forum

The reason you can (probably) never become a pro at osu

posted
Total Posts
155
Topic Starter
Railey2
This thread is dedicated to everyone who wants to make it to the top





These are the end times. You need 7000pp to get to the top1000, players all around the world are competing fiercely for their ranks, and you want to make it to the top too.
You play this game a lot, for sure. Maybe you are thinking things like:


"Osu is a game about hard work, the more you play, the better you get!"

"The best players in osu are also the players that worked the hardest! Hard work pays off!"

"Everyone who works hard can make it to the top! I just have to play more!"



There is a reason why people always say "play more", right? For sure you can become a pro if you really follow their advice. Well... no.
You are making a costly mistake. Improvement at osu is not only about work, and people who claim that they made it to the top only as a result of their hard work, are lying. There is a component that we hate looking at, because it is outside of our control. For this reason, it is often times overlooked completely. But it is too powerful for us to ignore it.

Talent.


__________________________________________________________________________________________________





Talent is very elusive and hard to measure, but there is a simple way to do it.
Think of talent as the thing that caused the difference in skill between two players, that put the same amount of effort into the game. If we think of it like this, we can measure it just fine, because playcount is a decent approximation for effort (hitcount is even better, to be seen on peoples profiles), and pp is a decent approximation for skill. If someone gets more skilled with less effort, we can call them talented.



Green would be an example of a talented player (lower playcount than everyone around him).
Red is an example of an untalented player (higher playcount than everyone around him).

Keep in mind that "talented" is a relative term, which means that it only becomes meaningful in comparison. We call red untalented, because he is less talented than the reference group, other people around rank 5k.
If we went back in time and checked how red was doing when he only had 1k pp, we may have found that red was a relatively talented player.


So, why is this relevant?

Simply put: As soon as you find yourself in the "untalented-bracket", it is time to bury your dream of becoming a top-player. This is particularly true if you get there early.
The top-players became top-players through hard work, but they were also very talented. You will find nobody in the top100 who isn't extremely talented, and the overwhelming majority worked very hard in addition to that. As a result, you will never catch up to them, if you are "just" hard working.
Hard work may beat talent, but it can't beat talent and hard work. The top, has both.


But if you find yourself in the "average-bracket", or possibly even in the "talented-bracket", go ahead and play more. See how long your talent lasts. As soon as it runs out, you know that you are close to approaching your limit as a competitive player.
Great effort will get you far, but if you lack talent, it will never get you to the top.


Lastly, a word for people that lack talent.

Change your goals. Osu can be an extremely fun game, especially without the pressure of playing for ranks. Discover new music, play with friends, play interesting maps. It's all about what you make of it. A more talented player once said "plz enjoy game", and this is good advice regardless of how talented you are. Settle for less, but enjoy it all the way.

Good luck to everyone! It's a rocky road that leads to the top100. Let's hope that you have the talent to make it there.



exceptions
SPOILER
There are cases where people put effort into the game in wrong ways, such as only playing for SS. In that case, their lack of success is not necessarily a result of them lacking talent, but rather a result of a misapplication of effort. It can be hard to tell the two apart sometimes, but what I wrote above still holds true either way.
Caput Mortuum
don't crush my dreams :C
chainpullz
This post is flawed because you can acquire play count etc from playing maps that wouldn't even give you pp for an SS. Not everyone goes hard every hour of every day. Some people still choose to play even on days where they are both physically and mentally exhausted and not capable of making top performance plays. Does this have anything to do with "talent"? No.

Your entire notion of talent is flawed if you are basing it off rank/pp/playcount.
Topic Starter
Railey2

chainpullz wrote:

This post is flawed because you can acquire play count etc from playing maps that wouldn't even give you pp for an SS. Not everyone goes hard every hour of every day. Some people still choose to play even on days where they are both physically and mentally exhausted and not capable of making top performance plays. Does this have anything to do with "talent"? No.

Your entire notion of talent is flawed if you are basing it off rank/pp/playcount.
To make this a bit more clear:

If you misapply your effort (never going hard, only playing for SS, depriving yourself of sleep for the sake of playing more..), this can also be a reason why you don't see results.
But what I said about talent is still true. Keep in mind that I mentioned how pp and playcount (better: hitcount), are just approximations for skill and effort, not perfect representations of it. It is just a way to estimate how talented you are. I will claim that it generally works, if you don't do some super crazy shit like only playing while blindfolded. Forming the average of the people around you and comparing yourself to it will give you a basic idea of where you fall. -/+ 2 million hitcount around the average and you are probably fine. More than that? Probably lacking talent.


Take yourself as an example. You have 9,587,322 hits and are rank 8k.

You are already in the untalented-bracket, by approximation. You will never make it to the top and should give up on it. You'll make it to top500 tops. There are other reasons to play the game.
Tamako Lumisade
And then, there was thelewa, who's never been a talented player. He repeated many times that he sucked in rhythm games. Yet, he was one of the best players in the world through insane hard work he put in.
Yolshka
im heavily offended
Topic Starter
Railey2

Husky wrote:

And then, there was thelewa, who's never been a talented player. He repeated many times that he sucked in rhythm games. Yet, he was one of the best players in the world through insane hard work he put in.
lewa is probably among the top10 most accurate players in osu, right behind bikko, HDHR, xilver and maybe a couple others.

If you want to make an example to debunk what I said, https://osu.ppy.sh/u/1208858 is probably the best counter-example.

But even then, I can almost assure you that Vettel was most likely not behind at 4k pp.


The only thing that can really debunk my argument is showing me a large amount of players that were in the untalented-bracket early on, but still made it to the top. But you won't find many examples like this, because it is generally not a thing. The overwhelming majority of top-players always did better than people close to their rank, until they joined the ranks of the top-players. If you don't count to this group, your chances of becoming a top-player are significantly reduced.
Endaris
Don't need to be a pro to be good.
winber1
useless thread

let me help all you nerds out there

tl;dr you suck
chainpullz

Railey2 wrote:

chainpullz wrote:

This post is flawed because you can acquire play count etc from playing maps that wouldn't even give you pp for an SS. Not everyone goes hard every hour of every day. Some people still choose to play even on days where they are both physically and mentally exhausted and not capable of making top performance plays. Does this have anything to do with "talent"? No.

Your entire notion of talent is flawed if you are basing it off rank/pp/playcount.
To make this a bit more clear:

If you misapply your effort (never going hard, only playing for SS, depriving yourself of sleep for the sake of playing more..), this can also be a reason why you don't see results.
But what I said about talent is still true. Keep in mind that I mentioned how pp and playcount (better: hitcount), are just approximations for skill and effort, not perfect representations of it. It is just a way to estimate how talented you are. I will claim that it generally works, if you don't do some super crazy shit like only playing while blindfolded. Forming the average of the people around you and comparing yourself to it will give you a basic idea of where you fall. -/+ 2 million hitcount around the average and you are probably fine. More than that? Probably lacking talent.


Take yourself as an example. You have 9,587,322 hits and are rank 8k.

You are already in the untalented-bracket, by approximation. You will never make it to the top and should give up on it. You'll make it to top500 tops. There are other reasons to play the game.
My actual stats are nowhere close to what is listed on my profile and the same could be said about most players which is why your argument is 100% pointless. There is no such thing as talent. Just mindset. If you live and breath circles you will be better at them then other people. That has 100% nothing to do with talent. Saying that someone is at the top because they are both talented and worked hard is stupid and is honestly an insult to those players. It had nothing to do with talent.

Talent is an excuse people make for not having the drive to succeed. It is an admittance to defeat. This doesn't just apply to circles. It applies to pretty much everything in life.
OnosakiHito
I won't say whether this is likely to be the case or not. But for someone like me who plays Taiko since a very long time, I can say, that I reached some kind of cap in the past which brought me to my nowaday's thinking, keeping playing for fun and not putting pressure on me. I found my own niche where I am good at. Though, the outcome of this was surpassing my old self later, especially since I found another way of playing for me, so the cap I reached in the past was outdated.

What I want to say with this is that I do believe there is some kind of physical cap to one which could be determined as 'talent'. But one can't really say when this cap is reached at all. There are afterall other things which influence this cap such as the way you play or even ones health.

