At the risk of this being locked, denied, etc, I figure it's better to say something than let a possible issue for multiple people, rather than just myself, that refuse to speak up go unattended.

Now I am aware that this request has been made, and I have seen LuigiHann and peppy's arguments for the issue, but I'd like to propose another perspective on it.

Peppy brought up that osu! is a game that focuses on creativity for the map-maker, which is a point LuigiHann addressed in his statement prior: "removing the background image or skinned elements that I chose to add, would ruin my map as much as if you could delete the hitcircles that you didn't like." While this may be true, in a game that provides a venue for competitive play, it seems counter-productive to enforce the aesthetic of a map over its worth as a competitive playing area.

Peppy states that osu! doesn't enforce "pure competition," and while that may be true, it can't be denied that there is an element of it throughout the community and the ranking system. There is even the option to display your ranking as your signature if one so desired; catering to the competitive demographic. If everyone was playing osu! to look at the moving pixels as they form with the music, it wouldn't very much be a game worth attributing points to, would it? I would like to bring in something such as Flower as a solid attribution to peppy's description of osu! beatmaps as a "work of art."

Flower, for those unaware, is a PlayStation 3 game made for relaxation and delivering a message. In its primal level, it is a "collection" game, but add the music and sanctification of the areas in which the player guides the dancing flower petals through the stage, and you have a truly beautiful and literally: awesome experience. For support: here is a video of the first stage of Flower:



As you can see, in itself it is a beauty to behold. It should be made apparent that Flower also offers no points whatsoever throughout the game. Sure there is an overarching goal of "collect the most petals and reach the end," but there is no HUD to display how many petals the player has, or an amount necessary to clear the stage. Every stage is made for its enjoyment and experience alone. Although there is a story intricately weaving the stages together to provide a message, alone they all serve as a message and truly: "work of art."

To attribute this definition to osu!, a game based on Ouendan and Elite Beat Agents, is ridiculous. Sure there are experiences in osu! that can be breathtaking and suited to the music, but should not be held solely in that regard, because at the end of the day the player earned a score depending on how well the hit the notes. Look back at osu! in late 2007, when custom skins and hitsounds were a rarity. Despite the progress it has made aesthetically, those core components remain. It is meant to be an exercise in the players rhythm, dexterity, and awareness. Osu! is a rhythm game. Osu! is not a device for creating works of art. The possibility is there, but it's simply a layer to mask the fact that there are scores, penalties, and a ranking system.

I by no means am trying to bash the attempt at creating custom skins, backgrounds, and environments set around a beatmap, because the products yielded by those endeavors are what come to entitle individuals as a "great mapper." Awp, LuigiHann, Ultimate, and yeahyeahyeah just to name a few. They create amazing maps on a level of appearance, but they are also fun to play. Without the last element: play, specifically ranked and scored play, then by all means destroy the ranking system and let osu become something for visual and interactive appreciation, but not a vehicle for competitive play. Destroy the difficulty mods and tell those players that they're destroying the aesthetic value by making the circles too small, hiding the background, or speeding up the music.

The idea is ludicrous. The fact is these elements do, have, and seemingly always will exist in some form or another as long as osu! continues to be a PC port of the Ouendan and Elite Beat Agent games. All I am trying to propose is that it would not be as devastating as it has been made out to be to let a player that has the desire to disable some custom skins so they can enjoy the song and play it. I haven't met a person that enjoys failing a map, and if there is, by all means let them be heard because from all I've gathered, if this is a highly made request, and it continually becomes denied, perhaps there is something to the issue more than those defending it would like to let on.

Please don't take this as an offense, I am just a player and love osu! through the years I've played it. It continues to improve, and all I ask is that this option would be implemented so people like myself and others can enjoy the element of beating high scores in osu.

Thank you for your time.

The reason skin elements, storyboards, and backgrounds may not be disabled? It's the same for everyone. Thus, each person gets the benefits and downsides (e.g. distractions) of these elements.

The only reason I see the current disables are in place is for performance reasons. peppy wants to appeal to a wider audience (I assume) and that means supporting many more computers.

If you don't like a map's skin or whatever, then don't play that map or get over it

strager wrote:

The reason skin elements, storyboards, and backgrounds may not be disabled? It's the same for everyone. Thus, each person gets the benefits and downsides (e.g. distractions) of these elements.

