I mentioned it in my big post, but there's not much incentive for a new player to continue playing Taiko. One of these reasons is that auto-converts are seriously lacking in quality - we have a healthy population of Kantan~Muzukashii, but because of the obscurity of the mode most that try the mode out will think it's lame and boring.

A few things that might help with this:

1. More hype for really great plays. A lot of people heard about osu! because of the recent 799.99pp meme thanks to shigetora, and it's made a lot more visible because you can see a bunch of his great plays easily from YouTube, thus giving a potential player a great view of top-level play. We don't really have anything like that for taiko - n1doking recently dropped a best taiko pp play and most people were arguing the legitimacy of it because lol HDFL is stupid. This doesn't really reflect well on the community. I don't think there's a particularly easy solution to this, because at base it requires an active and excited community. I can be excited for my own personal great plays, such as recently making a 300pp play, but I feel in comparison to The Great Nippon Masters it's really not that great of an accomplishment and that I wouldn't have much merit sharing it with the community. We also certainly don't want to hijack or step on the toes of the standard community, because then they might meme us to death (don't scoff at the meme death, it's very real).

2. Less obfuscation for new players. We have a TBT, but it's tucked away in the forums that new players probably barely touch. For a potential player to find out that auto-converts are regarded as lower quality, they have to go out of their own way to discover the taiko community, rather than being guided. This is a problem that standard doesn't suffer from nearly so much, because a) the osu!Standard channel is on auto-join for launching the client, and b) osu!Standard has gained popularity from outside of osu! itself, such as having a subreddit that reaches /r/all occasionally and streamers for other games like League of Legends playing osu! on stream, and c) osu!Standard doesn't suffer from the problem that "some ranked maps aren't good for play at all" except unless you want to argue about farm maps but that's upper levels of play anyway.

A lot of (2) can be resolved by having more support in-game, which goes back to my previous post where I said that frankly osu!taiko kind of sucks as a client, and I don't think we can expect many improvements until dev focus is freed up from their LAZER project.

I joined 11 months ago yo osu! , and immediately fell in love with taiko. since then, i have noticed that the actual active members ranges from 0-15 at it's largest. we need to fix this.

<33
--weiss--

As someone who is like a ghost nowadays, I just wanted to give some input, since my state is something that I can see happening to more people.

I am trying to be objective in my discussion posts, so please take no offense to this post. ╭( ･ㅂ･)و
Also, I always tend to look at any negative points of the discussion first, since they are easy to fix if necessary.

Anyways, here are a few thoughts of mine on why mentoring is not a good idea at all:

1. What is an accurate definition, or even a qualification of a mentor? I am not trying to discourage people from doing this, but for a system to be in place, a clear vision is necessary. While anyone can be someone's "mentor", who is exactly capable of doing that, or what are the benefits?
   
   Learning is fine, but learning on your own mistakes is best (in my opinion). This doesn't mean that it's wrong to learn from other people's mistakes, of course, but what I am trying to say is that usually following in someone else's footsteps doesn't really produce desired results for either the mentor or the person under them. It takes a lot of energy, mutual understanding and not to mention time for someone to properly coach someone. I don't think many mappers are willing to go through all that, but I could be wrong.
2. How does the mentoring system benefit everyone? If by any chance you could define what a mentor should be doing, and how is one qualified to be one, how does everyone benefit from this system?
   I doubt there could be so many mentors that every mapper could have one, and taking more than one person to coach at a time is insane if you consider how much time is necessary.
   Even if everything is working as intended, not many people would benefit from this system, really.
3. Taiko only has one-dimensional maps, which heavily limits on what you can do with them. I am mentioning this, despite it being somewhat unrelated, because I find this very important. Basic rhythms are not that difficult to make, however new mappers can't even handle that, and explaning everything about rhythm and why it works is so much for someone to handle. You could really write books about it. Connect it to the problem above, and you will easily burn yourself out as a mentor.

These are just what comes to mind at this moment.

Now, this post isn't really constructive, so let me add a few suggestions to make it so:

1. Since everyone seems to be focused around mapping here, mapping contests are obviously a way to go. And by that, I mean official mapping contests which so far happened how many times, 2 or 3? I don't even know. Obviously taiko is not popular enough (I beg to differ though) so every now and then only the standard mode gets more focus on.
   
