CDFA wrote: 6d6j4w

As an instructor, I of course tell my students

Man you've been in osu so long you're teaching students now

x86 wrote: 6s526t

CDFA wrote: 6d6j4w

As an instructor, I of course tell my students

Man you've been in osu so long you're teaching students now

thanks for your comment.

x86 wrote: 6s526t

In my opinion, total playcount is a better measure of how much each category is getting played, but you can argue long Easy/Normal/Hard maps are getting pretty high playcounts still.

I wonder how many people of those easy diffs are actually beginners and not just 3k pp full mod players

Also I wonder how many people actually find these sets as redundant
https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/s/363118

Honestly, it really doesn't affect me in any way and my brain might not be big enough for this discussion but I decided to post here anyway. In my opinion, just remove the 'reasonable spread' rule from 4:30+ songs but increase marathon SONG length to 6mins (with drain being let's say, 80% of the mp3's length, which effectively lowers the current required drain time for 1 difficulty sets, round it to 4:50). 5min songs won't be extended as much if the alternative is just making an easy/normal difficulty without all the fillers nobody wants to make anyway. Let's be honest, it doesn't take nearly as long as the higher difficulties. It could also allow mappers to insert a goddamn break without worrying about drain time in their maps, leaving some breathing room for the players. That, or just don't allow mp3 manipulation in ranked maps, there are loved/graveyard sections in this game too.

I think this idea is really cool, can only agree tbh. Nice proposal UC

:0 i didnt like it but 7 page discussion is huh bye GL

Reminder that you can still make a full spread marathon. It is just a choice.
But if you want to map anything 4:59 or lower, it is a rule.

I'm all for more choices for mappers who want to undertake on longer songs. And if you enjoy mapping full spread, you can continue to do that

From my experience my N/H makes up half of the playcounts. So I will continue to make them regardless of this proposal.

I think people are missing a lot of new incentives a system like the proposed could bring. Not only would the reduced workload enable experienced mappers make 4-4:59 songs avaible to a broader playerbase (since instead of one topdiff+R3 or the map not being ranked at all, the spread would actually be directed towards a 4 and 5* playerbase). 4 min hard or normal only spreads would be a great opportunity for new mappers to get their first map ranked more easily. That's great, since new mappers are most often mapping to share their own taste in music - thus broadening the ground of genres/artists being playable in the game.
So not only would 4-4:59 songs finally be mappable/playable for experienced mappers/players - also the mapping community could potentially grow more easily in of numbers in mappers and artists being ranked.
One downside I could see would be that a lot of fresh music/artists new players search for wouldn't be immediately playable for them - but apart from that being some motivation to become better, I think you could nudge new players into playing appropriately difficult maps by well placed highlighted sets or some algorithm to suggest maps based on their previous plays.

TL;DR: Total number of maps would increase, as well as the growth rate of the mapping community, since it'd be easier accessible for new mappers. New artists/genres would be mapped by new people trying to get their music into the game - often with hard or normal diffs (since easier rankable). New players will more likely find ranked songs they're looking for.

Agreed.

this proposal would just allow people to be more lazy, and would reduce even more the content targeted for the newer players. it's a regression for the ranking criteria rules. (but i think 4:30~4:45 length approval would be okay actually)

if the player enjoys the game he will play any length. let's not assume new players would only want to play short songs.

if the mapper is not interested in mapping a full set alone, he won't, doesn't matter if the song is 4 minutes long or only 30 seconds long (https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/s/336471). why worry about this when you can have guest mappers completing the spread?

doesn't matter if getting mods/icons for longer songs is more difficult. if you want to rank longer songs it's expected that you will have to work harder to make it happen.

UndeadCapulet wrote: 1t2uc

and now people are even starting to use r3 music box extensions to avoid making them

this is the real problem, compilation maps should not be allowed anymore, or at least have reasonable restrictions, like allowing only compilations of the same album/artist/tv show/movie and don't allow compilations of less than 3 songs / less than 7 minutes, only allow compilations to be mapped as the same difficulty level each song ...

This doesn't stop people from making r3 music box extensions. It'd only give them a very small incentive not to do it. Anyone lazy enough will still extend the mp3. What needs to happens is extensions repeating the same song need to be banned. Extensions are the problem. Lazy mappers are the problem. Sure this proposal might encourage 1 or 2 people not to extend their mp3, but other lazy people still will. If a song is 4:30, its 4:30. It shouldn't become 5:00 just because you're too lazy. Another problem is the BNs willing to rank it.

I didn't read the whole tread (sorry) but the main issue behind the reduction of diffs in mapsets is newbies can't enjoy long musics because no one whould map it with a low SR, am i right ?

Well what is we ask both BNs and QATs to rank (and nominate and so one) an equivalent number of high and low diffs ? I mean, mapping is a thing, ranking is another and there're already way much more Ex diffs maps than everything else, you can find countless sets having only one Ex diff not designed to be rank.

Imo we should let mappers do what they want and require BNs and QATs to regulate everything. Seems like actually BNs are obligated to nominate good mapsets even if they don't like the music, that's false but from my point of view it looks like it.

And also ban R3 musics, especially combined with dragonforce

tatatat wrote: 3i245q

This doesn't stop people from making r3 music box extensions. It'd only give them a very small incentive not to do it. Anyone lazy enough will still extend the mp3. What needs to happens is extensions repeating the same song need to be banned. Extensions are the problem. Lazy mappers are the problem. Sure this proposal might encourage 1 or 2 people not to extend their mp3, but other lazy people still will. If a song is 4:30, its 4:30. It shouldn't become 5:00 just because you're too lazy. Another problem is the BNs willing to rank it.

Honestly I think this is the wrong way to look at it. The R3 extensions aren't getting popular because all these mappers are super lazy and want to rank the song with no effort, they are getting popular because they want to rank it, but just don't want to put in the effort to make a million diffs for a proper spread leading up to a 7*. Sure they will still exist afterwards, but 1) There will be less of them and 2) tons of maps that would otherwise never get ranked might now have a better chance since they'd just require one or two additional diffs.

The point of this proposal also shouldn't be a crusade against R3 extensions, it should be to fix the underlying issue. "Banning mp3 extensions" is just fixing the symptoms and also completely unenforcable (it's now My Sweet Maiden (Riven's R3 Music Box Remix)), not an extension right?

Banning mp3 extensions, even if there was some way to make it work, will, if anything, have the opposite effect, getting even less 4:30 songs ranked because extending them is no longer an option.

Saying people should stop being lazy helps absolutely no one. You can't force people to "not be lazy", and what's being "lazy" or not is in relation to yourself anyway. A new mapper might've spent a week perfecting their tv size 4 diff mapset, meanwhile an experienced mapper could probably mindlessly make that same mapset in a few hours, have a better map in the end, and still have been "lazy" because they didn't spend the time making the best map they can. Decisions to the RC should not be decided on things like "they're lazy so just make them not lazy"; it's not like you're going to change their behavior with that. Rather, it should focus on what it can do to maximize the amount of content for all players, and this includes more experienced players as well.

If the concern is new players, then we can be sure that calmer 4:30min songs that would fit a NH spread better than a HX spread would still be ranked. If the details of the current proposal doesn't sound good, then suggesting changes that could work such as you still require a normal, or the spread needs to be 3 diff, or whatever, or maybe you believe the current situation is good as it is because x,y,z, but saying "no because they're just lazy" doesn't actually help the problem (if it is a problem) of less people mapping 4:30~4:59min songs, without extending them.

