Hello fellow community members. I'm dkun and I'm a fellow mapper here at osu!. I'm here to discuss the concept of getting a map "speedranked", and why this should be addressed. This is merely a discussion to the concept, and nothing else. I am not nominating a rule change to the current criteria, nor am I advocating for it to be changed.


To those of you that are not familiar with the mapping community and our mapping jargon, please note that a speedrank is exactly what the name entails; a map being ranked with speed that's not normal of the rest of the community, for one reason or another.

@mods: please move this thread accordingly if this is the incorrect section to do so.
@other people: if this doesn't concern you, or if you have negative things to say about speedranking that does not contribute to the thread's purpose, then please do not post at all.
@cnf: this goes out to you, and the other people that did try/still are trying to stop this on-going problem

jericho2442 wrote:

not worth it, you want a discussion over such a subject make a related topic, dont use map threads, it wont get anywhere

Here it is jericho. Let's have a discussion about it! Let me explain why this is a concept that needs to be addressed here in the world of osu!.

Sakura wrote:

As long as the map's are flawless it doesnt make any difference if it gets ranked now, in a week or in a year. The problem is when the map's not flawless, in that case then point it out in the map thread.

As much as i disagree with speedranks, this is how things work in here atm, so please direct your discussion elsewhere to another topic or probably a PM instead of here (you may as well PM me as well if you want to talk about this).

Let's start with this line that Sakura said right after jericho on Andrea's latest ranked map.

As long as the map is flawless? The map in question was deranked after a speedrank. This is a clear point to why this is an issue, is it not? You may disagree with speedranks, but what are you doing to prevent them? I hope this thread will have people listen about speedranks and why they are unethical in the community (I am guilty of this as well, please note this). This is one issue compared to the many that do come within the aspects within "speedranking".

If I start a PM with you, what exactly happens? I've spoken with a lot of the staff and they have all told me the same thing. Or no, they haven't told me, they all shrugged, because there's not enough drive to moderate something such as this.

peppy wrote:

How to get your map ranked, in order of effectiveness
1) Make it flawless
2) Put a lot of effort into the map. Make it awesome and stand out from the crowd.
3) Make it a popular song (call it controversial, but popular songs are the ones people want to play, so why not?)
4) Have a history of flawless maps (so modders/BATs are more likely to know how easily it can be ranked)
5) Give and receive. Offer to trade mods. Show that you aren't just about "me, me, me"
6) High SP, since we mod and rank at least 50% based on SP of maps.

Also consider that what you call "speedranking" is only so fast because there are minor/no issues. You can't "speedrank" most maps because they you know, require modding.

No rule needs to exist to solve this problem that doesn't exist.

What I just noted above with a map that was deranked is some sort of proof to why this problem exists. But point by point on a mapper standpoint to why most of these points are wrong, in order.

Why this is wrong, in order listed above:
1) Nothing is flawless, no? There's too many different interpretations to the different kinds of mapping out in the osu! world today. What one person may see as flawless may be complete trash to the next.
2) The said mapper putting effort? Awesome? (I would rather not elaborate on this)
3) I doubt these songs are "popular", just of the Anime aspect.
4) A history of putting effort and making awesome maps? (Same point as #2.)
5) ^ "me, me, me, and her"
6) 50%? His maps get ranked in a week with other maps still on the list that have been there for months.

As I said earlier, what I listed above right here points to one single instance of this problem. The entire issue of speedranking extends past this issue at hand. If you break down the entire problem, you have a problem within many aspects of mapping and the game in general, including...

1. Kudosu is meant to be spent on what mappers think is "rankable", not just because of the mapper. (There are instances of maps that are kudosu "abused", and are ranked due to their priority.)
2. Modders are only focusing on specific maps, rather than looking at it as a whole (elitism, looking at the people already here, than the new. tl;dr, it's hard for a mapper to start up.)
3. BAT's don't mod to the same standards as they do with "newer" mappers. (Looking at the example above, something got ranked and was deranked shortly after due to an issue. When a BAT lets the same issue go with said popular mapper, goes right around and enforces it with another. Essentially a double standard.)
4. Speedranking isn't to blame on one sole person, but essentially the entire process where it goes through, which includes, (but isn't limited to) the MAT and the BAT.

Let's put this all in retrospect. You need two people to rank a map. Three for an approval. (1 MAT/BAT, or 1 MAT/2 BAT) Where does the biggest problem lie in all of this? The BAT team as a whole. Change needs to come from within the BAT to address this issue, as it's not just one mapper's fault, or one BAT's fault. This is a community problem as it stands, and needs to be solved by those in power for the better sake of the community.

Essentially... Getting a map "speedranked" accelerates or even skips over the modding process, hindering the quality of ranked maps. It skips over what makes a map "polished", or what makes it "good". This is something that shouldn't be rushed, or avoided to any extent.

Let this be heard. This is an issue. But what are we going to do as it keeps exponentially growing?
Well, that's up to you.