   Mapping contests are amazing, because every map gets judged by several people. That's feedback. Feedback is really really important for improvement. And in this way, you get it for free.
2. More frequent tournaments. Currently, there is twc only, and maybe a localized tournament for Japan or NA or something.
   I know that tournaments are difficult to handle since you need dedicated staff, but this is exactly the engagement which brings many individuals together.
3. Music making? Not everyone can do this, but I know that some can. Do a community collab that some make music and some map it?

Just a few thoughts that came by while writing the post.

I hate to be negative or to crush people's dreams, but please think about a goal and the means to achieve it. It goes a long way, and makes things much faster if you need to push an idea.

P.S. you don't need to reply to this post to answer the questions, you just need to ask yourself.

I'll go back to hiding again, before someone exorcises me. ╭( ･ㅂ･)و

good point on the feedback part, one of the mentoring system's issues is that you only got the feedback of your mentor instead of severals. but to build your own mapping preferences (still in a "quality way") your need to get opinions from different "experienced" people rather than ending up doing "what your mentor would have done".

about the mentor himself, i think so he should be able to teach general things like spread/density regardind the music/.. and stuff rather than going too deep in patterns detail as this becomes a bit subjective (that would not be an issue with several opinions).

another issue would be for BN who chose to become mentors. those are kind of seen as people up to help anyone on mapping stuff instead of being dedicated to only one person.

i can think of other ways to actually teach someone how to "properly" map but in the end those systems would die some week after because it's entirely up to the "experienced" guys who could be part of it (like tna). i see no benefits at all for them so such system can hardly survive.

Nofool wrote:

good point on the feedback part, one of the mentoring system's issues is that you only got the feedback of your mentor instead of severals. but to build your own mapping preferences (still in a "quality way") your need to get opinions from different "experienced" people rather than ending up doing "what your mentor would have done".

about the mentor himself, i think so he should be able to teach general things like spread/density regardind the music/.. and stuff rather than going too deep in patterns detail as this becomes a bit subjective (that would not be an issue with several opinions).

another issue would be for BN who chose to become mentors. those are kind of seen as people up to help anyone on mapping stuff instead of being dedicated to only one person.

i can think of other ways to actually teach someone how to "properly" map but in the end those systems would die some week after because it's entirely up to the "experienced" guys who could be part of it (like tna). i see no benefits at all for them so such system can hardly survive.

I understand these concerns.

The main objective of a mentor is not to forcefully introduce his/her own way on the mentee, but rather help them with general issues that may arise and try to get them unstuck on whatever thing they get stuck with, so that in the end, the mentee can follow his/her own way without any need of a mentor.

And actually, the BNs are actually considered as "gatekeepers" for what passes to ranked and what does not. Our 'duty' is not to "help people inconditionally" like a NGO or like some sort of philantropists, but to ensure the quality of the beatmaps passing to ranked section. We are the ones deciding what becomes official content of this game, after all.

edit:╭( ･ㅂ･)و

Bring in Taikonator.

On a serious note, mainly in response to lolcubes, I'm currently helping in the osu!std winter mentorship program and I can tell you that there have been remarkable improvements on peoples' mapping abilities thanks to all the mentoring. This has not only been stated by the mentors but by the mentees themselves as well. In addition, there's no shortage of people wanting to mentor others. Currently we have 31 mentors willing to help newbies learn how to map. Some have even gotten their first ranked maps thanks to this. I don't see why the same wouldn't work for Taiko?

Clearly it's going to increase the amount of mappers for the mode in question, since many people struggle with different mapping concepts (rhythm for example) and can lose faith in their own mapping ability. This is when a mentorship is of a lot of help because mentors have the experience and capability to teach these concepts in a fairly comprehensible way. The results speak for themselves.

MrSergio and some other mentors have picked more than 1 mentee so teaching multiple at a time isn't impossible either. I think it'll be especially easier with Taiko because it is arguably the easiest gamemode to map right now with less concepts that people have to learn in order to make quality maps. Also the mentees themselves will be of course applying these learned concepts into their own maps, so it's not like they're simply copy pasting a mentor's work. Once they've gotten the hang of it, they can apply it on any map.

I think Taiko mentorship would increase the amount of mappers and therefore maps as well, so in conclusion, I see it as a viable option to boost the gamemode's popularity.

