Change the Rule of BN Activity
The Proposal refers to this part of 'Rules for Beatmap Nominators'


What's the issue with this rule?

The rule for activity requirements only takes into the number of nominated mapsets, and it does not consider the disparity in drain time between mapsets.

The cumulative drain time of a mapset is directly related to the amount of effort and time required for BN modding activity, making larger mapset spreads and long marathons less viable.

Real-world scenarios for context

Let's consider four different mapsets:

1. TV Size N/H/I (4:30 total drain time)
2. 2-minute song N/H/I/E/E/E (14:00 total drain time)
3. Marathon E (27:21)
4. Full Size H/I/E/E/E/E/E (~30:00)

Under the current rules, all of these mapsets count as **one** activity of the **two** required per month. However, when factoring in cumulative drain time, the level of BN activity required to evaluate them differs significantly.

Consequences of the Current BN Activity Rule

BNs are discouraged from nominating mapsets with high cumulative drain time. While this may not seem problematic at first, there is definitely an audience for mapsets with large spreads or long marathons.

Making it difficult to rank such maps is detrimental to the game, especially when encouraging more complete mapset spreads could improve the gameplay experience. Additionally, this would assist BNs in pushing such mapsets without compromising their activity quota.

Another factor to consider is mapping EPs, albums, song compilations, etc., which are highly appealing to consistency players and rarely get ranked due to the effort required to nominate them.

Conclusion

While many factors influence the amount of BN activity required for different mapsets, **cumulative drain time is an obvious and reasonable metric** to consider when evaluating BN activity.

Proposed Change

Incorporate cumulative drain time into the BN activity to encourage BNs to push larger mapset spreads or long marathons without needing to spend additional time meeting their quota.

A Reasonable Estimation

After analyzing 58 randomly selected maps ranked between 2019 and 2025, here is a graph showing the average cumulative drain time per mapset:



544 seconds is close to 9 minutes of total drain time per mapset on average. Based on this, I propose the following rule modification:


Proposal 2




Final Thoughts

I understand that evaluating 2 mapsets per cycle compared to 6 may be seen as problematic under this new system. Metadata, timing, file management, etc., require more effort in the 6-mapset scenario than in the 2-mapset scenario.

However, when it comes to actual modding (hitsounds, offscreens, unsnaps, etc.), the workload shifts in favor of long drain-time maps.

Let me know your thoughts on this topic in the comments below.

I'm not really a big fan of this idea mainly because of how much the consideration of drain time overcomplicates things. If now a BN would have to just keep track of the number of nominations they do then following this change they would have to start doing math adding up all the drain times of all their noms and NAT would have to do that for every BN as well. It's just extra stress and workload.

Also something I do want to add in from the perspective of catch is that due to our more relaxed spread rules most maps have a lower average drain time in general so this change would in fact raise the bar of activity our BNs would have to achieve.

@Sadu it is a OR condition, so you only need to take drain time into if you fall short on the 6 mapsets per cycle. Also, that metric is already present in the BN website.

not sure about the drain time number itself but agree with idea, gives BN freedom to only nom big spread/marathon if they want

the vision is there but the OP's implementation has a lot of pitfalls as you wrote at the end... not sure how I feel about allowing a 2/0/0 eval or even 1/0/0 depending on how a theoretical BN would play it out

especially with "simple megaset" meta over the past few months (i.e. zetsubou plantation is 28min) - the NAT aren't able to say "don't nom this" so it's basically just wide open & ripe for abuse

ed: also drain time calculation on the bn site might need to be fixed if this moves - sometimes 5 diff 4 mins equals 40 mins apparently

I completely agree, but are 58 mapsets really sufficient to determine the average drain time? I think selecting a larger data set would be better to make sure the numbers are accurate. Also, different game modes might have to use different values as Sadu pointed out, so gathering data for each game mode would be necessary.
The calculation of total drain time and whether it meets the minimum activity requirement should be automated on the BN website to keep it simple.
Also, maybe to avoid having too few nominations, the drain time requirement could be coupled with a mapset minimum that is lower than the "regular" threshold, for example 6 beatmaps or 3 beatmaps with at least 54 minutes of cumulative drain time.

I feel like it is unnecessary.

