People have expressed a concern about the issue of new players losing interest in osu! before they start. This issue is that the first songs they play are songs from obscure fandoms/genres that osu! does not cater to, and the ranked beatmaps for these songs are from 07-09. Beatmap quality is considered to be worse in 09 maps than the ones we have now, so much worse that players cannot follow the rhythm and do not enjoy the song. My fix for this is simple. Make the first songs they play be high quality, fun ones. This way, they do not assume the overall quality of maps is as bad as it was in earlier years.

This thread is expressing the problem. t/86618&start=0

Well, how do we make sure the first maps they play are good? We include them with the osu! client. This could be 5-10 songs, or could be more. These are songs that have a ton of plays, and are usually staples to the average player's songlist anyways. Bad Apple comes to mind. They would have to have good easy difficulties so they don't get bored/overwhelmed by the songs. But what does this accomplish?

It provides a fun first step into osu!, and creates a solid basework for what maps the players will enjoy. People are quicker to enjoy Bad Apple's easy then they are to enjoy that one cartoon theme that was mapped in 08 that MIGHT have a chart they could stumble through.

The thread I posted above tried to fix the new player issue by removing the beatmaps from the rankings. The idea I have here does not change anything about the old maps, but it does accomplish the same goal of starting new players off on the right foot, playing maps they will enjoy.

P.S. EliteBeatTacoNinja, a friend of mine, wanted to try osu! after watching me play. When I asked him a week later on his progress, he quit. Looked at his maps, none were considered rankable by today's standards. I gave him some of my maps, he kept playing for a few months before minecraft got him. Just sayin'

Sounds good, but how we pick up those "good" songs for starter? and how we define "good"?

I think people just want to play songs they like, when they begin playing osu! :p

[CSGA]Ar3sgice wrote:

I think people just want to play songs they like, when they begin playing osu! :p

Pretty much this. If this is really an issue, people would already be remappping the songs from osu!'s past, because, as has been said, they're apparently quite popular and 'badly' made.

The other problem with this idea is that a lot of songs are copyrighted and have other legal issues attached to them, so to avoid some issues (I know osu! is already in very gray areas), it is not advised to put unoriginal songs with the osu! installer (this was discussed before, but I am not sure where).

Also: high learning curve. This isn't anything new, but I just watched a friend pick up the game today, and after quickly failing the easiest difficulty (around 2 to 3 stars) on a few maps that he selected, he was about ready to give up. And mind you, this was on osu!droid, with a touchscreen as opposed to a mouse. A starter pack with carefully-selected easy diffs would go a long way in making the game more appealing. IIRC osu!stream comes with a default pack, presumably for this same reason.

Instead of feature requesting for this and just hoping it gets done, though, how about we as a community figure out a good "starter pack", and simply leave it up to peppy to include it or not? Taking into considerations things like copyright, song recognizability, diversity, difficulty, etc.

If you want to do that, by all means, go nuts. As bliss said, anything copyrighted likely wouldn't make it into osu!installer though.

You're forgetting that osu!Droid is in beta stages at best at the moment, and is produced by a third party so, if they're giving up after failing on an app in-development, It's not osu!s fault?

woc2006 wrote:

Sounds good, but how we pick up those "good" songs for starter? and how we define "good"?

maybe some cool songs with beginner - easy level

[CSGA]Ar3sgice wrote:

I think people just want to play songs they like, when they begin playing osu! :p

^ epic outcome...

@woc2006
I don't have a clear idea on what exactly makes the perfect beginner map. I said bad apple because most people are going to download bad apple sometime anyways, might as well make it a starter.

@Ar3sgice
If you do not provide any songs for the player, they have to download their own. This means that in most cases, they download songs they know. A lot of the time, these maps are the old, low quality ones. If we give them some songs to start, their mindset is that they want to play osu!, not play the doctor who theme on osu!.

@Azure_Kite
The problem with this is that most of these songs are not popular songs, and all of the remapped popular ones get ignored because people are sticking with the old ones.

If I had any type of MIDI software, I wouldn't mind creating my own songs FOR this osu! starter pack. If anyone has a nice midi program that either has a trial or is free, let me know please. I would not mind giving a few songs to peppy for commercial use on osu!stream or PC osu!.

I don't know about osu!droid, I personally thought they were just porting over osu!stream, which already has some nice easy songs installed.

@Kite- it didn't have anything to do with osu!droid being a port, it was about the difficulty of gameplay for an ouendon-clone. Including maps right from installation makes the experience that much smoother for newcomers if we can select good beginner diffs.

