Hi, this is a guideline proposal.

The proposal is in in a similar vein as https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/topics/844073 , but applies to a different case.

With a growing collection of ‘PP mappers’ banding together on mapsets, we’re starting to see quite the amount of sets that have a lot of difficulties with a similar star rating and very similar design ideas. This causes content bloat, and could be described as artificial score inflation.

To explain why it causes content bloat, let’s start with defining that in this context. Given the varied nature of ranked content, full of different songs, maps and mappers, the ranked content generates different play experiences by design. Content bloat then could be described as the opposite :
“The absence of different play experiences and/or the obstruction there-of”

By this definition, it’s clear that sets designed around players being rewarded for retrying multiple difficulties many times cause this issue. Spending a lot of time on 1 song on 1 mapset already cuts or obstructs the time spent playing maps on different songs by different mappers. If each difficulty is also designed around the same difficulty elements, emphasis methods and/or patterning style, then the player is also derived from different gameplay.
You could also say this causes a very disproportionate play distribution. Players at the lower levels of play get very very little content, while players at higher levels get too much content. While there is no need for equality, something more equalized would be better.

The reward, PP, is the main cause of this happening. If players see an opportunity to inflate their score and gain ranks, or even are afraid that they’ll fall behind, they have no choice but to take it. You could say that those players are to blame for it and not the system or that they are probably enjoying themselves, though I believe it’s important to protect players from themselves. Many of them are in fact not enjoying this, have accepted rank decay despite finding going for ranks fun otherwise, or disagree with the system even allowing this entirely.

Additionally, when several difficulties have the same design and star rating, it means they target the same audience. Players who can set a score on one difficulty can set it on the others as well. This essentially means players are given the chance to duplicate their score multiple times over. This artificially inflates score and is evidently unhealthy for the competitive side of the game.
Disproportionate play distribution causes issues here as well, giving players at lower levels much less opportunities to rank up than those at higher levels.

To fix these issues, I propose the following guideline :

1. “Avoid having many difficulties with similar rhythm, intensity and other emphasis methods on the same set. This is to avoid unnecessary bloating of the ranked section and artificially increased scores.”

Edit: Lots of discussion happened and the proposed guideline changed quite a bit, current version can be found on this post https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/topics/912089?n=40

What this is intended to prevent : Mapsets like https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/931452#osu/1944926 and https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/950289#osu/1985282

These should simply not exist under the reasoning provided; they are the exact reason for this proposal existing. Their highest difficulties use similar rhythms, especially in their most intense parts. Their main method of emphasis (big sharp angled jumps) makes minor differences across some difficulties negligible.

What this is intended to limit : Mapsets like https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/513590#osu/1091249 or https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/935111#osu/1952177

Monstrata’s Zen Zen Zense is an example of 2 difficulties being similar as a result of a concept. While not disallowed, notable differences should be made between the difficulties.

Sotarks’ Gold Dust has 3 difficulties at 5.55 stars with the similarities in the described aspects. This pushes the boundaries of the reasoning given and should be avoided.

What this should not limit or prevent :

1. Mapsets that have a lot of difficulties with different designs. This still provides a unique gameplay experience. Megasets are a good example of this, as they often focus around individuals expressing themselves.
2. Mapsets that have 2 difficulties with similar deisgn, given they are made by different people. These seem inevitable and aren’t nearly as harmful.
3. Similar maps of the same songs on different sets, hosted by a different user. These require a full set to be made and more nominations, this evens out the amount of potential bloat causes.
4. more .. ?

I do want to avoid the proposal covering cases it shouldn’t, it’s made to target very specific mapsets and not to cause collateral damage. Another issue here is vagueness. What is ‘many’ and when are difficulties too ‘similar’, can the mapping community agree on these? Personally I find a case by case basis judgement to be best for this, so maybe precise wording isn’t necessary.

I’m also trying to avoid adding direct reference to PP in the guideline, since we still have to rely on 3rd party tools to check the rewards. It also has too little to do with actual mapping.

So, that's my thoughts. I'd like to hear yours as well

thanks for saving mapping yaspo

It must state very obviously in the rc how this guideline is only meant for a very specific type of abuse. You don't want someone to interpret it in a way that will make them post problems on discussions like "This spread is not creative enough".

Still I think it's a good guideline addition if it gets handled well.

I really like the idea of this, seems like it will be very subjective though.

Does a set like pishi's Reign of Fear fall under this guideline? The difficulties are extremely similar but one could argue that difficulty setting and star rating differ enough between at least some of them to consider them rankable?

Also not entirely sure about the "different sets" part. Different users entirely sure, but what about user A ranking a set of song X and then making a GD for the ranked set of the same song hosted by user B? In my opinion this proposal should affect that case as well, if the GD is too similar to the ranked set it is bloated content.

Ailvs Saifu Kamiasobi no Uta is also a possible case for this, at what point does the ranked section become bloated when the same mapper maps the same song in a similar style x amount of times?

Right so
@Olibomby
I agree! "I do want to avoid the proposal covering cases it shouldn’t, it’s made to target very specific mapsets and not to cause collateral damage."

@sylvarus
Pishi's reign of fear would be debatable under these rules, but not entirely unrankable. The difficulty settings are definitely a plus, but it would be recommended to design more around them in a few instances.

The GD thing is already covered in another guideline, the one added through the proposal at the top.
Ailv would fall under this rule as well in case the map is too similar. Though if the maps are different enough there is essentially no reason to complain; it counts as unique content.

Who remembers when megasets were used for gimmicky songs to showcase all kind mapping styles like Axion? https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/115193#osu/324516

Throughout the osu history even devs have tried imposing the idea of limited amounts of difficulties per spread range but were shotdown by community as they were way vague and didn't have a place back then.. Nowadays it is precisely what is needed to avoid content bloat and what yaspo proposes would fix that. https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/topics/420223 At that point it wasn't received greatly as it offered nothing but an inconvenience therefore the community's complaints were loud, so the proposal was not implemented.

Why it would be good to implement:

1.Ever since osu existed you couldn't gain points by doing the same thing, if I fced the same map twice with same acc I wouldn't get awarded for it which makes sense, I already got awarded. Nowadays like justadice or harumachi clover, mappers thought of adding GD's to avoid that limitation and use the most convenient methods in all the maps for performance gain.

