I got a full combo on a couple of 1-star maps but then as soon as I try to get a full combo on anything that's two stars the difficulty ramps up so fast and way too much. I've played plenty of other rhythm games and the difference in difficulty in this game between 1 star and 2 stars has the widest gap I've ever seen in my life.

The circles go from relatively close together to an entire half a screen apart going from 1 star to 2 stars. The pace of the circles get much faster way too early on. The timing windows get far tighter and I can't even hear what's going on in the song half the time so I can't even time the circles properly anymore so it ends up being a mashfest just to stay afloat. And the 2-star song is, yea, it's over 5 minutes long.

This might work if you have the best keyboard and mouse in the world but I'm still stuck with the free mouse and keyboard the tower came with because you can't possibly get a better mouse for a reasonable price let alone a better keyboard (inflation and also it's Canada so the dollar is nonsensically weak here; also the markup where I live is insanely bad). This is not a mindset problem. The game has serious issues and the people are willfully ignoring.

If I were a beginner in rhythm games in general the "git good" argument might be justifiable, but no. I play the electric guitar for a living and I've been playing guitar since 2005, I've made some pretty decent progress in Pump until the new update put everything behind the lvl10 wall so I wound up quitting because I got demoralised pretty fast.

"oh don't get discouraged over a couple misses" That doesn't fly either when you have a system that punishes people way too hard for missing even one note (rhythm games in general really are like that) and if I were to actually make progress in this game especially, yea, I can't progress at all unless I get that full combo.

I actually used to play this game back when it was still in its early phases and I can't believe the game got this bad. I played plenty of rhythm games and I'm actually highly skilled at some of them (notably Guitar Hero which is infamous for its lag issues and I still had quite the laundry list of full combos under my belt on Hard and Expert) but this, just isn't it.

I don't know, this might just be a vent post and it seriously might be mostly a mouse and keyboard issue (because the ghosting on this keyboard is atrocious and I've already seen plenty of people complain about the same mouse and keyboard I have and even I can't believe there's no way to get out of this hellhole) but gawd, these "git good" comments that keep getting spammed whenever a valid complaint is being raised, like, really make me sick.

u will probably hate my guts for this but u probably need to get good

its okay, ur still new to the game!

You don't need the best gear to play the game, 50€ will get you a good enough kb + mouse or tablet. You can also remove double tap style ghosting with software (3rd party if not in driver).

The game is heavily an aim game and there's not really a good way to diffrentiate between maps having aim/rhytm/reading etc differend types of difficulty. You just gotta try the maps, learn. I recommend low bpm maps at lower stars because they are more "fully" mapped (you tap to all distinct sounds).

You should stop thinking of progress as raising the numbers, try to focus more on the gameplay for focus. Get better at the thing that is playing the game-

You are a beginner in osu. Aim is probably more than half the difficulty of standard, in most maps.

dung eater wrote:

You don't need the best gear to play the game, 50€ will get you a good enough kb + mouse or tablet. You can also remove double tap style ghosting with software (3rd party if not in driver).

The game is heavily an aim game and there's not really a good way to diffrentiate between maps having aim/rhytm/reading etc differend types of difficulty. You just gotta try the maps, learn. I recommend low bpm maps at lower stars because they are more "fully" mapped (you tap to all distinct sounds).

You should stop thinking of progress as raising the numbers, try to focus more on the gameplay for focus. Get better at the thing that is playing the game-

You are a beginner in osu. Aim is probably more than half the difficulty of standard, in most maps.

I'll look into the anti-ghosting software. In the meantime I finally bought a new mouse from Amazon. Hopefully it fares better.

Local Hero wrote:

its okay, ur still new to the game!

You know what honestly, maybe I just needed to let off steam or something, if aim is far more important as they say then "git good" might not be such an unfair thing to say after all. I'll just look for more maps to try.

I knew something was up with that 2-star map, the bpm is rather high and the whole track lasted so dang long I was already demoralised halfway.

I knew something was up with the game, I never did well with shooters. Time to really brush up on aimlabs.

You will get better nonetheless with time. Something you already do better than quite large majority of beginners is start from the beginning of the difficulty to your capabilties. instead of mindlessly spamming high star rating with questionable accuracy (<70%).

But there is merit to attempting pass on higher difficulty. You will also need to expand your capabilites outside of Full Combo your current comfortable zone of around 1* maps. And together with that, you will want to download and play more maps. Osu have quite a lot to offer!

No, you don't necessarily need the best equipment. If you do buy the best of everything, you won't notice the result right away anyway, since you would also need to hone in your actual skill or your new shiny tablet, monitor, etc would be just soemthing nice to look at.

So in short, keep playing! You will improve!

If you're not happy with your mouse and keyboard, you can just buy a better one, but you don't really need to best setup to play the game as long as you're enjoying it.

