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.

pimpG wrote: 4xr26

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

Problem with this is not all songs will be the same difficulty example being https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/s/744238 which has a 206bpm song and a 86bpm which are completely related as its part of the same album project so its a completely logical compilation

also agree on what Halfslashed said a few pages back as 2 songs are sometimes even d as bundled together and this would make them unrankable.
For example https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/s/710305 and http://akatsuki-records.com/drcd0013_2.html, these 2 songs clearly belong together and even the album title hints to it.
Halfslashed's version already covers this and seems quite good so I would honestly just use that one

hi im too lazy to read thru the entire thread and im not sure if this is mentioned but ima mention it anyways~~

i think it would be better if the times were changed from

- 3:30 to 3:00
- 4:30 to 4:00

just for consistency reasons, idk ab you guys but 3:30>4:30>5:00 doesnt make a lot of sense if theres a 1 min gap and then a 30 sec gap.

I'm thinking about the drain time rule things.
How about we allow some leniency on lower difficulties.
For example, The insane diff drain time is 4:10 it is qualified for the 4:00 rule, however due to the gameplay elements of Normal and Hard the maps drain time are 3:40 and 3:50 instead which I would like to extend the rule back to help those lower diffs.

The difference in drain time has to be reasonable and relative to the top diff and the overall length of the song. And the extension will only help Hard difficulties or lower.

The issue with this solution is that it is very vague and needs to be handled subjectively case by case by the Beatmap Nominators to work.

Edit: I might add some people are really concerned about less content on the game which is justified, but I think it might even add more content with this change. Think about all the full ver maps that never got ranked because of the mappers giving up/spread issues. And mappers can still opt to ignore this rules and map full spread should they wish to.

the only exception i could make with the 3 song rule is red like roses 1 and 2 from rwby. but iirc that was an official track released by the artist?

very good list kibb



on a different note we'll be collecting until the weekend (so probs around this sunday) and then change the draft accordingly to the consensus of this thread

Mir wrote: 13202u

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.

This is what I also suggested here https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/forum/p/6655193

UndeadCapulet wrote: 1t2uc

@squirrel

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.

That was the very beginning of the thread though. Since we have a lot more people in on this discussion now and we're approaching spreading from different perspectives, I think we should reconsider a linear 3:00 -> 4:00 -> 5:00 draintime spread.

Don't have much to add here, but I'd like to remind everyone of what demographic we're dealing with and how the mapping scene deals with these time factors currently. If we make the cutoff 4:00, A significant portion of full anime OP's and ED's are going to make the cutoff (things the demographics like), which I believe will make them appear more in the mapping scene, unlike how I believe they are currently neglected a bit (not in the literal sense). If we make the cutoff 4:30, not so much. I wouldn't want to talk much because I don't really know the more technical or obscure stuff, but I agree with -Mo-'s proposal here. Even in that case, that we don't exactly have to settle for 3:00/4:00/5:00 or 3:30/4:30/5:00. We can do stuff like 2:30/3:30/5:00 (While I know may seem unreasonable, but this is just a reminder).

Okoratu wrote: ct57

very good list kibb

Tfw tried looking the previous pages like where the hell's this, only to realize in the end it's prob just sarcastic remark for

Kibbleru wrote: 6p3k2d

the only exception i could make with the 3 song rule is red like roses 1 and 2 from rwby. but iirc that was an official track released by the artist?

FeelsBan

EDIT: wdym with that tho kibb? You wanting red like roses to be exception to song compilations needing 3 but it having 2 (not like it should be song compilation anyways, doesn't it work as one track?) or does it have 3 parts and you want it to not be song compilation cuz it works as one or whaaaaat (in which case it shouldn't be the only exception obviously) (￣ー￣；

-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.

The problem with the graphs shown as well as the data via twitter poll is that it does not take into that people wanting full length songs are invested in the game. The purpose of the proposal is to incentivize mapping more songs of that length for that audience, as opposed to the newer audience that tires out. Given that, I still think 3:30 for a minimum difficulty of hard is a good place to put the cutoff.