2. It's as yaspo said, it just encourages people to play the map they already basically played to stay relevant and not feel like crap for dropping thousands of ranks for denying to do it. Implementing this rule can save players from themselves as playing the diffs to stay relevant can cause fatigue and tilt due to failure to come up with the terms. Having a more diverse section with more songs and styles to boost their rank makes the grind much more interesting. A single set of the same song with 10 diffs is a lot to take in.

3. Would inspire mappers to be more creative and add more to the ranked section.

What I would add as the guideline is that no more than two difficulties of same spread range may be mapped in a similar fashion. It is for members of BNG and NAT to decide whether the difficulties fall under that category.

Two would be fine because when you ask someone for GD you won't know how it will turn out, but having more than that is just too much to be looked over. This kind of guideline existing adds incentive to BNs being careful of nominating such maps and gives other BNs the possibility to veto such a blatant issue without mappers and other BNs using the famous "buT itS NOt In raNKInG CrITeRiA" argument.

Against the argument off "this will limit the freedom of mappers" well sorry it may but, maps are being ranked for the sake of the community not just the individual mapper that wants to rank it, you're not disallowed to map the song if your heart wills it.

i love this so much thank you yaspo

I absolutely love this proposal, thanks for your hard work putting this together yaspo! I hope this gets the attention it deserves

I am against this because I specifically make my difficulties to build on top of one another. My style is progression across difficulties, I like establishing a core concept and building upon it across difficulties. I don't want this guideline to wreck havoc on such concept.

Instead of complaining people that mappers are creating similar maps, make different maps yourself and get them ranked. I hear everybody complaining that ranked is stale because there is little variation in mapping. What is preventing you from making maps with the variation that is lacking? Come on, people.

I agree with Yaspo and Maridius that something should be done about the excess amount of pp maps in the same set.

I find Maridius' guideline especially viable since it clearly defines the maximum amount of difficulties you are allowed to have for each spread range. Which is why I'd like to change the wording a little bit to take in account Maridius' opinions.

1. “There should be no more than two difficulties with similar rhythm, intensity, difficulty spread and other emphasis methods on the same set. This is to avoid unnecessary bloating of the ranked section and artificially increased scores.”

dennischan wrote:

I agree with Yaspo and Maridius that something should be done about the excess amount of pp maps in the same set.

solution is simple: fix pp

I find it ridiculous that we need to limit map designs because of a broken calculator. This should not happen.

yaspo i love you and this proposal

progression across difficulties is the exact opposite of what this guideline is opposing lol.

however i think this guideline is ultimately pointless as it can be easily surpassed (for example, sotarks gets one of his clones to host a second set and then is able to even bubble it himself) and is simply a bandaid fix to the more overarching issue of bns purposely promoting horrifically bad maps as well as the pp system failing to accurately rate difficulty by ignoring several factors and overweighting others. unless you expand it to apply to copies of the same *song* being mapped in the exact same way, i don't see how this is useful in the slightest.

and even then, it won't do shit because you can stick amazing repeats on 1/4 and simple rhythm and a 2* diffspike with 1-2s on just about any song and get some amazing bns to bubble it and bob's your uncle. not like pp farmers care what song it's on, just whether they can get their new top play...

I can see your good perspective for writing this proposal, but I personally against it.

I want to give the example based on my mapset which 7 mappers participate to create a GD for this mapset results in 3x(ENHI) spread. Petit Rabbit's - Happiness Encore

The pace of the music has pretty forced the mapper to make the creation of their difficulty become similar to each other (pattern structure is almost the same for my Oni difficulty and Blacken's Oni - some small difference has been shown, but in overall I'd say that it is still similar). Which this proposal gonna prohibited this kind of mapset too. But as you wrote here,

yaspo wrote:

What this should not limit or prevent :

• Similar maps of the same songs on different sets, hosted by a different user. These require a full set to be made and more nominations, this evens out the amount of potential bloat causes.

So, it means that if I want to make this mapset become rankable according to your proposal, this mapset must be split into 3 mapsets instead. Which it is not match to my intention to host this map for "Making the player enjoy the song while no need to download too many mapset - All in one". To split this mapset into 3 mapsets will cause the song folder of the player becomes larger unnecessarily (since the player must download all of the maps to be able to play them all and thus causing the player to download redundant mp3 and bg). And for a nomination for this kind of map, even the map gets separate into 3 mapsets, each host can still manage to find the same nominator to nominate it.

In conclusion, practically, this kind of proposal may can't help anything. As the mapper/GDer can host a new mapset to avoid this proposal's restriction by hosting another mapset while asking for the same nominator to nominate - which this causes the song folder to become unnecessarily larger.

Reading the proposal, it seems to me that the potential loopholes of this proposal is within the proposed guideline itself. You need to iron out the wording, defined and objectively leaning.

Hello, everyone~ My English abilities are quite poor so there may be mistakes here and there.

Originally, my definition of a Ma”pp”er was “PP(providing pleasure)”, not just “PP(Performance Points)”
If you look at my recent ranked or pending maps, you will see that they are not just maps for gaining PP

What I find enjoyable about maps when playing is the “movement of the cursor”, which is why I started mapping in the first place. I wanted people to enjoy my mapping style.
It just so turns out that my style of mapping was easier to farm PP than other maps, and eventually people started to misinterpret my definition of “PP (providing pleasure)” as “PP(performance points)”. I was fine with this since it still gave people a sense of accomplishment by gaining PP (performance points). This eventually lead me into thinking that “performance points” was a part of “providing pleasure”, and I just have been mapping like that since.

Enough with my own story. Let me explain from my point of view how this situation turned out like this.

1. First, the PP system is focused too much on jumps and streams.

1. Second, usually mapsets with a lot of difficulties tend to have shorter songs, which means that the play count will stack up quickly.

These two are the main reasons why maps become popular.

Most people want their maps to get attention, and if they do not people won’t receive motivation for people to continue mapping.
I feel like Yaspo’s view is more like a temporary solution and does not tackle the two fundamental problems stated above.
It's like you've taken away the fulfillment and the freedom of mapping from countless players by vetoing JUSTadICE(https://osu.ppy.sh/b/2044364)
I wonder if the adverse effects of the PP system can limit the mapping style of a mapper.
Of course, some people want more patterns, but some people will enjoy the current difficulties as they are.
Lots of Hype Trains, favourites and Play Counts provides evidence for that.
A player has their rights to choose and play a map, so it does not make sense to take away the freedom of mapping just because a map is similar to other ones.

