Nice write up, and thanks for the plug!
The very first thing I want to say is do not be afraid to be bad. If you've only ever played Osu!'s standard maps, learning mania can feel very difficult and take a little while to really get into, but if you keep practicing, you'll get it eventually.
I've been doing some research into what actually happens in your brain when you learn to play games like this, and you've done a good job at identifying the important points at each level of skill. The current generally accepted learning process involves 3 stages: the Cognitive Phase, the Associative Phase, and the Autonomous Phase. (This page explains it a bit) This actually matches up very well with the stages you outline in your post, actually. I don't think that is a coincidence.
I want to point out one thing. You mention how learning to recognize patterns is extremely important, and it is. But you don't seem to mention that being able to recognize a pattern does not mean you can actually play that pattern. These two things don't progress at the same rate. Sometimes you can hit anything, as long as you can recognize it in time, and other times, you may find yourself thinking everything looks easy, but you can't seem to hit the patterns. Both of these are normal.
For beginners, the single most important thing is associating your fingers with the columns on screen. Even if you think "oh, I can hit notes on any column" that doesn't mean you've passed this point. If you find yourself hitting the key beside the one you want, or panicking and mashing a few keys trying to hit the one you want, you're not out of this part yet. Don't worry, once you do get out of this part, you'll find things a lot easier. When you're in this stage, you're response time for hitting the right key is usually pretty slow, even if you're pretty accurate.
For mediocre players, the goal here is to begin learning patterns and to improve your ability to hit those patterns. The only way to really improve your ability to hit patterns is to play them enough, so all you really need to do is practice to improve that, but to learn patterns, you definitely want to find as many different styles of map as possible, in order to be exposed to as many different kinds of patterns as you can.
For advanced players (which I consider myself, because I'm nowhere near as good as players like Entozer), random is incredibly helpful at this point. I regularly practice with pretty much every mod except Fade In, but I think random has had the most actual benefit.
I just overcame a skill wall in the past few days, and I think it'd be good to share the changes I made in how I play that are responsible for getting over the wall.
The most important change I made, which has allowed me to play much faster and more accurately than I used to, is to keep my fingers resting lightly directly on the keys, and keeping my hand relaxed the whole time. It's incredibly easy to tense up when playing fast stuff, and I had a bad habit of pressing the keys really hard and pulling my fingers back really far when I'd lift off, almost hovering over the keys. Now I make an effort to keep my fingers resting directly on the keys, and keeping my hand relaxed, and it's made a huge difference.
The other part that helped me break my wall was that I practiced on Davteezy's BMS conversions (I still need to download all your ones Doorknob T.T). Reading those patterns helped me get better at handling chords, and layered patterns, and the change in technique both had a noticeable impact.
The very first thing I want to say is do not be afraid to be bad. If you've only ever played Osu!'s standard maps, learning mania can feel very difficult and take a little while to really get into, but if you keep practicing, you'll get it eventually.
I've been doing some research into what actually happens in your brain when you learn to play games like this, and you've done a good job at identifying the important points at each level of skill. The current generally accepted learning process involves 3 stages: the Cognitive Phase, the Associative Phase, and the Autonomous Phase. (This page explains it a bit) This actually matches up very well with the stages you outline in your post, actually. I don't think that is a coincidence.
I want to point out one thing. You mention how learning to recognize patterns is extremely important, and it is. But you don't seem to mention that being able to recognize a pattern does not mean you can actually play that pattern. These two things don't progress at the same rate. Sometimes you can hit anything, as long as you can recognize it in time, and other times, you may find yourself thinking everything looks easy, but you can't seem to hit the patterns. Both of these are normal.
For beginners, the single most important thing is associating your fingers with the columns on screen. Even if you think "oh, I can hit notes on any column" that doesn't mean you've passed this point. If you find yourself hitting the key beside the one you want, or panicking and mashing a few keys trying to hit the one you want, you're not out of this part yet. Don't worry, once you do get out of this part, you'll find things a lot easier. When you're in this stage, you're response time for hitting the right key is usually pretty slow, even if you're pretty accurate.
For mediocre players, the goal here is to begin learning patterns and to improve your ability to hit those patterns. The only way to really improve your ability to hit patterns is to play them enough, so all you really need to do is practice to improve that, but to learn patterns, you definitely want to find as many different styles of map as possible, in order to be exposed to as many different kinds of patterns as you can.
For advanced players (which I consider myself, because I'm nowhere near as good as players like Entozer), random is incredibly helpful at this point. I regularly practice with pretty much every mod except Fade In, but I think random has had the most actual benefit.
I just overcame a skill wall in the past few days, and I think it'd be good to share the changes I made in how I play that are responsible for getting over the wall.
The most important change I made, which has allowed me to play much faster and more accurately than I used to, is to keep my fingers resting lightly directly on the keys, and keeping my hand relaxed the whole time. It's incredibly easy to tense up when playing fast stuff, and I had a bad habit of pressing the keys really hard and pulling my fingers back really far when I'd lift off, almost hovering over the keys. Now I make an effort to keep my fingers resting directly on the keys, and keeping my hand relaxed, and it's made a huge difference.
The other part that helped me break my wall was that I practiced on Davteezy's BMS conversions (I still need to download all your ones Doorknob T.T). Reading those patterns helped me get better at handling chords, and layered patterns, and the change in technique both had a noticeable impact.