So I've recently have talked with some friends about Osu! and we all agreed that very few people stay after the tutorial level and starter levels. So we all talked about ways to solve this:
1- Developing a more newbie-friendly approach to the Osu! application.
This is a relatively simple task, but it will involve actions to be taken before people even play the game. There should a survey that could be optionally taken that asks you questions about your preferred music genres, favorite songs, and TV/Anime shows. By answering this survey, a computer will recommend them songs to download and play, these songs would usually be Theme Songs to the shows they liked or popular songs to the genres they preferred, this should be sorted by top plays of the songs, since they are usually the more enjoyable maps and will make the newbies more inclined to download them since they have such a high play rate. Also, the Osu! application (The actuall game on your desktop) should have a notification to sense if a player has or hasn't downloaded a new beatmap recently. For example, if a player hasn't downloaded a new beatmap in the last 7 days and has completed all the songs at his/her usual star level, the bot should suggest them to move up a star level or guide them to new beatmap choices, these choices should vary based on past downloads.
2- A more newbie friendly website Url
This website in all honesty has a difficult url to remember, so it would be hard for people to spread to their friends. I recommend something like this: https://www.godaddy.com/domains/searchr ... x?ci=83269, that redirects to this page so people could spread the knowledge of this games existence much easier.
3- New Tutorial Level
This should probably be the easiest, since you could take a big chunk of advice from the iPhone version of the game. The tutorial level is a lot more modern than our current desktop version. It has a much more upbeat and modern beat behind it and you could probably improve that 2007 microphone quality for the voiceover. This will make the game seems a lot less ancient and appeal to a lot more people.


Thank you for reading this all, I hope you guys critic it to your heart's content and help improve this game we all love

I can't imagine anyone doing a survey, even myself, before playing a game. I would drop it instantly.
There's osugame.com already or some shit like that. After downloading game once you don't need to remember the url, it's easily accessable ingame.
Tutorial is OK, explains everything and there are plenty of Easy songs to train on. But yeah it would be nice if it could be reworked, it sucks appealwise.

Astar wrote:

I can't imagine anyone doing a survey, even myself, before playing a game. I would drop it instantly.
There's osugame.com already or some shit like that. After downloading game once you don't need to remember the url, it's easily accessable ingame.
Tutorial is OK, explains everything and there are plenty of Easy songs to train on. But yeah it would be nice if it could be reworked, it sucks appealwise.

The survey is optional, even though it will only affect a small portion of new players, it's those players that we gain.
The url I personally suggested is already taken, okay, but it could be anything that is easy to remember. It's only a simple url to help people spread word easier. I don't think people will remember osu.ppy.sh after a conversation with a friend. The url will only serve as gateway to this site, nothing more, nothing less.

Thank you for your reply, I kind of feel honored to receive a reply from someone so high-ranked in the game

For more clarity it's http://osu-game.com

I could imagine when a user first time launch a game osu will display a few squares that represent some genres like anime electro rock etc... when user click them it will download premade pack for the user and import it.

Seriously, if people can't search for the music they want, then something is wrong (they probably shouldn't join our community).

As for the tutorial, yes it is shit. I've been asking people to help me update it for YEARS. I've tried paying people to update it. NO ONE has even tried to help. Any takers?

As an addendum, I did attempt to create a new tutorial last year, but it ended up too ambitious for me. I did at least create some template code in SGL for emulating circles for use in the tutorial, so if anyone wants to take a stab (and knows / is willing to learn SGL) then they can work off it as a base.

Download

peppy wrote:

Seriously, if people can't search for the music they want, then something is wrong (they probably shouldn't join our community).

As for the tutorial, yes it is shit. I've been asking people to help me update it for YEARS. I've tried paying people to update it. NO ONE has even tried to help. Any takers?

I'v got a friend who might be willing to map it, though I'm not sure he would do it for free, though as this is a famous game he might. I'd be willing to voice the directions, along with I had an idea for a helper level, like offering tips on how to do spinners etc. etc. I'll check with my friend and we'll see I guess.

ztrot voice would be great for acting, he already did a lot for community with his tutorial videos on his channel .

Also the text messages i found in the folder looks kinda retro, not sure if they are used or its the latest tutorial for osu.
I will try to just make them a bit better using some stylish simple and modern font. I will see.

MillhioreF wrote:

As an addendum, I did attempt to create a new tutorial last year, but it ended up too ambitious for me. I did at least create some template code in SGL for emulating circles for use in the tutorial, so if anyone wants to take a stab (and knows / is willing to learn SGL) then they can work off it as a base.

I can do the SB work if needed, I know a bit SGL and is generally quite experienced with SBing in general.

Also the friend system is pain to use.

i don't get this thread.

kaminishi wrote:

Also the friend system is pain to use.

What exactly is the "pain" behind and what could've been improved in your sight?

kaminishi wrote:

Also the friend system is pain to use.

LMFAO. Funny PPL everywhere
Friend system is almost same with anyother site and their friend system.

peppy wrote:

i don't get this thread.

I don't see how

sounds like a good idea to me. i would like to see an increase in players

Yeah, I can agree. This system should encourage the newer players that there is hope for them.

peppy wrote:

Seriously, if people can't search for the music they want, then something is wrong (they probably shouldn't join our community).

A bit over a year ago I've started to listen to vocaloids songs after both my sister and a fellow player on a server that I was playing on at that time showed them to me. What really got me into them compare to other songs in languages that I can understand was how easy it was to find a sh!t load of songs with just a few names. Half a year ago, when all the big home-works that I had for school was done, I remembered about a nice youtuber (Cubehamster)that had been gone for almost a year at that point(half a year before I started to really listen a lot to music) for some personals issues and went back to watch some of his videos (he really did awesome stuff in minecraft) and remembered seeing him playing another game featuring music, so I watched those videos back too. From those video, the 3rd last that he made of osu! happened to be a vocaloid song from one of my favorite vocaloid song maker : Scarlet rose by Sele-P.
When I first tried to play osu!, most of the songs that I downloaded were obviously vocaloid songs, and I now honestly think that most of them are quite terrible. It took me a little bit of time before feeling good enough to try playing on multiplayer, and that's where I did got a lot of most of the beatmaps that I enjoyed and some that I still enjoy (or started to enjoy once again because I got to a skill level where I can play the higher difficulties). If it wasn't from my for Cubehamster (did I said that he did awesome technical stuff?) and the awesome community that made me discover a lot of awesome songs (and some not so awesome, but let ignore those one) I may not be still playing osu!, and I think that a good tool to push new players towards songs that they would both enjoy listening to and playing really would help new players to enjoy the game more.

All that back-story to say that osu! made me discover a lot of music that I wouldn't even have expected to enjoy listening to and lots of animes (almost all of what I have watched so far) that I wouldn't have heard of... Also, I still don't know how to search for music that I want to listen to other then the ones that I know the title(and hearing a song on the radio or in movies really don't help me know their title)

So yes, joining the community of osu! when you know really a really low diversity of song it totally a good thing to discover more of them in my opinion

Thanks for everyone that took time to fully read that wall of text that I just wrote while expecting it to be at least a bit smaller then that, and for those that didn't take time to read it all, I've put in bold the more important things that I wanted to say about the topic.