So, hello all, I am a new-comer to this forum - not a new player though, I have 3,500 pp points on my account.
This is my first thread, because I always feel that OSU is a straight-forward game, and there is really nothing so complicated to be worth-discussing in this official forum.
But recently this pp thing made me really confused. Always, from the time I first heard of this game, OSU has been Kept Stupidly Simple. My rank was raised by some 2,000 for no obvious reason, and what it has to do with my playing makes almost no sense.
I believe not all players are as lucky as me. Some of them dropped from 10k to 40k. The previous #9 player, Yimo_Coppola, just announced AFK in the Chinese community. The reason seems to be that after this pp revolution she(he?) dropped to #500+.
Now that I came here and learnt this new system, I still feel that it is not worth it to *replace* ranked score with pp.
First problem . The intention of the pp system seems to be to eliminate "farming" and to weigh "skill" more. But measuring skill is a difficult job.
How do you define farming in the first place ? How do you distinguish "farming", "practicing" and "learning" ?
I feel that compared to "farming", "learning" is a worse practice. By memorizing the positioning and timing you significantly reduce the difficulty of a hard map. The result is you can play hell well on your mastered maps, but you still suck elsewhere. Probably the situation is not as bad as I put it, but the low popularity and doubt around the FL mod will speak louder than me. What is the difference from "playing a map from your mind" and "playing a map from another monitor" ? Well, you probably get praised in some TV shows or your mid-terms for good memory, but should everyone accept this as part of OSU ?
The type of skills vary greatly. At least the term "skill" means different things to different people. Some people play S on Hard. Some merely pass Insane with C. You can't really put them together and say one is better than the other. The S guy probably can't make it through the Insane map, and the Insane player probably couldn't FC the Hard map. Who knows ? There won't be such a system where people can be ideally ranked by their skills.
Second problem. Is it really worth it to use "skill" as the major criteria to rank players, especially when there is already another friendly, well-understood and mature ranking system in use?
In Game Centers, there is really few situations where people playing different levels are put together and ranked - except for ranking their total scores. And every other place in the world, wherever there is a skill-based ranking system, there is some sort of regular competition to back the scores. We don't see it in OSU, and it is not necessarily favorable to everyone.
If I have to propose a solution, I'd say I'll like the following system:
1. In the in-game player display, show ranked score rank in the background with pp points aside. Currently it's pp rank in the background with ranked score aside.
This is to maintain the old gameplay experience without giving up a skill-measurement system.
2. In terms of pp calculation, host some regular tournaments to give player performance ranks. For example, there could be some maps in the Monthly Charts which have a "Tournament" tag. Players can register to participate in these tournaments, and only the scores they get from the tournament maps can affect their pp. Tournaments will define deadlines (for example, after 00:00:00 xx/xx/2012 the registered participants can't submit scores), or an active time limit (for example, after one hour from the first time a participant plays the tournament map, he can't submit scores anymore).
This is to make sure good players are able to beat others in the same map under similar conditions. Also, this can make sure people don't come up with farmable maps and get ridiculous scores.
3. Use tournament scores exclusively to define pp. For example, there can be a "Season" period to count and rank people's scores. If one doesn't care about tournaments, he will have zero pp. He doesn't care about pp in that case, so we don't have to care.
This is to make sure AFK players don't get ranked. Old scores are also meaningless. Every Season will have its own champion.
4. Use an independent pp number for each mod setting. For example, in each tournaments the mod settings are pre-defined, and players playing the same mod setting are grouped together in the registration process. pp-score multipliers are adjusted by the administration staff according to each map's real difficulty.
The pp system has a good intention, but I believe there are better ways to do the job. I thought features are supposed to be added to the game, without replacing or overshadowing existing features. Anyway, it is next to impossible to ask peppy to give up pp now, as it's already there.
This is my first thread, because I always feel that OSU is a straight-forward game, and there is really nothing so complicated to be worth-discussing in this official forum.
But recently this pp thing made me really confused. Always, from the time I first heard of this game, OSU has been Kept Stupidly Simple. My rank was raised by some 2,000 for no obvious reason, and what it has to do with my playing makes almost no sense.
I believe not all players are as lucky as me. Some of them dropped from 10k to 40k. The previous #9 player, Yimo_Coppola, just announced AFK in the Chinese community. The reason seems to be that after this pp revolution she(he?) dropped to #500+.
Now that I came here and learnt this new system, I still feel that it is not worth it to *replace* ranked score with pp.
First problem . The intention of the pp system seems to be to eliminate "farming" and to weigh "skill" more. But measuring skill is a difficult job.
How do you define farming in the first place ? How do you distinguish "farming", "practicing" and "learning" ?
I feel that compared to "farming", "learning" is a worse practice. By memorizing the positioning and timing you significantly reduce the difficulty of a hard map. The result is you can play hell well on your mastered maps, but you still suck elsewhere. Probably the situation is not as bad as I put it, but the low popularity and doubt around the FL mod will speak louder than me. What is the difference from "playing a map from your mind" and "playing a map from another monitor" ? Well, you probably get praised in some TV shows or your mid-terms for good memory, but should everyone accept this as part of OSU ?
The type of skills vary greatly. At least the term "skill" means different things to different people. Some people play S on Hard. Some merely pass Insane with C. You can't really put them together and say one is better than the other. The S guy probably can't make it through the Insane map, and the Insane player probably couldn't FC the Hard map. Who knows ? There won't be such a system where people can be ideally ranked by their skills.
Second problem. Is it really worth it to use "skill" as the major criteria to rank players, especially when there is already another friendly, well-understood and mature ranking system in use?
In Game Centers, there is really few situations where people playing different levels are put together and ranked - except for ranking their total scores. And every other place in the world, wherever there is a skill-based ranking system, there is some sort of regular competition to back the scores. We don't see it in OSU, and it is not necessarily favorable to everyone.
If I have to propose a solution, I'd say I'll like the following system:
1. In the in-game player display, show ranked score rank in the background with pp points aside. Currently it's pp rank in the background with ranked score aside.
This is to maintain the old gameplay experience without giving up a skill-measurement system.
2. In terms of pp calculation, host some regular tournaments to give player performance ranks. For example, there could be some maps in the Monthly Charts which have a "Tournament" tag. Players can register to participate in these tournaments, and only the scores they get from the tournament maps can affect their pp. Tournaments will define deadlines (for example, after 00:00:00 xx/xx/2012 the registered participants can't submit scores), or an active time limit (for example, after one hour from the first time a participant plays the tournament map, he can't submit scores anymore).
This is to make sure good players are able to beat others in the same map under similar conditions. Also, this can make sure people don't come up with farmable maps and get ridiculous scores.
3. Use tournament scores exclusively to define pp. For example, there can be a "Season" period to count and rank people's scores. If one doesn't care about tournaments, he will have zero pp. He doesn't care about pp in that case, so we don't have to care.
This is to make sure AFK players don't get ranked. Old scores are also meaningless. Every Season will have its own champion.
4. Use an independent pp number for each mod setting. For example, in each tournaments the mod settings are pre-defined, and players playing the same mod setting are grouped together in the registration process. pp-score multipliers are adjusted by the administration staff according to each map's real difficulty.
The pp system has a good intention, but I believe there are better ways to do the job. I thought features are supposed to be added to the game, without replacing or overshadowing existing features. Anyway, it is next to impossible to ask peppy to give up pp now, as it's already there.
