After years of discussions from the beginning of osu!mania internally and publicly, the osu!mania mapper community came to this consensus that can best enhance the osu!mania experience. This is why I'm here to propose an amendment on making osu!mania an exception to this clause, or to say, to allow hitnormal.wav silenced.Ranking Criteria wrote:
Hitsounds from notes and sliders must be audible. ...
To clarify this, osu!mania mappers MUST HITSOUND their maps PROPERLY and to at least make they being frequently heard, but they can silence some of them when they think completely silence do the best and any audible sound are too noisy.Ranking Criteria wrote:
Hitsounds from notes and sliders must be audible. (Osu!Mania is an exception) ...
I think related people have already read too much of these arguments. Starting from urge of completely remove hitsounds, things have move forwarded (and changed) a lot, so I'll still list reasons here (also for newcomers). To see the detailed discussion, be sure to visit these links.
t/171350
t/171647
t/131455
t/128069
t/127565
Why we should amend this?
(1) Osu!mania is a music-playing simulation game, which means the background music AND the hitsounds is considered as a whole to be the music being played. (Which is different from osu! standard, where hitsounds act as an audio feedback but not a part of the music.) This is how keysound maps work.
(2) Since osu!mania is multi-columned, and most hitsounds are the same, hitsound acting as the role of audio feedback provider in osu! standard doesn't work well in osu!mania when you can still hear a clear sound (or two) but don't know what you did wrong. Players use video and tactile feedback instead when playing osu!mania, extremely on non-keysound maps.
(3) Most players (about 80%) vote for silence in a poll, concerning disturbing hitsounds filling the whole song which ruin their gameplay. Furthermore, a higher percentage of players I interviewed say they just use default silenced skin or close SE completely to avoid being disturbed. When players find hitsounds disturbing, the mapper's work of proper hitsounds are wasted.
(4) When hitsounds like clap or whistle works as an enhancement to the music, it works pretty fine and can make the map better. This is the consensus which had been met after long discussions - but no one find good on putting it anywhere. Actually, the players' feedback centers on audible hitsounds on long chord rushes and other similar patterns representing instrumental sounds which they found it unnecessary. Songs may still contain vocals and drum beats (and more) to be hitsounded.
So what do you think?