The only reason I see the current disables are in place is for performance reasons. peppy wants to appeal to a wider audience (I assume) and that means supporting many more computers.

While that may be true, why then, do the possibilities for difficulty modifications exist that adjust the ranking score? To propose a challenge as a beatmap in the form of storyboard and skin destroys the purpose that beatmaps are created to be a test, as I said, of rhythm, dexterity, and awareness. That's what the rhythm game element is, it's not a "sift through the crap to find what you want"-fest. The rankings and scoring system are based on the hitcircles, not the skin. To have the skin implement a further challenge is simply unfair to the player; and if peppy's purpose is to reach a larger audience, that is destroyed if one can't disable the distractions. Not to mention peppy said himself that the possible "downsides" aren't meant to be distractions at all, since every element in a beatmap is placed for a reason, supposedly, although I believe that gives far too much credit to any random mapper.

Derekku Chan wrote:

If you don't like a map's skin or whatever, then don't play that map or get over it

Uh.. it's not a matter of "like." Clearly you missed the point.

This map has been deleted on the request of its creator. It is no longer available.

LuigiHann wrote:

On a related note, I don't think that the cursor should be skinnable on a per-map basis, period. So I'd be all in favor of having a toggle, or simply disabling it forever.

Everything else, I think you should just suck it up, but I think the player has a right to choose his own cursor

Thank you for the reply. I have much difficulty playing with the circular preset cursor, and found that I have to use awp's Final Fantasy one for any accuracy.

This map has been deleted on the request of its creator. It is no longer available.

strager wrote:

You can argue the position of hit circles is completely unrelated to score, thus position doesn't add to the competitiveness of a map.

Yeah, I'm arguing that. It seems to be your only attack on skins?

Well that's how I feel. Jumps can be "epic" and all, but there aren't any jumps in Ouendan or Elite Beat Agents to make a map harder. Sure having some here and there is okay, but I feel that they can be overdone, which is my gripe on skins. I honestly don't see how some of the jump/stream filled maps get ranked.
This argument could extend to jumps, but I feel that's another topic in itself. Or maybe it's not. Depends on peppy's reaction.
To be honest I'm surprised distance spacing isn't already calculated in the score. It seems.. fairly obvious that it should be. Closer notes together are easier to hit for the most part.

And as the title suggests, my biggest gripe is the cursor. I just can't aim when I'm playing Kagamine Rin - I Like You, I Love You when the cursor is so light, fits the size of the notes, and during kiai mode everything might as well be white. It's like trying to follow a flashlight in a well-lit room. Other examples like L'Arc~En~Ciel - Link where the hitcircle is so blurred it's hard to tell where it's going in a stack. There's parts of that you just have to memorize to get, all of which isn't a test of skill at all, just dedication.

LordMoonstone wrote:

Well that's how I feel. Jumps can be "epic" and all, but there aren't any jumps in Ouendan or Elite Beat Agents to make a map harder.

This isn't authentic Ouendan. I think that's the part you're missing

LordMoonstone wrote:

I honestly don't see how some of the jump/stream filled maps get ranked.

Because they're fun/challenging?

LordMoonstone wrote:

And as the title suggests, my biggest gripe is the cursor. I just can't aim when I'm playing Kagamine Rin - I Like You, I Love You when the cursor is so light, fits the size of the notes, and during kiai mode everything might as well be white. It's like trying to follow a flashlight in a well-lit room. Other examples like L'Arc~En~Ciel - Link where the hitcircle is so blurred it's hard to tell where it's going in a stack. There's parts of that you just have to memorize to get, all of which isn't a test of skill at all, just dedication.

Practice; You'll get better.

Derekku Chan wrote:

This isn't authentic Ouendan. I think that's the part you're missing

I understand where you're coming from, but if it's not then why retain its scoring system which was designed so every map in it was fair, and manipulate those workarounds to make an unrewarding challenge? And I suppose to clarify, I've been playing osu for about three years, and I achieved a rank of 80 about a year and a half ago then stopped playing. I know what parts of a map take memorization and what take skill. No amount of practice can prepare you for a super fast slider or death jump. Sure your reaction time might increase, but that's from extreme amounts of dedication to practicing for it. Is that really fair to a wider audience that peppy's trying to reach?

