Loctav wrote: Or maybe you just accept the fact that ranking very difficult maps is a very difficult thing to do. And that it is very hard to figure out if it is done right. If you are not up for the controversy and just want everyone to accept your very hard maps as they are, maybe you simply shouldn't map very hard maps and only stay with milder stuff that it easier to evaluate for everyone, including the mapper.

Shiirn wrote: Let me personally make my feelings on the matter, again, extremely simple.





This track, Snow Drive, has so much equalization and white noise that there is next to no way for any mapper, regardless of skill level, to properly create rhythms that will undeniably follow "the music" to a level where both players and modders will be satisfied.



In other words, the track itself is just too flat and unadorned to properly allow for the kind of emphasis that allows for a very challenging or difficult map. All that players really hear are the repeating three-beat drum samples and the out-of-sync vocals, and these do not make for a very reliable or fitting metronome to have cross-screen jumps or made-up rhythms and streams.



If you want to make a hard map, choose a song that fits it and works well with that theme. I don't understand why this is such a hard concept to figure out. I really, really don't get it so please help me out here.

Hm, is that so Loctav? I would think you would speak otherwise. After all, you DID happen to rank a certain Fatal Oni, one not only extremely difficult for its time but also still brutally punishing 5 years later, and it just so happened to take you less than 3 months. And for those unaware, I might want to point out that this particular map is so difficult that it has never been HR SS'd, and actually is one of the fairly scant maps that has no top 50 DT play (or even EZDT). That certainly doesn't scream "agonizing ranking process".As for the claim's bearing in standard? I believe it is worth pointing out that this is selectively false. And there are no shortage of maps to support this. Allow me to, for your benefit and the benefit of others, provide some examples:Bal-Sagoth: The Obsidian Crown. Mapper: Mazzerin. 50 posts on a four page beatmap thread. Ranked 2 months and 20 days after submission. Quite rapid.Vektor: Cosmic Cortex. Mapper: Mazzerin. 62 posts on a 5 page beatmap thread. Ranked 1 month and 11 days after submission. This rather shockingly fast ranking would have happened even earlier, had someone not DQ'd the map. Ironically, they stated it was due to lack of sufficient discussion about the map. Unsurprisingly, the map was ranked after less than a page worth of replies. Hardly sufficient, I'd say, especially for a 10 minute map at a 7*+ level.Kalmah: Swamphell. Mapper: Mazzerin. 56 posts on a 4 page beatmap thread. Ranked 2 months and 12 days after submission. Earned two bubbles before the third page. Another DQ, meaning this was going to be ranked even quicker.Inferi: The Promethean Kings. Mapper: Mazzerin. Shocking 262 posts on an 18 page beatmap thread, nearly unheard of for Mazzerin. Most merely were related to whatever "meme" (I use that term extremely loosely here) people felt like clinging to as if they were leeches (although hearing Monstrata ramble on about Tianna Bartoletta's hypothetical osu career whilst showing an immense lack of knowledge for how basic physics work was quite honestly very amusing to watch). I've expressed my feelings on the map, and thus don't need to dwell on this any longer.BABYMETAL: Tales of the Destinies. Mapper: Monstrata. 60 posts on a 4 page beatmap thread. Ranked 3 months and 30 days after submission.9mm Parabellum Bullet: Inferno. Mapper: Monstrata. 183 posts on a 12 page beatmap thread. Ranked 1 month and 8 days after submission.BABYMETAL: Road of Resistance. Mapper: Monstrata. 109 posts on a 8 page beatmap thread. Ranked 1 month and 21 days after submission.MAXIMUM THE HORMONE: A-L-I-E-N. Mapper: Monstrata. Quite difficult to pin down accurate pertinent stats, as it is now loved. I do not know when it reached qualified, but I know, based off of the May 15th submission date, it is somewhere between 15 days and 1 month 15 days. Perhaps the only time where I have seen a mapper trying to justify a map by saying it is intended to be bad and ugly.BLANKENFIELD: Goodbye. Mapper: Kyubey. 78 posts on a 6 page beatmap thread. Ranked 2 months and 3 days after submission. This is possibly the very first non-Aspire map that has gotten ranked despite a complete violation of the rules of the RC. BLANKFIELD's portion of Untaled, "Goodbye", was artificially lengthened by Kyubey. You might be wondering how I know such a thing for certain. Well, after listening carefully to the MP3 over and over again, I decided to do a little digging. I found out that the total MP3 was lengthened by about 11 or 12 seconds, as BLANKFIELD's official upload on Bandcamp is explicitly listed as 5:01, and his official post of the Untaled project on his YouTube channel, warinside, explicitly lists that Mettaton's portion begins at 5:00. This is quite contrary to the 5:05:271 audible in the map's MP3. What Kyubey actually did was take the last few seconds of audio and flipped it, making a mirrored extension.So, Loctav, you say ranking very difficult maps is a "very difficult thing"? I believe these examples quite clearly demonstrate how wrong your statement is. And many of these had more flaws than maps like Snow Drive, Call Me It., or Immortal Flame ever had. But why do these maps get relegated to being bogged down and denied ranking? Simple: It's all about having the right friends in your pocket. As you might notice if you look through these maps I listed, you will see a few friendly faces making consistent appearances. Monstrata, Nathan, Pishifat, Cryptic, Yuii. These happen to be quite present in most of these cases. Am I accusing any of them of misconduct? No. But I remark nonetheless that these certain people are quite particular and calculated in regards to which pies they choose to have their hand in.If you can't hear the musical justification in this case, then I'm sorry, but it isn't the mapper's judgment that is wrong. You simply need new ears. The map could arguably be said to be undermapped, as far more patterns could have been used. The counterpoint is quite faithfully followed by the notes, and I say that after poring over the diff 50+ times easily. I'm not sure what bollocks you are trying to feed others here, but I believe the bull would put them to better use.