I find the OP interesting which is why I am here.
winber1
talent is an excuse but also a reason. completely denying talent is just showing ignorance as well tbh. just in osu alone, you can see examples of kids who reach top ranks within like 2 or 3 years, which you can attribute partially to more maps to train particular skills and more maps in general to just practice in addition to the higher cleanliness/quality of maps, but mostly to both having the right mindset and the right set of skills to begin with.

you seriously can't say some 130 pound asian kid who never works out or plays sport is gonna be a good bodybuilder. you can't say some diagnosed mentally retarded or autistic kid is gonna be the next genius physicist by pure hard work. i know these are completely random extreme cases, but you can apply them on smaller scale. Some people are just bad at math, some people are just plain stupid. These kids aren't gonna win a noble prize by studying science all day. They probably will never be able to do pretty much anything. people have strengths and weaknesses and almost always in their life end up following their strengths instead of their weaknesses, although they might have the heart to mitigate their lack of skill in certain subjects.

i'd like to think of myself as somewhat talented in intellect, or at least lucky to not be shitfaced retarded. Most of school I would never study, or at most 1-2 hour for only things like final exams at the end of a semester, yet although other kids spend more than 3 or more times the amount of time i spend studying, they often still get worse grades and worse gpa. that's also one of the only reasons i was able to balance my somewhat busy schedule while still playing league errday bruh. Hell, I even probably paid less attention in class, but I just retained information more easily. I really don't think you can just chalk that up to hard work.
Topic Starter
Railey2

chainpullz wrote:

There is no such thing as talent. Just mindset. If you live and breath circles you will be better at them then other people. That has 100% nothing to do with talent. Saying that someone is at the top because they are both talented and worked hard is stupid and is honestly an insult to those players. It had nothing to do with talent.

Talent is an excuse people make for not having the drive to succeed. It is an admittance to defeat. This doesn't just apply to circles. It applies to pretty much everything in life.
You are one of the people that hate admitting to themselves that there are forces outside of their control that affect what they can reasonably achieve.

People are born with certain predispositions. I can play as much chess as I want, but I will never beat Magnus Carlsen. I can study as hard as I want, but I'll never be as smart as someone with IQ 165 who studies half as much as me.

I can play as much osu as I want, but I'll never be even close to the top 100. And the same applies to you.

This is an undeniable reality. You can accept it, or you can call talent an excuse in an effort to justify your naive view of a world where talent is evenly distributed and effort gets rewarded fairly.

Denying the existence of talent is childish.

Read the original post again. I made this thread for people that think like you too. I don't want to insult anyone, I'm just don't want anyone to have unrealistic expectations of themselves.
PriestMVP
Very good post.

The grim reality is, you may pass someone with talent if you put in insane amounts of work while they sit idle.

But if they put in the same amount of work, they will inevitably pass you.

That's all there is to it.
chainpullz

winber1 wrote:

completely random extreme cases

chainpullz wrote:

pretty much everything in life.
Dw fam I know how to quantify my arguments to avoid extreme cases. :^)

winber1 wrote:

i'd like to think of myself as somewhat talented in intellect, or at least lucky to not be shitfaced retarded. Most of school I would never study, or at most 1-2 hour for only things like final exams at the end of a semester, yet although other kids spend more than 3 or more times the amount of time i spend studying, they often still get worse grades and worse gpa. that's also one of the only reasons i was able to balance my somewhat busy schedule while still playing league errday bruh. Hell, I even probably paid less attention in class, but I just retained information more easily. I really don't think you can just chalk that up to hard work.
As I said, mindset. When it comes to matters of knowledge/intellect "work" doesn't simply apply to like actually doing problems and shit. Both conscious and subconscious thinking apply here as well. People who are good at math are good at math because they see and think about everything in the world in a very mathematical way. They are in essence "working" just by living their life. If you want to go as far as to call things like that talent I would still say that is just disrespectful to those people, at least to use it in this sort of context. Most of these "talented" people have difficulty living normal lives because they are incapable of seeing/thinking about the world in a normal way.

I mean sure, there are the obvious extreme cases. Micheal Phelps is double jointed and that gives him a massive evolutionary advantage against most other people when it comes to Olympic Swimming. I still wouldn't call that talent.

I argue that talent doesn't exist and that you are simply using the wrong metric with which to measure effort. It's also a difficult thing to discuss due to how little we understand about the early developmental phase for humans from a research standpoint. Whether talent actually exists from a mental capacity standpoint (barring actual mental diseases) is still a contested topic.

But yeah, for a game where you literally just click circles you probably aren't ever going to hit your true limits as onosaki has pointed out and those are the only things that are really worth debating as far as "talent" is concerned.
B1rd
now for some more red pills:
-in addition to circle clicking, some people are just better than others in pretty much every way
-it applies to everything in life and if you lose the genetic lottery you're fucked
-race/gender has a big effect on IQ/intelligence
-jews control America

etc etc
Endaris
socialisation is more important than genes though
too bad that society sucks in most places
B1rd
Oh yeah statistically if you was raised by a single mother you're fucked too

sad life
Topic Starter
Railey2
chainpullz, this is insane. The existence of talent is not a contested topic. The blank slate-theory has been exhaustively refuted, there are about nobody left in professional fields who claims that all people could theoretically work themselves anywhere they want.

Reaction time is already moderately genetic.
Working memory is influenced by genetics.
IQ is influenced by genetics.


Your argument is demonstrably false. I've seen many people claim that hard work is more important than talent, but I've never seen anyone say that talent doesn't exist.
winber1

chainpullz wrote:

People who are good at math are good at math because they see and think about everything in the world in a very mathematical way.
not really. I didn't really want to go into this topic since there is not quantitative evidence truly, but what do you even quantify as "a very mathematical way?" I'd say doing basic math and solving basic algebraic equations for work or just curiosity isn't not really that mathematical, but that's what most people would do. And to be fair, a good portion of mathematically inclined people (asians lul) are not thinking about group theory or matrix transformations or some crap like that, they only use it when they need to. Otherwise, they'd only think about more complex problems if that is their job. Every once in a while people will just solve problems for fun or do it to help someone. I know most of my friends haven't even taken a math class in 4 to 5 years and only use basic math skills nowadays, but would be bounds better at relearning calculus than most people our age (who also have not taken or done advanced math in years). This is all just hypothesizing and no evidence, but that's all I have for that.

But when it comes to hardwork and mindset, even that is a talent in and of itself. Our brains are a physical entity that can be almost completely hardwired to think a certain way. Perhaps there's no absolute conclusion on the malleability of the human brain, but just evolutionarily speaking, certain animals have been "proven" to act a certain way under certain stimuli regardless of any environment. Of course, we don't see that specifically in humans, but the idea is that tendencies to retain a certain behavior exist in all animal, and especially for humans, regardless of whether it's "hardwired" or not. This is why personalities exist, because we have a tendency to always be a certain way. You can argue that people can push through if they work "hard enough" to change their identity and personality, but can't it also be said that that particular is much harder and time-consuming to accomlpish? And in that way, wouldn't that mean that for someone who has a behaviorally negative tendency to require more time and effort to fix it and improve themselves in a particular area? If you don't consider this a kind of talent, then there still seems to be a discrepancy between the amount of time one person takes to learn a skill and the time it takes for another, and that time discrepancy itself is like a pseudo-talent. If not measurable in mental capacity, we can still measure talent in the amount of time it takes people to learn particular sets of skills, although not numerically per se.
7ambda
Being good at osu! doesn't mean much in real life, so it doesn't matter.

Also, the fact that you're judging someone's skill by their play count is pretty sad.
Topic Starter
Railey2

F1r3tar wrote:

Being good at osu! doesn't mean much in real life, so it doesn't matter.

Also, the fact that you're judging someone's skill by their play count is pretty sad.
You don't get to decide what matters to anyone but yourself, don't be so presumptuous.

I don't judge skill by play count, I consider hitcount and skill to estimate talent.
KupcaH
ok

Just believe in yourself, and stay positive.
7ambda

Railey2 wrote:

You don't get to decide what matters to anyone but yourself, don't be so presumptuous.
Since when did I say my words are fact?

But honestly, when is osu! going to help you in real life? You don't need to pour an insane amount of dedication and time into something that you won't be using in the future. I'm not saying you can't if that's how you feel, but don't feel obligated to get good at something that ultimately won't help you.
Rhonin
you can't just call people "untalented" you inconsiderate douche.
chainpullz
Idk, seems to be a pretty contested topic in philosophy to me.
http://cogprints.org/656/1/innate.htm

For reference all my previous studies have been in regard to innateness of language so I did have to confirm that the innateness of domain specific talent in general was also highly contested.
I Give Up
Topic Starter
Railey2

F1r3tar wrote:

Railey2 wrote:

You don't get to decide what matters to anyone but yourself, don't be so presumptuous.
Since when did I say my words are fact?

But honestly, when is osu! going to help you in real life? You don't need to pour an insane amount of dedication and time into something that you won't be using in the future. I'm not saying you can't if that's how you feel, but don't feel obligated to get good at something that ultimately won't help you.
You said that "it doesn't matter" as a factual statement.


I don't need to do anything.