Appelkatt wrote:

2. Less obfuscation for new players. We have a TBT, but it's tucked away in the forums that new players probably barely touch. For a potential player to find out that auto-converts are regarded as lower quality, they have to go out of their own way to discover the taiko community, rather than being guided. This is a problem that standard doesn't suffer from nearly so much, because a) the osu!Standard channel is on auto-join for launching the client, and b) osu!Standard has gained popularity from outside of osu! itself, such as having a subreddit that reaches /r/all occasionally and streamers for other games like League of Legends playing osu! on stream, and c) osu!Standard doesn't suffer from the problem that "some ranked maps aren't good for play at all" except unless you want to argue about farm maps but that's upper levels of play anyway.

A lot of (2) can be resolved by having more support in-game, which goes back to my previous post where I said that frankly osu!taiko kind of sucks as a client, and I don't think we can expect many improvements until dev focus is freed up from their LAZER project.

I vaguely recall Vulkin planning to do a storyboarded taiko-tutorial with the tutorial-song but dropping it due to difficulties with storyboarding.
I think that this certainly could help newer players and when pushed forward by the Taiko-community i could definitely see peppy bundle it with the game.
I mean when I first wanted to try Taiko I looked for a tutorial and found this: https://osu.ppy.sh/b/70167&m=1
Well, trolled, fml. Since I was lurking in the forum anyway I found TBT of course but that might be a good project to actually start off.

Although this may sound counter-intuitive I think I might know a way we can get more people interested in Taiko. There is a feature request currently that has a decent amount of star priority to add a cumulative rank to the Osu website and players profiles. I think if they add something like this a lot of people will want to get the all-around #1 and will ultimately play other game modes such as Taiko in the process. I have gone ahead and put a bunch of stars of my own into this request. But something like this might get other people playing Taiko without the potential "meme" death

I don't think cumulative rank would do much at all or even have a negative influence because Taiko is the mode that is most prone to get pp-farmed with all-don converts and the first 1,5k pp are incredibly easy to get compared to any other mode. It doesn't even require you to develop any kind of Taiko skill at all.
Maniaplayers will just play with the 4k maniaskin for Taiko and rise to high ranks without even "playing Taiko".
I really think Taiko has absolutely nothing to gain from a cumulative ranking.

Endaris wrote:

I don't think cumulative rank would do much at all or even have a negative influence because Taiko is the mode that is most prone to get pp-farmed with all-don converts and the first 1,5k pp are incredibly easy to get compared to any other mode. It doesn't even require you to develop any kind of Taiko skill at all.
Maniaplayers will just play with the 4k maniaskin for Taiko and rise to high ranks without even "playing Taiko".
I really think Taiko has absolutely nothing to gain from a cumulative ranking.

Maybe I am just an exception to how most people would react. I personally played Mania before I played Taiko & Standard before that. I got it in my head that I wanted to get a high cumulative rank on the dawns glare ranking chart website. So I decided to start playing Taiko & CTB seriously. It was from doing this that I discovered just how amazing Taiko was. The thing is the dawns glare website is only really visible for people wanting to find out about their cumulative rank and most players won't ever know about it.

But like I said you might be night and we may get people who just farm some easy PP and never come back. But there is a chance that in their easy PP farming days they may find a love for it and stick with it like I did.

I actually think cumulative rank would indeed be a cool and useful feature, like he said, to encourage folks to at least TRY the other modes. osu! Is a very varied game and to ignore all features is a bit of an injustice though clearly we all have favorites. A cumulative rank would have a LOT of positive effects on all communities. In our current way, we are all split apart, but a unity of the four seems like a really good idea at heart, especially since all 4 have skills which do in fact correlate with one another. Not saying you are immediately going to be good at one or the other, but playing all or at least some of them would give you a little bit of value for each. Basically what I'm saying is that is a good idea that should one day be looked at. Maybe osu! Next will implement something like that.

I actually wanted to avoid the thread but somehow I also feel like to contribute here.

Raiden wrote:

Is it the lack of motivation or the lack of a sense of reward? Maybe no one sees interest in starting something in our community because they feel either nothing good is going to come out of it, or nothing is going to come out of it at all, and the time and effort spent in said project will be wasted for nothing.

The issue is less that we lack on motivation but we lack on motivated people and people in general which are around to establish something really cool. Obviously, if you see you can't reach the audience you lose your hope in your project and it dies.

Sonnyc wrote:

If there aren't much taiko maps in the ranked section as you think, then my opinion for that will be "start thinking backwards". When taiko maps first appeared, they were combined with an osu difficulty which is mostly refered as "Taikosu!". Are there any maps like this? None for years. Contacting some standard mappers who are interested in taiko community to resurrect this project might make taiko mappings gather some attention.

