ScarletStory wrote:

Hi everyone, first let me give you some background on myself, I like long walks on the beach, I enjoy watching the sunset... yeah enough with the BS about me.

I've been playing osu! daily for almost a year (8 months) I can not do anything very impressive, I can't promise you that reading any of my advice will help you in the least, and I'm very sarcastic. ANYWAY I will be explaining why some people don't improve at osu! However, *drumroll* DADADADADUNNN I will also attempt to explain how to fix it. Hopefully ending the questions "how do I get better at osu?" "why am I not improving at osu!" etc. If you are asked send them here with a smile and a cupcake and go about your day.

You may be wondering *scoff* what do you know about playing osu! You're not Cookiezi, BluOxy, Thelewa, blahblahblah (insert other good players) and oh my I'm so proud of you. You deserve a cookie (no pun intended!) I am indeed not Cookiezi nor the latter however after playing the game for 8 months (which isn't a lot of time) and watching other people play, and having people spectate me, and ask me how I learned to do such and such, and why they cant do this and that (it's like people think I'm good when I'm really not...) I've picked up on a few bad habits that I've broken (and some I haven't) I've seen others bad habits that i usually try to guide them to fix and I'm hoping to give some pointers to those who ask such questions.

Soooo without further adieu let me begin the thread to bring an end to the questions "How do I improve at osu!" and "Why am I not improving at osu!" without just throwing the word "practice" in your face, as if that was possible...

Before I continue on with this let me just say that asking how to play osu! better is like asking a native speaker of a language how they learned to speak it, or asking someone how they move their arm, or how they breathe, it's hard to explain you just kinda... know. Therefore my explanations will be mediocre at best. Also i'll revise this as i see fit mostly because its 1:30 AM and i made this out of boredom because i got homework done early *proud*

As another side note, after reading through some responses, I feel I should add that I will not possibly be able to cover every single aspect of gameplay due to the fact that it would take yeeaaaarss... and would make the thread difficult to follow, however, I will add suggestions as I have time and as I see fit but keep in mind I'm trying to make this as short, sweet, and to the point as possible, also I am trying to keep this thread as objective as possible, therefore, I will not be going over different playing styles (pen grips/ mouse grips) as those are much too variant and subjective matters and I have no right whatsoever to tell you how to hold your pen/mouse, therefore I'm leaving it out, and leaving it up for you to decide (refer to the spoiler box on copying play styles).

MISCELLANEOUS (non-playing related) REASONS (warning may contain demoralising content)

1. You play osu! for the WRONG REASONS. Allow me to elaborate. You are the one who plays osu! entirely for the purpose of "getting better" you spend countless hours upon hours upon days upon weeks UPON YEARS?!?! Okay maybe not years however rather than improving by enjoying the game you just keep trying to get better by sheer force of will, aaaaand that almost never works. Eventually all you will do is end up defeated, angry, left with multiple red spots on your face from face-palming for days, rage-quitting you get the gist of what I'm trying to say. I do understand that improving at osu! is indeed fun it brings a sense of accomplishment and amazement with what you're capable of when you really try however you should let skill come to you and you should not try to chase after skill relentlessly However I'm not saying don't try to improve, I'm saying don't repeatedly play the same song over and over or songs that you have no chance in beating thinking it will make you better when in reality you're just frustrating yourself and bringing yourself bad habits (which ill go into detail on later)

2. You believe that you're the next osu! prodigy. You're gonna pick up that pen (or mouse) and just blow everyone away with your instant talent and make yourself a name. I like your resolve kid, but slowdown there sea biscuit, its not gonna happen. Nobody in the history of osu! has ever gotten an SS on The Big Black, Scarlet Rose, (insert other hard maps) on the FIRST DAY they ever played osu! If someone has, please proceed to kill me. BUT YOU'RE DIFFERET RIGHT?!? YOU JUST KNOW YOU CAN DO IT, again I'm sorry but you wont and you probably wont for a long long long long long loooong time.

3. You want to impress others. This will be an easy one. The next time someone tells you about something great that they worked for lets say maybe they got into Harvard. You look that smug law school good for nothing Son of a B#$%$ right in the eye and tell him how you streamed 20 notes at 222 BPM and you only got 10 100's and 5 50's!!! After you inevitably get looked at as if you are the biggest idiot in the world, please come back here, settle down, and let me tell you something young one. osu! standard the concept of the game is to press keys or click while aiming where indicated by hit objects (circles, sliders) oh and to bring it all home spin your cursor in a circle for spinners. Doesn't sound so impressive to someone who doesn't play osu! does it? That's because well... it's not. That's not to say that being good at osu! isn't impressive or that others won't be impressed by your skill, but the point is the only person you should try to impress is yourself.

You Don't Actually Follow The Beat Of The Song

osu! is a rhythm game not a click circles as fast as you can game(though sometimes it seems that way). Since the creator of osu! Dean Herbert has been kind enough to implement a hit error indicator which can be found under Options->Score meter type-> Hit error you can tell just how early or late you are from actually hitting perfect while you are playing (the hit error indicator shows up as a little rectangle that appears at the bottom of the screen). Blue is good, green is meh, orange is wtf are you doing?

More technically speaking inside the blue range is 300, inside the green range is 100, and inside the orange range is 50. Watch your replays and examine your hit error. Are you usually too early, are you usually too late, are you just kinda all over the place like a 5 year old trying to play the piano?

Now listen to the song, do you feel like you're actually clicking to the beat of the song or do you try to memorize the time between hit sounds and go by what you THINK sounds right what I mean by that is are you actually listening to the song to base your timing off of or are you trying to base your timing off the hit sounds. I promise you that if you listen to the beat instead of the hit sounds you'll be a lot better off. In my opinion the hit sounds are there for you to use as a means of correcting your timing and are not there to entirely basing your clicking off of

By now you may be asking, what the heck Scar first you tell us not to use the hit sounds now you're telling us to use the hit sounds you don't make any sense please go jump off cliff. Woaaaaah slow down there my impatient friend let me explain. I think the best way to explain this would be streaming to songs where the beat is unclear, you think you have it right, but the hit sounds don't sound quite like they should and you can see that your hit error is too late, therefore what you should do is speed it up a little bit until the stream sounds correct and the hit error comes into the blue at a relatively stable rate, get what im saying?

You use the hit sounds because you know if they don't seem to have any particular rhythm(generally sound funky/wrong) you probably just aren't doing it right... and if it seems like they're just a bit off you can adjust your speed based off the hit sounds, very hard to explain, which is why when you ask people how to get better they say "PRACTICE" because its a hell of a lot easier to do than giving a paragraph that probably wont make sense to a vast majority of people who are reading it unless they practice in order to understand it. If you hit 300, 100, 300, 100, 50, 300, etc. etc. you're not keeping the beat you're just kind of guessing.

You Don't Snap To Notes

This is probably one of the biggest problems I see when spectating other people, you aren't snapping to the notes. What I mean by this is that you should make one motion between two notes and land as close as you can to the center although this is difficult without tons and tons of practice, it will come to you in time if you snap to notes by making one motion directly to the note.Don't quickly head over to the note and when you get close slow down to try and adjust your aim making two motions (one quick motion followed by another slower one) ,that is not snapping to the note, that's what I like to call half ass snapping (sounds like a stupid dance you'd see in a rap video) BUT unlike most stupid dances that seem to take off such as the Harlem shake,and even if you can lean with it while rocking with it, half ass snapping wont get you anywhere.

The best way I can think of to explain this would be higher BPM squares that come in a rapid succession. Sure you may be able to get the first one maybe even two but as more squares appear those few milliseconds you lost begin adding up and you begin to lag behind and therefore you either A. begin moving into the 100's and eventually 50's. or B. You start going in circles (literally you begin to make circles with your cursor as you get more confused) I cannot stress the importance of snapping to notes. It is probably the most basic necessity in order to complete jumps.

The next time you're having problems with jumps just remember snap don't linger or make curves or slow down you want to be able to get from one side of the map to the other without even thinking. Eventually it comes as naturally as hitting any other note if you keep up with snapping.

You View Patterns (squares, triangles, stars) As One Big Movement

Ahh this one. What can I say this one is going to be a bit hard to explain without some sort of diagram but I'll give it a shot. Okay so lets go over the seemingly most hated jumps by players, squares. I know with squares THE STRUGGLE IS REAL but to all those people who say "I can't do squares" maybe the problem isn't you, more likely, the problem is the way that you are looking at it.

Okay squares 4 notes spread out on the map that are equidistant from each other they can come in many different styles; typical squares, diamonds, rectangles (which aren't totally equidistant but you get what I mean). The biggest problem I see is people are trying to think of squares as well... squares instead of individual jumps. What I mean by that is people try to make a square with their cursor in one motion instead of 3 different jumps. It's okay squares are intimidating and even reading them the correct way can get people confused but I'll try to explain what I've found to be the best way to do squares.

With squares you want to think of them as individual jumps between notes rather than just one square. Think of it like this, a square can be broken up into 3 individual jumps (unless it's repeating in which case it can be broken up into multiple different jumps) but it still comes back down to the basic pattern. Rather than thinking of it as a square, think of it as jumping between 2 notes in 3 different intervals. What I mean by that is jump (1-2) then (2-3) then (3-4) get out of the 1 2 3 4 mindset (oh god this one's not looking so good) let me try to expand on this.

When doing a square instead of counting the notes in your head as 1,2,3,4 think of it more rhythmically in sets of 1 and 2. Count the notes 1,2 1,2. What I'm trying to say is realize that a square is merely one jump vertically one jump horizontally and then another jump vertically. When you change your way of thinking about it they should make more sense. Basically break the square up into two parts rather than taking it all in as a whole. It's a lot easier to do them if you realize that they're all movements you can easily make assuming you can probably jump up and down and left and right pretty easily by now you just have to think outside the box (pun definitely intended).

Think of it this way with any jumps you learned how to do you probably don't think of it as one motion you break it up into multiple smaller movements between the notes. I think that squares are a lot easier when you look at the follow points. The follow points give you the best way to do just about any jump but I find them to be more useful with squares. The way the follow points connect the two notes is the way you should be moving. Practice moving with the follow points that way you'll be less likely to make circles when doing squares. This may be pretty hard to follow but if I had to boil it down to one thing it would be break shapes down into individual jumps.

You Don't Follow Sliders ALL The Way Through

Let's face it, were all guilty of this at some point or another. You know, that really small slider that you can perfectly pass by just safely moving to the middle and allowing the slider to do its thing, if I had a newspaper right now I would roll it up and (gently of course) "pat" you on the head with it, DONT DO THAT!! and you are probably asking "well I mean we can pass the slider and get the nomnoms isn't that good enough for you your majesty...*eye roll*" and my point is that it's not. Sliders teach you control over your pen/mouse being able to change speeds in an instant is a very important skill for you to develop and sliders will teach you just how to do that. My example would be two sliders on each side of the map something like this
1--------......center....... 2--------
expert internet drawing skills, I know.

In all seriousness though you move through slider 1 slowly then you have to quickly jump all the way to slider 2 and slow down again in order to match the speed of the slider which is difficult, however if you practice this (AS WELL AS PRACTICING FOLLOWING ALL SLIDERS CORRECTLY 100% THROUGH) it will teach you how to have better control over your pen and it will increase your speed in general because you will be more aware of where your cursors going and what movements you need to make in order to get it there without even needing to think about it.

No matter how small or insignificant the slider may be follow it all the way through to the best of your ability, sure it's okay to be lazy sometimes, but if done too many times it will become a bad habit that will come back to haunt you when you play increasing difficult songs with multiple fast sliders such as my most popular example:Talent Shredder

You Freeze Up During Streams

Okay here you are playing this map with DT and you're kicking a#$. You managed to get through most of the map with a respectable degree of accuracy and you just look great, but something is worrying you. That one long stream at the end of the map. Now you're thinking "WHICH A@#HOLE BEATMAPPER PUT THIS TROLL STREAM IN HERE?!?!"(just kidding I highly respect beatmappers you make the game awesome) but it's just the one stream and you are prepared! Man will outsmart the stream and live on just like in the old days when man outsmarted those lions and built fires to put in front of their rocks for protection, and then died from carbon monoxide poisoning(maybe), and then proceeded to build a fence instead... I digress, you get to the anticipated stream you start out PERFECT and then halfway through you start hitting hundreds and freeze up for a second and start mashing the keyboard and we all know what happens when you mash your keyboard in osu!... You miss.

Let me tell you something interesting about your brain. When our brain anticipates a stressful event it makes your muscles tense up in preparation to deal with whatever is causing the stress. Now before you go on to hit your head with a hammer to punish your brain for doing this stop and think about this. If you're out and about and you saw a bear would you rather your muscles be lose and unprepared to move or tense and ready to get the f#$@ outta there? Well depending on how much you value your life it could be either... but I would probably go with the ladder. Now the stream is that bear, you've been anticipating this stressful moment and now when it's finally here your body is just doing what it was made to do in stressful situations. It tenses your muscles (including the ones in your arm) thus makes your fingers stiff and as that happens the ability to move your fingers fluidly becomes extremely difficult and what was "zxzxzx" now becomes "xxzzxzx" and that is extremely detrimental to streaming.

If your muscles are tensed up you're probably not going to get very far in the stream. I have no trouble at all believing that you can get maybe 4 or 5 or maybe even 6 notes in during the time when you still have a decent amount of control over your fingers, however, as I've observed multiple times, somewhere in that stream at least one of your fingers is not going to want to respond and it will most likely cause you to push down on a key too hard and hold it there for maybe 1/2 of a second. I'm sure we can all appreciate how much of a difference 1/2 of a second makes in the great world of osu! that 1/2 second can be the difference between hitting a note and missing it entirely. That's not all folks, there's more! In order to compensate for that 1/2 second you're going to speed up and being unable to control your fingers you're probably just going to mix it all together or completely overcompensate for the time you lost by going way too fast. Then you get angry and do it again and again and again with the same end result.

With speed I can see how one would think that in order to go faster they should tense up their hand and press on the keys as hard as they can. It's natural to think that pressing down the keys harder makes you faster, however in reality, that's only going to slow you down. Try it our yourself. Open word and press down on the keys as hard as you can and see how long you can go until you slip up somewhere. Then, after a break of course, go back and try the same thing by pressing the keys down as lightly as you possibly can while still registering a keystroke. You'll probably notice that you have a lot more stamina when you lightly press keys as compared to when you press down on them as hard as you can, and not only will you have more stamina, you probably have more control too.

Now this is a bit tricky to fix because one might think "hey fast streams make me mess up I'll just practice by playing a bunch of 220 BPM deathstream maps". Now before you attempt to piss yourself off to no end, I have something else you can try. I would advise you to SLOW DOWN. Practice streaming at low BPM's so you can get a better feel for how your fingers work together and hopefully build up a better connection between your finger movements and how fast you're going. I don't know if this is just me but I feel like extremely slow streams (when alternating) are not as easy as they seem, naturally I want to go much faster than I should, but I do believe after doing slow streams you should have somewhat better control over your fingers and should also be much less likely to tense up during fast streams because you will have gained more control over your fingers in the sense that you understand how to make more fluid movements with smoother transitions.