Think of how computers come with preinstalled software like Internet Explorer- stuff people like us ridicule, but it makes it so that Joe Schmuck's grandma can pinterest or whatever right out of the box.

I support this. The obvious thing to do after downloading the game is to check the Gameplay & Rankings forum for guides. Beginner's Training and James Training are currently the stickied guides even though they really are outdated.
Including a pack with modern beatmaps would teach new players much more about intuitive spacing.
Someone should at least make a new guide if copyright is the issue. I've seen a really nice half-finished beginners guide somewhere but unfortunately I can't find it right now.

I did exactly that. I got owned by the maps I downloaded and looked for a guide, found a bunch of maps that really didn't help me much. I was on the chat asking why the training wasn't working at all, /np'd my maps, then I FINALLY got some good maps for myself. I don't know the good beginner maps (I know a few taiko ones), so I can't really make a guide myself. I'm just trying to get some modern songs put in the songs folder next to tutorial so players can learn what good maps are like before they search all the old maps, ones they are more likely to fail and more likely to lose patience and ragequit on. Thanks for the support, kreph!

There were a few training packs/styles throughout the history of osu! They are definitely not very well advertised though.

t/16250
viewtopic.php?t=5456

On another note, I also notice that when I try to get new ppl to play, one of the biggest problems is that they don't realize how to play. They usually watch me play difficult maps, and then when they play easier ones, they hit circles early and don't follow the slider ball. I personally think most ranked easy diffs are easy enough that a new player can grasp the map after a few tries (never tried for sure though).

[CSGA]Ar3sgice wrote:

I think people just want to play songs they like, when they begin playing osu! :p

I wasn't one of those new players btw. I downloaded maps from map packs when I started playing osu!

Even some of the map packs have outdated songs in them. *cough*Video Games Pack*cough* Most of my older maps are from beatmap packs, or just songs I really like (considering stealing the timing so I can remap them x.x).

An updated, stickied tutorial thread (maybe a list of tutorials sorted by age/qualty?) could help with this issue, but throwing in a few songs with the download to get people started would definitely help newbies learn the game. They don't even need insane diffs.

I think we first need a like/dislike rating sytem (t/61247), then we can get going with this.

also, most of the themed beatmap packs suck. That's what many people are downloading. How about updating the themed packs, and continue to update them?

theowest wrote:

I think we first need a like/dislike rating sytem (t/61247), then we can get going with this.

also, most of the themed beatmap packs suck. That's what many people are downloading. How about updating the themed packs, and continue to update them?

Instead of implementing a new beatmap ranking feature just to see what maps people like, why not just present the idea of a starter pack to the community, and have like 20 songs for people to vote for. The 5 best songs get in. We see what maps people want to use without months and months of implementing yet another proposed overhaul on how beatmaps are ranked/unranked/sorted.

yeah 5 times Bad Apple
I think a Starter pack is a nice idea though ~ I still would include at least one good map from '07 - '09 or so

vote as in like/dislike. yes

Bundled songs will never happen unless I have the rights to use them. Therefore, if this is going to go anywhere, the list needs to be of beatmaps using creative commons or equally licensed songs.

Other than that, I would suggest a wiki page with an updated list of beginner-friendly songs which could be linked from the osu! download page.

If me, or anyone else in the community, decides to make some music + maps for the sole purpose of you putting them into a starter pack (assuming they were mapped good), how would we go about asking you to add them?

As far as t/16250 goes, I actually did want to get that going again, but change it to use a sort of nomination process because my taste is ass. We really do need some newbie-friendly packs with modern maps.

If me, or anyone else in the community, decides to make some music + maps for the sole purpose of you putting them into a starter pack (assuming they were mapped good), how would we go about asking you to add them?

You would contact him or one of his servants an admin, of course.

EDIT: You could also make a thread for it in General Development once it's completed, if that person really is making the music themselves and, thus, has the rights. peppy does read that section of the forums and would probably notice the thread.

Alright. I just need some music making software (hopefully MIDI) so I can get to work with making some music.

IMO the easier (read: more likely to actually occur) option would be to find some good, creative commons music and focus on mapping a high-quality easy diff for that, rather than trying to compose music from scratch.

Unless there are existing beatmaps using such music already that I don't know about?

akrolsmir wrote:

IMO the easier (read: more likely to actually occur) option would be to find some good, creative commons music and focus on mapping a high-quality easy diff for that, rather than trying to compose music from scratch.

Unless there are existing beatmaps using such music already that I don't know about?