Rhonin wrote:

you can't just call people "untalented" you inconsiderate douche.
Some people are talented, others aren't. The point of this thread is giving people a heuristic to estimate how talented they are. This will prevent untalented people from pouring a huge amount of time into a game to reach a goal that was unobtainable to begin with. Nobody should have to delude themselves into thinking that they can reach the top when it is not possible.
suh
So the real question is: how do I obtain talent? Is it something I can develop? Do I have to think a lot harder than others to get talent? Can I even get talented? 0.o

People can argue you have to born with talent. Over the past months I had a casual play break where I had no idea what I was doing or how to improve. Just recently I figured out my problems (I'm prob wrong but oh well). Im not sure if the reason I figured out how I should get better is because I got older (it's weerd I've been able to learn thing better now that I'm older). Maybe I'm developing talent? I dunno. I really want some of this talent that people are talking bout nowadays.

:D
PinkNightmares
I find your post hilarious. By definition you can never become a pro at osu! because you can't make a living out of it (even if you are top 5 material). You try to give your own definition to talent by using a flawed metric and buzzwords such as "untalented bracket". It may be true that people have a different skill ceiling but most players will never even come close to it.
NixXSkate
Judging people based on playcount or hitcount? Really? You assume the other player in question doesn't play offline, play mostly unranked maps, use an alternate account, or farm for certain scores in general. It's an extremely inaccurate statistic that would probably only discourage you if you took it to heart, which would only hurt your performance. Some people don't actively try to improve their physical skill with each play they make. Hell, my first ~60,000 plays were all easy/normal farming. And then I moved to hard farming and SS farming until like ~100,000 playcount. Older players weren't improving themselves based on a ppv2 system, and the players in question may not be either. For example, Doomsday is very talented, but if you went based on his playcount, you would probably think he was less talented than his competitors, even though his extreme finger speeds give him massive potential to become much higher ranked than he is now.

Sometimes you might have a weakness that's hard to improve (but can be improved). For example, I started off terrible at streaming, maxing 210bpm bursts in my first 2 years of osu!. However, slowly but surely I've improved to 220bpm deathstreams and 270bpm bursts. It took a lot of playing to do this, and in that playing I could've focused on other aspects, like aim or accuracy. Even if you aren't a perfect well rounded player like Cookiezi or hvick, there could be something you specialize far more than others when practiced, and perhaps you just haven't realized what that niche is yet. I would argue that nothing about WubWoofWolf's skill set and playing is abnormal (aside from his reading most likely because of all the old map practice), but he's definitely pro, most likely because of his state of mind and consistent practice over the years. First step in becoming a pro at osu! is to not dwell on whether you're untalented or not. As long as you work to improve yourself and understand how to you can improve yourself, there's no reason to be discouraged. If you hit a wall, take a lengthy break and think about it for a little, you might come back and get an epiphany.
Topic Starter
Railey2

NixXSkate wrote:

Judging people based on playcount or hitcount? Really?
Yes, really. Your playcount reflects to a certain extent how much you play this game. Hitcount is even better. If you take the average of 100 people around your rank and compare yourself to that average, all the points you mentioned become statistical background noise. To account for the inaccuracy of the method you can only consider your result as significant when it is either far lower or far higher than the average. And there you go, you have a (somewhat) reliable method for estimating how talented you are at osu, granted that you don't do stuff like playing for SS or only playing Easy maps for #1's on the leaderboards, which would really skew the results.
Doomsday isn't as talented as most other top-players, he will never make it to the very top again.



B1oody wrote:

I find your post hilarious. By definition you can never become a pro at osu! because you can't make a living out of it (even if you are top 5 material). You try to give your own definition to talent by using a flawed metric and buzzwords such as "untalented bracket". It may be true that people have a different skill ceiling but most players will never even come close to it.
1) stop your semantic nitpicking. You know exactly what I mean by pro, and so does everyone else
2) I used a widely used and understood definition of talent. Again, semantics.
3) I know that the metric is flawed, but there isn't really a better one. That's why its only approximating talent.
4) That most people never reach their skill ceiling is completely beside the point. How is that even relevant? I never said that you have to give up on getting better, just on reaching the top.
NixXSkate

Railey2 wrote:

NixXSkate wrote:

Judging people based on playcount or hitcount? Really?
Yes, really. Your playcount reflects to a certain extent how much you play this game. Hitcount is even better. If you take the average of 100 people around your rank and compare yourself to that average, all the points you mentioned become statistical background noise.
No, not really. Many players still don't try to improve physical skill every play, many players play offline or primarily unranked maps, many players may be focusing on becoming well rounded rather than a specific specialty, and many players may not be focusing on pp nearly as much as the others. There are many top players that are only talented in one or two aspects of osu!. As I said before, some talents may be held back, there have been many times where players that consistently play just seemed to shoot up once they weren't held back from a weakness, like a speed demon that learned how to aim fast or vise-versa.

KukiMonster wrote:

Miss_Moksha_333
I agree with NixXSkate. Playcount and stuff could be good information to take into account, but for that you'd need to remove of the playcount (for instance) all of the plays that did not have the endeavor to make you better. Look at me for instance, I have 34k playcount, yet, I spend what, a fifth of my play time playing easy maps to take breaks from tryharding. A fifth of 34k would be 6800, which is a lot of difference. Now, let's imagine that I've been playing for much more time and that I have 200.000 playcount, and that I would always have played easy maps. A fifth of it would be 40k playcount, which is a big lot.

On the other hand, I've noticed that people that play less than me (like, maybe twice or thrice a week, while I'm playing six days out of seven) improve faster playcount-wise, but slower time-wise (one of my friends, for instance, has 2600pp, when I had as much as him, my playcount was twice as high, yet, I went to this amount of pp way faster than he did, he attained this amount in one year and a half while I atteined it in just one year).


Besides, retrying makes a lot of difference playcount wise, as it increases a lot faster, while the total hits doesn't increase as fast.

Railey, let's take you and I as exemple, if you go to my profile, you'll notice that we begun playing (or at least created our accounts) the exact same day.

In those 21 months, my playcount went all the way up to 34k. Yours is 41.5k. Yet I have 110 hours of playcount more than you. I also have half as much total hits as you. My max combo is 3670 while your is 1330.

For all of this I get to the conclusion that you retry a lot more than I do (and I did retry a lot before deciding to get consistent, if I had never retried, maybe I would be at around 25k playcount or something like that).

If we take only playcount and total hits into account, it would seem like you have more talent than me, but if you take into account that a big part of my total hits comes from not retrying, and that another significant part of them comes from playing piss easy maps, we can't say which one of us is the most talented. Or at least I cannot, and I probably couldn't even though if I knew if you were not retrying like me or playing maps just for fun and not for improvement like I do.

I think that playcount, total hits, and play time are influenced by too much variables to discern them from one another, which would make any judgment based on them dubious.

Also, but this is 'total' intuition from my part (which means that it's totally up to you to believe any of it), I looked at your profile and I think that you tend be pessimistic, which could lead you to think that certains things that look impossible indeed are, while they not necessarily are.
7ambda

B1oody wrote:

By definition you can never become a pro at osu! because you can't make a living out of it
Not unless you're a partnered Twitch streamer.
-Makishima S-
Just few words:

There are 2 meaning of "being pro":

1) You are pro because you are in top100 and you can play whatever majority of players cannot due having talent for "everything"

but

2) You can be pro in one thing which separates you from majority at your own rank range - for example:

https://osu.ppy.sh/u/-GN

Is not in top100, yet holds biggest amount of most crazy plays which nobody in top100 can probably do (or can do with great effort and sacrifice). One of examples of this scores which i think everyone in top100 tried and failed:
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/155691 - HDHR FC.
Not mention amount of TAG4 Solo FC scores.

Next example:

If you are let's say in top5000 but your control and reading is focused into fast complex patterns and you can without much problems FC gimmick maps, anytime when someone throw at you another camellia map you just laugh at it and do another 200pp FC due this map not yelding much of it - you can consider youself as a pro in this one thing - due probably 99% of players around you will strugle hard in this maps.

This kind of examples are a lot and honestly - who gives a fuck, really, top100, top50, top1.... who gives a fuck if you actually can play maps what you enjoy, as far as people produce them and you find new one even unranked.

For me Railey2 post sounds like crying "i cannot be good", dunno if it's just me but really, demotivating people from work to progress and enjoy higher variety of fun maps is just retarded.

Fuck this thread and OP for bunch of salt, my room looks like ocean after reading this, bye.

@Edit: I also put here Thelewa as someone who worked extremely hard to be good and now it's one of best acc players in this game. As he said - he is "untallented".

Really... if you think you cannot do something because you don't have talent - buy a rope and use it properly, here is tutorial:


Railey should do this right now since there is no hope for you bro, pls don't waste precious oxygene.
Hiro-Senpai
I didnt read what the op wrote bcuz its too long
Basically i dont believe in this talent bullshit.



