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[Proposal] Spread requirements based on song length

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Topic Starter
UndeadCapulet
4:30 sets have been falling more and more out of favour over the years, and now people are even starting to use r3 music box extensions to avoid making them, i think it's time to address the issue with current spread rules.

4:30 sets require triple the workload of tvsize sets and quadruple the workload of marathons for both the set host and any bn checking them. it's no surprise they've fallen out of favour. longer sets are also generally less played and less popular, especially among newer players, so requiring a full set for 4:30 songs is impractical for mappers/modders and excessive for players since those lowdiff will mostly go unplayed.

but ofc just changing marathon length min requirements to 4min or 4:30 wouldn't rly fix the main issue of people extending mp3s to avoid full sets. so instead i think we should have a more dynamic spread system.

idk about these exact numbers but something like this:
  1. if the drain time is <3:30 your set's lowest diff must be normal or lower
  2. if the drain time is 3:30-4:15 your set's lowest diff must be hard or lower
  3. if the drain time is 4:15-5min your set's lowest diff must be insane or lower
  4. >5min can be anything
this would greatly reduced workload for mappers and modders, cater longer maps to the players actually interested in playing them, and help reduce a lot of the mp3 extension workaround stuff that nobody rly likes to see.

p sure this has been proposed before as well, and was a well-received idea, but im reposting here

EDIT: this gained traction, and you can read the full draft here: https://gist.github.com/Okorin/190bc363 ... 919eb8e1cf
Shohei Ohtani

UndeadCapulet wrote:

4:30 sets have been falling more and more out of favour over the years, and now people are even starting to use r3 music box extensions to avoid making them, i think it's time to address the issue with current spread rules.
This is just fucking stupid that people are doing this lmao. Like it's rankable I guess but man this is just insanely silly. There was sort of something brought up in the other discussion about meme maps where like technically yes you can rank silly stuff but at some point you just sort of lose respect for yourself.

4:30 sets require triple the workload of tvsize sets and quadruple the workload of marathons for both the set host and any bn checking them. it's no surprise they've fallen out of favour. longer sets are also generally less played and less popular, especially among newer players, so requiring a full set for 4:30 songs is impractical for mappers/modders and excessive for players since those lowdiff will mostly go unplayed.
True. It's been problematic to rank 4 minute maps for WAY longer than now. Even this map was a bitch to get modded, https://osu.ppy.sh/b/259187 and it eventually sort of just graved because people just did not want to spend the time looking at a 4 minute long map. The map itself was actually sort of created as pushback towards the fact that people only wanted to map TV size maps and such (a sentiment that has changed since I mapped this 5 years ago).

but ofc just changing marathon length min requirements to 4min or 4:30 wouldn't rly fix the main issue of people extending mp3s to avoid full sets. so instead i think we should have a more dynamic spread system.
Seems about right. Loctav would often pull out the slippery slope thing whenever people would get mad about spread. It's kind of why 4:55 maps couldn't get approved, because "oh man you're so dumb and fat soon 4:50 maps are going to get ranked and soon we will have no easy diffs"

(Skipping the paragraph with the actual system since I already talked about that).

this would greatly reduced workload for mappers and modders, cater longer maps to the players actually interested in playing them, and help reduce a lot of the mp3 extension workaround stuff that nobody rly likes to see

p sure this has been proposed before as well, and was a well-received idea, but im reposting here
ya.

I didn't mean to delete my old post but I did so oops
Topic Starter
UndeadCapulet
cdfa silly
_handholding
tbh i kind of agree, based on the length of time a beginner has the ability/interest to play

To fix CDFA's issue maybe word it along the lines of "3-4 mins lowest diff cannot be insane, 4-5 mins lowest diff can not be extra"?
Shiguma
100% agree with this, because if you think about it, what new player wants to play a 4-5 minute long song? With the simplified rhythm, by 3-4 minutes a new player is probably bored of effectively playing the same thing over and over again.

Making a dynamic spread rule for longer songs makes sense to me in almost every aspect, and I would hope this motivates people to map 4 minute sets more often
Icekalt
That 4-5 minutes sets only need an insane is pretty unfavorable for me since even semi new player cant play anything over 4 mins since for the most mappers, the most disliked difficult to make is a "Hard". Like my suggestion would be that maybe:

<200 seconds: spread rules like b4
>200 seconds: spread needs an hard
>300 seconds (marathon): can be anything

since 200 seconds is 3:20, it seems pretty fair for player and mapper that after here you dont need a normal anymore. Since after the previous RC change for lowest SR in your set it is possible to have even a 2,4sr diff as lowest diff so imo no need to change that for below 200 seconds.

That would be my idea since your idea is pretty discouraged against even semi new players so i proposed this instead ^^
Stack
Would also reduce the increasing amount of audio editing that is going on to reach the 5 min mark so I'd love this
Voli
When looking at proposals like this, it's important to look at both sides.

From a mapper's perspective this change might be welcome in the short term, but from a player's perspective, restricting songs to solely higher diffs because mappers don't want to bother making full sets is not that good of a thing.

As an example, most songs from genres such as rock/metal are 3:something minutes in length. That range spreads way further than songs that are over 5 minutes (the current marathon length). Now obviously, most mappers that would map these songs wouldn't bother making the lower diffs anymore, essentially restricting the song choice completely for newer players. That's the main problem I have with this.