Aside of the point that TaikOsu! doesn't really worked well, I get where do you want to go. One of many problems is that Taiko Maps are less accepted by people since the system changed almost by a whole (full spreads/"easier" Taiko Difficulty required, lack of knownledge in certain areas) and people are also worried to include them since some of them caused problems leading to unranks/disqualifications. So that scared people away and made them less motivated to be open for special mode difficulties. This is - how I find - exaggerated but that's what happened in the past. Even today, people deny them for similar reasons.

Edgar_Figaro wrote:

I am a slightly newer member to the Taiko community but I too have noticed the smallness of the community. For instance I rarely find Taiko multiplayer games, the #taiko sometime has the most recent comment be posted almost an hour ago, almost no tournaments ran for taiko & other things.. Quite a shame as although I play all the game modes I think Taiko is the one I am developing the greatest love for.

I'd love to help out in growing the taiko community and if anything I can do to help let me know. Also mind putting link to the standard mentoring thread so I can see what it would be about?

Things like that are community-based - so that means everyone, even you can host them! At any time if you need help to organize or to spread the word, you can ask us (the community, the staff) for help. I just believe that a lot of users which wish that actually want to do but are stuck with other (more important) projects and business they need to take care. That's what I assume.

S a n d wrote:

Ayyy Dr. Raiden~
From a high ended player's view, what I have been seeing is lack of hype in taiko. Either that's in tournament or just daily playing. Japanese players are obviously dominating everything. I have no rope to raise my rank as obviously Ik some Japanese are going to rape me shortly after anyway. It is hard to hype a tournament when we clearly know who is going to win in the end as well... And personally I have no good suggestion other than ones that would provoke exclusion or racism... But anyway, just telling you problem.

Indeed, Taiko had its hype in 2013 (maybe even 2014?) when suddenly Standard and Mania mappers appeared and started to map Taiko but that seems to broke down, starting with the begin of this year. About the thing with japanese players: I don't really see how's that an issue. Naturally the original game comes from Japan so the audience consist a lot of japanese users. That's just normal, like speedrunning can mostly be found in the western part they dominate the leaderboards for the more famous games.

S a n d wrote:

Second problem I would say is, yes, we have lots of taiko mapper, but we lack in quality mapping. Yes, even myself. It is very easy to start off mapping taiko comparing to other game modes, but to be good and precise it definitely needs lots of repetitive practice and training in order to do so. Inexperienced mapper would tend to think their map is perfect, and ask BN to bubble it despite having lack of realization in the lack of quality (Yes, that's myself again). Which leads to the next problem.

I don't think we lack of quality mappers, rather of mappers which are willed to investigate time to improve in their doing and to know the ropes in the Taiko Mapping (and modding as well).

S a n d wrote:

The BN after checking through too many maps that requires too much improvements and lacking in quality, would shortly grow demotivated to check more maps; thus, why BNs tends to be demotivated and taiko tends to have small amount of maps ranked. A lot of times people shit on BN due to the fact that they don't check their map, or reject their map check. I believe it is worth looking from another perspective. Just imagine having to deal with tons of people asking for NORMAL MOD with NO RETURN everyday, while when they actually check it, the map has shit load of flaws. No matter how motivated of a BN you are, you will grow tired shortly after. Another factor that would affect lack of ranked map is the lack of player base, which again isn't something that we could change.

By the logic they need to qualify less maps which you apparently point out that the average of qualified/ranked maps is too low. That's sort of a contradiction, as long I haven't understood you wrong.

Estaryo wrote:

If you would look at the maps of everyone it may would be better, but to me it seems like the nominator ignore every map thats not of famous mappers and nominators themselves. i know maps where the mapper spend much time for making a good map or at least they try to do it. they start modding spend all their freetime for their map and noone of you even want to look at it.
then on the other hand, there are mappers that make halfassed maps (*sry but it pisses me off), spending some stars receiving 1-2 mods where they ignore nearly everything and its ranked immediately... why? just because the mapper is a nominator.
and yes you know which map i mean, its just ranked.

That isn't true at all. A half-assed map very likely won't pass by the QAT so if that really should happens a map really lacks of quality, it should be reported. That is also something the community needs to do by their own. They can't expect that a bunch of users (counting BNs and QAT in total you have less than 15 people) to take care for more than 500 users? (this is a speculative number) I know how frustrating it can be to bring your map forward but it actually means something if your map won't be accepted by the community. You don't need to have a name to get your maps ranked, you need to provide something special. Because people WILL share your beatmap if it's good, that's just natural. The freshly added Loved Section proves that good maps are shared by the people and loved by them. So it's the concept to get known with a (good) beatmap.