For those who have more free time they can choose themselves if they wish to nominate mapsets with more difficulties, if not they can choose to nominate mapsets with less difficulties.

+ I feel like NAT already forgives if you miss your activity as long as you notify them why

If anything I would say it would be valid to count Song Compilations as something more than just 1 nomination.

But applying this to every mapset just seems like a bit too lenient, especially considering that activity has been reduced not long ago.

Maybe the idea could work, but to me personally it seems to overcomplicate a system that already works pretty fine.

tilda wrote: 5n595f

ed: also drain time calculation on the bn site might need to be fixed if this moves - sometimes 5 diff 4 mins equals 40 mins apparently

Isn't it because the mapset has taiko diff? I've noticed that in hybrid sets it adds up the other game modes that's why it could be doubled.

Serizawa Haruki wrote: 294t5w

I completely agree, but are 58 mapsets really sufficient to determine the average drain time? I think selecting a larger data set would be better to make sure the numbers are accurate. Also, different game modes might have to use different values as Sadu pointed out, so gathering data for each game mode would be necessary.
The calculation of total drain time and whether it meets the minimum activity requirement should be automated on the BN website to keep it simple.
Also, maybe to avoid having too few nominations, the drain time requirement could be coupled with a mapset minimum that is lower than the "regular" threshold, for example 6 beatmaps or 3 beatmaps with at least 54 minutes of cumulative drain time.

We could use bigger sample, but just gotta be careful with data work using osu api stuff. About minimum amount of beatmapsets using potential drain time, I guess it would make it more complicated, but I'm not against a 2 or 3 minimum.

This is one of the cases where I completely agree with the rationale provided above, but can't fully agree on implementing it as it may add extra needless complexity to the mix. I agree with tilda with the fact that the proposed implementation is a bit flaky.

That said, I do think there are grounds to add Drain Time to the mix in some way, shape, or form. I may not play Standard, but I'm sure as hell nominating 100 difficulties is no easy task.

Have to say that for mania in particular, this usually isn't really the case. Mega sets are far and few between, and usually the biggest of sets have to incorporate multiple keymodes to reach their sizes. Nominating a set with 2 or more different keymodes counts as 2 nominations to us, so that front is already solved.

That said, I don't think there's an easy solution. Even if the 54 minute solution on paper sounds good, it is still prompt to fail:

- What if s only get 53:59 minutes of drain time? If we were to be as strict as with spread rules, the drain time requirement must be met to the zeptosecond.
- This is just not practical. Also as an Evaluator, I can agree that evaluating someone out of 1-2 maps alone does not really paint a full picture of their work. If anything, by nominating one to two maps, if s have a blunder in between, that would reflect poorly on their overall performance.

All in all I do not think there needs to be the extra OR clause.

However, I'm not completely against the idea of letting Evaluators, at their own behest, pardon some activity if BNs have nominated noticeably big sets. This responsibility would fall on Evaluators, who would know best the current situation of a BN, their current activity, potential absences, and ultimately whether the work they've put in the sets themselves makes up for the lack of total nominations.

Neto wrote: 59346s

Isn't it because the mapset has taiko diff? I've noticed that in hybrid sets it adds up the other game modes that's why it could be doubled.

fwiw i used this set as my reference which gets listed as 48:51, despite there being no hybrid diffs

Stompy_ wrote: 6q2p4u

For those who have more free time they can choose themselves if they wish to nominate mapsets with more difficulties, if not they can choose to nominate mapsets with less difficulties.

The idea is exactly to allow more BNs who might not have so much free time to get involved with such projects not getting in the way of their activity.

Stompy_ wrote: 6q2p4u

+ I feel like NAT already forgives if you miss your activity as long as you notify them why

If anything I would say it would be valid to count Song Compilations as something more than just 1 nomination.

But applying this to every mapset just seems like a bit too lenient, especially considering that activity has been reduced not long ago.

Maybe the idea could work, but to me personally it seems to overcomplicate a system that already works pretty fine.

Fair take, tho I'd say it doesnt overcomplicate because most people would still engage with the regular 6 mapsets and this is for edge cases. Also, making a distinction just for song comp doesnt really help with mapsets that are full version multiple diffs.