Actually very true
Wait till u see the difference between 3 and 4 ;-;
Shit i still cant do some 4* maps now lol

Justt keep trying tho, find some more maps or songs u like and then just grind out the lower diffs on them and u will see improvement

Okay, so I watched a few of your recent plays, and for the 2 star map Flamewall, I see that on some parts you are missing because you are going too fast, and not tapping to the beat of the music. I know, when playing this game, it is natural to want to rush, and circles immediately, especially if there are a lot of objects on your screen (this is one of the differences between 1* and 2* maps), but listen to the music, watch the approach circles, and try to tap to the beat. Also, when i first started playing, I found the 3* maps to be actually easier than the 2* maps because I have trouble reading low ar, and actually reading the patterns and waiting for the right time to hit, instead of just seeing something on screen, and reacting to it, like I do in other video games. Also, befopre I played osu!, I played gd and osu!stream on my phone, and even though the skills don't translate directly to osu! on pc, some skills, notably learning how to practice the same map for hours and not give up, and also staying calm instead of getting frustrated, and being in the right headspace to play rhythm games, and knowing when to relax and let my muscle memory do its thing, and when to focus and play more actively, are the skills that really helped me get better at osu!. I've then spent a few hours I think grinding, and trying to fc the map Flamewall (playing mouse and keyboard using 1 key), and it was actually pretty hard and frustrating, especially since the map is over 6 minutes long, which means a lot of time for you to potentially make mistakes, so it would probably be easier for you to fc some maps that are shorter than this. I have actually gotten pretty close to fcing it, holding a combo that is 3 less than the max combo for that map (probably from dropping the slider ends), and when I was playing, I could not pinpoint where exactly I messed up. Also, I saw that you sliderbroke a few times when playing that map, which also happened to me a bunch when i was playing, and is very frustrating. What I found that helped me was being "in control" of the sliders when I am playing, and being very intentional to make sure that I tap on the circle and smoothly follow each slider all the way through before I let go. Also for me what helped was sorta memorizing the map, so i am expecting where each slider and hit object is, and have my moves already planned out in advance, instead of reacting to it on the fly when you see the objects, which sometimes would work, but it did make my gameplay and my movements a lot more unstable, and made it a lot more likely for me to mess up at some point. Also, if you could fix the keyboard issues, I would suggest giving mouse and keyboard a try, instead of playing mouse only, because seperating the aiming from the tapping, and not pressing down on the mouse does have its advantages, and helped me improve a lot faster. But these maps are definitely still definitely fc-able playing mouse only, and some people prefer that playstyle, and I can understand why you are playing with mouse-only, because it is unfair, and very frustrating, when the keyboard is not properly registering the keys being pressed down. Also, which keyboard are you using, and how bad is the ghosting on it? Does it only register 1 key press at a time? Or can you press 2 keys at once, but it only works for certain keys? If it is the latter case, I suggest maybe binding your hit keys to different keys on your keyboard that do not cause ghosting when they are pressed together. Also one more thing, I do not know what you mean by progress, but if you are talking about the pp system, playing harder levels, even if you don't fc, and you still have decent combo and accuracy, the system would reward you with more pp than playing very easy levels and fcing. When I first started playing, I also wanted to go for fc's, but I couldn't fc anything. So I started playing harder levels just to pass them in order to challange myself, when when I get comfortable with playing 3 stars, and even beating some 4 star level, when I go back to play the 2-star levels, I find them to be much-easier to beat, which also really helped me to fc some of those. Your skills and experience will build up over time, so no, you do not need to fc in order to make progress on osu!.

aimlab doesn't really help you here... LOL cus it got no beats in it.

So usually in games after 1 star then 2 stars right?
But we have the unsaid 1.01-1.99

Strife for stability.

Yeah the gap between difficulty in star ratings is massive. Wait till you get to 4 star maps, it'll start taking months to years to move up even a single star rating. However osu shows the star rating to two decimal points, so it might be better to think of moving up in increments of maybe 0.2 stars or something instead of an entire star rating.

As others have said equipment matters surprisingly little in osu, especially when you are new. As long as your equipment isn't literally faulty somehow it should be good for osu, at least as a new to intermediate player. I literally had a shitty office mouse and I preferred it over my 60 dollar gaming mouse because it's lighter and didn't have any glaring issues. The ghosting issue does sound horrible though, hopefully you find a workaround.

WintermintP wrote:

"oh don't get discouraged over a couple misses" That doesn't fly either when you have a system that punishes people way too hard for missing even one note (rhythm games in general really are like that) and if I were to actually make progress in this game especially, yea, I can't progress at all unless I get that full combo.

If you missed a note you missed a note and you can just keep playing, I'm not too sure what you mean by the game being too punishing in this sense. Yeah full combos are incredibly hard to get but isn't that the case for pretty much every hard rhythm game out there? I'd suggest not caring about full combos at all because they're so hard to get unless you are trying to get pp or a particularly cool score, it's a lot better to focus on accuracy and/or misscount instead. I feel like this advice would go for other skillcap pushing rhythm games as well, but idk this is pretty much the only rhythm game I've played beyond a fairly casual manner.

WintermintP wrote:

I knew something was up with the game, I never did well with shooters. Time to really brush up on aimlabs.

For osu specifically aimlabs is not going to make much difference, because osu is 2D aim and aimlabs/shooters are 3D aim. The one way it might help is with your aiming mechanics and getting more used to using a mouse in general.

Idk if you are but if you're inexperienced with aiming in general, it might be a good idea to look at the handcams of top players and try to emulate their mechanics and sensitivity, because if you've never had to aim intensively before then good chance your mechanics are pretty wack and your sensitivity is way off what most people use. I remember my sensitivity being way too high when I started playing, which translated into a tablet area which was way too small, because I didn't know any better. I think it took a few months to realise that by increasing my area by like 8 times and fully utilising my wrists and fingers, aiming was a lot easier. Also turn on "raw input" in the settings if you haven't already.

And while you're there, also turn background dim to 95-100% to see the notes clearly, music volume to 20%ish to hear the hitsounds clearly, turn off "hit lighting" and maybe all the other effects as well to minimize distractions (snaking sliders is the only one that a lot of people have on), and get a nice, simple skin.