Nepuri wrote:

- My Opinion -
I can agree with almost all your Points, Raiden, experienced these myself as a mapper in the lower quarter of the community.
The lack of motivation is just a massive hole, and i think the Mentor program will help, but not entirely fix it.

Ive seen people just quit mapping after several months not because 'their maps are bad' or 'they cant improve', they mostly just dont WANT to improve.
But this is where i see the Mentor program helping, being a kind of general help for newer mappers, with them VOLUNTARILY expanding their mapping/modding skill and knowledge.

My words. You can't expect to be a goddess by starting your first beatmaps and being accepted as good mapper. That's not how it works. The old mappers did also need to map crap (let's call it like that) afterwards to improve. You keep improving by failing and at one point you stop failing but you still improve by elaborating your mapping style and how you map. That's not done in two beatmaps. This kinda reminds me how people with 1k playcount in Standard wonders why they cannot "improve", pp-wise. And that's pretty much the same case, people expect too much from theirself in a short time period.


TL;DR: Community needs to be pulled and shaked that both sides need to do their work. Else, you obviously cannot improve in any point.

structuring post through different subjects

Projects:
Most projects that we want to try have some kind of bad-outcome hivemind to it, I'll take for example your Community Mentoring for Taiko that you want to organize since I was kind of directly involved with it as I had the idea a few years ago (I told you directly) - most people did not believe in it at all, regardless of their position, worrying that it would fail miserably. As such, the very few people who think it is a good idea either end up abandoning their hope, or give it a try. Unfortunately, it ends up being the former - which is what happened in my case.
This time around, we have a far greater modding potential with a twist to it: a significant portion of it have limited knowledge in English, which makes it very difficult for them to structure their posts correctly and be understood outside their native tongue. As such, they will abandon the idea because it is "too difficult" to understand. A way to remedy to this is to offer multilingual support.
Also, you mention the lack of new projects being due to either lack of motivation or lack of reward. I think this is the latter, you don't really feel like you get something off of anything, be it either the failure of a project, or just everything repeating itself. You don't really feel rewarded when you do the same thing over and over, even when motivated. Lack of motivation would make the situation worse than it already is, as in I'd say the mode would be much emptier; no real tournaments outside of TWC, no modding queues, no newfaces, as in pretty frozen. I'd argue one of the only ways to help Taiko get a new birth is to change a ton of habits, but old habits die hard.

The Game (Modding/Mapping):
You made an analogy with quicksand, which is very accurate at the moment, should you know that you will still have space to breathe. The problem is the lack of real surprising plays, unless people have knowledge of how taiko pp works, everything will look unimpressive (IIRC we don't even have 50 600+ scores) compared to other modes which get a very intimidating pp inflation which can make the values go up to the 4 digits, which in Taiko is only possible with.... a 4-mod SS on Galaxy Collapse. Accompanying new mappers to ask for feedback on their maps, or giving actual advice to new players (the likes of getting started with the mode or the different key configurations) will give them a better impression. If we're leaving them with "DIY" or "play more", I have quite the intuition that they won't stay for very long.


(mood whiplash time)
I've only answered Raiden's OP, if you want my input on different aspects of the game just ask me

I'd just like to mention that me, Nwolf, Garpo and Lno have tried to make as many tournaments as we could for the community, and while I understand that when you guys have said "no tournaments other than TWC" you are just saying there is a lack of bulk tournaments (similar to osu!), however, I feel it is a little disrespectful. Me and Nwolf worked very hard to bring LMS + LMS SE and happily they still get participants. There is supposedly going to be no more rewards for tournaments in the future other than the main ones, so possibly tournaments as a whole will either die or be discouraged.

However, I would also like to point out my own tournament, Taiko Spin-Off. People ask for innovation, people ask for more tournaments, so I did another one and well, really, no one signed up. I think partially this is my fault, but we are overestimating our tournament participation percentage, I think. Spin-Off was even more inclusive than LMS, since there is no country regulation, however I only managed to get 13 teams in total. This was a big disappointment for me, and left the tournament to sit in postponement indefinitely. Now hopefully, I can continue this tournament in the future, when I believe our community is ready for it, but right now, tournament making is maybe not a particularly worth-while investment of time.

