this one makes sense... The RC technically allows burai's as long as they are not "unreadable or ambiguous". The rule lists "burais" as an example of an unrankable issue, but only when they do not have "straightforward slider borders".

(Grammatically, "straightforward slider borders" modifies both "burais" and "hold sliders" so you should read it this way, not "burais (all) and hold sliders (but only when they don't have straightforward slider borders).)

Burai's with predictable slider paths have already seen use in the ranked section, but they are currently being used in very rare instances.

I'm a native English speaker and this doens't make sense to me
can you reword things to make more sense

the burai sliders were an example in the wording, not the actual content of the rule

the actual content before is the content that matters, burais without clear sliderborders are the thing that is lol

as long as the slider is edgy but it can still be predictable even if its not really clear, i don't see problems in it

i've been told to bump this by mir qat due to recent map discussions

@mir post a thingy

thanks UC

So, the rule for burais is still confusing and to an extent disagreed with in part or wholly by different QATs and BNs alike even a year from this proposal. Honestly I don't quite know what to do with how this is worded either.

Ranking Criteria wrote:

Every slider must have a clear and visible path to follow from start to end. Sliders which overlap themselves in a way that makes any or their individual sections unreadable or ambiguous cannot be used, such as burai sliders and hold sliders without straightforward slider borders.

From how I read this, the usage of burai and hold sliders sort of gives off the impression that those are not allowed. But we've seen several examples of where burai is readable, which keeps in line with the entire rest of the rule.

Examples: https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/862573/discussion/1804279/timeline#/879121
https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/844719/discussion/1766943/timeline#/879749

Many maps with "tumor" sliders (sliders with minor burai "bumps") have been ranked in the past without much of an issue despite being technically burai.

I've had a couple of suggestions given to me on how to resolve this issue, the easiest of which is just remove the entire second half of the rule.

Amended Rule wrote:

Every slider must have a clear and visible path to follow from start to end. Sliders which overlap themselves in a way that makes any or their individual sections unreadable or ambiguous cannot be used.

This doesn't specify burai specifically, so it's clearer that if the slider happens to be burai, but still readable, it will abide by these rules and be rankable. Currently the "at a glance" interpretation is "burai bad" but with maps ranked recently that clearly isn't the case.

Regarding what UC said about moving the rule to diff specific and guideline for insanes/extra, I don't particularly mind that either way but examples like



shouldn't be rankable because it's not immediately clear even in higher difficulties (correct me if I'm wrong). Though reading the rule it kind of already covers it. I'll leave this here in case I misunderstood or something <:

Would appreciate a resolution coming out of this this time around, since this rule is admittedly getting annoying to keep re-interpreting every time a case arises.

change suggested in ^ sounds good and would be a nice change to avoid lots of pointless discussion about sliders that should be totally rankable since their pathing is clear, while still not allowing things that will actually be misleading or unreadable

i dont mind sliders overlapping themselves in a way that the direction they go in is predictable and they dont overlap themselves for an ambiguous amount of time (as in the sliderball keeps actually indicating that the sliders is moving somewhere), that would mean that stuff like

is fine to me as long as the slider does what you'd expect from it by looking at it

i dont think this is a diff specific thing, because either you can expect what's about to happen to this shitter of a slider or you can't

well i say diffspecific bc new players are still getting used to playing, like, straight sliders. sliders like the one oko posted or other weird ones would be pretty unfair in that context.

tho then again i guess that's already covered by the "Use straightforward and easily understandable slider shapes. New players may not understand how to follow more complex shapes." guidelines? /shrug

also i personally dont have an issue w/ the slider mir posted but w/ev babysteps

maybe having some sort of written examples of what's "ambiguous" bc rn the rulechange would just be making the rule even more subjective and inconsistently enforced than it currently is. it'd be best to have as few case-by-case rules as possible (and making anything we need to be case-by-case as easy to interpret as possible). examples like: "sliders with multiple forks at a crossroad", "loop sliders that have perfectly overlapped head and tail", things like that.
(also change "any or their" to any of their" like 4n3c mentioned in minor fixes thread ww)

So make something like a bulleted list of examples that aren't okay? I think that would just confuse people more if their case isn't covered by the listed examples. That's kind of why the current sucks because burai is listed as an example but people interpret it differently as if it's "just an example" or something that you actually shouldn't do.

