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Bsaber Update: Curator Recommended v1.1, Survey Feedback Response, and the Future

Hello everyone! If you’re not a member of our Discord, you may not be aware that BeastSaber has recently begun to undergo some change. As the newest admin to the team, I have stepped up with the intention of bringing Bsaber to be more aligned with the modern Beat Saber community at large, as well as to reinvigorate and promote our own space within BeastSaber. You may recall the survey that went out a month ago – which was one of our first steps towards our new goal – to gather your opinions and feedback on the state of the site. I believe it’s time to issue a formal response. So, let’s do this!


Emails

Bsaber has grown faster than the admin team can keep up, and one of the first things to have suffered from that was our email server. I would like to apologise on behalf of the entire team if you’ve struggled to register at any point within the last few months. We have succeeded in moving Bsaber to a new email server, and while there may be the occasional issue, we hope these problems are now behind us. 

 

Curation

Curator Recommended is at the core of this site, and for many people, is the driving force behind why they visit us at all. However, we know there are many aspects of curation that have not held up against the test of time. Addressing these has been one of my primary concerns, and I’m happy to report we are already making strides forward. 

Accountability

One of the primary concerns surrounding the curation system was abuse, and a lack of a papertrail to know who was curating what. To address this, I started by gathering all of the anonymous curators that had access to Curator Recommended, and assigning those eligible the role of ‘Elite Curator’. This role and its members are to be the new curation team leaders, and they are equipped to handle disputes within the system, whether it be the quality of a curated map or suspected abuse.

The Elite Curators are, currently:

CyanSnow 

Maybeemae

Pixelguy

Skyler Wallace

Techbutterfly

Teuflum

We also purged a great number of curators that were inactive. We have started fresh with a new team under the Elite Curators’ management, which you can find on our Discord, and we hope these systems will keep us accountable, so that we may slowly regain your trust.

As well, we have officially abolished anonymous curation. From today onward, you should be able to scroll down on a curated map and see who the post author was, for a clear indicator of who curated that map. While reviews are not mandatory and never will be, we hope that be at least using post authors, we can keep track of the actions of curators. If you spot a map, after today, that is curated with no author attached, you can report it on the Bsaber Discord.

Categorisation

Many of you reported that it was difficult to find maps you actually enjoyed in Curator Recommended. While the current system may have worked just fine when most maps were of a similar style, we know that tastes have evolved in those two years since, and that many of you looks for specific traits in your maps. To try and accommodate this, we are launching a trial period of a new tagging system. This system is very much in ‘beta’ and likely will not stay the way it is, but it will give us valuable information on how to move forward in addressing this complaint. We encourage you to engage with on on our Discord to share your feedback. 

As of today, these tags have become mandatory for curators. However, we have not yet settled on strict definitions for what each tags means or should encompass; we would like this to be a natural revelation with feedback and time, rather than trying to force specific criteria on maps. Our curators are all hand-picked, professional mappers, and we trust their judgement in carving out this path.

Keeping that in mind, here are very brief descriptors that will likely shift with time: 

Map Style

Balanced maps are the generic category, and are for maps that do not fit into a more specific style. They should generally be acceptable for all types of players.

Dance are categorised by big movements that are best played with a lot of arm, and typically a slower, groovier tune. These maps tend to be enjoyed by arm players, and the more casual playerbase. 

Tech maps tend to include a lot of complex patterns and unconventional hits that persist throughout the entire map. They should still play well and have good flow, but they can be intimidating to the average player. 

Difficulty

All of the difficulty tags are judged by the top labelled difficulty (so expert+, expert etc.), unless the spread as a whole is exceptionally difficult or easy. An example of that would be an easy expert+ map that would be below the ‘standard’ difficulty level of your conventional expert+ map, and as such it is tagged with ‘novice’.

Beginner maps are exceptionally easy and present little to no challenge to any player.

Novice maps are easy to pass, although may still not be accessible to truly new players in any given difficulty.

Intermediate is the standard; the difficulty is what you would expect of the genre and mapper’s label.