The other point would be much harder to define in a way that mappers would be able to use it, since usually those remaps and creating additional difficulties is not understanding how to keep a linear spread while avoiding massive jumps between difficulties. A guideline that "relaxes" this would just allow poor spread design through to ranked.

if you people want linear just go with 3:30 - 4:15 - 5. that both avoids the "issue" of non linearity while also keeping fairly normal standards for drain time per set; for a 3 minute nhix set, that's 12 minutes and about the max amount ever needed for a set, which is perfectly fine imo... at 3:30 hix that becomes 10:30 which isn't a huge reduction and then 4:15 ix is 8:30 which is also not a big difference.

plz move to completed

Nevo wrote: j36y

pimpG wrote: 4xr26

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

Problem with this is not all songs will be the same difficulty example being https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/s/744238 which has a 206bpm song and a 86bpm which are completely related as its part of the same album project so its a completely logical compilation

sure but what if the songs have similar bpm and intensity, shouldn't the RC at least discourage mappers from mapping them inconsistently?

pimpG wrote: 4xr26

sure but what if the songs have similar bpm and intensity, shouldn't the RC at least discourage mappers from mapping them inconsistently?

I personally haven't seen a compilation which maps 2 slimiler bpm/intensity songs in completely different levels of difficulty. So i dont really see what making people stay consistent would do since its like their interpretation of the songs and stuff.

I think the wording of the proposal could be fixed to somehow uhh.. deal with the "at least two difficulties" part of the current ranking criteria. Not that I this proposal. I'm just saying. Also I'm not really a fan of the "Song compilations must incorporate 3 or more songs. " thing. If I want to make a compilation of two 4:30 length songs from the same artist and album into a 9 minute map, I can't? No more Artist - Song1 / Song2 ? that seems silly.

the proposal is to make the ranking process easier to get long songs ranked without the need of extending them, allowing people to pick two random songs from an artist/album would be a contradiction in the proposal. making an exception for songs like the ones kibbleru mentioned should be fine.

Nevo wrote: j36y

I personally haven't seen a compilation which maps 2 slimiler bpm/intensity songs in completely different levels of difficulty. So i dont really see what making people stay consistent would do since its like their interpretation of the songs and stuff.

if the songs have similar bpm and intensity then I don't see how the interpretation could be different. i'm talking about obvious SR differences... what if the mapper decides to have the compilation mapped as (Extra ~ Easy ~ Hard) when all songs in the compilation s the same level. That's subjective so what are the chances that you will be able to convince him that this is a bad idea if not even the RC mentions anything about it. sure I don't seeing anyone doing this so far but it doesn't means it won't happen in the future.

there is some maps that have increasing difficulty level like https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/s/69076 but this concept wouldn't make sense in a compilation of songs with similar intensity and bpm imo

Proposal wrote: 5b6w39

Guidelines

1. Each song in a song compilation should be similar in audio quality, volume, and length.

could be something like:

Proposal wrote: 5b6w39

Guidelines

1. Each song in a song compilation should be similar in audio quality, volume, length and difficulty level.

that should not need to be a rule. it's like saying, your extra diff should not be mapped like a normal then have random fullscreen jumps somewhere randomly. that is simply something that would be considered low quality by BNG and should not be nominated. even if it isn't a hard set guideline people still do not it, so there isn't a reason to suspect they would do it in a marathon form...

one of the main reasons why we are discussing this changes is because some BN nominated bad stuff

Well it's because it's subjective since not everyone thinks the same way about mapping songs you shouldn't create a rule to force people to do things the way you think it right if they think it's wrong. At least that's how I feel about it.

I believe that the majority would agree with it but I only suggested a few more words for the guideline, not a rule.

So instead of combining two 4:30 songs from the same artist and album into one 9 minute diff, I'd have to combine three 4:30 songs into 13:30 length diff? that just seems absurdly dumb. Why should there be any restrictions of what songs can be mapped. I do agree that just patching together two random songs from two random artists isn't okay, but why not from the same artist and same album? Why map two diffs of a 4:30 length song when you can map one diff of 9 minutes of two song? There is much more variety. If I can't combine two 4:30 length songs from the same album, I'd just be... inclined to extend the compilation with a r3 music box to fit the 3 song requirement. and thats even dumber? right?

Two songs from the same artist should be perfectly acceptable, such as https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/b/1639326 . I see nothing wrong with the way two songs were combined.

Also I'm still not entirely sure whether or not the rule of requiring a "spread of at least two difficulties." is required for maps shorter than 5:00 in drain time. Can you please clarify?

tatatat wrote: 3i245q

So instead of combining two 4:30 songs from the same artist and album into one 9 minute diff, I'd have to combine three 4:30 songs into 13:30 length diff? that just seems absurdly dumb. Why should there be any restrictions of what songs can be mapped. I do agree that just patching together two random songs from two random artists isn't okay, but why not from the same artist and same album? Why map two diffs of a 4:30 length song when you can map one diff of 9 minutes of two song? There is much more variety. If I can't combine two 4:30 length songs from the same album, I'd just be... inclined to extend the compilation with a r3 music box to fit the 3 song requirement. and thats even dumber? right?

