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.

point 1: difficulties in a spread are not filler difficulties, they are difficulties in a spread. this proposal is only upping the difficulty of the starting point for a spread for longer songs to better cater to mappers' needs and to better suit spreads to players' needs. it is not saying that spreads are not valuable. forcing 2 diffs in a mapset is not forcing the contribution of a spread, it is just forcing a filler difficulty. once again, we have had single-diff sets in the form of marathons forever, and they have not changed the value or perception of spreads in any way.

point 2: nice to hear people can make gds or other diffs if they want, but this is not a reason to force it.

point 3: this sounds more like you are against the entire proposal itself instead of just being against single-diff sets. forcing a second difficulty in a set does not give more options for players, as shown by how the rule is currently forcing EE/EN/NN sets that offer basically no variety. alongside the proposal, forcing 2 diff sets would at best only sometimes result in a spread-based difficulty, but would often just add a filler difficulty of the same difficulty level. there is no reason to force this.

point 4: ok then "solve it together" by changing/addressing the bn rule, not by inhibiting a change to the rc.

i like the 3:30/4:15/5:00 idea better too

Doormat wrote: 1m5p37

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?

That's a stupid question. Filler difficulties and spreads are not interchangeable. We require spreads so that newer players can play the songs, too. Filler difficulties, in this context, are exactly the same (or perhaps higher) difficulty and complexity, and thus contribute nothing to the spread except the minimum required effort on mappers', modders', and nominators' parts.

Doormat wrote: 1m5p37

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.

And if they put a lot of care and effort into making a balanced spread, they're free to do that. Let's just not force the ones who won't put much effort into it to do the same.

Doormat wrote: 1m5p37

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.

And not everybody is going to be happy and willing to make silly filler difficulties that, in of spread, are unnecessary at best. If you want to ensure that there is a wider selection of difficulties, then you are in a great position to do so through your own maps and through the maps you nominate. Let's encourage what you see as positive here instead of outright disallowing what you don't for reasons that do not appear to go beyond niche personal preference.

Doormat wrote: 1m5p37

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.

Are you implying that you want to force mappers to map at least two difficulties no matter what because it limits the speed at which they can produce sets, effectively trying to kneecap them?

Mun wrote: 4v406

Are you implying that you want to force mappers to map at least two difficulties no matter what because it limits the speed at which they can produce sets, effectively trying to kneecap them?

That is not at all what I'm saying. I'm saying that we're going to need to come to a compromise in regards to the current proposal; we shouldn't be trying to brute force the proposal in its current state when there are proponents on both sides arguing for and against difficulty count requirements. I was giving my points to (hopefully) explain why I think we need difficulty count requirements.

I do understand the grounds for which the removal of a difficulty count was proposed, and I do agree that we shouldn't punish mappers for wanting to be lazy. What I don't agree with is the notion that spreads should be optional for longer length songs, based on the current proposal: there needs to be a better progression line since playing a shorter 1:30 Insane is going to be much different from playing a 4:30 Insane.

Spreads aren't optional for longer songs, the rule just changes what is actually defined as an acceptable spread. This rule says, IF you have a 4:30 insane, that IS a spread now.

If you have a 4:30 extra, that is not a spread, and it would require an insane to become a spread.

I don't see an issue with this. Are you saying just because it's not 5 minutes you would like to force 4:30 insane diffs to also have a hard diff? But then what's the point of the this entire proposal.

edit -

The entire point of the proposal is to set new minimum difficulties for certain time slots. 3:30, the minimum diff is a hard. Anything above and below is optional. At 4:30 (or 4:15, whatever), the minimum diff is an Insane. Anything above or below is optional. If you add diffs above this minimum, they must form a reasonable spread.

Having 5 minutes be an arbitrary line where you say anything below this needs 2 diffs defeats the point of the proposal to me.

The proposal implicitely still requires a minimum of 2 diffs, as you can't have a spread with a single element (Oko confirmed this). I see no reason to keep this implicitely stated, as it can potentially lead to ambiguity and differences in interpretation, which is why I'm suggesting adding the rule back.

As for Mir concern about forcing EE or EN spreads where one E diff wouldn't add much (which is a pretty edge case, to be honest), I'd personally be open to moving said rule to guidelines. It should still be followed by an ample majority of mapsets, but would allow for ranking a single diff on songs that are so calm/slow that you can't add/remove objects to make a significant difference, up to BNs/QATs and ultimately community's discretion when qualified.

@Hobbes2: I think the original goal of this proposal was that, if you have a 4:30 Insane diff, you aren't forced to map 2 additional diffs (a Normal AND a Hard), but only one (a Hard or an Extra).

@Hobbes2: I think the original goal of this proposal was that, if you have a 4:30 Insane diff, you aren't forced to map 2 additional diffs (a Normal AND a Hard), but only one (a Hard).

I interpreted it based on what I see when reading the proposal, not what it was 'meant to be' or whatever. If it's the case that this is what the community overwhelmingly wants, as in forcing 2 diffs below the 5 minute point, then sure, whatever.

EDIT - I feel like there's some assumption here that the 2 diff requirement is some kind of inherent requirement but it's really not. It's a remnant of when we had to have 2 diffs to even move a map to pending from a technical forum perspective. It is possible for it to not exist.

Hobbes2 wrote: 1k263b

@Hobbes2: I think the original goal of this proposal was that, if you have a 4:30 Insane diff, you aren't forced to map 2 additional diffs (a Normal AND a Hard), but only one (a Hard).

I interpreted it based on what I see when reading the proposal, not what it was 'meant to be' or whatever. If it's the case that this is what the community overwhelmingly wants, as in forcing 2 diffs below the 5 minute point, then sure, whatever.