I want to hug you forever
nothing else to say

I will say that I don't care about speedranking at all. Maps getting ranked much earlier than those who have had more mods, SP, etc isn't something that bothers me (and yes, it has happened to me before http://osu.ppy.sh/s/37235 http://osu.ppy.sh/s/42460)

However, when a speedranked map gets unranked due to an issue, why rerank after that? Seems like common sense to realize that more than one thing could of been looked over. It's like finding a rat in a house you are selling - don't assume that single rat to be the only one there, and get it checked lol

Lol I was going to create such a thread.. Nevermind, yours is better.

Speedranking is very bad, I agree.

Kudosu system is useless those days since a person can earn star poins with useful mod post in his/her map.

Also, I don't think the 50% of the most rated maps (High SP) are modding those days, I can give you some 3 or 4 examples.

I'm against of "That BAT/MAT is my friend, I think I can call him/her to claim a bubble, doesn't matter the others' mod now."



Star Priority, huh?

I agree with this. Maps should only be speedrank when they stand out by A LOT. There are very few cases when I see just that happening. Most of the time, it's your average uninteresting boring map that people just play to get their score/pp to go up, not to actually have fun.

Here is a link to the osu!monthly #5 where KRZY discusses Speedranking. Needless to say, this didn't have any impact on the ranking process in general. This was made back in mid-2011.

If you could rank my maps I would love you forever.

Also, it doesn't really seem you have any sort of proposed solution. This is a type of problem that you really can't fix by just saying, "Guys, stop." imo, it just seems like after a certain point, people get lazy, and modding just begins to feel burdensome. People start to pay less attention, overlooking minor details. Now not every BAT/MAT probably is like that, but sometimes after a person first becomes BAT/MAT they just kinda dwindle away. To be honest, if you really need people to be consistently concentrated and determined in modding, I don't really see much else of a way other than having some sort of rotation so that new players keep coming and older ones leave (and may or may not come back), but kinda sounds like a really bad idea/probably will not work.

I don't mind speedranking that much, but when it needs to be unranked and reranked, then it's not a good thing. It's also annoying to players who took time to FC the map and lose their scores (depending on how the unranking and reranking process went)

It also annoys me cuz I'm all like wtfhow2rankmapsgoddamnit

Hm, I feel like I haven't discussed it enough. But dkun really has his finger on a huge problem here.

I'm quite tired of seeing maps being bubbled/ranked in less than a week after they were submitted unless they gain some sort of popular attention, support, or anything that shows that the map is really well-received, stands out from the other maps by its quality, originality, fun, flow, etc. Like I said, they're usually very boring, plain and uninteresting maps, which only get many plays and good ratings because the song is popular and not because the map is great. Now, when the map speedranked in question is actually ranked with problems, that is simply unacceptable. I can close my eyes on a map that's been ranked in a week if it has no gameplay issues, if the mapper has put effort into his map, even if the map in itself... Isn't all that great. But I do remember a few examples, which add nicely to the one provided by dkun. Let's focus on one particular one.

I'm not trying to flame anybody here. If I were flaming, I'd be using sarcasm.

Remember the whole fuss about Fluorite Diary? The one mapped by Kawayi Rika? Yeah, that was pretty bad now was it? The map had a number of issues pointed out by those or Charles445, and yet, it got ranked in two days after its submission. Drama ensued, naturally. One of the major complaints was that it had a high Star Priority due to many stars given by one BAT, Andrea, which kinda threw off the whole "we mod maps according to star priority as to advantage maps that got many mods" way of modding, which at the time, was still in its early days. Nevertheless, the map got unranked after an interesting amount of people complained. It was reranked several weeks later when a significative amount of changes were applied to the map. The problem here, was the high and "undeserved" star priority as many people pointed out. That's something I want to focus on for a minute here.

Nowadays, there are two ways to get star priority: Modding other people's maps, which gives you kudosu, that you can use to boost the priority of your map or any map that you like, or to get it modded and give the mods kudosu. Looks fine, right? But let's study a very specific example. Imagine, you're a XAT. Naturally, you mod maps, and get kudosu off of these. You can then choose to boost your own maps with kd or use them on other maps that you liked. Imagine you do mod4mod. Since you're XAT, you will have NO trouble whatsoever finding people to mod your map. You're going to get 1 kudosu by modding someone's map, you're going to get +1 SP from the mod you get, and you can possibly get more if that someone stars your map with the kudosu you gave the guy. If all of these various stars, and star priority boosts were off of decent-sized, well-made, and most importantly, listened to and applied mods, then that would be fine. However, it usually results in a couple of lines of somewhat lazy modding, along the lines of New Combo placement, or metadata changing. And people get kudosu (and star priority) from these. I think the problem here is that the kudosu giving policy is much too lenient. It should be something like this:

This, of course, is your top-notch, neat, omg-you-need-to-be-a-MAT mod. But it would be nice to at least deny kudosu on mods that are less than 4 lines long. This would prevent the star priority from skyrocketing for no apparent reason, which would lead to a proper treatment of the map, which would avoid the map from being speedranked. Even if it still won't prevent certain XATs from bubbling/ranking certain other XATs under the name of friendship, it'll help.

About speedranking...if map is REALLY GOOD and almost perfect and it gets ranked fast...then I see no problem...for example recent grumd's map...and also he can get like 30 mods in 4 days...