This is my nindo, my path of ninja
CXu
The moment you made this thread is the moment you're not going to reach the top.
E m i
skill:
https://osu.ppy.sh/u/My%20Aim%20Trash
https://osu.ppy.sh/u/KeigoClear

don't care about talent 8-)

to put it simply, no aim no life (salty)

Shoutout to mithew also.
-Makishima S-

CXu wrote:

The moment you made this thread is the moment you're not going to reach the top.
Hug me CXu <3

So true, so so true.

This thread should be deleted and OP permanently banned from this game.
Topic Starter
Railey2
Vayenthapost
SPOILER

Vayentha wrote:

I agree with NixXSkate. Playcount and stuff could be good information to take into account, but for that you'd need to remove of the playcount (for instance) all of the plays that did not have the endeavor to make you better. Look at me for instance, I have 34k playcount, yet, I spend what, a fifth of my play time playing easy maps to take breaks from tryharding. A fifth of 34k would be 6800, which is a lot of difference. Now, let's imagine that I've been playing for much more time and that I have 200.000 playcount, and that I would always have played easy maps. A fifth of it would be 40k playcount, which is a big lot.

On the other hand, I've noticed that people that play less than me (like, maybe twice or thrice a week, while I'm playing six days out of seven) improve faster playcount-wise, but slower time-wise (one of my friends, for instance, has 2600pp, when I had as much as him, my playcount was twice as high, yet, I went to this amount of pp way faster than he did, he attained this amount in one year and a half while I atteined it in just one year).


Besides, retrying makes a lot of difference playcount wise, as it increases a lot faster, while the total hits doesn't increase as fast.

Railey, let's take you and I as exemple, if you go to my profile, you'll notice that we begun playing (or at least created our accounts) the exact same day.

In those 21 months, my playcount went all the way up to 34k. Yours is 41.5k. Yet I have 110 hours of playcount more than you. I also have half as much total hits as you. My max combo is 3670 while your is 1330.

For all of this I get to the conclusion that you retry a lot more than I do (and I did retry a lot before deciding to get consistent, if I had never retried, maybe I would be at around 25k playcount or something like that).

If we take only playcount and total hits into account, it would seem like you have more talent than me, but if you take into account that a big part of my total hits comes from not retrying, and that another significant part of them comes from playing piss easy maps, we can't say which one of us is the most talented. Or at least I cannot, and I probably couldn't even though if I knew if you were not retrying like me or playing maps just for fun and not for improvement like I do.

I think that playcount, total hits, and play time are influenced by too much variables to discern them from one another, which would make any judgment based on them dubious.

Also, but this is 'total' intuition from my part (which means that it's totally up to you to believe any of it), I looked at your profile and I think that you tend be pessimistic, which could lead you to think that certains things that look impossible indeed are, while they not necessarily are.
thanks for your honest response, I will try to reply to it adequately.

As a response to your example: Everyone plays maps that are easier to take a break. Some more, some less. The good thing is, when you compare yourself to an average, you expect these factors to even out a fair bit, meaning the average you compare yourself with also has a good number of plays on easier maps in it. Some of the players that make up the average that you compare yourself to will also have offline-plays.
It only stops working when you, as you correctly pointed out, do some very irregular stuff. Like having 200k playcount and only playing easy maps. Or playing offline for entire 2 years. Then you could certainly get the wrong idea when you compare yourself to the people around you.

If I have 40 less hitcount than you but am still considerably higher in the rankings than you, a natural conclusion would be that I am more talented, yes. Of course there are many, many confounding factors (which I never denied), but thats why the method is only approximate. When I have the same hitcount as you, it is expected that I am well ahead of where you are.

Regarding frequency of play, I've seen it go the other way round too. People that play more in a short time improving faster (with less hitcount/pp). I am unsure if this is really such a big factor.




To sum it up: the confounding factors become less important when you compare yourself to an average, that is the nice thing about big numbers. Individual deviations vanish in statistics. You just have to account for it when the deviation lies with YOU, like you playing offline for 2 years.


Taigapost
SPOILER

[Taiga] wrote:

Just few words:

There are 2 meaning of "being pro":

1) You are pro because you are in top100 and you can play whatever majority of players cannot due having talent for "everything"

but

2) You can be pro in one thing which separates you from majority at your own rank range - for example:

https://osu.ppy.sh/u/-GN

Is not in top100, yet holds biggest amount of most crazy plays which nobody in top100 can probably do (or can do with great effort and sacrifice). One of examples of this scores which i think everyone in top100 tried and failed:
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/155691 - HDHR FC.
Not mention amount of TAG4 Solo FC scores.

Next example:

If you are let's say in top5000 but your control and reading is focused into fast complex patterns and you can without much problems FC gimmick maps, anytime when someone throw at you another camellia map you just laugh at it and do another 200pp FC due this map not yelding much of it - you can consider youself as a pro in this one thing - due probably 99% of players around you will strugle hard in this maps.

This kind of examples are a lot and honestly - who gives a fuck, really, top100, top50, top1.... who gives a fuck if you actually can play maps what you enjoy, as far as people produce them and you find new one even unranked.

For me Railey2 post sounds like crying "i cannot be good", dunno if it's just me but really, demotivating people from work to progress and enjoy higher variety of fun maps is just retarded.

Fuck this thread and OP for bunch of salt, my room looks like ocean after reading this, bye.

@Edit: I also put here Thelewa as someone who worked extremely hard to be good and now it's one of best acc players in this game. As he said - he is "untallented".

Really... if you think you cannot do something because you don't have talent - buy a rope and use it properly, here is tutorial:



Railey should do this right now since there is no hope for you bro, pls don't waste precious oxygene.
You call me salty and yet you tell me to kill myself? Do you not see the hypocrisy here?

Anyway, you got it entirely the wrong way around. This post was made to show people that playing to be at the top isn't for everyone, but that there are other ways to play the game. I concluded my post on a positive note even.

I am pretty good at this game. Exceptionally good, even, at least for my own standards. But I can never make it to the very top. It's not called being pessimistic, or giving up on your dreams, it's called being realistic.

I think getting peoples hopes up when there is no chance of them achieving their dreams is the biggest insult. It doesn't only insult their intelligence, it also makes them waste their time on a goal that is unobtainable.

Lastly

this is the exact type of just-world-hypothesis bullshit that rational people try to avoid like the pest. It doesn't get more delusional than that.
Topic Starter
Railey2

CXu wrote:

The moment you made this thread is the moment you're not going to reach the top.
ok Mr.CXu I want you to write a PM to Cr1mmy, telling him that he will catch up to your rank if he just worked a bit harder. Can you do that for me? I'm sure he will feel very encouraged.
CXu
Yes because I'd want to do something someone making this thread tells me to do.
Topic Starter
Railey2

CXu wrote:

Yes because I'd want to do something someone making this thread tells me to do.
I think you are missing the point.

Telling cr1m that he can make it to the top after he spent so much time on the game without getting there is a very vile and mean-spirited thing. That's why you wouldn't do it. It'd be almost like an insult. A taunt.

Your response made it sound as if attitude is the only thing that prevents people from reaching the top, when that is not true at all. Attitude isn't everything. Talent does exist, and it is very, very important for this game.

I wasn't surprised that both low-ranked and high-ranked players react aggressively to this post, because it crushes the hopes of low players and undermines a source of self-credit for high players, but the amount of delusional people who even claim that talent doesn't exist, is beyond shocking.


Anyway, I never wanted for this thread to have this sort of backlash. Think what you want. I'd rather go with the things that reflect in the rankings: People improve at vastly different speeds, and the ones that don't improve fast won't make it far up. That is just common sense.
chainpullz
Topic Starter
Railey2
did you know peppy was the best osu-player once?
Endaris
That's a poor answer not worthy of your standards Railey.

I think the argument about the data being faulty is very valid and massively reduces the validity of generalising players via playcount.

Rizzo is obviously one of osu!'s most famous SS-farmers and look, with the introduction of ppv2 he was suddenly #1 even though you claimed that SS farming doesn't do anything for your skill. That is apparently wrong and it is also my personal experience that going for the SS can be very valuable for your skill.
It also shows that the ranking metric has a major influence on what players with a competitive mindset actually play because very soon WWW, Rucker and all those other people passed Rizzo and now he's 2k which is not very pro. Many people consider Rizzo pro anyway.
The common metrics accessible for evaluation (playcount, hitcount, A/S/SS-count, weighted acc, pp) are just way too general to accurately assess a player's skill due to the ranking meta, its development over time and the specific histories of the players.
In order to show the actual difference between players just due to talent you would have to go into many more details, compare plays and set up your data in a way that makes the players well comparable(e.g. similar Total to Ranked Score ratio, similar playtime in months, no previous rhythm game experience, no experience in playing an instrument, ...).

Last but not least "play more" certainly remains the most significant factor in whether someone can become pro or not. A couple months ago some guy made some statistics that showed the correlation very clearly.
winber1
this whole thread is getting confused and befuddled with a slowly diverging argument. The initial argument is that talent makes the difference between the amazing and the very best. You are guys are now criticizing now that Railey used playcount as a unit of measurement in skill, when he has already indeed said (or implied) that it is not perfect method, and in a sense using that to combat the argument that talent isn't much of a factor, if it exists at all, despite the two being pretty much unrelated. Even if you are not, it is coming off like that. Same with SS-farming and the like, etc. Opinions are opinions, but I am on Railey's side here that talent is a very large factor. Argue that or let people have their own opinions, or else this thread is gonna become a shithole.

Think what you must, and play for whatever reason you want, it really doesn't matter to me. Perhaps Railey may have pushed a certain notion too far, but at the same time, the G&R community has a strong tendency to just shitface anything that just seems blatantly wrong to them, but in general it's with scrubs asking dumb questions. You may think this thread is cancer, but it's slightly more legitimate than the classic how to get better.
Endaris
Yes, I won't deny that talent exists and that it makes the difference as you said winber but the method described in OP is arguably very meh
Talent is very elusive and hard to measure, but there is a simple way to do it.
Think of talent as the thing that caused the difference in skill between two players, that put the same amount of effort into the game. If we think of it like this, we can measure it just fine, because playcount is a decent approximation for effort (hitcount is even better, to be seen on peoples profiles), and pp is a decent approximation for skill. If someone gets more skilled with less effort, we can call them talented.



Green would be an example of a talented player (lower playcount than everyone around him).
Red is an example of an untalented player (higher playcount than everyone around him).

Keep in mind that "talented" is a relative term, which means that it only becomes meaningful in comparison. We call red untalented, because he is less talented than the reference group, other people around rank 5k.
If we went back in time and checked how red was doing when he only had 1k pp, we may have found that red was a relatively talented player.
This section should get some kind of rework if this thread should be used for informing people in the future because it simplifies stuff way too much.
-Makishima S-
Anyway, you got it entirely the wrong way around. This post was made to show people that playing to be at the top isn't for everyone, but that there are other ways to play the game. I concluded my post on a positive note even.

I am pretty good at this game. Exceptionally good, even, at least for my own standards. But I can never make it to the very top. It's not called being pessimistic, or giving up on your dreams, it's called being realistic.

I think getting peoples hopes up when there is no chance of them achieving their dreams is the biggest insult. It doesn't only insult their intelligence, it also makes them waste their time on a goal that is unobtainable.
This whole thread is just one - big - fuckin - bullshit.

Performance in this game is similar to performance in real world sports.
In every group of olympic team are people who are talented and hard working but also people who love this sport and working twice as hard to be the best.
If you decide to throw a lot of work into something what you love, hard work grow a talent which overcome just talented people who just hard work.

Will Smith, successfull actor:



I could find tons of speach like this one - where not talented people are proving that you can overcome "so talented" people by ridiculus amount of work.
More - i know this by myself - from real life, i am not a scientific smart person who i ended up my mid-grade school and university with higher scores than "so called talented people" just by working hard, learning hard, not sleeping but learning, spending most of my life time in books. Right now i consider myself as successfull and smart guy in term of Network Security and Software Engineering.
The same apply to almost everything.

Stop your ridiculus idiotic "if you are not talented, you don't reach top100" because it's pure bullshit.
Same as your statistics are bullshit.

Another video - if someone think Michael Jordan is talented - no, he worked extremely hard for what he achieved:



You may be talented in something and that just makes your work on this easier but 2 people - one talented, second not talented can end up on same point, it's just matter of determination, amount of work and effort put into this.
winber1
However, he said it to be a "decent" approximation, and both "decent" and "approximation" are both loose and non-conclusive ways to estimate something. In my opinion, the fact of the matter is that he isn't even using playcount as his argument to say talent exists, but more so uses it to try and exemplify the difference it makes. It's a slight difference, but I think it matters. Either way, there's so many lurking variables that nothing can be 100% correct, but some people are mixing the two up (mixing playcount and pp is not a good representation of skill with talent being a predominant factor in being good). I'm sure you can find "evidence" for whatever argument you have considering our sample size in the rankings as well as the innate subjectivity of "effort spent" and "skill" though.

I mean really at this point I think people are just about to go in circles, so I'm just more or less advising to watch out for that.

Edit:

[Taiga] wrote:

If you decide to throw a lot of work into something what you love, hard work grow a talent which overcome just talented people who just hard work.
Again, going off-topic again. Railey's argument is that for two people who worked just as hard, the one with more talent will come out on top. Your evidence says nothing, because they explain that you can surpass a so-called talented person if you work harder than them. If not explicitly said, that's the major selling point.
Topic Starter
Railey2
MICHAEL JORDAN ISN'T TALENTED
is that what you insinuate now?

holy shit man
If he wasn't talented, he wouldn't have made it. This is an insult to everyone who worked just as hard as him but didn't make it.


Will Smith is another topic, because acting is a job where success is much more random in a way. Unlike osu.
I swear the hole you are digging yourself with your arguments gets deeper and deeper.

Work may beat talent. But it can never beat work and talent. The people at the very top have both. Maybe Jordan wants to attribute his success to his insane work-ethic, and you know thats partially true. He wouldn't have gotten so far without work. But also not without talent. Admitting that to ourselves is painful, because it takes away some of the credit that we like to give ourselves. But it's still true. Poor Michael Jordan.



Thanks to winber1 for backing me on this.

I'll try to give Endaris a better response soon, give me some time.
Gigo
I agree that "playcount", "play time", "total hits" etc. are not accurate enough statistics to measure whether some player is more talented than another. However, disregarding the existence of talent altogether is simply delusional.

It would be the equivalent of telling me "Yeah, Gigo, go to the basketball court and start driving that ball through the hoop, you'll be as good... hell, maybe even better... than MJ some day!" Uhmm, no, I won't be. I'll also NOT box like Tyson or run like Bolt or dance like Michael Jackson etc. etc. Some people just have "IT".

That being said, this topic is basically pointless. No one will convince the others in their point of view.
-Makishima S-
MICHAEL JORDAN ISN'T TALENTED
is that what you insinuate now?

holy shit man
If he wasn't talented, he wouldn't have made it. This is an insult to everyone who worked just as hard as him but didn't make it.
Ok, i am out, your are not only ridiculusly stupid with this topic but also need to learn search for informations and personal stories of people.
When you read about MJ very close, you notice that he himself call that he IS NOT talented, he growed it with hard work.

Keep dreaming kid, there is no place in top for you anyway, one less crying shitter.

If in real life you also cry over everything with "he is more talented" then maybe buy a rope? It may help, really, it will fix all your real life problems.

I swear the hole you are digging yourself with your arguments gets deeper and deeper.
Even if i pull out all "dual stylus" from forum, i still will have problem to catch up to you. Your talent o make holes is unbeatable lmao.
Sorry, i pass, cannot work hard on crying and assuming guy in front of me is "talented", i honestly get my pants out and shit on his talent, i prefer to work on my future and be sure it pays off with proper expected result.

Everything in this world have limits and can be achieved... except excessive stupidity of people who think that hard work cannot beat talent.
Everything have limit where talented person and hard working one will meet.
Corim
what the fuck is this lmao
Hiro-Senpai

Gigo wrote:

Yeah, Gigo, go to the basketball court and start driving that ball through the hoop, you'll be as good... hell, maybe even better... than MJ some day!" Uhmm, no, I won't be.
You what. Man if someone really wants to become someone, gain some specified skills or whatever, he will eventually become very good at it if he will put all of his effort to achieve that.

If you really would want to become better at throwing this brown ball with air inside than MJ and you would train hard for days and nights than it is really possible for you to surpass him. And the quality of practice matters aswell.

There are couple types of practice/training.
One that i like to call bullshit practice. Where the person that practices doesn't commit himself fully to it and don't search for mistakes he makes and how to fix them (I saw that a lot from people that draw. They say that they draw a lot and do that whole day but always think that they drawings are good and there isnt anything that can be improved there)

And there is a proper practise that is helping the person that really wants and commits himself to it. Such person sees his mistakes in the particular thing and spends days in trying to find a fix for these mistakes

MJ is a human and he trained a lot to achieve what he achieved.