If that doesn't work I do have one other option. You could put your tapping key on a large key on the keyboard (shift or backspace) and then use both of your fingers at the same time on that one key(for educational purposes only of course, I wouldn't advise you to play like that all the time). You may be asking what good is that going to do? Allow me to explain. When you are using one key and you stream you're probably going to find out fairly quickly that you're going to have to smoothly transition between fingers. If you leave your index finger on the shift bar then try to press on it with your middle finger before letting up on your index finger you wont register a keystroke, which in theory, should prevent your fingers from freezing up because you wont be able to allow your finger to stay down without missing (it's hard to explain but if you tried it you'd probably understand).

You Don't Stick To The Same Settings

Changing things up every once in a while may not seem like such a bad thing, and sure maybe everyone once in a WHIIILE it's not bad, it's good to experiment with areas/DPI and find out which works best for you in the beginning/ as you gain more skill. However, if you are changing your tablet area/DPI religiously(literally almost every day/week) all you are going to be doing is constantly confusing yourself and putting yourself right back at square one. You'll have to reteach yourself how to snap to notes and what movement make your cursor do what and it's just a giant mess.

I don't care if you have a small or large tablet area or a high or low DPI the point I'm making is pick a setting and stick with it

You Try To Copy Other Players Styles Instead Of Doing What Feels Natural to You

I feel like this one is pretty self explanatory. Just because a certain play style works for one person that's good at osu! that doesn't mean that it will work for you if it puts strain on you don't do it. You should be as comfortable as possible and your hands should be as relaxed as possible when you are playing. If another style of playing (holding the pen differently, holding the mouse differently) ends up working for you better then that's fine but don't try to copy someone else if it leaves your hands strained or generally makes you feel like you play worse. If you feel like you're holding the pen/mouse incorrectly it is perfectly fine to adjust your play style to what other players use but use caution and ask if it really feels comfortable to you or if you just want it to.

You Have Bad Habits And You just Keep Reinforcing Them

I have given you a little insight as to what bad habits are above, now ask yourself, if you practice doing the same thing wrong all the time every day what's going to happen? Well, you're just going to get better at being bad, and if you get better at being bad, that means you're just going to get worse.

A bunch of unnecessary words to say that if you are constantly practicing with bad habits, you're only going to get worse not better which makes sense. Think of any bad habit you've had, have had, or have broken, ITS REALLY DIFFICULT!! Not only is it difficult to break bad habits it's also hard to stop them from reoccurring later on.

The best way to do something is to do it right the first time. If you learn to do it right the first timeeven if it is more difficult, it will be one less thing to worry about later on.

You believe a tablet will make you "INSTA-BETTER"

This topic doesn't necessarily fit it with the thread but I do feel like it should be touched on a bit.

Ahh... it's another beautiful day you're sitting in a multi-player match having fun and then all of a sudden... THAT GUY with the tablet comes in aaaaand he destroys you. You play multiple harder songs and he still has the nerve! To switch it up a little you even throw in that beatmap you practiced for HOURS and he still seems to come up on top. Now, you may be thinking you have two options you can 1. Track him down and give him a little taste of your fist OR 2. You can get a tablet and show that cheating jerk that you'd be just as good as him if you weren't "handicapped" by a mouse. I personally am not one for violence so I'd go with option 2 HOWEVER neither of them (especially option 1 i feel like they don't allow you to play osu! in prison...) may be your best option, but regardless, in the end, you decide to opt for getting a tablet.

THATS ENOUGH! You say to yourself. You go and quickly throw on your best shopping clothes and proceed to drive to Best-Buy Walmart (product placement) etc. etc. and you've found it. The holy grail to being the bestest of the better of the greatest at osu! and its only 80-150 dollars well shoot what a small price to pay for something so great, right? You rush home install all the latest driver software waiting in anticipation. Now the moment of truth you open up osu! begin to play and realize that... "WTF I CAN'T EVEN PLAY NORMAL SONGS" *insert rage here* and I'm here to tell you, well... what did you expect?

If you've played with a mouse starting out, I can see why it's easy to believe that getting a tablet will make you better. I mean, all the good players use it (not true) and since it's an actual pen it takes less time for everyone to get used to (also not true). This may come as a shock to some people but a tablet requires just as much practice as a mouse. Now I'm not saying that you won't find your skills improve after using a tablet and I'm also not saying that you wont enjoy using a tablet. What I'm trying to say is that regardless of whether you play with a mouse or a tablet it will take time for you to show improvement.

Think of it this way. Whether you use a mouse or a tablet it's going to take time for you to develop muscle memory for each device, which, as with most things in life, comes along with repetition. Therefore in order to build up that muscle memory you're going to have to, well, use it... for a while. Now I understand everyone has their own opinion and some may say, "OH NO TABLET IS BETTER THAN MOUSE" and the people who use a mouse may say "NO MOUSE IS BETTER" first off let me say please don't go there... girlfriend? *insert Z-snap here* What's important is that you realize there are essentially no get better instantly tricks in osu!

You can go to the store buy the best CherryMX(insert color) mechanical keyboard and get a $2000 tablet/ mouse and sure that may help you along a bit or a lot (everyone builds skill at different speeds) but if you don't build up the skill to use them, you're not going to be drastically better overnight. Both mice and tablets have their advantages and disadvantages but don't get tricked into believing that either one will require less effort on your part. Let me stress that I'm not in any way trying to talk down tablets mice or mechanical keyboards. What I'm trying to do save you the frustration of getting one thinking you'll be 20 times better only to realize you're still going to need to spend time in order to improve.

You Read All Of This And Thought "WELL TIME TO GIVE UP!"

Just as a side note this is probably the only time you'll ever see me be somewhat serious.

After going through the comments I feel as though I must add this section in. Perhaps as a way to rouse up some kind of morale to those who read this and thought to themselves "WELL THIS SUCKS EVERYTHING SUCKS YOU SUCK I SUCK I QUIT FAJDLFALJFL!!!!" (insert extreme rage quit here). Okay maybe I'm exaggerating like I usually do. Seriously though, to the comments who are talking about such things as quitting after reading this, even if you're not being serious (which I seriously hope you aren't) you have roused my attention, or as I like to say, you gave me the feels. First off let me just say that if you read this thread and felt a sense of despair, depression, demoralization, sadness (synonyms) you interpreted this thread very differently than what I had hoped you would.

OKAY let's get one thing straight here this thread was not to throw any possible shortcomings in your face to make you feel bad about your playing so that you'd give up, rather, this thread was made so you would examine your possible mistakes that you may not even have known you had and to fix them to improve hence the title. Now, don't get me wrong, this is a free country...to some extent... and if you, for your own personal reasons, would like to stop playing osu! then you have that right. With that being said, if you enjoy playing osu! then play osu! it's that simple. Don't allow me to ruin your fun in any way. Let me just say that within this thread I have never said you can't do something without enough practice (trust me I used control + F). I believe anyone is capable of playing osu! with a respectable degree of skill with enough practice. The main point of this thread was to point out the things you CAN do in order to make yourself a better player or point out things that were hindering your ability to show improvement.

With that being said let me move on to my next point. I had stated earlier that one of the wrong reasons to play osu! is to play entirely for the purpose of getting better without really caring about much else, and my reason for saying that, is reflected in the comments on quitting. Not that I'm targeting anyone I just wanted to point out that's the reason why I consider that a bad reason to play osu! If you play osu! only because you want to get better you're going to be much more likely to just give up when you realize that "getting better" at osu! is something that takes time and effort. Now I'm not saying that this is a "one-size-fits-all" policy, not at all. For some people improvement can be a strong driving force in their, well... improvement. However, osu! is not something you can just become great at all abra-cadabra-like. Most (more like all) achievements in life are going to require effort on your part, but more so than that, they're going to require you to have the will the want and the drive to achieve them.

If you're the type of person to give up when something gets difficult and you want to get better at osu! you're probably not gonna get all that far and you're not going to improve at all if you give up. Sure, maybe you're not the best in the world and maybe you never will be (I'm not judging I'm not either). Please recognize the fact that I used the word "maybe". Maybe you won't be the best maybe you will, however, I can assure you that if you sit around sulking about the things you can't do well while having never even focused on the things you can do well you will DEFINITELY never be very good, there's no "maybe" in that statement. I can say in my own personal experience, that's the way things are. That statement isn't something just osu! specific. You can't change something by sitting back and just looking at it passively and you can't ever get good at something if you give up. It's just not gonna happen. (end of motivational speech if it ever started)

Now that I've got that out of the way please allow me tell you something you already, or should already know. osu! is for FUN (you can tell that's important because of all the pretty font editing I did on it). Now, I'm not going to become Spongebob and sing the F.U.N. song (feel free to youtube it) but I can tell you that when you do something for fun it doesn't matter whether you're good or not because that's not the point of it. The point is that you are doing something you enjoy and that's all that matters. Don't get me wrong, if you find you get enjoyment out of improving then by all means continue to do so, but just do what you enjoy. If you can't do something don't get hung up on it and beat yourself up about it because that's going to take away the fun of the game, ain't NOBODY got time for that! With this being said I'm not trying to say that "IF YOU DON'T HAVE FUN WHILE PLAYING osu!(still lower cased "o" >.>) YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO PLAY!" while holding you prisoner in my non-existent basement refusing to allow you to leave until you listen to me. I'm just not that kind of person and I'd really have no place to put you... At the end of the day you do whatever makes you happy this is merely my perspective on things. If there's one thing I would like people to take away from this thread it's to just have fun d%#@!#!!!!!

Quotes From Others On Improving

Well if you read all of the above and thought to yourself, well sir, you're information is decent but you sound like a cynical A$#!!!! You are right! Just kidding, however, if you thought you might want some more supplementation to my advice then here's some wisdom from other players.
Here is a thread from jesus1412 on the same topic http://osu.ppy.sh/forum/t/99612 he gives great detailed advice and uses a much more professional tone than i do, very worth checking out in my opinion.

ethox wrote:

One thing I would like more highlight on (or mentioned even) is pauses in gaming in general. How to treat them, lose "rust" and get over the barrier that pauses generate. People tend to forget how training muscular and nervous systems work. Studying how a human body learns mechanically is very, maybe almost as important as psychological aspects of a self-improvement game such as this. Morale and motivation plays a huge role in a long and tedious task and often people indulge themselves in self-criticism and frustration. That is the hard part of the game, which you as a gamer and a person have to find out by yourself.

Philantropist wrote:

No but in seriousness, you are right. People need to realize that their own ego is what is keeping them from improving. Heck, even I thought I was "good" at some point which is pretty funny because I was so bad.

AmaiHachimitsu wrote:

Some good, some obvious, 2 I disagree, the two above the last one.

A setting that suits you after 2 months of playing might not be the best one after a year or two. Your physical abilities improve with practice and thus you might need to change them several times in the first year of playing. Just do it wisely. You should stick to one setting the moment you feel your "aiming" hand is fully trained. But even then things like resolution full screen/window settings play a role and you simply MUST experiment with it as to find the best option.

As to copying playstyles, I'm pretty sure copying some manners may be beneficial for the player's improvement. Remember, that if something is comfortable for you it doesn't mean it's the best in terms of performance in a freakin circle-clicking game. You must find the best playstyle you can in terms of pure performance, e.g. your clicking hand position should allow to keep up with any speed you're physically able to and maintain it. If an effective playstyle isn't natural or comfortable for you, just make it so via practice!

Just look at all the players who grab their mice/pens in a strange way, the same with hand position on the keyboard. Do you really think this is how they've been using keyboard and mouse since ever? (implying that any standard PC user wants to work at maximum comfort)

Although I don't necessarily agree with all of the second point i feel that a good overall point is made.

Pettanko wrote:

If I could suggest you add one more reason, it would be something along the lines of "blaming your equipment(or lack thereof)"

For those of you who miss a note and say swear up, down, left, and right that your tablet/mouse/keyboard hates you (don't worry mine does too)

WOLOLOXIII wrote:

Great post, lots of truth, but i'll add something about what you call "muscle memory"

What ethox said People tend to forget how training muscular and nervous systems work. Studying how a human body learns mechanically is very, maybe almost as important as psychological aspects of a self-improvement game such as this. Knowing how neuromuscular training works is a big help to become good at stuff.

Lots of people are aware of this "muscle memory" thing, without truly understanding it. Those who play instruments are probably the most affected by it. "Do this legato exercise everyday and eventually you'll be able to shred like Eric Johnson".

This is due to a phenomenon called neuroplasticity. Basically, if you work on something intensely (by pushing your limits every time) and on a regular basis (3 times a week at least), your brain and nervous system will actually change in order to make you better at what you do. New connection will be formed between the most solicited neurons in your brain and your nervous system will strengthen the connections with the muscles you use.

If you played the guitar for 20 years, you can hear yourself say stuff like "This F chord is so easy, why can't you do it you scrub" to a beginner, but you have to remember that you are literally made to do that F chord. You made yourself that way through training. It's the same with games, you made your brain to be able to see ar10 notes coming, you made yourself able to stream super fast through training. So train by pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone, and slowly make those hostile 80% accuracy songs feel like the tutorial.

Very much truth to this quote things that seem hard now you'll come back to later and think "I couldn't pass this easy stuff?"

Legxis wrote:

And to all people who'd like to improve and seem to hit a wall: It's most likely because you don't have enough maps.
The definition of difficulties varies a lot and there are tons of different mapping styles out there.
So for instance, while you may S some Hards, there will be other Hards you can't even pass. If you play more songs, you'll naturally get better. Don't try to force it. Just come back to that difficult song later and you'll see that it's much easier.

Open up your variety of maps. The more different types of beatmaps you play the more overall skill you will develop because you'll be making different movements and learning new ways to do things.

CPTW wrote:

I only started snapping around the start of this year but personally I went to hards/low ar insanes to practice so it gave me time to snap to a circle but also enough time between each circle to see where my cursor actually snapped to, thus showing me how inaccurate my aim was on top of it and then once I could snap on "slow" maps speed up and play smaller circle size.(Only personal experience though since practicing on faster insanes just made me slip into old habits and glide again within seconds)

Lovely example of how taking things slowly can help tremendously over time and how overdoing things can lead to bad habits.

Much thanks to sarasseo for supplying me with a format that doesn't kill your eyes and marcostudios for explaining how to make boxes that don't look weird. Am a complete forum "noob" so I didn't understand what you were trying to say Nyrox but thank you for leading me in the right direction.
Of course a gigantic thanks to the people who are showing support/supplying constructive criticism it is extremely helpful and very much appreciated.
Edit: I went through and made all of the "o's" in "osu!" lower case yesterday, although either way, it doesn't particularly matter... at all.
Due to extreme lack of time with finals coming I probably wont make practice maps because I just don't have the time... and plenty already exist and you can make your own that would better focus on what you need to practice the beatmap editor IS YOUR FRIEND~! use it!

ScarletStory wrote:

Hi everyone, first let me give you some background on myself, I like long walks on the beach, I enjoy watching the sunset... yeah enough with the BS about me.

I've been playing osu! daily for almost a year (8 months) I can not do anything very impressive, I can't promise you that reading any of my advice will help you in the least, and I'm very sarcastic. ANYWAY I will be explaining why some people don't improve at osu! However, *drumroll* DADADADADUNNN I will also attempt to explain how to fix it. Hopefully ending the questions "how do I get better at osu?" "why am I not improving at osu!" etc. If you are asked send them here with a smile and a cupcake and go about your day.