EDIT - I feel like there's some assumption here that the 2 diff requirement is some kind of inherent requirement but it's really not. It's a remnant of when we had to have 2 diffs to even move a map to pending from a technical forum perspective. It is possible for it to not exist.

I think it stems from the assumption that the word “spread” implies more than one. If we’re saying “only one difficulty is acceptable as a spread,” why aren’t we just removing the spread requirement altogether? I think the pushback against the proposal also comes from the idea that we’re basically just removing marathons and saying “anything goes” as long as it meets the bare minimum requirement.

doormat can you please stop repeating yourself over and over bc you're just gonna get the same response over and over

"spread" does not imply "more than one diff" for the purposes of the ranking criteria, stop using pseudo-technicalities to force things that have no reason to be forced (or i guess you can find a better word for us to use than "spread" if you really have issue with us using a colloquial term in a way that doesn't immediately match an oxford dictionary definition)

yes obviously anything goes as long as it meets the bare minimum requirement, that's literally what the ranking criteria is, defining the bare minimum requirement. the bare minimum requirement is "have a reasonable spread from this diff on", which is a very reasonable minimum requirement that offers the proper lower diffs for the players that need them and makes the increase of drain time scale naturally until we 5 minutes.

1 diff sets don't mean some anarchic usurp of spread balance, they're just a 1 diff set like we've had for years and years with approval sets and will not in any way interfere with how most people design sets

UndeadCapulet wrote: 1t2uc

doormat can you please stop repeating yourself over and over bc you're just gonna get the same response over and over

"spread" does not imply "more than one diff" for the purposes of the ranking criteria, stop using pseudo-technicalities to force things that have no reason to be forced (or i guess you can find a better word for us to use than "spread" if you really have issue with us using a colloquial term in a way that doesn't immediately match an oxford dictionary definition)

Spreads have always had the implied meaning of more than one in the Ranking Criteria though; it’s why we had a separated “marathons” category that differentiated from other ranked maps in that they don’t need a full spread. Even if we remove the “marathon” definition in your proposal, “reasonable spread” in its current state still heavily implies more than one difficulty.

RC wrote: 616b45

Reasonable Spread: A mapset without drastically large differences between difficulties as dictated by difficulty-specific rules and guidelines.
Marathon: A mapset which does not require a full spread of difficulties.

Proposal wrote: 5b6w39

If the drain time of a song is...
… lower than 3:30, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode 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. Difficulties lower than Insane can use their play time as a metric instead of drain time, but their drain time must be equal to at least 80% of their play time.
… lower than 4:30, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode cannot be harder than a Hard. 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.
… lower than 5:00, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode cannot be harder than an Insane.
… anything else, the mapset is exempt from reasonable spread rules.

...

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

Saying that I’m using a pseudo-technicality is pretty insulting when the main problem I’m seeing here is just a misinterpretation based on your wording. If you’re going to go through with the proposal, then the wording needs to be changed to address that a single difficulty is acceptable as a “reasonable spread.”

doormat and i talked over irc so i didnt accidentally insult anyone anymore to clarify why there was confusion over current wording
tl;dr the current wording does make it explicit that single diff sets are allowed by "reasonable spread" but it might not be super clear so maybe an extra bit tacked on is needed
i dont wanna add it tho bc its redundant but wHATEVEr

UndeadCapulet wrote: 1t2uc

doormat and i talked over irc so i didnt accidentally insult anyone anymore to clarify why there was confusion over current wording
tl;dr the current wording does make it explicit that single diff sets are allowed by "reasonable spread" but it might not be super clear so maybe an extra bit tacked on is needed
i dont wanna add it tho bc its redundant but wHATEVEr

we technically didn’t agree on whether or not current wording was explicit enough but wHATEVEr i’m just glad we’re getting a better definition. we’ll see how the proposal pans out in the longrun though, since it appears there are proponents that are for and against difficulty count requirements.

with the changes to what constitutes as a “reasonable spread” being introduced i can at least be a bit more accepting of the proposal, even though i personally believe in more difficulty level choices for players (not saying they should be mandatory though)

Forgive me if this has been discussed before;

Wouldn't this give people a loophole to create 1 diff maps without it being above 5 min? So think of this case;

4:40 song (proposal here states that the minimum diff must be an insane)
Couldn't you just make a single insane diff and rank that?

What about having a single hard diff? or single easy diff? lol
wouldn't that kind of encourage this kind of low effort shit?

Or... is the 2 diff rule still in place after this?


edit: ok we discussed this on discord

For non-osu! game modes in hybrid mapsets that feature osu! difficulties, the lowest difficulty cannot be harder than a Hard

I propose we do something more along the lines of

For non-osu! game modes in hybrid mapsets that feature osu! difficulties, the lowest difficulty must at least be one difficulty higher than the osu!std requirements

so if lowest diff is Normal on std, the minigames can be Hard
if its Hard on std, minigames can be Insane
etc.

I think this would provide more clarity since instead of being a category specific (only to songs below 3:30) it would simply apply across everything

in general it is better to avoid any category specific rules as it just causes confusion. that's like the equivalent of hard coding values to make something work

I find it a bit weird that this proposal at first was aimed to help longer maps that are not quite marathon length, but it ends up helping TV size and shorter maps as well. Some people were against this proposal at the start claiming it would limit how much the newbie audience could play.

I think shorter maps only requiring 1 difficulty minimum won't help them much because they are limited to Normal only. And people seem to enjoy playing Insane/Extra difficulties, so those mappers are forced to make the same spread as they are currently doing right now.

That said as a player/mapper, I would react very poorly to a 30 second ring tone sized ranked map that only has one difficulty. Such little amount of effort shouldn't be qualified or promoted to the ranked section.

