I really want to know if osu is flourishing atm or dying because it seems like the latter. Its probably not as bad as it sounds but I‘m really beginning to worry. I remember when the decision was made to make MWC7k 2v2 instead of 3v3 as it was before. Then more and more tournaments began to do this as well with a 7k world cup not even happening this year. Also in standard we see a growing number of pros quitting (Shige, (maybe) Vaxei, etc). I couldnt really find an answer to this online but this is starting to paint a picture Im not really fond of. Maybe its just because of other reasons. Often tournaments change the ruleset to make things more interesting and maybe thats because taiko and 7k are now 2v2 and maybe there just wasnt enough time to have a 7k world cup this year or maybe its still coming and we just dont know yet. The players quitting could also just be normal as no one can play forever and there are always old players quitting and new ones coming. I dont know and to my knowledge no one really knows, Im just kind of sad all this is happening and theres no information to find about it. Even if the community is not shrinking whatsoever I still feel like its not growing and thats also kinda sad.

Welp, sorry for this wall of text. Ive just been thinking alot about this in the past and just wanted to get my mind out there. Thank you for reading and I would love to hear your thoughts!

tl;dr: I feel like the community is shrinking and want to know why and if thats even the case.

i'm speaking from a side who is a less a semi-player and more a semi-mapper.

some months ago or maybe even a year ago, the osu!community was very updated with the new hot beatmaps. it was very defined. but now, i don't even know whats in the player side meta. maybe this updatedness was thanks to the youtubers of the community, especially those who post replays and moments from streams. but they've started to pop up less in the community. its was through them where osu! moments were best brought to the community. so as they start popping up less... well you know by now.

also, more on the mapper side: connected to the previous point, i don't know what's how in the ranked section anymore. and i see old mappers less and less. it's as if a new generation is pooping up, so it's all so ambiguous. there are some gems, but they've yet to pop out into the community as much as any of the old legend mappers did. another thing, i think its just me but i'm seeing seasonal wars ("war" on ranking the first map of a seasonal anime OP).

everything's less defined nowadays. it's like things are still being set up. i'm not so sure on the player base side. i think it'd be nice though for the player base side to let out more osu! streaming content. but for the mapper's side, i think that we need to wait. stuff like the monthly contests are already starting. mapper mentorship in a while. the previous meta mappers have just started getting less prominent.

I think it is growing. Just not the way you think. I rarely visit this site - only to download new beatmaps. usually i'm busy playing Osu, so i can probably imagine 80-90% of players doing the same. Still, the best idea would be to just ask peppy on twitter, or watch player counter on home page for some time like 2-3 months, this way you would be able to see the answer to your question.

osu generation gap

Well you seem to be mainly focused on mania in this context, where people mostly play other mania-like games because the mania competitive scene is just koreans getting free money and it's really hard to get better at mania without playing other games. Just because there's little to no variety in ranked maps in the higher star difficulties. So the only time ranks really shift are when new pp maps are made. And the majority of mania players love to shit on mania for this and the overall "pp system". Many even going so far as to make their own knockoff versions where they implement their own competitive scene (look at Quaver) or creating/playing private servers where a lot more high star maps are "ranked". Combine that with making it hard to really get in between the few mania beatmap nominators that exist:
community/forums/topics/298689 spoiler: there's about 10 of them
There's no incentive to start mapping mania because of this. The same people crying about the pp system being broken cry about the ranking criteria being too strict. Now I haven't delved into the mapping scene too much, but it definitely could use more incentive / help to bring newcomers into it. I honestly forgot about the whole mentorship thing as well, since that got "full" really fast and I have no clue what even became of the people that got picked to be mentored. Especially seeing how empty the BN list really is.

You can check the current qualified maps right now:
beatmapsets?s=qualified and sort them by gamemode.
You'll see catch is completely empty and mania has about 5, so only looking at this metric you can sort of tell that both catch and mania are dead/dying. Comparing it to the...35 taiko qualified maps and 35 osu-standard qualified maps.

So no I wouldn't say osu or even taiko are really dying, the player count on the front page is still climbing and increasing, it used to be 16k peaks, now there's 16k lows:


But the other 2 gamemodes are probably shrinking unless some big changes came around.
Some changes I would think of would be:
- Add ratechangers between the HalfTime (x0.75) and DoubleTime (x1.5) measurements to increase the amount of maps people can potentially play / get better with.
*Being able to play a map at x1.2 speed for example, being put under the DoubleTime leaderboard with slight reduced scoring.
*Being able to play a map at x0.8 speed for example, being put under the HalfTime leaderboard with slight increased score compared to regular HalfTime (x0.75)

- Add a money incentive to mania and catch mapping
- Make HardRock rankable and give a SLIGHT pp bonus (in mania)
- Rank more maps
- More elaborate mentorship program focused specifically on these struggling modes.
- Rank more maps
- Create a matchmaking system that let's you queue for a matchup and you get matched with someone that is also in queue around the same rank or skillset and a random map of that skillset will be started between the two. Winner gets bragging rights.

Some ideas other people mentioned:
- Add seperate leaderboards for key counts, this in turn could possibly make 10k ranked as well
Edit 1: Feature request for making 10k ranked: community/forums/topics/379786
- More Cosmetic rewards to spicen up your profile on the website AND in-game (for example a better border around your profile card when you press F9 to see players online) This could be tied with match-making as well.
Edit 2:
- Full long note / Inverse Mods that basically invert the map
- Proper dual scratch support (putting 2 keybinds on the 8th key for 7k+1, seperating from regular 8k)
- Being able to see unstable rate in multiplayer
- And if HardRock became ranked, customizable early/late hit settings for unstable rate between Easy mod and HardRock, same as with speed rating between HalfTime and DoubleTIme.
I probably forgot some things, but here's some of my intake on it