This is my opinion on how to get good with training and will of heart
shortpotato
op makes a legitimate point

it's just unfortunate that those people who mindlessly shit on him are actually the people who need to consider his advice the most


Anyway, it's hard to pinpoint what exactly 'talent' is, but there does seem to be a correlation of some players improving at a much slower rate than others, whether it be due to work ethic, mindset, physical attributes, your bringing up as a child, or any other factors - which are all contributors to 'talent' or 'natural ability' in this game.

Neverthless, in the end you need hard work to be good at anything in life. i.e don't think talent is the determining factor to success. That bring me to the one point I don't agree on with OP:

Railey2 wrote:

There is a reason why people always say "play more", right? For sure you can become a pro if you really follow their advice. Well... no.
You are making a costly mistake. Improvement at osu is not only about work, and people who claim that they made it to the top only as a result of their hard work, are lying.
I'd argue work ethic is definitely more important than natural talent. People who played for only 2-3 years and reached the top- check how much they played every day, probably 5-6 hours or even more, with over 5000 playcount a month. The thing that defines these 'pro' osu players is that they constantly try to improve. There's no secret other than they played hours on end, day after day, year after year and constantly pushed themselves, looked for new ways to improve, changed their settings, thought about the game in their spare time, read threads, stayed healthy, kept playing and kept playing the game.

Some people (I hate to fire shots again but too bad) can't even begin to comprehend how much time a 'pro' player has spent trying to improve himself at this game. I might attribute this to ignorance. Next time you play, try playing the hardest maps you can play, maybe even with NF, trying to hit every single note the WHOLE MAP through, even if your arm is burning and your eyes are tired, and then repeat that for 5 hours. This is the work ethic that successful people have and if you can't match that, don't make excuses about talent because it's not the reason you're not improving.

On a side note: (off-topic rant xd)
I hope people realise that the reason 'pro' players constantly say 'play more' is because they are entitled to; they play they asses off every day to improve at the game and then they go onto G&R forums and see people looking for the 'quick fix' to improve it's really just funny. You can't just play 'for fun' and get better. It's fkn hard work and the way people say 'play more' is subtly mocking those who are naive and make excuses for not improving because in reality, they're just lazy. (considering they legitimately want to improve)

there's like a good quote i wanna finish on: "you can dedicate your body and soul to something, but it's no use if you're just more lazy than the person next to you"

tl;dr talent isn't the determining factor to success. It exists but isn't the reason why you're not improving and can't be 'pro' - that's because you don't work hard enough and hence "play more"
-Makishima S-
whether it be due to work ethic, mindset, physical attributes, your bringing up as a child, or any other factors - which are all contributors to 'talent' or 'natural ability' in this game.
Wrong - natural talent is born ability to perform certain activity with much easier learning curve than standard group of people. Nothing what you pointed out eg. ethic, mindset etc have nothing to do with natural talent. They affects your ability to improve at activity which you are talented. Solving your problems, eg - proper mindset, strict times of training / working on, determination improves your ability to perform task. Talented person require less strain in work to achieve let's say point A than person not naturaly dedicated to this task but that doesn't mean this one person cannot get to this point. For someone not naturally dedicated to this task it will take longer time and more work to reach point A but it's definitly possible.
shortpotato
taiga did u even read my entire post

or did u find the first thing u disagreed with and made a post about it

i agree with winber, theres nothing you can do about the quality of discussion on g&r i guess
-Makishima S-
taiga did u even read my entire post

or did u find the first thing u disagreed with and made a post about it
Yes, thats why i didn't speak about rest since i have nothing to add there.
Topic Starter
Railey2
thanks shortpotato for your long and detailed answer.

I think we agree on even the part you quoted, so let me highlight the most relevant part

Railey2 wrote:

There is a reason why people always say "play more", right? For sure you can become a pro if you really follow their advice. Well... no.
You are making a costly mistake. Improvement at osu is not only about work, and people who claim that they made it to the top only as a result of their hard work, are lying.
I agree that hard work is essential to become a pro. But talent is just as essential. To reach the very top, you need both, as you can't beat people that have both while having only one yourself.

The thing is, talent is much more subtle and harder to grasp, while hard work is the opposite. You can see very clearly when someone worked hard, which is why it is so often listed as the main reason (also, because you can feel good about it as it is something that comes from yourself - it's the opposite with talent, that comes from a place unknown to us).

But this is a logical fallacy. Only because it is more accessible, doesn't make it more important, or even equally important. This thread is a plea to not overlook that which only manifests in the obvious differences in improvement rates between people.


The method I gave to approximate this elusive thing is, as others correctly pointed out, flawed. But I say it's better than nothing, and I wouldn't know any other way to do it without going heavy into analyzing every single component of a persons playstyle and playhistory.


Thanks for taking your time to read my post, means a lot. Especially after all that flak I got.
Miss_Moksha_333

Railey2 wrote:

I am pretty good at this game. Exceptionally good, even, at least for my own standards. But I can never make it to the very top. It's not called being pessimistic, or giving up on your dreams, it's called being realistic.
I used to say that. It's not that I wasn't admitting that I was pessimistic, it's that I didn't even realize it at the time. What does 'being realistic' even mean ? Nowadays I am optimistic as fuck, yet I am realistic, not because I think things are impossible, but because I think 'how to do this ?' 'what makes this possible and not this'.
In my opinion, being realistic means that you question your confidence, while still believing in your confidence. And if you happen to find a mistake in your confidence, you are pessimistic if you think that your confidence was wrong, but you are realistic if you think your confidence had a flaw (yet isn't wrong).

Let's take your phrase. You say that you are exceptionnaly good, which is true since you are judging it from your own standards. Yet, you throw all of it away by saying that you cannot make it to the top. That is, in my opinion, being pessimistic. If you were realistic, you would have said 'I won't make it to the top if I don't commit to it more'.
If the first case, what makes it pessimistic is the word 'never'. Like, you'll never be able to make it to the top. This is pessimistic.
While, what makes it realistic in the second case is the 'if'. It means that you won't (not that you'll never) unless you commit more.

Now, this is total interpretation from my part. I wouldn't be surprised to know that you made this thread purposely to get denied by people. Because your education/life taught you that you cannot do something great if you don't have the talent to. Yet, you don't want to believe this, you want to believe that the lack of talent does not mean that you cannot do it. You want to believe that hardwork can replace talent.

You said that hard work cannot beat both hardwork + talent, even though it can beat talent alone. BUT, you do not consider hardwork and talent as things that can be more or less 'bigger'. You can work very hard for one day, but that will mean much less than if you work without effort for an entire year.
Yep, half a year of hardwork + talent will have higher results than one year of hardwork without talent. But that doesn't mean that half a year of hardwork + talent will have higher results than two years of hardwork alone.

What I mean is that it's not because you have both hardwork and talent that you'll do better than someone with hardwork alone.

Also, thanks for appreciating my honest response earlier, a lot of people would have said 'you are wrong because of whatever' yet you said 'thanks'. I appreciate that, you earned my respect by saying that ! :3
Topic Starter
Railey2

Vayentha wrote:

Railey2 wrote:

I am pretty good at this game. Exceptionally good, even, at least for my own standards. But I can never make it to the very top. It's not called being pessimistic, or giving up on your dreams, it's called being realistic.
I used to say that. It's not that I wasn't admitting that I was pessimistic, it's that I didn't even realize it at the time. What does 'being realistic' even mean ? Nowadays I am optimistic as fuck, yet I am realistic, not because I think things are impossible, but because I think 'how to do this ?' 'what makes this possible and not this'.
In my opinion, being realistic means that you question your confidence, while still believing in your confidence. And if you happen to find a mistake in your confidence, you are pessimistic if you think that your confidence was wrong, but you are realistic if you think your confidence had a flaw (yet isn't wrong).

Let's take your phrase. You say that you are exceptionnaly good, which is true since you are judging it from your own standards. Yet, you throw all of it away by saying that you cannot make it to the top. That is, in my opinion, being pessimistic. If you were realistic, you would have said 'I won't make it to the top if I don't commit to it more'.
If the first case, what makes it pessimistic is the word 'never'. Like, you'll never be able to make it to the top. This is pessimistic.
While, what makes it realistic in the second case is the 'if'. It means that you won't (not that you'll never) unless you commit more.

Now, this is total interpretation from my part. I wouldn't be surprised to know that you made this thread purposely to get denied by people. Because your education/life taught you that you cannot do something great if you don't have the talent to. Yet, you don't want to believe this, you want to believe that the lack of talent does not mean that you cannot do it. You want to believe that hardwork can replace talent.

You said that hard work cannot beat both hardwork + talent, even though it can beat talent alone. BUT, you do not consider hardwork and talent as things that can be more or less 'bigger'. You can work very hard for one day, but that will mean much less than if you work without effort for an entire year.
Yep, half a year of hardwork + talent will have higher results than one year of hardwork without talent. But that doesn't mean that half a year of hardwork + talent will have higher results than two years of hardwork alone.

What I mean is that it's not because you have both hardwork and talent that you'll do better than someone with hardwork alone.

Also, thanks for appreciating my honest response earlier, a lot of people would have said 'you are wrong because of whatever' yet you said 'thanks'. I appreciate that, you earned my respect by saying that ! :3
I appreciate your words of encouragement, but really I am wholly content with where I am as a player. At the same time, I am aware of the reality that I will never make it to the very top. That is why I used the word never. It is a fact that I can not humanly make it to the very top, period. Don't see that as an unfounded pessimistic statement that is grounded in my insecurities, see it as a realistic estimate, based on experience and the analysis of players improvement rates.

I did what I mentioned in the opening post: settling for less and playing the game in a way that I can enjoy.

Your interpretation is quite off though. I was raised in a very positive and approving household, with lots of support from many sides.


half a year of hardwork + talent will have higher results than one year of hardwork without talent. But that doesn't mean that half a year of hardwork + talent will have higher results than two years of hardwork alone.
Well, I agree. Too bad that the top is literally all talent and 3 years of hard work. Hard to beat that.
Corim
actually it's 3 years of DT farm
Miss_Moksha_333

Railey2 wrote:

Your interpretation is quite off though. I was raised in a very positive and approving household, with lots of support from many sides.
Owh, then I'm wrong :3

Railey2 wrote:

It is a fact that I can not humanly make it to the very top, period. Don't see that as an unfounded pessimistic statement that is grounded in my insecurities, see it as a realistic estimate, based on experience and the analysis of players improvement rates.
Hum, maybe your experience isn't totally right (yet not wrong either) on this one ! (Just like mine may be.)
Endaris
I think while saying that "talent is essential" we get to the point where you have to ask what talent even is as there are many factors that play into a rapid improvement curve not called "play more". As the talent component might encompass things such as self-assessment, decision making on what to play and what to improve on, frustration tolerance and many other things not directly related to circle clicking it could be replaced by say a coach or gameplay & rankings(nice meme[tm]).
You might notice that these are all skills that are heavily connected to competitiveness which isn't everyone's thing anyway and certainly has nothing to do with circle clicking in particular but I believe that the effect of those is massive regarding the ranking curve of a player.

I think it is important to see hard work as the essential component (as elaborated by shortpotato) and greater talent as the thing that gives you the edge. I think most passionate circle clickers are already talented to play the game in some way because they're able to enjoy the game and show endurance in their progress. Talent always includes the tendency to have an interest in the area you're talented at and I think this is something everyone who plays this game for a long time has.
So even if someone may not have the sufficient talent to get to the very top I think players shouldn't be told that they are untalented. Those untalented never even begin to play this game - my grandma for example to give a really dumb one.
Yuudachi-kun
play more
Topic Starter
Railey2

Endaris wrote:

I think while saying that "talent is essential" we get to the point where you have to ask what talent even is as there are many factors that play into a rapid improvement curve not called "play more". As the talent component might encompass things such as self-assessment, decision making on what to play and what to improve on, frustration tolerance and many other things not directly related to circle clicking it could be replaced by say a coach or gameplay & rankings(nice meme[tm]).
You might notice that these are all skills that are heavily connected to competitiveness which isn't everyone's thing anyway and certainly has nothing to do with circle clicking in particular but I believe that the effect of those is massive regarding the ranking curve of a player.

I think it is important to see hard work as the essential component (as elaborated by shortpotato) and greater talent as the thing that gives you the edge. I think most passionate circle clickers are already talented to play the game in some way because they're able to enjoy the game and show endurance in their progress. Talent always includes the tendency to have an interest in the area you're talented at and I think this is something everyone who plays this game for a long time has.
So even if someone may not have the sufficient talent to get to the very top I think players shouldn't be told that they are untalented. Those untalented never even begin to play this game - my grandma for example to give a really dumb one.
I gave a definition of talent at the beginning of my post.


Hard work is important to progress through the rankings all the way.
Talent is important to progress faster and further through the rankings, which is essential to make it to the top.

Hard work will always be essential, but talent is essential too when you have big ambitions. This is why I am telling people, who lack this essential talent, to give up on their ambitions for the sake of avoiding late disappointment.

As to your grandma example, there are certainly different degrees of talentlessness. As I said before, in my opening post, talent is a relative term. Even we are talentless when compared to the likes of vaxei. Saying that untalented people never start playing the game is a statement that misunderstands the nature of how I used the term all along. Feel free to use the term the way you like, but we should make sure that we understand each other.
kurodahatsuharu
Talent is overrated af to be honest. 10% luck, 20% talent, 10% believe in your goal, 60% is pure hard work.
Everything has a price. If you got talent you have to trade it. People with talent usually lost their goal because they don't have the will to work as hard as other untalented person.
And yes, if you got talent and hard work you will reach the top, but even if you don't have talent, you can still be a pro, you just don't stand on top
Muuki
there really arent enough talented people that play osu for it to be an issue towards reaching top100 with just hard work
E m i

Corim wrote:

actually it's 3 years of DT farm

no 5 minutes of hr farm 1v1 please i am 90 second acc meister
shortpotato

Muuki wrote:

there really arent enough talented people that play osu for it to be an issue towards reaching top100 with just hard work
ye true

you'd have to sacrifice a lot of your current commitments: i.e studying, work, social life, etc. in order to do so tho

I'd say most of us here are innately talented ENOUGH (think bell distribution) at least to reach the top 100 with consistent effort, but almost always it's not worth sacrificing your current commitments as mentioned above. It's also discouraging at times when people who play less than you (i.e the EXTREMELY TALENTED) are still better - and hence why people should consider spending their time elsewhere, maybe in an another area in which THEY might be talented or extremely talented in

But Railey's right I guess, the top of the top (top 5, 10 or 50 maybe) are just exponentially more insane with every rank and maybe only with talent can you break into it, i dunno though i haven't been there dx

w

edit: I don't think it's pessimistic to say this, it's just reality and tbh if ur life purpose is to be the best circle clicker maybe u need to reconsider ur priorities xd (no offence to any aspiring circle clickers)
-Enigma-
This is a bit of a vitriolic discussion, but an interesting topic. I find it strange that people say 'talent is more important IN MY OPINION'. I feel that if you don't actually know which one is actually more important, then it's not really that useful to say. If you don't qualify your opinion with evidence (not anecdotes from famous people) then you are unlikely to convince anyone that you are correct.

I found this related article, anyway http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121114-gladwells-10000-hour-rule-myth . TLDR; There is no clear agreement among experts about whether talent is just hard work or not.

I drew a couple of things from this article anyway:

1- The majority of those at the top of any discipline have put in a huge amount of time practicing, and often they had already put in a huge amount of time before the people against whom they are competing. So if these top players are still active (cookiezi, WWW, [Toy], Beafowl etc.) then they are still improving, so it makes catching up to them in terms of hours harder.

2- You don't know if you could be one of the best until you actually put in the hours required to reach the top (whether it is ~1000 hours for memory training, ~25,000 hours for concert level violin playing, ~XXX hours for osu!....). Yes some people can get there quicker (Vaxei, Rafis), but for you personally you just don't know what you might achieve until you have actually done all that practice.

Finally, I personally think that OP's attempt to find a measure for talent vs. effort is interesting, not pure cancer, but I personally think the biggest flaw is that it somehow assumes that people improve at a steady pace. In my experience with eg. language learning this is just not usually the case. Some people find the early stages of learning a skill particularly hard, others might struggle to maintain focus when practicing through a plateau where improvement comes slowly, and in any case you can't predict exactly when something might start to feel natural and easy to you. Yes you might practice for a long time and still suck, but maybe next week something will just click for you, and you'll make a huge leap in improvement.

Just my 2 cents
Hiro-Senpai
i like your 2 cents
-JaZe-
My entire response to this post can basically be summed up by "so what?"

Obviously, I'd be crazy to think that I can somehow catch up to the likes of Cookiezi and Rafis because they're so far ahead of me and still working hard at improving every day. Obviously, I'm not talented, because there are people who played this game 1/3 as much as me and are higher rank.

But, seriously, who are you to tell me that I couldn't climb to the top if I pushed myself really hard? For the past year and a half, I've only gotten to play one or two days a week, and I'm still climbing (albeit slowly). I still have room to play 5x as much, and when my crazy 6 day workweek + graduate classes schedule ends, maybe that's what I'll do. Maybe I'll find something else I'd rather do, but I'm certainly not going to give up on it just because you told me to.

