[Game] Osu! - Page 174

Warning, another rant incoming.

I've made numerous posts about that in support of the idea. I don't understand why people think the mapper needs control over the AR. AR is different for everyone. Some people can't handle high AR, while others can't handle low AR. I don't see how the AR contributes to the artistic aspect of the map, either. The timing of the notes and the patterns used are what makes a map. Everything else is eye candy. A map feels the same to me whether it's AR5 or AR10, other than the fact that I'd be far better at the AR10 due to the fact that I read high AR far better than low AR.

The idea that people who play the game for their personal enjoyment should be subject to the whim of a mapper just because maps are a form of artistic expression is just as ludicrous. If you don't have fun playing a map a certain way, you should be allowed to change things, as long as it doesn't change the core mechanics of the map. Every other music game allows for changes of various options. Sometimes they're poorly done with only a small selection of changes (o2jam and their 0.5x, 1x, 1.5x, 2x, 2.5x, 3x, 4x, 5x, 6x speeds), but it's still available.

As far as I'm concerned there are two kinds of music games: those designed for casual players which generally have few features outside of the core gameplay (guitar hero definitely counts here, despite having a higher skill ceiling than most casual games) and those which are geared towards the rhythm gamer who is serious, which have a number of options which can be changed, etc. Such as o2jam, stepmania, etc.

Osu seems to be stuck somewhere between the two, occasionally making features which benefit the players who play seriously, but often making decisions which gear it towards casual play. Locking AR, forcing backgrounds, and generally allowing the mapper more or less full control over the experience the player has while playing firmly points osu in a direction which alienates serious players and fosters a casual approach to the game. To foster high level gaming you need to make the interface as clean and non-intrusive as possible, and allow the player to customize as much of their experience as possible without impinging on the core mechanics.

Another example of something I haven't yet mentioned from stepmania. There is a noteskin (which changes the appearance of the arrows) called Note. The default skin for arrows in stepmania/DDR is a technicolor animated arrow. Note changes that so that depending on where in a bar of music the note would fall, the color of the arrow changes. quarter notes are red, 8th notes are blue, 16th yellow, etc. Triplets have their own colors. This probably makes it quite a bit easier to read for most people. Did the community argue about whether or not scores were valid using that noteskin? Hell no, we embraced it. Some people still chose to use the normal notes, some people chose to use Note as their skin. It made no difference to anyone else because it didn't change any patterns in the song, it didn't change the life difficulty or the timing difficulties, so it was fare game.

I don't get why the osu community is so zealous about controlling how a player plays the game. Just let us have fun, if you like making maps with intricate storyboards and skins, go right ahead. The players who care about that won't delete everything. The players who don't care will. Forcing the players who don't care to deal with your bullshit is a good way to piss them off, and force them to leave.

Normally I would be willing to donate to a cause like Osu, but with the way peppy and the other elitist mappers treat the people who play the game, there's no way on earth he's getting my money now.