CXu wrote: 344051

Saying people should stop being lazy helps absolutely no one. You can't force people to "not be lazy", and what's being "lazy" or not is in relation to yourself anyway. A new mapper might've spent a week perfecting their tv size 4 diff mapset, meanwhile an experienced mapper could probably mindlessly make that same mapset in a few hours, have a better map in the end, and still have been "lazy" because they didn't spend the time making the best map they can. Decisions to the RC should not be decided on things like "they're lazy so just make them not lazy"; it's not like you're going to change their behavior with that. Rather, it should focus on what it can do to maximize the amount of content for all players, and this includes more experienced players as well.

If the concern is new players, then we can be sure that calmer 4:30min songs that would fit a NH spread better than a HX spread would still be ranked. If the details of the current proposal doesn't sound good, then suggesting changes that could work such as you still require a normal, or the spread needs to be 3 diff, or whatever, or maybe you believe the current situation is good as it is because x,y,z, but saying "no because they're just lazy" doesn't actually help the problem (if it is a problem) of less people mapping 4:30~4:59min songs, without extending them.

I don't usually do this but

this.

once a map gets ranked it's expected that it will stay ranked for ever as long as the game is still alive, so just take your time to work on the map and stuff...

again, we can just include guest difficulties and tell the guest mapper to get at least one mod for his own difficulty/ask him to mod other difficulties. if you are able to make a very polished extra difficulty, there will be people interested in ing your mapset, and even if don't get that much attention you should be able to convince your friends to map a difficulty xD.

the truth is that most mappers don't even like to make low diffs. they will start finding excuses to not have to include them in their maps even on shorter songs if this kind of rule changes start to get applied.

lower diff's are way easier to do than hard and above... less objects, usually constant spacing, less rhythm variation...

i don't really have anything to suggest that could make the ranking process better than it currently is for longer songs, but i think this proposal would not fix anything and will create other problems, so yeah, just keep stuff the way it is... or just reduce a bit the minimum length required for approval maybe.

pimpG wrote: 4xr26

i don't really have anything to suggest that could make the ranking process better than it currently is for longer songs, but i think this proposal would not fix anything and will create other problems, so yeah, just keep stuff the way it is... or just reduce a bit the minimum length required for approval maybe.

fwiw this proposal is basically a way to lower the minimum length requirement of approval, just not as a hard cut-off as it is right now, but instead in a more gradual matter.

As I see it

Current System: Blatant cut-off --> Alienates a lot of mappers. (makes me not want to rank or map it at all, just because it's 4:30 or 4:50.)

New System: Gradual cutoff with a lower/difficulty spread

In general , there will be less workload for mappers who want to map long songs, which do not fit with the current Ranking Criteria. This also means that there will be more content for mappers to choose from, because as it is now, it can't be denied that some tracks just are a lot more troublesome to rank. This turns a lot of mappers off from ranking those songs (me included). If the changes are made, this will help introduce more new content to the game in general. BUT, this won't help new players as much, and it is undeniable that there will be less content for them as mappers who in the current system map 2-3 minute songs with a full spread, switch to longer songs that do not require a full spread.

This is a trade-off --> More content in general vs. Less content for new players. (how much less content is debatable)

Imo. this trade-off is fine. It isn't like everyone is just going to stop mapping their favorite anime TV-openings, their favorite FELT-songs and maps which are less than 3 minutes long. This will just bring more content for mappers to map, bring more new mappers in because they can map their favorite songs easier and bring more content to the game. If anything, not being able to play a song because you can only play Normals at the moment, and you have that one song you really like, which is a HIX-spread, should motivate you to become better at the game. I really don't understand why this has become an 8-page discussion. I fully the proposal.

I dislike mapping short vers/TV sizes, so I'm in favor of this, for what that may be worth.
As far as the cut goes, AncuL's proposal seems the most reasonable to me.

The song length proposal could also work if it was a gradual cut. Having NH be something like 2 minutes while I or X is 4:30 seems pretty unreasonable to me.
I could see something like a 2 minute N, a 3:smth H and a full 4:30 I work fine for a spread, though. We could maybe limit that via % of song that has to be mapped or something along those lines.

Still, more in favor of less difficulties but everything in the set having same length, personally.

if the drain time is <3:30 your set's lowest diff must be normal or lower
if the drain time is 3:30-4:30 your set's lowest diff must be hard or lower
if the drain time is 4:30-5min your set's lowest diff must be insane or lower

if the mapper picks a song that is 3 minutes long, he could easily eliminate the need of a normal difficulty by extending the song by 30 seconds, if he is not skilled enough to make a decent extention using only the original song he could just add harumachi clover to the mp3, there would be nothing preventing him from doing this... same applies for the other lengths to eliminate the need of the hard or insane...

unless more specific rules are added for compilations like i said, the hard cut-off will be the only reasonable way for dividing ranked and approval.

any song can be shortened if the mapper wants to do everything alone without guest difficulties.

I agree

pimpG wrote: 4xr26

unless more specific rules are added for compilations like i said, the hard cut-off will be the only reasonable way for dividing ranked and approval.

any song can be shortened if the mapper wants to do everything alone without guest difficulties.

But it would remove a lot of the incentive to do so. You can not reasonably regulate extensions because you can then just call it a remix and it's allowed (it could be left up to QAT discretion but that's just a recipe for drama tbh).

There's no benefit at having a hard cut off vs. a more gradual one. A hard cut-off makes certain song lengths far less desirable for mapping which is just bad for musical variety.

This isn't necessarily about making everything easier to rank (though I think that should be the way this goes), if it was "3 diffs for >4 mins, 2 diffs for >5 mins, 1 diff for >6mins" it'd still help with the problem, even though the workload for 5-6 minute maps would increase (by not that much if it just has to be one additional diff that's at least hard or below or something like that).

i don't even know why they allow compilations to get approved, osu! is probably the only relevant rhythm game that allows this... at least i don't seeing compilations in the other rhythm games i played.

if exploitable rules are added, people will exploit them the weirdest ways as possible. they already exploit the current hard cut-off. we should be thankful that we are even allowed to get maps approved with only one difficulty, because having a spread on every map ranked would be the best for the community in general and especially the new players...

LwL wrote: 5e326l

There's no benefit at having a hard cut off vs. a more gradual one. A hard cut-off makes certain song lengths far less desirable for mapping which is just bad for musical variety.

the first sentence is saying that there's no benefit while the second one tells that it has benefits. nice

PimpG wrote: 3qp1l

if the mapper picks a song that is 3 minutes long, he could easily eliminate the need of a normal difficulty by extending the song by 30 second

yea but by then there's less urge to do that. there's a difference between having to map 4 other diffs compared to 1

AncuL wrote: 93i4m

LwL wrote: 5e326l

There's no benefit at having a hard cut off vs. a more gradual one. A hard cut-off makes certain song lengths far less desirable for mapping which is just bad for musical variety.

the first sentence is saying that there's no benefit while the second one tells that it has benefits. nice

I don't see how having less variety is a benefit but ok

I misunderstood sry

pimpG wrote: 4xr26

because having a spread on every map ranked would be the best for the community in general and especially the new players...

I didn't see this before but I disagree with this almost entirely. Better for new players sure, hard to argue against that.

But overall? If that happened I can see myself losing interest in the game relatively quickly, it would mean very few long ranked maps, which happen to be the type I enjoy the most. It probably wouldn't even lead to more long difficulties ranked overall (making one diff for 5 different songs is a lot less tedious than 5 diffs for the same song), and the number of different songs at that length getting ranked would almost certainly decrease significantly.

was mostly refering to the players as "community in general", not the mappers

i don't want approval to be discontinued if that's what you were thinking
but i suppose having all songs mapped for every skill level would be the best thing from the staff's perspective, but they understand that mapping takes time, it's "voluntary work" so it gives no real reward for the content creators, and that's why the approval exists.

