



Hello everyone, ztrot here with some exciting new news!From today on, there will be a new format in which mapping beatmap sets will work. This falls in line with our goals to make as many of the maps here at osu accessible to all players of many skill types! This new rule might seem scary at first but, fear not as we don't want to forget our professional osu! players either!The new restructure will not be retroactive as there a lot of maps with icons so far though the modding process. Therefore,However, all new maps or maps without icons will be asked to make changes to their existing sets.We would recommend reading the, reflecting the changes we pushed through. To make every have an overview of what changes we have done, we created a few fancy pictures for you:First of all, we reworded the current spread rule.. You can add one Ultra difficulty past an Expert difficulty that does not have to increase linearly in difficulty with the rest of the spread. Keep in mind, thatis a placeholder term, used to reflect a high end difficulty that has not been specified with a name yet. We put that name in place, so you guys know what we are talking about when we want to refer to the high end difficulties of a mapset.Secondly, we limited the amount of difficulties of the same level per game mode.While this appears very limiting at the beginning, the hybrid set rules stay intact. Don't forget that every keycount in osu!mania is considered as individual game mode, too! If you wish to get your mapsets with multiple difficulties of the same level ranked, we advise you to split it off into a new mapset.At last, we altered the requirements for Approval beatmaps.. Your mapset must contain an Insane difficulty if an Expert or Ultra difficulty is present. This means that every Approval containing only an Expert or Ultra difficulty must receive a second difficulty. If you do not wish to map more than one difficulty for your Approval sets, we would advise you to keep the single difficulty at Insane level or below.The difficulty is not dependent on the star rating. The mapping techniques used within the difficulty and the spread to the surrounding difficulties define the category each difficulty level falls into. Difficulties must be named to reflect that.Keep in mind that this change affects all full spread and approval difficuly sets across. Despite using Standard as an example in our infographics, we want to make clear that the rule goes for everyone. However, the hybrid set rules stay the same way as they are.If you wish to discuss this change, you are free to post here. We are aware that these are quite some big changes and it might be upsetting for a bunch of people, but the change reflects something we see as urgent and something that needed to happen.