Mr Color wrote:

I think the problem here is that the kudosu giving policy is much too lenient.

yet another huge problem without a clear solution :/

Mr Color wrote:

it would be nice to at least deny kudosu on mods that are less than 4 lines long.

hi

The problem you're describing has nothing at all to do with fast ranks, rather, it has everything to do with bad ranks.. If a map needs to be unranked, it's because of something important that the ranking BAT ought to have caught before ranking it in the first place. If anything, there should be more discipline towards the BATs involved in bad ranks.

Mr Color wrote:

A mod that makes the mapper change stuff in his map (a disregarded mod isn't a mod since nothing came out of it)

I couldn't disagree more. If the mapper needs to make changes for it to count, it becomes a game of roulette for the modder since they have no way of knowing if the mapper applies their changes or not. It puts the mapper on a high pedestal, establishing their personal opinions as law regarding whether a mod is good or bad. Furthermore, this encourages mappers to avoid maps from mappers who are known to have inflated egos and never accept any mods. These maps, usually from famous mappers, end up getting ranked with even fewer mods than they already have.
There's a reason why BATs are allowed to grant kudosu rather than just the mapper.

Can we please get rid of the mod4mod BAT/MAT queues? People post in there and make half-assed mods to the BAT/MAT maps just to get an easy bubble/ranks. Andrea's maps have tons of that and this is how he gets so many badly done mods in such a short amount of time.

Blue Dragon wrote:

Can we please get rid of the mod4mod BAT/MAT queues? People post in there and make half-assed mods to the BAT/MAT maps just to get an easy bubble/ranks. Andrea's maps have tons of that and this is how he gets so many badly done mods in such a short amount of time.

completely agree with this.

I don't really have much to say other than that I totally agree with dkun here. @ mm201, you may say the problem at hand may be caused by bad ranks, when frankly, it wouldn't be a bad rank in the first place had enough people modded the map if they were given more time.

However I don't really have the time to read absolutely everything going on in this thread, so I won't say any more than that; just throwing in my opinion.

Canadia supports dkun!!!

Kitsunemimi wrote:

you may say the problem at hand may be caused by bad ranks, when frankly, it wouldn't be a bad rank in the first place had enough people modded the map if they were given more time.

Kinda this.

I don't really care about speedranking as long as the map is stay ranked after be ranked. But nowadays we saw so many speedranks following with de-rank soon after it became ranked. This is just not good.
Instead of time we count the amount of mods what the map is got. Basically this way, the map needs (example) 30 mod before it will become ranked. Of course, someone will get this amount in a few days, but at least, the map is already good enough.
I hope I was able to wrote this in an understandable way.

mm201 wrote:

Mr Color wrote:

A mod that makes the mapper change stuff in his map (a disregarded mod isn't a mod since nothing came out of it)

I couldn't disagree more. If the mapper needs to make changes for it to count, it becomes a game of roulette for the modder since they have no way of knowing if the mapper applies their changes or not. It puts the mapper on a high pedestal, establishing their personal opinions as law regarding whether a mod is good or bad. Furthermore, this encourages mappers to avoid maps from mappers who are known to have inflated egos and never accept any mods. These maps, usually from famous mappers, end up getting ranked with even fewer mods than they already have.
There's a reason why BATs are allowed to grant kudosu rather than just the mapper.

I actually partly agree with you on this, but I'd rather see something like this: When a XAT comes to check out a map, he should also check out the mods it has received, and check what has been fixed and what hasn't. If a normally good mod has been completely disregarded by the mapper, he would be able to deny the SP gained by the mod without revoking the modder's well-deserved kd. Unfortunately, that would require a lot of work from the XATs. We don't really want that.

mm201 wrote:

Furthermore, this encourages mappers to avoid maps from mappers who are known to have inflated egos and never accept any mods. These maps, usually from famous mappers, end up getting ranked with even fewer mods than they already have.

See, that's something I disagree with. Instead of getting the map ranked with fewer mods, the map should be stuck in its ranking process until the mapper accepts to give in and eventually apply changes pointed out by the mods. This would prompt mappers with too much pride to learn some modesty, also.

maybe we should make the rankingprocess anonymously, so you don't see who mapped what, so nobody cares for big names, and people like andrea start again actually caring about quality, and modders mod maps based on quality and not on names.

well, at least this would e the utopian answer the problem.

but for the start, it would really help if people would stop with the elitism and don't just mod maps from some special people.

As mm201 said, this is an issue with bad ranks, not speed ranks.

I will never repeat this enough, but the problems comes from the general modding level. Yes, many MATs and BATs are concerned. Mods are bad. No one bothers to point out what could be improved. They only point out what could be unranked.

No attention whatsoever is given to quality. Yes, I know, this speech again. Do you need any more proof of this ? And before you go "find us a solution", I had a "mod queue" in which I told people what I think could be improved in their mod posts. Unfortunately, it was very quickly forgotten. We need to make mappers understand that a rank is a consequence of making a good map, while most seem to think that having a good map is a consequence of having a map ranked.

So, what solutions ? Obviously, changing people's mindsets is impossible, especially when some mappers keep getting bad maps (in many ways) ranked and showing the wrong example. Trying to set good examples is impossible either, for the same reason.

