not flaming but just giving a mere example
having a bold at the bottom of your post makes it feel really cluttered because of how the forums workAlheak wrote:
Hello, this is quite a controversial topic, but I believe it is necessary to clear up this grey zone of the rankability of a map.
Some people seem to argue that visuals do not matter as long as the intent or concept is well executed, but I would make the point that a good concept is way better conveyed with an effective design, and clean visuals make a map easier to read.
Moreover, they show that the mapper cares about their creation (not that they don't, note the use of the verb "show"), and when your map becomes an official part of the game (=ranked), it should look the part.
the equal sign looks ugly next to the parenthesis here
Of course everybody can't be literal Michael Angelos but aesthetics are still something that can be learned to some extent, just like flow, rhythm, consistency, and anything else that makes up a good map. There is no excusing obvious defects like unintentional overlaps, bad blankets, or clash in styles.
the way you wrote this list hides it in this paragraph and makes it harder to read
I'm also aware that this is quite subjective as well, so I don't want to get into total aesthetics nazism (although I wouldn't mind it tbh), but since there are literally zero (0) rules or guidelines about this subject, I think we should at least clear this up in the guidelines for Standard:
putting the number 0 in the parenthesis has bad blanket because you need to move it down a few pixelsAppropriate, consistent and clean visuals should be used throughout the map.having a quote above adds an extra line below this paragraph so to make it even you should make an extra line of space before it
Unless the song suggests it, avoid clashing slider shapes and patterns (e.g. "industrial", straight shapes when the others are "natural" and curved). Be also mindful of close objects unintentionally overlapping each other, non-centered blankets, and inconsistencies in angles or spacing in similar parts of the song.
Hopefully, having this kind of guideline should make any poor design choice unrankable unless the mapper can justify it.
the italics in "should" put the letter d much closer to the word "make" which is inconsistent to how much space is between the letter s in "should" and the letter n in "in" before it
I really believe this is an important aspect of mapping, so I hope we can have a productive discussion about it, thanks!
tl;dr: visuals are as important as any other aspect of a map for a lot of reasons explained above and should be heavily considered for rank
Please stop, you're embarrassing and discrediting everyone who disagrees with this guideline proposal.bor wrote:
things
I really believe visuals matter if we are going to push this to an official state, and I don't get why you are personally attacking me on an official threadMun wrote:
Please stop, you're embarrassing and discrediting everyone who disagrees with this guideline proposal.bor wrote:
things
Anyway, I think that there is some rift in the understanding of what each side is saying.
that aside, this proposal wouldn't even do anything about the maps you're knee jerk reacting to because the justification for the awful aesthetics in them is very simple - the gameplay value of the placement is worth more than making the map look nice to other people. this is just unnecessary.Alheak wrote:
I think the biggest point of this guideline would be to enforce the minimum aesthetic requirements that mappers can currently flat out ignore because there's literally nothing about it in the RC, and the backlash and stepping in of the QAT in some extreme cases show that there needs to be a clarification there.
- there is already, in 99.99999% of cases, a fairly intersubjective level of aesthetics in a map. so much so that people complain, and have been complaining for a while now, that a lot of maps look the exact same. defining a minimum level of "aesthetic", aside from being hilariously impractical, is not something that can be codified since it's so subjective. for example: i am a bn. i think that so-called russian style mapping looks terrible. should i veto a map for using that type of aesthetic? very few people would agree with that, but this guideline would provide support for it.
A guideline is a good idea because it prevents most of those issues to get to qualification, preventing DQ and drama, while still leaving room for creativity if the mapper can justify it and if the community agrees with it, just like any other guideline has done so far.
- the community agreeing with a guideline being broken has nothing to do with whether or not it's justified. aside from that, the community at large is laughably inconsistent with what is accepted and what isn't so it shouldn't be used as a judge for what is rankable or not. note that this applies to both the BNG and mappers in general. guidelines, as a whole, are either entirely ignored (slider tick + slide being muted) or treated like rules (break times in muzu diffs, density guidelines, etc.) this, i am 100% certain, would be under the first category, making it useless.
If things are "frowned upon", why not make a guideline? I believe it's a necessity to write some points down so that everyone is on the same page and to prevent debating again over the same things.
- a lot of things are frowned upon that are not guidelines. for example, extreme overmapping is not unrankable, yet you will not see a lot of support for it. ranking the same song 15 times remains rankable despite lots of complaints. none of these have been made guidelines, because the point of the ranking system is to self control and not rank these types of things organically. yes, it happens once in a blue moon, that doesn't mean the solution is to overreact and make a huge change to the system to make sure it never happens again.
Appropriate, consistent and clean visuals should be used throughout the map.
Unless the song suggests it, avoid clashing slider shapes and patterns (e.g. "industrial", straight shapes when the others are "natural" and curved). Be also mindful of close objects unintentionally overlapping each other, non-centered blankets, and inconsistencies in angles or spacing in similar parts of the song.
Alheak wrote:
I think the thread can be closed here unless people still want to debate this further or have some better ideas.