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.

System

For the most up-to-date information about the Mappers' Guild system, see the FAQ section of its website.

Mappers with 3 or more ranked maps can join the guild at any time via the Mappers' Guild website by authenticating their osu! account. Anyone else is free to view the website's quest and mapping activities.

Mappers 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, however rewards are also provided for users who contribute by modding, creating storyboards, and completing quests within the guild.

Parties

Parties are groups of mappers who register to complete quests together. Mappers may join as many parties as they want at a time.

Special quests require higher guild ranks to participate in. For a party to qualify as a higher rank, at least half of its members must be the required rank or higher.

Quests

Quests reward mappers for following certain requirements when creating their Featured Artist maps. Usually quests involve creating a certain number of beatmaps for a new Featured Artist, however some quests involve small gimmicks.

Each quest has its own party size/rank specifications, price to accept, and deadline. All members of a party must pay the listed price to accept the quest. Prices are usually higher for gimmicky quests and solo quests.

Quests will automatically expire after 3 months of inactivity. Any user can re-open 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 rewards.

Rewards

The four tiers of the Mappers' Guild profile badge

Rewards are distributed through a points system. When a user reaches a specified points threshold, they earn a different rank signified by a profile badge. There are four profile badge tiers at 100, 250, 500, and 1000 points respectively.

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 are earned for different mapping-related 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 first rewards more points than the second.

Difficulty creation tasks earn a user more points if the beatmap is associated with a quest. Completing a quest before its deadline provides users with bonus points for each difficulty mapped and a flat bonus for all users involved in the quest. This flat bonus is lost after the deadline is passed, however difficulty bonuses are kept with diminishing returns after 0, 20 and 40 day increments beyond the deadline.

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 newspost and are often promoted on the @osugame Twitter as well.

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. Any user can host contests through the Mappers' Guild for increased accessibility to osu!'s mapping community.

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.