Just my humble opinion:
I don't think this change will encourage laziness and that there won't be a sudden influx of normal-only sets, because I believe that when someone decides to map a song, they do it because they like it. Maybe I'm just being sentimental or something, but I don't think many people would be willing to impoverish/underrepresent music they enjoy. There would, of course, be those who exploit the rules UC proposed, and I don't think much can be done to avoid it, but, as has already been mentioned several times in this thread, we've got people who map EZNM sets even now. The only difference is that there would be no EZ.

Plus, I honestly don't feel like there are that many songs over 4:15, and even less over 4:30 (at least in the genres I enjoy), so there won't be that many insane-only sets either. Not to mention that in many cases insane is not the top diff.

Honestly, I can't see this proposal as anything but helpful, especially for newbie mappers like myself, who not only need to put more time and effort into their maps than experienced mappers, but also often struggle with finding people willing to GD exactly because of their visible inexperience. And this is even more true in case of longer songs.

There, the token newbie post for you.

timemon wrote: 6fp3s

I find it a bit weird that this proposal at first was aimed to help longer maps that are not quite marathon length, but it ends up helping TV size and shorter maps as well. Some people were against this proposal at the start claiming it would limit how much the newbie audience could play.

I think shorter maps only requiring 1 difficulty minimum won't help them much because they are limited to Normal only. And people seem to enjoy playing Insane/Extra difficulties, so those mappers are forced to make the same spread as they are currently doing right now.

That said as a player/mapper, I would react very poorly to a 30 second ring tone sized ranked map that only has one difficulty. Such little amount of effort shouldn't be qualified or promoted to the ranked section.

Pretty much this. The thread has very much deviated from what I (and probably other people) were originally here to . The one-diff thing doesn't really tickle my peaches

timemon wrote: 6fp3s

I find it a bit weird that this proposal at first was aimed to help longer maps that are not quite marathon length, but it ends up helping TV size and shorter maps as well. Some people were against this proposal at the start claiming it would limit how much the newbie audience could play.

I think shorter maps only requiring 1 difficulty minimum won't help them much because they are limited to Normal only. And people seem to enjoy playing Insane/Extra difficulties, so those mappers are forced to make the same spread as they are currently doing right now.

That said as a player/mapper, I would react very poorly to a 30 second ring tone sized ranked map that only has one difficulty. Such little amount of effort shouldn't be qualified or promoted to the ranked section.

So really the point here is; if the mapper intends to be stupid, they can do it already (just make EE spread or EN, NN, etc)

so removing that limitation would only be beneficial as it makes it better for really low bpm ambient stuff where cases you can really only map a normal as the max diff it would remove the requirement of having to map an EN

yeah, what kibb said. A lot of the abuse cases y'all describe can already happen.

Hey, i want to bring up again what i said earlier

AncuL wrote: 93i4m

1. if the drain time is <4:00 your set's lowest diff must be normal or lower
2. if the drain time is 4:00-5:00 your set's lowest diff must be hard or lower
3. >5:00 can be anything

I'm thinking more like this. since H is way more accessible than N. IX only is just too small imo. Since we are having problems with 4:30 maps, we don't need to do anything with anything below 4:00

The goal of the spread rule restructure is to reduce the amount of people doing extensions to reach 5 minute mark. and because of that, there's no need to touch anything not nearing that borderline, which in this case are 3:59 and below maps

I would still rather 3:30/4:30/5:00. Similar reasons to what I posted about boosting normal to 4:00 before. https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/community/forums/posts/6655799

Edit: I still stand by doing 4:00/4:30/5:00 but I guess I'm in the minority here.

fwiw I'm more of a 5:30 or 6:00 kind of guy for the 1 diff limit. With a more gradual cut off the 1 diff requirement doesn't really need to be at 5 min, since mapping 9-10 min total isn't really that much more than 7-8min, in comparison to what it used to be, with the potential difference being something like 20 min vs 5 min of required mapping.

I've always felt like 6 minutes fit better for marathon length.There are enough 5 min songs that the length doesn't feel long/special enough to be called a marathon, compared to the time when the marathon length limit was like 6 or 8 minutes or whatever and you only occasionally got a marathon ranked. Maybe that's just me though, and increasing the cut off might not be well received since it's kind of taking away something mappers have had, but since we're discussing cut-offs anyway and most seem to end at 5 min for marathon I figured I'd just throw that out there.

Before tackling the removal of the 2-diff count rule

Kibbleru wrote: 6p3k2d

For non-osu! game modes in hybrid mapsets that feature osu! difficulties, the lowest difficulty cannot be harder than a Hard

I propose we do something more along the lines of

For non-osu! game modes in hybrid mapsets that feature osu! difficulties, the lowest difficulty must at least be one difficulty higher than the osu!std requirements

I think it is really clear that converts, specially for mania and taiko, aren't good enough so that a standard H converts to a proper H in other modes. So having a ENH standard spread + an I taiko is something you won't find much agreement on, IMO. Even for catch, that was considered to have decent converts, we've been recently moving towards converted diffs being less valuable. A few years ago standard spreads + a catch X was rankable. A while back it was changed so you required at least an I catch difficulty. And just a couple months ago we made it so the lowest diff you can need in a hybrid mapset with standard difficulties is a H. This proposed change is a step back.

=======

Now, onto the 2-diff count rule.

UndeadCapulet wrote: 1t2uc

"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

A single player will usually play a single diff from a mapset. But when you take a larger group of players, the same thing doesn't apply.

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

This is assuming a couple things that are just wrong. First, you're calling EN spreads inherently effortless and stupid. From my experience in catch, not many people know how to make a really good N diff from the start (actually, N are the diff my mods are usually the longest). Is that diff effortless? I don't think so. Seconly, requiring only 1 diff won't stop those that want to pull "stupid" EE or EN in their attempt to be the next memelord. Those types of "meme" spreads won't be affected at all, yet it is one of the reasonings most of you have used in favor of removing the 2-diff count rule.

