proposed rc wrote:

1. Beatmaps must be hitsounded. Hitnormals give feedback to the player, and additions (whistles, claps, and finishes) accent the most important parts of the music.
   
   1. For osu!mania beatmaps of difficulty Insane or above, additions are not required.

This issue mostly affects experienced players, which is why I am conservatively limiting this to insane and extreme difficulties, but I would include this for all difficulties if not for my fear this will be rejected for the third time.

The need of including hitsounds additions (whistles, claps, and finishes) is very counter intuitive to how players play the game. There is no point requiring mappers to put effort into something that not only will be turned off by many players, but is seen as something that is ruining mania because it is a discouraging effort for a lot of mappers. I don't think it's fair to argue that hitsounding should be a thing for "quality" reasons if players themselves don't see it as "quality". Considering it laziness is fair, but it's laziness I hope can be forgiven for the sake of giving players more maps they would enjoy playing.

As I was making this proposal, I was made aware that Jakads was asked by pishifat why mania has mostly lower diff maps as of late and what can be done to fix it, with one of the answers by Jakads being that hitsounds need to be optional. The are also scattered criticisms of the hitsounds requirements here, here, and here in case anyone thinks there is not enough support for this.

As for peppy's historic stance, enough time has passed I hope he at least has considered what this does to the availability of harder maps in ranked.

I agree!!

I couldn't agree more. This requirement is ridiculous and demonstrates a clear lack of understanding about what is and isnt relevant in a good VSRG chart.

Here's what I think. I honestly don't know if this proposal will even go anywhere as hitsounding at this point has been so ingrained in the ranking criteria and the ranking process so we'll eventually see where this goes. Though I agree with this proposal, if you're willing to propose this then I would like take it a step further and would like to see be available for all difficulties, not just higher difficulties.

I would like to bring up the twitter post that abraker had mentioned up top that Jakads had posted. From the twitter comments and to even some of the other discussion (threads) being mentioned here, it's very clear and apparent that hitsounds seem to be a leading factor to why people do not want to go through the hassle of ranking a map. It's also why the most popular "modding queues" for mania are hitsounding queues where you can get hitsounds typically for free quickly by a few selected hitsounders. I have also seen people bring up the argument that it's simply people being "lazy", when quite honestly that's probably one of the most laziest responses to this topic as you're straight up dismissing the point entirely. I'm not sure why people come to that conclusion exactly, but one thing's for certain and it's that hitsounding is currently detracting people to want to rank anything. Personally, I believe hitsounding to be unnecessary and I'm sure a lot of others could agree with me on this issue as well. Especially if people have played similar VSRGs to mania, I'm sure a lot of people find that hitsounds literally don't exist at all as many of them do not to see it add much of anything to the game. Which leads me to also add how many people who play mania turn off hitsounds to begin with as a lot of people find them annoying or obnoxious even.

Though I say this, I understand the importance of hitsounds as well and why they exist to begin with. However, it should be incredibly apparent to anyone that hitsounds seem to be a root cause to why people are seen not ranking their maps. I do not believe that we should not use hitsounds entirely though because there are people who do legitimately want to use hitsounds in their maps and make it a part of a map, an experience if you will which is why maps that are mostly or purely keysounded are quite very enjoyable to a majority of the mania community. However, I believe one of the best routes to go about this is to make hitsounding optional. This way, it compensates for people who extremely dislike hitsounding whilst compensating for people who find hitsounds to be essential in their map making. I think this would be of best interest to the entire mania community as a whole and we can hopefully see something come from this in the future.

Edit: found a grammar mistake and wanted to correct it

Agree for sure

surprised this hasn't made its way into RC for so long. I think Unpredictable's suggestion is best choice

I 100% agree with Unpredictable. A MASSIVE reason why mania has such a low number of mappers ranking stuff in comparison to other modes is that many osu!mania mappers are mappers who come from other games that don't require them to hitsound stuff, so if you look at the situation in their shoes hitsounds are completely unnecessary in comparison to creating maps with creative/structurally sound concepts.

For those of us who started out on mania and especially for those of us who have hitsounded maps for a long time it's very easy to assume, as Unpredictable said, that mappers who don't want to spend hours hitsounding are lazy but I firmly believe that they love their maps and put just as much effort into creating their patterns as mappers who do hitsound their maps. Hitsounding can be a way to really spice up a map but I think it's important to realize that we aren't like the other 3 modes and that not a lot of mania mappers are enthusiastic about hitsounding.

https://github.com/ppy/osu-wiki/pull/2925, should get approval from at least a few other BN and NAT since this is a significant change

edit: to be clear, having this PR exist doesn't mean that it will be added to the RC. this is just a working draft of how it could be worded in case it is added. no rules will be changed until the conversations in this thread are over and a verdict has been made

imo, most people who are not in favor of requiring hitsounds for ranked maps turn the effect volume down anyways. im not in favor of allowing *muted* hitsounds, but im in favor of not having to thoroughly hitsound a map - maybe allow every note to be the same default sample, at say, 10% volume? definitely not full volume. but thats just my understanding of it

I agree. Please only apply this if the map have specific pattern like handstream, jack or something challenging maps. Hitsounds would be fun for easy until insane difficult in my opinion. Top players does not care about the hitsound and they just want to play it with good acc & score! So, would be nice if it get muted. For an example, "Yuikonnu - Houkago Stride" map by "tailsdk" expert difficult until Ash's difficult should get muted because it does not fun to hear with the hitsound in my opinion. In summary, the map which is have specific pattern like I stated above and challenging maps should get muted.

