In it's current state, the qualified section has basically become known as the "maps that are probably going to be ranked in a week or so" category, which has a very underwhelming charisma to it. At the same time, the amount of maps that are hitting the qualified section is only increasing. When we see a map with a questionable element going for rank during the modding process, a common argument from the mapper might be "Well we'll see how this (questionable element) plays out in qualified and make a decision if it's really a problem."

A cute little description of the qualified category on the old website reads:

This category is recommended for people who:

1. Want to play cutting-edge maps.
2. Want to help keep map quality top-notch! (make sure to leave your feedback)

The temporary leaderboard qualified gives us might provide some competition or incentive to play the map, sure, but it's common to see a lot of players wait until these maps get ranked in order to play them for pp or for a permanent leaderboard. Really not enough incentive when it comes to give feedback. Right now I feel like its not uncommon to see a map get through qualified with less than 50 plays on the top diff for a really niche map. Here's a snapshot of some qualified leaderboards as of 11/30:

51 passes on top diff, no dq, ranked in 2 days.
23 passes on top diff, was qualified for another 2 before dq, ranked in two days.
Less than 50 passes on top diff and much less on the others, dq for ~1 day early in qualified, ranked tomorrow.

It's not to say these are bad maps either, but nobody is playing them.

With that being said, I think the qualified section can use some adjustments to persuade players to more actively play them. After asking around some top 1k players, I gathered the top three reasons that players are motivated to play something is due to leaderboards, song choices, and fun mapping styles. Some things I think can appeal to that:

Proposals

1) Display first place ranks on qualified maps on player profiles

I don't think I know a player that doesn't like having another juicy number 1 score to add to their collection, especially if its unsnipable (Hello sniping drama). This can be displayed as a completely new statistic like this.
This can probably be modified to only be displayed if the map didn't get dqed, because a number 1 score on a map with a leaderboard for 2 days doesn't say too much.

2) Snapshot the qualified leaderboards right before the map transitions to ranked status

Appeals more broadly to leaderboard farmers in general, and can even make leaderboard scores more accessible to players who can't top 50 a map of the same ranked difficulty level. Can look like this on the webpage, I don't think this needs to be integrated into the client.

3) Sort by genre in osu! direct

Really as simple as it sounds, helps players narrow down to their taste in music a little more. This is a bit separate from the first two proposals, but it helps our purpose so yeah why not

The talked about "subscribe to a mapper" proposal would also help this case, but that's its own proposal already.

Fourth proposal:
Leaving feedback in map's discussion page within a certain time of playing the map may reward the player with something

abraker wrote:

Fourth proposal:
Leaving feedback in map's discussion page within a certain time of playing the map may reward the player with something

This is what kudosu attempted to do. The problem is, what exactly will it reward? The map may be fixed to address the players concerns but there doesn't feel like much value there

2 on its own would be a good enough addition imo. idk if this is what you mean anyway, but potentially could integrate with 1 so that whoever has number 1 at the moment a map gets ranked will have it on their profile

this is good

Saw ya' on the reddit thread.

I couldn't agree more with your analysis of the problem, but I don't think any of these are really strong solutions. Unfortunately, I don't have anything better to suggest though =(

1 and 2: I think both of these are not very respecting of leaderboards' dynamic natures. It is assumed that leaderboards aren't immutable, because the whole point is to encourage an ongoing competition on every map. I know you have split both of these (leaderboards / first place ranks) into their own new categories, but it still feels more like a little gimmick than anything, because it's not really an achievement at all to place highly on a leaderboard that only exists for around a week. I think it would very, very quickly lose its flair and end up being meaningless

3: This is a cool feature (that will be coming!), but I don't think its effect will be that noticeable with respect to qualified maps. Players would still be required to go out of their way to try out new qualified maps, and even searching by genre I'd personally much rather just play a ranked map so I feel like my score is counting towards something

Subscribe to mapper: similar reasoning as 3, though I'm less sure. Maybe this would be more effective, since players can try out maps from their favourite mappers that they know could be ranked soon. As you said, that's already a feature request though (and I believe that is planned as well )

abraker wrote:

Fourth proposal:
Leaving feedback in map's discussion page within a certain time of playing the map may reward the player with something

if we can figure out what "something" is, then this seems like the most promising way to encourage activity. but I am doubtful that there exists a "something" for this case

how about having a 'new qualified beatmaps' section similar to the 'new ranked beatmaps' section on the website? that would make qualified maps a lot more visible

squirrelpascals wrote:

abraker wrote:

Fourth proposal:

Leaving feedback in map's discussion page within a certain time of playing the map may reward the player with something

This is what kudosu attempted to do. The problem is, what exactly will it reward? The map may be fixed to address the players concerns but there doesn't feel like much value there

Yea, and I avoided mentioning kudosu because of it's failure to be of value. Don't know what the reward could be, but it can provide a very good incentive if it is something desired.

clayton wrote:

if we can figure out what "something" is, then this seems like the most promising way to encourage activity. but I am doubtful that there exists a "something" for this case

In wonder if staff may have any ideas other than kudosu

Angane wrote:

how about having a 'new qualified beatmaps' section similar to the 'new ranked beatmaps' section on the website? that would make qualified maps a lot more visible

Could work a little bit? But a lot of players don't really follow the front page of the website which is why I didn't suggest it.