That said, I don't have any suggestions to word it differently :/

Regarding the slider:


You could argue this is readable in the same way loops and any other semi-ambiguous slider is played, that is you follow it in the "obvious" path that it makes, and only allow it in that configuration. i.e Left-Right-Up-Down, and not Left-Up-Right-Down, due to the curves of the slider, similar to how you would expect a loop to be, well looping, and not have a path like Ω. Basically, the suggested curves in the slider dictates a lot how people read the slider. It's the same reason Notch Hell sliders work.


I don't mind either way in this particular case, just wanted to point it out.

low diffs have their own rules for complex slidershapes already, so i dont think this needs to be diffspecific.


https://github.com/ppy/osu-wiki/pull/2156 changed to kinda mir's suggestion + invis slidertail info:

Every slider must have a clear and visible path to follow from start to end. Sliders that overlap themselves without straightforward slider borders and sliders whose individual sections are unreadable cannot be used. A slider's end position must be clear under the assumption that a player has a fully transparent `sliderendpoint.png` skin element.

"straightforward slider borders" are mentioned because the implied path is usually what we're relying on to know if a self-overlapping slider is readable. if there is no implied motion (or otherwise obvious path due to a slider's huge size like the cryo map in op), then it's likely not reasonable

sliderend skin element is mentioned to disallow this kind of ambiguity, which is readable with the visible slidertail. if someone says the rc should only consider the default skin they're gonna get slapped

"sliderendpoint.png" is not a thing, should be sliderendcircle.png / sliderendcircleoverlay.png
otherwise change sounds fine

might be easier to define "transparent slidertails" in the glossary and replace it with that term here

*clears throat*
the rc should only consider the default skin and the map-specific skin. anything else is the player's fault for changing the base intended gameplay experience. we dont consider when people skin out combo colours or numbers currently, we shouldn't consider slidertails being skinned out either.

(i play with my tails skinned out, too, but still feel this way)

[deleted as part of purging my old post history]

thats good to know but like, if that poses a problem in 2029 when lazer's out we can address it then. until then we should be basing rc on current ver. there's no guarantee it'll stay like that anyway.

(also lazer sliderbodies disappear as you play along them which makes many burais readable in another way so we'd be having to re-evaluate our slider rules then anyway)

[deleted as part of purging my old post history]

even if the default skin is ok for certain sliders, too many people currently use transparent tails to ignore in this case. similar unintended gameplay experience rc restrictions exist for the same reason, like those about black combo colors and custom sample normal/soft finishes -- this slider one will affect way more people than those though

i also dont think lazer is relevant to the current rule. that can be dealt with when it comes

Some burai examples ppl addressed here looks reasonable, but i can sure mappers will try to rank more and more unreadable one.. and that would be a problem

Left wrote:

Some burai examples ppl addressed here looks reasonable, but i can sure mappers will try to rank more and more unreadable one.. and that would be a problem

i think this would only be a problem if the ranking process was automated and mappers were trusted to behave themselves. but ranking process operates on a case by case basis, meaning every attempt at making an unreadable slider will be heavily judged.



this thread also raises the question why sliders must be sightreadable. low AR overlapping patterns aren't expected to be sightread, it's expected that the player learn these maps through multiple plays and yet they are perfectly rankable. (plus it's a lot of fun to actually learn to play a map that's not easily sightreadable)

@pishi both of those examples are related to default in-game settings, which is very different from users going out of their way to remove entire files from their skins. when people make massive game changes like that they're doing so with the understanding it may have unintended consequences. people deviating from the base game's settings shouldn't impact the base game's ranking criteria. they can just add the files back if they find it a problem.

there's separate files for heads/tails because people used skinning workarounds to achieve the invis tail effect, just as bg dim exists because people were deleting/replacing bgs

regardless of the intended experience, too much of the current playerbase uses certain unintended settings to be told that they aren't valid ways to play anymore