I think people perceive this proposal as a proposal to not doing hitsound instead of using muted hitsound (which means hitsound that doesn't emit any kind of sound). Both are different as muted hitsound is still a hitsound but returns blank which requires hitsounding process as well.

I agree with higher difficulties having muted hitsounds as higher difficulty tends to have high density as well and these hitsounds that mostly used are not mixed properly (EQ, Compression, and such) leading to the hitsound being completely dampening the actual music (in low volume as well but it mostly unnoticeable). It's one of my gripe when hitsounding Yggdrasil Kobaryo kicks as the ending's kick is relentless. I EQ'd the kick numerous time but it just doesn't mix properly with the music played.

I think you can use muted hitsound as RC said

Completely silent hit sounds must use this 44-byte file. Other files have unnecessarily high file sizes and 0-byte files do not function.

but there's lines such as

Hit sounds must be audible. Their purpose is to provide feedback, so hit sounds with extremely low volume or samples that blend with a song's samples are unacceptable. Specific game modes list exceptions to this rule on their respective ranking criterias.

which is kinda contradictory.

EDIT: Proposal description also touches the not doing hitsound suggestion what.

EDIT2 (for my opinion if this proposal really wants to remove hitsounding process as optional):
I agree with this due to the facts stated by people before me regarding hassle of doing hitsound, but I kinda disagree with removing the hitsounding process on all difficulties as hitsounds are what makes osu!mania different (making this process optional is a death sentence for the process as most people would not do it if that's the case). For lower difficulties I didn't see how HS became a detriment as most of these difficulties may consists of only drums (and additional melodies in some cases) and HSes may work wonder adding flavors to the music.

I agree with higher diff having muted hs, since it might affect player's experience by forcing noticeable hs for high bpm maps.

I disagree with removing hs requirement from RC, since hs can help some players play better.

For people who think hs don't matter, it has more impact on gameplay than metadata, and yet metadata is more strict.

The decline of people trying to rank maps might be more related to lack of BN availability.
If having more maps ranked is that important, why even have BN, just 5 hype and make it ranked. Its because we are aiming for higher quality maps over the years. For example, there has been set rules/guidelines set for each difficulty. HS is just another aspect of trying to achieve a better quality. It's true that it's harder to rank a map now compared to before, but that is not a reason why someone shouldn't bother learning what is hs.

If hs is not required, people who want hs will be punished.
If hs is required, people who dont want hs can just mute and isn't punished.

In order to make most people happy, its better to make it required.
Why is it justified to remove hs, just because mapper doesn't want it?

If your map should only please you, why even ranked?

the PR is based on Unpredictable and -MysticEyes's comments, which say (unless if I misunderstood) that mania mappers need not worry about hitsounding.

it explicitly isn't about muting sounds. it says the mapper is not required to do anything

I can definitely see the benefit of allowing muted hitsounds for intense high snap patterns like drill sounds or wub semi-dumping.

Making hitsounding optional is quite a stretch which i am in fact in favor of though it would be wise to add a volume requirement if this were to actually push through cause defaults at 100% are awful lmao.

Kinda odd that the pull request went to "removing hs requirement".

the volume thing is probably wise, but at the same time, the player can turn down their effect volume too (having a higher base volume gives the player more options to work with)

nvm this is probably shit to require players to do something about all maps lol

dudehacker wrote:

For people who think hs don't matter, it has more impact on gameplay than metadata, and yet metadata is more strict.

and then i mute effect sounds. voila, hs no longer has any impact on my gameplay.
this doesnt really seem like a solid argument

abraker can you confirm whether this thread is about
1. allowing mappers to mute some hitsounds (as in, 0% volume)
or
2. allowing mappers to do no hitsounding work (as in, a map could have only hitnormals all the way through)

there's two conversations going on here.

apart from the usage of the word "muted" in OP, which I assumed to just be a poor choice of words, it sounds like everything in the first few posts is talking about 2. I'm not sure where the misunderstanding is besides word choice of "muted" as mentioned

I personally assumed this thread was a direct successor to https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/topics/169490

-mint- wrote:

dudehacker wrote:

For people who think hs don't matter, it has more impact on gameplay than metadata, and yet metadata is more strict.

and then i mute effect sounds. voila, hs no longer has any impact on my gameplay.
this doesnt really seem like a solid argument

so every player who wants hs should just go make hs themselve after you make it optional?

Actually those muted hitsound sticked because copiyng using hitsound copier, which make it zero value in the ending and front of samples, it's doesn't affect on anything, so better to keep them or remove them if you could do that. But know the system will more effective doing that, i suggest to add a new system where zero/muted hitsound automatically remove rather than allow to use it.
Below is why muted hitsound appeared.

Yeah those zero value is muted hitsound and it's the volume of the sample.

Knows what benefit using hitsound, why bother yourself maps only played by top players. Do beginners and Regular players plays using hitsound too? did i know is hitsound helping them to do hitting notes and make them easier to play with hit every sound of notes. Players know the sound every hit because they not actually hit notes in entire charts.

