A bit of a follow-up regarding this thread: https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/topics/936631

As a mapper, I've been wanting to open myself up to other modes and 8K/7K + 1K has taking my attention the most for some reason. After looking at some 8K/7K + 1K maps myself and reading the thread above, I was actually quite surprised with a lot of responses, with more people saying they would preferably like to play pure 8K. I've always considered 8K to be 7K + 1K to be honest since in more recent years, 8K has usually been as 7K + 1K, but it seems like there's a lot more people wanting for more pure 8K maps to be a thing, especially in the ranked section. So what gives?

Just for speculation, I believe it's more of the surroundings games that are similar to 8K/7K + 1K, such as BMS, Lunatic Rave, beatmania, etc. to where the 1K, also known as the scratcher, makes it where the key is emphasized usually by something that the other keys don't exactly need to emphasize, things like cymbals, etc. Ok ok, just wanted to get that out of the way for people who aren't too familiar with the mode, but getting to my point, people who have seen and/or played games like these usually find this as the only way to map 8K since nearly every other game like it follows the same format with the 1K (scratcher). Just speculation honestly, but I don't think it's totally bad either considering that we have a lot of people who come from other games like mentioned before that have tried mania and believe 8K is going to be something like 7K + 1K for the most part. Though, we have actually had pure 8K maps in the past in the ranked section, most notably DJPop's ranked christmas set such as this but honestly, after looking at a bunch of 8K maps, I realized the meta for 7K + 1K maps was a lot bigger than I'd imagined, but yet again, we barely see any 8K/7K + 1K to begin with so from a ranking standpoint, there's nothing we BNs can do to push anything like this unless we wanted to push things like these ourselves.

That being said, is there anything I wanted to do from here or anything maybe I hope to accomplish? I mean, not really, I just wanted a bigger discussion about it since I definitely see the lack in 8K/7K + 1K maps, or even just the lack of anti-keymodes for the ranked section in recent years honestly. If anything, it would be nice to have something specifically in the game to let the player know that the map is pure 8K or 7K + 1K but the hopes of that happening are a long shot, considering that 8K isn't even a big thing and I'm not totally sure how the devs would go about doing that to begin with. But if I really wanted something to come out of this, I would maybe hope to have some clarification on the wiki about this since there is definitely a clear separation between 8K and 7K + 1K and I don't believe that many new people who are trying to figure out osu!mania even know about the clear separation of the two unless they figured it out from playing 8K overtime or understood it while playing the game but I also feel like it's something they should be aware of if they were to read the wiki because I haven't found anything like this on the wiki anywhere so it would be nice to have something like this imo. That being said, there's nothing against having pure 8K maps for ranked since the ranking criteria doesn't actually go against having anything that's pure 8K, but having a clear definitive between the two I feel like is something we should have, just to let players know they aren't the same thing since the game bunches the keymodes as just "8K".

Any sort of discussion would be great, thanks!

The mapper actually has always been able to indicate if the map uses the special style (n+1K), it is just that this information is not displayed anywhere outside the map editor, and it has not had any effect on gameplay since they fused 8K and 7K+1K in the keybind configurations several years ago.

Full Tablet wrote:

The mapper actually has always been able to indicate if the map uses the special style (n+1K), it is just that this information is not displayed anywhere outside the map editor, and it has not had any effect on gameplay since they fused 8K and 7K+1K in the keybind configurations several years ago.

ah maybe i should have included this in the post somewhere, but yes I'm well aware that they could do this. it's just that this "merge" really makes 8K and 7K + 1K seem similar when they clearly aren't. I mean sure they both use 8 Keys, but if we consider each keymode like a different mode, I feel like something for this should be added as well. I also did mention that we didn't have to have this like an internal thing in the game, even though the editor shows it, it's not like many players know about it and seems sort of silly to have check the editor to know whether the keymode has a special style. Honestly would rather have it has an external thing, like on the wiki or somewhere if I wanted something out of this.

also to the "effect on gameplay point", sure it hasn't had a huge effect on the gameplay but 8K and 7K + 1K are literally different ways to play something with the same keys. usually key fingerings are different and mapping 8K and 7K + 1K are different as well. having an extra key that's used like an actual key compared to a key that is used less rarely only to emphasize certain sounds makes a huge difference in comparison tbh.

Sounds like something that is worth requesting in lazer: https://github.com/ppy/osu-web/issues
If no body is going to call dibs by end of the week, I'll make it myself

abraker wrote:

Sounds like something that is worth requesting in lazer: https://github.com/ppy/osu-web/issues
If no body is going to call dibs by end of the week, I'll make it myself

yoooo that would be pretty awesome, would love to see what you could do with this ^^

Since I don't play 8k, I'm not going to bother to vote.

