ranking maps these days feels only possible when you are engaged with people, I seem not to be able to rank any maps as a noname anymore - like it was possible many years ago.
I can see why people behave that way and of course its fine to have preferences and favorites, but please give people outside your bubble a chance to be part of the ranked section every once in a while (speaking of literally only one map a year or something like that).
its all many unknown people like me ask for.
as for now the amount of energy and time you need to put into ranking a map does not match the the accomplishment of presenting ones own map to a broader audience. I noticed that I need to put more time into gathering mods and BNs interested in my map than into mapping (and self modding) my own map - and honestly that cant be right..

speaking of self modding: I feel like this is a very underrated concept of revisiting your own map many times, before pushing it finally to ranked. how often did I rearrange whole sections which I initially was happy about and made it much better after I found a new (better) way of representin the song. rearranging, or even remapping, multiple sections in your map doesnt mean that you failed mapping the song, it rather is part of the journey to make a very unique song fitting beatmap. unfortunately that is what Im missing in ranked maps the past few years, not only you see the submitted date being close to the ranked date, but you notice sections in their maps that feel just like a filler section, not be put much care to it

having many ranked maps is not a proof of being a good mapper, instead I experienced that the best maps come from mappers with few ranked maps (like less than 10 or even less than 5 ranked maps). also somehow even mappers that have many ranked maps now show to have their best maps made in their early times, when the focus wasnt to make many maps ranked in a short time.
can we just start to take our time to make good maps, maps that are made by the feels of the individual song instead of using the same mapping template (some people call it mapping style but for me it really is just a copied template) over and over again? I dont play maps to play the mappers map, instead I play maps to play the songs map. I dont care if the map is made from mapper X, there are no favorite mappers for me - there are favorite individual maps. the focus really should come back to the song and the respective map

some of my thoughts, maybe to be continued