Why we throw away when we can fix it, it is ? Consider again

i bet if its really gonna change to optional, over 50% of the ranked map would only have hit-normal sample on it. i think hitsound is not really the main problem with why there are only a few ranked mania beatmaps in this game. (i'm not gonna tell, but i bet some of you already know the main problem.)


i agree with abraker to allow muted hitsounds but only for higher difficulties to help people have more focus when playing a higher level map.

i dont really know why this conversation has changed to "make Hitsound be Optional for ranking a beatmap". while "he" said people are being "lazy" to rank a map because of the hitsound. there's a lot of maps that ready for rank out there. people start to lower their mapping activities because they know the chance for them to have their map ranked is very small. i'll said it again, i think hitsound is not really the main problem with why there are only a few ranked mania beatmaps in this game.

dont bother these. its only my opinion

clayton wrote:

abraker can you confirm whether this thread is about
1. allowing mappers to mute some hitsounds (as in, 0% volume)
or
2. allowing mappers to do no hitsounding work (as in, a map could have only hitnormals all the way through)

there's two conversations going on here.

apart from the usage of the word "muted" in OP, which I assumed to just be a poor choice of words, it sounds like everything in the first few posts is talking about 2. I'm not sure where the misunderstanding is besides word choice of "muted" as mentioned

I personally assumed this thread was a direct successor to https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/topics/169490

I think the original thread was about muted hitsounds, what Unpredictable stated was meant as a counter-proposal.

I do not think Abraker's proposal is a good idea since some players do in fact rely on hitsounds for feedback so this could prevent people from accessing higher level maps, and it wouldn't hit at the crux of the issue since people will still be required to hitsound lower diffs.

However I do still think that Unpredictable's counter-proposal is necessary. A good compromise is to require maps to have audible feedback, but make actually hitsounding maps optional. that way players who need auditory feedback will have it, but mappers will have more freedom to rank their maps.

I want to restate the fact that requiring hitsounds drives away a lot of mappers from ranking stuff. Not sure if people from other modes are aware from this but our community of experienced, unranked mappers is huge. Way larger than other gamemodes. And we're hardly doing anything to try to attract them to rank things (excluding a few BNs who make an effort to reach out to them). If we want to revitalize mania we need to actually take steps to revitalize it, even if it disturbs the status quo.

-MysticEyes wrote:

I want to restate the fact that requiring hitsounds drives away a lot of mappers from ranking stuff. Not sure if people from other modes are aware from this but our community of experienced, unranked mappers is huge. Way larger than other gamemodes. And we're hardly doing anything to try to attract them to rank things (excluding a few BNs who make an effort to reach out to them). If we want to revitalize mania we need to actually take steps to revitalize it, even if it disturbs the status quo.

hmm no no no i think you should read this once more

dudehacker wrote:

The decline of people trying to rank maps might be more related to lack of BN availability.
If having more maps ranked is that important, why even have BN, just 5 hype and make it ranked. Its because we are aiming for higher quality maps over the years. For example, there has been set rules/guidelines set for each difficulty. HS is just another aspect of trying to achieve a better quality. It's true that it's harder to rank a map now compared to before, but that is not a reason why someone shouldn't bother learning what is hs.

If hs is not required, people who want hs will be punished.
If hs is required, people who dont want hs can just mute and isn't punished.

In order to make most people happy, its better to make it required.
Why is it justified to remove hs, just because mapper doesn't want it?

If your map should only please you, why even ranked?

Agayers wrote:

-MysticEyes wrote:

I want to restate the fact that requiring hitsounds drives away a lot of mappers from ranking stuff. Not sure if people from other modes are aware from this but our community of experienced, unranked mappers is huge. Way larger than other gamemodes. And we're hardly doing anything to try to attract them to rank things (excluding a few BNs who make an effort to reach out to them). If we want to revitalize mania we need to actually take steps to revitalize it, even if it disturbs the status quo.

hmm no no no i think you should read this once more

dudehacker wrote:

The decline of people trying to rank maps might be more related to lack of BN availability.
If having more maps ranked is that important, why even have BN, just 5 hype and make it ranked. Its because we are aiming for higher quality maps over the years. For example, there has been set rules/guidelines set for each difficulty. HS is just another aspect of trying to achieve a better quality. It's true that it's harder to rank a map now compared to before, but that is not a reason why someone shouldn't bother learning what is hs.

If hs is not required, people who want hs will be punished.
If hs is required, people who dont want hs can just mute and isn't punished.

In order to make most people happy, its better to make it required.
Why is it justified to remove hs, just because mapper doesn't want it?

If your map should only please you, why even ranked?

Point 1. And I respectfully disagree with you. Yes there are some mappers who can't rank their maps but that happens in every mode because BNs have to have their own quality standards and not every map will meet theirs. It isn't BN's jobs to rank every map that's going for ranked. It's their job to rank the maps that they believe are *ready* for ranked. Every BN will have different definitions, especially today since we have a pretty diverse cast of BNs with very different mapping styles, but still. Fact is a large chunk of experienced mappers are soft locked out of the process entirely because they don't believe that hitsounds are essensial to making a high quality map. And they still make maps with interesting, unique concepts that could theoretically be rankable if hitsounds were optional.

Point 2. That's a straw man fallacy. The argument isn't "we don't want to do hitsounds because we're lazy and only want to please ourselves" it's that we want to include a larger portion of the mapping community in the ranking process. And once again the auditory feedback issue could be addressed by making auditory feedback required (turning volume up via timing points) but not requiring mappers to place hitsounds. that way notes can still be heard.

