Hey there! There are a few things I've been wondering about for a little while now, and figured this would be the best place to get some answers.

The main thing I've been thinking about is what difficulties everyone starts out with, and why. I've been trying to get an idea of which difficulty I should start with. I can see why starting with any difficulty might be a good idea, like starting with the hardest and simplifying, or starting with the easiest and increasing complexity.

Another is if someone who is newer to the game should really be mapping in the first place. That might sound weird, because I'm not exactly new.. But I might as well be. I can barely play any 3 star maps. The issue is that if I can't even play the maps to understand their overall structure, am I really cut out to map them? Sure I could watch some videos and edit some of the harder maps, but will I really gain the same knowledge from observing as I could from actually playing?
Most of what I try to apply to the maps I've worked on have been based on concepts I've seen used in maps that I've actually played. I have a much easier time understanding their layouts and whatnot. Even editing some harder maps I haven't been able to understand a lot of circle placements. It's really been a struggle for me haha..

Yet another would be is related to distance snap. Should new mappers always try to use this? Should they not? How often does distance snap actually cause more issues? Stuff like that. I feel like I should be using it, but based on some of the stuff I'm learning.. Maybe not so much?

And lastly.. Is it really appropriate to ask people to check their maps for possible errors here? I know I have in the past, it just doesn't seem like anyone will help much unless the song is somewhat popular or if it's asked about here. I'm assuming it's best to make sure that a map is as good as it can be before it's submitted for approval in order to save time both on your end and on any moderator's end. Am I just looking at this all wrong?

700k rank mapper here, I will answer those questions for you.

Most people will start choosing Hard or above to start with, because:
1. Most newer mappers tend to map every sound (but not in a good way) and don't care much about the difficulty in the first place. Easy and Normal will be practically impossible for them to map since simplification matters.
2. Mapping with these kind of difficulties will give you more room to practice the basic structure, rhythm... therefore will improve faster and better.

Actually not everyone can play well when they ranked their map. Kite when he rank Uta, which is 7*+, he only have plays that not even 200pp. Or more specific, Lama Poluna is a 7 digit and has a top play just only 17pp, despite of having a 6*+ map ranked. But even with those top plays, it doesn't mean they actually suck at playing, they knew the concept (and executed it pretty well), had a good aesthetic sense, knew what should be and what shouldn't be for a long time of mapping (at least a year). You're still a new mapper so you can't actually know what concept they're in, which confused you just as you stated.

And finally, just feel free to mod their maps even in the Discussion page. Despite of being famous, they're still like you, they're not perfect. However, with your current mapping skills, you should only mod their map when they give you permission (in the modding queue mostly), or they will find it annoying.

That's it for now. Good luck!

Having some playing experience does make it easier to understand stuff at first, but as Uraomote said, that doesn't mean a lot in the long run. I'd suggest starting with something you can play so you can kind of see how things work and working your way up from there. There's nothing you can't learn in mapping, so it's never too early or late to start.

Distance snap can help you make your placements make at least a bit of sense, especially if you're starting with lower diffs. That's because it enforces something called time-distance equality, which is really important for reading purposes in Easies and Normals. However, even in those diffs, if your DS value is too low it can cause issues. The importance of time-distance equality falls off a bit in Hard diffs and mostly disappears after those, so overusing distance snap at that point is an easy way to make your map bland and poorly representative of the song.

Asking for feedback is a bit tricky, especially in an environment filled with other new mappers. New mappers tend to give bad advice since they don't know any better, but since you're also new, you can't actually know whose advice is good. Personally, I don't have any motivation to give feedback on maps that are posted here anymore; they're almost always made by really new mappers, so they all have the same problems and I'll essentially just say the same thing with different examples every time.

One thing you could do is find someone whose maps you like and try asking them for feedback in-game. Lots of mappers are willing or even eager to comment on maps when asked.

It's true that you should make your map as good as you can before trying to get it ranked, but ranking is honestly worthless to think about at such an early stage. Feel free to upload/submit as many maps as you want though, it's usually the most convenient way to get your map to the people you're trying to get feedback from.

Uraomote Error wrote:

Most people will start choosing Hard or above to start with, because:
1. Most newer mappers tend to map every sound (but not in a good way) and don't care much about the difficulty in the first place. Easy and Normal will be practically impossible for them to map since simplification matters.
2. Mapping with these kind of difficulties will give you more room to practice the basic structure, rhythm... therefore will improve faster and better.

Ohh, that makes sense.. In the future, I'll probably start with hard and simplify from there. I did notice when making easier difficulties, I struggled to decide which sounds I was supposed to be focusing on.. Heck, if mapping harder difficulties can help me understand why other mappers structure maps the way they do, that would be amazing. Sometimes I can't understand which sounds maps are focusing on when it comes to harder difficulties..

