We're interested to know how people feel about maps that are featured in the Most Played widgets on the front page. Do you enjoy playing them? Why or why not?

Let us know your thoughts!

hell yea dude tear rain has been my shit since day 1

I play them, but I cannot say that I enjoy them, because it's just farming, farming and farming. Tbh I am looking forward to play them less.

The 5 most played maps of any given day don't really need the extra visibility boost since they're already played a ton and spread faster than the Black Plague

Slap Spotlights onto there instead

Nah, i don't really care, It's cool to know as a fact, however i wouldn't give it so much relevancy

The most played maps are almost always maps that are made just for pp farm, a lot of them arent even fun to play

They're a bit "eh" since most plays just rack up from people retrying over and over again.

I do enjoy some of them a lot. There's really only 3 ways a mapset makes it there; it's bundled with the game download, it's a song/mapset that is immensely well known, or it's extraordinarily farmy.

Maps from the first category are generally lovely and I play them regularly to this day.
The second category is hit and miss, some of them are great and others not so much.
Third category is mostly bad content in my eyes, with few exceptions.

since i have 4 maps most played atm, i'll give my word on this since i like playing my own maps. well to be really honest my most played maps are the maps i never play from myself, because i just don't enjoy them because i don't farm pp anymore since like 2 years+.
just people play them to rank up mostly.. i mean they are not even good songs (make a move, harumachi, despacito ect..) only black rover is an actual decent song.

ya just put spotlights there at least weekly delis maps are better than 1-2 spam for the entire thing :d

+1 for spotlights

If it's a most played map, their either pp farms or played for the enjoyment of the song. To me it just depends on the map.

I like going through all of their diffs and trying to fc them quickly it's always fun

People who are farming pp are enjoying playing them, but people who don't farm pp will never attempt to touch them.

In my opinion, this whole thing makes no sense, because people who say "they aren't fun to play" don't even play them at all, or they oblige themselves not to like them because they "destory" the ranking system.

Their hate comes from nothing but a system that controls the game. It is true that they are so easy and they don't require that much effort to FC, but they always forget the main thing why we play this game. We aren't playing this game for gaining pp or gaining high ranks, we play it to experience music in a different way other than listening.

I dont like them because they stagnate easily, day after day and for weeks you'll be seeing the same maps all the time, occasionally a new one comes in for a while before falling out again, but overall it's super samey

Something like spotlights would be cool, but that wouldn't be better if they stick with the current plan of moving to be every few months instead of monthly

Something more flexible would be cooler, like showing the maps from a random beatmap pack, or showing the top played maps out of the ones ranked in the past week, to keep it rotating and fresher than it is right now

i only ever play them if i feel like gaining ranks honestly, because thats what they usually are.
i dont particularly get any enjoyment or satisfaction for playing them other than from the PP count.

so i rarely do that

Current most played is pointless, Map spotlights would be very meh aswell on the frontpage because of how irregularly they are updated and how they can be a single diff aswell. Instead it should be a top5 category that cycles through few categories in 3 second intervals or so.

You'd have a filter for top 5 most played ranked(if you had options for 24h/7days/30days that would be even better), weekly/monthly spotlights, top 5 most played from loved (24h/7D/30D), Most favourited (24/7/30, these wouldn't necessarily even need to be ranked/loved for this category, great way to see new just submitted maps that are great!), Most played single diff sets... The list goes on. Point is that cycling mechanic would be the best option and would cater to everyone.

You could quickly check if something worthwhile happened today in the game just by scrolling through the tabs relevant to you. Having this in-game in lazer with pinnable tabs for example would be great aswell (for when that becomes relevant in development).

bad timing for that poll sir, basically (for current moment) it's like asking if we like sotarks' maps

though I am pretty sure people who enjoy gaining pp/rank will enjoy them too. for me "the most played" section still remains the section being constantly flooded with maps which are just straight forward repetition of what we had for a long time - the pp mapping (maybe with few exceptions) so I don't really pay attention on it/don't enjoy them that much

Dropping my two cents: I think the option to have a display on which maps are currently most played is a fun idea, but is definitely skewed towards certain types of maps, especially since some of these maps have been on there for a long time (1+ years).