I do understand that there are some songs that are so calm/slow that you can't make a significant difference between two diffs and that those are affected by the 2-diff count rule. However, that's a really niche case and, as such, removing the rule as a whole is not necessary. I proposed a thing a while back that got swiftly ignored, and which was a pretty decent middleground, which I'll state again at the end of the post.

UndeadCapulet wrote: 1t2uc

"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....

As I said a couple paragraphs above, removing the 2-diff rule won't prevent EE/NN/HH/II from happening.

I also read that those who want to map more diffs, for whatever reason (they like the song, they want to cater to a larger playerbase, etc.) can do so. That will happen whether the 2-diff rule is there or not. So, basically, the removal of the 2-diff rule just caters to two groups of people: those mapping songs that are so slow/calm that making 2 noticeably different difficulties is hard or imposible, and those that are lazy. Personally I don't think we should cater to the second group. As for the first group, there is a simple solution:

MOVING THE 2-DIFF RULE TO GUIDELINES
MOVING THE 2-DIFF RULE TO GUIDELINES
MOVING THE 2-DIFF RULE TO GUIDELINES
MOVING THE 2-DIFF RULE TO GUIDELINES
MOVING THE 2-DIFF RULE TO GUIDELINES

If you can judge whether a EE or EN spread is stupid, as you so called them in your post, you're equally capable of judging whether a song really doesn't allow for a 2nd diff.

I agree. Requiring at least 2 diffs is perfectly reasonable, thats what sets apart a marathon from a reasonable spread.

I don't see what the case is for exploitation of removal of the 2-diff rule is.

If you do not want to see stupid single-diff R3 music box ringtone size sets in ranked, then the solution isn't to outlaw them - it's to encourage the BNs and QATs who actually have the privilege and right to decide whether they get to ranked or not to stop the low-effort content that adds nothing from getting into the ranked section.

We shouldn't be disallowing content we don't like, that's exactly the wrong mentality to have. This is why I somewhat agree with ZiRoX on this one - move it to guidelines - although I disagree that it should only be allowed in clearly defined niche cases.

I'm more concerned that requiring 2 diffs encourages behavior like putting no effort into a secondary diff. Not requiring diffs that are generally unnecessary and don't fill any specific purpose means less work for mappers, less detritus in the ranked section, less work for BNs checking the maps, and quite likely more good content, and a greater variety of good content. Time that is not spent, but wasted on mapping or trying to find a GD for a second difficulty required for no good reason by RC could be better spent making more maps, modding other people's maps, or even just looking for BNs to check and nominate their single diff set.

That's precisely why I'm suggesting that the rule is moved to guidelines instead. For those songs that it is really hard to make a difference between 2 diffs, which is a really edge and niche case, you're still allowed to rank 1-diff mapsets provided you can actually justify that. Allowing 1-diff sets for this sole reason is going completely overboard.

completely agree with zirox

btw, this spread idea has gone from the diff requirements at different lengths being adjusted, which i ed, to removing the two-diff rule and changing things with hybrids, which i really can't at all. we're taking a step back with the additional proposals being made in my opinion, when we could easily be ing the changes to the length for lowest difficulties like it was originally intended.

Regarding why we use minimum drain time, why not just replace it with minimum length
There's been plenty of cases where it would be preferable to have a break in a low intensity section, but having one prevents reaching the minimum drain. In some cases, it even feels overdone to map sounds for that section, but there's no way around it.

Imo all diffs should be allowed to use breaks since the player's total play time is unaffected,
Something like that would let marathons that are 5:01 give players recovery, 5 minutes without breaks is not fun for anyone and is just bad game design.

edit
ok so just have at least 80% of time must be mapped, problem solved?

I don't agree Sinnoh. That could be abused to have less than 10 seconds of actual draintime, like a 1 minute map with 50 seconds of breaks. That'd be horrible. A minimum of 30 seconds of drain time is perfectly reasonable. Also there isn't much use for a break in a 30 second map. Its over very quickly. Also how could you reasonably measure length? From the start of the audio file to the end of it? From the first object to the end of the audio file? From the first sound to the last sound? What if at least 20% of the outro isn't mapped? What if the mapper decides to have 40% of the song be an unmapped intro to beef up the length? It seems abusable.


About the 2 diff rule, I still think it should stay. Even with simple r3 music box songs, its always possible to make at least two different diffs if the mapper actually tries. Its also not an issue in any other gamemode besides osu!std. There can be full 3-4 diff spreads out of a r3 music box song in taiko/ctb/mania. If the mapper actually tries to represent different rhythms in a song, they can easily make at least 2 diffs. One of you gave an example of a two diff r3 music box spread with only a 1 object difference between the two diffs. Thats just a bad spread because of the mapper.

oh come on tatatat stop saying the same thing over and over again and not even acknowledging anything that's been said to the contrary

"that could be abused," is not a usable argument, nor is "a mapper can make multiple diffs if they try!" and the reasons why this is have been explained for you several times.

for what it's worth i can see this work while requiring 2 diffs minimum because a spread doesnt work as a spread if there isnt anything to spread out

to the contrary i forgot updating the gist for the first post with the changes pertaining to what's been said so i'll do that sometime

REEE done


I think 'Reasonable Spread' shouldn't skip any levels from the difficulty you start at btw
because doing the optional easy if your normal is optional and then doing no normal is ????????????????????????????????

https://gist.github.com/Okorin/190bc363 ... 919eb8e1cf we made some further updates

tl;dr drain time scales linearly now as requested by a bunch of people. other than that we just further clarified some things

In response to oko:

I was afraid of this coming up. If it is required that a spread be "reasonable" (not clearly defined) and linear even in sections where the spread is not required at all, then we run the risk of depriving the game of content, because in this case it is possible that a mapset would be completely acceptable and rankable without a low diff, but then have spread problems when that low diff is added.