Uraomote Error wrote:

Actually not everyone can play well when they ranked their map. Kite when he rank Uta, which is 7*+, he only have plays that not even 200pp. Or more specific, Lama Poluna is a 7 digit and has a top play just only 17pp, despite of having a 6*+ map ranked. But even with those top plays, it doesn't mean they actually suck at playing, they knew the concept (and executed it pretty well), had a good aesthetic sense, knew what should be and what shouldn't be for a long time of mapping (at least a year). You're still a new mapper so you can't actually know what concept they're in, which confused you just as you stated.

I suppose that also makes sense.. It seems like there's at least a little bit of music theory that needs to be taken into consideration whilst mapping. I've been trying to watch videos on a lot of different mapping concepts, but not all of them are really sticking.. Hopefully that all just comes with time haha..

Uraomote Error wrote:

And finally, just feel free to mod their maps even in the Discussion page. Despite of being famous, they're still like you, they're not perfect. However, with your current mapping skills, you should only mod their map when they give you permission (in the modding queue mostly), or they will find it annoying.

I didn't even think about that honestly.. I wasn't planning on criticizing anyone else's maps until way further along since I'm still struggling with some basic concepts. Though I guess it is sort of similar to art.. Someone who isn't an artist can still easily point out flaws within a piece.

Uraomote Error wrote:

That's it for now. Good luck!

Thank you! ♥

lewski wrote:

Having some playing experience does make it easier to understand stuff at first, but as Uraomote said, that doesn't mean a lot in the long run. I'd suggest starting with something you can play so you can kind of see how things work and working your way up from there. There's nothing you can't learn in mapping, so it's never too early or late to start.

Ahh, I didn't really think of it that way! That's encouraging.

lewski wrote:

Distance snap can help you make your placements make at least a bit of sense, especially if you're starting with lower diffs. That's because it enforces something called time-distance equality, which is really important for reading purposes in Easies and Normals. However, even in those diffs, if your DS value is too low it can cause issues. The importance of time-distance equality falls off a bit in Hard diffs and mostly disappears after those, so overusing distance snap at that point is an easy way to make your map bland and poorly representative of the song.

Good to know! I always use the ranking criteria when deciding what numbers to use (like for DS and other difficulty settings). Speaking of.. Is it really necessary to use decimals in difficulty settings? I know that there's an option to, but I don't really understand why..

lewski wrote:

Asking for feedback is a bit tricky, especially in an environment filled with other new mappers. New mappers tend to give bad advice since they don't know any better, but since you're also new, you can't actually know whose advice is good. Personally, I don't have any motivation to give feedback on maps that are posted here anymore; they're almost always made by really new mappers, so they all have the same problems and I'll essentially just say the same thing with different examples every time.

Ahh, that's understandable. Honestly I've made a few posts here about my new maps, and deleted some as well because I feel like there are so many people asking about theirs as well. It seems like it gets a bit tedious after a while.. Maybe I'll ask for more advice here once I get a bit more experience.

lewski wrote:

One thing you could do is find someone whose maps you like and try asking them for feedback in-game. Lots of mappers are willing or even eager to comment on maps when asked.

I'd love to! Though.. I honestly don't know a lot of mappers? I haven't played a wide variety of maps to be honest with you.

lewski wrote:

It's true that you should make your map as good as you can before trying to get it ranked, but ranking is honestly worthless to think about at such an early stage. Feel free to upload/submit as many maps as you want though, it's usually the most convenient way to get your map to the people you're trying to get feedback from.

The only issue is that there's a cap on how many maps you can upload.. Is that until you get one ranked? When I started mapping way back (when I started mapping ICU), there was no cap, so I didn't feel as anxious about uploading..

(Thank you two for your answers, I really appreciate it!!)

You don't really "need" decimal diff settings, especially in lower diffs. However, sometimes you may want the extra precision. For example, if you're mapping a fast song, you might feel that the note density is too high at AR9, but at the same time, AR10 might feel unnecessarily fast, so you'd use something in between.

There's actually no limit on the number of maps you can upload. The limit only takes pending maps into account, so after a map is moved to the graveyard (which happens after it hasn't been updated for a month) it no longer counts towards the limit and you can upload more maps again. I can't remember the specifics, but ranked maps and supporter increase the limit up to a cap (iirc it's 20 with supporter and 10 without it but I might be wrong about that).

lewski wrote:

You don't really "need" decimal diff settings, especially in lower diffs. However, sometimes you may want the extra precision. For example, if you're mapping a fast song, you might feel that the note density is too high at AR9, but at the same time, AR10 might feel unnecessarily fast, so you'd use something in between.

There's actually no limit on the number of maps you can upload. The limit only takes pending maps into account, so after a map is moved to the graveyard (which happens after it hasn't been updated for a month) it no longer counts towards the limit and you can upload more maps again. I can't remember the specifics, but ranked maps and supporter increase the limit up to a cap (iirc it's 20 with supporter and 10 without it but I might be wrong about that).

Ahh, okay.. Makes sense. And thank you! I probably could have looked that last one up myself now that I think about it.. Thank you!
I've been applying a bit of what you all have told me here to my maps. You've really helped a lot!