The only solution I can think of would be to make the overall modding quality greater.

mm201 wrote:

The problem you're describing has nothing at all to do with fast ranks, rather, it has everything to do with bad ranks.. If a map needs to be unranked, it's because of something important that the ranking BAT ought to have caught before ranking it in the first place. If anything, there should be more discipline towards the BATs involved in bad ranks.

dkun wrote:

Let's put this all in retrospect. You need two people to rank a map. Three for an approval. (1 MAT/BAT, or 1 MAT/2 BAT) Where does the biggest problem lie in all of this? The BAT team as a whole. Change needs to come from within the BAT to address this issue, as it's not just one mapper's fault, or one BAT's fault. This is a community problem as it stands, and needs to be solved by those in power for the better sake of the community.

(I still see a problem in this, don't you? It exists. You just explained a variation of it.)

To be frank, this problem wouldn't exist if the people in question would submit quality, not quantity. Isn't that the standard we uphold for future maps? We slowly improve over time to better ourselves as players, mappers, and modders. The standards (which have quite drastically changed over time) do show, but I believe that this is a step backwards (since it's an on-going issue) and nothing is still being done.

The first step of fixing a problem is recognizing it exists.
A lot of bad ranks seem to come from speed ranks, no? Slowing down the process seems like the obvious choice in what we do here.
A personal take on fixing this problem is re-thinking who is on the team that represents this entire community. I'm not pointing fingers, of course.

In the long term solution, Shiro has the right mindset...

Shiro wrote:

I will never repeat this enough, but the problems comes from the general modding level. Yes, many MATs and BATs are concerned. Mods are bad. No one bothers to point out what could be improved. They only point out what could be unranked.

From the general modding level, true. But how does one mod a map when you go to sleep the night before, and when you wake up, the map is already ranked? I try to mod with quality in mind; with the standard we do hold to date. But how are people like myself supposed to mod when said maps are sped to the ranked status?

Shiro wrote:

No attention whatsoever is given to quality. Yes, I know, this speech again. Do you need any more proof of this ? And before you go "find us a solution", I had a "mod queue" in which I told people what I think could be improved in their mod posts. Unfortunately, it was very quickly forgotten. We need to make mappers understand that a rank is a consequence of making a good map, while most seem to think that having a good map is a consequence of having a map ranked.

This is yet another piece of truth. The "quality" of mods is going down the drain.

Shiro wrote:

So, what solutions ? Obviously, changing people's mindsets is impossible, especially when some mappers keep getting bad maps (in many ways) ranked and showing the wrong example. Trying to set good examples is impossible either, for the same reason.

The only solution I can think of would be to make the overall modding quality greater.

This is perfect for a long-term solution; redefining what a "mod" actually is. Re-thinking what counts as kudosu.

If only people would understand that you're supposed to give a Kudosu only if the mod helps, not just because someone made the effort to mod.

thank you lewa for summing up in one line what I made an entire paragraph about

I definitely agree that speedranking shouldn't happen so often, especially if the modding is unsubstantial. I think that the problem with the mods themselves is that many people are too afraid to point out suggestions and become too offended when most/all of their points are denied. Of course, mappers don't always help by being obnoxious/ignorant, so when modders are being discouraged by a bad attitude, it only takes a few people to say that they like the map and then the map could be ranked because there is nothing "unrankable."

I think that the amount of mods should be an issue here and, even if there are a lot of mods, I believe that a map should still be given time to receive more. This is a big community and there is a ridiculous amount of perspectives on what makes a map good. For example, if a map is ranked after receiving perhaps a page of mods and everybody is fine with it using approach rate 9, plenty of people could notice the map after it's ranked and consider AR9 to be abusive and forcing difficulty. There are many things like that which I think warrant as many opinions as possible before a map is ranked.

DEEDIT: Elaborating on the disadvantages of speedranking, it isn't fair to modders if they aren't given the time to pull together a quality mod or to notice the map at all. Just because a map has a few mods and a few people are happy with the map, it does not imply that nobody else will mod the map. I mod rarely, but I see a lot of maps which I'd like to mod, but I want to play the map many times before I even think about starting a mod. While I'm so tardy that I'd probably miss out even if a map isn't speedranked, my huge timescales can be toned down in the perspective of somebody who sees a map, wants to mod it and then is thoroughly miffed when it's ranked too quickly for them to touch it.

Tanzklaue wrote:

and people like andrea start again actually caring about quality, and modders mod maps based on quality and not on names.

but for the start, it would really help if people would stop with the elitism and don't just mod maps from some special people.

THIS. It seems that people just uses 50% symmetry and half of the map is copypasted from the first kiai, meaning the map has... 25% originality wtf? I mean.. they don't seem to map for people to enjoy or try to improve their style or anything.. just get ranked maps without any effort.. I really really really hate those maps and mappers too.

Also, I'll quote what yyy said on a map:

yeahyeahyeahhh wrote:

Just disappointed this coming out of you. From a mapper on his 158th map I'd expect more quality. Guess quantity is of the importance here.

