Hi!!!

There's a few threads in this subforum aiming to change the spread part of the RC:

1. osu!original spread requirements ✅
2. Allow mapset host to indicate possession in a difficulty name ✅
3. Rework osu! spread requirements for mapset with high-star difficulties ⚠
4. Relax osu! spread requirement for difficult maps ⚠
5. Allow album/multi-act marathons to include diffs for each song ⚠

⚠ = Not directly included in this proposal
✅ = included in this proposal

=> CLICK HERE FOR THE PROPOSAL | GOOGLE DOCS VERSION 5n4lh

I aimed to primarily

1. Rearrange the status quo into more digestible categories
2. Have one overview that tells you what difficulties you need to include and why instead of having to navigate to each mode's RC

General talking points:

1. For osu!, we seem to want to relax the spread requirements or use the same numbers either catch or mania has at the moment for our rules. I couldn't figure out what the popular choice was so I did nothing for now
2. The included proposals had clear and more universal so I did include them. I will keep the still-open changes updated with this proposal

If we want to "marry" the two osu! proposals into this write-up we need to come to a consensus. Right now I have no clean idea how to do this besides aggressively revitalizing these respective discussions.

Personally I think lowering the spread drain time requirement numbers would be "the most uncontroversial" start, and the other ideas such as categorizing Expert+ spreads to require less "filler extras" could come later.

I hope to use this thread to discuss what we should do with the proposals marked as ⚠ as well as the draft document.

Would love some ! I'll create an updated version either as soon as I am able, but at the latest until April 1st to make sure we have some sort of timeline when to bring this in

Thank you for taking the time to read this!

dont think u need put spread requirement in 1 place, only minority of people play or map more than 1 mode.

and spread rules should differ for each mode as their population size is very diffetent.

against making exception in spread rule for osu original or tournament maps, just do better advertising, better organizing or give some sort of motivation/reward to push more that content.

allow gd to change map can be nice, but some gd are bound to mess it up, would be better to show map change history like git, and use pull request to let host approve or reject the change by gd. also let bn do it too when they check map it makes applying bn mod easier

> dont think u need put spread requirement in 1 place, only minority of people play or map more than 1 mode.

majority of bns will at some point encounter a hybrid though
that and there's general spread requirements and then mode specific requirements which make it necessary to always consider at least two pages when reading it

> and spread rules should differ for each mode as their population size is very diffetent.

it still does tho

> against making exception in spread rule for osu original or tournament maps, just do better advertising, better organizing or give some sort of motivation/reward to push more that content.

sentiment of that thread was pretty favorable before it died so i included it

> allow gd to change map can be nice, but some gd are bound to mess it up, would be better to show map change history like git, and use pull request to let host approve or reject the change by gd.

this was more the existing part about common curtesy of allowing a host to take your diff and manage it, less about the technical side of exchanging and updating map versions

> also let bn do it too when they check map it makes applying bn mod easier

that violates bn rules because then the BN would be a contributor to the map if they just edit it and send it to someone...


----

Updated the proposal to actually capture the status quo for catch and mania, apparently i misunderstood how marathon rules work for both modes, my bad

Descriptive difficulty names should have a relation to the song. When adding other such as Tragic Love to a difficulty name, it should relate to the song.

I have said it before and will say it again that this kind of restriction never makes any sense it is so rarely enforced and rarely abused that i think its unnecessary, if anything rewording it to something like

Descriptive difficulty names should such as Tragic Love Extra, should be considered on a case by case basis and used within reason.

I know that its rare for people to actually abide by reason at times but the current wording can be used in bad faith arguments a lot easier, its easier to call someone out for abusing a rule then it is to fight someone enforcing one to the word if that makes sense.

honestly the last part of that section

If it is unclear, a discussion should be held to come to a consensus on whether the difficulty name can be used or should be changed.

already says this so feels redundant in the first place.


