The problem here isn't that there's "copying" going on, but that somehow a mapper's creativity is so inherently limited in scope that it feels "wrong" to map any particular set of a music track any differently from "the best" way.





Monstrata is extremely skilled at figuring out the "most natural" way to represent the music in a beatmap. This makes for very pleasing maps to play, and ones that people find very easy as well. Hence his popularity.



But when you get right down to the details of individual musical tracks, you find that there is



a



lot



of the same shit going on.



When you figure out "the best" way to represent a 5-roll, a cascade pattern, and do nothing but that, and (looking at you, irreversible) tell other people to do nothing but that, you're going to end up with extremely visually similar maps, until you reach a point where "the best" way to map is unequivocally going to be similar to how Monstrata maps it, because he's good at that style.





Whether Kroytz was using Monstrata's mapping as a reference, a direct inspiration, or even just as the only way he knows how to map (take a look at Ascension to Heaven - it's also extremely plain and uninspired, but effective), is irrelevant in the end.







Ya'll only have yourselves to blame. You like and encourage one particular style, then when it starts taking over, you have the audacity to complain. I've seen it all over and nary a half dozen people actually tried to do anything about it. The rest stomped them down, all the while bitching that every map "feels the same".







EDIT: also because im bored i might mod this later just to get some sick kd to pretend to be alive