[Game] Osu! - Page 126

I don't think you can come up with a new ranking system using the current way of keeping track of scores that would effectively rank people based on skill. If you wanted a skill based ranking you would need to do a lot more tracking of statistics and probably change the whole multiplayer system to achieve that. You cannot expect a system that doesn't take into consideration any of the subjective parts of a map that make it "harder" to effectively rank people by their skill. With the current system an SS on a map with 1000 combo over 4 minutes is worth the same as an SS on a map with 1000 combo in only 1 minute. Obviously the 1 minute beatmap is harderbecause of the "density" of beats you need to hit (only an approximate way to compare, but all other things being equal a map with a higher "density" should be more difficult)

You know, the whole Accepted/Ranked map distinction kinda hurts the ranking system, and I haven't seen anyone here bring that up... If some of the accepted maps contributed to your ranked score I bet there are a lot of better players who would suddenly rank a lot higher... Someone who can FC an accepted map and get 40mill from one map would have a lot easier time getting ahead of the player who just plays tons of [Hard]s at 1 or 2 mill each. As far as I'm concerned deciding a map is "too hard" to be rank-able directly hurts the competitive aspect of osu.

Having an optional ELO rating system would be kinda cool, but I don't like the idea of specifying certain maps as "ladder maps". If there's any bias, it changes how people rank (some people are bad at high BPM stuff, some people, like me, are bad at low AR stuff).

If an ELO like system was used there are two approaches you could use:
a) Players both join a "ladder game" where only 2 people are allowed, a map that both of them is randomly selected. ELO should be publicly visible as well as ranking.
b) Players hit a "find match" button and are matched against players with similar ELO and a random map is chosen. ELO does not need to be public at all.
(This doesn't solve the issue of players not having many maps, or players not having the same maps as other players, but I'll talk about that a bit later.)

The first system allows for players who are not close in ELO to still play each other, but if someone is significantly higher rated than the other player the game will be more or less meaningless. The second one has the problem of trying to find a match against someone of similar ELO that is also looking to be matched. With only 2500ish players playing and a large diversity of skill levels I dont think that would work well for Osu.

Solving the map issue: Instead of directing the players to the beatmap page the way the game does now in multi rooms I think it should be easy to implement a P2P map sharing system where you can download a map directly from the other people in the room. That would cut down the bandwidth costs for peppy as well as allow maps that have been deleted or haven't been uploaded yet to be shared.

Of course, there's also the issue of the random beatmap selector selecting maps that are harder than a player is capable of passing (I don't mean something just over your head, but like making someone who can only handle 3* maps play val's Homework Crisis [Let's Jump] difficulty), but that could be done by tracking how well a player does on each map that is chosen in the ladder system and comparing it to how hard the map is (preferably using a number of metrics such as notes/time, snap distance, BPM, AR, etc.) and basing the choice of maps on what they are capable of playing. Of course, calculating that stuff would require some heavy duty statistical analysis on the back end, but it's certainly doable.