Also, had the have been a better alternative for kudosu I think it would have been proposed / implemented by now. This isn't another kudosu v2 thread though

@clayton: 3 and 4 were kind of meant to compliment 1 and 2 so ya, they wouldn't directly address qualified, it kind of relies on players using them very often. I also agree what you said about one and two :p

Maybe to combine/strengthen 1 and 2, there can be some sort of monthly leaderboard tracking who can acheive the most leaderboards / number 1 spots in qualified? Kind of similar to spotlights in the way that the leaderboard fluctuates between maps released for each month. Competition over the period of a month would have more significance than a single week for one map :p

bring back qualified pp and ignore the people who complain when the map gets dq'd

I don't understand, why do you need an extra incentive?
How i see it the incentive to see qualified maps is to see up and coming ranked maps, why would you need anything more than that?

also "how about having a 'new qualified beatmaps' section similar to the 'new ranked beatmaps' section on the website? that would make qualified maps a lot more visible"

CrumpetFiddler wrote:

I don't understand, why do you need an extra incentive?
How i see it the incentive to see qualified maps is to see up and coming ranked maps, why would you need anything more than that?

also "how about having a 'new qualified beatmaps' section similar to the 'new ranked beatmaps' section on the website? that would make qualified maps a lot more visible"

Lol I meant something like this but for qualified (the right side of the screen)

CrumpetFiddler wrote:

How i see it the incentive to see qualified maps is to see up and coming ranked maps, why would you need anything more than that?

The original point of qualified maps is for people to play them and for them to say if there needs something fixing before they are ranked.

I think the biggest incentive to play qualified maps is to not wipe any scores as it transitions from qualified to ranked and give the pp to any scores made while it was qualified the moment the map gets ranked. That way players won't feel demoralized that they have to make the same score again while it was qualified when it gets ranked, and they'll get their rewards when the map has been deemed by the 7-day process to be ranked and thus suitable to award pp to players.

Add-on edit: I think a good chunk of these players that are experienced with the mapping in the difficulty range the map is catering to will be more inclined to speak up of what parts of the map aren't sitting well when they play (as doing so would mainly benefit them in the end, assuming the mapper is going for ranked no matter what).

ruruchewy wrote:

I think the biggest incentive to play qualified maps is to not wipe any scores as it transitions from qualified to ranked and give the pp to any scores made while it was qualified the moment the map gets ranked. That way players won't feel demoralized that they have to make the same score again while it was qualified when it gets ranked, and they'll get their rewards when the map has been deemed by the 7-day process to be ranked and thus suitable to award pp to players.

Add-on edit: I think a good chunk of these players that are experienced with the mapping in the difficulty range the map is catering to will be more inclined to speak up of what parts of the map aren't sitting well when they play (as doing so would mainly benefit them in the end, assuming the mapper is going for ranked no matter what).

That's a good point. I'd love to see it on osu!

4Lajf wrote:

ruruchewy wrote:

I think the biggest incentive to play qualified maps is to not wipe any scores as it transitions from qualified to ranked and give the pp to any scores made while it was qualified the moment the map gets ranked. That way players won't feel demoralized that they have to make the same score again while it was qualified when it gets ranked, and they'll get their rewards when the map has been deemed by the 7-day process to be ranked and thus suitable to award pp to players.

Add-on edit: I think a good chunk of these players that are experienced with the mapping in the difficulty range the map is catering to will be more inclined to speak up of what parts of the map aren't sitting well when they play (as doing so would mainly benefit them in the end, assuming the mapper is going for ranked no matter what).

That's a good point. I'd love to see it on osu!

Please see this: https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/topics/846278

You noobies have to learn some osu! history to understand why things are the way they are.

abraker wrote:

Please see this: https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/topics/846278

You noobies have to learn some osu! history to understand why things are the way they are.

If that's the case, then I'm at a loss for what else can be done to encourage playing qualified maps. I'll admit, I almost never play qualified maps, yet do when they're ranked, and putting some big banner saying to play qualified maps is really not going to help the cause. I also don't really buy into the "theoretical loss in pp when a qualified score that doesn't give pp that would give pp when it gets ranked gets wiped out due to map DQ" idea because the people that are playing qualified maps know what they're getting into by playing qualified maps that their scores are at a risk of being lost due to a map DQ (probably means those people are all big airheads, but anyway). I still feel like keeping qualified scores and not awarding pp for qualified scores is our best chance we got; I don't see any other methods benefiting the player's perspective on this.

I would really love the ability to sort by genre in osu! direct. If the maps get properly tagged you kinda can do that but raising awareness of tagability and some system that categorizes the songs would be rad none the less. At times its hard to find maps with music to my liking.

2: seriously, who would go and say "oh, a beatmap! let's look at the screenshot of the playerboard when it was in qualified to see who was number 1 then!" i don't know if you would be interested personally, but to me it sounds like something that will never see the daylight again.

3: okay, i would like that, but i don't get the relation

the first suggestion i think is decent.

what could be implemented is one or two (hush-hush) medals. i know there are not thaaaat many medal hunters but there are some (including me) and i know that would definitely be an incentive.
some ideas: super quick draw - get #1 on a map right after it gets qualified. tester - play x maps while they are in the qualified state. unqualified - play a map that later gets disqualified (even though i don't know if this would be technically possible but just suggestions for now). chargeback - get a score that would've been in your top 100 pp if it was ranked (this would be a extremely mean and hard one but just suggestions).
there are tons of possibilities and why not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i dont really differentiate between unranked, qualified, ranked, or loved maps. I just play what I like, I think for a lot of qualified maps though the issue is i dont know about them, just advertise them better maybe? Replace higher user rating with most recently qualified perhaps because frankly user rating is meaningless.