The Beatmap Spotlights (also known as Spotlights or Ranking Charts) is a recurring curation program for recommending and highlighting beatmaps for their excellent and unique design and gameplay. It is accompanied by a seasonal league that yields awards for all participating players.
The current iteration of this program is still under development and many features are still pending implementation. Specifics of this system, such as rewards, seasonal rankings or gameplay features, can change anytime.
The current season is the Autumn 2020 season.
The Beatmap Spotlights project is run by various community members across all game modes, led on by a dedicated project lead.
Role | Members |
---|---|
Project lead | |
Project manager | |
Website manager |
Each Beatmap Spotlights release is assembled by a dedicated curator team and individually picked based on an extensive application and review process. Bold members are the respective team leaders.
Main page: Seasons
The Beatmap Spotlights project is currently organised in pre-defined seasons. Each season consists of a pool of curated beatmaps and a competitive seasonal league for the whole community.
This feature is pending implementation. Parts of it are to be added as the season goes on. Because of that, this section can change anytime.
The seasonal leaderboard sums up the weekly ranked score results of every participant. Based on the seasonal leaderboard, every participant is assigned to a league bracket reflecting their relative placement within the leaderboard.
Parts of these rewards are pending implementation. They are to be added as the season goes on. Because of that, this section can change anytime.
Rewards are distributed to weekly timeshift lobby winners, creators of curated beatmaps and every participant present on the seasonal leaderboard.
Badges | Bracket Tier | Placement |
---|---|---|
Rhythm Incarnate | The best of the best | |
Diamond | Top 3% | |
Platinum | 3% – 10% | |
Gold | 10% – 25% | |
Silver | 25% – 50% | |
Bronze | 50% – 70% | |
Copper | 70% – 95% | |
Iron | 95% – 100% |
The Rhythm Incarnate tier threshold is picked manually based on season's participant count and general size of other tiers, though it is an absolute number that ranges between top 2 and top 50 in most cases.
This table only shows one of four badge versions. Each game mode has its own badge version.
The curation system involves the process of curators selecting the beatmaps being put into the Beatmap Spotlights for each season.
The current implementation of the Beatmap Spotlights is highly experimental and can change anytime depending on how players respond to it. Because of that, it is important to collect as much feedback and criticism as possible to improve furtherly on the direction and implementation of this system. Players are encouraged to leave their thoughts and feedback here:
#beatmap-spotlights
in the osu! community Discord server
#osu-spotlights
in the osu!dev Discord server
Anyone can apply to become a curator by filling this application form. Applications open up between the seasons and are closed during an ongoing season.
All applicants are reviewed by project management and team leaders and assessed based on their proficiency as a player, mapper, modder and tournament mappool selector for their respective game mode. Applicants do not need to be proficient in all of these things to be selected, but having a broad skill set certainly helps. The roster of curators is based on a healthy mix and match of various skill levels, experiences and proficiencies. The number of curators is being purposefully kept small and limited at the moment as the project develops.
Originally named "Ranking Charts" and initiated in November 2009 by Cyclone and
peppy, the project aimed to highlight the best beatmaps of a month by letting the Beatmap Appreciation Team and the Mapping Assistance Team nominate and vote for the most suitable candidates.
The project underwent several changes and additions, such as themed Ranking Charts, mod restricted Ranking Charts or seasonal leaderboards. Originally, the winners of the Ranking Charts were awarded with osu! Supporter Tags. Later, rewards for mappers or seasonal leaderboard winners have been added.
The project lead has changed several times in its history. SapphireGhost took over the project lead in May 2012, followed up by
DeathXShinigami and
Makar.
Loctav and
OnosakiHito took over the project in December 2013. In March 2015 the project changed from its original design of nominate and vote into having renown community members single-handedly select a roster of beatmap sets they recommend. In September 2016, the selection system has been mostly reverted and put the Quality Assurance Team in charge of selecting the most noteworthy beatmap sets.
Renamed to Beatmap Spotlights in March 2017, the system itself stayed mostly consistent while adding additional rewards like medals and enhancing the presentation of the Beatmap Spotlights furtherly. During an internal overhaul of the Quality Assurance Team, the responsibility for the project has been reassigned to Kurokami and re-implemented a community-based selection team. In November 2018, the frequency of the Spotlights have been changed to a seasonal release cycle. In March 2020,
Loctav rejoined the project lead together with Kurokami, both reworking it into a new shape and assembling a new team of osu! curators.
In August 2020, Kurokami stepped down from leading the project. At the end of November 2020,
Loctav also resigned, and
Venix took over the project along with
pishifat.