For example, when https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/744772#osu/1570203 was ranked, it only had 10000 play counts after a whole week.
But it became a popular map in just a day, when a_blue HDDT FC’ed it.
More people had played the map after it went in the Popular Beatmaps section, and I was happy to see this since many people would gain a sense of accomplishment after gaining PP.
(You won’t know the feeling of numerous people sending you “thank you” messages…)

Also, the standard for determining the rank of Popular Beatmaps is the play count. This lead many mappers to map shorter songs, while a lot of good long songs received less attention.
For example, https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/890174#osu/1860808 is a very interesting and well-made map, but many players do not know about this and the play count does not even exceed 30000.
Do you think people would want to rank maps that are well-made but unnoticed?

I just want to say that the so called “PP maps” are worth being ranked as they give players a sense of fulfilment.
I think a faster way to fix this is to discuss ways to tackle the fundamental problems, rather than these guidelines.
One thing I would like to add is that my mapping style is definitely distinct from those of other mappers, but if they become more distinct than that then that would just be over-mapping or a mapping style that people do not want…
As you said, it is good to put variousity in mapping styles for a more diverse experience, but I want more people to enjoy my maps

I will stop here for now, and I will answer after further observing the situation.

abraker wrote:

dennischan wrote:

I agree with Yaspo and Maridius that something should be done about the excess amount of pp maps in the same set.

solution is simple: fix pp

I find it ridiculous that we need to limit map designs because of a broken calculator. This should not happen.

pp will never be perfect and it doesnt matter how many times pp is "fixed" there will always be someting to exploit and abuse. Stop blaming the pp system for mappers exploiting it, the pp doesnt exploit itself. Grow a backbone please and add this guideline so mapsets that deserve to be unranked jump map compilations stay in the graveyard.

Alright so, there seem to be 2 main counterpoints for the proposal
1) Limiting sets in themselves doesn't prevent the maps from getting ranked through different means
2) This doesn't come close to fixing or approaching the root causes, like the pp system, mapping for playcount, circlejerk, etc ..

1) For a while I felt like the pros would outweigh the cons, but now I more or less feel like both the current situation and the one that would result just bring different issues to the table (partly due to 2). In essence it's just a game of pros and cons
- 1 big content drop vs multiple smaller ones
- 1 normal/hard/insane vs multiple similar, generic ones
- downloading a song once vs seeing it appear multiple times
etc.
In that sense, yeah, the approach should be adjusted.

2) While I understand this, it's also the mentality I'm trying to counteract with the proposal. With fixes to the performance system currently happening, it's not unreasonable to also try fencing in the problem from the other side. It's just a matter of finding the best band-aids we can find, in a sense.

Other stuff
- Tyistiana : yeah, that's a case I didn't consider, combined with above it's clear that the current proposal isn't valid
- Taeyang : I do get this sense of accomplishment, and I'm fine with PP maps existing. But, in the case of JUSTadICE the mapset originally gave 8 times the same sense of accomplishment, as the maps are about as difficult and provide the same rewards. Players being spoonfed 'accomplishment' quickly turns into something meaningless, bloated. That's mainly why I think limiting it per set is a good thing.
There's also a lot of players that just dislike this constant mapping for attention. You might not get their messages, but there's plenty of them. So I'd like to look for a better balance.
If the fundamental issues you mentioned were 'quick fixes' then they'd have already happened, or aren't happening for some reason (eg. https://github.com/ppy/osu-web/issues/2730 this thing that never happened)
- Maridius : imo I'd prefer an allowing guideline over a super strict one. Binding things to spread gets kinda pesky. Generally I'd rather tell mappers to "c'mon don't do this shit" rather than "you must work within this small space of options"

Anyways, I'm kinda brainstorm mode right now. People seem to agree with the premise of the proposal, but the execution has issues. So time to try a different angle on it.
Things that come to mind are

1. Avoid oversimplifying Extra difficulties. Players at this level require a suitable challenge.
   [counteracts more blatant design choices done for pp mapping, also disconnected from the set transferring issue]
2. Avoid having many similar sections across difficulties in the same set. This is to ensure that every difficulty gives a different experience.
   [Loosens up the proposed guideline by not overfocusing smaller similarities. Gives room for mappers who have different approaches to the same thing, like Taeyang refers to. Also encourages actually acting on it, making sections different seems easier than ranking another set. Still conflicts with Tystiana I think, but maybe just not fit for other gamemodes .. ?]

I'll add more ideas when I think of them. Thanks for all the feedback so far, though open for suggestions and even more feedback!

I fail to see how this prevents the same content bloat occurring when a mapper can just take those similar difficulties, make more sets with exactly the same everything else and some new lower diffs, and rank that without running afoul of this guideline. I'd recommend that if this is going to have any effect at all, it should come with an additional restriction not to make redundant sets of the same song, as that is a clear attempt to dodge the guideline.

MiGGo wrote:

abraker wrote:

dennischan wrote:

I agree with Yaspo and Maridius that something should be done about the excess amount of pp maps in the same set.

solution is simple: fix pp

I find it ridiculous that we need to limit map designs because of a broken calculator. This should not happen.

pp will never be perfect and it doesnt matter how many times pp is "fixed" there will always be someting to exploit and abuse. Stop blaming the pp system for mappers exploiting it, the pp doesnt exploit itself. Grow a backbone please and add this guideline so mapsets that deserve to be unranked jump map compilations stay in the graveyard.

Because thus far it has been one bandaid fix after another. A real solution to fixing pp has yet to be proposed. What you are failing to understand is that when pp is fixed this proposal will look archaic and as a desperate attempt. Its a short sighted solution.

Mun - Well, it'd be better to not limit what people map, especially if they are unrelated to the original set. Imagine mapping a set to find out that a similar one was ranked 2 years before without your knowledge. Imagine losing a speedrank war at the start of an anime season. Having your song choice limited sucks a lot, generally. At best "Don't host a set of a song you already ranked" could work, since that's relatively rare (rip ailv). Though then they could just pass of the set to a different host and yeah, rip lol.