Agayers wrote:

-MysticEyes wrote:

I want to restate the fact that requiring hitsounds drives away a lot of mappers from ranking stuff. Not sure if people from other modes are aware from this but our community of experienced, unranked mappers is huge. Way larger than other gamemodes. And we're hardly doing anything to try to attract them to rank things (excluding a few BNs who make an effort to reach out to them). If we want to revitalize mania we need to actually take steps to revitalize it, even if it disturbs the status quo.

hmm no no no i think you should read this once more

dudehacker wrote:

The decline of people trying to rank maps might be more related to lack of BN availability.
If having more maps ranked is that important, why even have BN, just 5 hype and make it ranked. Its because we are aiming for higher quality maps over the years. For example, there has been set rules/guidelines set for each difficulty. HS is just another aspect of trying to achieve a better quality. It's true that it's harder to rank a map now compared to before, but that is not a reason why someone shouldn't bother learning what is hs.

If hs is not required, people who want hs will be punished.
If hs is required, people who dont want hs can just mute and isn't punished.

In order to make most people happy, its better to make it required.
Why is it justified to remove hs, just because mapper doesn't want it?

If your map should only please you, why even ranked?

To say that the lack of ranked charts is because of the lack of bn availability is just factually false. Sure, there is a small amount of charters that are affected by this, but even then, there's a huge amount of charters in osu!mania that doesn't even bother trying to rank anything at all.
The far biggest reason why many of these "unranked charters" doesn't bother to rank anything is because of hitsounds. Hitsounds is not something that's common in other VSRGs (with the huge excetion of bms), and this has lead to a certain culture in the VSRG charting community, that focuses more on the chart itself
rather than something external like hitsounds. I mean heck, there's a reason why the loved section within osu!mania is considered more successful than the ranked section, both in terms of quality and the amount of content.

Also, making hitsounds optional would in theory increase bn availability, since it offloads them work, so it basically solves two issues at once.

Greeting!

So, i have followed the thread and read most of the replies in it. I have also followed most tweets in the past days on twitter about it. The topic about hitsounds gets more and more discussed and i am pretty sure we can somehow find a compromise about it.

First things first: Right now i am against the proposal how it is stated in the main post. The reason for this is simply that we can say for sure that "most people don't use hitsounds", neither we can say "most people do use hitsounds". There is not enough data available to judge this properly
Sure we can say "most of my friends don't/do play with hitsounds", but these cover in 98% of the cases a really small part of the community.

So, what can we do. I have thinking about this really long last evening and today, on how we could find here a compromise. Because i also do want to make the process of ranking a beatmap and playing a beatmap accessible to the widest audience as possible.
This covers pretty much with ppys intention to bring the joy of rhythm gaming to as much people as possible. That's why osu! is free to play and everyone should be able to play/rank without any restrictions. And before i post my proposal: I am sure there will be still people who won't like it.. but it should at least cover the majority of cases. And before you counter against it i want to make clear that i tried really to cover a high amount of the playerbase.

So here is my proposal (Wording might change, it just for the idea)

osu!mania hit sound must consist of at least one audible hit normal hit sound and at least 1-2 additional effect hit sounds. This is to ensure that notes provide a proper feedback when being played. (I said 1-2 because i think we can discuss about this)

So that's the idea behind the proposal: Like previously stated, we can not for sure say how many people play with or without hitsounds. These people who are playing without hitsounds have a clear advantage here: They just turn them off.
People who are actually playing with hitsounds and even need them to have a more accurate play (Including me) don't have this choice. If a beatmap has no hitsounds, we could increase the volume as much as we want, it doesn't change the fact that there are none.
Removing hitsounding from ranked would restrict these players.

My proposal try to cover both parties: First of all people who are playing with hitsounds still have them.
People who do not want hitsounds/don't want to hitsounds their maps don't have to spend that much time with hitsounding anymore. Reducing the amount of needed hitsounds also helps mapper to "outsource" hitsounding to other people.
There are already some who hitsound beatmaps for other, reducing the amount of needed hitsounds could possibly increase the number of people who are willing to hitsound for other.

So yeah.. that's my proposal which really try to cover as much of the playerbase as possible. Whenever you want to counter it, please do not forget that there are people who like playing with hitsounds and these should not be restricted in playing beatmaps.

Feedback welcome!

Edit: Minor grammar fixes

clayton wrote:

abraker can you confirm whether this thread is about
1. allowing mappers to mute some hitsounds (as in, 0% volume)
or
2. allowing mappers to do no hitsounding work (as in, a map could have only hitnormals all the way through)

This is technically suggesting #2. I suggested this in context of existing criteria, so allowing to leave hitsounds muted made sense. In my mind this would allow mappers to mute all hitsounds (0% volume), making hitsounding pointless if mapper does mute everything, allowing to do no hitsounding work.

The proposal can be improved to allow no hitsounding work in a better and direct way.



@Feerum
My issue with coming to such compromise is that in eventuality there will be another proposal for the removal of hitsounds. People depend on hitsounds for the same reason I depend on a hidden lane cover, it's there and it helps. Do you need hitsounds to be able to make great scores? No, and stepmania/etterna proves that. I do see players relying much less on hitsounds if hitsounds are made to not be required. The matter of fact is, the arguement "you need hitsounds because people depend on hitsounds" is a circular one - it's trying to counter-argue the very thing that would make it false.

Feerum wrote:

People who are actually playing with hitsounds and even need them to have a more accurate play (Including me) don't have this choice. If a beatmap has no hitsounds, we could increase the volume as much as we want, it doesn't change the fact that there are none.
Removing hitsounding from ranked would restrict these players.