Likewise, I’m not a fan of the “replace it with Spotlights” idea either because that’s going to be biased towards certain picks as well (i.e. which maps are decided as spotlights? how do we ensure impartiality/unbias towards spotlight picks? how long will they remain in the spotlight? etc.) We already have a “beatmaps spotlights” advertised on the home page every month but I certainly don’t see it being an effective replacer due to how infrequent these are posted. I especially don’t think that a monthly tracker would be ideal due to how quickly people want to move on to new maps; a weekly tracker would be better, but then it’s impractical to get people to curate 30+ new maps and determine which one deserve to “be put on a spotlight” on a weekly basis.

The “newly ranked beatmaps” feature on the newer site is a neat idea too, but because of how fast things get ranked these maps don’t gain a lot of exposure either.

To sum it all up: older maps shouldn’t receive as much exposure; beatmap spotlights are proven to be ineffective; newer maps could use longer exposure. Maybe something where we display most popular maps within a specific time frame would be a better system (for example, the most popular maps from maps that were released within the last week/month using play count as the variable for which we determine popularity), but I don’t know how effective that would be either.

Could just cycle through the latest qualified maps to give them more publicity or something if people find issues/etc, most played is a bit of a mess right now for the reasons everyone explained above.

Indifferent
I'll play them if I stumble upon them in my folders however I will rarely specificaly go and search for them to play them.
So I don't mind playing them, but I don't enjoy them that much to purposely play them... If that makes any sense.

(replace it with loved maps)

Weekly Spotlights would be nice, a team made by mappers, BNs, QATs, Loved Captain, etc to pick 5 maps from the ones that were ranked in the past week to feature there. Mainly 5 maps that are "different" from each other in terms of difficulty, song choice, length and other criterias.

Short term goal is to actually promote the maps that literally no one plays after the first week they get ranked, giving it a bit more time of exposure would be nice.

The current maps that get featured in the "popular" category are probably recommended by other resources commonly used in the community like Tillerino, they don't need "help" to be played, but I feel like many maps get ranked and people don't even notice that they do. (but I guess that's a topic for a discussion elsewhere).

Changing the most played maps to Spotlights could be bad idea imo, because this have an human factor: a little group of people choose them, so they could be pressured (not a nice situation).

If we want to replace it with another list, the first question is:
What was the original purpose of the Most played maps.

When the community was small and the amount of maps and new players was growing, the list helped them to look the most popular maps (aka: Bad Apple or Pika girl or Kokou no sousei), but is that our necessity to find the most popular maps?, I think new players could find them easily nowadays. In fact, they usually find them in multiplayer or Tillerino.


Without a clear purpose, any discussion is just pointless.

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Edit: ups, I forgot to say: I do not play those maps because they does not change closeToNever and what I usually want to play are old maps, or maps from mappers I like, or new maps from cool songs, or maps that someone recommended to me, or maps with edgy stats (AR7~8, CS5+, OD9+ etc), and maps without deadly streams lol

Edit2: If the purpose is to show the most enjoyable maps, showing the maps with more favs the last week, could be more interesting.

select * from beatmap where date > now() - interval 1 week order by fav limit 5;

Rolniczy wrote:

bad timing for that poll sir, basically (for current moment) it's like asking if we like sotarks' maps

though I am pretty sure people who enjoy gaining pp/rank will enjoy them too. for me "the most played" section still remains the section being constantly flooded with maps which are just straight forward repetition of what we had for a long time - the pp mapping (maybe with few exceptions) so I don't really pay attention on it/don't enjoy them that much

*Good timing

Do you mean the most popular maps from the past 24 hrs (ex. No Title/Make a Move) or the most played beatmaps of all time (ex. Tear Rain/My Love)?