There is one thing though, me and Nwolf have discussed something (which I will keep private) which would make tournaments overall much more competitive and as a whole more interesting to watch and possibly even easier to stream. This could be a big advancement into our approach in tournaments. I hope we can show it to you all in the coming months, and I hope you guys do make sure to spread the tournament when it comes out if you are interested/have in your interests to make our community stronger.

I meant no disrespect with this post, I hope you guys don't mind my opinion!

Just gonna share how I feel about this, some of it from personal experience.

New players, after playing for some time and getting used to the mode, often want to make their own map, because it looks "easy". Compared to osu!standard, there's almost nothing to map: there’s just the circles, and the hitsounds. You don’t need to worry about slider shapes, new combos, combo colours, distance spacing, and all those extra things that make osu!standard mapping more complicated. So Taiko mapping looks easy, and maybe a way to get their first ranked map.

But often they’re a Futsuu or early Muzu player, and so they have no knowledge of Onis. When you’re far away from ever playing Onis, you don’t know how they’re made. So you follow every sound you can hear in the song, and put a note of random colour to it. You don’t know about 1/4 patterns, and what should be red and what should be blue. You make your 1/4 patterns consist of random selections of red and blue, because you think that’s how Onis work. The result is a map that experienced players will not be very happy with, because it’s not very good, but the mapper doesn’t know that. You might’ve made a decent Kantan or Futsuu, but you’re going nowhere if that Oni in your set isn’t of rankable quality.

Experienced players and modders look down upon your Oni, and, depending on how much detail the modder goes into, the mapper is either going to be left confused (“What’s wrong with my Oni? It looks fine to me. And what is this ‘lack of structure’ you’re talking about?”) or they’re going to see that their map isn’t very well liked, and lose faith in ranking it. Then they either get disheartened and choose not to bother mapping anymore, or believe that the system is somehow flawed, and again don’t bother mapping anymore.

Then there’s, as has been already stated, the belief that BNs only focus on maps by famous mappers or BNs. I’m not saying it’s true, but currently it can certainly feel that way - go to most of the BNs profiles and you will see “Not taking requests at the moment.” But at the same time, you see they’re modding other BNs’ maps in their post history. You feel the system is corrupt, it’s impossible to get your map ranked, why bother. So the only people left to keep mapping are the ones who can be sure they’ll get their map ranked.

On a side note, there’s also mod queues. You go to the Modding Queues subform and almost all of the queues are osu!standard only. There are very few for Taiko, sometimes none at all. You check every day and maybe you find one place to ask, and they mod your map. Cool! But finding a constant flow of modders is far harder than it is for osu!standard - especially when you go every day and start seeing the same queues that you’ve already requested in. Recently, there’s been more queues available - but it was far more stagnated in the months previous to this. Some are going to get annoyed about how frequently they have to check the queues list to find a mod. And I think this is even harder sometimes, when there are few queues but a lot of mappers wanting to get mods - when a queue opens, sometimes it can be flooded in minutes.

From the playing perspective, transitioning from Muzukashii to Oni can be very hard. You can be an amazing Muzu player, getting FCs on the >3.75 star Muzukashiis, and now you’re out of Muzukashiis to play. So now you want to try Oni. You may have excelled at 3.75 star Muzukashii, but you can’t immediately do 3.75 star Onis. The different patterns and the increased note density make it far harder than what you’ve experienced in most Muzus. So you have to take a step back - try 3.00 star Onis, then gradually advance forward, to 3.5, and onward. But this, again, can make you feel rather sad, because you’ve had to take a step back in order to progress forward. And getting up to 3.75-4 star Onis can take a long time. If you’re someone to be focused on pp, you’re going to see it stagnate, because a large factor of it is the SR, and you’ve gone down in SR to play Onis. Again, that can make you feel a little annoyed at progression.

Anyway, that’s just some thoughts of mine.

.

Took me a while but here I come.

J1NX1337 wrote:

MrSergio and some other mentors have picked more than 1 mentee so teaching multiple at a time isn't impossible either. I think it'll be especially easier with Taiko because it is arguably the easiest gamemode to map right now with less concepts that people have to learn in order to make quality maps. Also the mentees themselves will be of course applying these learned concepts into their own maps, so it's not like they're simply copy pasting a mentor's work. Once they've gotten the hang of it, they can apply it on any map.

I think Taiko mentorship would increase the amount of mappers and therefore maps as well, so in conclusion, I see it as a viable option to boost the gamemode's popularity.

