There has been a bit of discussion within the staff about how the Taiko community isn't sustaining a proper amount of ranked maps. We are only seeing a few a month, and would like to see more. With that said, it is very obvious the modding community for taiko is very small, thus, slowing the ranking process immensely. The purpose of this thread is to talk about why a lot of us dedicated mappers/modders, are not really modding enough to help maps get pushed for ranking, and what we can do as a community to get taiko maps ranked more often.

Myself personally, try to take as many Taiko request as possible. But in my position as BAT I have to take care of osu! more frequently because that is what is asked of me by users. I'm willing to set more time aside for Taiko, or even dedicate my modding to Taiko exclusively, but I'm not being asked enough. I also map frequently, and struggle to find quality mods, because half the people I ask either say no, or just never get around to it. Just to add, I am always open for mod request, bubble, rank, or just a conventional mod. Please do not be afraid to ask me. I'm sure this applies to a lot of the other taiko related BATs.

What do you guys, the community think should happen? What steps should be taken to try and get more maps modded by the community and ranked?

Before I start, I want to say that I'm happy that the responsible people have forwarded my please about this topic and want to thank them for this.

Now to come back to the question ,,What do you guys, the community think should happen? What steps should be taken to try and get more maps modded by the community and ranked?".

In my opinion there should be a Team available which is responsible for the game modus Taiko, to ensure that more 'proper' Taiko-sets are getting ranked in a reasonable time-line.
The reason for this is to give people(which are at the beginning rather player than mapper) a feeling of how a 'proper' Kanta/Futsuu/Muzukashii/Oni should be mapped, which knowledge they can apply in later stages(if they become mapper or modders) on their own maps or mods. Without enough ranked Sets -which could cover a larger area of songs like for example high/low BPM-, 1/3- or unique pattern-maps- people will be not able to learn how to map/mod for difficulties in certain situation, such as ,,How am I able to map/mod a Kantan on a BPM of 220?". The experienced would be not reached fast enough.

Speaking of fast, it is indeed possible to rank nowadays Taiko-sets with the current Team. But if we look at the time-line maps are getting ranked, the progress for people who want to learn how to map/mod is rather chastening and could be increased by having a specific Team. Also when considering the last 3 cases(unrank, etc.) which happened in the last 2 weeks, the performence isn't that well as some of us would this wish to be.
To be able to express my opinion about this problem better, I would like to show an example: https://osu.ppy.sh/s/64969
This map recieved a decent number of mods and has been even bubbled, but if we look at my mod: p/2382977 - it might astonish some people right now, as it astonished me as well.
The mod shows mostly unrankable or not Kantan worthly patterns which would probably lead to an unrank. So some people will probably think ,,how could this happen?". Mainly it is not because of the modding, it is rather due to unexperience in the difficulties which is effected by the less amount of ranked Taiko-sets who could serve as example for these mappers/modders. This effects of course the knowledge of mapper/modder and makes the modding at this point suffer a lot. There is no real reference at all.
Sure, there can be made guides how to map these diffs(which I'm going to make really soon), but this would be just a part of what we would actually have to do for mapping/modding. After all there are many cases(like high BPM maps) which are still unclear for most mappers and needs to be enlighted by an higher amount of ranked Taiko-sets.

I also have to say, that Taiko is by far more complicated as some people might think about. The drum can be seen e.g. as an beat-following instrument which is depending on the song, but it can be also used as additional instrument which makes the mapping on its own way to a complex system of stanzas, patterns, SV,..., and their interaction together. So is it hard to map a Kantan for a song, if mappers follow only the beat which contains 1/3 beats or different spaces, which makes the Kantan automaticly to a Futsuu or sometimes even to a easy Muzukashii. In this case the mapper has to think about another style which he probably isn't aware about, due to less experience(btw my previous example reflects this case pretty good).

I talked now about a Team and its possible(and positive) effect to modding/mapping and ranking. But the question about, how to get people to mod is still remaining, right? Especially what about the experienced Taiko Mappers.