Yeah I can agree with that, in an ideal world every song would have a spread.

I'd say maps that are about 5-8 seconds short off of 300 seconds can be ranked on a case-to-case basis, but If someone did mp3 edits to extend it to barely hit this 5-8 seconds shortage, I feel like that shouldn't be rankable.

TL;DR being short 8 seconds makes me want to kill myself

Case-by-case basis is inviting people to complain about bias. Better to have a criteria everyone must follow.

I am absolutely behind this. I can say, with full confidence, that the extensions, mp3 editing, etc is based out of one thing: Laziness. It's stupid and completely pathetic. Seriously. This needs to STOP. How is this even allowed lol you guys are letting these esoteric people BEND the rules for the reasons that they're lazy, impatient or apathetic about making a full set. This is creating a CRISIS.

"it's his choice" "it's five minutes that's his choice"

His choice, his consequences.

This is a controversy amongst others that I feel is extremely perilous and actually quite sad. I could even conjecture that people who do this don't do it for the love of the music itself or that they genuinely care about the song, but that they want just "one map, one diff", say "It's 5 mins so I can get this ranked", and is even inviting other mappers to do the same. When I wanted to make a map of bassdrop Freaks 2018 Redrop version and tried to find people who to collab with, I was already aware it's only 4:30, but I was prepared to make a whole set. Mappers should realize THIS IS THE NORM. If this behavior continues, I feel like this kind of extending would increase to songs of 4 minute length, 3:30, and so on.

Say what you will, I firmly stand behind all my previous statements.

I will make it very clear that if my National Hangover Anthem aka Kac was looped to 4 minutes and people skipped mapping at least Normal difficulty for the song, I would be, putting it unbelievably lightly, pissed off to my very fucking death. If you make a spread, at least the standard one, and not a marathon map(set), then for God's sake, make it playable for noobs. We've already dropped the 1.99* star rating rule which is catastrophic in of how extreme so-called "easier" maps are nowadays and you want to take it to another level? God forbid, that is becoming a literal nonsense and pain in the back for the newer audience and I hope everyone agreeing on this issue starts thinking a little bit more soberly because that seems as if you all want to create only 5-10* content.

I'm crying for this proposal to die as soon as right now, I am not even going to hide how triggering that is.

Krfawy wrote: 155a6k

I hope everyone agreeing on this issue starts thinking a little bit more soberly because that seems as if you all want to create only 5-10* content.

No, I want to create content I enjoy creating, and mapping the same song multiple times very rarely falls under that for me. And I'm most certainly not alone on this or we wouldn't see so many sets with 1 diff per mapper. And for many, mapping a long song probably invokes a similar feeling as most songs repeat themselves, which also makes it harder to fill a 4 minute set up with GDs in that manner.

Krfawy wrote: 155a6k

I'm crying for this proposal to die as soon as right now, I am not even going to hide how triggering that is.

You can still force normals while helping with the problem if you just modify the precise rules a bit. It would still help as in of workload it's much less to map, say, N-I-X with the X being 6.5* or sth than a full spread that would almost certainly need an additional extra, or high star insane, as well as a hard.

Krfawy wrote: 155a6k

I will make it very clear that if my National Hangover Anthem aka Kac was looped to 4 minutes and people skipped mapping at least Normal difficulty for the song, I would be, putting it unbelievably lightly, pissed off to my very fucking death.

And as it stands you could just loop the song to 5 minutes instead and map only one diff, yay so much better! The point of this proposal is precisely to reduce the excessive amount of looping that came up recently, because not having a gradual cutoff is just screaming for loops. The workload difference between N-H-I-X-X and N-I-X is decent, but if the first is 3:40 and the second is 4:10, it's not that bad. However having a 4:40 N-H-I-X-X spread vs. a 5:10 single diff is huge.

Hi I'm new to this thread.

I tend to agree with this direction. It is hard to map easier difficulties over longer periods of time because it is harder to keep things interesting.

The argument of not having enough beginner content doesn't really hold because we already have a huge library of easy difficulties.

We should probably also disallow extending songs for the only goal of hitting a length. Cutting shorter is fine; extending should not be.

thanks ppy
but if cutting a song is fine, why entending shouldn't be then?

I agree with peppy.
including the part "Cutting shorter is fine"

Cutting shorter is done to make it more playable/suited to a rhythm game. Making longer is done to avoid mapping certain difficulties with basically no exception.

peppy wrote: 73101g

Cutting shorter is done to make it more playable/suited to a rhythm game. Making longer is done to avoid mapping certain difficulties with basically no exception.

Yeah, extending is almost always done just to hit five minutes, but I seriously doubt most people cut songs for any reason other than not wanting to map the whole thing lol

People cut songs because they're lazy. Extension are done for the exact same reason, barely anyone likes to make a 4:59 spread

peppy wrote: 73101g

Making longer is done to avoid mapping certain difficulties with basically no exception.

are you just refering to mp3 loops?
including a song to the end of the mp3 counts as making longer or will it just be considered a "compilation"?

before moving forward, we should decide what kind of extensions are a no-no.

are r3 ok? because it can be considered a compilation, one song after another.

another example are short ~29 second anime opening/ending songs, like Harumachi clover, where the song is under 30 seconds but mappers have been extending them to hit the 30 second mark.


as for cuts, i personally cut the song for playability and "not making the player bored" sake. Most songs have pretty much copy pasted rhythm.
The most common song structure is intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus (or refrain), verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge ("middle eight"), verse, chorus and outro, and then the song is pretty much over. pretty much copy paste with different vocals.

making a song shorter serves more purpose than just putting less work. in fact, it does not require that much work if i don't cut a song, i just copy paste items, change them up a little and etc.

Kyuunex wrote: 124n1

before moving forward, we should decide what kind of extensions are a no-no.

are r3 ok? because it can be considered a compilation, one song after another.

I'd say that r3 is not ok because in almost every circumstance where it has been put in a "compilation" it's been to extend a song past 5 min. If the compilation itself is all r3 music box songs that'd be fine but just pasting it onto a 4:40 song should not be acceptable imo

i think extending to meet 30s mark is different from meeting 5min mark. cuz otherwise its literally unrankable for 30s but for 5min its just to have less effort. extending to approval length with r3 or whatnot is what is being targeted here after all

eek thread derailing fast

@peppy thank you for your approval! will get the extension stuff drafted in soon

@everyone freaking out about extension ban, please do me a huge and favour and 1) reread the op, most reasons people have for extensions are irrelevant with this proposal, and 2) wait until the ban is drafted until you start heavily discussing, i already know all the things needed to consider like compilations, 30sec, 1sec extensions, etc. that will be accommodated for, it's just going to take some time for me to draft it up/oko to get back home from vacation to actually push it

things are happening now, i won't let those things hurt the game, just hold on

some of us discussed this on a discord, if you're interested in reading what some other people think about it then you can click right over here.

I agree with the idea of more length = less diffs mapped. I am interested to see what people against this idea say and their reasons.

