Shiirn wrote:

The quality standard isn't the problem. It's that people expect all mapping to adhere to their individual standards of quality, namely in terms of aesthetics. This creates an oppresive atmosphere as every new mapper needs to learn all of these fairly inconsequential rules and still they face discord and disappointment.

Intrinsically, the main issue with mapping is making sure that it makes sense within itself. That is to say, that it is logically consistent within its own rules. A mapper will try to provide an experience for the player, ideally, with the end result being that the player has enjoyed the challenge or immersion the map provided.

This experience is largely unrelated to the actual aesthetic quality of the map, for better or worse. The obsession with map quality in the modern age has largely been misrepresented, what it actually is, is an obsession with map aesthetics. These can easily be confused, after all - they're both very similar at a glance. But the current setup of qualification, combined with an exploitable score system, has lead inevitably to the 'gaming' of both systems - and as such, a very specific style that is both highly efficient but produces the best results has become wildly prevalent for so long that any new mappers and modders start to believe that this is simply "how maps are meant to be". It's the same sort of educational system that is toxic without anyone even noticing it.

The fact that this style is aesthetically very neat and polished is probably an outright coincidence - large 1/2 spacing in "instinctive" jumping angles leaves maps being very easy to follow no matter what the bpm, and to an extent, no matter what the rhythm. But, as I'm sure everyone has realized at this point, this comes at the detriment of creative impressions of what the music is actually trying to do or say.

How can this be fixed? Well, I'm in no place to really place suggestions, but any sort of reasonable person would look at the source causes - The problem right now is that mapping quality is subjective and aesthetic demands are sometimes confusing, and, between different BN/QATs, wildly different. This means that the qualification phase is a time of tension and fear for both mappers and modders, as a sufficiently disgruntled individual (or portion of the community!) can utilize their own impressions to bring up enough issues to DQ a map. This has happened more in the past seven months i've been back than I care to count, and not just to me, I've done it myself to bring down maps that were of actually questionable quality but were not definitively unrankable.

In layman's terms, the current qualification system encourages people to "throw the book" at them.

Letting up aesthetic demands in favor of actual playability or consistency concerns (because, to an extent, consistency IS important! but aesthetic consistency is not, just click and relative spacing consistency) can eventually solve the problem on its own, as new mappers learn to not take the oppressive atmosphere as being "normal".

Xexxar wrote:

The problem isn't the quality we demand out of new mappers, but the lack of resources for them to improve to meet it. Specifically, there needs to be more capability for them to check if what they're doing is sufficient, and if not, how they can improve. Right now, most BNs aren't going to bother checking someone's first map if it isn't quite up to par simply because of the time required to help them improve not only the map, but their sense of mapping as a whole.

In terms of solutions, having better written rules and possible video tutorials for new mappers to improve their ability and compare with would allow for quicker development. Of course, they're still going to need one-on-one's with skilled mappers to learn from, but this would at least somewhat alleviate the problem. Specifically, things like aesthetics need much more explanation as to what is "correct".

In regards to what Shiirn said, I agree that the inconsistency in aesthetic standards is a problem, but i personally believe that instead of not caring about them, there should be more universal rules on the standard of quality. Things should make sense geometrically and have their position justified by the location of other notes. In other words, if a map obey's this then aesthetically it should be acceptable.

And obviously, adding ways to motivate BNs to check noobs maps and uhh... oh yeah adding more BNs would also be an effective way to support new mappers!