pandaBee wrote:
what has given us thousands of copies of the same beatmap - just with different songs attached.
I think the causes are kinda logic - and it's also due to the fact that thousands of songs in osu! sound pretty much the same.
Back then no one really had a clue how to do an objectively good beatmap, everyone just tried things and beatmaps ended up being good or bad.
Now some of the smarter folks looked at the good maps they/others did and figured some things out that work:
The most ruining thing for the modern beatmapping is the idea of putting an own percussion line via hitsounds.
While this idea can produce very good results when used in sensible spots and being executed with consistence it went out of hand and people who played some of such maps were like:
"huh, that beatmap's cool, i could just make some circles and sliders for my favorite song that aren't connected to the melody or anything and have my own beatmap!" while not understanding why the beatmapper did that in the specific case nor how he did it - i think the same kind of mapper also likes to include hipster-slidershapes.
The result are beatmaps that are kind of random and don't focus on the special needs of a song. If you have bad luck the mapper doesn't even include melody at the refrain but just puts a new drumline that is subconsciously influenced by the refrain which makes it even more confusing. Another problem connected with this is that these maps are easily playable and don't feel wrong in particular which is why regular modders that never thought about this will just play it through, think "ok, this is playable" and leave it being - I have to point out here though that at least the inconsistencies in this particular way of mapping usually get noticed and modded accordingly(even though the song might have deserved something better than that).
Old maps don't have this particular problem as much as this style wasn't popular back then(usually they're heavily focused on melody) but they tend to have other problems that modern beatmaps successfully avoid.
I don't know, let's take this map(the hard diff):
https://osu.ppy.sh/b/359972Even though it's very simple(or maybe because of that) this map absolutely makes sense. There is no room for any doubt or questions, the hitsounds are ligned up with the vocals 100%. On the opposite take pretty much any hard diff from Fycho. The majority of them makes sense too(the ones i played at least) but it's a lot harder to grasp as he switches between vocals and drumline very often and while it feels right you don't get any theoretical understanding of how he did it by just playing it which is why maps will feel similar if they somehow mix vocals+drumline even though they aren't similar at all.