agree with uber, clayton and io wholeheartedly
i. did you come to osu expecting a certain song with low difficulties? if yes you probably wouldnt be playing now because not every song people come to play (especially popular western songs on a very western-centric game) are even mapped, let alone ranked with low difficulties. Removing the opportunity for beginners to play certain songs is not really a valid point because you could argue that opportunity did not exist in the first place for 99% of songs, nobody comes to osu with rigid ideas of the songs they want to play and if they are not available they leave; and even if it were the case it would just be natural selection at that point and that is not the mentality needed for a rhythm game.
ii. i believe some spreads just seem very bloated or are unnecessary, i feel like we should be promoting foward-thinking in mapping which is why spreads are a massive burden. there is no reason to have a 2* on a 9* set because;
1) that map is not targetted at ALL for that level of difficulty, arguably the map was made to challenge and not accomodate
2) if a song is able to fit and be represented accurately by a 9*, arguably there will be a significant amount of absent song representation on a 2* that will start to balance on a thread of logic, it eventually just won't make sense
perhaps we could tweak spreads to make them fit 'brackets' of difficulty instead of specific difficulty requirements (sort of similar to quaver), for example if you had a 5* map it perhaps would require a normal, but a 7* would only need an insane. we can still have accessability for the right crowds and for the right intentions this way.
NOTE: if we all stopped mapping low diffs from today there is still enough content to make it to an intermediate level (4*~), we should really be focusing on these set-centre core diffs rather than lowest diffs because realistically you spend a week on normal difficulties and move on, that journey off of insanes is the majority of your osu career, these diffs are arguably more important to keep.
normal difficulties generally garner higher playcounts on certain types of maps (e.g anime tv size maps), i dont understand who sputnik's normal diff is appealing to with that genre of song which is obviously not targetted at players of that level (and this goes for more maps/songs that are styled like this and are even longer)
just my two pence ^^
i. did you come to osu expecting a certain song with low difficulties? if yes you probably wouldnt be playing now because not every song people come to play (especially popular western songs on a very western-centric game) are even mapped, let alone ranked with low difficulties. Removing the opportunity for beginners to play certain songs is not really a valid point because you could argue that opportunity did not exist in the first place for 99% of songs, nobody comes to osu with rigid ideas of the songs they want to play and if they are not available they leave; and even if it were the case it would just be natural selection at that point and that is not the mentality needed for a rhythm game.
ii. i believe some spreads just seem very bloated or are unnecessary, i feel like we should be promoting foward-thinking in mapping which is why spreads are a massive burden. there is no reason to have a 2* on a 9* set because;
1) that map is not targetted at ALL for that level of difficulty, arguably the map was made to challenge and not accomodate
2) if a song is able to fit and be represented accurately by a 9*, arguably there will be a significant amount of absent song representation on a 2* that will start to balance on a thread of logic, it eventually just won't make sense
perhaps we could tweak spreads to make them fit 'brackets' of difficulty instead of specific difficulty requirements (sort of similar to quaver), for example if you had a 5* map it perhaps would require a normal, but a 7* would only need an insane. we can still have accessability for the right crowds and for the right intentions this way.
NOTE: if we all stopped mapping low diffs from today there is still enough content to make it to an intermediate level (4*~), we should really be focusing on these set-centre core diffs rather than lowest diffs because realistically you spend a week on normal difficulties and move on, that journey off of insanes is the majority of your osu career, these diffs are arguably more important to keep.
normal difficulties generally garner higher playcounts on certain types of maps (e.g anime tv size maps), i dont understand who sputnik's normal diff is appealing to with that genre of song which is obviously not targetted at players of that level (and this goes for more maps/songs that are styled like this and are even longer)
just my two pence ^^