Abraker - "When pp is fixed" is kinda wishful thinking, it's being worked on but still, it's a long journey (if it even can be completed). I'd very much like this to be archaic in the future, but for now we can try working towards a solution that works in the current century.

So, yeah suggestions would be cool.

Sorry, I should have clarified. I do not mean redundant sets of the same song by different people, as that's overreach we'd all like to avoid - I mean stuff like what Sotarks is doing right now, and uploading 3 sets with the same song, same bg, same hitsounds, etc. in an attempt to rank the GDs that were removed for score bloat and redundant content.

hm if you are not going to make it limited to having similar sets for the same song coming from your last post, then wouldn't the problem still be pretty problematic?

While there is people who is not gonna cared or abused the system that much to a degree to do such a thing but if the problem is these mapsets then as you see here for a recent example with you vetoing sotarks set now that he has 3 sets of the same song going to rank similar gds of the ones on the original set and it isn't like the gders themselves cannot just host the set either, causing your attempt, to not turn out as pretty and while I do not know what is in turn for them in the future, i don't imagine this coming out the way 1 would want it to

While there is ways to limit it, it just seems like the way you approaching it is only making the problem worst then it actually improves the situation because now we have even more bloated content and these guidelines won't do a damn thing to them and adding more is prune to harm others who has nothing to do with this

@mun wouldn't that simply be solved by sotarks himself to just let the gders host the set, since if those sets aren't allowed to be rank for being similar, then wouldn't that go against any other person who just so happen to have a similar mapping style that wants to ranked that set for such reasons, there isn't much you can really do on that and things like hitsound for such a short set can easily be done quickly in a matter of 30mins or possibly less and same for bg.

While this would make ranking those sets a bit harder for the people who abuses it, but at the same time when you have people such as sotarks who can easily whipped up the gds needed and have the bns for it, it isn't a big enough brick wall to keep it from still being as problematic and as said before, it just harms others in the process of doing these things

Maybe I am misunderstanding it so forgive me as I am just skimming through but I just don't really see how this will go through without just interfering too much with mapping freedom in general rather than mainly the sets that people have the more concern with ^^;

(also forgive my grammar I typed this up pretty quickly)

I don't think there's any way to come up with a concrete set in stone way to word this new guideline, as I don't doubt any of the mappers have any problems finding ways to loophole and skim around the guideline if it's extremely defined. Technically clear intent to abuse the ranking system is already not allowed, but it's extremely obvious to anyone at this point that this rule is extremely easy to get around. Just don't make your intentions literally written in the map and you're good.

Mun - I agree, personally I'd also a different outcome here

Hailie - Well, the toxic(?) way of handling the 'set transfer' problem would be to say "Don't rank difficulties that were vetoed on a different set without making changes. (Difficulties vetoed for spread issues are an exception)". In combination with "diffs on a single set shouldn't have too many matching sections", that'd effectively keep this idea specific to the cases at hand.
But yeah otherwise trying to cover the issue is just kinda "oh your mapset is redundant because x mapped it already" and that's kinda dumb and rude.
Agree that current situation is kinda backfiring, but I think their circumvention isn't very viable since it doesn't guarantee them being in the top played listing they aim for.

Miggo - man, I agree it's not easy but I think it's healthy to try brainstorming nonetheless. If a lot of people try thinking outside of the box maybe something interesting falls out. Or not. Doesn't hurt to try.

So
- Avoid having too many similar sections across difficulties in the same set
combined with
- Don't rank difficulties that were removed due to a veto without making adjustments (avoids circumvention of vetoes post-veto)
and
- Don't oversimplify extra difficulties (just like how low diffs shouldn't be too complex, high diffs shouldn't be lacking in complexity)

How does that sound? That would at least discourage making sets for the sake of high playcount, which means a primary motivation for making this many similar difficulties is gone.

I agree with the premise but I'm going to play devil's advocate for the purpose of generalizing and (eventually) closing loopholes.

Avoid having too many similar sections across difficulties in the same set.

1. No real issue here. This is the most solid out of them, because it is objective and provable. The issues come in with the already presented loopholes, tackled below.

Don't rank difficulties that were removed due to a veto without making adjustments.

1. As others have mentioned, what if you just upload the same set over and over again? Ultimately, the issue is treated as a spread issue (due to the fact that maps are treated as individual cases in the ranking criteria (similarities between difficulties being evaluated as something throughout a spread)).
2. What is defined as proper adjustments (outside of fulfilling a vetoer's wishes)?

Don't oversimplify extra difficulties.

1. Slippery slope. If this goes through, maps that BNs don't like or agree with could be vetoed for this reason without proper evidence, especially because of the below point.
2. "Simple" is an extremely subjective term depending on perspective- a new player obviously does not think playing an expert difficulty is simple, so what defines simple in this case?

simplify could mean, for example, putting repeat sliders/ unrepresentative rhythm over 1/4 or 1/3 or 3/4, making the aim component of the map much much much higher than the rhythm component

@nao tomori, @mun

In a real scenario that won't be happening, why it's happening now is simply because sotarks doesn't want to straight up delete what their gders have done. In a real scenario, a mapper would have no incentive to make multiple mapsets of the same song with someone else's difficulties, as the main purpose of amassing the difficulties in one set is for the popularity of said set. That said, the original owner has to get over the hard work to rank someone else's maps as the main attraction + lose a significant portion of BNs wiling to nominate already ranked mapsets. Additionally, players will lose hype over the song meaning newer sets will get less popular unless the pp gain is significantly more convenient. A much more viable tactic for the mapper would be to work on a different song with one of his difficulties actually being the "star" of the set if he was aiming for popular sets. So tl;dr going around the rule will be way too inconvenient for the mapper other than going around it won't make the goal of a popular set possible.

@Tyistiana Yes it will go against these kind of things because what you're doing is precisely content bloat as you are admitting yourself. Yes it may be larger but may I ask what is the purpose of asking for GDs especially for lower difficulties which will essentially feel the same?

Will limiting the maximum number of difficulties in a single mapset also works ?
For example : 8 (or fewer)

This can prevent the score inflation in the same set, or spamming the "Popular beatmaps" section,
example : quaver, No title (Not inflation I think but it is in the "Popular beatmaps" since I first play this game)

As taeyang stated in the discussion of JUSTadICE

Second, usually mapsets with a lot of difficulties tend to have shorter songs, which means that the play count will stack up quickly.

A hard limit on the max number of diffs in a set goes against the spirit of the proposal, since it would also cull sets with lots of clearly different diffs.

A hard limit on similar difficulties, not any kind of difficulties which will be left for BNs and NAT to judge if its appropriately different is the topic of discussion @lewski

yea i was replying to ztumpie

Right so
- Ztumpie : Lewski is correct, just limiting the amount of difficulties hurts some of the cooler big sets out there (eg. sets that result out of pending/newspaper cup)

I slept on the things I proposed before, ty Lass for cool feedback
- "don't rank difficulties that were removed due to a veto without making adjustments"
Kinda ends up being a bandaid for my bandaid and that's bad. Comes down to "don't circumvent the veto after changes have been applied", which should just be countered by the rule still existing. Case of Justadice is particularly weird, but more below. Cutting this idea.

- Don't oversimplify extra difficulties
While 'simple' is subjective, simplification is something you can point out regardless of style, and oversimplification comes closer to something that is objectively judgeable imo.

Some examples of simplification :

1. Mapping complex or dense rhythms in a way that is easier/trivial to play relative to the rest of the map. Like Nao referred to
2. Re-use of the same patterns without any changes to the way they play. For example, re-using the same horizontal jump pattern at the same spacing quickly becomes an introductory level consistency test in terms of both aiming and reading. Similar things could be said about stream design and slider usage.
3. Mapping sections at a low-insane level of difficulty despite the hardest part being 6*, potentially misrepresenting intensity for the sake of simplifying sections.

Oversimplification would be when multiple cases of simplification are present, so a BN placing a veto would have to explain the different aspects, relative to the map's perceived difficulty level.

That said, yeah there is potential for attacking styles here, though I don't believe it's invalid conceptually. Would say it's odd that lower difficulties have to match the skills of their target audience based on Ranking Criteria, but higher difficulties don't. Maybe I'm wrong because generally more freedom is better for everyone. Want to keep this open for discussion.

So, so far

1. Avoid having too many similar sections across difficulties in the same set.

is fairly valid (need more opinions but it seems a good start)

However, a lot of people seem to be hinting at extending it past the set itself to prevent just ranking the diffs in a different set.
Therefore, how about

1. Avoid having too many similar sections with an already ranked difficulty of the same song. This is to encourage diverse content. Also applies to difficulties within the same set.

With an exception for levels of difficulty that don't have much room for design choices, like R3 Music Box normal diffs or even easy/normal difficulties in general.
Still feel conflicted about this personally, but after looking around more and reconsidering, this really only applies to few specific case. (Was worried that this'd turn speedrank wars into a toxic wasteland, but mappers participating in them are experienced enough to have their own separate style)

What's so wrong with having more maps to play? This rule is way to subjective and you're forcing mappers to change their style. Which I really dont like. For example sotarks and taeyang diff have different structure flows and they really don't play the same way at all players like variety and this rule would only limit there options. Also this rule can be easily avoided by hosting it on different sets which means you could have 2 sets what could have been 1. This would cause unnecessary space usage on my hard drive. I think you're only doing this out of self interest trying to get rid of pp maps.

-Liban- wrote:

things

It might be a good idea to go back and read the thread more carefully since you seem to have misunderstood what the proposal aims to do. Also, everything you brought up either has already been addressed or is currently being discussed.

-Liban- wrote:

I think you're only doing this out of self interest trying to get rid of pp maps.

I can't really see what personal interest anyone could have in this. In any case, whether or not there's a hidden agenda behind the proposal isn't even relevant to the discussion.

So so glad that this proposal was brought up, and I really really hope that it doesn't end as a dead proposal. I think for any game, or even for any service with user-submitted content, it's much more healthy for it to keep the redundant content or the content bloat at bay, right?

Well, I think that depends on what we want osu! to become in the long run. I always advocate for having a permissive ranking criteria that allows many things for it to get through, in order to have more variety in the ranked section... but at the same time, since many people do like to map in this sort of way, implementing something like this would be the exact opposite of being permissive, rather barring maps from getting to the ranked section. So, pros and cons, yeah.

Looking at the two perspectives:

If we were to continue with the current system, where mappers go for pp/attention most of all, it's not necessarily a bad thing. As people have said, there's people right now that do enjoy the current state of things despite them being 'bad', and I think pp mapping, or mapping for attention will never truly disappear (think of them like the clickbaity videos in YouTube... they work, that's why they exist). Continuing like this sets a standard on what is 'common' ranked mapping, thus making maps that are different really stand out, plus everyone gets a true and fair chance on getting to the ranked section. As a player, once you happen to stumble upon a mapper that maps this kind of way, you rather just know that you want to stay away from his/her maps - and the issue of the players feeling pressured to play these types of maps to stay in the top rankings, that may only be related with the pp system directly, and not so much with the mapping it has influenced, at least from my point of view.

So the current state of things, I see it as an even ground for everyone (or at least, as even as it can get) but... for the game as a whole, it does not give it a good image. It may make players think that this is all osu! is about and make them quickly quit the game, and sure enough, in an ideal world you wouldn't need to dig too deep to find something interesting out there. We wouldn't be able to pride ourselves in belonging to a community where only the highest standard is held - since we know so many things pass through without too much effort, or that there are many other interests for mappers than just trying to bring something interesting to the table. We would know as a community that there's too much content bloat, and aren't really doing anything to change that. But just maybe that can be countered with the beatmap spotlights, or with the staff trying to bring more attention to maps that really deserve it in some other way, I'm not sure if that's as effective though.


Now, if something like this were implemented...

Hopes are that, pp maps would be more limited. Less pp difficulties in the same set, or even less pp sets entirely. No more grinding the same songs over an over with similar mapping ideas - we know there's no content bloat happening, and that you can find something new and unique on each map. Even though there would be lots of backlash from mappers, the game as a whole would become more interesting, even if it's forcing the mappers to change their habits/way of mapping. I don't think it would make the game instantly better, as the first sets of a song, or first difficulties of a set, would still be pp and still get more plays (and I guess that's why this is called a 'band-aid' solution?) but, I think it would be a great first step as other mappers would need to forcefully find other, more interesting ways to represent a song in a map.

If I put myself in the shoes of someone who made a pp map and tried to get it ranked as a GD, but was told later that it was removed due to ranking criteria standards, and would not be able to get it through with significant changes, it would make me really mad, since I had spent so much time and effort mapping that (also because I would not be provided the opportunity to push it through, just because someone else beat me to it). Despite my rage though, for the game it would also make perfect sense since, if the map I created is extremely similar to an already ranked one, or a difficulty of the same set, what are you really going to provide to the ranked section? It would be time to ask myself, am I really bringing anything interesting or anything new to the table? That's why I think, if we were going this way, barring sets or difficulties from ranking is completely valid, as we want the game to provide something different and unique for everyone - as painful as it would be to the mapper putting their effort and time on the map, just telling them "sorry, you can't get in, try again - the game requires something different now".

I mean, we kinda know already that with any sort of change, people are going to get mad. But if it's for making the game better as a whole (better in this context meaning to provide more variety), then I think we should go ahead and embrace ourselves for the outrage this is going to cause. Myself personally, I'm all for a proposal like this.



tl;dr - I think this most of all depends if we all, as a community, want to start enforcing subjective quality standards again, with the mapper outrage it's going to ensue, Loctav-era style again. Do we want to keep mappers happy, or do we want to make the game more varied with its maps?
As I see it right now, the community is divided and has been for some time. If we can all get on the same page though, I'm on board.

(Sorry if I actually failed to tackle the currently discussed points or digressed a little bit, just felt like that's a strong point that should be clarified first. There is another thing I wanted to say, but I'll leave it like this for now I guess).

- Liban : There's a lot of wrong interpretations here. More maps to play is fine, Taeyang is definitely not Sotarks and variety is cool. Lack of variety is an issue however (see Sotarks & mentees). mp3 issue is already prevalent (see harumachi clover, re:tryment, etc), might be an interesting fix for osu!Lazer to have them use the same mp3 instead.

- Gens : Thanks a lot for your in depth post. It details exactly the two opposing sides of the argument, mapper freedom vs stricter content moderation. Since this is a game with user-created content and user-moderated content, it causes conflict between these users and their goals.

So, yeah. I'm not eager for a "Loctav style era", nor am I trying to stop pp mapping. Beyond restricting cases where content gets excessively repetitive (same song + same map), the Ranking Criteria should remain as permissive as possible. So for example, ranking set with 4 overly similar difficulties or pushing popular song x for the 5th time without a different approach is an issue. A second or maybe third version in similar vein should be fine; it seems unreasonable to expect everyone to do different things considering the size of our community and the meta.

To extend that thought to my current version of the proposal, here's an adjustment.

1. Avoid having too many similar sections with several already ranked difficulties of the same song. This is to ...

This seems as specific as it gets, though idk how others feel between this and previous iteration. This does seem more realistically enforceable, since when more cases of 'the same thing' pop up, it becomes a lot more clear and easier to point out compared to when there's only 2 things to compare.

When I was writing the previous post, one thing that crossed my mind was exactly that - since we're going to have two sides of the spectrum, then what we would need is strike a balance between these two things, so cases where mappers are dissatisfied are minimal but variation in the game overall is upheld. So I like where this is going!

At first I thought it may be too lenient to have up to 3 or 4 difficulties with similar design ideas, but actually, revisiting your previous examples it is obvious that, it is valid and necessary. My only thought would be possibly the word "several" having too much room for interpretation. Does several mean 3 or more? Should it be until 4? 2 is already plural isn't it? Perhaps more specific wording there is needed, so that discussion isn't brought up at the moment it's applied.

And the only other thing I wanted to mention was also including the difficulty level wording in the proposal itself too. Everyone so far, as least the way I see it, already knows difficulty progression among the entire spread, where easy difficulties share ideas with the Insane and so, are perfectly valid and shouldn't be barred from ranking at all, so I don't think there's much to be discussed there but, the wording should also be included in the proposal to avoid misinterpretation. I think something like "...difficulties of the same song, of the same difficulty level" should suffice.

- Specifying amount of difficulties
Has been brought up quite a bit as I talked to people, but ultimately doesn't work out well. It really just ends up being an arbitrary number, and the difference between 2,3 and 4 difficulties is unsurprisingly huge. Prefer this to be vague so people can apply their own judgement. This mindset fits most of the ranking criteria (?) (eg how bpm gets handled on low difficulties)

- Specifying difficulty level
Felt like this was implied by 'too many similar sections'. When targeting different difficulty levels, you'll inherently end up adjusting certain things to fit that difficulty level. As a result the current guideline shouldn't cover those by nature. But you do make a valid case.

At this point I'm trying to find a more suitable way to word the guideline, maybe there's a way to group all the different things to be said together better. Words are hard.

Alright, thread's kinda dead, but I'm not (yet)!
Going to at least leave a post with current state of affairs.

- Specifying amount of difficulties
In hindsight still good to add it, to avoid mappers and BNs having a different interpretation of what is fine and what isn't.

Current version of the guideline :

1. If multiple difficulties of the same song exist in the ranked section or on the same mapset, avoid having many similar sections with 2 or more of these difficulties. Similar refers to sharing a combination of mapping concepts such as rhythm, movement ideas, visual design, intensity, difficulty level, etc.

"If .. ," -> states when this guideline applies, as it's fairly specific. Preferably there'd be a way to combine "in the ranked section" and "on the same mapset" in one overarching term, but I can't find the word for it.
The part referring to difficulty level could also be moved here if necessary

"similar sections" -> what is "similar" is clarified in additional info, though could be reworded or added to

"with 2 or more" -> implies the current difficulty should be different from any 2 similar ones that already exist. Could be bumped up, and/or reworded to "between 3 of them"

With as result that excessively repetitive content (same song + overly similar map) is a valid, enforceable issue as per the ranking criteria. This is to combat content bloat, and also target the score inflation that naturally comes with it.

That's the thought process behind it, though with all the parts to it I feel like it gets convoluted? On the other hand, I've also been struggling to find a more effective way to word it.

