Apologies in advance if this isn't the correct section, just wanted to share some thoughts and feedback here.
Now, I'm by no means a great player so I can't speak to anything super technical in terms of mechanics and the like at the high end of the spectrum as I'm not the leaderboard type. There are however a few things I've liked and disliked with osu!lazer, as I've been playing with it the past few weeks or so. So I'm here to share those points.
The Default Skin
I really do like the default skin for lazer, at least aesthetically. It looks and sounds fantastic and gives a much better first impression over the classic skin. It's a small thing really, but I actually liked it enough to use over the skin I've used for a couple of years now. The colors are brighter and stand out much more against the typical black background, which honestly makes reading certain maps a bit easier.
However, I've noticed a couple of things that initially threw me off, and even with the limited way to fix them, some still persisted. (I'll try to find some example maps to use later if necessary, but these inconsistencies with the skin are fairly common)
I think the biggest of these is the larger circle size, which often feels inaccurate. This could possibly just be user error or some change related to hit timing, but I do find it weird that going from playing a song in classic osu to playing the same song lazer I'm somehow much less accurate overall.
I did notice that there were a lot more cases where despite the cursor being over a hit circle, attempts to hit the circle still resulted in a miss if the cursor was closer to the edge. Maybe the skin I used for a while is just smaller than normal, idk.
Next are the hit sounds themselves. While it's mitigated slightly by forcing the game to use the hit sounds of the skin only and never anything from the map, they're still inconsistent at best. For the most part with hit circles, they're a quiet but audible sound that remains fairly consistent throughout most maps. There are sections of some maps that still use a much louder hit sound, often for no apparent reason.
Sliders though, are only consistent within a map; Map to map however, they just do whatever. Sometimes there, sometimes not. Sometimes a constant high pitch sound, other times the much more tolerable sound closer to the classic skin. I'm not sure why sliders in particular need to have any variation in sound at all.
On the topic of Sliders, I do also dislike that there's nothing to visually follow on slider tracks with this skin, other than the outer boundary ring (?) generated as the slider moves along. If there is something there, it certainly doesn't stand out enough in standard play to be noticeable.
Hit Timing Changes
While overall the changes are helpful, there's really only two changes that have been noticeable to me as a more casual player. Slider Changes and change to prevent "note lock". Both of these have been net positive changes after getting used to them, though there was definitely a break-in period.
Even with classic Osu, Sliders have always been a thing that gave me issues. Though in classic, it tends to be more the rapid series of kick sliders(?) that tend to trip me up or break combos. I've had much fewer issues with that in lazer. However, There have been more issues with actually tracking and determining slider speed, which is more a skin issue than a result of the change.
Now the fix towards preventing note lock has been the most noticeable. It's actually made more apparent to me that note lock actually causes me more issues as a casual player than it likely would someone much higher up in the rank. I've been able to pass more maps, and definitively harder maps than I have been able to on classic. As examples take a map that has a "death stream" such the older Pretender map, or a high BPM map like Scarlet Rose. Previously I wouldn't have been able to dream of having any chance of passing these maps, let alone consistently. Now with that change alone, I can actually fairly consistently pass them, even with my less precise timing.
Needless to say, changes in those directions have felt fantastic to me as a more casual player.
UI/UX
One thing that did take me a moment to figure out when first launching lazer was the new song select. It wasn't immediately clear there was a way to start a song without clicking the Osu icon in the lower right. As the difficulties dropping down just isn't there unless you manually pick a song, which lead to a bit of confusion initially. I also don't recall it highlighting the currently selected difficult as classic does, which is probably why that happened at all. Just seems like something that could very easily throw off a brand new player especially if they were to start on classic, and transfer things over later as I had.
The only other thing that feels off is the Options menu, where in most/all cases, checking a box means turning something off and unchecking it means it's on. While there's the little green indicator that does help bring some clarity to this, it's just.. unintuitive. Maybe just a personal thing, but the checkbox-like area conveys enough information, if it were changed to where being lit up meant enabled, while unlit was disabled. The extra clarity of the green indicator is still nice, just feels misplaced and out of the way, since it and the checkbox are on opposite sides of the option name.
Think that's about all I have for the moment. Not sure if anyone else has noticed the same things, or had similar thoughts at all.
