Taiko player here. There are many motivations to map. You see, I like to map nutty maps for fun. Recently even, nutty maps because I want to know how strong players fare against them. Ranking a map might be a long term goal, but I'll stick to the firsts for starters.
But lately I came back to the game after like 3+ years and noticed something. That every type of maps existing today actually are pitch based. Pitch based drums? I don't think it works that way (in actuality it does work that way in a way), but thing is every other types are pretty much extinct. I don't really know what they are, but it felt so. Except for following the drums. Taiko is actually quite free imo, it's so free you can make it work even without following the song. There are so much things that works and you just need to make the consistency. From there, you can use the song as a reference and there are certain follow points that could be considered as 'the soul' of the song and it's not the vocal, nor the drums.
In reality though, pitch is king, and that's how the world agreed to map Taiko, or so I heard. It's a shame that the long history of Taiko-ing actually went down the drain pretty much. All that I said was sentiment based, but it rooted from this next statement. I felt that too many modern maps nowadays felt so very soulless. I'll be fair, I still relate to a very few maps mapped by certain mappers. If you're reading this, a Taiko hitting warrior, I'll tell you that since pitch is what it's all about. Maps has felt more balanced (diff wise), a lot are boring, and you're following the pitch. Not really representing the song.
Some people would say that I ignored the pitch, and respect to Jarvis for pointing out my mistakes and made good notes out of my map at some point. But know this. Pitch might be what's going on during the time, but sometimes there are something more significant and you're ignoring it. There's no real way to map Taiko and that, in my opinion is a just fact. Please engrave your soul into your maps. Everybody listens to the vocals, and some the drums too. But in reality, a song is way beyond those, and so is your own spirit.
Hence, this problem gave rise to my greatest motivation yet. I just want to make something fun and memorable.