RandomeLoL wrote: 6j2w4

However, I'm not completely against the idea of letting Evaluators, at their own behest, pardon some activity if BNs have nominated noticeably big sets. This responsibility would fall on Evaluators, who would know best the current situation of a BN, their current activity, potential absences, and ultimately whether the work they've put in the sets themselves makes up for the lack of total nominations.

I really don't like the idea of leaving something that is objective such as BN activity to subjective evaluation of NATs. It's positive to have objective standards so interpersonal relations and other social factors be in place that could or not kick someone out of BNG due to activity standards.

I also want to reafirm I'm open to other implementations such as the one that proposes a combination of both when you're below 6 nominations.

Activity, in my opinion, isn't as objective as it seems. I'm not really sure how "interpersonal relations" and "other social factors" play into it (?). This is mainly a matter of using absence notices as they should've been when determining leniency as they currently play little to no part.

Any and all activity thresholds are, at the end of the day, subjective themselves. It's just the current lack of flexibility that concerns me the most. And yes, map drain time plays a part on that, hence my comment.

RandomeLoL wrote: 6j2w4

Activity, in my opinion, isn't as objective as it seems. I'm not really sure how "interpersonal relations" and "other social factors" play into it (?). This is mainly a matter of using absence notices as they should've been when determining leniency as they currently play little to no part.

Any and all activity thresholds are, at the end of the day, subjective themselves. It's just the current lack of flexibility that concerns me the most. And yes, map drain time plays a part on that, hence my comment.

I guess I failed to communicate. Let me rephrase it. We currently have an objective rule for BN activity which is 6+ for normal activity. 4-5 you get a warning. 3 and below you're removed from BNG. That in itself is objective but obviously there's a human side of NAT interacting with said BN about what's going on. When I mentioned having an objective rule is to exactly leverage a conversation based on something other than just, "let's all be reasonable", because everytime time rules are not clear and directionless it's where confusion and trouble arise.

Considering all the I got so far, I think it's fair to say you guys don't want super low activity numerically speaking no matter what. So I'll change the original post to add another possibility, something that might fit better with current standards.

If a BN activity falls into 4-5 maps per cycle, he'll get a warning in normal circunstances, but if the cumulative drain time of the 4-5 mapsets reach 54 minutes, he'll be excused of the warning.

I proposal 2, I think it's a great way of encouraging ppl to devote time to larger projects without worrying about activity as much

for the 3rd point of proposal 1, maybe it should be "and" instead of "or"? so people can choose one of those requirements to meet

For what it's worth, this was considered in the past. It's why the metric exists on the bn site at all, so we could see what that would usually look like and get a better idea of if it would be a fair metric or not. uh, getting it to work smoothly ended up with technical issues, which is why there's so many with the wrong drain time listed, so it couldn't really be used to gauge accurately... This was a while ago though, so it would be up to bn web devs if fixing it to work properly is actually feasible to begin with.

I'm not sure activity requirements is even the right direction to look at this from though. Even many BNs that are hitting activity no problem may just find checking a long marathon spread to be a lot of work without a strong incentive, like if they're also ionate about the song etc, or just that they'd prefer to check more different sets from more different people. It's not as common that the concern is "this will take so long i would struggle to nominate 1 other map this month" in comparison to the other usual reasons.

Noffy wrote: 5c416y

For what it's worth, this was considered in the past. It's why the metric exists on the bn site at all, so we could see what that would usually look like and get a better idea of if it would be a fair metric or not. uh, getting it to work smoothly ended up with technical issues, which is why there's so many with the wrong drain time listed, so it couldn't really be used to gauge accurately... This was a while ago though, so it would be up to bn web devs if fixing it to work properly is actually feasible to begin with.

I'm not sure activity requirements is even the right direction to look at this from though. Even many BNs that are hitting activity no problem may just find checking a long marathon spread to be a lot of work without a strong incentive, like if they're also ionate about the song etc, or just that they'd prefer to check more different sets from more different people. It's not as common that the concern is "this will take so long i would struggle to nominate 1 other map this month" in comparison to the other usual reasons.

Dev side shouldn't be much of an issue to be honest. About your point about reasons as to why they don't nominate bigger mapsets, speaking about my own bubble and the people I know, a good portion of the reason of not checking such maps IS the fact that it's not worth it activity wise to take such task.