Sorry about that, just figured earlier it was as much as I could contribute to the thread. But hey, with this new version of this guideline, I like it much better! It's got everything I mentioned earlier, and I'm satisfied with it. I think the number on it is reasonable and it is as specific as it can get, preventing misinterpretations - and I don't really see the wording on it as if it was convoluted or bad in any way. I think this is as good a guideline as it gets.

hey so i'm a bit late (oops) but

MaridiuS wrote:

Against the argument off "this will limit the freedom of mappers" well sorry it may but, maps are being ranked for the sake of the community not just the individual mapper that wants to rank it, you're not disallowed to map the song if your heart wills it.

what is this argument

why do you think people rank maps solely for themselves (with the exception of MAYBE sotarks because of his personality)? so very few people do that that it's not even an issue. you're basically enacting support for limiting guest diff's creative interpretations of the song if they have the exact same ideas because "some people do it for attention". that should never be how mapping works and there should be no reason to limit creative freedom of expression for the few people who abuse it.

you linked axion in your example and that literally would be unrankable with this guideline because all of the maps are alternating-tech maps with the exact same rhythms and more or less the same emphasis (hollow wings excluded). i don't understand what point you were trying to make by linking that, going to be honest.

MiGGo wrote:

pp will never be perfect and it doesnt matter how many times pp is "fixed" there will always be someting to exploit and abuse. Stop blaming the pp system for mappers exploiting it, the pp doesnt exploit itself. Grow a backbone please and add this guideline so mapsets that deserve to be unranked jump map compilations stay in the graveyard.

ignoring the attack on basically any mapper that maps jump maps at the end there:
pp system isn't entirely to blame, of course, but saying "the pp doesn't exploit itself" is just ridiculous. hidamari no uta was a no-name map until the speed buff and then suddenly everyone started playing it, alongside other very-easily doubletappable maps. would those maps then be unrankable because they exploit the pp system after a change? on top of that, you're generalizing approximately 3 mappers for abusing the system openly and saying every mapper does it. that makes no sense.

in any case, my thoughts on the proposal:
i will say yaspo makes a really good point in regards to the simplification of extra difficulties, so i will definitely vouch for that. it is bland to play maps that are essentially 1/2 spam with 1/4 repeats where there should be bursts or even streams. however, i disagree entirely with avoiding similar sections in difficulties; that is almost entirely based on the song itself and is easily subjective. ranking criteria needs to be objective, not interspersed with subjective guidelines.

as a top player, i would love to see less of these pp maps around and have the ranking system actually represent skill level, but i acknowledge that you aren't going to easily be able to counter them without doing them almost entirely on a case-by-case basis. mapper intention is key here.

in regards to the original proposal i think i made my stance decently clear on this map. i explain more of my thoughts in what spawned this guideline here if you wanna read it, interspersed with a lot of random stuff regarding the set though

Fiery : Would prefer if you didn't pick the 2 strongest opinions in the thread just to argue them, since they're not really relevant anymore (Maridius' suggestion is not covered in current ver and Miggo was kinda just being a salty player).

For the actually relevant things you said.
on thread :
- "Similar sections" : emphasis on "many" similar sections, and across multiple maps (3 or more). If a lot of sections are mapped in the same way then it's fair to consider the difficulties excessively repetitive, especially if this happens many times over. With this degree of occurrence it should be fairly clear and less subjective.
- "Subjectivity" : Kinda agree, though certain RC rulings build on personal judgement, eg. reasonable spread, I don't find this proposal to be any different when looking at the long run.
- "Case by case basis" : yes, guidelines can be enforced on a case by case basis.

on map :
- "stance on single map" : I agree and that's why this proposal is a thing instead
- "butchering creative mapping by limiting freedom of expression" : Creative is a weird word here but w/e. In a sense limiting freedom is the point, from a content perspective it makes sense to not want the same thing over and over. Since mapping is content creation (and mappers should be aware of this), this is universally applicable. Mappers therefore lose a bit of freedom, but can take plentiful other freedoms, like trying a new interpretation of the same song or mapping a different song.
- "mapping should not be limited by the everchanging PP value" : luckily the proposal isn't oriented at PP itself (did strongly imply that at the start but things changed), but more-so at excessively repetitive content

Next time instead of replying to old posts and posting a link to a map thread filled with unrelated stuff, try being productive and focus on the current and relevant parts of the discussion. Thanks.

well first off im just gonna say, fiery you probably shouldnt have responded here. your points are just "someone else did it so let me do it". anyway, on to my thoughts about this proposal. i totally agree with pretty much everything here, if you can map an entire spread im pretty sure you can make difficulties that differentiate in structure. mapping soley for score abuse too like this wont help new mappers at all. they will most likely look at popular maps that have similar difficulties and get a mindset of "this is fine to do because it's ranked" which really isnt something i would like to see happen. feel free to discredit me though for i am only mr man

I ultimately disagree with this proposal, because to my eyes it seems pretty pointless.

Firstly, from what I understand/hear from many standard players/mappers is that a lot of recent maps feel the same to play. In fact, the whole argument of this thread is against people doing "pp map" spreads where all of the difficulties play similar, however what's the difference between one map with 8 extras mapped in a similar style vs 4 maps with 2 extras mapped in that style? Other than song variety, nothing ultimately. Whilst song variety may be slightly better in some people's eyes than all of these maps being on the same song, in the end it provides the same playing experience.

The above being said, you of course can't restrict people doing "similar" maps to other ranked maps as a whole, as this is highly restrictive and would be chaos both to determine what's too close to another map, and to keep every map ever in mind when nominating a map.

Secondly, limiting someone's ability to gd on a set purely because of their similar mapping style is quite an unfortunate thing to have to do, especially when some people don't do it intentionally. Each mapper has their own style, yes, however some of these styles are often inspired by others, whether it's a mapper they like, or a mapper who taught them. Especially in the former case, though it applies to both, these are probably the people mappers would most like to gd for or get gds from, as these are the mappers who were their inspiration, and so they end up having a lot of respect for.

This becomes even more of an issue if you don't let these people make seperate sets, as an even stronger case here is that mappers are more likely to be inspired by people who map the kinds of songs they like to map, so it's highly possible for these people to map the same songs, either by coincidence or by a popular artist they both like enjoying it. Personally, I think these mappers being able to work on the same set is nice for this, even if their overall style ends up with very similar mapping, however having each work on seperate sets also would be fine, yet both cases are limited here.

Thirdly, whether or not you enjoy it, there are other players that will enjoy these mapping styles, and reducing the type of content these players enjoy for no real reason other than that it's similar to another map of the song seems rather unfair to these players, as well as to the mappers who enjoy mapping in these styles.

