Hello everyone!

So, is it just me or the game feels the emptiest it has ever been?

I started playing in November 2017, and the game was never too popular to begin with, but nowadays it feels like there's barely anybody left. Ranked maps with only 3 scores after 24 hours, very slow rank decline (at least IMO) and many of the people who used to be active in the community aren't anymore, but there isn't many new people either.

Remember in 2018 I used to see a lot more activity in my national facebook an discord osu!/CTB groups, now it feels like there all gone and lost interest. Nobody ever takes the higher ranking in my country spots because once again, barely anyone plays, myself included. This also applys -although to a smaller scale- to the Global leaderboards.

What's your take on this everyone?

I don't think currently this is the most dead it has ever been, I think it's not the greatest time either
at least for the spanish community (de españa en si, no hispanohablante en general), 2013 was the worst year by far, I once with a couple of friends did a document, that had the best 3/5 scores per year, from 2010, to 2021, and we literally had almost no data on 2013, not any top national player played that year, and the scores that had to be selected were way below the average for the other years

I've also heard the community from 2017/2018 was more toxic, most people that I try to invite to my discord from those years claim that they had very bad relations with the community overall, and the fact that it was toxic is soemthing that i've heard repeated over and over again by a lot of different players

we currently have less active and good players than we used to, that's a fact, it's been hard trying to resurrect and keep afloat the community, but i honestly prefer to have a smaller ocmmunity more than a toxic one

If what i've heard about 2017/2018 community is true, it probably just selfdestructed itself, and now that there isnt a influx of new players, I don't think it's helpinh the case

I feel the low influx is because the gamemode itself doesn't have the same recognision as something like mania that came from stepmania, or taiko that came from the taiko no tatsujin series, which is pretty masive in japan, and the fact it's percived as a "minigame" and a "meme mode" doesn't help either

I feel most new players don't really try to play all 4 gamemodes to see which they enjoy, and while that has never really been the case, (Except when they actually got released), the community response to switching to a mode like taiko or ctb has become more hostile

I feel that there are a lot of factors of the game that most people don't explore, like medals for example, you don't really see people grinding those, the same applies for trying other gamemodes I feel, which is sad

I hope the explosion of osu!standard in popularity and the influx of people trying mania thanks to frday night funkin will negate that hostility, but yeah, I don't really think we can really do much about the community more than trying to keep it as welcoming as possible, but it seems we still have a long way until new players decide to try ctb and taiko

edit: based yuu koito pfp, bloom into you best anime/manga/ln

I do think this myself but also wonder if it could just be bias due to hanging around older communities. Older players tend to stick together but also stop playing over time. New players end up making their own communities separate from the older players and so from the older players perspective there is nobody new playing the game and the veterans are slowly quitting.

Looking at maps I think there are more maps being ranked recently than in the past. As far as mentioning scores set on these new maps I would say the issue has been and always has been the mid-level difficulties. You'll see tons of scores on the Cups and Salads and a large number of plays on Overdose+ but almost nobody plays the Platters or Rains.

I think CTB has always had an issue where we have a lot of casual low level players and then a group of dedicated high level players yet it seems very few of the casual players ever seek to go up to the high levels. This means that we end up having nobody playing these mid level maps and also makes a larger disconnect between the low level and the high level. It also means that there are very few multiplayer lobbies for these mid level players leaving them only with solo play which not everyone prefers to play that way.

Edgar_Figaro wrote:

I think CTB has always had an issue where we have a lot of casual low level players and then a group of dedicated high level players yet it seems very few of the casual players ever seek to go up to the high levels. This means that we end up having nobody playing these mid level maps and also makes a larger disconnect between the low level and the high level. It also means that there are very few multiplayer lobbies for these mid level players leaving them only with solo play which not everyone prefers to play that way.

Yes I feel this is an issue for new players where they can't find multiplayer room that play salad-cup difficulty. I tried to create auto host rotate room with that criteria but it received low attendance number. I want to try another way where this room can choose (manually or automatically) either osu! or osu!catch maps with low star rating. That might give me one of these things, the room might get high attention on osu! maps but then low during osu!catch maps or the room might get high attention on osu! and osu!catch maps (hopefully). Either way I would have encouraged them play osu!catch at least once.

nah

when a map under 1star gets ranked,look at how fast it will get filled

Its as dead as its been since 2016+ , a quick count right now at UTC+1 (00:23) we have 228 CTB players online and at most like 3000 players that actively play a few ctb maps a Month. And with the move of most of the community to Discord-Servers Forum and Ingame-communication died down

Theres quite a lot of factors, since we get a shitton more maps there is barely interest to touch all the diffs because it just takes to much time to keep up, and as said before we mostly have casual players that don't care to play harder stuff and a small group of very active pro's or Rank/Score/PP-Farmers

Compared to 2010-2014 that seemed like a impossibilty, back then even the most boring convert would atleast have its top 50 filled within a day or two. Now you see 2-4month old mapsets where some of the diffs barely have a top 10

I'm suprised our mapping community is still dedicated enough to get out a bunch of maps every other day. because it feels like there is also just a small dedicated group of like 50 Mappers & Modders and barely any growth.

When I started playing it was indeed more popular, the leaderboards were always full in less than one month in basically every difficulty no matter if the map was a convert or not, now, I've been seeing this happening only in catch maps at a slower rate.

I didn't involve much with the community till I came back in 2018 so I can't tell much how was the catch scene back then, but what I did notice is that the mode was way less played than it was when I started, that continues till now.

its slower then most years. Not completely dead though

Yes and no, depends on what factors you are looking at.

