Just started playing osu!mania recently and I was thinking about its relationship with other games such as StepMania.

How do you see osu!mania in relation to other similar games such as the ever-popular StepMania, Beatmania, DJMax, o2jam, and others? Do you feel that osu!mania has a future as popular as these titles in their respective heydays? What do you predict osu!mania's future will hold for the game mode as it stands on its own and alongside osu!'s main attraction, Standard mode?

Share your thoughts, I'm interested!

osu!mania strengths compared to other games:
- servers are always online + good multiplayer room support
- with the right resources, it's possible to quickly convert every single chart from any other game into o!m as long as the key mode is supported
- the game is pretty stable and doesn't crash often. loading times are very short for both menus and charts
- skins are highly customizable and you can make the game look like pretty much anything you want

osu!mania weaknesses:
- map ranking system and its rules prevents/drastically slow down access to new maps, highly limiting the game's growing potential
- due to the above as well as the fact that this is a new game, there's a relatively small map pool to play from. hard to find maps

as of right now, osu!mania is a slowly growing slug that has really strong infrastructure but inconvenient support, making it unable to grow.
had ranking been more lenient and more maps were allowed to be ranked without rules as restrictive as now, we'd see a lot more maps show up and both the game and community would grow much faster. however, for whatever reasons, this isn't happening, so mania is forever "blocked" as a minigame for most people and only a full game for people who are willing to spend time on getting to know the right sources to find the good unranked maps as well as mapping/converting stuff from other games themselves.

popular alternatives to osu!mania:

LR2:
ups:
- every chart is instantly ranked (as soon as anybody plays any chart, it gets a scoreboard)
- due to the above, there's A LOT of charts. by simply sorting them by playcount you can find all the good ones, and there's -a lot-
- even more skinnable than o!m, but the csv text structure might take longer to learn compared to osu skin.ini files
downs:
- no direct multiplayer elements (however there is score submission and also a rival system ingame, similar to "Friends Scores" in osu)
- crashes often
- mapping for it is hard; you most likely won't be able to do it without some music experience

o2jam clones:
ups:
- lots of charts, since the game existed for a long time
- has full multiplayer support
downs:
- you need to find servers to play on, and they often go down. you can't play if the server is offline
- chart quality is questionable
- menu are a little laggy

beatmania iidx:
ups:
- made entirely out of commercial charts, the game is full of high quality charts and tons of them

downs:
- you can't play it

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Play o!m if you:
- are willing to spend time on looking for maps
- like hanging out in chat with other players, spectating/sharing maps through the game, etc

Play LR2 if you:
- enjoy music charts (as in, piano/drums. because you play actual music notes in LR2) and want to have a huge database of high quality charts
- want a challenge, from a more skill-demanding game with high requirements for performance

Play o2jam if you:
- like LNs

Play IIDX if you:
- live in japan and have an arcade close to your house

Wow that is very fascinating! It's a shame that finding quality maps can be a chore in o!m. I feel like there is a lot of potential for this game mode to become much more popular than it is, but as you said its ranked map support seems to be in dire need of a fire lit under it so to speak, to get it moving.

What are your thoughts on Stepmania? I only ask because it is how I discovered this type of rhythm game, and I assume others here have at least dabbled in it. I have a few friends who play it religiously.

I have heard of LR2, but I have also heard it is relatively buggy. As far as I can tell StepMania and o!m seem to be two of the more popular games in this genre.

Personally I find that O!M is the most accessible rhythm game of its type around, but most of that is due to the success of Osu! I feel like this presents loads of problems for the game that other rhythm games wouldn't face, such as the lack of a decent ranking system (Although it does seem to be much better now) and a limited map pool.

Having played Mania since a few months after its release it's very obvious that the game has grown and will continue to grow. This growth is mostly due to the players, there is a very small, very dedicated portion of the Mania player base which seems to be responsible for many of the changes in Mania, when I began to take this game seriously there was a small sprinkle of dedicated maps, now that number(although small) has grown significantly. The next big step I can see for Mania will be the world cup later on this year, hopefully a big scale competition will promote the game just like it did to standard late last year as well as inspiring current players to compete in tournaments, which are almost non-existent at this time.

CaptainAhab wrote:

What are your thoughts on Stepmania? I only ask because it is how I discovered this type of rhythm game, and I assume others here have at least dabbled in it. I have a few friends who play it religiously.

I come from Stepmania too; sup. IMO, the main benefits of SM are CMOD, less input delay and a huge number of high quality simfiles, all in community-released packs.

I actually think osu!mania has bigger potential though, because of the online elements and centralisation of the game. Even having graveyarded maps is great, because you will never spend hours hunting for a mirror that isn't down when you want to play something (when MegaUpload went down, so many files lost D:). It's a scrolling rhythm game that anyone can access, supports 4-8K, has options for specific beatmaps (timing windows = OD) etc, amazing.

I think some of the ranking criteria is inappropriate (like hitsounds: high BPM jump/chordstream sounds atrocious) and puts mappers off, but it's not really a big deal - o!m just needs time to grow and evolve.

Aqo wrote:

beatmania iidx:
ups:
- made entirely out of commercial charts, the game is full of high quality charts and tons of them

downs:
- you can't play it

I laughed aloud when I read this.

c-c-c-combo breaker!

This forum really needs moderation for unnecessary posts.

I pretty much agree with everything Aqo said. osu!mania offers skin customization, smooth multiplayer experience, IRC chat, and spectating other players, all of which are rarely found in other rhythm games. osu!mania is excellent if you're a multiplayer fanatic or a frequent spectator of (higher level) players on YouTube. The lack of ranked osu!mania mapsets often forces players to play auto-converted maps, and I feel that this really hinders VSRG veterans from truly enjoying the game. For now, we can expect an exciting future for osu!mania.

O2Jam is more based on Long Notes (LN) than normal notes. The judgment is based on beats rather than milliseconds (If you hit A key when it was B beats off at C BPM, you get D judgment). The overall judgment is easy compared to other games; roughly speaking, a 300g, 300, or 200 in osu!mania is equivalent to a COOL in O2Jam. Players mainly choose O2Jam for LN practice, but ever since the official servers went down, it's hard to find a good server to play on.

LR2 has no mercy. It throws you into the fray without any tutorials. At the same time, LR2 offers many features that help you improve. You can find a rival system (where the system compares your scores on a particular map with your rivals, and determines who "wins". Meant to serve as motivation to beat your rival's score, subtly improving your skills), tiered courses (LR2 has no actual rankings. Players are classified according to the most difficult four-map course they can play), and an in-game target/goal setting. LR2 is great for players who couldn't care less about silly numbers and ranks, and want to focus solely on getting better at the game. However, some of LR2's major drawbacks include the website being written entirely in Japanese, and the client having many bugs (crashing after a couple of maps, for instance).

IIDX should only be considered if you can find a cabinet nearby. I have never tried IIDX yet, so I can't really comment on its advantages, but I can already think of one possible drawback: It's an arcade game. Money, transit, time...