First of all we can't hide the fact that experienced modders are fading out. This has various reasons, as for example reallife realted things and etc..
Mappers like lepidopodus are gone/inactive, but they mediated their knowledge to other people which should do the same to the up-coming mappers/modders. But what if the experienced mappers don't have enough 'examples' to teach the new generation? What if these experienced modders fade out as well and were not able to mediated their knowledge much enough? Another gap of unknoweldge and a decrease of proper taikos or increas of unranks appears, which is nowadays the case.
So we should give these experienced mappers a chance by helping them to spread their view, especially in the most importand phase, which is right now the case with the easier diffs and the Taiko-sets.

True, I have to say that our community is also kinda lazy when it comes to modding. But it has also something to do with the experience people can bring of. The less they can find 'issues' in a map, the less they are motivated because, they think their modding is 'crappy', but especially here it comes to, to be able differ for your-self iif this was really 'crappy' or if the mapper actually mapped his map in a proper way. People are insecured in many aspects.
Actually, I can clearly see that many people in our community are interested in modding and mapping because, I'm reciving day for day about 10 requests and a dozen of "Test-Play" requests. BAT's are also contacting me to check bubbled maps to ensure having no unrank or problems, so I can confidently say that the interestet for learning mapping/modding taiko is available.

But one person can't do so much at once, which is the reason having a a little team would work good, which is also able to reward mappers with a rank in their maps.

Since I'm a bit in a hurry I will enshorter the rest for now:
As MMzz said, BATs have to take care of osu! as well, so they can't concentrate on taiko well enough or often enough, and those BATs who are even experienced in Taiko have unfortunaley no time due to various reasons(real-life, osu, etc.).

(even now 5 contacted made requests while I was writing this)

MMzz wrote:

The purpose of this thread is to talk about why a lot of us dedicated mappers/modders, are not really modding enough to help maps get pushed for ranking, and what we can do as a community to get taiko maps ranked more often.

Well, I'll start by trying to point out what I see these days.

Well, that's the reasons I can think of now.
Sorry for making a super-lengthy post, but I think it's necessary for us to understand the causes of low ranking rate of taiko maps before we can think of any solutions.
Feel free to discuss and respond to what I said. The taiko community does need more feedback from you guys :3

To keep my views brief...

I would mod maps if I was trying to get my own map ranked. M4M is the most beneficial process for stimulating the map making community. The problem with this is that I am finding taiko mapping to be difficult, not because I lack the motivation or knowledge about taiko's patterns, but because I lack the examples. Like Ono said...

After all there are many cases(like high BPM maps) which are still unclear for most mappers and needs to be enlighted by an higher amount of ranked Taiko-sets.

I have many half-done taiko sets that I would love to try and rank, but all of them are stuck on simple things like "What should be playing during this slow part?", "How easy is TOO easy for a Fuutsu/Kataan?", and "I don't want to be repetitive, but I can't think of anything else that works here.". All of these situations could be solved by looking at how a similar map handled it, but the amount of taiko full spreads is really small. Obviously, this seems like a Catch 22. ...We can't map these songs because we can't get ideas because we can't map these songs because we can't get ideas because... It goes on for a while.

This is something that will obviously get better over time, as the amount of taiko sets being ranked isn't null. We just need less 120-140 BPM pop anime openings for examples and more of the obscure genres and feelings. Contrast Ono's Taiko Oni with ignorethis's Otaik. Both really nice, creative maps that have a unique ideas that fit the song, but they are on the opposite sides of the spectrum when it comes to song choice. If we could get full spreads of songs like this, and other songs that fit the different kinds of genres, players would be able to map out what kind of patterns and ideas will work in what songs, based on finding happy mediums between the contrasts.

As I said earlier, people are more likely to mod if they have a map they want modded. M4M gets you mods, modding gets you stars for your own maps, and making the connection with people willing to help you with mapping is something that is always desired when going for the front page. The only thing halting this is the difficulty that comes with "I really like this song and I want to see it represented in osu!taiko's songlist". Someone picks a song, runs into a roadblock with ideas, and never gets back to it. If these mappers had already played a lot of the mapsets that I am talking about, there is less chance that they will run out of ideas.