In general regarding extension ban, if it's done (which is hard to do objectively because you can just call it a remix), the rule should be worded as such that you can still extend songs if you want, you just have to still map the spread required for the original length. That would also eliminate the problem with <30 seconds songs. This is simply to allow people to extend songs or maybe use minor remixes that happen to put it past 5 minutes and might be seen as "lazy edits for extension" by the relevant people (and such a subjective judgement will be necessary at times since it's simply not possible to 100% objectively determine what is an extension and what is a legitimate remix or compilation).

peppy our saviour

ooooooooookay here's the draft: https://gist.github.com/Okorin/190bc363 ... 919eb8e1cf

tl;dr of the draft:

1. incorporated the op
2. incorporated a draft of the compilation rules staff want that you can read about here: https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/beatmapsets/786643/d ... ll#/289974
3. incorporated the extension ban peppy requested
4. incorporated this proposal: t/726926 to enable marathon rules to function for sets where the topdiff is lower than the required lowest difficulty

hope this makes everyone happy

I love you all, what a time to be alive. I really hope these changes go through.

1

Proposal wrote: 5b6w39

Song compilations must incorporate 3 or more songs. Using only 2 songs in a compilation is not a sufficient number of tracks to offer a compelling experience for players when compiled together, and should be broken up into separate mapsets.

Ooook so... would 2 songs be considered a compilation, or would it go under the other rule about "The audio file of a song must not be artificially extended in order to meet a time limitation in the mapset section of this criteria. ... If the audio file is extended in such a way, the mapset must still comply with the time limitations of its unaltered audio. Song compilations are not considered extensions, and are exempt from this rule."
What if one or both of the two songs is already over 5 minutes, but the mapper chose to combine them because they're directly related to eachother? The way this is currently put together would disallow that as well, because that'd still be considered a compilation atm.

I think a better approach would be defining "Compilation" in the Glossary as an edit which puts together 3 or more songs, and having rules related to the quality of compilations and other edits similarly to how they currently are to avoid confusion about this. Then it'd be obvious if a combination of 2 songs would be considered a compilation or an "artificial extension" and whether or not it's completely disallowed like the current draft implies

2

Proposal wrote: 5b6w39

Song compilations must be mixed properly and cannot include abrupt breaks or long fades between different songs. This is to ensure compilations achieve the same cohesive gameplay experience as other beatmaps.

ok what is a "long fade" here? There's no idea how long "long" could possibly be.

3

Proposal wrote: 5b6w39

The audio file of a song must not be artificially extended in order to meet a time limitation in the mapset section of this criteria. Illegal extensions include (but are not limited to) looping sections of the audio file, lowering the bpm of the song or section of the song, and adding small amounts of music to the song without incorporating it throughout the entire song. If the audio file is extended in such a way, the mapset must still comply with the time limitations of its unaltered audio. Song compilations are not considered extensions, and are exempt from this rule.

this rule is disallowing extending songs to be over 30 seconds, this isn't accommodating for 30 second songs at all with this wording.

Ranking Criteria wrote: j1xb

Mapsets must have a minimum drain time of 30 seconds. This ensures each ranked map has a practical play-time.

This is a time limitation in the mapset section of the ranking criteria. Which is exactly what your proposed rule specifies about when extending songs is bad and not allowed.

4

UndeadCapulet wrote: 1t2uc

incorporated this proposal: t/726926 to enable marathon rules to function for sets where the topdiff is lower than the required lowest difficulty

where? all I see is "Single-mode mapsets must include a reasonable spread of at least two difficulties. " which is not that at all. I don't see any exceptions listed, am I blind?

1 - they wouldnt they'd count as extension but i can see where you're coming fromwith this
your second idea about the glossary makes no sense to me because that's in the top of the proposal and there?
2 - dunno suggest some value
3 - ok we need to exclude 30 seconds from this? i mean i find 30 seconds mapsets pointless but whatever yeah
4 - probably not direct enough inclusion of that - yeah i dont see it either rn

fuck i knew i forgot something, will get the 30 sec extensions added in

and uh yeah noffy you should re-read, bc we took out the 2 diff minimum

UndeadCapulet wrote: 1t2uc

and uh yeah noffy you should re-read, bc we took out the 2 diff minimum

I'm blind :psy:

2.) like over 10 seconds would count as long, I'd think? under that should be fine as it'd work well to add in a short break too (like a lot of old song compilations do)

Wait fuck i didnt see that either and i helped write it

the point of the long fades thing was to make p much any fade that wasn't a seemless transition illegal, as staff don't like those anymore. perhaps instead of fussing about how long "long" is we should just reword it to make that more clear?

Yeah, though I disagree with banning fades because even if songs fit well together such as being from the same album or series, making "seamless" transitions can be very difficult unless you are super good at audio editing edit: especially what's considered seamless can be quite ambiguous.

"Song compilations must be mixed properly and cannot include abrupt breaks or long fades between different songs. This is to ensure compilations achieve the same cohesive gameplay experience as other beatmaps."

could be better as a guideline so that there is some discretion about what works and what doesn't?

Mapset Proposal wrote: 3665o

If the drain time of a song is...
… lower than 3:30, the lowest difficulty cannot be harder than a Normal. Because osu!mania does not have a difficulty-specific Ranking Criteria yet, an osu!mania mapset's Normal difficulty is defined as a difficulty below 2.00 stars. For non-osu! game modes in hybrid mapsets that feature osu! difficulties, the lowest difficulty cannot be harder than a Hard.
… lower than 4:30, the lowest difficulty cannot be harder than a Hard.
… lower than 5:00, the lowest difficulty cannot be harder than an Insane.
… anything else, the mapset does not require a reasonable spread.

Just my opinion, but the cutoffs are a bit odd; why does it shift from 3:30 to 4:30 to 5:00? imo it might be a bit more cohesive if it was 3:00 to 4:00 to 5:00, but I'd like to hear what you guys think. Also this is a bit nitpicky but instead of "anything else" maybe we should be more specific and use "anything over 5:00". Other than that, I don't really have any objections.

edit: apparently this was answered earlier in the thread lol.

Audio Proposal wrote: 1v1a4h

The audio file of a song must not be artificially extended in order to meet a time limitation in the mapset section of this criteria. Illegal extensions include (but are not limited to) looping sections of the audio file, lowering the bpm of the song or section of the song, and adding small amounts of music to the song without incorporating it throughout the entire song. If the audio file is extended in such a way, the mapset must still comply with the time limitations of its unaltered audio. Song compilations are not considered extensions, and are exempt from this rule.

From what I understand, this rule stems from the prevention of extending mp3s via looping (i.e. True Force) or jamming two songs to meet marathon length (looking at you, R3 Music Box Extension mappers...). But what about cases in which mp3s don't meet the rankable drain time of 30 seconds? There are quite a TV songs usually end up being 29 seconds in drain and thus require extension (Bill Nye, for example).. Will the new rule of prohibiting mp3 extension also apply to these songs?

>Song compilations must be mixed properly and cannot include abrupt breaks or long fades between different songs. This is to ensure compilations achieve the same cohesive gameplay experience as other beatmaps.

So about this, based on what Ephemeral wrote in the oimc map, we are now disallowing any compilation that has any sort of break or fade between songs at all? It's less of a compilation and more of an extended mashup at that point isn't it? We're going to discontinue the use of this mechanic entirely now? That seems somewhat excessive doesn't it

The wording around "does not require a reasonable spread" and "must form a reasonable spread" is conflicting, probably a good idea replacing the former with something along the lines of "the lowest difficulty can be anything" or "has no limitations", to avoid having two rules say opposite things, even though it could probably be understood with some common sense. Would allow that whole first rule to define what a "reasonable spread" is without contradicting itself.

the thingie wrote: 3c475m

>Song compilations must be mixed properly and cannot include abrupt breaks or long fades between different songs. This is to ensure compilations achieve the same cohesive gameplay experience as other beatmaps.

I really dont see why we can't use the normal method of fade out fade in for songs in compilations to me it seems by far the most logical way to make them. Nuking the way most compilations have been done for years seems kinda overkill. Especially when not all of these maps were made just to be over 5 minutes. Calling it low quality is fairly subjective :nyab:

There was concern about how there are some two song 'compilations' that are actually good or intended by the artist that the draft would deny, so stuff like C (Malformed Box was even spotlight).

Suggestion would be to allow two song compilations if both songs are from the same artist, and that the full version of both songs must be used.

Also I'm personally not fully convinced whether these changes are right for the newbie players, so I want to play around with x86's TSV file before having an opinion.

Song compilations must incorporate 3 or more songs. Using only 2 songs in a compilation is not a sufficient number of tracks to offer a compelling experience for players when compiled together, and should be broken up into separate mapsets.

I think an exception should be made for using two songs that were composed to transition into each other. Ranked examples would be stuff like https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/s/627671 - while this case is single artist, it would be a good idea to include cases for performances with multiple artists. Other examples are songs like Miss Murder which is actually two songs: Prelude 12/21 and Miss Murder, as well as Prayer of the Refugee and Drones, which are both connected by the fade at the end of the former song and the fade at the beginning of the latter one.

Possible wording:

Song compilations must incorporate 3 or more songs. Using only 2 songs in a compilation is not a sufficient number of tracks to offer a compelling experience for players when compiled together, and should be broken up into separate mapsets. The exception is when songs are related by a live performance and/or composed to transition into one another by the same artist.

Pretty happy with the rest of the proposal though.

i agree with nevo on that thingie :blobuwu:
currently the problem of a compilation is not how the way those songs got mixed bc not everyone is a pro mixer or composer
i think we may need to focus on the definition of a compilation (i think there was a thread about it)
for me the basic components (ie. rules) of a compilation would be
(1) songs from the same artist, and/or
(2) songs from the same production (like, from the same film/game/series/anime/album etc.)

and for a compilation itself is proper or not, since it’s a purely subjective issue i’d like to let concerned BN/QAT member(s) to judge

edit: fk typo

Two very big issues:

1. Artificially extending mp3's should be allowed.

This has already been discussed before but there are many reasons why this just won't work as a rule. You shouldn't expect every BN to be able to know that the song they are checking is actually 4:59 length and not 5:01. It's very easy to get away with extending mp3, and enforcing this rule is just not something feasible. Maps will inevitably slip through and you are going to get "well, x got theirs ranked, why can't I?" People will always be lazy, stop trying to penalize it, it won't work. Additionally, this rule applies to a very small minority of mappers anyways. I can only see this being enforced for quality-based concerns such as the mp3 editing (to achieve 5 minutes) being poor quality. If you can't tell the map has been extended artificially just from listening to the song, then it is fair game.

2. Cross-fade editing is perfectly fine in almost all cases.

No one had issue with crossfading until Ephemeral brought it up. Him and peppy have clearly decided to take a backseat and not interfere too much with mapping. I don't see why this is being pushed forward on the basis that "staff doesn't like it". The staff doesn't like it? Well too bad for them, because it's something that's been done for a long time. One (apparently) poorly cross-faded map should not prevent the multitude of perfectly fine ones from being ranked. I could talk about how the genre-compilation mp3 was perfectly fine anyways (and how the current one is worse). "Low quality crossfade" is subjective to begin with, and unless you can accurately define what the difference is between "low quality crossfading" and "acceptable crossfading" and "high quality crossfading" etc... this should not be a rule because it doesn't even know what it is trying to bar from ranked, or what it is allowing into ranked.

Please stop holding the staff's words as things we need to follow. Ephemeral has made it very clear since the QAT upheaval that he won't be intervening in these matters, and peppy as well, is not heavily invested in RC rework because if he is i'm sure there are other things he would have commented about. They are fine to offer their opinions on whether these things should be acceptable or not, and you can consider them as being from informed sources, but enforcing a set of rules because "two people thought the crossfading on a certain mp3 was low quality" is kinda ridiculous.

---

Basically,

1. Take out mp3 editing as a rule. Optionally you can make it a guideline that artificially edited mp3 extensions must sound natural/unnoticeable in order to be acceptable.

2. Remove the crossfade rule, and put it in as a guideline so people have the option to call a map out for its low quality crossfading, but not the ability to completely prevent it from being ranked. It is far too subjective to be an objective rule anyways.

1) Why are we removing the marathon definition from the glossary? After the changes I feel like people will still refer to single diff spreads as marathons so it only seems practical.

2)

If the drain time of a song is...

… lower than 3:30, the lowest difficulty cannot be harder than a Normal. For non-osu! game modes in hybrid mapsets that feature osu! difficulties, the lowest difficulty cannot be harder than a Hard.
… lower than 4:30, the lowest difficulty cannot be harder than a Hard.

I still see a lot of people get discouraged over making spreads for songs that are around 2:30. A song bpm / rhythm complexity has a lot to do with how long someone might take to create a difficulty. This also hurts if there's no particularly "slow section" or break part of a map. So this can still be discouraging for those types of songs, i don't feel like it's entirely out of laziness at that point. I would change it like so:

If the drain time of a song is...

… lower than 3:00, the lowest difficulty cannot be harder than a Normal.
… lower than 4:00, the lowest difficulty cannot be harder than a Hard.

This feels like it would make a little more sense too because the drain requirements for each type of spread would be established in a more linear fashion (3:00, 4:00, 5:00) similar to the difficulty increases in spreads (normal, hard, insane). But that probably doesn't matter much xd

3)

1. Single-mode mapsets must form a reasonable spread. This spread must comply with its respective mode's difficulty-specific Ranking Criteria.
2. Hybrid mapsets without osu! difficulties must form a reasonable spread for each mode. This spread must comply with its respective mode's difficulty-specific Ranking Criteria.

These are pretty repetitive, they can be combined into one

1. Single-mode and Hybrid mapsets without osu! difficulties must form a reasonable spread for each mode. This spread must comply with its respective mode's difficulty-specific Ranking Criteria.

Hybrid spreads with osu! difficulties are specified afterward so that should cover everything too

4)

Song compilations must incorporate 3 or more songs. Using only 2 songs in a compilation is not a sufficient number of tracks to offer a compelling experience for players when compiled together, and should be broken up into separate mapsets.

Definitely disagree here. There are many ways 2 songs together can offer a compelling experience.

1. There are a lot of cases where 2 songs are cohesive / go alongside eachother, which are intentionally done by the composer. Example of a ranked set that does this: the mapper, both songs are usually performed together, and the theme of both songs align in a somewhat chronological way.
2. Another different example, https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/b/315867 The songs in the actual album for this one are sold as "The Island, Part 1 (Dawn)" and "The Island, Part 2 (Dusk)." So under this rule, wouldn't this be illegal? Even though part 2 is literally intended to be a sequel to part 1, plus they are extremely similar in the first place.
3. One last point, while its might be uncommon for only 2 songs to be contained on an album together, 2 song eps are a thing. Since they're intended to be sold together by the artist, why would it be unfitting to make them into a compilation, if they encom their own album? exmaple

Okay so to change this I would basically move this over to a guideline and modify it to encom combining 2 songs out of laziness:

Guidelines

Song compilations must should incorporate 3 or more songs. Using only 2 songs in a compilation is usually unfitting, unless the music within the compilation is cohesive together.

5) One thing that I think should definitely be addressed is reasoning for songs compilations. As in: you shouldn't be able to take any random songs by any random composers and throw it into a 5:00 minute compilation just because I don't feel like making a spread. I think this would be the most important thing to address if anything:

Rules
Song choice within song compilations must be justified in some manner. This is to ensure that song choice within compilations are not by random and that the songs with in the compilation fit in with eachother.