I think -mint-'s post could be implemented in some way? Equalizing all the volume and samples in its uninherited and inherited timing points. for Example using N sample at 30%

1. Mappers are not necessarily to hitsound every specific sound to the corresponding hitsounds
2. but players who play with hitsounds may need to add their own hitnormal to comply with their playing capability (in case default hitnormal annoys them)

I think it kinda burden the players yeah, but if we're going to incentivize mappers in some way.... could probably works?

I would agree that volume control and the bare basics of using a better hitnormal is very acceptable as a requirement. It's fairly consistent with the hitsound model of other games where the sole purpose is basic hit feedback.

The additional 1-2 sounds is kinda eh within the bounds of the discussion as it would still end up being something along the lines of WCF (or less depending on the song). I don't really hitsound a whole lot so feel free to correct me on this regard and as to how it's different from the current model.

Its fair to consider that hitsound outsourcing does in fact exist.

Yeah, I got to agree with lenpai here. The proposal is a good idea, but the 1-2 additional hitsound thingy kinda brings back it back to the core issue. Sure it's less to hitsound, but it's still there. Many charters would like to avoid hitsounds as a whole, so I think only having hitnormal with a certain volume control as a requirement would be a reasonable compromise.

make hitnormal only the obligatory sample to have on a ranked beatmap and the 1-2 additional samples as optional?

making hitnormal louder isnt solving the issue. some players rely on WCF(kick snare finish) to help focus on drum pattern in lower difficuly since they pay more attntion to voice by default.

the real compromise is hs optional for spread without easy and normal difficulty.

i updated wording a bit to clarify that hitnormals are still a requirement (within the scope of this rule, anyway). this also dispels any concerns about volume, because it doesn't say osu!mania is exempt in any way from managing hitsound volume:

proposed rc wrote:

1. Beatmaps must be hitsounded. Hitnormals give feedback to the player, and additions (whistles, claps, and finishes) accent the most important parts of the music.
   
   1. For osu!mania beatmaps, it is acceptable to omit additions.

IMO allowing all hitsounds to be muted is too extreme because then the player has no choice but to play without any hitsounds. it should be their preference. seems like most people in this thread agree so I think we're good there

as for dudehacker's complaint, I can see a reasonable compromise being still requiring hitsounds on low diffs, again that also seems to be favorable for most people in this thread. so basically I could change the last sentence to read, "For osu!mania beatmaps of difficulty Hard or above, it is acceptable to omit additions." (at this point it may be more appropriate in the mania RC document but thats a small detail)

lenpai wrote:

The additional 1-2 sounds is kinda eh within the bounds of the discussion as it would still end up being something along the lines of WCF (or less depending on the song). I don't really hitsound a whole lot so feel free to correct me on this regard and as to how it's different from the current model.

Its fair to consider that hitsound outsourcing does in fact exist.

The problem i noticed is that a lot of mapper think they must hitsound their maps extravagantly. Which is not true. With this proposal i try to clarify that you just need a bare minimum of hitsounding, to satisfy both parties.
Mapper will have it way easier to hitsound their beatmaps (or to find someone who can do it for them)
Player will still have their hitsounds present in the beatmap which helps them to properly play it.

Agayers wrote:

make hitnormal only the obligatory sample to have on a ranked beatmap and the 1-2 additional samples as optional?

I get your idea here, but making 1-2 additional samples optional.. is kinda redundant then.. because it would make all additions optional.

abraker wrote:

@Feerum
My issue with coming to such compromise is that in eventuality there will be another proposal for the removal of hitsounds.

I kinda doubt a bit such a proposal would come.. at least not for the next few years. And even if, i will happily see them . Maybe more stuff will change in future. Who knows. Maybe then we could make hitsounding optional. But for now i don't see it happen.

abraker wrote:

People depend on hitsounds for the same reason I depend on a hidden lane cover, it's there and it helps. Do you need hitsounds to be able to make great scores? No, and stepmania/etterna proves that.

I highly doubt that every player from the other games makes great scores. Also i think using other games as an argument doesn't work that well here. Every game is differently. osu! works with hitsounds. And you can not say that people don't need hitsounds. How do you know that? We have thousand and thousand players in osu!mania. How can you know they all don't need hitsounds. I for my part need them. And i know some who need them too. That would make the ranked beatmaps for us harder to play properly.

abraker wrote:

I do see players relying much less on hitsounds if hitsounds are made to not be required. The matter of fact is, the arguement "you need hitsounds because people depend on hitsounds" is a circular one - it's trying to counter-argue the very thing that would make it false.

Everything can be learned. It can also be learned to play beatmaps without hitsounds. But why do you want to force player go this way? What's the point in it? Yes, it is kinda a circular argument but its a true one.


I still hold on to my proposal because it reduces the hitsounding to the bare minimum. It's a proposal for both parties.
And, both parties should get respected in this pretty big rule change. It is possible to find something for everyone.

Feerum wrote:

It can also be learned to play beatmaps without hitsounds. But why do you want to force player go this way? What's the point in it?

the point is that it has clear negative impacts on the playing and mapping communities, as stated in the OP and its references. I think at least giving this a shot is worth it; if it turns out maps become bland or players complain, you can always revert this in the future.

keep in mind this doesn't have to apply to all maps either, many people in this thread have suggested only removing the requirement for difficult maps. that seems like a good compromise to me considering the main issue is with hitsounding difficult maps anyway

also, your proposal is the same thing as current RC. there's nothing required beyond a minimum of using some additions to represent the song

Hmm.. it sounds like an idea. But i still have some doubts on it.

I probably could live with it having the restriction gone for Expert maps. The thoughts behind this is that the most beatmaps have at least an E/N/H/I or N/H/I (plus additional difficulties) spread, and from expert beatmaps get extremely dense.