You may be wondering *scoff* what do you know about playing osu! You're not Cookiezi, BluOxy, Thelewa, blahblahblah (insert other good players) and oh my I'm so proud of you. You deserve a cookie (no pun intended!) I am indeed not Cookiezi nor the latter however after playing the game for 8 months (which isn't a lot of time) and watching other people play, and having people spectate me, and ask me how I learned to do such and such, and why they cant do this and that (it's like people think I'm good when I'm really not...) I've picked up on a few bad habits that I've broken (and some I haven't) I've seen others bad habits that i usually try to guide them to fix and I'm hoping to give some pointers to those who ask such questions.

Soooo without further adieu let me begin the thread to bring an end to the questions "How do I improve at osu!" and "Why am I not improving at osu!" without just throwing the word "practice" in your face, as if that was possible...

Before I continue on with this let me just say that asking how to play osu! better is like asking a native speaker of a language how they learned to speak it, or asking someone how they move their arm, or how they breathe, it's hard to explain you just kinda... know. Therefore my explanations will be mediocre at best. Also i'll revise this as i see fit mostly because its 1:30 AM and i made this out of boredom because i got homework done early *proud*

As another side note, after reading through some responses, I feel I should add that I will not possibly be able to cover every single aspect of gameplay due to the fact that it would take yeeaaaarss... and would make the thread difficult to follow, however, I will add suggestions as I have time and as I see fit but keep in mind I'm trying to make this as short, sweet, and to the point as possible, also I am trying to keep this thread as objective as possible, therefore, I will not be going over different playing styles (pen grips/ mouse grips) as those are much too variant and subjective matters and I have no right whatsoever to tell you how to hold your pen/mouse, therefore I'm leaving it out, and leaving it up for you to decide (refer to the spoiler box on copying play styles).

MISCELLANEOUS (non-playing related) REASONS (warning may contain demoralising content)

1. You play osu! for the WRONG REASONS. Allow me to elaborate. You are the one who plays osu! entirely for the purpose of "getting better" you spend countless hours upon hours upon days upon weeks UPON YEARS?!?! Okay maybe not years however rather than improving by enjoying the game you just keep trying to get better by sheer force of will, aaaaand that almost never works. Eventually all you will do is end up defeated, angry, left with multiple red spots on your face from face-palming for days, rage-quitting you get the gist of what I'm trying to say. I do understand that improving at osu! is indeed fun it brings a sense of accomplishment and amazement with what you're capable of when you really try however you should let skill come to you and you should not try to chase after skill relentlessly However I'm not saying don't try to improve, I'm saying don't repeatedly play the same song over and over or songs that you have no chance in beating thinking it will make you better when in reality you're just frustrating yourself and bringing yourself bad habits (which ill go into detail on later)

2. You believe that you're the next osu! prodigy. You're gonna pick up that pen (or mouse) and just blow everyone away with your instant talent and make yourself a name. I like your resolve kid, but slowdown there sea biscuit, its not gonna happen. Nobody in the history of osu! has ever gotten an SS on The Big Black, Scarlet Rose, (insert other hard maps) on the FIRST DAY they ever played osu! If someone has, please proceed to kill me. BUT YOU'RE DIFFERET RIGHT?!? YOU JUST KNOW YOU CAN DO IT, again I'm sorry but you wont and you probably wont for a long long long long long loooong time.

3. You want to impress others. This will be an easy one. The next time someone tells you about something great that they worked for lets say maybe they got into Harvard. You look that smug law school good for nothing Son of a B#$%$ right in the eye and tell him how you streamed 20 notes at 222 BPM and you only got 10 100's and 5 50's!!! After you inevitably get looked at as if you are the biggest idiot in the world, please come back here, settle down, and let me tell you something young one. osu! standard the concept of the game is to press keys or click while aiming where indicated by hit objects (circles, sliders) oh and to bring it all home spin your cursor in a circle for spinners. Doesn't sound so impressive to someone who doesn't play osu! does it? That's because well... it's not. That's not to say that being good at osu! isn't impressive or that others won't be impressed by your skill, but the point is the only person you should try to impress is yourself.

You Don't Actually Follow The Beat Of The Song

osu! is a rhythm game not a click circles as fast as you can game(though sometimes it seems that way). Since the creator of osu! Dean Herbert has been kind enough to implement a hit error indicator which can be found under Options->Score meter type-> Hit error you can tell just how early or late you are from actually hitting perfect while you are playing (the hit error indicator shows up as a little rectangle that appears at the bottom of the screen). Blue is good, green is meh, orange is wtf are you doing?

More technically speaking inside the blue range is 300, inside the green range is 100, and inside the orange range is 50. Watch your replays and examine your hit error. Are you usually too early, are you usually too late, are you just kinda all over the place like a 5 year old trying to play the piano?

Now listen to the song, do you feel like you're actually clicking to the beat of the song or do you try to memorize the time between hit sounds and go by what you THINK sounds right what I mean by that is are you actually listening to the song to base your timing off of or are you trying to base your timing off the hit sounds. I promise you that if you listen to the beat instead of the hit sounds you'll be a lot better off. In my opinion the hit sounds are there for you to use as a means of correcting your timing and are not there to entirely basing your clicking off of

By now you may be asking, what the heck Scar first you tell us not to use the hit sounds now you're telling us to use the hit sounds you don't make any sense please go jump off cliff. Woaaaaah slow down there my impatient friend let me explain. I think the best way to explain this would be streaming to songs where the beat is unclear, you think you have it right, but the hit sounds don't sound quite like they should and you can see that your hit error is too late, therefore what you should do is speed it up a little bit until the stream sounds correct and the hit error comes into the blue at a relatively stable rate, get what im saying?

You use the hit sounds because you know if they don't seem to have any particular rhythm(generally sound funky/wrong) you probably just aren't doing it right... and if it seems like they're just a bit off you can adjust your speed based off the hit sounds, very hard to explain, which is why when you ask people how to get better they say "PRACTICE" because its a hell of a lot easier to do than giving a paragraph that probably wont make sense to a vast majority of people who are reading it unless they practice in order to understand it. If you hit 300, 100, 300, 100, 50, 300, etc. etc. you're not keeping the beat you're just kind of guessing.

You Don't Snap To Notes

This is probably one of the biggest problems I see when spectating other people, you aren't snapping to the notes. What I mean by this is that you should make one motion between two notes and land as close as you can to the center although this is difficult without tons and tons of practice, it will come to you in time if you snap to notes by making one motion directly to the note.Don't quickly head over to the note and when you get close slow down to try and adjust your aim making two motions (one quick motion followed by another slower one) ,that is not snapping to the note, that's what I like to call half ass snapping (sounds like a stupid dance you'd see in a rap video) BUT unlike most stupid dances that seem to take off such as the Harlem shake,and even if you can lean with it while rocking with it, half ass snapping wont get you anywhere.

The best way I can think of to explain this would be higher BPM squares that come in a rapid succession. Sure you may be able to get the first one maybe even two but as more squares appear those few milliseconds you lost begin adding up and you begin to lag behind and therefore you either A. begin moving into the 100's and eventually 50's. or B. You start going in circles (literally you begin to make circles with your cursor as you get more confused) I cannot stress the importance of snapping to notes. It is probably the most basic necessity in order to complete jumps.

The next time you're having problems with jumps just remember snap don't linger or make curves or slow down you want to be able to get from one side of the map to the other without even thinking. Eventually it comes as naturally as hitting any other note if you keep up with snapping.

You View Patterns (squares, triangles, stars) As One Big Movement

Ahh this one. What can I say this one is going to be a bit hard to explain without some sort of diagram but I'll give it a shot. Okay so lets go over the seemingly most hated jumps by players, squares. I know with squares THE STRUGGLE IS REAL but to all those people who say "I can't do squares" maybe the problem isn't you, more likely, the problem is the way that you are looking at it.

Okay squares 4 notes spread out on the map that are equidistant from each other they can come in many different styles; typical squares, diamonds, rectangles (which aren't totally equidistant but you get what I mean). The biggest problem I see is people are trying to think of squares as well... squares instead of individual jumps. What I mean by that is people try to make a square with their cursor in one motion instead of 3 different jumps. It's okay squares are intimidating and even reading them the correct way can get people confused but I'll try to explain what I've found to be the best way to do squares.

With squares you want to think of them as individual jumps between notes rather than just one square. Think of it like this, a square can be broken up into 3 individual jumps (unless it's repeating in which case it can be broken up into multiple different jumps) but it still comes back down to the basic pattern. Rather than thinking of it as a square, think of it as jumping between 2 notes in 3 different intervals. What I mean by that is jump (1-2) then (2-3) then (3-4) get out of the 1 2 3 4 mindset (oh god this one's not looking so good) let me try to expand on this.

When doing a square instead of counting the notes in your head as 1,2,3,4 think of it more rhythmically in sets of 1 and 2. Count the notes 1,2 1,2. What I'm trying to say is realize that a square is merely one jump vertically one jump horizontally and then another jump vertically. When you change your way of thinking about it they should make more sense. Basically break the square up into two parts rather than taking it all in as a whole. It's a lot easier to do them if you realize that they're all movements you can easily make assuming you can probably jump up and down and left and right pretty easily by now you just have to think outside the box (pun definitely intended).

Think of it this way with any jumps you learned how to do you probably don't think of it as one motion you break it up into multiple smaller movements between the notes. I think that squares are a lot easier when you look at the follow points. The follow points give you the best way to do just about any jump but I find them to be more useful with squares. The way the follow points connect the two notes is the way you should be moving. Practice moving with the follow points that way you'll be less likely to make circles when doing squares. This may be pretty hard to follow but if I had to boil it down to one thing it would be break shapes down into individual jumps.

You Don't Follow Sliders ALL The Way Through

Let's face it, were all guilty of this at some point or another. You know, that really small slider that you can perfectly pass by just safely moving to the middle and allowing the slider to do its thing, if I had a newspaper right now I would roll it up and (gently of course) "pat" you on the head with it, DONT DO THAT!! and you are probably asking "well I mean we can pass the slider and get the nomnoms isn't that good enough for you your majesty...*eye roll*" and my point is that it's not. Sliders teach you control over your pen/mouse being able to change speeds in an instant is a very important skill for you to develop and sliders will teach you just how to do that. My example would be two sliders on each side of the map something like this
1--------......center....... 2--------
expert internet drawing skills, I know.

In all seriousness though you move through slider 1 slowly then you have to quickly jump all the way to slider 2 and slow down again in order to match the speed of the slider which is difficult, however if you practice this (AS WELL AS PRACTICING FOLLOWING ALL SLIDERS CORRECTLY 100% THROUGH) it will teach you how to have better control over your pen and it will increase your speed in general because you will be more aware of where your cursors going and what movements you need to make in order to get it there without even needing to think about it.

No matter how small or insignificant the slider may be follow it all the way through to the best of your ability, sure it's okay to be lazy sometimes, but if done too many times it will become a bad habit that will come back to haunt you when you play increasing difficult songs with multiple fast sliders such as my most popular example:Talent Shredder

You Freeze Up During Streams

Okay here you are playing this map with DT and you're kicking a#$. You managed to get through most of the map with a respectable degree of accuracy and you just look great, but something is worrying you. That one long stream at the end of the map. Now you're thinking "WHICH A@#HOLE BEATMAPPER PUT THIS TROLL STREAM IN HERE?!?!"(just kidding I highly respect beatmappers you make the game awesome) but it's just the one stream and you are prepared! Man will outsmart the stream and live on just like in the old days when man outsmarted those lions and built fires to put in front of their rocks for protection, and then died from carbon monoxide poisoning(maybe), and then proceeded to build a fence instead... I digress, you get to the anticipated stream you start out PERFECT and then halfway through you start hitting hundreds and freeze up for a second and start mashing the keyboard and we all know what happens when you mash your keyboard in osu!... You miss.

Let me tell you something interesting about your brain. When our brain anticipates a stressful event it makes your muscles tense up in preparation to deal with whatever is causing the stress. Now before you go on to hit your head with a hammer to punish your brain for doing this stop and think about this. If you're out and about and you saw a bear would you rather your muscles be lose and unprepared to move or tense and ready to get the f#$@ outta there? Well depending on how much you value your life it could be either... but I would probably go with the ladder. Now the stream is that bear, you've been anticipating this stressful moment and now when it's finally here your body is just doing what it was made to do in stressful situations. It tenses your muscles (including the ones in your arm) thus makes your fingers stiff and as that happens the ability to move your fingers fluidly becomes extremely difficult and what was "zxzxzx" now becomes "xxzzxzx" and that is extremely detrimental to streaming.

If your muscles are tensed up you're probably not going to get very far in the stream. I have no trouble at all believing that you can get maybe 4 or 5 or maybe even 6 notes in during the time when you still have a decent amount of control over your fingers, however, as I've observed multiple times, somewhere in that stream at least one of your fingers is not going to want to respond and it will most likely cause you to push down on a key too hard and hold it there for maybe 1/2 of a second. I'm sure we can all appreciate how much of a difference 1/2 of a second makes in the great world of osu! that 1/2 second can be the difference between hitting a note and missing it entirely. That's not all folks, there's more! In order to compensate for that 1/2 second you're going to speed up and being unable to control your fingers you're probably just going to mix it all together or completely overcompensate for the time you lost by going way too fast. Then you get angry and do it again and again and again with the same end result.

With speed I can see how one would think that in order to go faster they should tense up their hand and press on the keys as hard as they can. It's natural to think that pressing down the keys harder makes you faster, however in reality, that's only going to slow you down. Try it our yourself. Open word and press down on the keys as hard as you can and see how long you can go until you slip up somewhere. Then, after a break of course, go back and try the same thing by pressing the keys down as lightly as you possibly can while still registering a keystroke. You'll probably notice that you have a lot more stamina when you lightly press keys as compared to when you press down on them as hard as you can, and not only will you have more stamina, you probably have more control too.

Now this is a bit tricky to fix because one might think "hey fast streams make me mess up I'll just practice by playing a bunch of 220 BPM deathstream maps". Now before you attempt to piss yourself off to no end, I have something else you can try. I would advise you to SLOW DOWN. Practice streaming at low BPM's so you can get a better feel for how your fingers work together and hopefully build up a better connection between your finger movements and how fast you're going. I don't know if this is just me but I feel like extremely slow streams (when alternating) are not as easy as they seem, naturally I want to go much faster than I should, but I do believe after doing slow streams you should have somewhat better control over your fingers and should also be much less likely to tense up during fast streams because you will have gained more control over your fingers in the sense that you understand how to make more fluid movements with smoother transitions.

If that doesn't work I do have one other option. You could put your tapping key on a large key on the keyboard (shift or backspace) and then use both of your fingers at the same time on that one key(for educational purposes only of course, I wouldn't advise you to play like that all the time). You may be asking what good is that going to do? Allow me to explain. When you are using one key and you stream you're probably going to find out fairly quickly that you're going to have to smoothly transition between fingers. If you leave your index finger on the shift bar then try to press on it with your middle finger before letting up on your index finger you wont register a keystroke, which in theory, should prevent your fingers from freezing up because you wont be able to allow your finger to stay down without missing (it's hard to explain but if you tried it you'd probably understand).

