[Game] Osu! - Page 82

Ok, so there was a large discussion on the arch0wl.com forums (probably the single most influential community in stepmania's history) about how to design the patterns in a stepfile, what sounds should be stepped, etc. etc. etc. Basically, a gigantic argument about "the right way" to step a song. It boiled down to basically two sides (with of course no agreement on the specifics of either side). One side said that you should step whatever sounds you wanted, as long as it was on time, and made a fun stepfile, and the other side said that you should be consistent in whatever you've chosen to step, and pick patterns that match with what the sound is (something repeating should either be drills (2 repeating arrows) or jackhammers (repeating single notes) unless there's a damn good reason otherwise)

This was early on in the rise of stepmania, although a0 was still well established at that time, there were quite a few stepmakers who didn't come onto the scene until the fallout of that discussion was long over.

Eventually, the second view became accepted as the norm, and resulted in plenty of fun stepfiles that were perfectly on time and meticulously crafted, and by comparison the stepfiles created by the people who just chose to do whatever they wanted basically disappeared. I was playing stemania the whole time that was happening, and found that pretty much every single person could agree that the stefiles created in the "be consistent, and map properly, instead of just mapping with no thought to the patterns or timing" "style" were far better than the previous ones. Timing was much sharper, simfile makers were beginning to use IDM and fast paced electronic music, or metal as their primary genres because the music was more complex and lead to much harder, faster, and complex simfiles.

There are still people who are removed from the scene who create simfiles that aren't created with the same attention to detail and design that the newer stefiles had, and they are basically all far easier than the song should be, far less complex, and far worse, in that they are very inconsistent in what sounds are being stepped, which makes it harder to play, simply because you can't count on a sound always resulting in a step.

I feel that the same thing should happen to osu, and is somewhat in the beginning of it's development. I feel that osu's map making
community is indeed changing, but not as drastically as stepmania's did, and that there are still many remnants of the older style still very much in use in osu's map making community. I also feel that the arbitrary rules about ranking and such are both contributing to the change, and restricting things by placing arbitrary restrictions on what is considered acceptable for ranking.

As an example of osu maps that I feel are very inconsistent in how they maps patterns, and to a lesser extent sounds, would be La Cataline's maps in general. Her sliders, especially, feel like she arbitrarily chose to change their speeds in the middle of a map with no musical reason, which makes them feel awkward and forced. By comparison I feel Aenna/Cyborg's maps are a fairly good example of consistent mapping. They feel like every sound that should be mapped is, and that the patterns don't do things the music doesn't call for. (not necessarily all the maps of either of those mappers fit into this, I just felt that a certain portion of each mapper's maps fit well enough into these two categories that I could use them as examples.)