Or another try:

A regular E/N/H/I spread still requires hitsounding up to Insane. Everything higher can be left with an audible hitnormal (And yes, audible means something different than soft-hitnormal please LOL). beatmaps starting from from Insane difficulty, means the longer songs from 4min up which doesn't need lower difficulties are except from it and doesn't need the hitsounding at all. Just an audible hitnormal.

Does that sound fair?

I think it's weird that an Insane difficulty would either require or not require hitsounding depending on the type of set it belongs to. other than that, this sounds good

Feerum wrote:

A regular E/N/H/I spread still requires hitsounding up to Insane. Everything higher can be left with an audible hitnormal (And yes, audible means something different than soft-hitnormal please LOL). beatmaps starting from from Insane difficulty, means the longer songs from 4min up which doesn't need lower difficulties are except from it and doesn't need the hitsounding at all. Just an audible hitnormal.

Does that sound fair?

Insane diffs may have dense enough patterns that they run into similar case as expert diffs. I really suggest Insane to not require hitsounding too.

updated again

proposed rc wrote:

1. Beatmaps must be hitsounded. Hitnormals give feedback to the player, and additions (whistles, claps, and finishes) accent the most important parts of the music.
   
   1. For osu!mania beatmaps of difficulty Insane or above, additions are not required.

Some food for thought

Just because WCF may become optional for IX+, it wouldn't necessarily mean that they wont be hitsounded at all. Consider this:

If the IX+ is in a spread where I is not the lowest diff, the lowest diff will still be subject to WCF. In this case, the hitsound copier will be encouraged to be used for the higher diffs. The enforcement of this will be under the BNs' discretion.

Ultimately, WFC hitsounding would be optional for the 4:15+ stuff with I as the lowest diff (like what Feerum said).

To account for chord sizes and whatnot on I+ diffs minor adjustments to timing/green line audio is rather simple.

Boop I'm late

based on what I've been reading,

I am against the use of muted hitsounds
main reason being that people actually do use hitsounds as feedback ( particularly the newer / beginner players ) which is a bit redundant considering that the ranking criteria also states this

everything else I kinda wanted to say was already said so that's that lol

I do think that the proposal should go ahead and specify the length as well ?
Ranking Criteria already states that any map "...between 4:15 and 5:00, the lowest difficulty of each included game mode cannot be harder than an Insane." So based on this, hitsound additions should not be required for any Insane difficulties that are longer than 4:15.
However, hitsound additions should not be required for Expert difficulties regardless of drain time.
That's just me following the current status tho

Best outcome would be to just rank any map that at the very least adjusts their hit-normal sample and volume, but obviously people want a bare minimum apparently
Personally, that's the bare minimum requirement for me - changing the hit-normal sample and volume because that alone is telling me that you've cared enough to 1. find a hit-normal that fits the map and 2. do at least some sort of hitsounding.

Think that doing a poll - or survey - on this would be better feedback ( with a requirement of having at least 1 submitted beatmap to vote, though that may be hard to adjust ).

Kamuy wrote:

Personally, that's the bare minimum requirement for me - changing the hit-normal sample and volume because that alone is telling me that you've cared enough to 1. find a hit-normal that fits the map and 2. do at least some sort of hitsounding.

Requiring to care enough about hitsound is missing the point of this proposal...

Kamuy wrote:

Think that doing a poll - or survey - on this would be better feedback ( with a requirement of having at least 1 submitted beatmap to vote, though that may be hard to adjust ).

What's the point in limiting to people who submitted maps? This affects players too, not just mappers - the point is that the requirement is limiting number of hard maps ranked - deciding what the requirement is affects what players end up getting. You bet players, even those who never submitted a map, want a say in this.

edit: edited proposal to reflect latest suggested changes I agree with

So what if there are people who think they're reliant on hitsounds in beatmaps? First of all, they aren't, they've just had no reason to learn to play without them because all ranked maps are currently required to have them. Second of all, why cater the ranking criteria to them at the expense of otherwise high quality mapsets getting ranked. Smells like a cop-out to me.

Kamuy wrote:

Best outcome would be to just rank any map that at the very least adjusts their hit-normal sample and volume, but obviously people want a bare minimum apparently
Personally, that's the bare minimum requirement for me - changing the hit-normal sample and volume because that alone is telling me that you've cared enough to 1. find a hit-normal that fits the map and 2. do at least some sort of hitsounding.

Think that doing a poll - or survey - on this would be better feedback ( with a requirement of having at least 1 submitted beatmap to vote, though that may be hard to adjust ).

"that alone is telling me that you've cared enough to do hitsounding".

As already addressed, theres some pretty clear reasons why someone wouldn't care enough to do hitsounding. If a mapper chooses to care about the quality of the actual map over note-hit sound effects that arent in other major VSRGs, that implies they don't care enough? Maybe you just care about the wrong aspects of mapping.

And why have a requirement of 1 submitted beatmap to vote? I have experience charting 4key VSRG maps and I'm an avid osu!mania player with a vested interest in the ranking criteria; why should i be disqualified to vote for something that affects me just because I haven't submitted a beatmap for osu!mania yet?

while there's no listed "minimum requirement" in this proposal, you could still mod about hitsound volume and hitnormal samples; it says nothing against that. the only difference between current RC and new RC would be removing the requirement of hitadditions

Think there was some misunderstanding in what I was trying to say ( I think ) ?

abraker wrote:

Kamuy wrote:

Personally, that's the bare minimum requirement for me - changing the hit-normal sample and volume because that alone is telling me that you've cared enough to 1. find a hit-normal that fits the map and 2. do at least some sort of hitsounding.