I disagree with Taiko being the easiest mode to map, I agree there are less concepts to learn. Comparing the learning curve of mapping of different modes is like comparing apples with oranges: it makes no sense whatsoever. Taiko has a very simplistic design which makes structural and flow errors much harder to detect, and as such, less experienced mappers tend to see their map is "good as it is right now and ready for BN check". Mentor program's intention is to try to avoid such structural and flow mistakes, as well as other important general things such as overall settings, correct spread, correct patterning. All of this based on the intersubjectivity that has been present in the past and is now evolving to a, hopefully, better future.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Gezo_ wrote:

structuring post through different subjects

Projects:
Most projects that we want to try have some kind of bad-outcome hivemind to it, I'll take for example your Community Mentoring for Taiko that you want to organize since I was kind of directly involved with it as I had the idea a few years ago (I told you directly) - most people did not believe in it at all, regardless of their position, worrying that it would fail miserably. As such, the very few people who think it is a good idea either end up abandoning their hope, or give it a try. Unfortunately, it ends up being the former - which is what happened in my case.
This time around, we have a far greater modding potential with a twist to it: a significant portion of it have limited knowledge in English, which makes it very difficult for them to structure their posts correctly and be understood outside their native tongue. As such, they will abandon the idea because it is "too difficult" to understand. A way to remedy to this is to offer multilingual support.

Preferably, the mentor program would have the secondary language attached to the form. As such, pupils who have trouble with English should be picked by a mentor who speaks their mother tongue. We sadly cannot be an English academy, the main purpose is what has been stated previous times.

Also, you mention the lack of new projects being due to either lack of motivation or lack of reward. I think this is the latter, you don't really feel like you get something off of anything, be it either the failure of a project, or just everything repeating itself. You don't really feel rewarded when you do the same thing over and over, even when motivated. Lack of motivation would make the situation worse than it already is, as in I'd say the mode would be much emptier; no real tournaments outside of TWC, no modding queues, no newfaces, as in pretty frozen. I'd argue one of the only ways to help Taiko get a new birth is to change a ton of habits, but old habits die hard.

About this, I am totally agreeing with you. That is what is wrong in here overall, lack of hype, lack of incentive to play Taiko. Nothing looks impressive. No tournaments, no contests, nothing. Not even TWC was that hyped, despite the incredibly AMAZING finals we had (both winner and loser bracket). I disagree in the "new faces" thing. #taiko is totally renewed to me if you compare it to a year ago. 90% of people who talk there are people who I personally don't know (and probably, you don't either).

Yes, habits are hard to change. But not impossible.

The Game (Modding/Mapping):
You made an analogy with quicksand, which is very accurate at the moment, should you know that you will still have space to breathe. The problem is the lack of real surprising plays, unless people have knowledge of how taiko pp works, everything will look unimpressive (IIRC we don't even have 50 600+ scores) compared to other modes which get a very intimidating pp inflation which can make the values go up to the 4 digits, which in Taiko is only possible with... a 4-mod SS on Galaxy Collapse. Accompanying new mappers to ask for feedback on their maps, or giving actual advice to new players (the likes of getting started with the mode or the different key configurations) will give them a better impression. If we're leaving them with "DIY" or "play more", I have quite the intuition that they won't stay for very long.

The problem is, people outside Taiko won't know what is impressive because there isn't an accurate comparative to other modes. What's funny to me is that a 700pp play in standard causes a huge outrage in social media, while in Taiko a 700pp play is seen as "meh" (or just blatantly ignored). How else can we get the hype other modes get? For that I have no answer. It seems a horizontal scroll game with only 2 colors is not hard for them, and as such, not impressive whatsoever -> nothing generates hype to play Taiko.

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numbermaniac wrote:

New players, after playing for some time and getting used to the mode, often want to make their own map, because it looks "easy". Compared to osu!standard, there's almost nothing to map: there’s just the circles, and the hitsounds. You don’t need to worry about slider shapes, new combos, combo colours, distance spacing, and all those extra things that make osu!standard mapping more complicated. So Taiko mapping looks easy, and maybe a way to get their first ranked map.

That's the problem: it looks an "easy way to get a map ranked". If it isn't easy in the end, you get frustrated. Despite everything that has been said about it not being, by far, the easiest mode to map (every mode has its difficulties, let's not compare apples with oranges).