You probably should've mentioned in the title that you were alluding to the "most played in the last 24 hours" section

Probably has been said before in some way but I want to drop my perspective on it:

the reason why the most played beatmaps are... well the most played, is because 1) fcing/passing simpler, more straightforward maps is retried more often and more within reach for players. In general it's easier to get a better score in a non-gimmick map than a tech/gimmick map that are both the same star ratings, because they require a less specific skillset. (Not to say that those maps are bad though. And 2) They stay on that list because they achieve the above effect so well, so they get more exposure from the chart, and rinse and repeat. It's positive feedback because the map's attention feeds on itself.

If we wanted to adjust the system we have right now while still showing popular maps on the front page of the website, which is a fun idea, we could always just limit how long a beatmap is able to stay on those charts. Around 1 month would probably be a good limit. We could also make the list more expansive (top 20, 30, 50 most played instead of 5) and through the charts players could discover more than the same 5 maps that are always at the top of the charts atm. Plus, it gives a lot more room for mappers to get some exposure from it too.

The problem that isn't fixed from that idea, however, is that these maps tend to be similar because they tend to attract the same playerbase (and again, this isn't a bad thing), but the common complaint right now is that the current charts don't give a refreshing enough variety of content. I don't think this can ever be solved through an automated system, though. Sure, some really good maps stand out with a higher user rating, and maybe a lot of favorites too, but both of those examples still leave out some sort of audience of maps (controversial / edgy maps, and unnoticed maps, respectively). I think the "newly ranked maps" section of the new website is definitely a step up from that though.

But that's the main reason I think people like the idea of replacing the top charts with spotlights. We have a team of human people, very involved in the community, who already hand pick maps for the sake of being unique!! This should be used toward our advantage!!

Toy wrote:

(replace it with loved maps)

Lol, I think this would be a great idea too, because the only way of knowing what maps that got loved in the most recent cycle is a #mapfeed discord channel for me, or searching the beatmap search engine. I think there room for a more consistent reminder of new loved content.

TL;DR: If I were the one and only osu! website developer I would do the following

1. Limit how long a map can stay on the current most played charts
2. Expand the current most played chart (to like 50?)
3. Add new charts for spotlights (and loved would be cool too)

Replace with loved maps pls, most played is always just the farm maps, nothing thats exciting

You don't even need to look there to know what exactly is most played. And I just hope that instead of a showcase of a shitty meta on the main page we can get something actually worthwhile

They're all maps that encourage retries and as such, artificial playcount boosting, rather than actual good maps that more and more people would be inclined to play.

I would say I enjoy them when I play them, but I only play them for gaining ranks. The game is basically split into 2 parts for me. Rank grinding and just playing for fun. The first part is done by playing all the Most Played maps and the second part is me trying to get better by playing hard maps, aiming for passes and overall playing maps that I don't expect to FC.

I definitely am happy when a new map makes it in the Most Played because it just means more rank gaining material. But I really want to see a more diverse showcase of beatmaps.

Fireburner wrote:

hell yea dude tear rain has been my shit since day 1

and the profile picture, actually made me laugh. 10/10

Not anymore. I think that's to blame on both the players and mappers. But with the PP system players are always going to want to gain PP and gain ranks, there's not really a fix to that. However mappers that intentionally push and condone this PP mapping style which rank hungry players feed on ruins the most played section by saturating it with farm maps that players grind out all the time thus shooting them to the top of the most played section.

unfortunately it's fairly common that the most fun and interesting maps don't reward PP or are much harder than their farm map counterpart, so a lot of people pass over them ignore them in favour of grinding out a generic repetitive map that gives a lot of PP. I don't know what a better alternative would be but perhaps the maps with the most favourites could be a slightly better option than by play count.

Don't really enjoy them, in large part due to them just being super short, though they usually aren't anything special mapping wise either. I always thought that, now that we have play time anyway, measuring "most played" in play time instead of play count would make more sense, maybe it would help with diversity in that section a bit if there's nothing better to replace it with (though I agree that putting map spotlights when they return there would be cool).

I never really clicked on any maps in that section, it's just that the songs I've downloaded were coincidentally in that category too. XD

If that counts, then yes, they can be fun to play.

some maps on the most played section are ok but to be honest, i dont really enjoy playing them because most of them are pretty boring to play.

would be best if the most played section are maps that is on the spotlights imo, or something like other people in this thread said regarding spotlights and stuff.

Would be nice to see more interesting maps there, as far as I can remember it's almost always just been filled with typical pp farm and anime / J songs.

I don't really enjoy those maps because they are severely lacking in concepts. The only ways the music is expressed in those maps are spacing increase on louder sounds or just whenever the mapper feels like it and occasionally triples or streams whenever there are 1/4s in the music.

Making things worse, currently 4 of 5 maps in there are from the same mapper, so every map feels like the same.

I think this should be replaced with maps from beatmap spotlight regularly, they are a lot better maps concept wise.

Worst case scenario, limit one map per mapper in there if nothing else.

extenting the most played maps section to 10 is actually a good idea.

I do not enjoy them, or well I stopped enjoying them after seeing that they are almost the same maps with just a few things changed.
Maybe removing it altogether would be a nice solution, and instead adding a search box to the home page just like in the beatmapsets page, I mean, there is already the beatmapsets page with infinite scroll and sorting options, it needs a little bit more of exposure.

Ephemeral wrote:

We're interested to know how people feel about maps that are featured in the Most Played widgets on the front page. Do you enjoy playing them? Why or why not?

Let us know your thoughts!

I don't see the problem, its not liked there not mapped properly or not fun.
But I guess since they are usually PP maps that are featured it could get repetitive and therefore become boring.
👌👌👌

Mostly I want to write something negative about a certain mapper, so I won't mention their name. This mapper is abusing the pp calculation system, by which the pp gain from their maps is inflated, making said maps appealing for the purpose of "pp farming".
I don't like this morally and that they get a highlight because of beling played a lot of times.
Maybe a rule that only show thier most popular map, and only one at a time.

Sincerely I play them just for pp 5 digit inc. I downloaded CBCC due to the Most Played and now it's my top play lol
The Most Played maps are just Sotarks and VINXIS' No title... Everyone knows these maps. I agree it needs to change. I have no problems with the mapping style. It's just that they don't give a slot to the [very] good, not recognized map. I am tired of seeing No title and Sotarks in the Most Played. Maybe banning a map after X weeks appearing consecutively? This would (FINALLY!) end with No title, Black Rover & etc. Harumachi Clover could appear because it got ranked recently, but after X days/weeks/months it would eventually disappear.

For maybe a day whenever an actual cool new map gets ranked. Most of the time it's the exact same farm maps though, which don't interest me at all. Thus the most played maps section becomes quite useless since it hardly ever changes, and if it does, it's usually just another farm map.

I guess one thing you could do is simply exclude all maps from the most played list older than, say, 1 month. This way you could at least keep the list full of fresh maps rather than the same farm maps from 2-3 years ago.

I don't really enjoy playing them and neither do I use them to gain any pp very often. It's not like they are mapped poorly or anything, they are just not really interesting to play.
I also don't like how this section is basically just "look Sotarks ranked a new map". I have nothing against him but I'd be really happy if we could see a little more mapper diversity on this widget, so maybe you could make this section show only one map per mapper.

Most played maps has more than enough places to be found, and because they have a lot of difficulties and are short and easy to grind (even more with DT), they will rack up on plays easily, and looking at the opinions given here, the "extend the Most Played Maps to 10" is a "Ha!, no please" for me.
Given that loved maps are getting more and more tools for exposure every round (news article and in-game banner) seems that they dont need more, specially due to the nature of the loved section itself (not all maps are loved, different numbers, and others)
The only project that seems to win something is spotlights, looking that they are going into a revamp right now, is the best place to get quality maps curated by various community members, my only concern would be that spotlights are probably going to be seasonal in the future (updates every 3 months) so something can be worked with that.

i like at least 1 map from spotlights so putting spotlights is the best option imo

also players complain about how there isnt creative stuff so having spotlights there is like "hey, heres some interesting maps"

Most Played will only be great once Sotarks gets all 5 spots.

they're actually quite handy when filtering to other modes but i wouldn't touch it for standard