If someone compiled a list of good creative commons music then this could be done in just a couple of days if we only do high-quality easy diffs.

EDIT: Still only a few days if we go up to Normal and only about a week if we go up to Hard, assuming all the mappers know what they're doing.

EDIT2: Though, the tricky part about doing that is finding songs with an appropriate type of license.

EDIT3: Would osu! qualify as non-commercial? I know osu!s doesn't if it's in a pack that's being sold, but does regular osu!? If so then here: http://dig.ccmixter.org/music_for_games

Should we provide taiko difficulties as well? If you take a look at the "Why don't normal osu! players play taiko" thread, many players simply couldn't start because they couldn't find easy taiko maps that actually made sense. If we decide to add Taiko maps (and maybe even CtB), I would be willing to make them. I like making taiko maps a lot more than osu! maps, seeing I play console and psp versions.

You can always go ahead and ask artists if you can distribute their songs on osu! Or even better, get them to play some osu! too. Helblinde started playing osu! because people were using his songs.

Mithost wrote:

Should we provide taiko difficulties as well? If you take a look at the "Why don't normal osu! players play taiko" thread, many players simply couldn't start because they couldn't find easy taiko maps that actually made sense. If we decide to add Taiko maps (and maybe even CtB), I would be willing to make them. I like making taiko maps a lot more than osu! maps, seeing I play console and psp versions.

yes, we should. The taiko ranking criteria must be improved upon too.

Totally forgot about other modes too. If I had access to a well-mapped taiko/ctb difficulty when I was starting out I think I'd have gotten a lot more seriously into those.

I'm thinking three osu, one taiko (and maybe one ctb?) maps would serve as a bare minimum for a starter pack. Getting enough mappers on board shouldn't be a problem, so really we just need to pick the songs...

akrolsmir wrote:

Totally forgot about other modes too. If I had access to a well-mapped taiko/ctb difficulty when I was starting out I think I'd have gotten a lot more seriously into those.

I'm thinking three osu, one taiko (and maybe one ctb?) maps would serve as a bare minimum for a starter pack. Getting enough mappers on board shouldn't be a problem, so really we just need to pick the songs...

Why not just two taiko diffs on each song?

Support.

I started osu! with Maps like Groundhog.
And anyway, the definition of easy Mapsets might be hard to find.

I don't think this should work and people should choose what's the best for them.

peppy wrote:

I would suggest a wiki page with an updated list of beginner-friendly songs which could be linked from the osu! download page.

Pretty much this.
Like when I started to play, I was about to give up, then someone showed me this thread and I could learn how to play
Well, the first maps I downloaded was 08 or 09 maps or really hard maps like Through The Fire And Flames
A link to a wiki page with suggestions of some easy maps would be perfect
I wouldn't keep playing this game if someone hadn't linked me a beginner's training

Mithost wrote:

Should we provide taiko difficulties as well? If you take a look at the "Why don't normal osu! players play taiko" thread, many players simply couldn't start because they couldn't find easy taiko maps that actually made sense.

Hence why i've been wanting for a while that when a mapset includes Taiko diffs they are bound by the diff spread rule as well.

Mithost wrote:

akrolsmir wrote:

Totally forgot about other modes too. If I had access to a well-mapped taiko/ctb difficulty when I was starting out I think I'd have gotten a lot more seriously into those.

I'm thinking three osu, one taiko (and maybe one ctb?) maps would serve as a bare minimum for a starter pack. Getting enough mappers on board shouldn't be a problem, so really we just need to pick the songs...

Why not just two taiko diffs on each song?

Good point. So, three songs across three genres, each with at least two osu and one taiko diff under 3 stars?

That sounds reasonable. Taiko is pretty easy to grasp after you learn the differences between don and kat, so we could have one song that starts just with that, and slowly move up to a 5* (taiko rating, not osu! rating) muhuzakhii diff in diff songs.

woc2006 wrote:

Sounds good, but how we pick up those "good" songs for starter? and how we define "good"?

What about the Best Maps of the Previous Year?

Philippines wrote:

woc2006 wrote:

Sounds good, but how we pick up those "good" songs for starter? and how we define "good"?

What about the Best Maps of the Previous Year?

They need to not be copyrighted, and the votes for best map of the year usually deal with insanes over easys.

The download would take longer then. What if someone deleted osu, decided to come back a few years not needing those kinds of maps.

They should have the option to download these stuff or not

Edit: There should be a "Download installer only" and "Download with beginner maps" options on download

Since the MBC (and mapping with rewards contests) provides beatmaps when you download osu! I think this can be marked as added. Good thing at all!