Experienced players and modders look down upon your Oni, and, depending on how much detail the modder goes into, the mapper is either going to be left confused (“What’s wrong with my Oni? It looks fine to me. And what is this ‘lack of structure’ you’re talking about?”) or they’re going to see that their map isn’t very well liked, and lose faith in ranking it. Then they either get disheartened and choose not to bother mapping anymore, or believe that the system is somehow flawed, and again don’t bother mapping anymore.

That problem is, in my honest opinion, on the mappers. We are not at fault that some may have a huge lack of self-criticism and tend to think their maps are always ready. We can only try to help but, as I said, that problem is not on us.

Then there’s, as has been already stated, the belief that BNs only focus on maps by famous mappers or BNs. I’m not saying it’s true, but currently it can certainly feel that way - go to most of the BNs profiles and you will see “Not taking requests at the moment.” But at the same time, you see they’re modding other BNs’ maps in their post history. You feel the system is corrupt, it’s impossible to get your map ranked, why bother. So the only people left to keep mapping are the ones who can be sure they’ll get their map ranked.

I understand your concern here. Here is the thing: it feels that way because it is that way. BNs with the "No request" spammed all over their pages usually means they are working on their own. What does this mean? Means that they will mostly check their friends' maps, maybe M4M with other BNs. It is an incredibly efficient method to relax and take a break from other formal requests while still keeping the qualified section with some maps unlike ctb who has 0

That was long.

what do you mean by an approach ? AR?

Hello everyone!

I'm a relatively new player of osu!, in particular I actually only play Taiko.

Just my two cents.

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I've noticed how at any given time, only 0 - 8 multi taiko games exist (including locked) at any given time compared to >150 standard games.
It's only fair as standard is standard and there are even fewer players playing other modes.

And I keep seeing the same players, and occasionally some others, mostly of very high rank.

Another thing is that the skill gap is HUGE. Some players can only borderline manage a 4-star map while taiko gods can FC a 6+* map at first sight.

I should also mention that there are only a limited number of taiko tournaments as I have observed so far as compared to standard.
Again, it's only fair as standard is standard and there are even fewer players playing other modes. But we can at least try?

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Has anyone tried hosting taiko tournaments for different skill levels (according to pp, ranking) or just more taiko tournaments in general?

Even primary students can participate in taiko tournaments in Japan with considerably easy songs so skill level is not a concern. The number of players is a genuine concern.

Taiko players, especially of lower rank, tend to come and go. I think it's important to try to give everyone an incentive to keep on playing.

All we have at the moment (as far as I have observed) is an official yearly tournament and some North American taiko tournament.
Surely we can have more divisions, individual or in teams, at a more frequent rate.

All we need are suitable songs and players as judges.

I'm just curious but is there a tournament in which the songs are predetermined and everyone is given time to prepare for it? Because this is what happens with the Taiko no Tatsujin arcade titles. A set of three songs are chosen beforehand and one would only have to grind enough times to get better at it.

Sure, rankings already exist for individual songs, and godly taiko players only really need to play a few times to FC any reasonably mapped song. But lower-ranked players can never get enough practice right? (no offense) Choose a couple of songs, let everyone try to master the songs, then multi. Just an idea.

Similar to tournaments, can there be some sort of ladder, divided to different grades, apart from ranking?
Just to promote more competition regardless of rank and give the people at the top of the ladder some accomplishment without ruining multis for other players by selecting songs with an inappropriate difficulty.

I do realise all of this may be kind of redundant given pp and ranking, and a lot of work would have to go into this for anything to work, but hey, if you really want people to play Taiko, it might be worth it. Anything at all. Just make the first step.

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I don't understand what's the deal with 'quality mapping'. I've played a considerable number of maps (troll maps or not) and I don't recognise 'bad qualities'. Would somebody mind explaining please?

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About the mentoring scheme,
I don't actually know what happens in standard, but it doesn't really matter does it.

I see that it's currently centred on mapping, which to me seems to consume ten million years / song.
There are a lot of songs available, even if it's just ranked and approved songs, so I don't think songs are actually a concern?
I probably haven't played enough to exploit all the songs

Wouldn't it be a good idea if there was a mentoring scheme for actually playing Taiko?

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That was my thoughts/misconceptions about osu!Taiko.

Wish you luck in whatever you try to do.

Cheers

Following up, we have finished the provisional draft for the general taiko RC rework: p/5586738

Feel free to drop your feedback (in fact, we do need it)

Possibly, once we launch the difficulty-specific draft, we may look forward into initiating the mentor program