There seem to be a lot of underhanded tactics like the streams and jumps that can be a turnoff for a lot of players, many of which I know that I tried to get into osu but stopped playing because of the tricks that jipped them from a full combo score. Does that make them any less of a player for it? Not necessarily, they just don't want to put up with the "fads" that beatmappers tend to do nowadays.

Regardless it doesn't change the fact that the inability to change the cursor on a map, when the option is there for the rest of the game, is insane. Aesthetic doesn't mean anything in that context, as I tried to say in my first post.

Sorry if I seem redundant and I know I'm fighting a losing battle, but I truly believe there's a view to this many are overlooking. There's no way a feature like this can be requested so many times and everyone that has felt it is just "wrong."

This map has been deleted on the request of its creator. It is no longer available.

strager wrote:

You keep saying some maps reduce the audience for some players due to some of their issues.

What? Think about what you're saying for a minute.

Again, if the cursor blends with the background, it blends for EVERYONE. If you allow it to be disabled, no doubt everyone will disable it unless they're one of the few who think things like No Video are cheating. So, it's like the feature of skinable cursors isn't even there.

What I'm trying to say is that, this is a game with an open community and people that are easy to talk to make the maps. Why pose such a ridiculous, unfair challenge if it won't translate to the competitive aspect?
It's a change of pace and something new, but does it have to be new? I feel the point of the Ouendan approach is clicking to a song the player enjoys. I love I Like You, I Love You, but I just can't play it because of how difficult it is to discern cursor from beat, and background. The original argument I was confronting was the one posed by peppy, which seems to be the main one, that it's for aesthetic reasons. Is there any beauty in making a map frustrating because it's "new" and "challenging?" This could be my age in playing osu! here talking, back in the day when the hardest thing was Caramelldansen, but it seems that new maps impose these feats for the sake of being.. there. I don't see any point to them.
WHY is the cursor so light, and the default osu! cursor? What does that add to the map? Frankly it doesn't add anything, from my viewpoint. A good contrast being awp's skin for Nancy the Tavern Wench. It fits the song, and doesn't impede on the gameplay. It's just a fun aesthetic addition, which is what skins should be. Not adding challenges to the basic player that doesn't want them. That's why I see the mods are there, but even then if the mods are there to remove the hitcircles, decrease the size of them, or double the song time, that utterly destroys the "work of art" the mapper tried to make, doesn't it? The difference being that the player gets rewarded for it. There is no reward for putting up with an annoying skin in a map in a game that has a competitive element. Nor is there a reward for doing a jump or double/half velocity slider. If there were warnings for the latter, it might not be so bad, but there aren't.
By adding these elements, the map DOES reduce its audience because these people don't want a challenge, but they want the song. The counter-argument to that being "well play the lower difficulty" or "map it yourself," and why go through this hassle when the people that make the maps are within an instant messaging distance, and allow these to go on being ranked?
With I Like You, I Love You, I would enjoy to play it with the cursor I have so I can see where I'm clicking. I like the map overall, because there are some jumps near the end, but it fits with the song. Why should a casual guy like me who doesn't want to spend the effort to deal with a new cursor be punished when there is no reward for putting up with it but on that map? If I wanted a challenge I would put on a mod, and even that concept in itself seems to go against what LuigiHann and peppy were saying about a map having inherent aesthetic value when there are buttons that get rid of it to make the game INSTANTLY competitive a click away.

God I type walls of text, but I guess I have to provide a huge argument since no one else agrees.

block of text, from experience, peppy doesn't like'm
Didn't fully read, but quickly went through (flower is an amazing)
I could easily see how this could be a very bad thing (competitive wise) but personally (might be suggested), I'd suggest making a "noskin" mod that would be UNRANKED just like NOFAIL.

There are many great songs that I was really hyped to play which then made me ragequit because of the annoying skin that made it unplayable. And I really didn't care about the score, I just wanted to enjoy the song in osu.

This map has been deleted on the request of its creator. It is no longer available.

Why is my name in every post by LordMoonstone at least once

peppy wrote:

Why is my name in every post by LordMoonstone at least once

Hi peppy. You should use my suggestion, because I'm cool.

Currently, for all skin objects including the cursor, a map-specific skin overrides a user-selected skin. I propose that, only for the cursor, this be reversed. So if somebody is using the default skin, or a skin with no cursor included, then a map-specific skinned cursor would show up. But if the user is using a skin with a cursor, for instance, the Twewy skin, the skin's cursor should override any map-specific cursor.

The cursor is too important for the user not to have control.

LuigiHann wrote:

The cursor is too important for the user not to have control.

Essence of the entire idea right there.

I support LH's iteration of this idea.

LordMoonstone wrote:

Peppy brought up that osu! is a game that focuses on creativity for the map-maker, which is a point LuigiHann addressed in his statement prior: "removing the background image or skinned elements that I chose to add, would ruin my map as much as if you could delete the hitcircles that you didn't like." While this may be true, in a game that provides a venue for competitive play, it seems counter-productive to enforce the aesthetic of a map over its worth as a competitive playing area.

I would like to bring this point further into attention. With some recent and upcoming changes (peppy knows what I'm talking about) this point is even more important. With the ranking system it's not that bad, since you can always retry the map so many times that you learn it by heart. Irritating or not, it's doable, though not necessarily fun.

In a tournament environment however people don't have the possibility to learn the quirks of the map at hand. (for example a hit judgment graphic set where it is unclear which judgment you got, 50, 100 or 300) In tournaments it is very possible that you need to sightread a song, and it makes it even worse if you are disturbed by the graphical elements that you don't know.

Thus I would say that for regular play it doesn't matter too much if there are storyboard or skin elements that you hate, although it might make playing more irritating to the player. In tournament play however it's imo important that no unnecessary trouble is caused to the player so that he/she can purely concentrate on the act of playing alone. By this I mean: no video, no storyboard, no skin elements from the map. Only the bg-image of the map and the users default skin.

strager wrote:

Again, if the cursor blends with the background, it blends for EVERYONE. If you allow it to be disabled, no doubt everyone will disable it unless they're one of the few who think things like No Video are cheating. So, it's like the feature of skinable cursors isn't even there.

This is not true. I am colorblind. I can't easily distinguish between red, green, and brown (and sometimes orange). Blue and purple can sometimes be troublesome as well. To the right of this box I'm typing in is a grid of colors to choose from for my font. If someone told me to make my font green, I'd honestly have no idea which one to click.

Lybydose wrote:

strager wrote:

Again, if the cursor blends with the background, it blends for EVERYONE. If you allow it to be disabled, no doubt everyone will disable it unless they're one of the few who think things like No Video are cheating. So, it's like the feature of skinable cursors isn't even there.

This is not true. I am colorblind. I can't easily distinguish between red, green, and brown (and sometimes orange). Blue and purple can sometimes be troublesome as well. To the right of this box I'm typing in is a grid of colors to choose from for my font. If someone told me to make my font green, I'd honestly have no idea which one to click.

I don't see how that counters my point at all, unless you're proposing you're at a disadvantage when it comes to custom skins due to contrast issues. (There was a thread in General Discussions with colour blindness mentioned within. Don't remember what it was about.)

strager wrote:

I don't see how that counters my point at all, unless you're proposing you're at a disadvantage when it comes to custom skins due to contrast issues. (There was a thread in General Discussions with colour blindness mentioned within. Don't remember what it was about.)

There are cursors that don't blend for anyone except for me (and other color-blind people).

I also have a hard time distinguishing the default skin's 300 and 100, but that doesn't really matter.

120% support.

don't skin the cursor
don't mak anything blend in with each other
spinners should have center points

i'd talk so much more about how much i hate when people skin their maps, but i have already done that.

How about a compromise?

If there are any maps which cause problems, report them.

A recent map I saw had all green combo colours, a green spinner, and a green cursor. I told the mapper to increase the contrast between the combo colours so each part was discernible. The many modders before me didn't catch that it seems.

strager wrote:

How about a compromise?

If there are any maps which cause problems, report them.

A recent map I saw had all green combo colours, a green spinner, and a green cursor. I told the mapper to increase the contrast between the combo colours so each part was discernible. The many modders before me didn't catch that it seems.

this is the problem though. some people like this, others don't and find it super distracting. then again i don't know if the players who don't complain just end up removing the skin etc.

i once got shot down when i said that the cursor in a map was to hard to use lol

strager wrote:

Ph0X wrote:

UNRANKED just like NOFAIL.

Failure detected. NoFail isn't unranked.

LOL shhh! though it would go unseen
You get my point

(+) [peppy] Added toggle for forcing skin cursor over beatmap customisations.

Thank you peppy. It is very much appreciated.