I personally find very hard to judge the timing in between notes with the arrows skin, they also leave the screen very busy all the time.
Isn't it better to have more space in between the notes? Why do so many people use it? Am I missing something? haha

It's all up to preference, I prefer arrows, some people like circles, others like bars and diamonds. You can increase spaces in-between notes by increasing scroll speed, and most arrow players have a higher scroll speed because of this. There's no inherit advantage or disadvantage based on the type of skin you use, its more about what you find appealing and easy to play with.

People who use the arrow skins have likely played DDR/Stepmania and are used to it by now.

MBatisti wrote:

I personally find very hard to judge the timing in between notes with the arrows skin, they also leave the screen very busy all the time.
Isn't it better to have more space in between the notes? Why do so many people use it? Am I missing something? haha

Arrows in stepmania are color coded by meters (1/2nd note, 1/4th note, etc) to allow players to tell spacing. The arrows reading transfers from stepmania and they are used to looking at note spacing relative to other notes as a fallback skill to tell the timing between them.

Variko wrote:

People who use the arrow skins have likely played DDR/Stepmania and are used to it by now.

This is the correct answer for most top players who have come from StepMania. I wanted to make sure that my osu!mania setup is as similar to my StepMania setup as possible, and using an arrow-based noteskin is part of ensuring that my o!m setup is similar to my SM setup.

abraker wrote:

Arrows in stepmania are color coded by meters (1/2nd note, 1/4th note, etc) to allow players to tell spacing. The arrows reading transfers from stepmania and they are used to looking at note spacing relative to other notes as a fallback skill to tell the timing between them.

I find note spacing to be extremely hard to differentiate without snap colours. I assume what you mean is that using an arrow-based noteskin when you have used arrow-based noteskins from the start is the best decision because of how you might've built up some familiarity with how spacing works, but I feel that you may be overstating the level of familiarity. You are certainly right that it would be better for those players to use arrow-based noteskins based on your reason, but there is still a lot of orientation required to actually discern between different types of note spacing. Players who use snap colours end up being heavily reliant on snap colours. If you take away that feature, it becomes significantly harder for those players to process patterns finely.

Yvorshire wrote:

There's no inherit advantage or disadvantage based on the type of skin you use, its more about what you find appealing and easy to play with.

This is a misconception. When it comes to processing patterning of very high rhythmic density (chords per second), noteskins that is generally thin (e.g. bars) are inherently better than other noteskins due to the amount of space that a bar takes. Many top players process patterns at very high rhythmic densities through negative space reading: the technique of discerning long blank spaces in a pattern to process the pattern entirely. This makes sense given that finding the blank spaces in something is inherently easier than processing the presence of notes when the rhythmic density of a pattern is so high (you are more likely to expect notes to be present than not).

Bars are slightly inferior to "fatter" noteskins when it comes to positive space reading (which tends to be utilised more often with patterns of lower rhythmic density for the opposite reason), but a slight reduction in ability to process patterns through positive space reading shouldn't be enough to deter people to utilise bars for negative space reading. If you read through positive space only, you are better off using a fatter noteskin (or at least a noteskin that doesn't take much of a player's screen). I used to play with larger notes for that reason, but I did notice that my stream ability (which has an extremely high rhythmic density) was considerably lower than others around my skill level.

Most players who read with negative space reading but stuck with errors are using an arrow-based noteskin that maximises the amount of blank space (DivideByZero) without changing the shape of the noteskin. They have not switched to bars because of the amount of time it would take for them to adapt to bars to the same level of proficiency as they have with arrows. The best alternative is to use an arrow-based noteskin with features that made bars good in the first place.

I read downscroll bars with flashlight in o!m and upscroll arrows with no vision mods in sm. Its totally possible to learn to read pretty much anything proficiently, so it totally comes.down to preference imo. The advantages/disadvantages of different skins are pretty minor overall.

Bobbias wrote:

I read downscroll bars with flashlight in o!m and upscroll arrows with no vision mods in sm. Its totally possible to learn to read pretty much anything proficiently, so it totally comes.down to preference imo. The advantages/disadvantages of different skins are pretty minor overall.

I feel that the ability to learn something to proficiency is a bit of a moot point; while it's certainly possible to utilise certain types of reading at a masterful level with "sub-optimal" noteskins, it takes far more time to actually reach that particular level of competence in that technique in the first place.

A comparison would be minimising the finger distance that it takes for you to register inputs. A MX Cherry Brown switch will be superior to a MX Cherry Red because the former has a tactile bump at its actuation point but the latter does not, but you can still minimise the distance that it takes for you to register an input on a red switch keyboard. The problem is that the latter would take far more time and effort due to its lack of a tactile cue. It's far better to utilise something that takes less effort to master than to utilise something else that takes more effort to master and yet yield the same results.

I do agree that the differences between noteskins are minor in the grand scheme of things, but I think that those differences get magnified at very high levels of proficiency. I suppose that was a mistake on my end: I didn't denote that these differences will be most significant at top-tier levels of play.

Shoegazer wrote:

You are certainly right that it would be better for those players to use arrow-based noteskins based on your reason, but there is still a lot of orientation required to actually discern between different types of note spacing. Players who use snap colours end up being heavily reliant on snap colours. If you take away that feature, it becomes significantly harder for those players to process patterns finely.

I guess I did overestimate how easily players can transfer to something without snap colours. I guess learning to read bars is much harder than learning to read without snap colours, so players just stick with arrows and deal with it?

abraker wrote:

I guess I did overestimate how easily players can transfer to something without snap colours. I guess learning to read bars is much harder than learning to read without snap colours, so players just stick with arrows and deal with it?

Correct.

Yeah, learning to read without snap colors is generally a more minor issue. I had no real difficulty in learning to read timing when I switched from stepmania to o2jam, but learning to read downscrooll and bars (at the same time) was a much bigger hurdle. Of course, that much difference made it essentially something I had to learn from scratch again, but I honestly always found reading timing to be the least difficult part of that transition.