Indeed, it seems that the quantity is what matters nowadays... IMO it would be much better if mappers just concern about the quality c:

Please refrain from pointing at other mappers unless it's from an objective-sided point of view. We're here to discuss how to solve the problem, not to point fingers are who's guilty of doing this.

Tanzklaue wrote:

maybe we should make the rankingprocess anonymously, so you don't see who mapped what, so nobody cares for big names, and people like andrea start again actually caring about quality, and modders mod maps based on quality and not on names.

well, at least this would e the utopian answer the problem.

but for the start, it would really help if people would stop with the elitism and don't just mod maps from some special people.

fwiw, I'll mod whatever you throw at me.

dkun wrote:

Please refrain from pointing at other mappers unless it's from an objective-sided point of view. We're here to discuss how to solve the problem, not to point fingers are who's guilty of doing this.

I (and hopefully other BATs) will be nuking posts that don't follow this simple rule. This is supposed to a constructive debate, not a gunfight.

My problem with modern modding is the plague of hitsound-focused modders.

For crying out loud, it's one thing to include hitsounds in your mods (which is a good thing BTW) and another thing for your mods to consistently be almost entirely hitsounds. I feel that this is part of the problem, actually; when a very high percentage of modders are incapable of modding the map itself and get by by looking at hitsounds then it is hard to get quality mods for the stuff that actually causes maps to get unranked.

Blue Dragon wrote:

Can we please get rid of the mod4mod BAT/MAT queues? People post in there and make half-assed mods to the BAT/MAT maps just to get an easy bubble/ranks. Andrea's maps have tons of that and this is how he gets so many badly done mods in such a short amount of time.

This post needs more attention.

It's like, "mod my map if you want me to do my job"

My thought to this is about to make a "minimum" of Mods which are neccessary. This should be NOT a fix rule, it should be suggested to be.
As first, it sounds bad, but I explain you how I think about this:

The modding progress contains points what should be changed and what could be changed. These are different points, and also that, Opinions and suggestions are different by most people. So having alot of Feedbacks and opinions will help the mapper to the map, it also could be that the mapper itself comes to ideas or to the things are wrong. This should be NOT abused that the friends of the mapper should permanently mod it. Because this is not the sense behind of it. I personally don't feel that a Map is ready after ten mods. I often see that people wishes a minimum of Mods are neccessary for a Mod, and this is great imo. Of course, CtB and Taiko Diffs are also meant to this.

Well, this idea is quite inaccurate at now, you may have more ideas to this.

Just a thought: What if only the oldest bubbled map is allowed to be ranked? (or highest SP.)

That would certainly cause a massive traffic jam of maps, imagine if a map is bubbled and the mapper is inactive for X days for Y reason?

akrolsmir wrote:

Just a thought: What if only the oldest bubbled map is allowed to be ranked? (or highest SP.)

The team is supposed to be "focused" on higher priority bubbles, but this is only a focus. And look how that turned out.

Mr Color wrote:

That would certainly cause a massive traffic jam of maps, imagine if a map is bubbled and the mapper is inactive for X days for Y reason?

Then a BAT has to mod the bubble and pop/rank accordingly, then move on to the next one.

Or, extend to oldest 3 maps or something.

dkun wrote:

The team is supposed to be "focused" on higher priority bubbles, but this is only a focus. And look how that turned out.

So implement a hard lock so that only the highest sp map can be ranked.

What if the map gets bubbled and suddenly the mapper's internet connection dies? Should we pop his bubble then? For unability to connect on osu!? That sounds kinda weird, to be honest.

By the way, this would encourage SP "abuse" even more.

akrolsmir wrote:

Then a BAT has to mod the bubble and pop/rank accordingly, then move on to the next one.

But in case, when the BAT rank it, it could be the possibility that it has to be unranked, because of something like Update Bug.
And when the creator cannot fix this, this will be problematic.

@Mr Color- It's up to the BATs, not the mapper, to proceed after the bubble.

@Stefan- Won't that happen anyways? I don't see how that's relevant...

Bad ranks and speedranks are certainly correlated. Statistically, a map that gets ranked before receiving enough mods gets ranked faster than a map that receives all the mods it needs.
What constitutes "enough mods" is different for every map, making it impossible to single out speed as the underlying problem.

mm201 wrote:

Bad ranks and speedranks are certainly correlated. Statistically, a map that gets ranked before receiving enough mods gets ranked faster than a map that receives all the mods it needs.
What constitutes "enough mods" is different for every map, making it impossible to single out speed as the underlying problem.

As speed is the most dominant factor in most of the "bad" ranks (at least I would say so), then wouldn't fixing this "issue" be on the road to success?

Or much rather, place a limiting factor of some sort -OR- put the team in question that's actually ranking said maps. Or hell, do both.

dkun wrote:

-OR- put the team in question that's actually ranking said maps.

Basically this. The problem is with BATs who don't really care about map quality.
(Speed limiting ranking does nothing to fix this.)

It says something that even the BATs know that there are BATs that are shitty at ranking and nothing is being done anyway.

Shiirn wrote:

It says something that even the BATs know that there are BATs that are shitty at ranking and nothing is being done anyway.

