[icontrolyourworld]

Originally Posted by QueenAshy

osu!mania has a better HP system

Can you explain this please? Afaik hp is set per map at the mappers discretion in osumania, while in stepmania you can choose between life 1 to life 8 depending on how fast you want your lifebar to drain. Additionally in stepmania you can choose to turn fail off negating any gameplay element that is linked with it. I don't particularly find that lifebar is an engaging gameplay mechanic unless you're specifically going for passes, and that's not the metagame right now and hasn't been since like 2008.

Originally Posted by QueenAshy

and more keymodes.

I will give you this, osumania does have more keymodes, but when I look for maps for each keymode I have trouble finding content for keymodes other than 4 and 7k.

Originally Posted by QueenAshy

Stepmania only has 4 & 8 keys,

This is incorrect information. Stepmania can support 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and i believe 3 9 and 10. Additionally we have a very nice selection of 6k files, and no one will come close to how much content we have for 4k.

Originally Posted by QueenAshy

while osu!mania has every keymode from 1k-18k.

As mentioned earlier, that's great but the majority of content i find is for 4k and 7k.

Originally Posted by QueenAshy

Mania is easier to "plug and play",

I would argue against this actually. Stepmania being centralized around sharing packs, makes it so that you can get more of what you want easier. For example, would you rather download 1000 songs in 20 packs, or 1000 songs in 1000 downloads. The idea behind sharing single files was scrapped for a reason, and the reason is community projects are far more engaging and easier to share.
I had a computer crash recently and I had to redownload every single last pack for stepmania that i had, as well as any osumania content that i wanted to play again. I can not for the life of me, remember every single song that i want to play on osumania. With stepmania I downloaded about 200 packs, and now i have over 10,000 songs that I know and love.
This very much comes down to preference, but I seriously think that stepmania has the sharper edge in how sharing content works.

Originally Posted by QueenAshy

you can start downloading maps and playing as soon as you boot it up:

This is not an arguement to say you can't in stepmania, because you can do the same thing. You can start downloading packs, even before you install stepmania.

Originally Posted by QueenAshy

No need for hunting down map packs and worrying about every song being in a set list.

This is a terrible preconceived negative outlook on how stepmanias pack system works. You need to open your horizons, and truly experience the benefits of packs. Let me explain please.

In osumania if you want to play a song, you must know the title, or some bit of information to find the song during gameplay. I can't imagine it's easy finding the exact song you want to play when you start to load up 15,000 songs for example. Your list of songs can be organized in many various ways, but I always sorted by difficulty, but that groups songs into 1000's of songs long lists. So the best resort is to keep a document, external notepad list, or in game grouping (favorites, which by extension could be considered in some ways a Pack, the way stepmania works) to find the song you want to play. This is my personal experience with osumania.

Imagine you have a filing cabinet in an office, with folders that you can organize files into, and have everything alphabetized, but instead of using the office to put your 1000's of papers into, you throw them into the closet in your room, and dig around for a while trying to find the right paper. That's how I feel when I look at the songs list in osumania

BY CONTRAST

In stepmania if i want to find for example Staring At My Spaceship, a very excellently made file that is worth playing many times, simply because it's very awesome, here is how I would find it if I couldn't for the life of me remember exactly that song name.
I have played many packs, becoming familiar with the groupings of songs in each pack. I can open a pack and know what to expect in it. It's basically 1 to 1 similar to how you would organize files in a folder in a filing cabinet in an office job. I know that Staring At My Spaceship is in a xoon pack, and there's 5 xoon packs. So I scroll through my list of packs, and search those packs, it's in Xoon 5, and going with the example I can't remember the song title, so I quickly scroll through the packs until I find it, each pack is also organized alphabetically, let's say I remember the song starts with an S (for Staring) so I go to the S's in each of the xoon packs until I find it, and I land on it and play it.
This might sound convoluted, but it's part of becoming familiar with the content. It 100% makes it easier to build a mental map of where 15,000 songs are, If there's a song in hard songs megapack that I want to play, I know to go to hard songs megapack.
Exploring packs in this way to find a song you remember, also brings up the opportunity to see other files you may have played before, and pursue a nostalgia session; which is totally a common thing in stepmania. I play through ODI packs, and Zaghurim files, and they're very old files, but it's awesome to revisit those files.

I also touched on this being good for our community. We can organize packs with predetermined rulesets that make packs have a theme to it. For example, we can organize a jumpstream pack, a jack pack, an index pack, a nostalgia pack where we try to use rules that were in place 10+ years ago, musically themed packs, like astronomic metal collection, 8bit, rap, current pop music, current Rhythm game music like IIDX or Sound Voltex, camellia, dj sharpnel, dragonforce, we can literally make any pack that suits anyone's taste for this game.
AND since each pack is catered specifically to one ruleset, it expands diversity, gives players an opportunity to find what they like, ask for recommendations for packs that are similar, and brings us together EVEN MORE as a community. There's a reason why we make packs of songs, it is absolutely not something that should be brushed under the rug as a negative thing.

One last thing on this point to wrap up, since we have the option to make diverse packs, with specific themes, and different rulesets, and the option to make packs all on our own, we are not held back by 1 set of rules that homogenizes all files to cater to 1 agreed upon ruleset. We can all agree that quality is an important factor when creating and playing a map or chart, but diversity is something I think stepmania definitely has nailed better.

I have a very firm position on this packs vs. single files difference, you could say it comes down to personal preferance, but I really think it's worth seeing from both sides of the fence.

Originally Posted by QueenAshy

Mania also has an overall better SV system than stepmania,

From my understanding SV is specifically the rate at which arrows scroll the screen, similar to how xmod works in stepmania. I've seen some FANTASTIC SV maps in osumania, but I've also seen some FANTASTIC xmod maps in stepmania. I'm not familiar with the osumania editor, but I imagine that SV is on a slider, or number line of sorts you can set to put in any desired SV. If that's the case I concede that SV is better than xmod. We both do have the ability however to meet practically the same desired outcome. Osumania probably just has the better tools for the job.

Originally Posted by QueenAshy

which allows you to change speed independent of BPM;

This is good news for SV/xmod mappers!

Originally Posted by QueenAshy

and as far as I know, arrowvortex has no such function.

Arrowvortex is a supplementary program/tool for stepmania, but you're right it doesn't have that function.

Originally Posted by QueenAshy

There's some things I like about stepmania tho, like the ability to choose rates and the colors for different beat snaps.

I do like this too

Originally Posted by QueenAshy

I just don't prefer stepmania cause of it's ranking system and the reasons I mentioned above.

In my personal opinion, i think it's a damn shame that you need a ranking system to drive you to play. I think both osumania and stepmania should hold their weight in fun simply based on the content you have to play. A game should be a game, not a leader board.
But since we're talking about it, I assume that the ranking system is important to you so that you can have bragging rights, like being rank 20 or 2000 or <10000 for example, and that's more an indication of your skill compared to other players, but I think etterna specifically gives a much clearer indication of where you are in skill. If I say my etterna rank is 20 or 30, that's probably more effective than saying my rank is 1400 or 14000. But that's just it, they're both roughly there as rough indicators of your progress as a player. I think they both hold merrit, but etterna actually does give a better indication of skill

Originally Posted by QueenAshy

If the osu! moderation wasn't quickly becoming the same level as the miiverse forums, I would certainly go back to practicing anti-meta keymodes.

I think you should play whatever you find most fun.