Obviously, as a mapper myself, I would enjoy not having to deal with the struggle of mapping lower difficulties everytime I want to push my set for rank. However, I don't think it's fair for the playerbase that isn't capable yet of playing higher difficulties to restrict the amount of songs they can play so drastically. Perhaps the direction to go isn't necessarily cutting off all the lower difficulties, but rather making the dfificulty spread these maps need to have less dense (so for example, 2sr > 4sr > 6sr is acceptable or what not.
Shohei Ohtani
Also if you really want to go hard with this, you could always just consider implementing the idea that you have to map the full spread of all songs, but then don't have to map the full length for all of the difficulties.

Because that's the reason spread rules were put in the first place, because people were super worried about newer players not having a lot of content to play because everyone would just sort of end up doing stuff like this: https://osu.ppy.sh/b/48775 (There's better examples but this is the only one I can remember off the top of my head), where newer players would only get like 1 verse and kiai while the other diffs would get more.

However, I feel (and have generally always felt, from what I can recall) that it's not really problematic for easy players to have shorter experiences on these longer songs, since they are developing the endurance necessary and might not be able to play 4 minutes of map. Plus it gives incentive for replayability since you have to keep on working to be able to hear the full song.

and if you wanna go SUPER far back you could always just go back to pre-spread rules where all you had to do to get approval was just say you were going for approval like: https://osu.ppy.sh/b/48775 ;)
Topic Starter
UndeadCapulet
current numbers excluding certain genres more than others is a fair point, but like i said the numbers can be fine-tuned as needed

still dont rly think we'd needneed a normal for most 3mins but if a bunch of people think otherwise i can adjust

and addressing voli's edit:
personally think EHX or NIU sets would be weird for newer players, it's more intuitive to say "expect these longer maps to be harder", but if more people are in favour of that than current proposal i won't object, still achieves the main goal in the end
Nikakis
''and help reduce a lot of the mp3 extension workaround stuff that nobody rly likes to see.''

tbh this is subjective, don't take the r3 hating thing as a whole agreement for the osu community because they would surely exist some r3 fans out there. With your logic then, any 5 min song remixes can be unrankable because they are extending the original length of the song. So stop getting triggered by the r3 extension thing, osu isn't a music police. Some variety is fun for the game.
Topic Starter
UndeadCapulet
@nikakis this wouldn't be making r3 edits unrankable, but p much only reason people are doing them rn is to avoid spread, not bc they rly like how it sounds. if they want to keep doing it bc they like r3 they are welcome to continue
Cheri
I would rank every buto-otome song if they do this 100% agree

I would still love to make spreads for certain songs but some songs is so discouraging to map (referring to songs capable of making 6* - 7* maps/high bpm) simply because you have to worry about making 5+ diffs afterwards which is very time consuming even with gds (and that isn't even including mods)

While I would love if it happen like the proposal as a mapper but as a player I think 4-5 mins needs a Hard difficulty seems to be a better idea than an a Insane since I myself enjoy playing 4min maps and can't play many insane difficulties at that length
Okoratu
Insane and up are the minority of players in this game

dropping that amount of content for people to get into the game on based on recent maps doesnt make any sense, there's a reason why the ranked section is sorted by newest first, it assumes that new maps and recent songs will get people into the game lol
_handholding
@Voli whilst I see your concerns I also think it's worth pointing out the correlation of interest between length of the song and difficulty of the map. Many other rhythm games see 2 mins as the length of time that is most engaging, for easy diffs especially. Not many new players actually go for something that approaches 5 mins with how un-engaging it gets towards the end. I do think the numbers would need tweaking if this actually went through though, it seems a bit more on the low side of things. Also your suggestion seems quite nice as well
Topic Starter
UndeadCapulet
redrafted the numbers so 3:30 sets need a hard, that number can go up further if needed.

also oko the content is getting lowered anyway bc of marathon extensions and people just mapping 4min songs less, this only increases the content for the game by making all sets closer to the same amount of work
Noffy
I think if anything CDFA's idea is far better. That way you're not totally shutting newer players out of enjoying songs they like, but you're not forcing a mapper to make four 4 minute difficulties either.

I mean, heck, the rule that all difficulties need to be around the same length was actually removed months ago. So take advantage of that instead.

this rule is gone wrote:

Your difficulties should all end at the same spot. Having a fully-mapped Normal/Hard and a half-mapped Easy just looks sloppy/lazy. A full Easy may look boring to you, but not to a player that can't handle the harder difficulties.

I mean this one btw, but a lot of people still point it out because it appears in modding assistant because modding assistant hasn't been updated.
pishifat
my thoughts on this have basically been said by other people here already

as a mapper, it's nice to have more equal work to rank longer maps compared to shorter ones. low diffs are boring to make anyway

if i were running osu and had i an interest in expanding its audience, i'd think this kind of change isnt very good. out of ranked maps selection, there would be a smaller fraction of content available for lowest level of players, alienating the potential future of hte game or something along those lines. the idea that new players are already alienated with 5+min songs, so being lenient with other lengths should be fine sounds more like a reason to remove approval from game dev perspective (which i'm not interested in doing).

so there's benefit for mapper quality of life, but maybe not for osu in general imo

@noffy im pretty sure the "you must map up to 80% of your map's mp3" rule counteracts that
Asaiga

pishifat wrote:

so there's benefit for mapper quality of life, but maybe not for osu in general imo
Natsu
Reducing content for new and casual players is never good for a game.
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