You Don't Stick To The Same Settings

Changing things up every once in a while may not seem like such a bad thing, and sure maybe everyone once in a WHIIILE it's not bad, it's good to experiment with areas/DPI and find out which works best for you in the beginning/ as you gain more skill. However, if you are changing your tablet area/DPI religiously(literally almost every day/week) all you are going to be doing is constantly confusing yourself and putting yourself right back at square one. You'll have to reteach yourself how to snap to notes and what movement make your cursor do what and it's just a giant mess.

I don't care if you have a small or large tablet area or a high or low DPI the point I'm making is pick a setting and stick with it

You Try To Copy Other Players Styles Instead Of Doing What Feels Natural to You

I feel like this one is pretty self explanatory. Just because a certain play style works for one person that's good at osu! that doesn't mean that it will work for you if it puts strain on you don't do it. You should be as comfortable as possible and your hands should be as relaxed as possible when you are playing. If another style of playing (holding the pen differently, holding the mouse differently) ends up working for you better then that's fine but don't try to copy someone else if it leaves your hands strained or generally makes you feel like you play worse. If you feel like you're holding the pen/mouse incorrectly it is perfectly fine to adjust your play style to what other players use but use caution and ask if it really feels comfortable to you or if you just want it to.

You Have Bad Habits And You just Keep Reinforcing Them

I have given you a little insight as to what bad habits are above, now ask yourself, if you practice doing the same thing wrong all the time every day what's going to happen? Well, you're just going to get better at being bad, and if you get better at being bad, that means you're just going to get worse.

A bunch of unnecessary words to say that if you are constantly practicing with bad habits, you're only going to get worse not better which makes sense. Think of any bad habit you've had, have had, or have broken, ITS REALLY DIFFICULT!! Not only is it difficult to break bad habits it's also hard to stop them from reoccurring later on.

The best way to do something is to do it right the first time. If you learn to do it right the first timeeven if it is more difficult, it will be one less thing to worry about later on.

You believe a tablet will make you "INSTA-BETTER"

This topic doesn't necessarily fit it with the thread but I do feel like it should be touched on a bit.

Ahh... it's another beautiful day you're sitting in a multi-player match having fun and then all of a sudden... THAT GUY with the tablet comes in aaaaand he destroys you. You play multiple harder songs and he still has the nerve! To switch it up a little you even throw in that beatmap you practiced for HOURS and he still seems to come up on top. Now, you may be thinking you have two options you can 1. Track him down and give him a little taste of your fist OR 2. You can get a tablet and show that cheating jerk that you'd be just as good as him if you weren't "handicapped" by a mouse. I personally am not one for violence so I'd go with option 2 HOWEVER neither of them (especially option 1 i feel like they don't allow you to play osu! in prison...) may be your best option, but regardless, in the end, you decide to opt for getting a tablet.

THATS ENOUGH! You say to yourself. You go and quickly throw on your best shopping clothes and proceed to drive to Best-Buy Walmart (product placement) etc. etc. and you've found it. The holy grail to being the bestest of the better of the greatest at osu! and its only 80-150 dollars well shoot what a small price to pay for something so great, right? You rush home install all the latest driver software waiting in anticipation. Now the moment of truth you open up osu! begin to play and realize that... "WTF I CAN'T EVEN PLAY NORMAL SONGS" *insert rage here* and I'm here to tell you, well... what did you expect?

If you've played with a mouse starting out, I can see why it's easy to believe that getting a tablet will make you better. I mean, all the good players use it (not true) and since it's an actual pen it takes less time for everyone to get used to (also not true). This may come as a shock to some people but a tablet requires just as much practice as a mouse. Now I'm not saying that you won't find your skills improve after using a tablet and I'm also not saying that you wont enjoy using a tablet. What I'm trying to say is that regardless of whether you play with a mouse or a tablet it will take time for you to show improvement.

Think of it this way. Whether you use a mouse or a tablet it's going to take time for you to develop muscle memory for each device, which, as with most things in life, comes along with repetition. Therefore in order to build up that muscle memory you're going to have to, well, use it... for a while. Now I understand everyone has their own opinion and some may say, "OH NO TABLET IS BETTER THAN MOUSE" and the people who use a mouse may say "NO MOUSE IS BETTER" first off let me say please don't go there... girlfriend? *insert Z-snap here* What's important is that you realize there are essentially no get better instantly tricks in osu!

You can go to the store buy the best CherryMX(insert color) mechanical keyboard and get a $2000 tablet/ mouse and sure that may help you along a bit or a lot (everyone builds skill at different speeds) but if you don't build up the skill to use them, you're not going to be drastically better overnight. Both mice and tablets have their advantages and disadvantages but don't get tricked into believing that either one will require less effort on your part. Let me stress that I'm not in any way trying to talk down tablets mice or mechanical keyboards. What I'm trying to do save you the frustration of getting one thinking you'll be 20 times better only to realize you're still going to need to spend time in order to improve.

You Read All Of This And Thought "WELL TIME TO GIVE UP!"

Just as a side note this is probably the only time you'll ever see me be somewhat serious.

After going through the comments I feel as though I must add this section in. Perhaps as a way to rouse up some kind of morale to those who read this and thought to themselves "WELL THIS SUCKS EVERYTHING SUCKS YOU SUCK I SUCK I QUIT FAJDLFALJFL!!!!" (insert extreme rage quit here). Okay maybe I'm exaggerating like I usually do. Seriously though, to the comments who are talking about such things as quitting after reading this, even if you're not being serious (which I seriously hope you aren't) you have roused my attention, or as I like to say, you gave me the feels. First off let me just say that if you read this thread and felt a sense of despair, depression, demoralization, sadness (synonyms) you interpreted this thread very differently than what I had hoped you would.

OKAY let's get one thing straight here this thread was not to throw any possible shortcomings in your face to make you feel bad about your playing so that you'd give up, rather, this thread was made so you would examine your possible mistakes that you may not even have known you had and to fix them to improve hence the title. Now, don't get me wrong, this is a free country...to some extent... and if you, for your own personal reasons, would like to stop playing osu! then you have that right. With that being said, if you enjoy playing osu! then play osu! it's that simple. Don't allow me to ruin your fun in any way. Let me just say that within this thread I have never said you can't do something without enough practice (trust me I used control + F). I believe anyone is capable of playing osu! with a respectable degree of skill with enough practice. The main point of this thread was to point out the things you CAN do in order to make yourself a better player or point out things that were hindering your ability to show improvement.

With that being said let me move on to my next point. I had stated earlier that one of the wrong reasons to play osu! is to play entirely for the purpose of getting better without really caring about much else, and my reason for saying that, is reflected in the comments on quitting. Not that I'm targeting anyone I just wanted to point out that's the reason why I consider that a bad reason to play osu! If you play osu! only because you want to get better you're going to be much more likely to just give up when you realize that "getting better" at osu! is something that takes time and effort. Now I'm not saying that this is a "one-size-fits-all" policy, not at all. For some people improvement can be a strong driving force in their, well... improvement. However, osu! is not something you can just become great at all abra-cadabra-like. Most (more like all) achievements in life are going to require effort on your part, but more so than that, they're going to require you to have the will the want and the drive to achieve them.

If you're the type of person to give up when something gets difficult and you want to get better at osu! you're probably not gonna get all that far and you're not going to improve at all if you give up. Sure, maybe you're not the best in the world and maybe you never will be (I'm not judging I'm not either). Please recognize the fact that I used the word "maybe". Maybe you won't be the best maybe you will, however, I can assure you that if you sit around sulking about the things you can't do well while having never even focused on the things you can do well you will DEFINITELY never be very good, there's no "maybe" in that statement. I can say in my own personal experience, that's the way things are. That statement isn't something just osu! specific. You can't change something by sitting back and just looking at it passively and you can't ever get good at something if you give up. It's just not gonna happen. (end of motivational speech if it ever started)

Now that I've got that out of the way please allow me tell you something you already, or should already know. osu! is for FUN (you can tell that's important because of all the pretty font editing I did on it). Now, I'm not going to become Spongebob and sing the F.U.N. song (feel free to youtube it) but I can tell you that when you do something for fun it doesn't matter whether you're good or not because that's not the point of it. The point is that you are doing something you enjoy and that's all that matters. Don't get me wrong, if you find you get enjoyment out of improving then by all means continue to do so, but just do what you enjoy. If you can't do something don't get hung up on it and beat yourself up about it because that's going to take away the fun of the game, ain't NOBODY got time for that! With this being said I'm not trying to say that "IF YOU DON'T HAVE FUN WHILE PLAYING osu!(still lower cased "o" >.>) YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO PLAY!" while holding you prisoner in my non-existent basement refusing to allow you to leave until you listen to me. I'm just not that kind of person and I'd really have no place to put you... At the end of the day you do whatever makes you happy this is merely my perspective on things. If there's one thing I would like people to take away from this thread it's to just have fun d%#@!#!!!!!

Quotes From Others On Improving

Well if you read all of the above and thought to yourself, well sir, you're information is decent but you sound like a cynical A$#!!!! You are right! Just kidding, however, if you thought you might want some more supplementation to my advice then here's some wisdom from other players.
Here is a thread from jesus1412 on the same topic http://osu.ppy.sh/forum/t/99612 he gives great detailed advice and uses a much more professional tone than i do, very worth checking out in my opinion.

ethox wrote:

One thing I would like more highlight on (or mentioned even) is pauses in gaming in general. How to treat them, lose "rust" and get over the barrier that pauses generate. People tend to forget how training muscular and nervous systems work. Studying how a human body learns mechanically is very, maybe almost as important as psychological aspects of a self-improvement game such as this. Morale and motivation plays a huge role in a long and tedious task and often people indulge themselves in self-criticism and frustration. That is the hard part of the game, which you as a gamer and a person have to find out by yourself.

Philantropist wrote:

No but in seriousness, you are right. People need to realize that their own ego is what is keeping them from improving. Heck, even I thought I was "good" at some point which is pretty funny because I was so bad.

AmaiHachimitsu wrote:

Some good, some obvious, 2 I disagree, the two above the last one.

A setting that suits you after 2 months of playing might not be the best one after a year or two. Your physical abilities improve with practice and thus you might need to change them several times in the first year of playing. Just do it wisely. You should stick to one setting the moment you feel your "aiming" hand is fully trained. But even then things like resolution full screen/window settings play a role and you simply MUST experiment with it as to find the best option.

As to copying playstyles, I'm pretty sure copying some manners may be beneficial for the player's improvement. Remember, that if something is comfortable for you it doesn't mean it's the best in terms of performance in a freakin circle-clicking game. You must find the best playstyle you can in terms of pure performance, e.g. your clicking hand position should allow to keep up with any speed you're physically able to and maintain it. If an effective playstyle isn't natural or comfortable for you, just make it so via practice!

Just look at all the players who grab their mice/pens in a strange way, the same with hand position on the keyboard. Do you really think this is how they've been using keyboard and mouse since ever? (implying that any standard PC user wants to work at maximum comfort)

Although I don't necessarily agree with all of the second point i feel that a good overall point is made.

Pettanko wrote:

If I could suggest you add one more reason, it would be something along the lines of "blaming your equipment(or lack thereof)"

For those of you who miss a note and say swear up, down, left, and right that your tablet/mouse/keyboard hates you (don't worry mine does too)

WOLOLOXIII wrote:

Great post, lots of truth, but i'll add something about what you call "muscle memory"

What ethox said People tend to forget how training muscular and nervous systems work. Studying how a human body learns mechanically is very, maybe almost as important as psychological aspects of a self-improvement game such as this. Knowing how neuromuscular training works is a big help to become good at stuff.

Lots of people are aware of this "muscle memory" thing, without truly understanding it. Those who play instruments are probably the most affected by it. "Do this legato exercise everyday and eventually you'll be able to shred like Eric Johnson".

This is due to a phenomenon called neuroplasticity. Basically, if you work on something intensely (by pushing your limits every time) and on a regular basis (3 times a week at least), your brain and nervous system will actually change in order to make you better at what you do. New connection will be formed between the most solicited neurons in your brain and your nervous system will strengthen the connections with the muscles you use.

If you played the guitar for 20 years, you can hear yourself say stuff like "This F chord is so easy, why can't you do it you scrub" to a beginner, but you have to remember that you are literally made to do that F chord. You made yourself that way through training. It's the same with games, you made your brain to be able to see ar10 notes coming, you made yourself able to stream super fast through training. So train by pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone, and slowly make those hostile 80% accuracy songs feel like the tutorial.

Very much truth to this quote things that seem hard now you'll come back to later and think "I couldn't pass this easy stuff?"

Legxis wrote:

And to all people who'd like to improve and seem to hit a wall: It's most likely because you don't have enough maps.
The definition of difficulties varies a lot and there are tons of different mapping styles out there.
So for instance, while you may S some Hards, there will be other Hards you can't even pass. If you play more songs, you'll naturally get better. Don't try to force it. Just come back to that difficult song later and you'll see that it's much easier.

Open up your variety of maps. The more different types of beatmaps you play the more overall skill you will develop because you'll be making different movements and learning new ways to do things.

CPTW wrote:

I only started snapping around the start of this year but personally I went to hards/low ar insanes to practice so it gave me time to snap to a circle but also enough time between each circle to see where my cursor actually snapped to, thus showing me how inaccurate my aim was on top of it and then once I could snap on "slow" maps speed up and play smaller circle size.(Only personal experience though since practicing on faster insanes just made me slip into old habits and glide again within seconds)

Lovely example of how taking things slowly can help tremendously over time and how overdoing things can lead to bad habits.

Much thanks to sarasseo for supplying me with a format that doesn't kill your eyes and marcostudios for explaining how to make boxes that don't look weird. Am a complete forum "noob" so I didn't understand what you were trying to say Nyrox but thank you for leading me in the right direction.
Of course a gigantic thanks to the people who are showing support/supplying constructive criticism it is extremely helpful and very much appreciated.
Edit: I went through and made all of the "o's" in "osu!" lower case yesterday, although either way, it doesn't particularly matter... at all.
Due to extreme lack of time with finals coming I probably wont make practice maps because I just don't have the time... and plenty already exist and you can make your own that would better focus on what you need to practice the beatmap editor IS YOUR FRIEND~! use it!

EliteKitty wrote:

what dpi is the best for mouse?

JerduGamer wrote:

omg

Ederurlo wrote:

This is extremly useful for anyone really. While some of this is usual problems for newer players, I feel like there are points here useful for people quite experienced players aswell, especially the streaming tip. Big upps for making such a elaborative answer

ScarletStory wrote:

Hi everyone, first let me give you some background on myself, I like long walks on the beach, I enjoy watching the sunset... yeah enough with the BS about me.

I've been playing osu! daily for almost a year (8 months) I can not do anything very impressive, I can't promise you that reading any of my advice will help you in the least, and I'm very sarcastic. ANYWAY I will be explaining why some people don't improve at osu! However, *drumroll* DADADADADUNNN I will also attempt to explain how to fix it. Hopefully ending the questions "how do I get better at osu?" "why am I not improving at osu!" etc. If you are asked send them here with a smile and a cupcake and go about your day.