Now, I'm sure you are already fully aware of my relationship with reasonable spreads, but I genuinely think it would be counterproductive to strictly enforce spread rules on low difficulties that are not required at all in the context of the mapset.


On another note, I am also concerned at the challenge of, "what constitutes an acceptable bottom diff?" As it stands, many Normal difficulties are viewed as unacceptable as the lowest difficulty on a set not because of their star rating, but because of density and difficulty elements present in the map.

My main concern is that when we have challenging Hard or Insane difficulties, will these be at risk of being blocked from the ranked section due to the challenge they provide? As a side-effect of this, won't we just see people making sets that go one diff lower than the minimum required in order to have an acceptable lower diff, defeating the purpose of this amendment altogether?

Mun wrote: 4v406

My main concern is that when we have challenging Hard or Insane difficulties, will these be at risk of being blocked from the ranked section due to the challenge they provide? As a side-effect of this, won't we just see people making sets that go one diff lower than the minimum required in order to have an acceptable lower diff, defeating the purpose of this amendment altogether?

I don't think the majority of Hards will have a problem with this, and if they violate

proposal wrote: b175q

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

then I think it's entirely reasonable to require a normal or more appropriately mapped Hard. Star Rating is so broken that it should really not be used as the sole judge of whether something constitutes a reasonable spread, the difficulty-specific criteria exist for a reason and if there's concern about elements found in Hards that are not appropriate for players at that level, imo it would belong there rather than having anything to do with this proposal. Basically, if it's mapped like a Hard according to RC, it should count as a Hard, if it's mapped like an Insane, make another diff.

Mun wrote: 4v406

In response to oko:

I was afraid of this coming up. If it is required that a spread be "reasonable" (not clearly defined) and linear even in sections where the spread is not required at all, then we run the risk of depriving the game of content, because in this case it is possible that a mapset would be completely acceptable and rankable without a low diff, but then have spread problems when that low diff is added.

but we added a definition, did you read that lol it's pretty clear atm i just suggest it should be different from what it is atm

Mun wrote: 4v406

Now, I'm sure you are already fully aware of my relationship with reasonable spreads, but I genuinely think it would be counterproductive to strictly enforce spread rules on low difficulties that are not required at all in the context of the mapset.

most of these diffs we're talking about are going to be cases where someone includes the optional easy or normal, at that level people haven't really figured out why and what is going on for their own sake im suggesting this to avoid confusion among the players ing a set

Mun wrote: 4v406

On another note, I am also concerned at the challenge of, "what constitutes an acceptable bottom diff?" As it stands, many Normal difficulties are viewed as unacceptable as the lowest difficulty on a set not because of their star rating, but because of density and difficulty elements present in the map.

My main concern is that when we have challenging Hard or Insane difficulties, will these be at risk of being blocked from the ranked section due to the challenge they provide? As a side-effect of this, won't we just see people making sets that go one diff lower than the minimum required in order to have an acceptable lower diff, defeating the purpose of this amendment altogether?

That was on my agenda for all the modes already - we will need to define what and if we need additional guidelines the same way we have them for normals as the lowest difficulty right now because i think these work.

@LwL there's a definition of the term reasonable spread in the glossary which probably explains whatever you were suggesting already

Okoratu wrote: ct57

Mun wrote: 4v406

On another note, I am also concerned at the challenge of, "what constitutes an acceptable bottom diff?" As it stands, many Normal difficulties are viewed as unacceptable as the lowest difficulty on a set not because of their star rating, but because of density and difficulty elements present in the map.

My main concern is that when we have challenging Hard or Insane difficulties, will these be at risk of being blocked from the ranked section due to the challenge they provide? As a side-effect of this, won't we just see people making sets that go one diff lower than the minimum required in order to have an acceptable lower diff, defeating the purpose of this amendment altogether?

That was on my agenda for all the modes already - we will need to define what and if we need additional guidelines the same way we have them for normals as the lowest difficulty right now because i think these work.

@LwL there's a definition of the term reasonable spread in the glossary which probably explains whatever you were suggesting already

The idea was the same as what you said, though I never believed that it should be particularly needed. What I was trying to argue was that a Hard diff following the current difficulty guidelines should be able to fulfill the purpose of being the lowest difficulty if the spread can end at a hard, it shouldn't be different from how it is now. If you had an N-H-I spread currently, and the Hard would be way out there in of playability, that brings up the same issue as having H-I-X after this proposal with a challenging Hard, as the spread doesn't work as intended for a spread. For that reason any issues arising in this regard would not be exclusive to this proposal, but rather still be an issue with the current RC, and therefore should be discussed seperately.

I did forget about the current rule regarding bottom diff Normals though, but if I understood it correctly Muns concern was that the existence of such a rule (or a common perception that the principle should be followed) would lead to a significant amount of sets ultimately mapping a Normal or a very easy hard to avoid any problems, and then end up with the same number of difficulties as now. I think it's a valid concern, but for above stated reason it should be enough for this to maybe clarify that a bottom diff Hard or Insane has to strictly follow the difficulty guidelines (basically turning the Guideline part into additional rules, while staying relative to song speed of course), without a need to follow anything further than that as that would partially defeat the point of the change.

Nah it just means we need to define how easy we expect a hard to be rather than taking sets down for it so that we're all on the same page

If the drain time of a song is lower than 3:30, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode cannot be harder than a Normal.