I can't for all scenarios, but I'm trying to be at least fair with those with limited time and schedules so that a big project could fit in their BN activities.

hi I like to nom big maps, I think what Noffy is saying is definitely true (at least for me, as a mania bn) that activity isn't really a factor that deters me from big sets.

for me personally, if I'm struggling on activity it'd mostly likely due to my own time management issues, not the big marathons I want to nom

there's always a lot of creative mappers with smaller stuff to nom first

Nice one for me since for the mania mode, the number of big spreads has indeed decreased significantly. Currently, making a big spread not only consumes a lot of time from a mapping perspective but also finding BN is not an easy task.

If it could be implemented this would allow some BN, especially who have activity issues or on the edge of risk, to be willing to nominate a big spread. I am not saying they must or should do so. Also I am not saying nominating small or medium sets only should be blamed. Implementing this proposal would provide them with more options for the nominations thereby increasing the amount of big spread nominations).

I think it might be better to look at the issue from different angles than just whether a BN is able to reach the minimum activity requirement:

1. What incentives are there for BNs to mod and nominate maps for longer songs and/or with more difficulties? Currently I can't think of any. It always counts as 1 nomination, no matter how much content there is. While there are BNs who have no problem checking maps with more total drain time, not everyone is able/willing to do so when there are lots of shorter songs and smaller mapsets to choose from that they equally like, especially for those with little free time. As has been mentioned before, this can also make it harder for mappers to find 2 BNs if their map takes a lot more time to mod than the average mapset, further increasing the amount of effort that is already required to create such a map, and discouraging mappers from doing so. Therefore, nominating maps with more total length should provide certain benefits or rewards beyond just being a measurement for activity.

2. Is it fair for someone who for example nominated 5 big mapsets to receive a warning, but for someone who nominated 6 NHIX sets for songs that are TV size or even below 1 minute not to receive one? Of course the former could have chosen different maps or tried to squeeze a short map in to avoid the warning, but from a logical point of view it doesn't make sense to punish them if they actually contributed more.

3. This metric is already being considered for some BN applications or evaluations to an extent, so it would be good to integrate it into the system officially. For example, in the of some of these evals there are comments saying that the maps which were modded/nominated don't have a lot of content, are too short or have too few difficulties overall (such as only picking low diff sets or 1 minute maps), even though there are no requirements of this kind written anywhere.

@snomi@Serizawa Haruki
While I do understand where you guys are coming from, I can assure you that it's missing the main point here. This proposal doesn't adress the various concerns regarding nominating big mapset spreads.

It limits to handle one part of it, which is, BNs with limited time and availability being able to work with bigger mapsets while not having to sacrifice more time spent in general in their BN modding activity. That's what proposal one and two try to solve in different amounts.

We could discuss the various other reasons, but, they're outside the scope of what this proposed change would achieve and don't really affect if it is viable or not in my opinion.

Neto wrote: 59346s

@snomi@Serizawa Haruki
While I do understand where you guys are coming from, I can assure you that it's missing the main point here. This proposal doesn't adress the various concerns regarding nominating big mapset spreads.

It limits to handle one part of it, which is, BNs with limited time and availability being able to work with bigger mapsets while not having to sacrifice more time spent in general in their BN modding activity. That's what proposal one and two try to solve in different amounts.

We could discuss the various other reasons, but, they're outside the scope of what this proposed change would achieve and don't really affect if it is viable or not in my opinion.

Maybe it was a misunderstanding but my post is meant to your proposal by countering some of the criticism such as activity not being a factor that stops BNs from checking bigger/longer mapsets. I do think it's a factor that should be ed for in order to give more flexibility to those with a tighter schedule as you said.
I only mentioned some additional aspects to consider so that the proposal doesn't get shut down merely because the initial resoning isn't convincing enough, so I don't think it's out of scope here.

Serizawa Haruki wrote: 294t5w

Neto wrote: 59346s

@snomi@Serizawa Haruki
While I do understand where you guys are coming from, I can assure you that it's missing the main point here. This proposal doesn't adress the various concerns regarding nominating big mapset spreads.

It limits to handle one part of it, which is, BNs with limited time and availability being able to work with bigger mapsets while not having to sacrifice more time spent in general in their BN modding activity. That's what proposal one and two try to solve in different amounts.

We could discuss the various other reasons, but, they're outside the scope of what this proposed change would achieve and don't really affect if it is viable or not in my opinion.

Maybe it was a misunderstanding but my post is meant to your proposal by countering some of the criticism such as activity not being a factor that stops BNs from checking bigger/longer mapsets. I do think it's a factor that should be ed for in order to give more flexibility to those with a tighter schedule as you said.
I only mentioned some additional aspects to consider so that the proposal doesn't get shut down merely because the initial resoning isn't convincing enough, so I don't think it's out of scope here.

I agree with you in that regard, but Im not sure we have many ways to really have incentives for BNs to do anything. But we need more opinions before considering the proposal shut down or anything

I like the idea of giving BNs options and incentivizing nominating more than the bare minimum amount.

Quite frankly, a "number of nominations" to standardize activity is rather counterintuitive when there's a multitude of spreads possible, and the infrastructure for calculating drain time is there yet half-baked. It's confounding to call this "overcomplicating the system" when the provisions are available.

I believe Proposal 2 is better as it doesn't necessarily allow the system to be abused as mentioned above (nom one really long map to get evaluated). Though I wish that the wording gives off more of a "54 minutes of cumulative drain time as a last resort, don't do this often" vibe instead of acting as an "option".

The revised wording above explicitly states that a warning can be waived if they accumulate enough drain time, giving the evaluators an objective guideline of the absolute baseline.

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However, I do think that the hypothetical RC change above doesn't necessarily incentivize the high-activity BNs who think megasets are cool. Some form of formulating the value of a nomination equaling to drain time or some formula in the future would be much more sustainable. I'm certain this type of suggestion has been said in the past, but I'll float it in this discussion to see the responses.

Perhaps we could assign each nomination a value of up to X minutes of drain time. If a BN nominates a beatmap exceeding X minutes, the excess drain time is accumulated until the excess reaches X, and then the BN earns an additional "nominated ranked beatmaps" tally, rewarding their hard work. Case study below:

Scenario 1: A BN nominates a map with a total of less than X minutes of drain time. This still counts as 1 nominated beatmap regardless of how short the drain time is.
Scenario 2: With X=20 minutes as an example, a 34-minute nomination will count as 1 nominated beatmap; the rest 14 minutes will be carried over until it totals 20 minutes. The only way to "complete" the 20 minutes is to nominate another beatmap with an excess of 20 minutes of drain time.

For context, the amount of drain time (X) is an arbitrary number above, however it should be defined as "something much higher than the average amount of drain time", signifying much higher diff count.

SupaV wrote: 1g335n

An activity warning will be issued when failing to meet this quota. Beatmap Nominators may be exempt from this warning only in cases where they accumulate at least 54 minutes of total drain time in their nominations.

The revised wording above explicitly states that a warning can be waived if they accumulate enough drain time, giving the evaluators an objective guideline of the absolute baseline.

I'll add your edition to the proposal, thanks a lot!

To save on some of the complexity, couldn't a tiered point system of sorts be implemented? e.g. for every 15 mins. of drain time, 1 additional point is awarded to the BN. I can see if this could end up being irritating if a set is like, 29:54 drain, but I think this could save quite a bit of time in that Evaluators and BNs wouldn't need to painstakingly add up every single set's drain time.

The only way to abuse this with a single set would be to mod an hour-long mapset which is a lot of work, anyway. Otherwise, I think Proposal 2 also addresses the problem quite well.

MintLeaf wrote: 3mq4d

To save on some of the complexity, couldn't a tiered point system of sorts be implemented? e.g. for every 15 mins. of drain time, 1 additional point is awarded to the BN. I can see if this could end up being irritating if a set is like, 29:54 drain, but I think this could save quite a bit of time in that Evaluators and BNs wouldn't need to painstakingly add up every single set's drain time.

The only way to abuse this with a single set would be to mod an hour-long mapset which is a lot of work, anyway. Otherwise, I think Proposal 2 also addresses the problem quite well.

I believe technical problems are not really an issue when we can implement adding draintime of mapsets very easy with osu!API to do so. In graveboards we already sort that data out very easily.

Still waiting for further opinions.