This is the blunt way at putting it. But what exactly is to be done with said people, mm201? I'm pretty sure internal affairs is set out to be set straight internally by the team, but it'd be nice if there was some kind of reassurance that some sort of action was being taken towards resolving this.

Mr Color wrote:

Here is a link to the osu!monthly #5 where KRZY discusses Speedranking. Needless to say, this didn't have any impact on the ranking process in general. This was made back in mid-2011.

Kinda touched people still remember/refer to these. I advise anyone on this thread who has yet to read this particular piece to do so.



What I bring to this topic is the matter of pinpointing the core issue of the problem. Speedranking is certainly a problem, but in my opinion, it is a side-effect of two bigger problems that are affecting osu! currently and have already been pointed out in this thread: a problem of global modding quality, and a problem of certain members of the MAT/BAT team not being competent enough and/or not having the right mindset for their jobs.

The specifics have already been discussed in the thread. I offer my solutions:

1. More strict disciplines for XATs with bad bubbles/ranks. What MM201 said really. This doesn't have to be done tomorrow but this has to be done eventually. I know a team exists to cover each other's weaknesses and collaborate for a better result, but sometimes the stick is more helpful than the carrot. Being an XAT is a great responsibility, and those in the XAT team that are committed enough should not mind receiving disciplinary actions due to their incompetence. Those who do mind should not be on the team. For the general community members, if this is ever to happen, it will be a painfully slow process, and patience and trust are necessary virtues for us to have for the team to get it figured out.

2. The improvement of global modding quality. There is no magic spell that will achieve this overnight. It has to begin by everyone on this thread who share the opinion that there is a problem going on upping their game. Take those extra 30 minutes when modding to cover every aspect of the mapset. Do not give okay mods--give excellent, ass-kicking mods. Don't be afraid to offer your opinion on the map--share how you would have done it, no mapping idea is superior over another. Make it an interactive process. Make it go both ways, not only from you to the mapper. Take the time to discuss with the mapper about disagreements in your modding--why did the mapper think your mod was unfit? Did you explain enough the reasoning behind your mods? These are time-consuming and requires commitment, but they are not rocket science either.


Reading this thread, I was surprised but could understand how many people think that speedranking really does not bother them as long as the map deserves it. It does bother them, however, when the map is unranked after it has been speedranked, just like it bothers the rest of us. That is why I figured the core of the problem was somewhere else, and tried to offer my opinion on how to go about solving the problem.



edit: Another thing to consider. If you want to mod one map and see two maps, one from a relatively competent and known mapper and the other from a new, below-average mapper, are you making the effort to mod the latter's map because that map needs your mod more than the former?

Give elite mappers the ability to rank their own maps. They're not retarded and they won't rank it before getting some suggestions/mods from players/other mappers. With that you save some time MATs/BATs spend modding some maps they can't even play/are even better than theirs. Plus you don't get Gold Dust and maps like that waiting for months till some random guy comes and rank it. If they abuse their power they can be removed from their position.

Remove the kudosu system and use another one, it's retarded and impulses fast shit mods.

Give MATs/BATs X chances to bubble/rank un-rankable maps. Let's say have 2 points to begin with, they get a point for every X correct bubbles they hand out, and of course they lose a point every fucking time they bubble a map that ends up getting un-ranked. 0 points = bye bye.

Problem is not speed-ranking but the fact some maps get ranked as fast as they get un-ranked, which is pathetic. And it's even worse when epic maps take ages to get ranked/never do. I'd seriously give privileges to those mappers who have shown to be able to map really well without 999 mods. Of course, since they have years here and have mapped a lot, seriously you can help out people like galvenize or val0108 with a little mod, but dude lol I've played many of their maps just out of the oven even before they got any mods and they are still better than 95% of the ranked maps we get every week. It is true they get some mods but the changes they get are minimum, and if they are noticeable I think those mappers are smart enough to figure that out after watching a free test plays like they always do.

Off-topic shit but I wanted to post that.

tl;dr: Crap. Make BATs/MATs get fired if they screw up too much/make their team look pathetic. Stop being so elitist, MATs/BATs are not mapping geniuses and aren't even that good@mapping when compared to some of the best mappers you got around. (Since most of them don't even play the game/suck and can't play most maps)

That sounds far too bloody minded. Just because somebody was given the title, it doesn't mean that they're perfect. I could pick apart a Lilac or m980 map for various reasons, whether it's for awkward jumps, bad hitsounds or bad presentation/too much repetition and blandness. Being so harsh towards the staff would also be unproductive, because some MATs are/were already too scared to bubble a map. Newer additions also need a fair crack of the whip.

Your point about Galvenize and val maps is also moot, because I don't really like them and I'm sure that a lot of others would share my sentiment. I think that plenty of RJ maps would be ready for ranking, but I'd still suggest many things. It's not a matter of a map being rankable nor standing out from the rest--it's about how much a map can be improved before it makes the cut. People need to be given a chance to facilitate this, regardless of how much some people like a map.