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

so if you've got a set with only a hard, minimum drain required is 2:48 for 3:30 songs? from a talk with oko, the play time thing was added so additional lower diffs dont need to force non-stop gameplay to meet minimum drain requirements, but having it apply to lowest diff hards like this seems to make it more lenient htan intended (and plain weird because fully mapped songs between 2:48 and 3:30 arent rankable).

may make more sense to apply the play time thing to diffs below the highest

i like that idea a lot

I think low diffs can be mapped by computer AI rather than by mapper. Since low diffs are rigid and people always want computer to do those rigid things. You can map high diff first and have it hitsounded, then computer can map low diff with modelling high diff's hitsound after.

haven't checked this in a while but i completely this and i have no complaints i literally already mapped a 4:30 set for these new additions

I would increase the workload of mapping TV-size maps rather than only reduce 4+min maps.

Stupidity and laziness level intensifies

UndeadCapulet wrote: 1t2uc

1. if the drain time is 4:15 - 5min your set's lowest diff must be insane or lower

While I do agree with the question at hand I do not get why there is no need for a middleground (Hard) level above 4:15. You are technically closing out a huge number of players with this step since no one will ever map a Hard if a standalone Insane is enough. We are talking about 30-50k people whose will be able to play these maps while the rest has to skip them because of the unreachable difficulty level.

I would lower the requirement to Hard. That is a far more acceptable difficulty level and can actually reach over 100k people which is double the size of the current number.

Kurokami wrote: 3j5016

Stupidity and laziness level intensifies

UndeadCapulet wrote: 1t2uc

1. if the drain time is 4:15 - 5min your set's lowest diff must be insane or lower

While I do agree with the question at hand I do not get why there is no need for a middle ground (Hard) level above 4:15. You are technically closing out a huge number of players with this step since no one will ever map a Hard if a standalone Insane is enough. We are talking about 30-50k people whose will be able to play these maps while the rest has to skip them because of the unreachable difficulty level.

I would lower the requirement to Hard. That is a far more acceptable difficulty level and can actually reach over 100k people which is double the size of the current number.

A lot of things wrong with this comment. //Stupidity and laziness level intensifies// (I am merely quoting an ex-QAT).

1. Hard level is also worked into the proposal, being specifically for songs 3:30 and above. The proposal is effectively scaling time-length with difficulty.

2. Hard is not a middle ground, it would be the lower limit.

3. A "huge number of players" is just rhetorical nonsense... Where did you get your numbers from?

4. As someone who is over 50k, I can assure you that I can very easily play "Insane" level maps.

5. I can assure you that many 250-300k players can play Insanes. Where am I getting my statistics? From places like: https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/p/pp/?c=GB&m=0&s=3&o=1&f=0&page=200 ...

Okoratu wrote: ct57

we need to define how easy we expect a hard to be rather than taking sets down for it so that we're all on the same page

Oh, I know! No idea how to word it but as an example: the Hard difficulty to be the lowest one in the set should be as easy as Oko's Normal (that actually is and works as an Advanced/a Hard): https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/beatmapsets/450762#osu/1629268

BUT it mustn't be as hard as Reiji's Hard here: https://osu-ppy-sh.tvgratuite.org/beatmapsets/666566#osu/1418862

I mean, the hard-to-read stacks not being allowed, high density and high spacings forbidden, not too many triples/streams in a row, something like that would be defined in such a kind of hard and it wouldn't hurt to add a guideline saying "you might want to keep it as simplistic in some as Normals" or should I say when you make a Normal it is suggested we should follow guidelines from a difficulty below the Normal, then why not using something similar for a Hard?

EDIT: In this case I REALLY think star rating would be helpful here. If a Hard has an Insane icon, you know for sure it is NOT easy enough.

kurokami 6 digits are faming Tons of low end 4 stars

i had my first 5* FC when i was 45k.....a year ago. and thats late to have that. most people i see get their first 5* FC well before 50k. some asspull it while still 6 digit now

Wutever wrote: 1x1v1m

i had my first 5* FC when i was 45k.....a year ago. and thats late to have that. most people i see get their first 5* FC well before 50k. some asspull it while still 6 digit now

Yeah lol I fc'd shiori with some luck when I was still 110k or something

Yeah I had a 4.83* fc as my top play when I was 30k. That was over three years ago with less than 2k pp total. Most highish 6 digits will be able to play mid-4* nowadays, quite a few players between 100k and 200k are in 5*+ multi lobbies even.

Aside from that, I definitely agree with Krfawy that SR for the lowest end difficulty should be within whatever the icon for that difficulty is.

Regarding more specific guidelines, I still don't think too much is needed. Others would need to weigh in on this but imo all the spacing stuff would be covered by the SR limit usually, so what might be needed to add would be reading and stamina related things. Therefore, just taking guidelines that currently apply to normals I would propose adding to lowest diff hards I'd suggest the following - I'm basing this on the goal of making these difficulties not frustrating to play as a whole, this is again based on personal experience but if there was one part I couldn't play that never felt like much of an issue, if the entire map was out of my level it just felt bad. (personal annotations in blue)

Avoid long chains of active hit objects with 1/2 gaps. Too many consecutive clicks can be exhausting for new players. - in my experience most hard diffs of decently fast songs do this already anyway so it shouldn't be an issue, and would ensure playability

avoid switching between 1/1, 1/2 and 1/4 stacks repeatedly. This may cause reading issues for new players, since two different rhythms are visually the same. - especially if someone is already challenged by the general speed of a map, having to switch up the rhythm on visually similar patterns can be hard

In addition to that, for lowest diff Insanes:

Avoid frequent streams made of more than 5 notes. Short reversing sliders can be used in exchange for these when the song s it. - stamina is an issue, and while a single longer stream is just a problem on that stream, having many of them can make the entire map frustrating

not the right place to suggest osu specific guidelines, a thread for that will follow.

