Frankly, I think the ranked section is a disaster. I don't like how many forced gimmick maps std has and how many hilariously overmapped dump charts mania has, but my main passion is of course about taiko. People have forgotten how to map in taiko due to the 2022 pp meta. When it came out, some mappers completely abandoned the music in favor of random patterns that boost SR. New-at-the-time mappers who took to those mappers for how to make their own have now joined them in ranked, doing the same thing, except now it's because they think it's good mapping to place whatever pattern is fun or feels good to a song they like, regardless what the music is actually doing, simply because it's what they're used to. At least in the old metas, people stuck to songs that supported pp inflation. A side effect of this is that most mappers have abandoned monos (but I'm glad to say this is gradually becoming untrue) due to their low colour (and stamina lol) SR. Also because whiny bongos (DDKK/KKDD players) used to the lack of monos in modern maps complain when they can't play them. As a bongo myself, I can play monos just fine and think that they should just get over their skill issue, instead of encouraging mappers to rely on improv spam to keep their maps interesting. In fact, mono maps have become so rare that now there are even KDDKs who can't play them. A map doesn't need monos to be good, but they're helpful variety in stream maps with long music notes.

There's also been problems on the opposite end of the spectrum as the pp mappers, where people will purposefully map in defiance of "slop" mapping. This originally meant just pp maps back in the colour days, but as the meta changed and mapping devolved as described above, it's become this nebulous term that honestly could mean anything, but it usually also refers to maps that are simplistic or normal. Hell, even something someone just doesn't think is cool lol. I believe this label causes a subconscious bias against map(per)s in a lot of people, which creates a mentality that using weird patterns or gimmicks is the superior way to map no matter what, because "slop map bad." This further encourages the excessive improv problem that's already happening in maps. Now anything "unique" is showered with praise solely because it's not "slop" mapping, when they may be just as bad in the other direction. Why should a map's quality be dependent on being different from other maps in ranked? Each map is its own map, just like each song is its own song. Don't force a map to be unique for the sake of being unique. That just contributes to the current problem. That being said, the recent metas have become a huge mindset issue for the taiko community at large, on both sides. One side full of BN circlejerkers pushing stuff that's mapped either for pp or out of bad habits transferred from people who abused colour back then, and the other full of edgy mappers who go too far in the other direction to spite them. I think that when people are judging a map, they need to forget that pp or the ranked section even exists, turn their effect volume down, and just listen to the music. That's where you'll find the answers. I've spoken with others about this and it seems like I'm not alone. A lot of people feel like me, but almost no one is brave enough to say something (or just don't think it would change anything), so everything in bad maps is now "subjective" without any real thought being put into improving them, and anyone who actually complains gets ratio'd by "skill issue," "don't like it don't play it," or some form of "map it yourself," which are just unhelpful more often than they are right (and you can consider my comment on Reaching Eternity hypocritical if you'd like). All that does is supress criticism, and the mapper learns nothing. It feels like the people just want the mapper to feel good about their map because it's nice, regardless how good a job they did. I agree that criticism should stay constructive, but c'mon...

I also have issues with mappers speedranking sets that simply aren't ready, because they rushed it out to see their ranked counter go up, which is an issue with BNs and their nomination count as well. I think it's self-explanatory why I have an issue with that. However people will also do this because the map features a skillset the mapper is new to and hasn't refined yet, like if my stream one trick ass decided to try tech mapping and pushed the first half decent thing he finished. EG: Stream map "larpers," as the kids would say. In this case, it's not "speedranked" because it's literally speedranked, but rather ranked too soon for them to unlock their full potential with that type of mapping. I'll admit that I have pretty high standards for what's considered deserving of ranked, so this is a pretty subjective point. It's possible that people want a map ranked simply as a milestone to show where they were in their mapping journey at a certain point in time. Not something I relate to since I've always strived to make sure my ranked maps are my best possible effort for the time, but ofc I don't have to relate to something for it to be a valid perspective. Personally I believe that mappers should rank things that stand the test of time, rather than things they'll look back at mere months later and go "Yeah that wasn't very good." You can't predict the future, so there can always be maps you'll come to think that way about regardless how much you try in the present (Under the Veil of Madness being that map for me, though the reasons behind that are complicated). Even still, I think you should retain the principle of trying to make a futureproof map, which means giving yourself the time to fully understand a mapping skillset.

I believe taiko pp is in a rather poor spot (still better than ctb/mania but go figure). It always has been, honestly, and with each rework that claims to and often fails to "fix" glaring issues which frankly never should have existed in the first place, my honeymoon phase gets shorter and shorter. I love the concept of pp. I always have ever since I learned what it was in 2019. As someone who is a huge fan of numbers and algorithms, and loves when games use them to motivate players to improve, it's easily the most important part of osu! to me and I want to see it get better. However, it has also completely ruined the game. This goes for every mode, taiko being no exception, and I hate that so much because it turns so many people (including peppy himself!) against pp as a whole. I would probably quit the game if we went back to the stone age of ranked score, so the idea of people turning against it and wanting to do that is a scary thought that I now have to have because of the controversy. Will that happen? Probably not, but I've always been the worrying type.