Two songs from the same artist should be perfectly acceptable, such as https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/b/1639326 . I see nothing wrong with the way two songs were combined.

Also I'm still not entirely sure whether or not the rule of requiring a "spread of at least two difficulties." is required for maps shorter than 5:00 in drain time. Can you please clarify?

From what I understand, they're working on rewording it so that 2 song mashes are ok with reasonable justification rather than just extending drain time.
Also, any map under 5:00 still wouldn't be considered a marathon so yes, they would need at least two difficulties.

Does the spread also have to remain linear?

Example:
if the drain time is 3:30-4:30 your set's lowest diff must be hard or lower (excuse me if that is outdated, just took it from the first post)

Let's say I still want to make an Easy for this diff- is a normal still required then?

Irreversible wrote: 4i6z36

Does the spread also have to remain linear?

Example:
if the drain time is 3:30-4:30 your set's lowest diff must be hard or lower (excuse me if that is outdated, just took it from the first post)

Let's say I still want to make an Easy for this diff- is a normal still required then?

I'd assume so, the reasonable spread rule is still in place.

nah the reasonable spread would only have to start at the hard
so you could do EHIX or w/ev if you wanted

one last thing that i'm concerned

there should be some limitation to what songs can be combined into a rankable compilation
the way the Proposal right now basically you can put songs from 6ix9ine, BABY METAL, and Beethoven in the same compilation

pimpG wrote: 4xr26

one last thing that i'm concerned

there should be some limitation to what songs can be combined into a rankable compilation
the way the Proposal right now basically you can put songs from 6ix9ine, BABY METAL, and Beethoven in the same compilation

That's what's attempting to be discussed with t/756468 iirc

Hi,

we applied all the angry we received over song compilations and extensions
please dont actually attempt lynching anyone over this:

https://gist.github.com/Okorin/190bc363f4790744556d3f919eb8e1cf

we decided to stick to 3:30/4:30/5:00 for a couple reasons:

1. 3:00 cutoff abnormally affects certain music genres more than others
2. there's a fair amount of data that suggests hard players like 3 minute songs
3. we can always lower the numbers further after the proposal goes through should it be deemed acceptable to do so, but it'd be insanely hard to increase the numbers in any way

we can do 3:30/4:15/5:00 i guess, but that looks really silly to me

I have a question, do every non marathon maps always have to have 2 diffs or more? Like if 4:45 map is a hard diff, does it need another difficulty? The proposal isn't clear on this one

Also what about the break on lower difficulties? The top diff might hit 3:30 drain but lower diffs might not.

Edit: Didn't see the full github thing, the drain time thing is addressed oops.

timemon wrote: 6fp3s

I have a question, do every non marathon maps always have to have 2 diffs or more? Like if 4:45 map is a hard diff, does it need another difficulty? The proposal isn't clear on this one

Also what about the break on lower difficulties? The top diff might hit 3:30 drain but lower diffs might not.

first thing gets removed, 2nd would have this now https://i.imgur.com/alU9tH5.png

timemon wrote: 6fp3s

I have a question, do every non marathon maps always have to have 2 diffs or more? Like if 4:45 map is a hard diff, does it need another difficulty? The proposal isn't clear on this one

Also what about the break on lower difficulties? The top diff might hit 3:30 drain but lower diffs might not.

Single-mode mapsets must include a reasonable spread of at least two difficulties.

looks great, I don't have anything to complain about anymore
moving extensions and compilations into guidelines is nice


this looks like a fine solution for the break issues

Difficulties lower than Insane can use their play time as a metric instead of drain time, but their play time must be equal to at least 80% of their drain time.

don't really care if it's 4:15 or 4:30, both seem alright to me

dude sdafsf that's the first removed thing

it's in the removed section

@timemon: you are right it does not need another difficulty

So this essentially lower the bar for marathon by 30 seconds, if you map insane.

Maybe I'm lacking sleep cause its 2am but if you guys get rid of the forced "2 diff" rule in favor of this proposal. Can't I just make a TV size map with only normal diff and rank it, or I am missing something again.

timemon wrote: 6fp3s

So this essentially lower the bar for marathon by 30 seconds, if you map insane.

