Take a good hard look, because this is the enemy. Don't you ever forget...
With Cookie Monster getting ranked, I've been hearing a lot about farm maps being bad recently, so why don't we stop for a second and look at this troubling state of affairs?
Ephemeral wrote:
We've seen widespread refinement of the 'modern' beatmapping style to what is arguably approaching its absolute limits. Quality has no longer become synonymous with actual quality, but instead a strict adherence to a particular mapping style that is thoroughly encouraged by a number of factors - familiarity and pp both among them.
Let's summarize!ProfessionalBox wrote:
As long as current pp system is in place there is no actual incentive to try being innovative and branch out to map more unique and varied song categories/mapping techniques but instead grab more "fame" and "recognition" in the community by mapping maps for the masses to play and grind.
- Mappers care most about popularity
- "The masses" care most about ranks
- The easiest way to get popularity is to appeal to "the masses", aka mapping pp-maps
- This is bad
Some people seem to share the delusion that the biggest reason why the meta shifted towards simple jumpy patterns is that pp gave people the "wrong" incentives. What even is a "wrong incentive?" Can they actually back this claim up? Or is it just a belief they want it to be true because they think that people should and would appreciate their "artistry" more if only it wasn't for that damn ppv2?
Let me ask you a question, what do you expect to happen if pp was removed tomorrow, what maps would be in high demand?
Well, let me give it to you straight. What was the map that the got most votes by a large margin when THE COMMUNITY voted on loved maps the for first time?
That's right, a "bad, un-imaginative and boring" jumpy map. Oops!
Did it ever occur to any of you that pp-mapping could also be in high demand because it is intrinsically fun to play?
Panda Eyes & Teminite - Highscore has been in the top10 or top5 most played maps for what.. a year now? Did you ever notice that it's actually not a pp-map? It's 4 minutes long, damn it. The reason why it's popular is not that you can easily rank up with it, it's because to most players, simple jumpy patterns and nice generic music are more fun than gimmicky borderline unplayable slider gimmicks.
But it's a boring map and people only play it for pp, right?
People actually seek out simple jumpy maps even when they are removed from pp.
Big surprise. Who would have thought that stuff you can read is more fun than stuff you can not read? Who would have thought that hitting jumps feels satisfying?
That's madness Railey, next thing you'll tell me that the majority of the playerbase isn't actually in the top10.000.
I know you're all really serious about fixing the current state of things, but shouldn't you understand where we're at before you try and fix things?
You're all out of touch, THAT'S the thing that needs the most "fixing" at the moment. Most players don't give a shit about the history of mapping, gimmicks or artistry. You just need to go in-game once and it becomes abundantly obvious.
Any takers for old AR8-style maps or Hollow Wings? Gimmick-lobby? "I'm just here to look at art"-lobby? No?
What do all these players have in common? They enjoy the simple stuff.
Any thoughts about how to serve all these people, whose existence you just overlooked?
"we need more hard maps and more variety"
"there seems to be an overall agreement that there is not enough diversity in the ranked beatmap section"
yeah sure, if you ask all your mapping-community buddies. Now excuse me, I'm off playing that old Miiro-set#6. These maps are actually fun as hell. I wish there'd be more of them, and I mean that.
Actually fuck all of that, who cares about the 10.000 people that enjoy pp-jumps and ranks, as long as Azer likes my map I've done a good job.
Hey, at least you're being honest now! Time to put that map of yours in a museum.
ProfessionalBox wrote:
I know that this turned out to be more of a rant against why pp is ruining mapping but essentially I feel like this is something that needs to be addressed before mapping can turn a new leaf and start heading towards another direction.
ProfessionalBox, I really hate to break it to you. You're living in a bubble. It's time to wake up before you and your buddies accidentally suffocate, because you are so busy vocally agreeing with one another that you forget to breathe.
But it gets worse, far worse.
Here we have osu's most popular mapper telling people that the most important quality of a map isn't, in fact, how much you enjoy it.
I'm busy reflecting songs, don't ask me questions about enjoyment
This is what's wrong with mapping: Some people think that the player's enjoyment of the game is not the thing that's central to mapping. The single most important thing isn't whether you like the map or not, it's whether or not the map satisfies rigid yet ill-defined artistic standards. And people wonder why it took 71 years to get Tomei Elegy through the ranking-process, even though the community was practically begging for the map to get ranked already.
"jumpy maps are bad, unimaginative and boring!"
"pp only invites players to farm, playing shit maps while ignoring all the good maps out there!"
"pp killed mapping!"
Can I just say that I love playing High Free Spirits and other TV-sized farm maps? The times where I farmed AR8+DT to get up to 4000 pp were the best times I've ever had?
No, that's not what you should be enjoying, these are pp-maps which means that they are bad. Now play Tengaku 5 more times, it'll teach you to appreciate what's truly valuable.
If you really think that pp ruined mapping, let me set you straight:
pp was never the problem, the problem is you. You don't care enough about what people enjoy.
My post was sparked by this thread, but the topics discussed there differ from the topics I touched on here. As you can tell, I'm mostly concerned about the divide between mappers and the playerbase. Quotes were taken from the linked thread. That is all.