Also seen an issue / redundancy that we discussed on discord currently you have

Based on the highest drain time difficulty in a set, the lowest required difficulty changes.

The shorter difficulties in the set can have up to 30 seconds of break time for the bracket to still be valid

but this should probably be

Based on the highest difficulty in a set, the lowest required difficulty changes.

Difficulties Below the highest in the set can have up to 30 seconds of break time for the bracket to still be valid

This alleviates two issues, one is that with your current proposal

Optional difficulty levels in a set do not have to follow a proper spread as long as the required spread rules are met.

A marathon length beatmap can include a Normal and Insane next to one another.
A 3:30 osu!catch set can include a Normal level difficulty without proper spread to the Insane level difficulty.

which would allow people to do stuff like 3:30 minute normal then h i x ex all being 3 minutes, which isn't that bad i guess but does seem like an oversight and unintentionally lowers the drain length of higher diffs, so debatable if that's a plus or minus in the end.

The other is that If we go by longest difficulty rather then Top it makes for awkward progression between the difficulties, why is a hard diff for example mapping more of the song then say an extra difficulty right, probably needs some discussion but overall this is just my two cents.

(on a side note wording like this i think in theory would remove the fact people randomly just dont map intro's or outro's on random diffs which is really tilting lol.)

Edit: might wanna add some clarification that this should really only apply to difficulties necessary for the spread.

will probably change it back to highest instead of longest difficulty. though i think forcing the hardest difficulty in the map to have objectively worse design is something we shouldnt do so i did take creative liberty with rewriting that in a way to be more lenient

will probably just change the sentiment back unless there's for changing it i guess

Also since mania has a guideline discouraging breaks i think i need to move hte part about including break times into the table, which i think is very doable and can be done via icons on the actual wiki too 👍👍

Based on the highest drain time difficulty in a set, the lowest required difficulty changes.
The shorter difficulties in the set can have up to 30 seconds of break time for the bracket to still be valid. For example, an osu! set with the lowest difficulty Hard must make sure that the shorter difficulties have a drain time of 3 minutes or more and otherwise must include a Normal.

Maybe I'm imagining things but I think this is actually more restrictive than the current rules, as (to me) it's forcing a max of 30 seconds of break time counting towards drain time on all difficulties. The current wording places that limitation only on the highest difficulty.

yeah i think i read that wrong originally, aimed to relax it and accidentally made it something else that is easier to abuse. will definitely fix and maybe discuss a relaxation under different requirements later on

I will try fixing that tomorrow

Other than what has already been said in relation to changes being made to some of the mode's nuances, I do also want to add that putting everything together on the very same bulletpoint, at least to me, was initially more confusing to read than the current split we dispose of. May be because I'm already well used to the current way of things, but my main gripe lies with the table with drain times itself.

On the general RC, those seem out of place. It would probably be better to refer or link to the other modes' Spread rules for that particular purpose. That said, it would be the perfect place to have the originals or otherwise global spread times such as the one being proposed.

I am assuming the spread rule drain times from the other modes' articles are not being deleted though. For the sake of avoiding redundancy, I would still keep those in their respective places. Feels way less confusing for a player who's looking for information on the mode. But this is just my nitpick after trying to compare both the current and proposed format. Otherwise, think a lot of the clarifications being made are very nice to see.

Relaxing spread requirements should be done in a separate thread no? I think it's better to divide them so that the current thread will be more focused on the actual proposal and fixes to it, as it seems that there are two levels of relaxing spread right now.

Other than that, I'd like to comment on some other parts of the write-up

The current wording is 1:1 to the existing ranking criteria, but wouldn't it be better if we made it into something of a "universal" blanket statement instead of using difficulty markers? While difficulty markers paint a picture, it gives off a "limiting" stature to something that's pretty vague.

Something like these would be better as a guideline, personally. Let me know what you think.

I also want to ask what's with the scrutiny of the difficulty naming guidelines. The current RC doesn't necessarily emphasize this much of a difference lmao

The whole difficulty naming thing can be condensed to a one-liner below. I also think "Allowances" should be included below here too.
Note that you've also got an "if unclear discussion can be held", which makes the whole elaboration thing pointless. At the end of the day, if something comes up, someone's gonna point it out, which has been the case for difficulty naming for the past couple of years.

I think the names part (2,3) should be a whole guideline separate of difficulty names and below guest nicknames.

Oh and I don't see the proposals being written into the github documentation. Am I missing something or...?

RandomeLoL wrote: 2p466u

Other than what has already been said in relation to changes being made to some of the mode's nuances, I do also want to add that putting everything together on the very same bulletpoint, at least to me, was initially more confusing to read than the current split we dispose of. May be because I'm already well used to the current way of things, but my main gripe lies with the table with drain times itself.

On the general RC, those seem out of place. It would probably be better to refer or link to the other modes' Spread rules for that particular purpose. That said, it would be the perfect place to have the originals or otherwise global spread times such as the one being proposed.

I am assuming the spread rule drain times from the other modes' articles are not being deleted though. For the sake of avoiding redundancy, I would still keep those in their respective places. Feels way less confusing for a player who's looking for information on the mode. But this is just my nitpick after trying to compare both the current and proposed format. Otherwise, think a lot of the clarifications being made are very nice to see.

i mentioned this to oko but would like some more inputs, it'd be nice to have the table on the main page of the wiki or something, simply due to how digestable it is and for a quick reference, but keeping the more nuanced info on mode specific stuff could be on the modes specific wiki

The hardest difficulty of a beatmap should correspond to the general feel of the song.
The current wording is 1:1 to the existing ranking criteria, but wouldn't it be better if we made it into something of a "universal" blanket statement instead of using difficulty markers? While difficulty markers paint a picture, it gives off a "limiting" stature to something that's pretty vague.

The hardest difficulty of a beatmap should correspond to the general feel of the song. The hardest difficulty should represent the song sufficiently and be ed by the song's rhythm density.
or
The hardest difficulty of a beatmap should correspond to the general feel of the song and be ed by the song's rhythm density.

current wording is fine, the guideline doesnt need extra information or changes, its mainly there for enforcing when people try to map like 2 stars of a icdd song or something lol,

RandomeLoL wrote: 2p466u

Other than what has already been said in relation to changes being made to some of the mode's nuances, I do also want to add that putting everything together on the very same bulletpoint, at least to me, was initially more confusing to read than the current split we dispose of. May be because I'm already well used to the current way of things, but my main gripe lies with the table with drain times itself.

I want to capture as much of the nuance as possible, i think as such, I guess keeping mode specific spread stuff on their corresponding pages can stay, but I think having a central overview of the big points is overall very beneficial, and i'd want to keep this as one of the first points people see when reading the Ranking criteria

I want to restore as much of the supposedly skipped nuance as possible to this proposal, would anyone be willing to work this out with me?

RandomeLoL wrote: 2p466u

On the general RC, those seem out of place. It would probably be better to refer or link to the other modes' Spread rules for that particular purpose. That said, it would be the perfect place to have the originals or otherwise global spread times such as the one being proposed.

As I said, I think having a concise overview, or even a graphic to illustrate the point would be massively beneficial

RandomeLoL wrote: 2p466u

I am assuming the spread rule drain times from the other modes' articles are not being deleted though. For the sake of avoiding redundancy, I would still keep those in their respective places. Feels way less confusing for a player who's looking for information on the mode. But this is just my nitpick after trying to compare both the current and proposed format. Otherwise, think a lot of the clarifications being made are very nice to see.

I agree with keeping the mode specific stuff mode specific, but I think a bit of redundancy in such a key element of the game is fine for the sake of clarity

Does that sound acceptable?

SupaV wrote: 2c4jz

Relaxing spread requirements should be done in a separate thread no? I think it's better to divide them so that the current thread will be more focused on the actual proposal and fixes to it, as it seems that there are two levels of relaxing spread right now.

I'm not actually sure, all referenced threads have had their discussion die months ago. This is an effort to revive the conversation

SupaV wrote: 2c4jz

The hardest difficulty of a beatmap should correspond to the general feel of the song.

The current wording is 1:1 to the existing ranking criteria, but wouldn't it be better if we made it into something of a "universal" blanket statement instead of using difficulty markers? While difficulty markers paint a picture, it gives off a "limiting" stature to something that's pretty vague.

The hardest difficulty of a beatmap should correspond to the general feel of the song. The hardest difficulty should represent the song sufficiently and be ed by the song's rhythm density.
or
The hardest difficulty of a beatmap should correspond to the general feel of the song and be ed by the song's rhythm density.

Something like these would be better as a guideline, personally. Let me know what you think.

I prefer examples to illustrate points, because what sort of thing the song s is a bit abstract, and the problem is usually brought up when a topdiff feels too easy for the kind of song rather than "this is overdone". Maybe we should add an example that this works both ways?

SupaV wrote: 2c4jz

I also want to ask what's with the scrutiny of the difficulty naming guidelines. The current RC doesn't necessarily emphasize this much of a difference lmao

The whole difficulty naming thing can be condensed to a one-liner below. I also think "Allowances" should be included below here too.

Difficulty names should not be misleading and should have a relation to the song.

1. A custom difficulty naming scheme can be used...

Note that you've also got an "if unclear discussion can be held", which makes the whole elaboration thing pointless. At the end of the day, if something comes up, someone's gonna point it out, which has been the case for difficulty naming for the past couple of years.

It is a one liner, followed by nuanced cases and how to handle them, similar to what metadata RC does. I think it works? As for why i chose to go for an allowance section: I think having it separately that yes, it's okay to do that makes it clearer than tossing it as a subpoint to something else. Would appreciate more opinions on that

SupaV wrote: 2c4jz

I think the names part (2,3) should be a whole guideline separate of difficulty names and below guest nicknames.

A guest's nickname or alias for guest difficulties should be consistent between multiple beatmaps...

1. The host should not include difficulties such as Host's Insane...
2. When combining multiple names...

I'll give rearranging it like that a shot

SupaV wrote: 2c4jz

Oh and I don't see the proposals being written into the github documentation. Am I missing something or...?

what does this mean

I went back to collect the spread parts of all the mode RCs and gave rewording this a shot. Also I've severely misunderstood the intent behind the 30 seconds of break time being included for the hardest difficulty and being arbitrary for all the others.

I think it would be easier to just lower the number by 30 seconds for all modes so that the mental gymnastics aren't required when reading the list

I've rearranged the thing SupaV complained about and instead opted to list all commonly accepted collab difficulty labeling methods i could think of

Okoayu wrote: 6i2a5l

I prefer examples to illustrate points, because what sort of thing the song s is a bit abstract, and the problem is usually brought up when a topdiff feels too easy for the kind of song rather than "this is overdone". Maybe we should add an example that this works both ways?

Sparhten wrote: 4k261e

current wording is fine, the guideline doesnt need extra information or changes, its mainly there for enforcing when people try to map like 2 stars of a icdd song or something lol,

The current rule somewhat implies that "Make a hard diff and above for 'harder' songs, don't do normal and easy diffs" since the examples there only use Easy, Normal and Hard as a point of reference for some reason. I do think that practically, a map "too easy" and/or "too hard" will be pointed out immediately in the discussion threads and that keeping it abstract allows the rule to go both ways and be more overarching instead of only "no easy diffs pls "

I don't mind if the description is changed to something that more universally uses the difficulty markers or it attempts to explain song intensity to the average Joe.

as a last resort, a statement like you used on the "guest difficulty naming" part should also be added due to the nature of such issues as stated above

Okoayu wrote: 6i2a5l

what does this mean

I don't see the 1)osu! original spread requirements, and 2) Allow the mapset host to indicate possession in the documentation. I meant to ask if you forgot to include them in.

side note: thought color is only possible via hexcode, never knew typing the names out would be possible damn

U mean this part in the top of the proposal that links the referenced threads?

the named css colors work https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/named-color

Redundancy is fine. Would probably just play around the assumption that, considering clauses will be detailed elsewhere, the general overview should be as simple as it can feasibly be.

The alternative is moving it to the short-form RC we have, though it is not a problem having it in the main one.

Other than the comments above, I am personally satisfied with the direction this is taking based on the .

Okoayu wrote: 6i2a5l

U mean this part in the top of the proposal that links the referenced threads?

yes, I assumed that if you checkmarked it you've added it in lol

Okoayu wrote: 6i2a5l

the named css colors work https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/named-color

danke schon

I don't agree with making spread requirements for osu! originals more lenient. The team wants these songs to be experienced by as many players as possible, and making the spread requirements for these songs more lenient would deny new players the opportunity to play some of these songs.

niat0004 wrote: 5c284k

The team wants these songs to be experienced by as many players as possible...

Playing devil's advocate here, but we're currently running into the issue that the actual original sets are not being Ranked at a steady pace, if they're even Ranked at all. It is easy to brush the issue off and just request another mapper to handle the spreads or whatnot. But with the current model, unless the team disposes of a team dedicated to working on these sets with mappers who are already willing to go through the process from the get-go, ranking the sets becomes increasingly difficult.

I'm neutral towards positive on the original proposal, to set things straight. Making the full spreads should be prioritized yes. And if this change fails to maintain that, I'd be less willing to it. Not as easy to do with all songs after all. Moreover, MPG quests could help pushing for brand new sets of still unranked songs, at the cost that the original custom mapped sets will most likely not be featured in them.

I'd also argue the most common originals, baring Tiebreakers, usually get a good selection of maps and spreads to go along with them, and not necessarily because they were forced to. The argument that being more lenient will kill spreads altogether is fairly similar to the argument that the original spread leniency rules on some game modes ran into.

In practice spreads should be favoured, but should not pose an unnecessary showstopper for the rest of a beatmapset's content altogether.

I can't find it anywhere - what is an osu!original? Is it a featured artist song?

Xelasto wrote: 505533

I can't find it anywhere - what is an osu!original? Is it a featured artist song?

not quite, multiple feature artist songs are originally made for other circles/games instead eg. noisz, Mili's songs that were made for Library of Ruina/Limbus Company, multiple Touhou circles, etc.

osu!originals are song that were made specifically for osu!, be it tournament songs or just songs made with osu in mind in general. Those that do will have the "original" label added in the FA listing.

Xelasto wrote: 505533

I can't find it anywhere - what is an osu!original? Is it a featured artist song?

the originals will link this article to clarify that:
wiki/en/Community/Bespoke_music

I excluded third party links from the draft because there's so many different links that would lead somewhere on the wiki that i couldnt be bothered to put in before coming up with the pull request

as i mentioned in community/forums/posts/9844153 I tried to include something that makes the following scenario a bit less weird

⚠⚠ Rewording it to use play time didn't work because the 30 seconds of break made no sense and i didnt want to just decide the 30 seconds of breaks die per gamemode lol ⚠⚠

- get rid of "each difficulty must have x drain time"
- have hardest difficulty count for that
=> allow 30 seconds breaks more clearly in hardest diff
- allow any amount of breaks in lower difficulties as long as they have the same vibe as top diff

that would make dealing with this list and the thresholds overall a bit more relaxed, the guideline i threw this into is


Oh i also brought back the clarification for combining two songs together, we had a recent case in the bn server where that elaboration on this specific bulletpoint was extremely helpful