The worst part is that it doesn't have to be this way. You're probably expecting me to rip into farm mappers and circlejerking BNs next for being the ones ruining the system by abusing the hell out of it. You would be half right. I do loathe both of those groups, as well as the NATs to an extent for doing almost nothing about them, but there's a fourth group that I think always goes unnoticed when it comes to their responsibility for pp being in the state it is: the developers. pp devs are the first line of defense when it comes to how abusable a rework is. If they make it well, fewer maps will be able to break it. Obviously I don't expect them to be perfect. Mistakes happen, holes get through, and farm mappers are annoyingly persistent. I understand that, but as someone who has been a taiko pp feedback committee member for around a year now, I can safely say that there has been a great deal of bad handling. Some of the system is held together with duct tape and has multiple serious bugs, and frankly the rhythm hotfix thing coming out Soon:tm: isn't gonna do a damn thing to help that. I get time crunches, but if you wait until the end of a deploy cycle then rush out a rework, throw out a bunch of buzzwords instead of being transparent about how it works, ignore glaring issues and only fix things with band-aids instead of accepting your methods are fundamentally flawed and just redoing them? How much is it really the mappers' fault that things are broken? I'm not naming anyone in particular with this. These issues have happened on and off over several years. What's not important is who's guilty, but that deploys take time to get right. They need to be made conceptually strong, have informative documentation that can be understood by people who don't know programming or calculus, and have people purposefully try to break them as hard as they can to ensure stability. All serious exploits that are possible should be considered an inevitable meta. If it's not ready, it shouldn't be deployed at all, regardless how long it's been since the last changes. As someone who's been involved with pp dev for a long time now, we shouldn't pretend like we've done nothing wrong and it's all the evil mappers' and BNs' fault. It is their fault, but only because it's ours. I sympathize with the amount of work that goes into making these algorithms. I've created a complex one of my own in recent years, so I understand the pain of spending so long on something just to realize it doesn't work and I have to start over, but that shouldn't be an excuse to push something bad anyway. The 2022 meta in particular is the worst because it made the system's issues abusable by ALL maps, not just certain ones, which led to the aforementioned issues in the ranked section part of this box. Frankly I think it's done irreversible damage to taiko mapping as a whole, long after being phased out. Let it be a lesson in why good development practices are important. I'm trying (when motivation permits) to fix parts of taiko pp myself, and hopefully that goes somewhere, but until then (and probably still after since there are problems I don't consider myself qualified enough to solve), RIP in pieces to it lmao.

Another disaster, and for every mode this time (okay ctb I don't actually know). BNs shamelessly abuse their powers and friendships without even hiding it, both to rank complete garbage and unfairly block anything they don't like. That's a known fact though. (The unfairly blocking thing is mainly a problem with std.) Taiko BNs often don't care about map quality and just push anything that follows RC, which is how we ended up with the epidemic of bad pp maps. Keyword BAD pp maps. If a map happens to be overweighted because pp is shit, but it's still good, then let it get ranked. I believe the aforementioned BN issue also has to do with them being new people who are simply used to the recent metas (like what I said about mappers earlier), in which case those BNs should study older/better maps to get a greater sense of quality, but the ones that doesn't apply to need to put their feet down more and not be as afraid to get their hands on a map that's bad, or just outright reject it. Stop trusting mappers just because they're popular. They could be popular for the wrong reasons. NATs member also need to put their foot down more, giving punishments to BNs who push blatant garbage.

Also, some of the ranking criteria is horrible, like spread rules. Both having to map multiple diffs just because a song is short, and having to follow dumbass arbitrary diff specific rules. My heart goes out to the five digits who have to play nothing but mono triplets in their muzus. I understand why spread rule is a thing. In fact, I had lower diffs on A Greater Purpose at one point, but now I think mappers need to come first in the ranking system. Please stop making them cater to noobs if they don't want to. Skill issues are temporary, ranking restrictions are eternal unless repealed. There are already thousands of easy ranked maps for noobs to train up on, and they can play inners within months if they gun for it. This would reduce the amount of modding BNs would have to do on sets, making ranking queues flow faster, which would encourage more BNs to join. That's good, because lack of BNs is a huge problem right now. You wanna rank something? Well, there are only three BNs open, and they all like electronic or Vocaloid music. Sucks to be you. I'm not against implementing some kind of optional reward for mapping lower diffs, but the diff specific rules would need to be improved. Namely the abolition of rest beats, because let's be real, not all songs support a forced break every so often, and the noobies can suck it up. If I played almost nothing but arm shredding stream converts until rank 2k and turned out fine, others can handle a few extra notes. Credit where it's due, though: Both spread and rest beat rules have been nerfed, which is a step in the right direction, but I would still like to say goodbye to them.

Also, there's a problem of BNs being nowhere near good enough at the game to judge a map. We have people not even capable of passing what they're modding, and the quality of their mods shows it. I understand skill level doesn't always equal level of mapping knowledge, but it's true way more often than it's not. Someone else told me that having BNs for specific SR levels may be a good solution to that. I'm not completely sure myself, but some consideration for a BN's ability to play a map they're wanting to nom could be good.

If I have motivation, I'll try to fix it. If I don't, I'll leave it alone or clarify that it sucks in desc if I feel I should. TLDR, if it's mapped before 2025 it's probably not that great, and shouldn't be considered up to my standard of quality.

As of right now, I don't favorite maps ever and the ones I do have favorited are extremely out of date. Just ignore that for now, and maybe some day I'll make it contain something relevant to me.

Voting sucks. The fact that we need a separate site like OMDB is lame (though I like being able to type a review out on there Nvm RIP OMDB).

1. There should be ratings per diff. Individual diffs can be great or terrible, when the rest of the set isn't, especially on multi mode sets.
2. Voting needs to be disabled for NF. Too many whiny idiots will NFDT a map just to rate it 1 when they're completely incapable of passing. I agree that people can have valid opinions on a map they can't play, but I think they're a worthy sacrifice to filter out the noise, especially considering EZ and HT exist (and even easier alternatives if you play lazer).
3. Votes need to be changeable and removable. Right now they're permanent, and there are votes I regret giving long ago.
4. Votes need to be givable from anywhere, not just on the result screen after finishing a play, as long as you have a pass. I think it's stupid how I have to replay the entire map to vote just because I got carried away by my score and forgot.