Stop comparing osu to things that aren't osu

Osu takes 3 skills

- accuracy/reading
- aim/jump
- stream/speed

You won't improve your stream AT ALL by playing normals
You won't improve your aim AT ALL by playing normals
You will improve your reading VERY SLOWLY by playing normals since they're mapped at half bpm and usually in a vague way that, for a beginner, is unclear how it connects to the music, so he ends up just looking at approach circles instead of following the rhythm

The things that you're going to accomplish in 2 months of playing [Normal]s can be accomplished in one week of playing insanes with nofail.

Nofailing stuff with 50% is not the way to go.

Just challenge yourself, and don't get complacent, unless you're like me and don't actually care because I can do without the extra stress in my life.

But make sure that "IF ANYTHING," your order of fingering and the number of taps you do on your keyboard matches what's on the screen. Tapping even one note extra leads to problems in the long run, which is the start of buttonmashing. If there is a pattern giving you this problem as it used to do to me, practice it slower and get it right first.

"Elementary school kid example" is actually somewhat relevant. You develop a repertoire of experiences, whether it be eye-motions, pen/mouse sequences and keyboard taps, just by playing osu!, an unimaginably large repertoire. If you never practice, for example, doubles, you're always gonna triple-tap them until you do. That's why you need to play INSANES. Hards and under rarely feature difficult patterns that you need to learn.

It's similar to FPS games, where you can have quite a large repertoire of mouse-flick movements to exact distances practiced, and keypress timings which you are familiar with, accurate to within a few milliseconds. You compensate for this movement with your mouse instinctively, yes, it's called "dodging." But even dodging, although simple to execute, is not effective unless you're anticipating your opponent in said game. This is where "basics" come into play, when autonomous motions such as dodging no longer require our attention, and instead we just think about our opponent and we "know what to do."

Although it is not mathematics per se, it's about patterns. Pattern recognition is the unseen fuzzy logic maths of the human mind, the invisible intelligence. A bit like how sometimes maths students can arrive at an answer, and know it's right because of some fuzzy logic pattern, but not know how they got there.
It has no use in society aside from learning other things better, and plays a huge role in everybody. In osu!, all we see is circles, all we have to think about is circles, but our brain is STILL doing everything which we USED TO PRACTICE AT THE BEGINNING. However it no longer requires our attention. This is why you need to learn the basics. Basics become instinctive later.

Aqo wrote:

Stop comparing osu to things that aren't osu

Osu takes 3 skills

- accuracy/reading
- aim/jump
- stream/speed

You won't improve your stream AT ALL by playing normals
You won't improve your aim AT ALL by playing normals
You will improve your reading VERY SLOWLY by playing normals since they're mapped at half bpm and usually in a vague way that, for a beginner, is unclear how it connects to the music, so he ends up just looking at approach circles instead of following the rhythm

The things that you're going to accomplish in 2 months of playing [Normal]s can be accomplished in one week of playing insanes with nofail.

Osu might not be completely analogous to math or musical instruments, but it's similar enough to draw comparisons, and there is a middle ground between normals and no-fail insanes (and a pretty substantial one at that). Stop thinking in binaries.

Obviously playing normals for two months isn't going to get you anywhere, but why on earth would you spend a whole two months playing normals when you could easily start doing hards after a couple of days? You said it yourself, the difference between hards and insanes is often blurred, and the vast majority of patterns in most insanes are just variants of patterns found in most hards. This includes jump patterns and stream patterns, though you've gotta dig a bit to find hards with lengthy stream patterns. I'll agree that there is absolutely no reason to do normals for an extended period of time and retrying to perfect a map is generally worthless unless you have something really specific you want to practice, but telling a beginner to marathon insanes is just silly. It might work eventually but making use of the vast number of maps between normals and insanes to build a foundation will be much, much quicker.

And I have to ask, why the hate for approach circles? Sure, you shouldn't only be watching approach circles for your timing, but on older maps with more offset variance it can help a lot to know whether the hit circles are ahead or behind, and if you have a good eye you can figure this out by watching approach circles.

NarrillNezzurh wrote:

And I have to ask, why the hate for approach circles? Sure, you shouldn't only be watching approach circles for your timing, but on older maps with more offset variance it can help a lot to know whether the hit circles are ahead or behind, and if you have a good eye you can figure this out by watching approach circles.

He's just being obnoxious about it. What he really means is you shouldn't focus explicitly on approach circles, which is true for playing AR9+
But as I've described above, with pattern recognition, whether it is peripheral vision or whatever, your brain still knows what an approach circle is and is certainly aware of them, no matter what speed.

­

By playing insane + nofail, you don't have the basics to even grasp what's actually going on, which results into button mashing and moving your cursor just in the general direction, hoping to hit something. This creates a lot of bad habits:
Button Mashing results in uncontrolled streaming. A lot of players get frustrated by a 1/2 note stacked underneath the last note in a longer stream, because they overstream. If you actually have the basics down before practicing streaming, you'll always pay attention to not clicking more than necessary, thus reducing the chance of overstreaming. You also expect to need to just click as fast as possible on any stream, and you'll have problems maintaining slower streams, while this is never a problem if you start from the slower ones and work your way up.
Because faster streams are more lenient to button mashing, even if you can control the speed of your fingers, you still don't have the fundamentals to move your fingers in a consistent alternating motion, resulting in 300-100-300-100-100-300-50-300-x-300-100 on slower streams.
Reading a map is combination of more than just seeing the notes. One of those factors is the approach circle. It's not a useless skill to be able to read approach circles, as they're often used to read anti-jumps.
Playing maps over your skill level will also mean you need higher reaction, which results in you paying attention to when a not appears, and then instantly hitting it. This works for maps with AR10 or hr playing, but you'll struggle A LOT on slower approach rates, because your brain expects to hit the note just as it appears. I know many players who can read AR10 much better than me, but think AR9 is too slow. If you start from the basics, you stimulate your brain to actually know that no, you don't hit a note when it appears, but ACTUALLY when the approach circle hits.
Other bad habits include shaky hands, which, if you start from the bottom, you can always maintain a steady hand, because you're always playing something around your comfort zone.

That's just some points. I'm not saying that playing insane+nofail is very bad or anything, but doing only that wont help.
Also Aqo, yes you get better at everything, even if you play normals.
Oh btw, I have a little under 70k plays now over 4 years, and I can say that I've never once used the method you describe, and have no problems becoming good at the game, while people I know who've done what you say, struggle with atleast one of the problems I describe above.
In almost anything, the basics must be there before you can become good at it.

And I still suck at streams, but that doesn't mean I can't stream, I just don't have the speed to do the faster ones, and that's something you can train AFTER you can stream.

Still, the best advice is probably just not caring about how to improve, and just play whatever you feel like and find fun; that's what I did anyhow, and no matter how fast/slow you improve, you'll get better while having fun, so it's worth it.

CXu wrote:

If you start from the basics, you stimulate your brain to actually know that no, you don't hit a note when it appears, but ACTUALLY when the approach circle hits.

I agree the approach circle will help you, but I wouldn't stop there because I think it helps even more to know when to hit a note by only listening to the music. This is something you can also learn at the beginning by playing Normal or Hard maps with Hidden. Besides good reaction skills, having good musical skills helps too.

I was just saying that to people who say reading approach circles is useless. Of course when you read a map, you factor in a lot of other stuff as well.

Any tips for me?
My skill level is around getting 5million on the Just awake Las Vegas map, 2 million on SAVE THE QUEEN Ex-termination

EDIT: i absolutely fluked the stream on save teh queen, i cant usually pass it

also i get around 1.5 million for boot[shoe]

score doesn't really mean anything, accuracy and amount of sustained combos helps describe skill more, though that's still vulnerable to random lucky runs.

Defacer wrote:

When I was on the skill level of the author of this thread,I didn't even CARE for things like the forum for instance, didn't know what was jump or stream even though I was essentially doing it,didn't give a shit about the community, I was just playing the goddamn game, THE ONLY thing I knew was Cookiezi and that's all, I was playing for fun and fun for me was hard maps+nofail, which results in bad acc and insane speed.

So my advice is play for fun, and it's best for you if you find playing insane+nofail fun thing to do.Planning how to improve and use different techniques for training and stuff is things you should do after a lot, A LOT of practice.