Maybe I'm lacking sleep cause its 2am but if you guys get rid of the forced "2 diff" rule in favor of this proposal. Can't I just make a TV size map with only normal diff and rank it, or I am missing something again.

I mean you could right now just rank a TV size with E/N, doesn't make that much of a difference.
I'm not sure if I like that you don't have to make two difficulties anymore though, the marathon bar for Hards would be lowered to 3:30 and that's pretty low imo.

Isn't it possible to turn "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." into a note or, alternatively, moving it to the mania specific RC? It makes the rule harder to read, as it adds something between the main rule and an exception.

Mao wrote: d2n2w

timemon wrote: 6fp3s

So this essentially lower the bar for marathon by 30 seconds, if you map insane.

Maybe I'm lacking sleep cause its 2am but if you guys get rid of the forced "2 diff" rule in favor of this proposal. Can't I just make a TV size map with only normal diff and rank it, or I am missing something again.

I mean you could right now just rank a TV size with E/N, doesn't make that much of a difference.
I'm not sure if I like that you don't have to make two difficulties anymore though, the marathon bar for Hards would be lowered to 3:30 and that's pretty low imo.

The marathon bar will be lowered to 30 seconds if you want to map Easy/Normal diff which is absurd.

Single-mode mapsets must form a reasonable spread. This spread must comply with its respective mode's difficulty-specific Ranking Criteria.

So you removed the rule that requires to have at least 2 diffs per set to have a rankable spread. Does this mean you can now basically have a 4:30-long "marathon" with a single Insane diff? These things need to be clarified better. Consequently these RC neither explain what a reasonable spread is, so it's quite vague.

The audio file of a song should not be artificially extended in order to meet a time limitation in the mapset section of this criteria. This can include (but is not limited to) looping sections of the audio file, lowering the bpm of the song or section of the song, or adding small amounts of music to the song without incorporating it throughout the entire song. This does not apply to song compilations or audio files less than the minimum rankable mapset length.

What's the point of this again? If I read this correctly, it's ok to extend a song to reach the minimum rankable song length. In my opinion, this only invites poor quality mapsets to be made. People will extend/loop/modify short songs to make popular pp farm maps with minimum effort required.

basically advocating the 3:30 - 4:15 - 5:00 drain time steps

As others have said, I don't think the minimum 2 diff rule should be gone. As the proposal stands now, I could map a 1 min Normal and get it ranked. You could say that the proposal mentions that maps require a proper spread (and you can't have spread with only 1 element), but an explicit mention of this minimum number of diffs required would be good.

just fyi i said in the beginning that im not actually the most ive of it i'm just dragging the idea along and making sure it doesnt just go and die

spread kind of implies that you have 2 elements that spread out
yeah

I think the bar for entry into the ranked section should be at some point higher than making one diff in a solo set but at the moment, as a host, it's at making one diff at minimum - just that the allowed tv size normal diff being rankable would be super weird for a player - like you could even spam those sets out if you wanted to lol

ZiRoX wrote: 1g5x4h

As others have said, I don't think the minimum 2 diff rule should be gone. As the proposal stands now, I could map a 1 min Normal and get it ranked. You could say that the proposal mentions that maps require a proper spread (and you can't have spread with only 1 element), but an explicit mention of this minimum number of diffs required would be good.

I have the same complaints/worries. Having a base minimum difficulty requirement is good conceptually, but comes with too many implications in my opinion. The idea that I could make a “marathon” for a TV Size if I only mapped a Normal difficulty completely undermines the original intent of this proposal to begin with (balancing spread requirements for longer songs).

Personally I feel that there needs to be a requirement for a minimum number of difficulties in addition to a minimum difficulty level; otherwise the spread requirement will feel redundant.

ZiRoX wrote: 1g5x4h

As others have said, I don't think the minimum 2 diff rule should be gone. As the proposal stands now, I could map a 1 min Normal and get it ranked. You could say that the proposal mentions that maps require a proper spread (and you can't have spread with only 1 element), but an explicit mention of this minimum number of diffs required would be good.

I agree. There should always be at least 2 diffs unless its a marathon. Thats what differentiates a marathon from a normal set.

tatatat wrote: 3i245q

ZiRoX wrote: 1g5x4h

As others have said, I don't think the minimum 2 diff rule should be gone. As the proposal stands now, I could map a 1 min Normal and get it ranked. You could say that the proposal mentions that maps require a proper spread (and you can't have spread with only 1 element), but an explicit mention of this minimum number of diffs required would be good.

I agree. There should always be at least 2 diffs unless its a marathon. Thats what differentiates a marathon from a normal set.

i agree

Yeah, make songs under 5 minutes still require minimum two difficulties and I'd this.
Longer songs that call for a Hard (or even Normal) as highest diff instead of something higher are probably the most suitable candidates for longer Normals (or Easys) anyway. Having just one diff here wouldn't even feel like a mapset anymore in these cases.

I would like to push for 4:15 as a cutoff rather than 4:30 for previously mentioned reasons:

Nao Tomori wrote: 1f93x

if you people want linear just go with 3:30 - 4:15 - 5. that both avoids the "issue" of non linearity while also keeping fairly normal standards for drain time per set; for a 3 minute nhix set, that's 12 minutes and about the max amount ever needed for a set, which is perfectly fine imo... at 3:30 hix that becomes 10:30 which isn't a huge reduction and then 4:15 ix is 8:30 which is also not a big difference.

edit: ok about the 2 diff rule

I spoke with UC about it and my mind has been somewhat changed:

ZiRoX wrote: 1g5x4h

As others have said, I don't think the minimum 2 diff rule should be gone. As the proposal stands now, I could map a 1 min Normal and get it ranked. You could say that the proposal mentions that maps require a proper spread (and you can't have spread with only 1 element), but an explicit mention of this minimum number of diffs required would be good.

This is the equivalent of ranking a 2 diff EE set, and it's been done before. Ranking a 1 min single Normal/Easy diff could even be better off because the diff underneath it could be completely unnecessary (1.6* normal, 1.4* easy for example, the easy is basically unneeded in most cases like this). This actually also solves UC's other proposal as well: https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/community/forums/topics/726926 but that's another topic altogether.

Forcing 2 diffs may not do much for content/variety for this reason: if we forced 2 diffs minimum we could get 4:15/30 sets like II which seem pointless because there's already an insane there. The second diff may be effortlessly mapped anyways. Instead, why not focus all of the effort into one great diff instead of splitting it 20/80 for another difficulty that may not benefit the set aside from "here's another diff"?

tatatat wrote: 3i245q

Thats what differentiates a marathon from a normal set.

Doormat wrote: 1m5p37

The idea that I could make a “marathon” for a TV Size if I only mapped a Normal difficulty completely undermines the original intent of this proposal to begin with (balancing spread requirements for longer songs).

Marathons should be defined by song length and length alone, difficulty count should be irrelevant - and kinda is - because some marathon maps have full spreads/more than one diff. Forcing 2 diffs for the sake of differentiating sets from marathons is unnecessary imho (not saying that's what your point is but I want to dismiss that idea entirely)

I think what maybe needs to happen is a rethink of what "marathon" constitutes, because it shouldn't be "1 difficulty mapset" by any means.

The "effort" argument can be seen as being "for the sake of effort" as well and may not have a benefit to the mapset at all despite being more work for the mapper in the long run. AFAIK the proposal's main aim is to gear sets towards the people that get the most out of playing them, and those people likely won't care much for filler diffs that are there just to fulfill the 2 diff minimum.

i kinda used words from UC and Hobbes2 in here too since we had a discussion about it on Discord so disclaimer some of the phrasing isn't mine

you can ask gd ifyour song length is too long

Single-mode mapsets must form a reasonable spread. This spread must comply with its respective mode's difficulty-specific Ranking Criteria.

My main issue is the wording here. Most people are worried that this removes the 2 diff requirement but you can't really have a spread if you only have 1 diff so it's kinda ??? In addition, this change wouldn't allowed NN or II stuff to be ranked if the two diffs are very similar in difficulty since once again having 2 incredibly similar diffs difficulty doesn't make a reasonable spread?????????

Reasonable spread isn't well enough defined for this rule to properly work since a lot of it is up to interpretation and you can twist this rule to be applied for both allowing single diff maps under 5:00 and forcing 2 diffs under 5:00. Since I'm not sure what the intent of this rule change was I'm not sure what a better wording would be, but my point is that as is the rule really doesn't work currently.

But then again, I think the 2 diff should stay (or at least make the wording better where you require 2 diffs)

Mir wrote: 13202u

Marathons should be defined by song length and length alone, difficulty count should be irrelevant - and kinda is - because some marathon maps have full spreads/more than one diff. Forcing 2 diffs for the sake of differentiating sets from marathons is unnecessary imho (not saying that's what your point is but I want to dismiss that idea entirely)

I think what maybe needs to happen is a rethink of what "marathon" constitutes, because it shouldn't be "1 difficulty mapset" by any means.

The "effort" argument can be seen as being "for the sake of effort" as well and may not have a benefit to the mapset at all despite being more work for the mapper in the long run. AFAIK the proposal's main aim is to gear sets towards the people that get the most out of playing them, and those people likely won't care much for filler diffs that are there just to fulfill the 2 diff minimum.

i kinda used words from UC and Hobbes2 in here too since we had a discussion about it on Discord so disclaimer some of the phrasing isn't mine

I used “marathon” in quotes because that’s probably the most recognizable thing that this new proposal will get compared to. I know it technically isn’t a marathon; I just used the word for the sake of simplifying my argument.

I understand that this suggestion to the proposal was made in order to help reduce the redundancy of something like a EE or HH spread; this isn’t what I’m concerned with. I’m more concerned with the opposite effect: people becoming complacent and only mapping a single difficulty.

The implication that I could theoretically rank a one difficulty mapset as long as it meets a minimum difficulty is what worries me. I honestly can’t see the purpose of requiring a spread anymore if you’re going to use the argument that people won’t care for filler difficulties in order to fulfill the minimum difficulty requirement. With the current amount of lower level difficulty maps, you can make the argument that making filler difficulties is unnecessary anymore because most new players can just play those until they get better at the game; we might as well just get rid of spreads to begin with.

Only we don’t do that, because that’s dumb and would only lead to a huge influx of ranked maps. When this is coupled with the rule that only one mapset of a song (assuming that they’re of the same game mode) can be in Qualified at a time, this will only lead to a huge influx in maps that will be perpetually stuck waiting to get ranked. Which will only complicate things for Beatmap Nominators as we have to decide which one should be ranked first, which only leads to a growing frustration in the community...

Like I said, I think that the minimum difficulty level is a good idea conceptually; it can help get rid of redundancy while opening up more opportunities for mappers to get their maps ranked. However, I also think that there needs to be a minimum requirement of difficulties in order to prevent potential abusing of the system.

Edit: I also dislike the idea that this proposal is “geared towards people that get the most out of playing longer length songs.” Maps should be inclusive and geared towards everyone, not some exclusive club that is going to benefit the most out of the changes. Having a minimum difficulty count helps to give players more options in choosing what they want to play.

a lot to unpack, bear with me

first of all, @everyone, "reasonable spread" is a glossary term in the current ranking criteria, so please go read up on that bc it makes a lot of things more clear, like how single diff sets innately feature reasonable spreads

"single diff mapsets wouldnt feel like mapsets"
people are already well accustomed to single diff mapsets because marathon sets get ranked like every day, there will be no difference. its not like the average really think "mapset = a set of maps" anyway, they just play diffs they find, no reason to bar this from ing because of a weird pseudo-technicality

"i could make just a 1 minute normal and rank it"
yeah and you can make a 1 minute EN set right now and rank that, there's basically 0 difference in effort or value. 2diff requirement doesn't keep people from making stupid sets, and it doesn't even discourage it. changing this to a single diff requirement will not encourage it any further because people don't really like to make stupid sets anyway, or else we'd see a lot more of them rn

"it defeats the point of having spreads to begin with"
again, marathons are already very prolific and are not inhibiting spreads in any way. tv sizes are super popular and always will be and will require a full spread, 3:30 H sets will not intrude upon that

"it promotes laziness"
it also promotes caring about the single difficulty you want to make instead of phoning in a forced difficulty you don't want to make. people are always going to be lazy but at worst we get 1 lazily made difficulty, which surely is better than 2

"2 diffs promotes variety/appeals to more players"
except EE/NN/HH/II are all rankable and do not promote either of those things. in fact of all the listed sets the ones we have ranked right now are EE and NN....

mir did a good job covering a lot of arguments already, was there anything else? i may have missed something..

basically by removing the 2diff requirement it makes for overall more clarity when the proposal goes through as all you need to understand is "linear spread from this diff onwards." forcing II sets in 4:30 songs is very awkward and unwarranted as it does not promote good content but instead just arbitrarily forces more content. from what i can see there is no benefit whatsoever from requiring 2 diffs