I think that KRZY shares my sentiments, especially in regards to having the patience for better practices to be adopted. We're a huge community, so getting everybody to agree on the best approach will be impossible. However, getting the word out that people should make an effort shouldn't be hard and it is not unreasonable to ask people to suggest subjective and stylistic changes. For a start, the stigma of "nazi modding" needs to go, because picky things are what makes a bland map much, much better. Given the amount of maps on this system, it should take a lot of effort to make a map stand out. At the very least, if a map isn't spectacular, then it should be damn tight and have its distinct flair.

I think the speed of the ranking proccess is inversely proportional to the effort the mapper made on his/her map...

Edit: and don't get me wrong, I mean the effort they made in the MAPPING proccess.

Wishy22 wrote:

Give elite mappers the ability to rank their own maps. They're not retarded and they won't rank it before getting some suggestions/mods from players/other mappers. With that you save some time MATs/BATs spend modding some maps they can't even play/are even better than theirs. Plus you don't get Gold Dust and maps like that waiting for months till some random guy comes and rank it. If they abuse their power they can be removed from their position.

nobody will ever be able to rank their own maps. even in the new proposed system, it requires community consensus and always will require consensus of some form.

Wishy22 wrote:

Remove the kudosu system and use another one, it's retarded and impulses fast shit mods.

care to elaborate? this is vague.

Wishy22 wrote:

Give MATs/BATs X chances to bubble/rank un-rankable maps. Let's say have 2 points to begin with, they get a point for every X correct bubbles they hand out, and of course they lose a point every fucking time they bubble a map that ends up getting un-ranked. 0 points = bye bye.

and then what? they are removed from the team once reaching 0 points? all this will do is cause people to not look at maps for fear of reprisal, meaning the entire system will collapse in on itself. smart suggestion.

Wishy22 wrote:

Problem is not speed-ranking but the fact some maps get ranked as fast as they get un-ranked, which is pathetic. And it's even worse when epic maps take ages to get ranked/never do. I'd seriously give privileges to those mappers who have shown to be able to map really well without 999 mods. Of course, since they have years here and have mapped a lot, seriously you can help out people like galvenize or val0108 with a little mod, but dude lol I've played many of their maps just out of the oven even before they got any mods and they are still better than 95% of the ranked maps we get every week. It is true they get some mods but the changes they get are minimum, and if they are noticeable I think those mappers are smart enough to figure that out after watching a free test plays like they always do.

credence is likely already given to "proven" mappers by some members of the team already.. others call it "speedranking". see the problem here?

Wishy22 wrote:

tl;dr: Crap. Make BATs/MATs get fired if they screw up too much/make their team look pathetic. Stop being so elitist, MATs/BATs are not mapping geniuses and aren't even that good@mapping when compared to some of the best mappers you got around. (Since most of them don't even play the game/suck and can't play most maps)

there has always been a profound difference between a good mapper and a good modder - the two are not always mutually exclusive. a fantastic modder may be a terrible mapper, and vice versa. it is also exceptionally difficult to retain interest in actively playing a game where you are spending 80% of your time for said game on working for other people's projects for practically no benefit other than the occasional "thanks". what you are proposing in essence is that we begin to treat this position like people actually receive any form of benefit for helping out. the moment we start excessively reprimanding people for mistakes is the moment this team begins to fall apart, and practically anybody in the staff team at the moment is aware of this.

while i can understand your frustrations about the system, i think that you are looking towards the wrong part of the system to attempt to fix what is wrong. being more strict with the BAT/MAT will not solve anything, only cause more issues. the system needs to be fundamentally changed at the most basic level, which it will be, provided peppy ever gets around to implementing the new ranking system over all the other thousands of bugs and feature requests.

Ephemeral wrote:

nobody will ever be able to rank their own maps. even in the new proposed system, it requires community consensus and always will require consensus of some form.

Most "best" mappers don't really need mods, and they search for approval In-Game, by asking for test plays/little mods from players, since the best way to mod a map and find it's errors is TO PLAY THEM. As I said many times I got to play maps even before they got submitted/just after they did, and guess what, they got ranked months after and the map was pretty much the same, of course, you can't really go around telling very experienced mappers what to change in their maps, unless you find some critical mistake, which would be really rare.

care to elaborate? this is vague.

Way too easy to abuse, and a good reason to speed-mod/do shit mods everywhere just to get kudosu. You could say this incentives people to mod maps to get kudosu, I think it just makes them do bad and fast mods. Different points of view I guess.

Then again you could ask your friends to give you some kudosu, spam your own map with kudosu, etc. Having 999 kudosu on your map does not mean it is good, liked, popular, anything, it just means some players with kudosu are willing to spend it on that map for whatever reason. Some little changes like being able to give one kudosu per player per map AT MOST (like, even if I have 4000 to hand out, I'd only be able to give each map one) could be good.

and then what? they are removed from the team once reaching 0 points? all this will do is cause people to not look at maps for fear of reprisal, meaning the entire system will collapse in on itself. smart suggestion.

If you get to be a MAT/BAT you shouldn't be worried about that, just do your job wisely and carefully and you won't have any problem. What you say is a possibility, but if you made it to that position and yet you're as good as any random modder/mapper/player then something's wrong. Being a MAT/BAT should mean that you're over the average so you can give better mods, also meaning your judgement is good enough to decide that a map should be ranked. If someone can get to that position without those minimum condition, then even the bases are wrong.

