As we enter the second phase of our Loved state testing, get ready to cast your vote for the next set of maps to enter the category!
We're pleased to see the positively glowing reception for the new Loved beatmap status. We'd expected people to like it, but not quite this much! Evidently it was something that we should've pushed forward a long time ago, but enough of that for now.
The next phase of testing involves the gradual addition of new beatmaps into the Loved category. To start with, we'll be doing these via community voice polls held on the official forums. Here's how that's gonna work - though I do warn you, it's a bit involved to start with:
Each week from now going forward, we'll be holding a "round" of Loved voting in the Community Voice forum.
Ten maps will be selected from a pool pulled from the beatmap listing based on a variety of factors - ranging from the number of favourites they hold, to the predominant gamemode that their mapsets are based around and an appraisal of the overall "feel" of the map.
Each gamemode will have their own poll - you can vote in all of them, if you like.
Every member of the community will be given four votes to use in these polls.
The top 4 maps voted for in the osu!standard poll, and the most popular choice in the each of the other gamemode polls will be placed into the Loved status at the end of the voting for a total of 7 maps added per round.
The leftover maps will remain in the pool until the next round, where another four maps will be added to supplement the ones that were added to the mode.
Maps that are not voted into the category in any round they're in after 2 rounds of voting (2 weeks) will be removed from the voting list and replaced with another map chosen from the criteria listed earlier.
Some maps with many difficulties across a number of gamemodes may be featured across multiple gamemode polls. For now, winning in any gamemode poll will have the whole mapset across all modes placed into Loved. This may change in later rounds.
If a map wins in multiple gamemode polls, it will be taken from the poll in which it scored the highest number of votes, and another map will take its place within the other polls based on the next highest number of votes.
Rounds will remain active for three days, covering the weekend completely across all timezones.
New rounds will be announced via newsposts and also over the
@osugame twitter account, and
the results of last week's rounds will be covered in the next osu!weekly. The maps will enter the Loved state long before they are announced in the weekly.
TL;DR: Vote for your favourite maps via Community Voice polls, and the top 4 voted standard maps plus the top voted map from every other gamemode will be added to the Loved listing after the polls are closed.
Just a reminder, this is just one way that maps will enter the Loved category for the time being. We're debating a number of ways internally about how this can be split into a system that runs on its own, possibly using SP or kudosu as a "currency" of sorts to invest the status into a beatmap. The system is in open testing after all, and we're using this opportunity to experiment with a number of ways to do this sort of thing in the future.
We're also currently working on the map pool for the non-osu! gamemodes. We've identified some issues with the criteria we were using to select the maps, particularly related to how favourites for other difficulties on the map set were not correlating strongly enough to the gamemode-specific difficulties within these sets.
Now that we've gotten that out of the way..
Head on over to the Community Voice forum and check out the Announcement posts to get started on voting for your favourites!.
You're also all very welcome to discuss any maps you think would be worth adding in the polling threads, but please keep it civil! It's all about the love, after all.
—Ephemeral
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