You may be wondering *scoff* what do you know about playing osu! You're not Cookiezi, BluOxy, Thelewa, blahblahblah (insert other good players) and oh my I'm so proud of you. You deserve a cookie (no pun intended!) I am indeed not Cookiezi nor the latter however after playing the game for 8 months (which isn't a lot of time) and watching other people play, and having people spectate me, and ask me how I learned to do such and such, and why they cant do this and that (it's like people think I'm good when I'm really not...) I've picked up on a few bad habits that I've broken (and some I haven't) I've seen others bad habits that i usually try to guide them to fix and I'm hoping to give some pointers to those who ask such questions.

Soooo without further adieu let me begin the thread to bring an end to the questions "How do I improve at osu!" and "Why am I not improving at osu!" without just throwing the word "practice" in your face, as if that was possible...

Before I continue on with this let me just say that asking how to play osu! better is like asking a native speaker of a language how they learned to speak it, or asking someone how they move their arm, or how they breathe, it's hard to explain you just kinda... know. Therefore my explanations will be mediocre at best. Also i'll revise this as i see fit mostly because its 1:30 AM and i made this out of boredom because i got homework done early *proud*

As another side note, after reading through some responses, I feel I should add that I will not possibly be able to cover every single aspect of gameplay due to the fact that it would take yeeaaaarss... and would make the thread difficult to follow, however, I will add suggestions as I have time and as I see fit but keep in mind I'm trying to make this as short, sweet, and to the point as possible, also I am trying to keep this thread as objective as possible, therefore, I will not be going over different playing styles (pen grips/ mouse grips) as those are much too variant and subjective matters and I have no right whatsoever to tell you how to hold your pen/mouse, therefore I'm leaving it out, and leaving it up for you to decide (refer to the spoiler box on copying play styles).

MISCELLANEOUS (non-playing related) REASONS (warning may contain demoralising content)

1. You play osu! for the WRONG REASONS. Allow me to elaborate. You are the one who plays osu! entirely for the purpose of "getting better" you spend countless hours upon hours upon days upon weeks UPON YEARS?!?! Okay maybe not years however rather than improving by enjoying the game you just keep trying to get better by sheer force of will, aaaaand that almost never works. Eventually all you will do is end up defeated, angry, left with multiple red spots on your face from face-palming for days, rage-quitting you get the gist of what I'm trying to say. I do understand that improving at osu! is indeed fun it brings a sense of accomplishment and amazement with what you're capable of when you really try however you should let skill come to you and you should not try to chase after skill relentlessly However I'm not saying don't try to improve, I'm saying don't repeatedly play the same song over and over or songs that you have no chance in beating thinking it will make you better when in reality you're just frustrating yourself and bringing yourself bad habits (which ill go into detail on later)

2. You believe that you're the next osu! prodigy. You're gonna pick up that pen (or mouse) and just blow everyone away with your instant talent and make yourself a name. I like your resolve kid, but slowdown there sea biscuit, its not gonna happen. Nobody in the history of osu! has ever gotten an SS on The Big Black, Scarlet Rose, (insert other hard maps) on the FIRST DAY they ever played osu! If someone has, please proceed to kill me. BUT YOU'RE DIFFERET RIGHT?!? YOU JUST KNOW YOU CAN DO IT, again I'm sorry but you wont and you probably wont for a long long long long long loooong time.

3. You want to impress others. This will be an easy one. The next time someone tells you about something great that they worked for lets say maybe they got into Harvard. You look that smug law school good for nothing Son of a B#$%$ right in the eye and tell him how you streamed 20 notes at 222 BPM and you only got 10 100's and 5 50's!!! After you inevitably get looked at as if you are the biggest idiot in the world, please come back here, settle down, and let me tell you something young one. osu! standard the concept of the game is to press keys or click while aiming where indicated by hit objects (circles, sliders) oh and to bring it all home spin your cursor in a circle for spinners. Doesn't sound so impressive to someone who doesn't play osu! does it? That's because well... it's not. That's not to say that being good at osu! isn't impressive or that others won't be impressed by your skill, but the point is the only person you should try to impress is yourself.

You Don't Actually Follow The Beat Of The Song

osu! is a rhythm game not a click circles as fast as you can game(though sometimes it seems that way). Since the creator of osu! Dean Herbert has been kind enough to implement a hit error indicator which can be found under Options->Score meter type-> Hit error you can tell just how early or late you are from actually hitting perfect while you are playing (the hit error indicator shows up as a little rectangle that appears at the bottom of the screen). Blue is good, green is meh, orange is wtf are you doing?

More technically speaking inside the blue range is 300, inside the green range is 100, and inside the orange range is 50. Watch your replays and examine your hit error. Are you usually too early, are you usually too late, are you just kinda all over the place like a 5 year old trying to play the piano?

Now listen to the song, do you feel like you're actually clicking to the beat of the song or do you try to memorize the time between hit sounds and go by what you THINK sounds right what I mean by that is are you actually listening to the song to base your timing off of or are you trying to base your timing off the hit sounds. I promise you that if you listen to the beat instead of the hit sounds you'll be a lot better off. In my opinion the hit sounds are there for you to use as a means of correcting your timing and are not there to entirely basing your clicking off of

By now you may be asking, what the heck Scar first you tell us not to use the hit sounds now you're telling us to use the hit sounds you don't make any sense please go jump off cliff. Woaaaaah slow down there my impatient friend let me explain. I think the best way to explain this would be streaming to songs where the beat is unclear, you think you have it right, but the hit sounds don't sound quite like they should and you can see that your hit error is too late, therefore what you should do is speed it up a little bit until the stream sounds correct and the hit error comes into the blue at a relatively stable rate, get what im saying?

You use the hit sounds because you know if they don't seem to have any particular rhythm(generally sound funky/wrong) you probably just aren't doing it right... and if it seems like they're just a bit off you can adjust your speed based off the hit sounds, very hard to explain, which is why when you ask people how to get better they say "PRACTICE" because its a hell of a lot easier to do than giving a paragraph that probably wont make sense to a vast majority of people who are reading it unless they practice in order to understand it. If you hit 300, 100, 300, 100, 50, 300, etc. etc. you're not keeping the beat you're just kind of guessing.

You Don't Snap To Notes

This is probably one of the biggest problems I see when spectating other people, you aren't snapping to the notes. What I mean by this is that you should make one motion between two notes and land as close as you can to the center although this is difficult without tons and tons of practice, it will come to you in time if you snap to notes by making one motion directly to the note.Don't quickly head over to the note and when you get close slow down to try and adjust your aim making two motions (one quick motion followed by another slower one) ,that is not snapping to the note, that's what I like to call half ass snapping (sounds like a stupid dance you'd see in a rap video) BUT unlike most stupid dances that seem to take off such as the Harlem shake,and even if you can lean with it while rocking with it, half ass snapping wont get you anywhere.

The best way I can think of to explain this would be higher BPM squares that come in a rapid succession. Sure you may be able to get the first one maybe even two but as more squares appear those few milliseconds you lost begin adding up and you begin to lag behind and therefore you either A. begin moving into the 100's and eventually 50's. or B. You start going in circles (literally you begin to make circles with your cursor as you get more confused) I cannot stress the importance of snapping to notes. It is probably the most basic necessity in order to complete jumps.

The next time you're having problems with jumps just remember snap don't linger or make curves or slow down you want to be able to get from one side of the map to the other without even thinking. Eventually it comes as naturally as hitting any other note if you keep up with snapping.

You View Patterns (squares, triangles, stars) As One Big Movement

Ahh this one. What can I say this one is going to be a bit hard to explain without some sort of diagram but I'll give it a shot. Okay so lets go over the seemingly most hated jumps by players, squares. I know with squares THE STRUGGLE IS REAL but to all those people who say "I can't do squares" maybe the problem isn't you, more likely, the problem is the way that you are looking at it.

Okay squares 4 notes spread out on the map that are equidistant from each other they can come in many different styles; typical squares, diamonds, rectangles (which aren't totally equidistant but you get what I mean). The biggest problem I see is people are trying to think of squares as well... squares instead of individual jumps. What I mean by that is people try to make a square with their cursor in one motion instead of 3 different jumps. It's okay squares are intimidating and even reading them the correct way can get people confused but I'll try to explain what I've found to be the best way to do squares.

With squares you want to think of them as individual jumps between notes rather than just one square. Think of it like this, a square can be broken up into 3 individual jumps (unless it's repeating in which case it can be broken up into multiple different jumps) but it still comes back down to the basic pattern. Rather than thinking of it as a square, think of it as jumping between 2 notes in 3 different intervals. What I mean by that is jump (1-2) then (2-3) then (3-4) get out of the 1 2 3 4 mindset (oh god this one's not looking so good) let me try to expand on this.

When doing a square instead of counting the notes in your head as 1,2,3,4 think of it more rhythmically in sets of 1 and 2. Count the notes 1,2 1,2. What I'm trying to say is realize that a square is merely one jump vertically one jump horizontally and then another jump vertically. When you change your way of thinking about it they should make more sense. Basically break the square up into two parts rather than taking it all in as a whole. It's a lot easier to do them if you realize that they're all movements you can easily make assuming you can probably jump up and down and left and right pretty easily by now you just have to think outside the box (pun definitely intended).

Think of it this way with any jumps you learned how to do you probably don't think of it as one motion you break it up into multiple smaller movements between the notes. I think that squares are a lot easier when you look at the follow points. The follow points give you the best way to do just about any jump but I find them to be more useful with squares. The way the follow points connect the two notes is the way you should be moving. Practice moving with the follow points that way you'll be less likely to make circles when doing squares. This may be pretty hard to follow but if I had to boil it down to one thing it would be break shapes down into individual jumps.

You Don't Follow Sliders ALL The Way Through

Let's face it, were all guilty of this at some point or another. You know, that really small slider that you can perfectly pass by just safely moving to the middle and allowing the slider to do its thing, if I had a newspaper right now I would roll it up and (gently of course) "pat" you on the head with it, DONT DO THAT!! and you are probably asking "well I mean we can pass the slider and get the nomnoms isn't that good enough for you your majesty...*eye roll*" and my point is that it's not. Sliders teach you control over your pen/mouse being able to change speeds in an instant is a very important skill for you to develop and sliders will teach you just how to do that. My example would be two sliders on each side of the map something like this
1--------......center....... 2--------
expert internet drawing skills, I know.

In all seriousness though you move through slider 1 slowly then you have to quickly jump all the way to slider 2 and slow down again in order to match the speed of the slider which is difficult, however if you practice this (AS WELL AS PRACTICING FOLLOWING ALL SLIDERS CORRECTLY 100% THROUGH) it will teach you how to have better control over your pen and it will increase your speed in general because you will be more aware of where your cursors going and what movements you need to make in order to get it there without even needing to think about it.

No matter how small or insignificant the slider may be follow it all the way through to the best of your ability, sure it's okay to be lazy sometimes, but if done too many times it will become a bad habit that will come back to haunt you when you play increasing difficult songs with multiple fast sliders such as my most popular example:Talent Shredder

You Freeze Up During Streams

Okay here you are playing this map with DT and you're kicking a#$. You managed to get through most of the map with a respectable degree of accuracy and you just look great, but something is worrying you. That one long stream at the end of the map. Now you're thinking "WHICH A@#HOLE BEATMAPPER PUT THIS TROLL STREAM IN HERE?!?!"(just kidding I highly respect beatmappers you make the game awesome) but it's just the one stream and you are prepared! Man will outsmart the stream and live on just like in the old days when man outsmarted those lions and built fires to put in front of their rocks for protection, and then died from carbon monoxide poisoning(maybe), and then proceeded to build a fence instead... I digress, you get to the anticipated stream you start out PERFECT and then halfway through you start hitting hundreds and freeze up for a second and start mashing the keyboard and we all know what happens when you mash your keyboard in osu!... You miss.

Let me tell you something interesting about your brain. When our brain anticipates a stressful event it makes your muscles tense up in preparation to deal with whatever is causing the stress. Now before you go on to hit your head with a hammer to punish your brain for doing this stop and think about this. If you're out and about and you saw a bear would you rather your muscles be lose and unprepared to move or tense and ready to get the f#$@ outta there? Well depending on how much you value your life it could be either... but I would probably go with the ladder. Now the stream is that bear, you've been anticipating this stressful moment and now when it's finally here your body is just doing what it was made to do in stressful situations. It tenses your muscles (including the ones in your arm) thus makes your fingers stiff and as that happens the ability to move your fingers fluidly becomes extremely difficult and what was "zxzxzx" now becomes "xxzzxzx" and that is extremely detrimental to streaming.

If your muscles are tensed up you're probably not going to get very far in the stream. I have no trouble at all believing that you can get maybe 4 or 5 or maybe even 6 notes in during the time when you still have a decent amount of control over your fingers, however, as I've observed multiple times, somewhere in that stream at least one of your fingers is not going to want to respond and it will most likely cause you to push down on a key too hard and hold it there for maybe 1/2 of a second. I'm sure we can all appreciate how much of a difference 1/2 of a second makes in the great world of osu! that 1/2 second can be the difference between hitting a note and missing it entirely. That's not all folks, there's more! In order to compensate for that 1/2 second you're going to speed up and being unable to control your fingers you're probably just going to mix it all together or completely overcompensate for the time you lost by going way too fast. Then you get angry and do it again and again and again with the same end result.

With speed I can see how one would think that in order to go faster they should tense up their hand and press on the keys as hard as they can. It's natural to think that pressing down the keys harder makes you faster, however in reality, that's only going to slow you down. Try it our yourself. Open word and press down on the keys as hard as you can and see how long you can go until you slip up somewhere. Then, after a break of course, go back and try the same thing by pressing the keys down as lightly as you possibly can while still registering a keystroke. You'll probably notice that you have a lot more stamina when you lightly press keys as compared to when you press down on them as hard as you can, and not only will you have more stamina, you probably have more control too.

Now this is a bit tricky to fix because one might think "hey fast streams make me mess up I'll just practice by playing a bunch of 220 BPM deathstream maps". Now before you attempt to piss yourself off to no end, I have something else you can try. I would advise you to SLOW DOWN. Practice streaming at low BPM's so you can get a better feel for how your fingers work together and hopefully build up a better connection between your finger movements and how fast you're going. I don't know if this is just me but I feel like extremely slow streams (when alternating) are not as easy as they seem, naturally I want to go much faster than I should, but I do believe after doing slow streams you should have somewhat better control over your fingers and should also be much less likely to tense up during fast streams because you will have gained more control over your fingers in the sense that you understand how to make more fluid movements with smoother transitions.

If that doesn't work I do have one other option. You could put your tapping key on a large key on the keyboard (shift or backspace) and then use both of your fingers at the same time on that one key(for educational purposes only of course, I wouldn't advise you to play like that all the time). You may be asking what good is that going to do? Allow me to explain. When you are using one key and you stream you're probably going to find out fairly quickly that you're going to have to smoothly transition between fingers. If you leave your index finger on the shift bar then try to press on it with your middle finger before letting up on your index finger you wont register a keystroke, which in theory, should prevent your fingers from freezing up because you wont be able to allow your finger to stay down without missing (it's hard to explain but if you tried it you'd probably understand).

You Don't Stick To The Same Settings

Changing things up every once in a while may not seem like such a bad thing, and sure maybe everyone once in a WHIIILE it's not bad, it's good to experiment with areas/DPI and find out which works best for you in the beginning/ as you gain more skill. However, if you are changing your tablet area/DPI religiously(literally almost every day/week) all you are going to be doing is constantly confusing yourself and putting yourself right back at square one. You'll have to reteach yourself how to snap to notes and what movement make your cursor do what and it's just a giant mess.

I don't care if you have a small or large tablet area or a high or low DPI the point I'm making is pick a setting and stick with it

You Try To Copy Other Players Styles Instead Of Doing What Feels Natural to You

I feel like this one is pretty self explanatory. Just because a certain play style works for one person that's good at osu! that doesn't mean that it will work for you if it puts strain on you don't do it. You should be as comfortable as possible and your hands should be as relaxed as possible when you are playing. If another style of playing (holding the pen differently, holding the mouse differently) ends up working for you better then that's fine but don't try to copy someone else if it leaves your hands strained or generally makes you feel like you play worse. If you feel like you're holding the pen/mouse incorrectly it is perfectly fine to adjust your play style to what other players use but use caution and ask if it really feels comfortable to you or if you just want it to.

You Have Bad Habits And You just Keep Reinforcing Them

I have given you a little insight as to what bad habits are above, now ask yourself, if you practice doing the same thing wrong all the time every day what's going to happen? Well, you're just going to get better at being bad, and if you get better at being bad, that means you're just going to get worse.

A bunch of unnecessary words to say that if you are constantly practicing with bad habits, you're only going to get worse not better which makes sense. Think of any bad habit you've had, have had, or have broken, ITS REALLY DIFFICULT!! Not only is it difficult to break bad habits it's also hard to stop them from reoccurring later on.

The best way to do something is to do it right the first time. If you learn to do it right the first timeeven if it is more difficult, it will be one less thing to worry about later on.

You believe a tablet will make you "INSTA-BETTER"

This topic doesn't necessarily fit it with the thread but I do feel like it should be touched on a bit.

Ahh... it's another beautiful day you're sitting in a multi-player match having fun and then all of a sudden... THAT GUY with the tablet comes in aaaaand he destroys you. You play multiple harder songs and he still has the nerve! To switch it up a little you even throw in that beatmap you practiced for HOURS and he still seems to come up on top. Now, you may be thinking you have two options you can 1. Track him down and give him a little taste of your fist OR 2. You can get a tablet and show that cheating jerk that you'd be just as good as him if you weren't "handicapped" by a mouse. I personally am not one for violence so I'd go with option 2 HOWEVER neither of them (especially option 1 i feel like they don't allow you to play osu! in prison...) may be your best option, but regardless, in the end, you decide to opt for getting a tablet.

THATS ENOUGH! You say to yourself. You go and quickly throw on your best shopping clothes and proceed to drive to Best-Buy Walmart (product placement) etc. etc. and you've found it. The holy grail to being the bestest of the better of the greatest at osu! and its only 80-150 dollars well shoot what a small price to pay for something so great, right? You rush home install all the latest driver software waiting in anticipation. Now the moment of truth you open up osu! begin to play and realize that... "WTF I CAN'T EVEN PLAY NORMAL SONGS" *insert rage here* and I'm here to tell you, well... what did you expect?

If you've played with a mouse starting out, I can see why it's easy to believe that getting a tablet will make you better. I mean, all the good players use it (not true) and since it's an actual pen it takes less time for everyone to get used to (also not true). This may come as a shock to some people but a tablet requires just as much practice as a mouse. Now I'm not saying that you won't find your skills improve after using a tablet and I'm also not saying that you wont enjoy using a tablet. What I'm trying to say is that regardless of whether you play with a mouse or a tablet it will take time for you to show improvement.

Think of it this way. Whether you use a mouse or a tablet it's going to take time for you to develop muscle memory for each device, which, as with most things in life, comes along with repetition. Therefore in order to build up that muscle memory you're going to have to, well, use it... for a while. Now I understand everyone has their own opinion and some may say, "OH NO TABLET IS BETTER THAN MOUSE" and the people who use a mouse may say "NO MOUSE IS BETTER" first off let me say please don't go there... girlfriend? *insert Z-snap here* What's important is that you realize there are essentially no get better instantly tricks in osu!

You can go to the store buy the best CherryMX(insert color) mechanical keyboard and get a $2000 tablet/ mouse and sure that may help you along a bit or a lot (everyone builds skill at different speeds) but if you don't build up the skill to use them, you're not going to be drastically better overnight. Both mice and tablets have their advantages and disadvantages but don't get tricked into believing that either one will require less effort on your part. Let me stress that I'm not in any way trying to talk down tablets mice or mechanical keyboards. What I'm trying to do save you the frustration of getting one thinking you'll be 20 times better only to realize you're still going to need to spend time in order to improve.

You Read All Of This And Thought "WELL TIME TO GIVE UP!"

Just as a side note this is probably the only time you'll ever see me be somewhat serious.

After going through the comments I feel as though I must add this section in. Perhaps as a way to rouse up some kind of morale to those who read this and thought to themselves "WELL THIS SUCKS EVERYTHING SUCKS YOU SUCK I SUCK I QUIT FAJDLFALJFL!!!!" (insert extreme rage quit here). Okay maybe I'm exaggerating like I usually do. Seriously though, to the comments who are talking about such things as quitting after reading this, even if you're not being serious (which I seriously hope you aren't) you have roused my attention, or as I like to say, you gave me the feels. First off let me just say that if you read this thread and felt a sense of despair, depression, demoralization, sadness (synonyms) you interpreted this thread very differently than what I had hoped you would.

OKAY let's get one thing straight here this thread was not to throw any possible shortcomings in your face to make you feel bad about your playing so that you'd give up, rather, this thread was made so you would examine your possible mistakes that you may not even have known you had and to fix them to improve hence the title. Now, don't get me wrong, this is a free country...to some extent... and if you, for your own personal reasons, would like to stop playing osu! then you have that right. With that being said, if you enjoy playing osu! then play osu! it's that simple. Don't allow me to ruin your fun in any way. Let me just say that within this thread I have never said you can't do something without enough practice (trust me I used control + F). I believe anyone is capable of playing osu! with a respectable degree of skill with enough practice. The main point of this thread was to point out the things you CAN do in order to make yourself a better player or point out things that were hindering your ability to show improvement.

With that being said let me move on to my next point. I had stated earlier that one of the wrong reasons to play osu! is to play entirely for the purpose of getting better without really caring about much else, and my reason for saying that, is reflected in the comments on quitting. Not that I'm targeting anyone I just wanted to point out that's the reason why I consider that a bad reason to play osu! If you play osu! only because you want to get better you're going to be much more likely to just give up when you realize that "getting better" at osu! is something that takes time and effort. Now I'm not saying that this is a "one-size-fits-all" policy, not at all. For some people improvement can be a strong driving force in their, well... improvement. However, osu! is not something you can just become great at all abra-cadabra-like. Most (more like all) achievements in life are going to require effort on your part, but more so than that, they're going to require you to have the will the want and the drive to achieve them.

If you're the type of person to give up when something gets difficult and you want to get better at osu! you're probably not gonna get all that far and you're not going to improve at all if you give up. Sure, maybe you're not the best in the world and maybe you never will be (I'm not judging I'm not either). Please recognize the fact that I used the word "maybe". Maybe you won't be the best maybe you will, however, I can assure you that if you sit around sulking about the things you can't do well while having never even focused on the things you can do well you will DEFINITELY never be very good, there's no "maybe" in that statement. I can say in my own personal experience, that's the way things are. That statement isn't something just osu! specific. You can't change something by sitting back and just looking at it passively and you can't ever get good at something if you give up. It's just not gonna happen. (end of motivational speech if it ever started)

Now that I've got that out of the way please allow me tell you something you already, or should already know. osu! is for FUN (you can tell that's important because of all the pretty font editing I did on it). Now, I'm not going to become Spongebob and sing the F.U.N. song (feel free to youtube it) but I can tell you that when you do something for fun it doesn't matter whether you're good or not because that's not the point of it. The point is that you are doing something you enjoy and that's all that matters. Don't get me wrong, if you find you get enjoyment out of improving then by all means continue to do so, but just do what you enjoy. If you can't do something don't get hung up on it and beat yourself up about it because that's going to take away the fun of the game, ain't NOBODY got time for that! With this being said I'm not trying to say that "IF YOU DON'T HAVE FUN WHILE PLAYING osu!(still lower cased "o" >.>) YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO PLAY!" while holding you prisoner in my non-existent basement refusing to allow you to leave until you listen to me. I'm just not that kind of person and I'd really have no place to put you... At the end of the day you do whatever makes you happy this is merely my perspective on things. If there's one thing I would like people to take away from this thread it's to just have fun d%#@!#!!!!!

Quotes From Others On Improving

Well if you read all of the above and thought to yourself, well sir, you're information is decent but you sound like a cynical A$#!!!! You are right! Just kidding, however, if you thought you might want some more supplementation to my advice then here's some wisdom from other players.
Here is a thread from jesus1412 on the same topic http://osu.ppy.sh/forum/t/99612 he gives great detailed advice and uses a much more professional tone than i do, very worth checking out in my opinion.

ethox wrote:

One thing I would like more highlight on (or mentioned even) is pauses in gaming in general. How to treat them, lose "rust" and get over the barrier that pauses generate. People tend to forget how training muscular and nervous systems work. Studying how a human body learns mechanically is very, maybe almost as important as psychological aspects of a self-improvement game such as this. Morale and motivation plays a huge role in a long and tedious task and often people indulge themselves in self-criticism and frustration. That is the hard part of the game, which you as a gamer and a person have to find out by yourself.

Philantropist wrote:

No but in seriousness, you are right. People need to realize that their own ego is what is keeping them from improving. Heck, even I thought I was "good" at some point which is pretty funny because I was so bad.

AmaiHachimitsu wrote:

Some good, some obvious, 2 I disagree, the two above the last one.

A setting that suits you after 2 months of playing might not be the best one after a year or two. Your physical abilities improve with practice and thus you might need to change them several times in the first year of playing. Just do it wisely. You should stick to one setting the moment you feel your "aiming" hand is fully trained. But even then things like resolution full screen/window settings play a role and you simply MUST experiment with it as to find the best option.

As to copying playstyles, I'm pretty sure copying some manners may be beneficial for the player's improvement. Remember, that if something is comfortable for you it doesn't mean it's the best in terms of performance in a freakin circle-clicking game. You must find the best playstyle you can in terms of pure performance, e.g. your clicking hand position should allow to keep up with any speed you're physically able to and maintain it. If an effective playstyle isn't natural or comfortable for you, just make it so via practice!

Just look at all the players who grab their mice/pens in a strange way, the same with hand position on the keyboard. Do you really think this is how they've been using keyboard and mouse since ever? (implying that any standard PC user wants to work at maximum comfort)

Although I don't necessarily agree with all of the second point i feel that a good overall point is made.

Pettanko wrote:

If I could suggest you add one more reason, it would be something along the lines of "blaming your equipment(or lack thereof)"

For those of you who miss a note and say swear up, down, left, and right that your tablet/mouse/keyboard hates you (don't worry mine does too)

WOLOLOXIII wrote:

Great post, lots of truth, but i'll add something about what you call "muscle memory"

What ethox said People tend to forget how training muscular and nervous systems work. Studying how a human body learns mechanically is very, maybe almost as important as psychological aspects of a self-improvement game such as this. Knowing how neuromuscular training works is a big help to become good at stuff.

Lots of people are aware of this "muscle memory" thing, without truly understanding it. Those who play instruments are probably the most affected by it. "Do this legato exercise everyday and eventually you'll be able to shred like Eric Johnson".

This is due to a phenomenon called neuroplasticity. Basically, if you work on something intensely (by pushing your limits every time) and on a regular basis (3 times a week at least), your brain and nervous system will actually change in order to make you better at what you do. New connection will be formed between the most solicited neurons in your brain and your nervous system will strengthen the connections with the muscles you use.

If you played the guitar for 20 years, you can hear yourself say stuff like "This F chord is so easy, why can't you do it you scrub" to a beginner, but you have to remember that you are literally made to do that F chord. You made yourself that way through training. It's the same with games, you made your brain to be able to see ar10 notes coming, you made yourself able to stream super fast through training. So train by pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone, and slowly make those hostile 80% accuracy songs feel like the tutorial.

Very much truth to this quote things that seem hard now you'll come back to later and think "I couldn't pass this easy stuff?"

Legxis wrote:

And to all people who'd like to improve and seem to hit a wall: It's most likely because you don't have enough maps.
The definition of difficulties varies a lot and there are tons of different mapping styles out there.
So for instance, while you may S some Hards, there will be other Hards you can't even pass. If you play more songs, you'll naturally get better. Don't try to force it. Just come back to that difficult song later and you'll see that it's much easier.

Open up your variety of maps. The more different types of beatmaps you play the more overall skill you will develop because you'll be making different movements and learning new ways to do things.

CPTW wrote:

I only started snapping around the start of this year but personally I went to hards/low ar insanes to practice so it gave me time to snap to a circle but also enough time between each circle to see where my cursor actually snapped to, thus showing me how inaccurate my aim was on top of it and then once I could snap on "slow" maps speed up and play smaller circle size.(Only personal experience though since practicing on faster insanes just made me slip into old habits and glide again within seconds)

Lovely example of how taking things slowly can help tremendously over time and how overdoing things can lead to bad habits.

Much thanks to sarasseo for supplying me with a format that doesn't kill your eyes and marcostudios for explaining how to make boxes that don't look weird. Am a complete forum "noob" so I didn't understand what you were trying to say Nyrox but thank you for leading me in the right direction.
Of course a gigantic thanks to the people who are showing support/supplying constructive criticism it is extremely helpful and very much appreciated.
Edit: I went through and made all of the "o's" in "osu!" lower case yesterday, although either way, it doesn't particularly matter... at all.
Due to extreme lack of time with finals coming I probably wont make practice maps because I just don't have the time... and plenty already exist and you can make your own that would better focus on what you need to practice the beatmap editor IS YOUR FRIEND~! use it!

nebraskaUWU wrote:

ScarletStory wrote:

Hi everyone, first let me give you some background on myself, I like long walks on the beach, I enjoy watching the sunset... yeah enough with the BS about me.

I've been playing osu! daily for almost a year (8 months) I can not do anything very impressive, I can't promise you that reading any of my advice will help you in the least, and I'm very sarcastic. ANYWAY I will be explaining why some people don't improve at osu! However, *drumroll* DADADADADUNNN I will also attempt to explain how to fix it. Hopefully ending the questions "how do I get better at osu?" "why am I not improving at osu!" etc. If you are asked send them here with a smile and a cupcake and go about your day.

You may be wondering *scoff* what do you know about playing osu! You're not Cookiezi, BluOxy, Thelewa, blahblahblah (insert other good players) and oh my I'm so proud of you. You deserve a cookie (no pun intended!) I am indeed not Cookiezi nor the latter however after playing the game for 8 months (which isn't a lot of time) and watching other people play, and having people spectate me, and ask me how I learned to do such and such, and why they cant do this and that (it's like people think I'm good when I'm really not...) I've picked up on a few bad habits that I've broken (and some I haven't) I've seen others bad habits that i usually try to guide them to fix and I'm hoping to give some pointers to those who ask such questions.

Soooo without further adieu let me begin the thread to bring an end to the questions "How do I improve at osu!" and "Why am I not improving at osu!" without just throwing the word "practice" in your face, as if that was possible...