this draft is now applied

Note: the QAT reserves the right to reevaluate if this approach made the quality of spreads that end up in the Ranked section significantly worse within the next 6 months of this being applied in case this proposal spectacularly falls flat on its face

The wiki pache is cached and can take up to 3 hours to refresh with the new information

OK so here's clarification:

- The guideline about beatmaps should have 2 difficulties was not added to the final draft, because the exhaustive reasoning required to ignore such a guideline would be "nope, i dont want to"

I forgot mentioning this on the thread, sry

If you think this should be added, please bring forth arguments and how you would evaluate such a guideline under the definition of what a guideline is

moving the thread back to RC proposals

ah, this entire "all or nothing" attitude is horrible. So the only solution you guys managed to find was to draw shitty red lines of where stuff is either "too long to have an beginner difficulty at all" or "not long enough so map a full beginner difficulty".

I'd like to repeat what I repeated on other places already, but please somebody explain me why you guys think that "all or nothing" is the only approach that you actually were able to go with?

You say "Hey, look, we get it, mapping a 5 minutes Easy is awful and boring to everybody, it's stale and uninteresting" and then you deduct "SO DON'T MAKE THEM AT ALL!" instead of "Make an Easy that has a 1 minute of drain time, that's enough!"

It doesn't make sense. Sure, for some shitty reason or another, making beatmap sets with varying drain times between difficulties is frowned upon to heavens. (I don't know why, but ok). Also there is this one rule that prohibits you to use less than 80% of the song or something. Fair enough, but why must this be adhered to in all difficulties? Why does the rule not say "If you never use more than 80% of the song in any of the difficulties, then you can't rank it, because you should cut the song, since you never use a huge chunk of the song in any of your difficulties, but if you use 80%+ of the song in at least one or two or whatever amount of difficulites and you can do whatever length on the easier ones, then be my guest".

What I am proposing instead is to keep beginner difficulties mandatory as prior the change and as we are used to it, however, allow people to map easier difficulties of shorter drain time, so they keep getting created for beginners to enjoy, but still don't make mappers vomit the same copypaste pattern into a 5 minute map, where even the untrained monkey from the basement would fall asleep at playing it.

Ranking Criteria wrote: j1xb

Difficulties lower than the hardest difficulty of a beatmapset can use their play time as a metric instead of drain time, but their drain time must be equal to at least 80% of their play time. (Not applicable to difficulties below 30 seconds of drain time.)

From what I can tell this basically just wants to accomplish allowing breaks in lower difficulties, but along with that it also implies that only the top difficulty can have less than 80% of play time as drain time, which seems a bit strange.

In order to allow lower difficulties to have breaks and stuff, you could instead base the drain time used in judging spread on the top difficulty, rather than each and every difficulty individually with an 80% play time exception on all difficulties but the highest. So rather than saying "If the drain time of a beatmap is...", it would probably be better if it said "If the drain time of the highest difficulty within a beatmapset is..." (or something similar).

Nice change, less unnecessary work for mappers. Tbh, mapping deathcore or neuro on lower diffs is a pain in the ass and nobody play them (and u cant reflect the song properly due to restrictions). So yeah, im happy with this change.

I am not talking about breaks. I am talking of lower diffs to simply have a shorter total drain time, whether or not the objects are placed on the start, end or middle of the songs, with our without breaks, fragmented or as one piece somewhere in the song is some entirely different topic of detail.

BUt yes, you quoted the right rule and yes, changing it to something like that and actually tell people to just make *shorter* Normals instead of no Normals at all is an actual middle ground between people screeching "too much work to make redundant 5 minutes Normals" and "but we need beginner content on all sets".

There is no reason as of why it is strange, it was common practise years ago and I don't know what has changed so people randomly hate it other than "I want people to enjoy the full song". So right now, you rather gut out the majority of the playerbase out of your mapset when the song is too long altogether and deny them ANY experience at all instead of at least offering them a fragment of the song as game content, which makes way more sense to me, to be honest.

You obviously would keep the 80%+ rule for the highest difficulties and only allow reduced drain time for the beginner difficulties as per your length tiers in your current (and shitty) amendment of the spread rules.

Just clarifying that my post was not a response to yours, Loctav, I just happened to take a really long time before actually posting mine.

While I would agree with you that this probably isn't an ideal solution, it at least makes the step from full spread to marathon a bit smoother, allowing for more of 3 and 4 minute maps to enter the game. And although it ultimately shifts the audience of maps above the 3:30 threshold to where they are no longer beginner friendly, there is unlikely to be lack of maps entering the game that are when considering that most of songs mapped are not 3:30+ (as of this moment, anyway). Again, we'll be reviewing this later, as mentioned by Oko.

varying drain times just widens the gap in difficulty between diffs which will make spreads have to be even denser negating the entire purpose of this proposal

Trigger Me Elmo wrote: 50311v

varying drain times just widens the gap in difficulty between diffs which will make spreads have to be even denser negating the entire purpose of this proposal

excuse me, what?

You are suggesting that we require shorter lower diffs in place of not requiring them at all. However, longer difficulties are inherently harder to play, as they require better concentration, endurance, and consistent finger control - things that the players that current spread rules are meant to accommodate almost universally lack.

By only requiring shorter lower difficulties with scaling drain time length (as I understand it), the ramp up in difficulty between diffs becomes larger (If I'm missing something here, please feel free to clear up this misunderstanding without being condescending). To compensate for this, the (completely subjective) rules of "reasonable spread" will be enforced and require mappers to have a greater number of lower diffs in general. This causes the entire goal of this spread, encouraging more mappers to map and rank longer but non-marathon songs, to be completely voided. In fact, I see only detriment in that: less people will be willing to map this length of song, and it becomes so arduous to rank these sets that nobody wants to deal with it, BN or mapper.