I'm having trouble keeping this post about the modding side of taiko, but I think my point has merit. People mod when they need mods, and they can't have mods without a fully mapped song, something that has been proven difficult for new players due to the lack of examples and experiences with anything outside of the norm.

I personally think that the biggest problem is actually the modding process itself. Often times, taiko mods look like "d here, k there, add finish", without any explanation. Mods like this are not useful in my eyes at all, because they are just applying another mapper's ideas blindly. Also, if the mapper is inexperienced and follows such mods, he can create an even bigger mess simply cause he has no idea what's going on.

Sadly, the best we can do here is to just continue modding properly, hoping that people would catch something from that.

As for mapping, I just think that people are too afraid to try and do something new. In most cases everyone always ends up with "safe picks", having a song type and a difficulty they can map the best, completely ignoring the rest. While you may create something really terrible in the process of experimenting, I believe it's worth it in the long run, because you learn new things - worst case scenario, you learn how not to do things. :p

Just passing by and throwing my point of view as someone that relatively has just started in Taiko mapping/modding.

We have very few famous modders, that's a possible reason, they receive, like Ono said, a lot of reqs per day, while other modders receive like a few reqs per week, so we can say a reason could be the lack of knowledge of who mods Taiko, I had that problem when tried to get mods for my first mapset, and I think almost all new Taiko mappers suffer from that. People that knows I map/mod Taiko is because they ask when they look me editing my Taiko mapsets/GDs.

Also it may be the lack of promotion of those maps, I often know about Taiko mapsets when they become bubbled/ranked.

Stubborn mappers is other problem, in this map, I think Taiko diffs have received more mods than standard and they stayed almost the the same for a long time, it had very big flaws in basic settings and the mapper either refused or didn't change for some reason.

Also as it's mentioned above, the lack of where to get the idea of mapping a proper Kantan/Futsuu, a few of those I've modded seemed too hard, as if they were following the same beat placement recommended for an Easy/Normal in standard mode.

Making a guide for mapping Taiko, spreading Makar's thread about Taiko modders, even putting people to play TnT games would be some of the solutions I could see when it comes to full spreads.

I would love to see Ono, Lepi, or one of the other good Taiko mappers making a Taiko mapping tutorial. I wanna see how they go about mapping

Mithost wrote:

I would love to see Ono, Lepi, or one of the other good Taiko mappers making a Taiko mapping tutorial. I wanna see how they go about mapping

I've started to do weekly livestream mapping sessions. Nobody from #taiko ever seems to really want to be involved in it though. If there was more interest in how mappers make their maps, I'm sure that there would be more people willing to show how through things like youtube / twitch.tv livestreams, etc.

---------------------------

As for the issue at hand. The are two issues I can think of that lead to the problem with the taiko modding community.

1. There are not enough experienced modders. This can mostly be solved by some more experienced modders (MMzz, Ono, Myself), teaching other modders some basic things through IRC or even in threads about how to EXPLAIN to a mapper why you're requesting that they change stuff. Having mod posts saying "k here, d here, KD pls" don't really help the mapper, and in most cases confuse them as to why they'd do that unless they're an experienced mapper to begin with and can make the choice on the mod based on their mapping style.

2. There are some really stubborn mappers who refuse to change or apply any mods, which can be detrimental to learning modders, as they see their mods being denied (sometimes a lot) and they might not understand why. For example, If I was a new modder and I tried to mod someone like... Rokodo's maps, I might be in for a rude awakening (Rokodo will flat out refuse a mod if he doesn't like the idea. Doesn't mean he's a bad mapper, but he refuses to change his experimental maps a lot, and has led to some of his maps being removed from sets before, as an example)

There's not really much that can be done about #2 (Other than BAT's giving the mapper a hard time about being stubborn / threatening a nuke), but #1 can be fixed through experienced modders helping out new modders.

Would be nice to stream if people are mapping haha. Recently I have been trying to stream my mapping too, however I can't always cause my connection is absolutely bad haha.

OnosakiHito wrote:

SPOILER

Before I start, I want to say that I'm happy that the responsible people have forwarded my please about this topic and want to thank them for this.

Now to come back to the question ,,What do you guys, the community think should happen? What steps should be taken to try and get more maps modded by the community and ranked?".

In my opinion there should be a Team available which is responsible for the game modus Taiko, to ensure that more 'proper' Taiko-sets are getting ranked in a reasonable time-line.
The reason for this is to give people(which are at the beginning rather player than mapper) a feeling of how a 'proper' Kanta/Futsuu/Muzukashii/Oni should be mapped, which knowledge they can apply in later stages(if they become mapper or modders) on their own maps or mods. Without enough ranked Sets -which could cover a larger area of songs like for example high/low BPM-, 1/3- or unique pattern-maps- people will be not able to learn how to map/mod for difficulties in certain situation, such as ,,How am I able to map/mod a Kantan on a BPM of 220?". The experienced would be not reached fast enough.

Speaking of fast, it is indeed possible to rank nowadays Taiko-sets with the current Team. But if we look at the time-line maps are getting ranked, the progress for people who want to learn how to map/mod is rather chastening and could be increased by having a specific Team. Also when considering the last 3 cases(unrank, etc.) which happened in the last 2 weeks, the performence isn't that well as some of us would this wish to be.
To be able to express my opinion about this problem better, I would like to show an example: https://osu.ppy.sh/s/64969
This map recieved a decent number of mods and has been even bubbled, but if we look at my mod: https://osu.ppy.sh/forum/p/2382977 - it might astonish some people right now, as it astonished me as well.
The mod shows mostly unrankable or not Kantan worthly patterns which would probably lead to an unrank. So some people will probably think ,,how could this happen?". Mainly it is not because of the modding, it is rather due to unexperience in the difficulties which is effected by the less amount of ranked Taiko-sets who could serve as example for these mappers/modders. This effects of course the knowledge of mapper/modder and makes the modding at this point suffer a lot. There is no real reference at all.
Sure, there can be made guides how to map these diffs(which I'm going to make really soon), but this would be just a part of what we would actually have to do for mapping/modding. After all there are many cases(like high BPM maps) which are still unclear for most mappers and needs to be enlighted by an higher amount of ranked Taiko-sets.

I also have to say, that Taiko is by far more complicated as some people might think about. The drum can be seen e.g. as an beat-following instrument which is depending on the song, but it can be also used as additional instrument which makes the mapping on its own way to a complex system of stanzas, patterns, SV,..., and their interaction together. So is it hard to map a Kantan for a song, if mappers follow only the beat which contains 1/3 beats or different spaces, which makes the Kantan automaticly to a Futsuu or sometimes even to a easy Muzukashii. In this case the mapper has to think about another style which he probably isn't aware about, due to less experience(btw my previous example reflects this case pretty good).

I talked now about a Team and its possible(and positive) effect to modding/mapping and ranking. But the question about, how to get people to mod is still remaining, right? Especially what about the experienced Taiko Mappers.

First of all we can't hide the fact that experienced modders are fading out. This has various reasons, as for example reallife realted things and etc..
Mappers like lepidopodus are gone/inactive, but they mediated their knowledge to other people which should do the same to the up-coming mappers/modders. But what if the experienced mappers don't have enough 'examples' to teach the new generation? What if these experienced modders fade out as well and were not able to mediated their knowledge much enough? Another gap of unknoweldge and a decrease of proper taikos or increas of unranks appears, which is nowadays the case.
So we should give these experienced mappers a chance by helping them to spread their view, especially in the most importand phase, which is right now the case with the easier diffs and the Taiko-sets.

True, I have to say that our community is also kinda lazy when it comes to modding. But it has also something to do with the experience people can bring of. The less they can find 'issues' in a map, the less they are motivated because, they think their modding is 'crappy', but especially here it comes to, to be able differ for your-self iif this was really 'crappy' or if the mapper actually mapped his map in a proper way. People are insecured in many aspects.
Actually, I can clearly see that many people in our community are interested in modding and mapping because, I'm reciving day for day about 10 requests and a dozen of "Test-Play" requests. BAT's are also contacting me to check bubbled maps to ensure having no unrank or problems, so I can confidently say that the interestet for learning mapping/modding taiko is available.

But one person can't do so much at once, which is the reason having a a little team would work good, which is also able to reward mappers with a rank in their maps.

Since I'm a bit in a hurry I will enshorter the rest for now:
As MMzz said, BATs have to take care of osu! as well, so they can't concentrate on taiko well enough or often enough, and those BATs who are even experienced in Taiko have unfortunaley no time due to various reasons(real-life, osu, etc.).

(even now 5 contacted made requests while I was writing this)

Well we can't have a team until we actually have a steady amount of maps ready to be bubbled/ranked. That is why we are questioning the state of the modding community, because it is almost unexistent. Until the community goes and mods maps, the BAT can't really do anything, unless there are special circumstances. And we have plenty of BAT available right now, who are active, willing to look at taiko maps, and can judge them, so we can't raise the argument that we are lacking the manpower in the BAT, because we are simply not. But when we do reach the point of many maps being out there and needing assistance beyond what the current BAT are capable of, a team would be the most ideal course of action, just like the ctb/o!m BATs.

I haven't read any post except the OP so don't slap me, kthxk

As I have noticed the process of the Taiko Modding/Mapping (especially talking about Taiko Mapsets) is quite weak at the Moment. Even if we can see the process is increasing (slowly) it's still way too slow and way too little to say that it has a appropriate level. However it's quite obvious who are the more famous Mappers and Modders - if you're for a short time active in this scene.

About myself, I am a really active Mapper. Like 40% of my unsubmitted/unfinished Stuff is Taiko-related and cannot be uploaded yet, and I am modding 50/50 Standard and Taiko (it actually depends about my motivation and what the Mapset consist). I would wish from myself to be more active because we really need many many more Taiko Modders because the bad fact is: Not every Mapper can handle the Modding System which is bad. It's not the Mapper's fault but I think we should try to give a basic tutorial how Taiko Modding is actually working, for what are you having to take care, what's important by modding a Taiko Diff, what you should try and what not, what you should point out that needs to be fixed, and continue..

A tutorial would be excellent to prevent this problem out of the world because I have big problems to get (qualified) Mods by Modders but I cannot bring my Maps forward to Ranks because Mods are simply neccessary to get Feedbacks and that.

Oh and btw, you all can ask me anytime about Taiko Requests. Maybe I won't be so fast at all but it's a much higher chance that I mod it as Standard Diffs.

MMzz wrote:

SPOILER

Well we can't have a team until we actually have a steady amount of maps ready to be bubbled/ranked. That is why we are questioning the state of the modding community, because it is almost unexistent. Until the community goes and mods maps, the BAT can't really do anything, unless there are special circumstances. And we have plenty of BAT available right now, who are active, willing to look at taiko maps, and can judge them, so we can't raise the argument that we are lacking the manpower in the BAT, because we are simply not. But when we do reach the point of many maps being out there and needing assistance beyond what the current BAT are capable of, a team would be the most ideal course of action, just like the ctb/o!m BATs.

Yes, I have to agree with this. Good point.

But when I think about it, this would be actually a perfect entry for the fresh team to get used to the BAT-System and refine their knowledge and moves for it. They could go for the current maps and take it easy - learn everything step by step without hurry and concentrate on a small amount of sets which prepare them afterwards for a higher amount of sets. Also in this way, the BATManagers could see how the guys are doing their jobs and prevent cases in future as we had it with the ctb or osu!mania guys before(actions are known).
After all, having one or two more BATs shouldn't be a problem I think, and it would facilitates the search of the specific game modus BATs for new players a little.

I have no problem if there are no specific game modus BATs for Taiko yet. Experience mappers have still the possibilities to pop bubbled maps.
I just think it would be in this way beneficial for both sites when considering all these points(+ normal BATs could concentrate more on osu).

Only thing which I wouldn't be confident about now is, when considering the last 2 weeks with the 3~4 cases(4 BATs, no check weee.....) ...actually I really have no lust to see such stuff happening again in this dimension. That's what would make me to demand for the Taiko BATs.

i began teach the steps of mapping to my Japanese friends.
well, very few taiko modders...

Stefan wrote:

I haven't read any post except the OP so don't slap me, kthxk

As I have noticed the process of the Taiko Modding/Mapping (especially talking about Taiko Mapsets) is quite weak at the Moment. Even if we can see the process is increasing (slowly) it's still way too slow and way too little to say that it has a appropriate level. However it's quite obvious who are the more famous Mappers and Modders - if you're for a short time active in this scene.

About myself, I am a really active Mapper. Like 40% of my unsubmitted/unfinished Stuff is Taiko-related and cannot be uploaded yet, and I am modding 50/50 Standard and Taiko (it actually depends about my motivation and what the Mapset consist). I would wish from myself to be more active because we really need many many more Taiko Modders because the bad fact is: Not every Mapper can handle the Modding System which is bad. It's not the Mapper's fault but I think we should try to give a basic tutorial how Taiko Modding is actually working, for what are you having to take care, what's important by modding a Taiko Diff, what you should try and what not, what you should point out that needs to be fixed, and continue..

A tutorial would be excellent to prevent this problem out of the world because I have big problems to get (qualified) Mods by Modders but I cannot bring my Maps forward to Ranks because Mods are simply neccessary to get Feedbacks and that.

Oh and btw, you all can ask me anytime about Taiko Requests. Maybe I won't be so fast at all but it's a much higher chance that I mod it as Standard Diffs.

I am very much the same, actually. But to me it's more like 60-40 Taiko-Standard mapper.

I am not sure if everyone knows though (I should probably update my userpage when I think about it) but if anyone at all got a Taiko Mapset that needs modding, I will gladly do it. I really want to bring more attention to the Taiko mapsets, since I map many myself.

One thing I really struggle with is keeping up with modding queues. I made some and I just couldn't keep up with modding because I didn't feel motivated enough. So I keep myself to Forum PM Requests.

But just writing on your userpage about you taking mod requests isn't really going to get many places. Few people might see it if they're browsing or maybe if you put yourself in the Taiko Modder List. It might just be me but I am really bad when it comes to keeping up with queues.

Most people check the Modding Queues Sub-Forum to get mods and very few actually look for users who take PM Requests.
It would be nice if we could figure out a way to bring out PM Request Taiko Modders out more than just in the Taiko Modder List.
Not everyone knows it exists. Especially Standard mappers with Taiko in their mapsets.

I just started up a Taiko M4M modding queue: t/140938

Hopefully I can keep up with it until I can get my map ranked while helping others do the same. Please check it out

Mithost wrote:

I just started up a Taiko M4M modding queue: t/140938

Hopefully I can keep up with it until I can get my map ranked while helping others do the same. Please check it out

This is a good thing. The only problem will be that very few Taiko mappers/modders do M4M and the thread will pushed down the forum listing very quickly due to the standard queues.. There are ways to try to prevent this though maybe. Suggestions don't hurt but they can be argued about.

1: Standard/Taiko/CtB/Mania specific Mod Queue sub-forums. Now this might be overdoing the whole thing. And it might be confusing for people who mod multiple game modes. And having 4 sub-forums for all this might be just a hazzle.

2: Adding a rule where you must label what modes you mod in the thread title. This one is better imo. If a rule like this gets added then it would be MUCH easier to search for queues. And it is a very simple rule. So all queues would be named something like "Blabla's Queue (Standard & Taiko)", making it a lot easier to find the queues you need.

What do you guys think?

I don't think separating the game modes in queues would be a good idea, as many queues do multiple ones. It SHOULD be a rule however to include what gamemodes are modded in the title.

My queue is being pushed down and I don't want to bump it :<

hey gurls t/141314/start=0

we opened this fancy spot today everyone is invited (except for those weirdos at the CtB and Mania club)

As nice as it is, I think we shouldn't talk so much about certain modding-qeues. After all, this thread is about finding solutions / steps for the current modding / ranking system in Taiko.

Though, for now I said what I wanted to say on Site 1. Maybe someone else has something to add / agree to in general.

I think one thing we can do is promote more Taiko mapping in general. One of the main things I found is that there was not many people trying to find mods for full taiko mapsets, so it was harder to ask for M4M. Obviously, we would need to make it more enticing to start taiko mapping... Something I'm not sure how to do.

Hi. I have been in the osu! community for about 5 years and I kind of saw Taiko mode come into being (when it was just lining up Ouendan notes into a scrollbar and plays exactly like the Relax mod). Outside of osu! I play the authentic Taiko console and arcade releases. I transcribe authentic charts for the aquabluu's Taiko Maps authentic ex-project (300+ songs) and maps for the Ao no Senritsu custom Taiko Maps project (with 90+ songs, mostly not on BSS).

I also host a modding queue that forces asks people to play Taiko (mostly authentic maps) for my mods. My modding style is a very much authentic-inspired approach, and mainly focusing on the overall ambience, rhythm structure and balance, usually starting with an overall "perceived difficulty rating" based on authentic difficulty spreads (I really check Taiko chart wiki for that). I almost never suggest note-specific changes except at times where denden notes and yellow drumrolls intrudes necessary note places (because they are optional). In replying mods I go to long paragraphs explaining my design objectives and why I do or do not change according to their suggestions (which I think is good for sorting out my thoughts).

Over the course of my modding career I have witnessed a few very common (and horrible IMO) trends: (1) Most Oni charts are of 8+ star ratings, no matter how the ambience of the song goes. Very rarely can a true 7* be spotted, and almost never 6* or less (probably except my The Black Case map); (2) Many Kantan charts are of 2- star ratings, featuring only notes at 2-beat intervals that have, again, little regard on the ambience of the song. So IMO one of the most significant problems is that some people have a somehow wronged stereotypical view over Taiko charts and their difficulty spread.

Having transcribed a decent number of authentic maps, I have some idea on how the difficulty spread can go. However not everyone has a good enough experience or good enough exposure to a variety of charts, and that could result in some biased charts in the BSS. Partly for this reason I decided to make my queue this way. I hope that with more people getting to know how authentic maps, with 1000+ songs in all 4 difficulty over 10+ years of the franchise's history, are structured and distributed, more high-quality Taiko maps can proliferate in the community. (A bigger reason is I really want people to play my maps.)

Hey guys,

aabc271 and me were talking about the community and its current "modding and mapping" status and I thought to give some input here; something like a check-point or so which might give you some overlook about the situation. Though, that's just my opinion here, but maybe you can agree with it.

I think we reached a generative phase, in which our community grows again.
Slowly we are having more ranked maps again and the modding community is also rising up. It might be not really noticeable yet, but it does grow step by step.
The positive thing here is, that some of these new modders are also old players from the past which I'm personally happy about. Also new faces appear due to the amount of easier difficulties we can provide. Quality of modding rises in my opinion as well, but that's of course rather subjective.

I think it becomes slowly better and I wanted to mention this.
Let's keep it up. ♥

@tetsutaro: I think the difficulty problem has become also a bit better.
(that's just my opinion about the current situation)

I wouldn't actually say that. That goes for you and aabc only, I haven't noticed any increased (actually, or any) activity of the taiko modding community at all.

As I said, it is only my own opinion. I might be wrong, yep.
But compared to a few months ago, there is a change. Especially in the modding process. We have more players who converted to modders and a increase of modding queue is also seeable.
The amount of ranked maps changed a bit as well.