Don't know if that would be the best way to word it though.

Agreeing with squireel about reasoning being the more important factor with respects to defining a song compilation.

But honestly, shouldn't song compilation rules be discussed on: t/756468 or can we get a merger of the two drafts?

@squirrel
are only defined when they appear in the criteria. the marathon term doesn't ever appear in the new draft so there's no need to keep the definition. it was only defined because there was a rule for it, but now it's better to just standardize everything.

please read the first few pages for why we can't do 3/4/5 for time limits. it was almost exclusively seen as too lenient.

can't combine the single/hybrid sets the way you suggested bc the wording is very misleading. the current draft/current rc are how they are for a reason
(tho ive now noticed a poor wording in the current draft that'll be fixed)

--

@squirrelstrata
that draft is discussing more than just the technical requirements of compilations, so it's prob best to keep it as its own thing

---

@all
as there's been a fair amount of edge cases we forgot, and just general backlash against the 3 song rule in the thread and outside of it, that'll be reworked shortly

Monstrata wrote: 5o4w3u

1. Take out mp3 editing as a rule. Optionally you can make it a guideline that artificially edited mp3 extensions must sound natural/unnoticeable in order to be acceptable.

Agree with this. so we wont get any abrupt editing loop/extension like Ashita no kimi sae ireba ii ever again

Looking forward to 4:30 IXXXXXX maps

sahuang wrote: 2e486v

Looking forward to 4:30 IXXXXXX maps

hold my beer

not gonna bother reading the thread since i'm not keen on reading 12 pages for something someone might not have brought up

In the "removed" section of the proposal, you have all rules of hybrid sets that previously adhered to the RC removed and some new ones brought up.

---

I'm mostly concerned about the removal of this:

"Any two or more osu!taiko, osu!mania, or osu!catch difficulties must be arranged in a reasonable spread. The lowest difficulty cannot be harder than a Hard."

which now reads (in the updated proposal) as:

"… any two or more osu!taiko, osu!mania, or osu!catch difficulties must be arranged in a reasonable spread."

---

Recently, we made a rule change proposal to ctb which made it so that hybrid sets with ctb needed the minimum of a Platter (hard diff for non-minigame s) which can be found here

I'm of the opinion that hybrid sets should still have a hard limit on how hard the lowest difficulty is allowed to be. At the very least, for ctb over the last 2-3 years we've progressively changed rules to prevent hybrid sets from only having things like this becoming normalized with this rule change.

We came to this conclusion and have been slowly moving this scale downwards to be more in line with other non-standard modes, since we believe that converts are not enough to create a reliable spread for missing osu!catch difficulties, despite them being probably the most playable out of the 3 non-standard modes.

Again, I didn't read the thread, but is there any plan to standardize these hybrid set limits or will we have to once again combat the idea of IX or XX spreads that we fought to remove only recently?

dw that's still there, it just got moved to this location: https://puu.sh/ACl3J/b9e8881660.png

must be blind oops

this applies to all lengths though, not just the ones below 3:30? or do the ones such as "lower than 4:30..." also apply to non-standard modes?

they apply to non-standard modes, felt it best for spread rules to be consistent across all gamemodes

alright, cool, was kinda confused on the wording since normally "the lowest difficulty" only considered standard-only stuff in the past. dunno how to word it any better tho

UndeadCapulet wrote: 1t2uc

@squirrel
are only defined when they appear in the criteria. the marathon term doesn't ever appear in the new draft so there's no need to keep the definition. it was only defined because there was a rule for it, but now it's better to just standardize everything.

Thats true. The main reasoning for this was because tha'ts still how the community will refer to those kinds of maps, like its part of a mapper lingo of some sort. I guess its similar to "bubbles" in v2 (theyre dead xd).

UndeadCapulet wrote: 1t2uc

can't combine the single/hybrid sets the way you suggested bc the wording is very misleading. the current draft/current rc are how they are for a reason
(tho ive now noticed a poor wording in the current draft that'll be fixed)

dont see why not tbh, both rules exactly say "This spread must comply with its respective mode's difficulty-specific Ranking Criteria." The one change in wording for that elaboration would just be changing "this spread" to "spreads." I don't think its a big deal but tbh it would be a lot more efficient and less repetitive so i still dont see why not

UndeadCapulet wrote: 1t2uc

@squirrelstrata
that draft is discussing more than just the technical requirements of compilations, so it's prob best to keep it as its own thing

If you're saying we should wait to include it (which in that case, I disagree), i think it should be added in as soon as we define "song compilations" in the criteria. Song choice and your reasonging for it acts as a backbone for a compilation.

This rule proposal was mostly related to spread requirement but somehow is now about how to regulate audio. The matters are related but the second topic needs to be clearer in the way it will handle 4 different case scenarios;


For the first case I think the debate about cutting songs is pretty much resolved since peppy already mentioned that it’s fine (still needs discussion imo). The concern about the second case wasn't specifically brought on the proposal, but mixed with the third case. So the discussion should be on the third and fourth case that were brought on the proposal.

Song Extensions;

The second case (music extension) in the new rule proposal, will be forbidden according to;

Song compilations must incorporate 3 or more songs. Using only 2 songs in a compilation is not a sufficient number of tracks to offer a compelling experience for players when compiled together, and should be broken up into separate mapsets.

And

The audio file of a song must not be artificially extended in order to meet a time limitation in the mapset section of this criteria. Illegal extensions include (but are not limited to) looping sections of the audio file, lowering the bpm of the song or section of the song, and adding small amounts of music to the song without incorporating it throughout the entire song.

But allowed according to;

If the audio file is extended in such a way, the mapset must still comply with the time limitations of its unaltered audio.

Leaving the contradiction itself, I don’t really recommend banning the combination of two songs from being rankable since there are good results coming from that idea. Refer to;
https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/s/673138

Using different songs from the same artist that blend well together, using different arranges of the same song to create an intro or outro for the original song, combining part I and part II of the same song, etc. The problem isn’t the extension itself, but people forcing extensions/song additions to meet a spread requirement, that is what resulted recently in very low quality mixes.

To solve this problem we can actually re-word the following rule proposal;

The audio file of a song must not be artificially extended in order to meet a time limitation in the mapset section of this criteria.

To

The intent here is that even if a person loops any part of the song or add another song in the mp3, the spread requirement will consider only the main song being mapped, the only expection being songs compilation.

Songs compilation;

Probably the topic with almost no consensus so far and a lot of discussion is happening on t/756468 , so I’ll probably just give suggestions regarding the re-wording of some stuff proposed. I agree with the definition brought on the glossary, I just think that it’s slightly inconsistent with the rule proposal;

Song compilations must incorporate 3 or more songs.

and

Song Compilation: An audio file that features more than 2 different songs or sections of multiple different songs.

About the rule itself;

Song compilations must incorporate 3 or more songs. Using only 2 songs in a compilation is not a sufficient number of tracks to offer a compelling experience for players when compiled together, and should be broken up into separate mapsets.

We can remove the following explanation since it contradicts allowing the extensions when the rule is about songs compilation. All explanations of rules in the RC are supposed to be related to the first sentence and things like “Using only 2 songs […]should be broken up into separate mapsets.” Doesn’t relate to the topic of songs compilation.

->while I was editing this a lot of discussion happened and I'm not sure if my concerns were adressed or not, sorry if anything here is doubled and resolved already.

I know the first rule applies to all modes as Ascendance asked about it, but the current wording doesn't make it clear if it applies to every mode in hybrid mapsets, which I think it should. For this reason, I suggest to change the wording to:

1. If the drain time of a song is...
   
   1. (the lower than 3:30 thing remains the same)
   2. ...lower than 4:30, the lowest difficulty of each mode cannot be harder than a Hard.
   3. ...lower than 5:00, the lowest difficulty of each mode cannot be harder than an Insane.

This would make it clear that you can't have, for example, a HI standard spread + an IX catch spread on a 3:30-4:30 song, which is what at least us catch people agreed a while ago.

ZiRoX wrote: 1g5x4h

I know the first rule applies to all modes as Ascendance asked about it, but the current wording doesn't make it clear if it applies to every mode in hybrid mapsets, which I think it should. For this reason, I suggest to change the wording to:

1. If the drain time of a song is...
   
   1. ...lower than 4:30, the lowest difficulty of each mode cannot be harder than a Hard.
   2. ...lower than 5:00, the lowest difficulty of each mode cannot be harder than an Insane.

This would make it clear that you can't have, for example, a HI standard spread + an IX catch spread on a 3:30-4:30 song, which is what at least us catch people agreed a while ago.

+1 this, we just had a fiesta about this in #catch over confusing wording, this would help clear things up for those who weren't aware of it

ok, will add those 3 words those places

not really looking forward to see the beginner difficulties decreasing but the boss has spoken and he doesn't really mind that...

"only allow compilations to be mapped as the same difficulty level each song..."
^ I think this should be considered

Don't agree with that because album compilations would have to follow that, if there's a low intensity song within then it becomes unrankable.
This would make almost all currently rankd 30 minute marathons unrankable which isn't that helpful

I've only read the spread proposal. I quite like it, though 3:30 drain time is very hard to reach.

1) full ver maps have lots of break (because they don't have to care about drain time)
2) some full ver songs can be quite short (3:30 to 4:00) so they might even fail to hit the rules designed to help them.

Maybe adjust the drain time a bit? I think 3:00 is good for the lowest point.

My issues with the song compilations stuff have already been adressed, though overall I'd think it to probably be better to move it to t/756468 entirely, as long as it's made sure that something comes of that, it would probably be better to seperate the two issues. Having a short period of time with laxer spread rules and no extension rules isn't gonna kill mapping or anything.

More importantly, while I unfortunately can't come up with a good way to word it, it might be beneficial for overall difficulty variety to allow "replacing" a diff in the spread with one below the maximum. Reasoning being that I don't see how an N-H-X spread is any better or worse than H-I-X in of player accessability, or how an H-X-X is worse than I-X-X, since the amount of players covered would be about the same, maybe even higher.

From what I read on the draft, we authorize people to be even more lazy when they could already rank mapset with only 1 difficulty done and the rest from GDs. So maybe we could include the idea about having a minimum amount of participation on a set (like 50% of it done by the original mapper) to be sure this won't lead to the opposite direction that draft is supposed to go.

And about the drain time of a song :

… lower than 4:30, the lowest difficulty cannot be harder than a Hard.
… lower than 5:00, the lowest difficulty cannot be harder than an Insane.

There's some songs who don't difficulties above Hard or Insane (depending of their BPM / density / etc...) who will lead this to mappers having forced difficulties who won't fit the song at all to have a spread as rules expect (example : https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/b/550579). So I don't think than you should force people do to a Hard / Insane in case of the songs can't it, or allow them to fall under Marathon rule.

Monstrata wrote: 5o4w3u

1. Take out mp3 editing as a rule. Optionally you can make it a guideline that artificially edited mp3 extensions must sound natural/unnoticeable in order to be acceptable.

2. Remove the crossfade rule, and put it in as a guideline so people have the option to call a map out for its low quality crossfading, but not the ability to completely prevent it from being ranked. It is far too subjective to be an objective rule anyways.

agree with both of these, mainly the bold part

agree with Halfslashed's point about combining two songs, since there are a lot of cases where songs work much better if you combine them, just look at https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/s/100348 which would be affected by this change since it technically combines two songs, it's split like this https://i.imgur.com/3fhDLNU.jpg on the album. where the actual kanshou no matenrou starts at 00:43:271 -


also with how this change is currently, if you're mapping a song that is just slightly above 3:30 you wouldn't be allowed to put breaks on your hard diff because then it wouldn't reach the drain minimum to not need a normal.
For example https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/b/1072897 higher diffs on this are ~3:40, so lowest diff could be a hard, but then diffs below another are <3:30.
Or https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/b/1590239 where Insane+ diffs are all above 3:30, but hard is 3:29 due to breaks.
Breaks can be very important on <Insane diffs of this length and this would discourage using them, so I think this should somehow be ed for, but I can't really come up with a nice solution right now.

Other drain time related spread changes look nice to me

Nozhomi wrote: 2x3oe

There's some songs who don't difficulties above Hard or Insane (depending of their BPM / density / etc...) who will lead this to mappers having forced difficulties who won't fit the song at all to have a spread as rules expect (example : https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/b/550579). So I don't think than you should force people do to a Hard / Insane in case of the songs can't it, or allow them to fall under Marathon rule.

Maybe I misunderstood something in your post, but I'm pretty sure this ain't forcing anyone to map those diffs or over them, but rather those diffs and under (for atleast the lowest diff); and thus in case of calmer songs having all diffs under those shouldn't be contradicting the idea of the wording there.

Halfslashed wrote: 3q315w

I think an exception should be made for using two songs that were composed to transition into each other.

Same but not restricted to two, considering there's compositions consisting of more parts than that still working as one whole. Basically restricting this with any number shouldn't really be necessary. In most cases songs ain't so short that you'd need like half dozen to get to the 5 min mark (so it ain't really abusable anyways), so putting the max amount for this will only end up forbidding mapping some pieces as whole, while their length would be over the 5 mins for single-diff-mapset even without all parts.

[quote="TheKingHenry"]Maybe I misunderstood something in your post, but I'm pretty sure this ain't forcing anyone to map those diffs or over them, but rather those diffs and under (for atleast the lowest diff); and thus in case of calmer songs having all diffs under those shouldn't be contradicting the idea of the wording there.

I see what you mean, and yeah agree I'm retarded.
Tho my first point is still something we should considerate.

Happy ! but if do this , e E&N diff will decrease ? (just imo

so i suggest if do TV size(<2min?) , should be map E N at least ?

Lasse wrote: 4y3p20

Monstrata wrote: 5o4w3u

1. Take out mp3 editing as a rule. Optionally you can make it a guideline that artificially edited mp3 extensions must sound natural/unnoticeable in order to be acceptable.

2. Remove the crossfade rule, and put it in as a guideline so people have the option to call a map out for its low quality crossfading, but not the ability to completely prevent it from being ranked. It is far too subjective to be an objective rule anyways.

agree with both of these, mainly the bold part

agree with Halfslashed's point about combining two songs, since there are a lot of cases where songs work much better if you combine them, just look at https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/s/100348 which would be affected by this change since it technically combines two songs, it's split like this https://i.imgur.com/3fhDLNU.jpg on the album. where the actual kanshou no matenrou starts at 00:43:271 -


also with how this change is currently, if you're mapping a song that is just slightly above 3:30 you wouldn't be allowed to put breaks on your hard diff because then it wouldn't reach the drain minimum to not need a normal.
For example https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/b/1072897 higher diffs on this are ~3:40, so lowest diff could be a hard, but then diffs below another are <3:30.
Or https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/b/1590239 where Insane+ diffs are all above 3:30, but hard is 3:29 due to breaks.
Breaks can be very important on <Insane diffs of this length and this would discourage using them, so I think this should somehow be ed for, but I can't really come up with a nice solution right now.

Other drain time related spread changes look nice to me

When there is a loop in the song, or the album have an intro, and your song is 4:55, it's really bad to not been able anymore to extend it. R3 music box are really autistic way to extend because it have basically nothing to see with the original song, and an extend of 30 secondes aka 1/10 of the map, is not an extend anymore. Adding a loop in the song to reach 5 minutes is maybe lazy, but when its inaudible, this rules is just bad and wont help beginners mappers to rank there stuff. Making it more like a guideslines as said Monstrata or Lasse would be much better.

peppy wrote: 73101g

Cutting shorter is done to make it more playable/suited to a rhythm game. Making longer is done to avoid mapping certain difficulties with basically no exception.

No, cutting a full version of a song to make it "tv size" is basically just been lazy to map a spread of 1:30 minutes for each diff despite a spread of 4:30 for each diff lol

moonlightleaf wrote: 562s6b

Happy ! but if do this , e E&N diff will decrease ? (just imo

so i suggest if do TV size(<2min?) , should be map E N at least ?

shorter songs will not be affected, anything shorter than 3:30 minutes will still have to follow the current spread rules

timemon wrote: 6fp3s

I've only read the spread proposal. I quite like it, though 3:30 drain time is very hard to reach.

1) full ver maps have lots of break (because they don't have to care about drain time)
2) some full ver songs can be quite short (3:30 to 4:00) so they might even fail to hit the rules designed to help them.

Maybe adjust the drain time a bit? I think 3:00 is good for the lowest point.

I actually agree with this, full version songs are more likely to have breaks in them so having slight leeway for breaks in longer songs would be nice. Instead of 3:30 -> 4:30 -> 5:00, I would prefer 3:00 -> 4:00 -> 5:00. Not only is it more linear (there's a lot of room between 3:30-4:30 to require a hard but half that from 4:30-5:00 to require an insane) but it could also allow more breaks in 3:00+ songs.

This pretty much solves Lasse's concern I think?

Lasse wrote: 4y3p20

Breaks can be very important on <Insane diffs of this length and this would discourage using them, so I think this should somehow be ed for, but I can't really come up with a nice solution right now.

The rest of the proposal I pretty much agree with.

The matter of Songs Compilation is kinda iffy. I think I agree most with what Monstrata wrote:

Monstrata wrote: 5o4w3u

1. Take out mp3 editing as a rule. Optionally you can make it a guideline that artificially edited mp3 extensions must sound natural/unnoticeable in order to be acceptable.

2. Remove the crossfade rule, and put it in as a guideline so people have the option to call a map out for its low quality crossfading, but not the ability to completely prevent it from being ranked. It is far too subjective to be an objective rule anyways.

I wouldn't say mp3 extensions are always bad, because sometimes songs are literally milliseconds away from being 5 minutes long, and a small extension would be fine in that case if it's natural or unnoticeable. I also think crossfades can vary in quality so I agree having it as a guideline works much better than as a rule.

As for "EN diffs will decrease" nobody is forcing people not to make difficulties lower than a hard/insane for songs that don't require them, if mappers want to continue mapping low diffs for those songs they are free to do so. Most newer players don't play long songs and don't stay around Easy/Normal level for too long anyways so for mappers that like to do less work I view this more as a QOL option.

Regarding Nozhomi's concern about participation, I think having the spread rules more lenient would encourage mappers to make more diffs themselves since they don't have to map as much. At least, that's how it would affect me most likely. Getting GDs wouldn't be so high priority if you only had to map two difficulties as opposed to 4 perhaps.

That's about all that's on my mind right now...

Had a chance to play around with map data now thanks to x86's TSV. I personally think that there should be some adjustments to the proposal.

I just finished gathering the research and writing the script for my next video on song length (relevant polls here), and the conclusion is that most players when it comes to enjoyment prefer full length songs over shortened versions. A lot of the time full length songs do go above 3:30 in length.



Looking at figure 1, it is true that the longer the map length, the less likely that the map becomes super popular, but keep in mind that this could be due to there being less maps in the 4 minute range compared to maps in the 1:30-2 minute range (see: these). It's unreasonable to say that lower level difficulties in the 4 minute range don't get played at all, because they clearly do. In figure 2 you can see that there are still a good handful of normal diffs with at least 250k plays in to 3:30 to 4, with a few being above 1 million plays.

The main concern for me is locking out those 3:30-4:00 songs from the newbie players, since they still do play them, and the jump from normal to hard can be difficult for some players because of how large that gap can be compared to other difficulty gaps.

You could say that we already have a large number of ranked normal difficulties in the game already, but this is a long-term change for the game, and mapping standards and quality change over time. Most of us would recommend a newbie player to play something ranked within the last few years rather than something from say 2009, for example.

Suggestions:

- Move the cut-off point for Normal difficulties up to 4:00. I think this is a more reasonable place to put it given the demand for full length songs.

- Add a new guideline that relaxes what a reasonable spread is for maps above 3:00. This is my compromise for raising the normal diff cut-off. One of the problems mappers face is having a low level normal diff and a high level hard diff, and requiring either remaps of the current diffs or the addition of an advanced diff to fill the gap. This problem is amplified for longer maps because more effort etc etc. This new guideline would allow spreads with wider gaps between each difficulty, lowering the workload on the mapper by not having to worry about spread too much and having less drain time to map whilst keeping maps accessible for lower level players.

- An (unwritten) guideline should be added/agreed for bundled maps or maps of featured artists to require normal spreads. It's probably no surprise that the most played maps in the game are the bundled default maps, and more specifically the lower level difficulties of those maps, since those are usually the first maps one plays when they first the game. To me it wouldn't make sense to add official/bundled content into the game that isn't accessible to newbies.

I should say that I'm all for the general direction of this proposal. I just want to be weary about this sort of change since it's going to have a long term effect on the content we get in this game.

-Mo- wrote: n314z

Suggestions:

- Move the cut-off point for Normal difficulties up to 4:00. I think this is a more reasonable place to put it given the demand for full length songs.

- Add a new guideline that relaxes what a reasonable spread is for maps above 3:00. This is my compromise for raising the normal diff cut-off. One of the problems mappers face is having a low level normal diff and a high level hard diff, and requiring either remaps of the current diffs or the addition of an advanced diff to fill the gap. This problem is amplified for longer maps because more effort etc etc. This new guideline would allow spreads with wider gaps between each difficulty, lowering the workload on the mapper by not having to worry about spread too much and having less drain time to map whilst keeping maps accessible for lower level players.

I like this solution a lot. The main problem would be how to relax something that is already somewhat subjective. My idea would be to perhaps for each star level of top difficulty define a minimum number of difficulties, which need to make a somewhat even spread down to the required minimum difficulty. Final judgement would still be done by BN/QAT as it is now, and that way we could also a bit more objectively define what constitutes a reasonable spread in the current RC. Everyone knows a hard limit on SR would be garbage because of how flawed SR is, but I think just saying "spread requirements are laxer" would be rather meaningless.

dunno if this already got resolved but I just wanna say that I two song compilations if they were intended to be listened to together

Monstrata wrote: 5o4w3u

1. Take out mp3 editing as a rule. Optionally you can make it a guideline that artificially edited mp3 extensions must sound natural/unnoticeable in order to be acceptable.

2. Remove the crossfade rule, and put it in as a guideline so people have the option to call a map out for its low quality crossfading, but not the ability to completely prevent it from being ranked. It is far too subjective to be an objective rule anyways.

I completely agree with these since I dont even see what can make a crossfade low quality and mp3 extensions that are done well you cant tell are extended.