Loctav wrote: 5b1v22

ah, this entire "all or nothing" attitude is horrible. So the only solution you guys managed to find was to draw shitty red lines of where stuff is either "too long to have an beginner difficulty at all" or "not long enough so map a full beginner difficulty".

I'd like to repeat what I repeated on other places already, but please somebody explain me why you guys think that "all or nothing" is the only approach that you actually were able to go with?

You say "Hey, look, we get it, mapping a 5 minutes Easy is awful and boring to everybody, it's stale and uninteresting" and then you deduct "SO DON'T MAKE THEM AT ALL!" instead of "Make an Easy that has a 1 minute of drain time, that's enough!"

It doesn't make sense. Sure, for some shitty reason or another, making beatmap sets with varying drain times between difficulties is frowned upon to heavens. (I don't know why, but ok). Also there is this one rule that prohibits you to use less than 80% of the song or something. Fair enough, but why must this be adhered to in all difficulties? Why does the rule not say "If you never use more than 80% of the song in any of the difficulties, then you can't rank it, because you should cut the song, since you never use a huge chunk of the song in any of your difficulties, but if you use 80%+ of the song in at least one or two or whatever amount of difficulites and you can do whatever length on the easier ones, then be my guest".

What I am proposing instead is to keep beginner difficulties mandatory as prior the change and as we are used to it, however, allow people to map easier difficulties of shorter drain time, so they keep getting created for beginners to enjoy, but still don't make mappers vomit the same copypaste pattern into a 5 minute map, where even the untrained monkey from the basement would fall asleep at playing it.

Just curious why you're so upset at a change that's meant to allow mappers more leeway in what they want to map and possibly have more interesting content in the ranked section? The same way you don't understand why people are so against different drain times in varying difficulties I don't understand why you're advocating so vehemently on keeping beginner diffs at all. Certain songs simply don't reflect them well, and I only see this change being a positive thing in making more interesting ranked content, not a laziness thing.

There's SO many more Easy/Normal difficulties. Like actually a metric fuckton. Literally over half of all ranked maps for standard are under 3*. That's not an exaggeration.

Let mappers rank harder stuff. If newer/lower ranked players want to have an experience at all, maybe it can be a challenge to work up to in order to play a map they want. They'd have to do that for marathons anyways and I don't see anyone complaining that their favorite Mazzerin map doesn't have a beginner diff.

I DO however like the idea of varying drain time IN ADDITION to the proposed changes to the RC. While I still think forcing beginner diffs is a bit silly, giving the mappers an option to map it or not with a lower drain time could lead to some interesting ranked mapsets in the future.

[deleted as part of purging my old post history]

loctav, how can u see this working on practice? say, you got an easy with less drain required, so you gonna ignore intro or outro? like, it completely doesnt make any sense. when you map a song, you shud cover the entire thing to make it completed as a thing, otherwise it will look like a joke to be honest.

how can you ignore some part of song and map another one? lets say its some DnB map, so all you do is map drop part without introduction? LOL its just a terrible idea to allow drain time manipulations depending on a diff name. as i can see it working in some cases like infamous 30 second CBCC or w/e when the introduction is cut and all the player does is retry till he gets the concept of the map such as patterning and the rhythm.

not to mention that we already have this in place, some people put breaks in lower diffs, nobody cares. so yeah leave it as it is now since its the most healthy change in rc for a while.

hi-mei wrote: 4k160

nobody cares. so yeah leave it as it is now since its the most healthy change in rc for a while.

Healthy? ... Try to think like a responsible adult, please... How healthy is making rules that serve for the only purpose of encouraging mappers to be lazy and ignoring the need for new content for beginners in the ranked section?

I'm all against this new change even though I don't agree with Loctav in the idea we should go back to these times where you had a 3:10 insane and a 0:50 Normal, but beginner diffs should be mandatory...
The "marathon" with one diff rule kinda made sense because they were like "boss songs" (try to think of them as if they were in a official rhythm game) even though they were a lot of them that could've easily had a full spread judging on how their rhythms allowed easy charts on them.

Also the increasing number of Marathon maps is a problem, maybe not in osu because you have a lot of BNs, but in Taiko, Catch and Mania the thing works really different... The most worrying case being the Taiko one where currently there are times when you find the QF section with 4 marathon and 2 sets.

Is it really ok for you to forget the core of games are PLAYERS? I don't want to brought some unrelated issues to this into this discussion, but this always comes on point when discussing about changes: You are ignoring what is better for players every time you make decisions as BN/QAT.

There is so much yet to say in this discussion, but the whole "give more ease to mappers" argument is not helping the community at all, if anything, nobody is asking you to rank maps. If you want to rank maps, then just put a bit more of effort and map lower diffs, isn't it simple?

Give me an example of how I should map multilayered Neuro song that cant be simplified to 1/1 rhythm on easy? or deathmetal etc?
The rule change is completely okay, nobody restricts you from mapping low diffs, go ahead if you want. But from my perspective its just a waste. The low diffs on hard songs are usually low quality because nobody cares about them, everyone knows it as a "filler diffs".

I am fully against spreads as a thing since it just kills any enthusiasm of people who puts lots of effort in their maps (I usually spend 200-300 hours on each map i make to find fitting patterns and keep the structure at the same time), and there are lots of people with the same mindset.

I got so many these 4:30 min songs that I could bring into this game but when I think about how much time it will take, I choose to better not even start mapping them.

So the only argument I see here is "b-b-but new players...." Well fuck. There are literally millions of low diffs you can evolve from. I basically got into this game by not being able to End Game so I started tryharding and eventually got better.

I only see this as a positive change since there will be more content in ranked, not the opposite.