Remember you will also win points if you bubble a map which gets ranked and DOES NOT get un-ranked. Unless you're a lazy ass that just goes and bubble some random map once every three months because it's your friends map and you barely look at it, then you're fucked.

If you think it that way, this is even kind of useless since it would be REALLY rare and sad that any MAT/BAT reached a point where he would lose his position by repeating the same mistake 2/3 times.

credence is likely already given to "proven" mappers by some members of the team already.. others call it "speedranking". see the problem here?

there has always been a profound difference between a good mapper and a good modder - the two are not always mutually exclusive. a fantastic modder may be a terrible mapper, and vice versa. it is also exceptionally difficult to retain interest in actively playing a game where you are spending 80% of your time for said game on working for other people's projects for practically no benefit other than the occasional "thanks". what you are proposing in essence is that we begin to treat this position like people actually receive any form of benefit for helping out. the moment we start excessively reprimanding people for mistakes is the moment this team begins to fall apart, and practically anybody in the staff team at the moment is aware of this.

while i can understand your frustrations about the system, i think that you are looking towards the wrong part of the system to attempt to fix what is wrong. being more strict with the BAT/MAT will not solve anything, only cause more issues. the system needs to be fundamentally changed at the most basic level, which it will be, provided peppy ever gets around to implementing the new ranking system over all the other thousands of bugs and feature requests.

As I said speed ranking is fine.

Even when I agree with everything you've said in this last quote, I'd rather have 3 active BATs/MATs that actually want to do their "jobs", than 500 BATs, 400 MATs that just go mod/rank their friends maps, or just AFK for years. I personally think mappers ENJOY mapping. I just made one map and dude I enjoyed doing it, getting mods and stuff, I even like to play it! If you're looking for some benefit by doing something you don't like IN A GAME where the maximum profit you can get is to have fun, then dude you're really screwed, no offense.

This is a game and the main reason I think people is here is because they like it. It's fun to play, to map, for some people it's fun to mod, etc. I do understand the system flaws come from the most basic level, but I have no idea about what or how to change that so I'd better talk about the actual one (also, I'm kind of sure there are many ideas of what to do about this and that they're gonna be applied in some near/not so near future).

Maps stand out because of their mappers... val0108 can just go make any random map that's playable for most people + popular song and it will automatically stand out, same with La Cataline, or any other skilled mapper. It's really hard and rare for a map to stand out when it got mapped by some new guy. I rarely play new stuff nowadays, but when I did every damn map that made me say "wow, nice", was from a well known mapper, every, fucking, time.

Anyways, I'm kind of sure my arguments are based on what I consider "a good map" and "good mapping", since I think that ANY map that's fun, readable, flows with the music and "looks nice" could be ranked, while others may even go around saying some map is un-rankable because there's one hit circle that's barely hidden under a slider... so feel free to ignore me (no sarcasm). :p

KRZY wrote:

a problem of certain members of the MAT/BAT .... not having the right mindset for their jobs.

This. Because if you look around, not many mappers' maps get speedranked. They all quite involve the same specific group of people.

I for one disagree with things like "speedranking is okay as long as the map's flawless", because it doesn't only take 2 XATs in 2 days to decide that. Then again, I guess it's not too hard to, for example, map something with 1.0x DS and call it "flawless".

It really wouldn't harm setting a speed limit, as speedranking is the issue here, so I don't see why not. The worst case is, that mappers just sit and wait for time to pass, ie. there won't be speedranks, but a later rank on that map wouldn't necessarily be a better one.. Again, this is only the worst case, but it at least eliminates speedranks.

xsrsbsns wrote:

This. Because if you look around, not many mappers' maps get speedranked. They all quite involve the same specific group of people.

I for one disagree with things like "speedranking is okay as long as the map's flawless", because it doesn't only take 2 XATs in 2 days to decide that. Then again, I guess it's not too hard to, for example, map something with 1.0x DS and call it flawless.

I agree with you. Speedranking happens usually in maps that usually involve the same specific group of people.
Speedranking a map just because it doesn't have any unrankable issue (aka "flawless" map) isn't a valid reason to do so.
Also, there are a lot of other maps that are still waiting to be looked at, and some of them can be called "flawless" maps because they don't have any unrankable stuff, but they still have to wait just because their respective mappers aren't involved in that group of people. Well, I also think that it's good to don't speedrank because maps can improve much more, going out of the standard "technically ok beatmap". People should be caring about quality. This kinda worries me. I don't want to be playing maps that are technically ok just to raise my pp or ranked score.. I want to play original and enjoyable beatmaps, with intuitive patterns just for fun, to enjoy more the game. (I'm saying this because most of the latest ranked maps kinda lack creativity and originality in my point of view).

Most of common players don't know anything about mapping. They'll not check how fast you ranked your map, they'll just play the map and see its quality during gameplay.

Let's think it like this: You ranked your map fast, but almost nobody will play it multiple times to keep enjoying the map. They'll see it just as a way to raise pp and rank.. not as an special and memorable map that leaves you the feeling of: "oh I would play this map again! I love it!". - I don't really see that as a good deal.

This problem should be solved for the sake of quality of every beatmap.