In conclusion, I find a guideline like this highly and unnecessarily restrictive given the fact these mappers are generally inspired by, or in some cases are friends with, the people with similar mapping styles to them, and so saying these people are disallowed from gding with their inspirations or people they get along with seems bad in general, especially considering the lack of real justifiable reasoning behind doing it.

Also, why do I feel like neither of the responses to fiery read his actual post at all...?

yaspo's proposal is interesting

there is no point having 5 insane with the same concept, same rhythm pattern, same difficulty and same movement. i don't think it would restrict mapset too hard tbh

Pachiru wrote:

yaspo's proposal is interesting

there is no point having 5 insane with the same concept, same rhythm pattern, same difficulty and same movement. i don't think it would restrict mapset too hard tbh

yes but the proposal isnt about restricting mapsets? its about score inflation and content bloat? cmon bruh

MBomb
I agree with your overall message, the proposal is a hindrance for a bunch of social interactions that come about naturally. The mindset behind the proposal is that inspiration and working together is fine, but there needs to be a line drawn for more extreme cases without hurting other ones. It also seems that, even though inspired, different people usually still do things differently by the nature of individual expression. I've been trying to rework the proposal to reach an agreeable middleground with this in mind, but as you put it, that might not be possible with what the proposal aims to do? Though since plenty of people agree on content bloat & score inflation being an issue, I still want to approach addressing it.

Some of your argumentation doesn't really make sense to me though.
osu primarily is a music game, song variety is essential to the overall experience. Listening to a lot of different songs freshens things up compared to listening to the same song many times over. That's why same map on different song isn't discouraged. You're right about trying to enforce something like that being silly.
For "there are players who like these maps", well .. there also are players who don't and it's hard to ignore (due to frequency + competitive aspect). "players like it" vs "no they don't" is an infinite back and forth, a balance should be struck rather than favoring one audience. Players who like it would still get plenty of content, these maps and mappers won't magically disappear. It's also unhealthy for players to spend a lot of time playing same map+same song while there is other content to explore. Lower diff players technically get derived from content because they get 1 normal / 1 hard / 1 insane compared to 6+ extras. Also hurts competition on the ranked ladder, too many of these maps blatantly inflates scores. So, there seems to be a considerable imbalance.
Hope this also clears up the reasoning, you seem to imply there isn't any, which kinda confuses me.

All that said, while the current proposal is made with your concern in mind, I realize that there might not be a good/fair way of executing it. Thanks for your post, it does really put the current version into question.
Also for Fiery's post it's kinda like .. when ignoring his replies to old posts there's only a couple lines left and the rest is mapthread clutter. You could imply he means that certain songs call for certain maps, which is understandable but it's far from a 1 to 1 relationship.

Other stuff
mr man - yeah, but it affects those things through restricting certain mapsets .. , cmon bruh

There's been a lot of comments along the lines of "pp should be fixed", "should have no bns that nominate this", "most played listing is stupid" etc. The hard work of everyone involved in these fields is invaluable (praise vinxis+xexxar, NAT, .. peppy does things sometimes I guess). But, I personally feel that's just waiting for other people to do stuff and wanted to try taking initiative. Maybe I'm not very good at that. Though, this line of thinking shouldn't be used to imply the impossibility of a fitting RC addition for the case at hand, that's just not productive. Actual counterarguments would be better (for example MBomb's or Gens') over this, we might gain some new insight or ideas.

ok i did an oops in my reply sorry yaspo. but uh yeah i still agree with this proposal and i think more feedback from others can shape this up to what it needs to be. so to anyone reading this, feel free to leave your opinion on this thread!

Sorry for the kind-of necro :thinking:

I feel like this proposal is targeting a symptom of a problem rather than the problem itself. "Content bloat" in this way is clearly an issue, but controlling all content bloat with this guideline (or rule) makes too many assumptions about why we might be in this situation in the first place.

Before my argument though I want to agree with some of your points and Pachiru's, I don't think the effect of adding this would ultimately mean anything bad for the community. The only practical cases I could imagine this guideline being applied are exactly the ones you describe in the OP, meaning I think it'd be beneficial for most people. The few people that actively support the copycat mapping you listed are likely in it to gain something for themselves (popularity, ranking, ...) while making the experience worse for everyone else. This is, of course, assuming the guideline is used sparingly.

One small criticism I have that others have already said is that content bloat across multiple mapsets is still possible with your proposal, and that might be a practical way to circumvent the guideline. You made this counter-argument in the OP:

yaspo wrote:

Similar maps of the same songs on different sets [...] require a full set to be made and more nominations, this evens out the amount of potential bloat causes

While that could be true, it doesn't outright prevent someone from putting in that extra bit of effort to get more nominations and make more difficulties. The guideline is just begging to be broken there.

Anyway my main disagreement with this is that it's covering a broad topic that's pretty unrelated from the main culprit of the outrage here, being mapping for competitive abuse ("pp mapping"). Consider a case where the difficulties in direct violation of your guideline are some 4-star maps that aren't out to abuse pp or whatever. Would anyone really care? Sure it's a bit redundant, but I really doubt the community would be throwing a fit over having more content rather than less, if that were the only reason. There are hypothetical situations where the redundancy might be warranted too, such as how MBomb mentioned with mappers being (heavily) inspired by each other or just unknowingly creating GDs that use the same style as other maps in the set.

The reason people are angry and disappointed is undoubtedly because of the pp mapping itself, whether it takes the form of bloated mapsets or not. I'd also argue that pp mapping is a main reason that content bloat exists in mapping at all (it's easy to seek popularity by abusing competitive play, so naturally some people will try to do that while minimilizing effort).

If there were instead a guideline proposed to curb abusive mapping, it'd be much more effective at solving the issues touched on by this proposal. I know it's not easy to make that happen, because concerns like Taeyang's and fieryrage's need to be kept in mind; the line between "abusive mapping" and mapping styles that happen to reward pp is hard to put into words. It's also (unfortunately) not possible to just say "don't map with bad intentions" because humans exploit each other to get what they want and the "bad guys" don't give up so easily.

Other than very partially addressing the underlying issue, this proposal won't have any practical effects, and hypothetically it just doesn't solve any meaningful problems. So that's why I don't support it as-is (or probably any variation of it)