Requiring to care enough about hitsound is missing the point of this proposal...

Lights wrote:

Kamuy wrote:

Best outcome would be to just rank any map that at the very least adjusts their hit-normal sample and volume, but obviously people want a bare minimum apparently
Personally, that's the bare minimum requirement for me - changing the hit-normal sample and volume because that alone is telling me that you've cared enough to 1. find a hit-normal that fits the map and 2. do at least some sort of hitsounding.

Think that doing a poll - or survey - on this would be better feedback ( with a requirement of having at least 1 submitted beatmap to vote, though that may be hard to adjust ).

"that alone is telling me that you've cared enough to do hitsounding".

As already addressed, theres some pretty clear reasons why someone wouldn't care enough to do hitsounding. If a mapper chooses to care about the quality of the actual map over note-hit sound effects that arent in other major VSRGs, that implies they don't care enough? Maybe you just care about the wrong aspects of mapping.

See the thing is, the proposal won't go anywhere if you remove hitsounding altogether just for mania because hitsounding is a requirement for all modes. Sure, it may sound good on paper, but that just makes it more unfair for the other modes ? Mania is mania, but it's still osu!.
To be quite honest, I fail to see how people are going to complain about having to change one sample. It's not like you're trying to hear where the kicks, claps, and finishes are. I'm just saying that the best approach to hitsounding in mania is to just change the hit-normal and the volume because 1. the default hit-normal is awful, 2. you're still giving feedback to the players that want them, and 3. still follows the RC since it's still hitsounding in some way.

abraker wrote:

Kamuy wrote:

Think that doing a poll - or survey - on this would be better feedback ( with a requirement of having at least 1 submitted beatmap to vote, though that may be hard to adjust ).

What's the point in limiting to people who submitted maps? This affects players too, not just mappers - the point is that the requirement is limiting number of hard maps ranked - deciding what the requirement is affects what players end up getting. You bet players, even those who never submitted a map, want a say in this.

Lights wrote:

And why have a requirement of 1 submitted beatmap to vote? I have experience charting 4key VSRG maps and I'm an avid osu!mania player with a vested interest in the ranking criteria; why should i be disqualified to vote for something that affects me just because I haven't submitted a beatmap for osu!mania yet?

I don't think players are trying to rank maps here; mappers are trying to get their own maps ranked. As I mentioned before, there are players who like hitsounds and those who don't. The thing about players is that a big majority don't know what the ranking process is like. Sure there can be more hard maps, but who are the ones actually making them ?

Lights wrote:

So what if there are people who think they're reliant on hitsounds in beatmaps? First of all, they aren't, they've just had no reason to learn to play without them because all ranked maps are currently required to have them.

Play other modes before coming to this conclusion.
For example, standard requires the slider tail to be matched to an instrument which then can also be hitsounded. Though minor, it tells the player why you don't click 5 times even though there are, let's say like, 5 kicks - implying that two of the kicks are represented with a slider ( one of the head and one for the tail ).

Lights wrote:

Second of all, why cater the ranking criteria to them at the expense of otherwise high quality mapsets getting ranked. Smells like a cop-out to me.

High quality is super subjective, so stating that they need to be ranked just makes it vague as to what exactly mapsets you want ranked.

clayton wrote:

while there's no listed "minimum requirement" in this proposal, you could still mod about hitsound volume and hitnormal samples; it says nothing against that. the only difference between current RC and new RC would be removing the requirement of hitadditions

ok so I guess I was partially misunderstanding it ?
In that case, think it's fair if the removal of hitadditions only apply to sets with any Insane difficulties. Looking back at it now, it seems odd that in a set, only the Insane diff doesn't have any hitadditions when the rest - if there are lower diffs - have hitadditions. Just breaks the overall consistency of that set if that were to happen.

Hopefully all of this clears up my view a bit; if not, oh well.

Knowing the current ranking scene, I'm fairly confident that IX+ diffs in a full set will get HS copied regardless of the formal ruling (that is making hitadditions optional for IX+ or something else). It's just awkward to have the top diffs not get hitadditions when the lower diffs do.

Kamuy wrote:

See the thing is, the proposal won't go anywhere if you remove hitsounding altogether just for mania because hitsounding is a requirement for all modes. Sure, it may sound good on paper, but that just makes it more unfair for the other modes ? Mania is mania, but it's still osu!.

Stop comparing mania to other gamemodes. Mania is not like other gamemodes. This proposal is a thing because people like Loctav were pushing mania to be like other gamemodes in the past, and now people are doing it the same mistake again. It's unfair to compare any gamemode with another gamemode - the mechanics, the community, and the culture is different and you are treating them as if everything is or should be the same/"consistant". That's one of the things ruining mania in the first place.

Kamuy wrote:

To be quite honest, I fail to see how people are going to complain about having to change one sample. It's not like you're trying to hear where the kicks, claps, and finishes are. I'm just saying that the best approach to hitsounding in mania is to just change the hit-normal and the volume because 1. the default hit-normal is awful, 2. you're still giving feedback to the players that want them, and 3. still follows the RC since it's still hitsounding in some way.

You still want to require mappers to do some hitsounding despite a large majority that have potential of ranking hard difficulties not caring so much they dont want to bother ranking at all.

Kamuy wrote:

I don't think players are trying to rank maps here; mappers are trying to get their own maps ranked. As I mentioned before, there are players who like hitsounds and those who don't. The thing about players is that a big majority don't know what the ranking process is like. Sure there can be more hard maps, but who are the ones actually making them ?

This is not just about mappers. Players are being affected by this as well. Players should get a say in how hard ranking harder difficulties should be because it will impact how many harder difficulties will be ranked for them. Players want harder difficulties to be ranked, and as a result, desire to change the ranking criteria to make it easier for mappers to rank harder difficulties. There is only one thing to understand about the ranking criteria from players' perspective and that's it's a hindrance to ranking maps they want to see ranked.

Kamuy wrote:

Play other modes before coming to this conclusion.
For example, standard requires the slider tail to be matched to an instrument which then can also be hitsounded. Though minor, it tells the player why you don't click 5 times even though there are, let's say like, 5 kicks - implying that two of the kicks are represented with a slider ( one of the head and one for the tail ).

This is about mania not other gamemodes...

Kamuy wrote:

In that case, think it's fair if the removal of hitadditions only apply to sets with any Insane difficulties. Looking back at it now, it seems odd that in a set, only the Insane diff doesn't have any hitadditions when the rest - if there are lower diffs - have hitadditions. Just breaks the overall consistency of that set if that were to happen.

So you are suggesting not requiring hitadditions on any diff if the set has an insane diff or higher?

Kamuy wrote:

In that case, think it's fair if the removal of hitadditions only apply to sets with any Insane difficulties. Looking back at it now, it seems odd that in a set, only the Insane diff doesn't have any hitadditions when the rest - if there are lower diffs - have hitadditions. Just breaks the overall consistency of that set if that were to happen.

Hopefully all of this clears up my view a bit; if not, oh well.

couldn't agree more, it feels kinda weird having a spread where the E/N/H have a complete hitsound but I and X only have a single hitnormal on it. example: there's a player who already can pass Hard maps then he wants to climb up higher difficulties but the players finds out that there's no W C F hitsound on it, only hitnormal. it would feels kinda awkward in my opinion and moreover, it breaks the overall consistency of the mapset. since there's many mapsets who have full spread ENHIX like https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/908415#mania/1895641 and https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/845859#mania/1774662 and i think its really really does not fit at all to have their I and X the only one that not gets fully hitsounded like its E N H diffs.

abraker wrote:

[quote="Kamuy"]To be quite honest, I fail to see how people are going to complain about having to change one sample. It's not like you're trying to hear where the kicks, claps, and finishes are. I'm just saying that the best approach to hitsounding in mania is to just change the hit-normal and the volume because 1. the default hit-normal is awful, 2. you're still giving feedback to the players that want them, and 3. still follows the RC since it's still hitsounding in some way. You still want to require mappers to do some hitsounding despite a large majority that have potential of ranking hard difficulties not caring so much they dont want to bother ranking at all.

how hard is it to put 1 soft-hitnormal into the file? I think at this point it's not about hitsounds being a hindrance to ranking a map, but more of a laziness issue. I believe what Kamuy is suggesting is already a good compromise. You can literally get a soft-hitnormal just from an already ranked mapset, and do a little bit of volume adjust. You don't even more than 30 seconds to do all of that.

actually the quality requirements for hitsounding was not increased. but from one day, we couldn't use "blank.wav" by an issue for inaudible hitsound. (actually I used that sample a lot) the hard difficulty has more notes and produces an inevitable volume increase for hitnormal. so that was the reason why I used.

of course, we still need to apply hitsound for ranked scene but I don't think it needs to be strict. so the best way is using muted hitsound as an option. therefore I'm agree with it. and I'm sure this will bring up better mania like mystic's point.

-MysticEyes wrote:

I want to restate the fact that requiring hitsounds drives away a lot of mappers from ranking stuff. Not sure if people from other modes are aware from this but our community of experienced, unranked mappers is huge. Way larger than other gamemodes. And we're hardly doing anything to try to attract them to rank things (excluding a few BNs who make an effort to reach out to them). If we want to revitalize mania we need to actually take steps to revitalize it, even if it disturbs the status quo.

and so If It applies, I think it should be from expert spread.
I have made a lot of insane difficulty but don't think that insane difficulty needs this from my experiences.
(generally 7K insane difficulties are maximum 4-5 chord on a section, most are 3-4)

Time to bust in and add my 2 cents as someone that's against this proposal on so many levels.

For people using the argument that SM/Etterna doesn't have hitsounds: Yes, it does. It's optional. Try pressing F6/F7 or something when playing a map. Sure, most people don't use it, but I guarantee that there's at least a few people that need it to play.

For people that say that they mute their hitsounding: Good for you. Just like people need hidden skins to play the game, some people need hitsounds to follow playing. This is an inclusive game, I don't care what your preference is.

For people saying it's the #1 deterrent towards ranking a map: Let's be real, it takes 30 min - 2 hours to fully hitsound a set. With the available resources at hand, it's not hard to find a few drum samples and stick them into a chart. It does take SEVERAL MONTHS to find BNs active enough to check through your sets. I am currently proving this with an open/closed BN sheet which tracks whenever BNs are open and closed, and at most there is 3/13 BNs open, 1 of which doesn't accept 4K, and another which states that they will take a long time for your request. If you can't find applicable hitsounding during that time, then it just isn't worth it. If you want your map to be truly good, you'd put the effort in at every point, and if hitsounding really is the thing stopping you from ranking charts, I'd suggest Quaver.