The reason there seems to be a mismatch is that most mappers who map 8k have experience with other rhythm games. This means they've been primarily exposed to 8k in the Beatmania IIDX format of 7k+1, because TBH I can't even think of a symmetrical 8k game.

On the other hand, most osu players have little to no experience with rhythm games outside of osu, and players tend to gravitate towards things that they perceive as easier (hence why 4k is far more popular than 7k). A symmetrical layout is easier in the sense that instead of having 2 keys that are somewhat special (spacebar and scratch), and patterns that are sometimes geared towards exploiting in inherent weakness of the scratch key (being on the weakest and least independent finger on the hand) make 7k+1 seem less appealing to players who are not used to that mindset.

Personally, I'd say that there should be a good balance between both styles. They each have their pros and cons, and will have very different feeling patterns due to the lane organization.

Bobbias wrote:

Personally, I'd say that there should be a good balance between both styles. They each have their pros and cons, and will have very different feeling patterns due to the lane organization.

Oh absolutely. Definitely both of them have their pros and cons, but they offer different ways of playing with the same keys which is something I hope to open this discussion to be more open about. Now looking at it, I hope people don't perceive this thread to be whether 7K + 1K is better than 8K or vice versa because of the vote on top, just put it there for people to express what they would rather play than some voting contest on what's better. Also, thanks for leaving some of your insight, means a lot!

No problem, if there's one thing I can contribute, it's my ~15 years of insight into rhythm games. I've played both stepmania and o2jam before I came to osu over that time. Never got into BMS sadly, and at this point I simply don't have the motivation to spend the time it takes to learn, but I personally would probably have voted 7k+1 for what it's worth.

As for the number of beatmaps for modes outside the meta, there's a bunch of factors that all work together here.

1. Autoconverts encourage players to start off playing 4k. (I distinctly recall pointing out that this would promote 4k as the most popular key mode for new players, and thus lead to 4k becoming the dominant key mode very early in mania's life.)
2. Players are scared to try higher key modes in the beginning because learning 4k feels daunting enough.
3. Players who have stuck with 4k for a while but have tried other higher key modes become easily discouraged by the slower pace of improvement, and the lack of skill transfer (reading and muscle memory transfers to lower key modes, but not higher ones, generally speaking).
4. Adding to that, most players don't have much interest in learning other key modes for a whole host of reasons.
5. The lack of maps also leads to a lack of interest, but I personally feel like even if there were as many maps as, say, 7k, there'd still be relatively low interest in the non-meta key modes.

I mainly play 7k, but I dabble in 4/5/6k as well, and I'd be happy to see more non-meta key mode maps, but I don't see things changing much. Making a real change to non-meta key modes in general requires participation from players and I doubt there's much anyone can do to legitimately promote non-meta key modes (let's face it, if nobody plays Xk maps, nobody is going to want to map for that mode... with the exception of circus gallop.)

Here we go:
https://github.com/ppy/osu/issues/5668

abraker wrote:

Here we go:
https://github.com/ppy/osu/issues/5668

awesome stuff. it seems like it just got moved to candidate issues. hopefully we can see something for this in the near future ^^

Bobbias wrote:

I mainly play 7k, but I dabble in 4/5/6k as well, and I'd be happy to see more non-meta key mode maps, but I don't see things changing much. Making a real change to non-meta key modes in general requires participation from players and I doubt there's much anyone can do to legitimately promote non-meta key modes (let's face it, if nobody plays Xk maps, nobody is going to want to map for that mode... with the exception of circus gallop.)

yeah im trying to dabble in some anti-keymodes myself since it's definitely caught my interest recently. hopefully we can see more people map some more anti-keymodes if they start to get bored of 4K lol but who knows.

Even as someone who started playing VSRGs with BMS I don't like playing 7K+1 and find it weird, probably because I play on a keyboard and have no plans of building or buying a controller. I played a little bit of 8K in SM, both pad doubles(still on keyboard) and 4K maps with two players and mirror on P2. That already felt better, so I imagine maps made specifically for keyboard 8K would be even better still(EDIT: they are). It also helped me a bit with alternating spacebar(although I still suck at it) because I used thumbs instead of pinkies.

Unpredictable wrote:

hopefully we can see more people map some more anti-keymodes if they start to get bored of 4K lol but who knows.

The funny thing is, there are many good alternative 4K games, and not so much for 7K and other keycounts(to the point where I'm unironically using open2jam, I might even remake a skinning guide that I never published and lost) and yet as far as I can tell most people who quit osumania are everyone but 4K mains