Advanced  maps are quite difficult for what it is labelled as.

Challenge maps are on the extreme end of the spectrum and are likely to fail the average player in their respective difficulty.

If this sounds complicated, I implore you to give it a chance. We will of course make changes and adjustments as needed, but this is our initial trial. 


There were many, many things that were brought up in our survey, and I want you to know that I have personally read all of them. In example, the search was a common complaint that, as it stands, is difficult to address. Bsaber is in desperate need of another developer that would be willing to help us move to the next level and fix these bugs and issues. While this is an ongoing search and discussion, your voices were heard, and they do sit with me. 

I hope that the future for Bsaber is as bright as I imagine it to be, and I’m really excited to show you all what else we have planned in the upcoming months. Thank you all for your feedback, as well as your love and support. 

Want to stay engaged? Join our discord: https://discord.gg/VJZHUbt

Want to help? Apply to be a curator here: https://forms.gle/CWFuPxSWkTcVmFKXA

If you would be interested in knowing more about the open dev position, you can contact Pyrowarfare#1032 on Discord. 

 

Comments (10)
  1. helencarnate says:

    Thanks for your endless time and energy in moving the site forward, Pyro! I’m excited to see how things grow!

  2. Rathius says:

    Super excited to hear about the new tags, it was definitely the focus on my feedback survey to have some way to classify style of play looking for tracks, thank you!

    1. Pyrowarfare says:

      I’m glad we are going in the right direction. Thank you for your feedback!

  3. 1m4z3 says:

    Sounds great, thanks for putting in the effort!

  4. asdf says:

    I am finding it impossible to find good maps here now. Before it felt like there was a wide variety for many skill levels – now it’s just a narrow collection of what the curation team enjoys. I appreciate you trying to improve the community but narrowing the focus might not be the best way to go. Either way I appreciate this site, just wish it could be more useful to a greater range of people again.

    1. Pyrowarfare says:

      I’m curious as to how you feel that the variety of maps has gone downhill; after all, the system has only been implemented for the last couple days, and the new tags intend to make it easier to spot what you’re looking for, rather than wading through an unlabelled queue of everything and anything. We are not narrowing at all; we are hoping to classify and identify. The curator team that has always had access to Curator Recommended has been the same for almost 2 years, and it has not changed now; it’s just public, as opposed to anonymous.

      While I would agree that Curator inactivity as a whole is a difficulty and leads to some stagnation in the feed, we can only have so many curators as those that apply.

      Nonetheless, I would encourage you to reach out on the Discord if you have further concerns.

  5. TheDocMods says:

    Pyrowarfare,

    Congratulations on the admin position! I’m sure that’s gotta be exciting right?
    You’ve already been at it so you must have some serious drive in you. I very much envy you for that.

    It reminds me of that one saying: “Don’t just tell me, show me”.

    I think that fits nicely here because you’ve already started working on this before sharing your plans / intentions with us.
    You’re on it man! Reading this was pretty inspiring to be honest. You have my support 100%, and some.

    If there’s anything at all I could be of assistance with, please don’t hesitate to ask. The size, quality, difficulty, etc. of the task is irrelevant to me so I’m at your disposal.

    Even though I don’t feel you need it, I wish you the best of luck through your endeavors sir.

    Best regards,

    Im-Mr-Chris

    1. Pyrowarfare says:

      Thanks very much, Chris! I appreciate your support. I did feel it was important to show I actually plan on change, rather than just saying I am. While I can never promise what the future might look like, I hope that Bsaber can be at its best for everyone!

  6. Sirenella says:

    I’m just saying thanks – what you guys do constantly reinvents the game for me! You need a flag a the top of this page that says “Contribute!” Kuddos – What you do gives JOY.

  7. StrongerThantheBoys says:

    Is there a way to sort/filter”weeb maps” from “non-weeb maps”?

    Just looking for a way to perhaps browse and download maps and playlists that are not anime-related, other than sorting by genre (because there are often anime-type maps mixed in — for example, the Electro House list https://bsaber.com/category/maps/electro-house/ )

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