I dunno, you can be a quitter all you like, but don't go pushing that onto me.
Floob
rip me im not talented at anything at all might as well just quit
Rilene
many of the response tells me that "I play for rank."
Hiro-Senpai

Floob wrote:

rip me im not talented at anything at all might as well just quit
Yeah you are right, everybody that is not talented should quit
Heck yeah ill quit today bcuz playing this game without talent makes no sense

Rip all the untalented players
-Makishima S-

Hiro-Senpai wrote:

Floob wrote:

rip me im not talented at anything at all might as well just quit
Yeah you are right, everybody that is not talented should quit
Heck yeah ill quit today bcuz playing this game without talent makes no sense

Rip all the untalented players
Rip, osu will be left with approx 100 players and peppy will shut down so amazing game. All thanks to OP being a mindless brick.
Topic Starter
Railey2
Did this thread offend you because you find yourself in the untalented-bracket?
That's fine, Taiga. You can play the game for other reasons than making it to the top. Just play for your own personal improvement, play for the music or play for fun. Wanting to quit is a pretty weird reaction to my post anyway. It's not like I was sharing new insights, it's just common sense for the most part.
Boomdopew
"Oh no... According to what this post says, I'm untalented T_T" (Just a joke alright?)

*Flawed points incoming*

Anyway, I find what OP has said to be interesting or even controversial to what people have in mind when it comes to ranking, score, PP etc.

Yes, putting in hard work does make you improve and do better. But if your method of improving is not benefiting you then there isn't really a point to lash and hate on what defines "Talent" in this context. I do agree on hard working having an important role in ones rise to the top - be it 200k- 100k or 100th-50th placing in ranks.

Although what the replies to the post are...mixed, I do not believe that OP needs to get such flak. Valid arguments and feedback? No problem. But hating with hypocrisy and criticizing in such an absurd way is totally undeserving.

I'll use myself as a sad example, 13k plays and about 2 million hits. Bring in the haters to tell me I am untalented and I should quit this game. While I realize I can never make it to the top(the fact came long ago), it doesn't mean that I can't improve(even slightly) from my sorry state. Some improve faster, some take more time. That's all I can think of at the moment.


It's cool to see the post get so much attention, but saying things like "lol I should quit this game, screw OP" or even "If I'm untalented, so are you lol" kind of comments. I don't know it could offend people to such an extent :/



To OP, interesting post :)
Mahogany
Railey, I used to respect you but this is seriously fucking stupid

How immature do you have to be to type up this massive post just because you're not capable of improving

You're attempting to rationalize your own failures as some sort of act of god or pre-destined occurrence just because you can't stand the fact that you're just not good enough - this is literally the sort of thing you see children do.

Not only that but you're making an active effort to discourage other people from playing the game too. "If I can't have it, nobody can!" That's literally toddler logic.

This is seriously fucking stupid and probably tops my list of the stupidest threads on this forum (and I've seen a lot of fucking stupid threads)

Stop whining. If you don't want to play, quit. If you do want to play, shut the fuck up and have fun. Not improving? It's your own fucking fault, and focusing on the negatives like this shit is probably WHY you're not improving. Attitude is important.
-Makishima S-
Did this thread offend you because you find yourself in the untalented-bracket?
That's fine, Taiga. You can play the game for other reasons than making it to the top. Just play for your own personal improvement, play for the music or play for fun. Wanting to quit is a pretty weird reaction to my post anyway. It's not like I was sharing new insights, it's just common sense for the most part.
LMAO, pls.

Yes - i am in so you call it "untallented bracket" and personaly, i don't give a single fuck, i don't take into my mind such bullshit like "you are not talented" since it's pure demotivational emotion to mess you up at any point of activity - basic psychology knock-knock to your empty brain.

First emotion if something goes wrong for several hours should be - how can i improve this, analyze your own mistakes, spend even hours on analyzing your routine, change something, expect better results, if not - change something else, be fuckin positive that at some point you will overcome your barriers and do your job better - one more time - basic psychology knock-knock to your empty shitty head.

I play this game for several reasons, mainly to enjoy certain group of maps created by HW, fanzhen, RLC and more amazing mappers.
When i played for ranking, i was spending minimum 6 hours per day hard working my ass, not paying attention to pain in wrist, overcomming my barriers and pushing forward - i made "impossible" - possible by working on it.

Your post is pure "hey dude, you are untalented, just quit because there is no place in top100 for you".

If you are a failure in computer game, that's fine but don't fuckin dare to demoralize other players. It's mothefuckin stupid.
By this post you prove how big failure you are not only in computer game but also in term of mental strenght.
Topic Starter
Railey2
well, I don't want to sugarcoat the truth, so I'm going to tell you that you should give up on your dream of making the top. I think upstanding people would appreciate honesty as it prevents them from sinking their time into something without chances of success.

It's nice that you like playing amazing maps, in fact, I do too. RLC is great.

and as I said before, talent is relative. You are probably more talented than the majority of people who got stuck in the 1kpp range.
-Makishima S-
well, I don't want to sugarcoat the truth, so I'm going to tell you that you should give up on your dream of making the top. I think upstanding people would appreciate honesty as it prevents them from sinking their time into something without chances of success.
You are a fuckin idiot.
Fuckin... demotivational failure who cannot handle anything in both - real life and computer game, your all posts here are just silly shitty excuse of your lazy mofo ass who don't want to work, don't want to improve.

and as I said before, talent is relative. You are probably more talented than the majority of people who got stuck in the 1kpp range.
It may be but as many... MANY respected people all over the world pointed out - you can work out and build up your talent but it require excessive amount of self-discipline, determination and sacrifice. You don't know this...

Just go and cry more, i am done with you.

I am curious if actually demotivating players from playing this game (in tl;dr telling people to NOT play it if you don't have so called talent) is actually against any rule so i could get rid of you and this topic. And i will try to do this since GnR is to

HELP PEOPLE IMPROVE - NOT DEMOTIVATE THEM AND TELL "FUCK OFF YOU ARE NOT TALENTED"
Tae
Bloody hell Railey, what on earth have you done now?
Topic Starter
Railey2
Don't worry about me, I'm not crying.

The reason why the "hard work got me where I am"-line of thought is so appealing, is because it is an amazing source of self-credit.

You can't exactly feel good for being born talented, so attributing 100% of your success to your work ethic is what people do to get as much of a boost out of it as possible.
In addition to that we hate admitting to ourselves that there are forces outside of our control, as it makes us feel powerless. You can see that reflected when people look back at their careers. They will often claim that their success is an immediate result of their decisions, when in fact there were often other people making decisions for them, or their decisions led to things that they didn't anticipate at all.

Similarly, attributing everything to hard work just isn't accurate. I don't care what these respectable people say about themselves, talent plays a major role in success for most fields (maybe not acting, but say professional sports for example).

Saying that it doesn't is an insult to everyone who works his ass off and still doesn't get to the top for a clear lack of talent.


What do you think? How would someone who is 165cm tall and worked his ass off every day feel when michael jordan came to him and told him that he didn't make it to the NBA because he didn't try hard enough?
-Makishima S-
What do you think? How would someone who is 165cm tall and worked his ass off every day feel when michael jordan came to him and told him that he didn't make it to the NBA because he didn't try hard enough?
As someone who is 160cm tall, hearing from MJ words "you didn't made it to NBA because you didn't worked enough" even knowing i was training 12 hours per day, i could increase this to 16 hours per day or more, it could be fuckin motivation to show that I CAN DO THIS BECAUSE I LOVE THIS.

I strugled in osu at rank ~160-150k with 800pp till r0ck one time told me stright - you don't improve because you don't play more and work. Took me few months to rocketjump my rank but he motivated me to do this, to show that i can actually improve. I done it for myself, ONLY for myself and i know my hard work paid off properly.
AsyouSaidsir
Here's my opinion on the matter:
Osu! (standard) is a game where you click circles on a computer screen. You have to press a button at the right time, and move the cursor to the right place.
I believe anyone can do that, saying that someone would never become good at the game because they lack talent is wrong. They can become good, and they can even be a top player if they want, the only thing I feel talent affects is how fast some people are improving, but even that barely matters.

Why?

You have to keep in mind a player's experience with rhythm games (or games in general) before they started playing Osu!, it'll affect how fast they'd improve. Show your grandma (or anyone who didn't grow up playing video games) Osu! and let them play a <1* song and see if she can even pass it, she obviously won't, does that mean your grandma lacks talent? No. You just grew up playing games all your life, yet she didn't. It's called experience.

Honestly, this whole "talent" thing feels like a bad excuse for you to feel better about yourself being stuck in the 5k range. It's like saying some people can never be a pro at a game like Tetris because they lack the talent for it. Not trying to sound rude or anything.
show more
Please sign in to reply.

New reply

/