Tournament + mapping scene is fairly active. Back then the only significant tournaments were like AxS and CTBI outside of CWC but now there are many other options that give badges (4CWC, 3CWC, 4DPT, CMT, countless regional tournaments) and many catch specific maps both for both beginners and end game players get ranked constantly.

The community is fairly active in certain discord servers and twitter but not so much in forums or in-game but that's a matter of evolving with the times. Even standard has a decline in the activity of those two platforms even if not as great as ctb. Similar thing with spectators.

There is a noticeable decline in the number of scores on invididual map difficulty leaderboards especially on converts beginning from 3 stars or so and upwards. This can largely be attributed to a shift in the meta since the past and the fact that more and more new players are not playing converts in favour of learning specifics. The only players interested in playing converts nowadays are either masochists or score/leaderboard farmers. Even so, there is little to no incentive to go out of your way to play mid to high level converts because the pp given is usually minimal (minus a few maps) and unless your scores are on certain very difficult converts they'll mostly go unnoticed. You can still farm leaderboards and even score by just playing <4 star maps at a high volume.

I don't know where I was going with this but I got distracted halfway through my writing and lost my train of thought. Seeing as I wrote a lot I'll just post what I already have.

Zephirine wrote:

The only players interested in playing converts nowadays are either masochists or score/leaderboard farmers.

Guess I'm a masochist

Sheepo wrote:

Zephirine wrote:

The only players interested in playing converts nowadays are either masochists or score/leaderboard farmers.

Guess I'm a masochist

nah I Think everyone except pp farmers are playing convert still

Patatitta wrote:

Sheepo wrote:

Zephirine wrote:

The only players interested in playing converts nowadays are either masochists or score/leaderboard farmers.

Guess I'm a masochist

nah I Think everyone except pp farmers are playing convert still

you have yet to see 4 digit pp farmers

pk kkr toho 999 wrote:

Patatitta wrote:

Sheepo wrote:

Zephirine wrote:

The only players interested in playing converts nowadays are either masochists or score/leaderboard farmers.

Guess I'm a masochist

nah I Think everyone except pp farmers are playing convert still

you have yet to see 4 digit pp farmers

yeah you can farm early stuff like TTFAF but it's more common to do something like vajurada than a 5 star convert

I think this varies a lot from country to country. The Belgian community for example hasn't had as much activity as it's having right now, like, ever.
Ofc we are a small country and only had like 10 active players to begin with, but I feel like this year is a pretty good ctb year for our country in terms of new players joining.
Can't really speak for the community as a whole, as I haven't really paid attention to it

ElPolloOficial wrote:

Hello everyone!

So, is it just me or the game feels the emptiest it has ever been?

I started playing in November 2017, and the game was never too popular to begin with, but nowadays it feels like there's barely anybody left. Ranked maps with only 3 scores after 24 hours, very slow rank decline (at least IMO) and many of the people who used to be active in the community aren't anymore, but there isn't many new people either.

Remember in 2018 I used to see a lot more activity in my national facebook an discord osu!/CTB groups, now it feels like there all gone and lost interest. Nobody ever takes the higher ranking in my country spots because once again, barely anyone plays, myself included. This also applys -although to a smaller scale- to the Global leaderboards.

What's your take on this everyone?

I left thats why

A very interesting topic, I remember that in 2011 and the players were quite active, in the summer of 2012 was much more active than in 48 hours or less the ranking was filled with 50 players, in 2014 stopped playing actively, so I don't know what happened from 2014 onwards or for what reasons the CTB community stopped being active, but when I returned in February 2022, I have noticed that almost no one sees themselves in the rankings, I mean the difficulties of 4 stars, and if there are 6 or 7 players in the beatmap rankings, they are the same players, but in the CTB beatmaps is where I see more activity, what I have seen is after being absent for 8 years, the level of play of the players from community is much higher now than it was in 2012, 2013 and 2014.

Convert maps get less plays because a lot of people refuse to play them compared to specifics.

Honestly, I think the difficulty gap is the largest issue with Osu! Catch. I'm rank 39,000 and I haven't even beaten anything past a 2.5 star, that speaks volumes. The second the red fruit is introduced in beat maps I feel like a lot of people don't care to play anymore (and I really feel that way as well). It puts everything you learned while starting and turns it 180. I feel myself worrying about where the red fruits are over going with the rhythm of the song. I'm still playing because it adds an interesting challenge and I enjoy it, but I often find myself not wanting to continue sometimes (especially since the fruit is red, and red to me means don't touch). I don't think Osu! Catch is doomed, or never going to be popular again, but I think it needs a rework of some kind, I just don't know what that would entail.

_mateo wrote:

I'm rank 39,000 and I haven't even beaten anything past a 2.5 star, that speaks volumes.

It's a lot easier to gain ranks in Catch than it is for standard. I haven't gotten a single 300 pp play yet I'm nearly in the top 2000 globally. While people around my rank in standard have 500/600 pp plays.

_mateo wrote:

The second the red fruit is introduced in beat maps I feel like a lot of people don't care to play anymore (and I really feel that way as well). It puts everything you learned while starting and turns it 180.

And I think this is the explanation for what I said above. Once people start seeing hyperfruits, they either get really scared of them, or simply just struggle to master them. This is why you increase a hell of a lot of ranks once you start FCing maps with lots of hyperfruits in them.