Before I continue on with this let me just say that asking how to play osu! better is like asking a native speaker of a language how they learned to speak it, or asking someone how they move their arm, or how they breathe, it's hard to explain you just kinda... know. Therefore my explanations will be mediocre at best. Also i'll revise this as i see fit mostly because its 1:30 AM and i made this out of boredom because i got homework done early *proud*

As another side note, after reading through some responses, I feel I should add that I will not possibly be able to cover every single aspect of gameplay due to the fact that it would take yeeaaaarss... and would make the thread difficult to follow, however, I will add suggestions as I have time and as I see fit but keep in mind I'm trying to make this as short, sweet, and to the point as possible, also I am trying to keep this thread as objective as possible, therefore, I will not be going over different playing styles (pen grips/ mouse grips) as those are much too variant and subjective matters and I have no right whatsoever to tell you how to hold your pen/mouse, therefore I'm leaving it out, and leaving it up for you to decide (refer to the spoiler box on copying play styles).

MISCELLANEOUS (non-playing related) REASONS (warning may contain demoralising content)

1. You play osu! for the WRONG REASONS. Allow me to elaborate. You are the one who plays osu! entirely for the purpose of "getting better" you spend countless hours upon hours upon days upon weeks UPON YEARS?!?! Okay maybe not years however rather than improving by enjoying the game you just keep trying to get better by sheer force of will, aaaaand that almost never works. Eventually all you will do is end up defeated, angry, left with multiple red spots on your face from face-palming for days, rage-quitting you get the gist of what I'm trying to say. I do understand that improving at osu! is indeed fun it brings a sense of accomplishment and amazement with what you're capable of when you really try however you should let skill come to you and you should not try to chase after skill relentlessly However I'm not saying don't try to improve, I'm saying don't repeatedly play the same song over and over or songs that you have no chance in beating thinking it will make you better when in reality you're just frustrating yourself and bringing yourself bad habits (which ill go into detail on later)

2. You believe that you're the next osu! prodigy. You're gonna pick up that pen (or mouse) and just blow everyone away with your instant talent and make yourself a name. I like your resolve kid, but slowdown there sea biscuit, its not gonna happen. Nobody in the history of osu! has ever gotten an SS on The Big Black, Scarlet Rose, (insert other hard maps) on the FIRST DAY they ever played osu! If someone has, please proceed to kill me. BUT YOU'RE DIFFERET RIGHT?!? YOU JUST KNOW YOU CAN DO IT, again I'm sorry but you wont and you probably wont for a long long long long long loooong time.

3. You want to impress others. This will be an easy one. The next time someone tells you about something great that they worked for lets say maybe they got into Harvard. You look that smug law school good for nothing Son of a B#$%$ right in the eye and tell him how you streamed 20 notes at 222 BPM and you only got 10 100's and 5 50's!!! After you inevitably get looked at as if you are the biggest idiot in the world, please come back here, settle down, and let me tell you something young one. osu! standard the concept of the game is to press keys or click while aiming where indicated by hit objects (circles, sliders) oh and to bring it all home spin your cursor in a circle for spinners. Doesn't sound so impressive to someone who doesn't play osu! does it? That's because well... it's not. That's not to say that being good at osu! isn't impressive or that others won't be impressed by your skill, but the point is the only person you should try to impress is yourself.

You Don't Actually Follow The Beat Of The Song

osu! is a rhythm game not a click circles as fast as you can game(though sometimes it seems that way). Since the creator of osu! Dean Herbert has been kind enough to implement a hit error indicator which can be found under Options->Score meter type-> Hit error you can tell just how early or late you are from actually hitting perfect while you are playing (the hit error indicator shows up as a little rectangle that appears at the bottom of the screen). Blue is good, green is meh, orange is wtf are you doing?

More technically speaking inside the blue range is 300, inside the green range is 100, and inside the orange range is 50. Watch your replays and examine your hit error. Are you usually too early, are you usually too late, are you just kinda all over the place like a 5 year old trying to play the piano?

Now listen to the song, do you feel like you're actually clicking to the beat of the song or do you try to memorize the time between hit sounds and go by what you THINK sounds right what I mean by that is are you actually listening to the song to base your timing off of or are you trying to base your timing off the hit sounds. I promise you that if you listen to the beat instead of the hit sounds you'll be a lot better off. In my opinion the hit sounds are there for you to use as a means of correcting your timing and are not there to entirely basing your clicking off of

By now you may be asking, what the heck Scar first you tell us not to use the hit sounds now you're telling us to use the hit sounds you don't make any sense please go jump off cliff. Woaaaaah slow down there my impatient friend let me explain. I think the best way to explain this would be streaming to songs where the beat is unclear, you think you have it right, but the hit sounds don't sound quite like they should and you can see that your hit error is too late, therefore what you should do is speed it up a little bit until the stream sounds correct and the hit error comes into the blue at a relatively stable rate, get what im saying?

You use the hit sounds because you know if they don't seem to have any particular rhythm(generally sound funky/wrong) you probably just aren't doing it right... and if it seems like they're just a bit off you can adjust your speed based off the hit sounds, very hard to explain, which is why when you ask people how to get better they say "PRACTICE" because its a hell of a lot easier to do than giving a paragraph that probably wont make sense to a vast majority of people who are reading it unless they practice in order to understand it. If you hit 300, 100, 300, 100, 50, 300, etc. etc. you're not keeping the beat you're just kind of guessing.

You Don't Snap To Notes

This is probably one of the biggest problems I see when spectating other people, you aren't snapping to the notes. What I mean by this is that you should make one motion between two notes and land as close as you can to the center although this is difficult without tons and tons of practice, it will come to you in time if you snap to notes by making one motion directly to the note.Don't quickly head over to the note and when you get close slow down to try and adjust your aim making two motions (one quick motion followed by another slower one) ,that is not snapping to the note, that's what I like to call half ass snapping (sounds like a stupid dance you'd see in a rap video) BUT unlike most stupid dances that seem to take off such as the Harlem shake,and even if you can lean with it while rocking with it, half ass snapping wont get you anywhere.

The best way I can think of to explain this would be higher BPM squares that come in a rapid succession. Sure you may be able to get the first one maybe even two but as more squares appear those few milliseconds you lost begin adding up and you begin to lag behind and therefore you either A. begin moving into the 100's and eventually 50's. or B. You start going in circles (literally you begin to make circles with your cursor as you get more confused) I cannot stress the importance of snapping to notes. It is probably the most basic necessity in order to complete jumps.

The next time you're having problems with jumps just remember snap don't linger or make curves or slow down you want to be able to get from one side of the map to the other without even thinking. Eventually it comes as naturally as hitting any other note if you keep up with snapping.

You View Patterns (squares, triangles, stars) As One Big Movement

Ahh this one. What can I say this one is going to be a bit hard to explain without some sort of diagram but I'll give it a shot. Okay so lets go over the seemingly most hated jumps by players, squares. I know with squares THE STRUGGLE IS REAL but to all those people who say "I can't do squares" maybe the problem isn't you, more likely, the problem is the way that you are looking at it.

Okay squares 4 notes spread out on the map that are equidistant from each other they can come in many different styles; typical squares, diamonds, rectangles (which aren't totally equidistant but you get what I mean). The biggest problem I see is people are trying to think of squares as well... squares instead of individual jumps. What I mean by that is people try to make a square with their cursor in one motion instead of 3 different jumps. It's okay squares are intimidating and even reading them the correct way can get people confused but I'll try to explain what I've found to be the best way to do squares.

With squares you want to think of them as individual jumps between notes rather than just one square. Think of it like this, a square can be broken up into 3 individual jumps (unless it's repeating in which case it can be broken up into multiple different jumps) but it still comes back down to the basic pattern. Rather than thinking of it as a square, think of it as jumping between 2 notes in 3 different intervals. What I mean by that is jump (1-2) then (2-3) then (3-4) get out of the 1 2 3 4 mindset (oh god this one's not looking so good) let me try to expand on this.

When doing a square instead of counting the notes in your head as 1,2,3,4 think of it more rhythmically in sets of 1 and 2. Count the notes 1,2 1,2. What I'm trying to say is realize that a square is merely one jump vertically one jump horizontally and then another jump vertically. When you change your way of thinking about it they should make more sense. Basically break the square up into two parts rather than taking it all in as a whole. It's a lot easier to do them if you realize that they're all movements you can easily make assuming you can probably jump up and down and left and right pretty easily by now you just have to think outside the box (pun definitely intended).

Think of it this way with any jumps you learned how to do you probably don't think of it as one motion you break it up into multiple smaller movements between the notes. I think that squares are a lot easier when you look at the follow points. The follow points give you the best way to do just about any jump but I find them to be more useful with squares. The way the follow points connect the two notes is the way you should be moving. Practice moving with the follow points that way you'll be less likely to make circles when doing squares. This may be pretty hard to follow but if I had to boil it down to one thing it would be break shapes down into individual jumps.

You Don't Follow Sliders ALL The Way Through

Let's face it, were all guilty of this at some point or another. You know, that really small slider that you can perfectly pass by just safely moving to the middle and allowing the slider to do its thing, if I had a newspaper right now I would roll it up and (gently of course) "pat" you on the head with it, DONT DO THAT!! and you are probably asking "well I mean we can pass the slider and get the nomnoms isn't that good enough for you your majesty...*eye roll*" and my point is that it's not. Sliders teach you control over your pen/mouse being able to change speeds in an instant is a very important skill for you to develop and sliders will teach you just how to do that. My example would be two sliders on each side of the map something like this
1--------......center....... 2--------
expert internet drawing skills, I know.

In all seriousness though you move through slider 1 slowly then you have to quickly jump all the way to slider 2 and slow down again in order to match the speed of the slider which is difficult, however if you practice this (AS WELL AS PRACTICING FOLLOWING ALL SLIDERS CORRECTLY 100% THROUGH) it will teach you how to have better control over your pen and it will increase your speed in general because you will be more aware of where your cursors going and what movements you need to make in order to get it there without even needing to think about it.

No matter how small or insignificant the slider may be follow it all the way through to the best of your ability, sure it's okay to be lazy sometimes, but if done too many times it will become a bad habit that will come back to haunt you when you play increasing difficult songs with multiple fast sliders such as my most popular example:Talent Shredder

You Freeze Up During Streams

Okay here you are playing this map with DT and you're kicking a#$. You managed to get through most of the map with a respectable degree of accuracy and you just look great, but something is worrying you. That one long stream at the end of the map. Now you're thinking "WHICH A@#HOLE BEATMAPPER PUT THIS TROLL STREAM IN HERE?!?!"(just kidding I highly respect beatmappers you make the game awesome) but it's just the one stream and you are prepared! Man will outsmart the stream and live on just like in the old days when man outsmarted those lions and built fires to put in front of their rocks for protection, and then died from carbon monoxide poisoning(maybe), and then proceeded to build a fence instead... I digress, you get to the anticipated stream you start out PERFECT and then halfway through you start hitting hundreds and freeze up for a second and start mashing the keyboard and we all know what happens when you mash your keyboard in osu!... You miss.

Let me tell you something interesting about your brain. When our brain anticipates a stressful event it makes your muscles tense up in preparation to deal with whatever is causing the stress. Now before you go on to hit your head with a hammer to punish your brain for doing this stop and think about this. If you're out and about and you saw a bear would you rather your muscles be lose and unprepared to move or tense and ready to get the f#$@ outta there? Well depending on how much you value your life it could be either... but I would probably go with the ladder. Now the stream is that bear, you've been anticipating this stressful moment and now when it's finally here your body is just doing what it was made to do in stressful situations. It tenses your muscles (including the ones in your arm) thus makes your fingers stiff and as that happens the ability to move your fingers fluidly becomes extremely difficult and what was "zxzxzx" now becomes "xxzzxzx" and that is extremely detrimental to streaming.

If your muscles are tensed up you're probably not going to get very far in the stream. I have no trouble at all believing that you can get maybe 4 or 5 or maybe even 6 notes in during the time when you still have a decent amount of control over your fingers, however, as I've observed multiple times, somewhere in that stream at least one of your fingers is not going to want to respond and it will most likely cause you to push down on a key too hard and hold it there for maybe 1/2 of a second. I'm sure we can all appreciate how much of a difference 1/2 of a second makes in the great world of osu! that 1/2 second can be the difference between hitting a note and missing it entirely. That's not all folks, there's more! In order to compensate for that 1/2 second you're going to speed up and being unable to control your fingers you're probably just going to mix it all together or completely overcompensate for the time you lost by going way too fast. Then you get angry and do it again and again and again with the same end result.

With speed I can see how one would think that in order to go faster they should tense up their hand and press on the keys as hard as they can. It's natural to think that pressing down the keys harder makes you faster, however in reality, that's only going to slow you down. Try it our yourself. Open word and press down on the keys as hard as you can and see how long you can go until you slip up somewhere. Then, after a break of course, go back and try the same thing by pressing the keys down as lightly as you possibly can while still registering a keystroke. You'll probably notice that you have a lot more stamina when you lightly press keys as compared to when you press down on them as hard as you can, and not only will you have more stamina, you probably have more control too.

Now this is a bit tricky to fix because one might think "hey fast streams make me mess up I'll just practice by playing a bunch of 220 BPM deathstream maps". Now before you attempt to piss yourself off to no end, I have something else you can try. I would advise you to SLOW DOWN. Practice streaming at low BPM's so you can get a better feel for how your fingers work together and hopefully build up a better connection between your finger movements and how fast you're going. I don't know if this is just me but I feel like extremely slow streams (when alternating) are not as easy as they seem, naturally I want to go much faster than I should, but I do believe after doing slow streams you should have somewhat better control over your fingers and should also be much less likely to tense up during fast streams because you will have gained more control over your fingers in the sense that you understand how to make more fluid movements with smoother transitions.

If that doesn't work I do have one other option. You could put your tapping key on a large key on the keyboard (shift or backspace) and then use both of your fingers at the same time on that one key(for educational purposes only of course, I wouldn't advise you to play like that all the time). You may be asking what good is that going to do? Allow me to explain. When you are using one key and you stream you're probably going to find out fairly quickly that you're going to have to smoothly transition between fingers. If you leave your index finger on the shift bar then try to press on it with your middle finger before letting up on your index finger you wont register a keystroke, which in theory, should prevent your fingers from freezing up because you wont be able to allow your finger to stay down without missing (it's hard to explain but if you tried it you'd probably understand).

You Don't Stick To The Same Settings

Changing things up every once in a while may not seem like such a bad thing, and sure maybe everyone once in a WHIIILE it's not bad, it's good to experiment with areas/DPI and find out which works best for you in the beginning/ as you gain more skill. However, if you are changing your tablet area/DPI religiously(literally almost every day/week) all you are going to be doing is constantly confusing yourself and putting yourself right back at square one. You'll have to reteach yourself how to snap to notes and what movement make your cursor do what and it's just a giant mess.

I don't care if you have a small or large tablet area or a high or low DPI the point I'm making is pick a setting and stick with it

You Try To Copy Other Players Styles Instead Of Doing What Feels Natural to You

I feel like this one is pretty self explanatory. Just because a certain play style works for one person that's good at osu! that doesn't mean that it will work for you if it puts strain on you don't do it. You should be as comfortable as possible and your hands should be as relaxed as possible when you are playing. If another style of playing (holding the pen differently, holding the mouse differently) ends up working for you better then that's fine but don't try to copy someone else if it leaves your hands strained or generally makes you feel like you play worse. If you feel like you're holding the pen/mouse incorrectly it is perfectly fine to adjust your play style to what other players use but use caution and ask if it really feels comfortable to you or if you just want it to.

You Have Bad Habits And You just Keep Reinforcing Them

I have given you a little insight as to what bad habits are above, now ask yourself, if you practice doing the same thing wrong all the time every day what's going to happen? Well, you're just going to get better at being bad, and if you get better at being bad, that means you're just going to get worse.

A bunch of unnecessary words to say that if you are constantly practicing with bad habits, you're only going to get worse not better which makes sense. Think of any bad habit you've had, have had, or have broken, ITS REALLY DIFFICULT!! Not only is it difficult to break bad habits it's also hard to stop them from reoccurring later on.

The best way to do something is to do it right the first time. If you learn to do it right the first timeeven if it is more difficult, it will be one less thing to worry about later on.

You believe a tablet will make you "INSTA-BETTER"

This topic doesn't necessarily fit it with the thread but I do feel like it should be touched on a bit.

Ahh... it's another beautiful day you're sitting in a multi-player match having fun and then all of a sudden... THAT GUY with the tablet comes in aaaaand he destroys you. You play multiple harder songs and he still has the nerve! To switch it up a little you even throw in that beatmap you practiced for HOURS and he still seems to come up on top. Now, you may be thinking you have two options you can 1. Track him down and give him a little taste of your fist OR 2. You can get a tablet and show that cheating jerk that you'd be just as good as him if you weren't "handicapped" by a mouse. I personally am not one for violence so I'd go with option 2 HOWEVER neither of them (especially option 1 i feel like they don't allow you to play osu! in prison...) may be your best option, but regardless, in the end, you decide to opt for getting a tablet.

THATS ENOUGH! You say to yourself. You go and quickly throw on your best shopping clothes and proceed to drive to Best-Buy Walmart (product placement) etc. etc. and you've found it. The holy grail to being the bestest of the better of the greatest at osu! and its only 80-150 dollars well shoot what a small price to pay for something so great, right? You rush home install all the latest driver software waiting in anticipation. Now the moment of truth you open up osu! begin to play and realize that... "WTF I CAN'T EVEN PLAY NORMAL SONGS" *insert rage here* and I'm here to tell you, well... what did you expect?

If you've played with a mouse starting out, I can see why it's easy to believe that getting a tablet will make you better. I mean, all the good players use it (not true) and since it's an actual pen it takes less time for everyone to get used to (also not true). This may come as a shock to some people but a tablet requires just as much practice as a mouse. Now I'm not saying that you won't find your skills improve after using a tablet and I'm also not saying that you wont enjoy using a tablet. What I'm trying to say is that regardless of whether you play with a mouse or a tablet it will take time for you to show improvement.

Think of it this way. Whether you use a mouse or a tablet it's going to take time for you to develop muscle memory for each device, which, as with most things in life, comes along with repetition. Therefore in order to build up that muscle memory you're going to have to, well, use it... for a while. Now I understand everyone has their own opinion and some may say, "OH NO TABLET IS BETTER THAN MOUSE" and the people who use a mouse may say "NO MOUSE IS BETTER" first off let me say please don't go there... girlfriend? *insert Z-snap here* What's important is that you realize there are essentially no get better instantly tricks in osu!

You can go to the store buy the best CherryMX(insert color) mechanical keyboard and get a $2000 tablet/ mouse and sure that may help you along a bit or a lot (everyone builds skill at different speeds) but if you don't build up the skill to use them, you're not going to be drastically better overnight. Both mice and tablets have their advantages and disadvantages but don't get tricked into believing that either one will require less effort on your part. Let me stress that I'm not in any way trying to talk down tablets mice or mechanical keyboards. What I'm trying to do save you the frustration of getting one thinking you'll be 20 times better only to realize you're still going to need to spend time in order to improve.

You Read All Of This And Thought "WELL TIME TO GIVE UP!"

Just as a side note this is probably the only time you'll ever see me be somewhat serious.

After going through the comments I feel as though I must add this section in. Perhaps as a way to rouse up some kind of morale to those who read this and thought to themselves "WELL THIS SUCKS EVERYTHING SUCKS YOU SUCK I SUCK I QUIT FAJDLFALJFL!!!!" (insert extreme rage quit here). Okay maybe I'm exaggerating like I usually do. Seriously though, to the comments who are talking about such things as quitting after reading this, even if you're not being serious (which I seriously hope you aren't) you have roused my attention, or as I like to say, you gave me the feels. First off let me just say that if you read this thread and felt a sense of despair, depression, demoralization, sadness (synonyms) you interpreted this thread very differently than what I had hoped you would.

OKAY let's get one thing straight here this thread was not to throw any possible shortcomings in your face to make you feel bad about your playing so that you'd give up, rather, this thread was made so you would examine your possible mistakes that you may not even have known you had and to fix them to improve hence the title. Now, don't get me wrong, this is a free country...to some extent... and if you, for your own personal reasons, would like to stop playing osu! then you have that right. With that being said, if you enjoy playing osu! then play osu! it's that simple. Don't allow me to ruin your fun in any way. Let me just say that within this thread I have never said you can't do something without enough practice (trust me I used control + F). I believe anyone is capable of playing osu! with a respectable degree of skill with enough practice. The main point of this thread was to point out the things you CAN do in order to make yourself a better player or point out things that were hindering your ability to show improvement.

With that being said let me move on to my next point. I had stated earlier that one of the wrong reasons to play osu! is to play entirely for the purpose of getting better without really caring about much else, and my reason for saying that, is reflected in the comments on quitting. Not that I'm targeting anyone I just wanted to point out that's the reason why I consider that a bad reason to play osu! If you play osu! only because you want to get better you're going to be much more likely to just give up when you realize that "getting better" at osu! is something that takes time and effort. Now I'm not saying that this is a "one-size-fits-all" policy, not at all. For some people improvement can be a strong driving force in their, well... improvement. However, osu! is not something you can just become great at all abra-cadabra-like. Most (more like all) achievements in life are going to require effort on your part, but more so than that, they're going to require you to have the will the want and the drive to achieve them.

If you're the type of person to give up when something gets difficult and you want to get better at osu! you're probably not gonna get all that far and you're not going to improve at all if you give up. Sure, maybe you're not the best in the world and maybe you never will be (I'm not judging I'm not either). Please recognize the fact that I used the word "maybe". Maybe you won't be the best maybe you will, however, I can assure you that if you sit around sulking about the things you can't do well while having never even focused on the things you can do well you will DEFINITELY never be very good, there's no "maybe" in that statement. I can say in my own personal experience, that's the way things are. That statement isn't something just osu! specific. You can't change something by sitting back and just looking at it passively and you can't ever get good at something if you give up. It's just not gonna happen. (end of motivational speech if it ever started)

Now that I've got that out of the way please allow me tell you something you already, or should already know. osu! is for FUN (you can tell that's important because of all the pretty font editing I did on it). Now, I'm not going to become Spongebob and sing the F.U.N. song (feel free to youtube it) but I can tell you that when you do something for fun it doesn't matter whether you're good or not because that's not the point of it. The point is that you are doing something you enjoy and that's all that matters. Don't get me wrong, if you find you get enjoyment out of improving then by all means continue to do so, but just do what you enjoy. If you can't do something don't get hung up on it and beat yourself up about it because that's going to take away the fun of the game, ain't NOBODY got time for that! With this being said I'm not trying to say that "IF YOU DON'T HAVE FUN WHILE PLAYING osu!(still lower cased "o" >.>) YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO PLAY!" while holding you prisoner in my non-existent basement refusing to allow you to leave until you listen to me. I'm just not that kind of person and I'd really have no place to put you... At the end of the day you do whatever makes you happy this is merely my perspective on things. If there's one thing I would like people to take away from this thread it's to just have fun d%#@!#!!!!!

Quotes From Others On Improving

Well if you read all of the above and thought to yourself, well sir, you're information is decent but you sound like a cynical A$#!!!! You are right! Just kidding, however, if you thought you might want some more supplementation to my advice then here's some wisdom from other players.
Here is a thread from jesus1412 on the same topic http://osu.ppy.sh/forum/t/99612 he gives great detailed advice and uses a much more professional tone than i do, very worth checking out in my opinion.

ethox wrote:

One thing I would like more highlight on (or mentioned even) is pauses in gaming in general. How to treat them, lose "rust" and get over the barrier that pauses generate. People tend to forget how training muscular and nervous systems work. Studying how a human body learns mechanically is very, maybe almost as important as psychological aspects of a self-improvement game such as this. Morale and motivation plays a huge role in a long and tedious task and often people indulge themselves in self-criticism and frustration. That is the hard part of the game, which you as a gamer and a person have to find out by yourself.

Philantropist wrote:

No but in seriousness, you are right. People need to realize that their own ego is what is keeping them from improving. Heck, even I thought I was "good" at some point which is pretty funny because I was so bad.

AmaiHachimitsu wrote:

Some good, some obvious, 2 I disagree, the two above the last one.

A setting that suits you after 2 months of playing might not be the best one after a year or two. Your physical abilities improve with practice and thus you might need to change them several times in the first year of playing. Just do it wisely. You should stick to one setting the moment you feel your "aiming" hand is fully trained. But even then things like resolution full screen/window settings play a role and you simply MUST experiment with it as to find the best option.

As to copying playstyles, I'm pretty sure copying some manners may be beneficial for the player's improvement. Remember, that if something is comfortable for you it doesn't mean it's the best in terms of performance in a freakin circle-clicking game. You must find the best playstyle you can in terms of pure performance, e.g. your clicking hand position should allow to keep up with any speed you're physically able to and maintain it. If an effective playstyle isn't natural or comfortable for you, just make it so via practice!

Just look at all the players who grab their mice/pens in a strange way, the same with hand position on the keyboard. Do you really think this is how they've been using keyboard and mouse since ever? (implying that any standard PC user wants to work at maximum comfort)

Although I don't necessarily agree with all of the second point i feel that a good overall point is made.

Pettanko wrote:

If I could suggest you add one more reason, it would be something along the lines of "blaming your equipment(or lack thereof)"

For those of you who miss a note and say swear up, down, left, and right that your tablet/mouse/keyboard hates you (don't worry mine does too)

WOLOLOXIII wrote:

Great post, lots of truth, but i'll add something about what you call "muscle memory"

What ethox said People tend to forget how training muscular and nervous systems work. Studying how a human body learns mechanically is very, maybe almost as important as psychological aspects of a self-improvement game such as this. Knowing how neuromuscular training works is a big help to become good at stuff.

Lots of people are aware of this "muscle memory" thing, without truly understanding it. Those who play instruments are probably the most affected by it. "Do this legato exercise everyday and eventually you'll be able to shred like Eric Johnson".

This is due to a phenomenon called neuroplasticity. Basically, if you work on something intensely (by pushing your limits every time) and on a regular basis (3 times a week at least), your brain and nervous system will actually change in order to make you better at what you do. New connection will be formed between the most solicited neurons in your brain and your nervous system will strengthen the connections with the muscles you use.

If you played the guitar for 20 years, you can hear yourself say stuff like "This F chord is so easy, why can't you do it you scrub" to a beginner, but you have to remember that you are literally made to do that F chord. You made yourself that way through training. It's the same with games, you made your brain to be able to see ar10 notes coming, you made yourself able to stream super fast through training. So train by pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone, and slowly make those hostile 80% accuracy songs feel like the tutorial.

Very much truth to this quote things that seem hard now you'll come back to later and think "I couldn't pass this easy stuff?"

Legxis wrote:

And to all people who'd like to improve and seem to hit a wall: It's most likely because you don't have enough maps.
The definition of difficulties varies a lot and there are tons of different mapping styles out there.
So for instance, while you may S some Hards, there will be other Hards you can't even pass. If you play more songs, you'll naturally get better. Don't try to force it. Just come back to that difficult song later and you'll see that it's much easier.

Open up your variety of maps. The more different types of beatmaps you play the more overall skill you will develop because you'll be making different movements and learning new ways to do things.

CPTW wrote:

I only started snapping around the start of this year but personally I went to hards/low ar insanes to practice so it gave me time to snap to a circle but also enough time between each circle to see where my cursor actually snapped to, thus showing me how inaccurate my aim was on top of it and then once I could snap on "slow" maps speed up and play smaller circle size.(Only personal experience though since practicing on faster insanes just made me slip into old habits and glide again within seconds)

Lovely example of how taking things slowly can help tremendously over time and how overdoing things can lead to bad habits.

Much thanks to sarasseo for supplying me with a format that doesn't kill your eyes and marcostudios for explaining how to make boxes that don't look weird. Am a complete forum "noob" so I didn't understand what you were trying to say Nyrox but thank you for leading me in the right direction.
Of course a gigantic thanks to the people who are showing support/supplying constructive criticism it is extremely helpful and very much appreciated.
Edit: I went through and made all of the "o's" in "osu!" lower case yesterday, although either way, it doesn't particularly matter... at all.
Due to extreme lack of time with finals coming I probably wont make practice maps because I just don't have the time... and plenty already exist and you can make your own that would better focus on what you need to practice the beatmap editor IS YOUR FRIEND~! use it!

well i am learning

Dustinstupid wrote:

I remember looking at this thread when I was newer to osu! yet I am looking at it again. fml

zQv wrote:

Click the circles to the beat 🤷‍♂️

C Tier wrote:

somebody teach me how to hd2

THETM wrote:

"nobody in osu! history earns an SS on The Big Black"

welp rrtyui did but no HDHR SSes yet

I AM VERY SMART wrote:

THETM wrote:

"nobody in osu! history earns an SS on The Big Black"

welp rrtyui did but no HDHR SSes yet

Bubbleman almost did it

THETM wrote:

I AM VERY SMART wrote:

THETM wrote:

"nobody in osu! history earns an SS on The Big Black"

welp rrtyui did but no HDHR SSes yet

Bubbleman almost did it

even maliszewski

reactaleu wrote:

So... does anyone have a good strat to not decay unused skills without having the only solution being "play more"?

reactaleu wrote:

I'm only here because I'm a bit worried about the fact that I can no longer keep up my skill level on NM jump maps and Hr/hdhr jump maps as good as my skills with dt/dthd maps.

So... does anyone have a good strat to not decay unused skills without having the only solution being "play more"?

To simplify, my pp highscore for dt is 450, nm 360, and hr 340

-MrGiku- wrote:

This is the unlimited facts pit that lasted 10 years- anyways play more. (thats wot everyone says- and its true)

Anaxii wrote:

I play more

But I'm still trash

BlueChinchompa wrote:

Play even more

18 hours every day, no going outside, eating only lasanga and bread, and only focus on osu!

play every beatmap too while your out. Don't just stop at ranked or loved do graveyarded too.

then you become better than mrekk

I believe

Anaxii wrote:

-MrGiku- wrote:

This is the unlimited facts pit that lasted 10 years- anyways play more. (thats wot everyone says- and its true)

Not true

I play more

But I'm still trash

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Anaxii wrote:

-MrGiku- wrote:

This is the unlimited facts pit that lasted 10 years- anyways play more. (thats wot everyone says- and its true)

Not true

I play more

But I'm still trash

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA