Mappers' Guild
The Mappers' Guild is a group of mappers responsible for creating beatmaps for osu!'s Featured Artists. Utilising an MMO-style guild format, it allows mappers to earn rewards by participating in the ranking process for Featured Artist beatmaps and cooperating in mapping-related quests.
Guild organisation and discussion can be found in the #mappers-guild channel of the osu! Discord server. For the most up-to-date information, track the home page of the Mappers' Guild website.
System
Mappers can join the guild at any time via the Mappers' Guild website by authenticating through their osu! account.
Mappers' Guild members can earn rewards by participating in the ranking process for Featured Artist maps that are connected to the Mappers' Guild. This primarily focuses on creating beatmaps, but rewards are also provided for users who contribute by modding, creating storyboards, completing quests within the guild, and participating in Featured Artist–related beatmapping contests.
Quests
Quests reward mappers for following certain requirements when creating their Featured Artist maps. Most quests involve creating and ranking a certain number of beatmaps for a specific Featured Artist.
Each quest has its own party1 size/rank specifications, price2 to accept, and deadline. All members of a party must pay the listed price to accept the quest. Prices are usually higher for quests that only require one beatmap.
Quests will automatically expire after 3 months of inactivity. Any user can reopen quests by spending their available pool of Mappers' Guild points.
Quest participation is not required for members of the Mappers' Guild. If a user wants to, they may create beatmaps alone to earn non-quest rewards.
Priority quests
Priority quests are a style of quest introduced in July 2023 that have more complex requirements.
Unlike normal quests, priority quests do not need to be claimed in advance. Any user can link a map to a quest until the deadline is met or a winner is selected, so long as they meet the quest's requirements. In some cases, multiple winners can be selected for priority quests depending on the win condition.
Priority quests are labelled by difficulty. Tier 1 is the easiest and most common, while tier 4 is the hardest and least common.
Rewards
The five tiers of the Mappers' Guild profile badge
Rewards are distributed through a point system. When a user reaches a specified point3 threshold, they earn a different rank signified by a profile badge.
When the Mappers' Guild began, there were three profile badge tiers at 100, 250, and 500 points respectively. After Annabel became the first user to reach 1000 points, a fourth tier was created, and after Hinsvar became the first user to reach 2500 points, a fifth tier was created. If a user reaches 5000 points, a sixth tier may be added.
Points are earned for different Mappers' Guild tasks. Earnings vary between tasks, though they are generally weighted according to the amount of time required. For example, mapping a Hard difficulty takes more time than mapping an Easy difficulty, so the former rewards more points than the latter.
Point breakdown
| Task | Points |
|---|---|
| Mapping an Easy difficulty | 545 |
| Mapping a Normal difficulty | 645 |
| Mapping a Hard difficulty | 745 |
| Mapping an Insane difficulty | 845 |
| Mapping an Expert difficulty | 845 |
| Hitsounding a beatmap | 2 |
| Hosting a beatmap | 5 |
| Modding a beatmap | 16 |
| Creating a storyboard | 2–107 |
| Completing a priority quest | 7–208 |
| Completing a quest | 79 |
| Contest organisation | 510 |
| Contest participation | 310 |
| Contest screening | 110 |
| Contest judging | 110 |
Additional rewards
In addition to general Mappers' Guild points above, priority quests have special rewards:
- Customised keychain for each winning beatmap. This is based on a pattern in the winning beatmap.
Physical reward example
- Priority quest profile badge. This is rewarded to any user who has completed 3 or more priority quests.
Priority quest profile badge
Showcase beatmaps
Main article: Featured Artist showcase beatmaps
Members of the Mappers' Guild may also participate in the creation of showcase beatmaps for future Featured Artist announcements. Upon the announcement of the corresponding Featured Artist, these beatmaps are highlighted in the news post and are often promoted on the @osugame Twitter as well.
Beatmaps for Featured Artist playlists are also coordinated through the Mappers' Guild, and often overlap with showcase beatmaps.
Beatmapping contests
The Mappers' Guild is also used to manage beatmapping contests. Since January 2020, all iterations of the Monthly Beatmapping Contest have been hosted, screened, and judged using systems provided by the Mappers' Guild.
As of July 2022, any user can host contests through the Mappers' Guild for increased accessibility to osu!'s mapping community and contest tools.
History
The Mappers' Guild launched with a group of less than 10 mappers in late 2017. Given information on an upcoming Featured Artist at the time, MOtOLOiD, they were tasked with creating six beatmaps to accompany the artist's news post announcement.
To promote older Featured Artists, the group increased its member count and ranked 8 beatmaps from different artists. These beatmaps were published in a news post alongside a downloadable beatmap pack
Following in the footsteps of both of these beatmap packs, the Mappers' Guild continuously increased its member count while publishing packs for new Featured Artist announcements, such as High Tea Music, Culprate, and HyuN, accompanied by other packs for older Featured Artist songs.
Automation
While the initial plan for the Mappers' Guild had always been to have MMO elements like quests, that was found to be impractical to handle while manually managing deadlines for the limited number of guild participants. pishifat and Milan- began development of a website to automate Mappers' Guild at the end of 2018, allowing for more adequate distribution of rewards and management of quest/party systems.
The Mappers' Guild website launched on the 1st of March 2019, and is where everything about the Mappers' Guild is currently controlled. Since being opened to the public, the guild has reached a member count over 500 and publishes update news posts to keep the rest of the osu! community up-to-date with Featured Artist mapping content.
Notes
A group of mappers who collaborate on a quest together. ↑
Amount of points required to accept the quest. These points are pulled from a user's "available points" pool, not their total earned points. ↑
Rewards are based on a user's total points. A user's available points are a subsection of their total points following the same model as osu!'s kudosu "total earned" and "available" pools. ↑
Points for creating beatmaps scale according to a map's length, meaning a longer map rewards more points than a shorter map. Collaborative difficulties split points evenly between all mappers. Points are only rewarded to Ranked beatmaps. ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑
Beatmaps assigned to quests, winning beatmaps of priority quests, and showcase beatmaps earn +2 bonus points per difficulty. If a map is ranked after the quest's deadline, this bonus will be reduced to 1.5 points for being 0–20 days late, 1 point for 21–40 days late, or 0.5 points for 40+ days late. Each of these bonuses scale by a map's length. ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑
Modding points for Beatmap Nominators who nominate a relevant beatmap scale with length on the assumption that they mod all difficulties. ↑
Storyboard points are rewarded based on a storyboard's content. Minimalist storyboards (basic lyrics usually) reward 2 points, while detailed storyboards earn 10 points. ↑
Priority quest points are based on the quest's tier. Tier 1 (easiest and most common) provides 7, tier 2 provides 10, tier 3 provides 13, and tier 4 provides 20 (hardest and least common). ↑
This does not apply if the quest is past its deadline, but difficulty-related quest bonuses are still applied. ↑
This only applies to beatmapping contests that use exclusively Featured Artist content. ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