I'm a pretty fast learner, my hand eye coordination is pretty good cause of other video games. I just didn't want to end up learning the wrong way for months and then find out how to play properly. For example before this post I was just using LMB to click, someone added me in game and recommended me XZ or LMB+RMB. Since I don't like using keyboard I use LMB+RMB now and I can actually finish pretty long streams already. Just cause I visit the forum doesn't mean I don't play for fun, getting some tips is always good imo.

Just wanted to post an update, I practised insane/hard songs for 3 days . The day after I just played normal difficultiy to improve my accuracy as I was still a bit jumpy, it helped me a lot. Also removing all the blinking stuff, dim background and using a custom skin helped me a LOT. On songs I went from 40% in NoFail to around 60% in 1 go just by changing that. Many beatmap skins did not allow me to see the next beat properly cause blinking "300"'s would appear etc. I can finish most hard maps without NoFail now altough I only get around 80% cause I hit quite some 100s.

One issue I notice when playing really fast maps. I start with my mouse in the middle of my mouse pad but halfway the track it's all down at the bottom and I have to lift it and put it back, which often makes me miss a beat. Anyone else has this? Should I use different DPI settings for X and Y? Thanks again.

critxjoker wrote:

Should I use different DPI settings for X and Y? Thanks again.

Absolutely not. If you're having trouble with reaching the end of your mouse pad you should simply increase your overall DPI. The only time you should ever make your X and Y sensitivities different is if the laser on your mouse is off-center (some Logitech mice do this).

NarrillNezzurh wrote:

critxjoker wrote:

Should I use different DPI settings for X and Y? Thanks again.

Absolutely not. If you're having trouble with reaching the end of your mouse pad you should simply increase your overall DPI. The only time you should ever make your X and Y sensitivities different is if the laser on your mouse is off-center (some Logitech mice do this).

Changing my dpi is hard because I basically use osu to improve my mouse control (and reaction time) in other games. Using a different dpi will result in less accuracy in other games and that's not my goal

I guess I'll just stick to hard songs, I only reach the end of my mousepad after it's done instead of in the middle of the song like on insane

Increasing mouse sensitivity instead of DPI is also an option and can be done within osu! itself.

critxjoker wrote:

Changing my dpi is hard because I basically use osu to improve my mouse control (and reaction time) in other games. Using a different dpi will result in less accuracy in other games and that's not my goal

I guess I'll just stick to hard songs, I only reach the end of my mousepad after it's done instead of in the middle of the song like on insane

If you can't reach the edge of the screen without hitting the edge of your mouse pad your sensitivity's probably too low for your other games as well. If your osu! resolution is the same as your desktop resolution you'll adapt to the change in no time, trust me

NarrillNezzurh wrote:

critxjoker wrote:

Changing my dpi is hard because I basically use osu to improve my mouse control (and reaction time) in other games. Using a different dpi will result in less accuracy in other games and that's not my goal

I guess I'll just stick to hard songs, I only reach the end of my mousepad after it's done instead of in the middle of the song like on insane

If you can't reach the edge of the screen without hitting the edge of your mouse pad your sensitivity's probably too low for your other games as well. If your osu! resolution is the same as your desktop resolution you'll adapt to the change in no time, trust me

That's not the issue. I use exactly the same settings on my desktop and my other games. I don't have to move my mouse that much, it's just that it slowly moves down and at the end of the songs it's all the way at the bottom of my mouse pad. Perhaps I do the spinners wrong or something, but I noticed I don't really have this issue at normal or hard but only intense.

sounds like you have one of those mice with built-in acceleration, what mouse are you using?

Most mice have some level of hardware acceleration due to the lasers they use, but you should check your mouse settings in Windows to make sure "enhance pointer precision" isn't checked.

I don't use mouse acceleration in windows and it's set to 6/11. All my settings are good, I have no issues with anything else except some osu songs. I just played a track without spinners and my mouse moved down again. I have a Razer Deathadder

critxjoker wrote:

I don't use mouse acceleration in windows and it's set to 6/11. All my settings are good, I have no issues with anything else except some osu songs. I just played a track without spinners and my mouse moved down again. I have a Razer Deathadder

Your problem is just relative positioning. It still drives me nuts, but you get better at handling/counteracting the drift. It's not really drift though, as it is your hand moving in different ways from different positions. Typical mapping doesn't return to the starting position.

tablet master race, don't have to deal with the mouse accel nonsense >: