abraker wrote:
People are speaking about controversial maps and the QAT's failure in handling them appropriately. Can we identify the maps and what was controversial about them so we have something to go off of? There can be controversy in context of abusing the star rating or pp, but there can also be controversy in context of mapping and design choices or some other context. Labeling them all under one term "controversial" does not paint the full picture.
Well I once tried to analyze myself not liking these "freestyle" maps that been infesting the game for past 2 years.
Lets take an example off this Itari Ten map by Hailie, its like an ultimate apotheosis of what been happening on the scene for quite a while.
So lets start off basic mapping concepts that has been developed over the last decade:
0. rhythm (cuz ure playing a map based on a song xd)
1. flow (obviously u shud move the cursor right)
2. emphasis (u shud distinguish the loud/quiet sounds)
3. structure (to bring the visual apsect into the game, which can help in reading, recognizing the rhythm, spacing and so on)
So these are the most basic and obvious concepts that has been there for literally a decade. In past years there also appeared rhythm filtering, gimmicks, aesthetics, anti-flow/emphasis and other more advanced stuff.
So back to Itari Ten: technically speaking, it almost entirely ignores the one of most basic concepts - which is structure. Also, the emphasis (spacing/hitsounding/volume) is completely unbalanced, a lot of the sounds has way larger distance than they should have (loud sounds - big distance, quite - low distance - the most obvious definition for spacing emphasis). Then we got the rhythm, which is uncanny to the point where you simply dont know which layer of the music you are playing (esp with combination of low end hitsounding and volume control).
So I just pointed out the most basic and understandable stuff without going in-depth of mapping theory.
The issue there is that, nobody bothered to explain these concepts in RC. Its just a huge blank area which nobody takes care of. As I said above -
lack of rules. Therefore you can continuously argue around it and not find a ground because you think that way, and the mapper think the other way. Even if the community is outcrying, the mapper is in a safe, especially having these sweet friends in BN who can renominate by a click of 2 fingers.
Just look at these discussions - (uc, hailie, halfslashed and so on) feels like they are just exhausting the modders which try to criticize them, so they would leave their "piece of art" in calm. There are literally walls of text being wasted into nothingness, people just give up on arguing because its like talking with a wall.
What most of these so-called "freestyle" mappers dont understand the most, is that if there is a HUGE fucking outcry in the community, which comes from both player/mapper base, that means they fucked up somewhere. And they should stop for a moment and think about it, ask for opinions and so on. I had the same issue, but I was smart enough to disqualify my map each time there were a concerns raised, because I genuinely felt like I am not the best one and people might be right. Thats how I completely removed 2 of my 200+ hours of effort maps because I failed. But here we have people not trying to change their minds, they just want to rank their maps, make people get the PP or just to fulfill their ego's needs. And the current state of RC allows them to do so.