Now, I'm by no means a great player so I can't speak to anything super technical in terms of mechanics and the like at the high end of the spectrum as I'm not the leaderboard type. There are however a few things I've liked and disliked with osu!lazer, as I've been playing with it the past few weeks or so. So I'm here to share those points.
The Default Skin
I really do like the default skin for lazer, at least aesthetically. It looks and sounds fantastic and gives a much better first impression over the classic skin. It's a small thing really, but I actually liked it enough to use over the skin I've used for a couple of years now. The colors are brighter and stand out much more against the typical black background, which honestly makes reading certain maps a bit easier.
However, I've noticed a couple of things that initially threw me off, and even with the limited way to fix them, some still persisted. (I'll try to find some example maps to use later if necessary, but these inconsistencies with the skin are fairly common)
I think the biggest of these is the larger circle size, which often feels inaccurate. This could possibly just be user error or some change related to hit timing, but I do find it weird that going from playing a song in classic osu to playing the same song lazer I'm somehow much less accurate overall.
I did notice that there were a lot more cases where despite the cursor being over a hit circle, attempts to hit the circle still resulted in a miss if the cursor was closer to the edge. Maybe the skin I used for a while is just smaller than normal, idk.
Next are the hit sounds themselves. While it's mitigated slightly by forcing the game to use the hit sounds of the skin only and never anything from the map, they're still inconsistent at best. For the most part with hit circles, they're a quiet but audible sound that remains fairly consistent throughout most maps. There are sections of some maps that still use a much louder hit sound, often for no apparent reason.
Sliders though, are only consistent within a map; Map to map however, they just do whatever. Sometimes there, sometimes not. Sometimes a constant high pitch sound, other times the much more tolerable sound closer to the classic skin. I'm not sure why sliders in particular need to have any variation in sound at all.
On the topic of Sliders, I do also dislike that there's nothing to visually follow on slider tracks with this skin, other than the outer boundary ring (?) generated as the slider moves along. If there is something there, it certainly doesn't stand out enough in standard play to be noticeable.
Hit Timing Changes
While overall the changes are helpful, there's really only two changes that have been noticeable to me as a more casual player. Slider Changes and change to prevent "note lock". Both of these have been net positive changes after getting used to them, though there was definitely a break-in period.
Even with classic Osu, Sliders have always been a thing that gave me issues. Though in classic, it tends to be more the rapid series of kick sliders(?) that tend to trip me up or break combos. I've had much fewer issues with that in lazer. However, There have been more issues with actually tracking and determining slider speed, which is more a skin issue than a result of the change.
Now the fix towards preventing note lock has been the most noticeable. It's actually made more apparent to me that note lock actually causes me more issues as a casual player than it likely would someone much higher up in the rank. I've been able to pass more maps, and definitively harder maps than I have been able to on classic. As examples take a map that has a "death stream" such the older Pretender map, or a high BPM map like Scarlet Rose. Previously I wouldn't have been able to dream of having any chance of passing these maps, let alone consistently. Now with that change alone, I can actually fairly consistently pass them, even with my less precise timing.
Needless to say, changes in those directions have felt fantastic to me as a more casual player.
UI/UX
One thing that did take me a moment to figure out when first launching lazer was the new song select. It wasn't immediately clear there was a way to start a song without clicking the Osu icon in the lower right. As the difficulties dropping down just isn't there unless you manually pick a song, which lead to a bit of confusion initially. I also don't recall it highlighting the currently selected difficult as classic does, which is probably why that happened at all. Just seems like something that could very easily throw off a brand new player especially if they were to start on classic, and transfer things over later as I had.
The only other thing that feels off is the Options menu, where in most/all cases, checking a box means turning something off and unchecking it means it's on. While there's the little green indicator that does help bring some clarity to this, it's just.. unintuitive. Maybe just a personal thing, but the checkbox-like area conveys enough information, if it were changed to where being lit up meant enabled, while unlit was disabled. The extra clarity of the green indicator is still nice, just feels misplaced and out of the way, since it and the checkbox are on opposite sides of the option name.
Think that's about all I have for the moment. Not sure if anyone else has noticed the same things, or had similar thoughts at all.