@doormat your concern about the bn rule interacting poorly with single-diff sets is valid, but that seems more of an issue with the bn rule itself, which is a very different topic. we shouldn't let bn rules interfere with improving ranking criteria.

in other news, i just realized the thing i told irre was totally accidentally a lie, the thing i had that allowed for EHIX 3:30 sets got removed by mistake somewhere...
will patch that bug shortly (in draft 3 i guess)

also it seems like people are more in favour of the linear 3:30/4:15/5:00 progression? any naysayers speak up or that will be changed

UndeadCapulet wrote: 1t2uc

"it promotes laziness"
it also promotes caring about the single difficulty you want to make instead of phoning in a forced difficulty you don't want to make. people are always going to be lazy but at worst we get 1 lazily made difficulty, which surely is better than 2

we have some other major issues if bn's are nominating lazy diffs

havent read any prior discussion just want to throw my two cents.

i think every difficulty should really be involved in any map where applicable, but i think judging them on star rating like what we do now to form a perfect "spread" is a little useless. if normal comes to be 1.8 and hard comes to be 3.8, that should be allowed so long as the maps are of good quality yknow?

i also think we should be required to add breaks to (higher difficulties especially) longer maps. i hate playing through 4 minutes of a map without being able to stop. it hurts and i imagine its not good to strain ones self like that.

thats all carry on

best of luck

UndeadCapulet wrote: 1t2uc

"i could make just a 1 minute normal and rank it"
yeah and you can make a 1 minute EN set right now and rank that, there's basically 0 difference in effort or value. 2diff requirement doesn't keep people from making stupid sets, and it doesn't even discourage it. changing this to a single diff requirement will not encourage it any further because people don't really like to make stupid sets anyway, or else we'd see a lot more of them rn

"it defeats the point of having spreads to begin with"
again, marathons are already very prolific and are not inhibiting spreads in any way. tv sizes are super popular and always will be and will require a full spread, 3:30 H sets will not intrude upon that

my argument here was that if we're using the argument that filler difficulties are largely seen as obsolete, what is the point in requiring a spread? why should tv sizes be required to have a full spread when we're going to be exempting longer length maps from the same, just because they have meet a difficulty level requirement?

UndeadCapulet wrote: 1t2uc

"it promotes laziness"
it also promotes caring about the single difficulty you want to make instead of phoning in a forced difficulty you don't want to make. people are always going to be lazy but at worst we get 1 lazily made difficulty, which surely is better than 2

i think this is a very pessimistic way of looking at things; just because lower level difficulties may take considerably less time to make does not mean that the same level of care/effort hasn't been put into them. there are still a lot of people in this community that do put a lot of care and effort into making a balanced spread so that people of all skill levels can enjoy them. even then, if the mapset host doesn't want to make a lower-level difficulty, there are plenty of others in this community (guest difficulties) that would be more than willing to give their take on making something so that players of all skill levels can enjoy a mapset for a given song.

UndeadCapulet wrote: 1t2uc

basically by removing the 2diff requirement it makes for overall more clarity when the proposal goes through as all you need to understand is "linear spread from this diff onwards." forcing II sets in 4:30 songs is very awkward and unwarranted as it does not promote good content but instead just arbitrarily forces more content. from what i can see there is no benefit whatsoever from requiring 2 diffs

the benefit that i've been trying to argue is that it provides more options for players to enjoy the songs they want to play to. not everybody is going to have access to all maps, or may be selective in the type of songs they choose to , so ensuring that there is a wider selection of difficulties for players to choose from that suit their skill level is crucial, in my eyes.

UndeadCapulet wrote: 1t2uc

@doormat your concern about the bn rule interacting poorly with single-diff sets is valid, but that seems more of an issue with the bn rule itself, which is a very different topic. we shouldn't let bn rules interfere with improving ranking criteria.

i actually think that these two go hand-in-hand. if potential ranking criteria changes have the potential to affect the rate at which maps will be ranked, then it can become a potential problem for the community: nominators will be swamped with an even bigger workload, and mappers will grow more frustrated at having to wait for their maps to enter the Qualified section if it so happens that somebody else qualified a smaller-sized mapset before theirs. getting rid of the "same song restriction" is also open to a whole bunch of new issues as well, as i'm pretty sure nobody wants to see the same song in qualified a bajillion times. these issues should be addressed and solved together, not separately.