I've been mainly playing standard since January when I first heard of osu!, and have only just glanced at the other gamemodes. However, I soon found CtB to be insanely fun, and was wondering about playing taiko and mania as well... Except, mania has me completely stumped on where to start. I've never played any game like mania before, and when I just tried jumping into it, I realized that pretty much every single song was out of my league. I tried getting used to the controls for about five to six hours in offline, and never got the hang of it. Some specific problems I have with mania are:

1.) My fingers feel like they aren't my fingers. I look at the screen and see what keys I have to press (sometimes; everything is so darn fast lol) but my fingers refuse to answer. This is by far my biggest problem; my fingers just don't know what to do.
2.) Everything seems really, really fast, even with HT on. And I thought standard was hard to read lol...
3.) When my fingers decide to work, my accuracy is AWFUL. If I finish a song, half of the notes are 200s, and a quarter of them are worse.
4.) Kind of ties into the 3rd; I have no idea when to release the long notes, and keeping track of all the notes I have to hold gets me confused.

Are there any tips on starting out? Should I not be playing mania if I have a dome keyboard (too broke to go mechanical )? Are there any maps you'd recommend to a complete newbie, and should I be practicing on the maps with only 4 keys or the ones with the entire homerow of keys? And any general advice? I really want to get into mania; being able to play a song from start to finish and SS it must be among the greatest feelings on earth lol. Sorry if there are always topics like this; I don't really know where else to go because there don't seem to be that many people who play osu!mania...

Thanks in advance!

t/146615

1.)
sometimes bpm = note density, you can try map which has a bpm lower than 140 (it's not a diffculty divider, just a suggestion)
HT = lowering the bpm, which means the note density would decrease if you put it on. If it doesn't help, pick a lower bpm song
If you're talking about scrolling speed, you can adjust it by pressing ctrl +/- (at the song selecting menu) or f3/f4 (in game)
2.) ^
3.) Accuracy solely comes from practice... My accuracy sucks too
4.) Try to play mania-specific maps, long note ends where it should be (according to the bgm). Auto-converted map's long note sometimes end at an awkward timing.

Hope it helps :<

...Wow, I completely passed over that while looking for a topic that would cover something of the sort... Damn, I'm really, really sorry! I appreciate you pointing me in the right direction though!

Also, don't just read the first post. When Drace first posted that, I was doing a bit of research trying to learn what we actually know about how the human brain learns things like this, and there's quite a bit of information in some of the other posts in that thread that didn't make it into the main post.

Alright, thanks!

...I just realized something. My Logitech Cordless iTouch Keyboard doesn't have proper rollover. Every time I attempt to play a chord in mania, my keyboard treats my presses as stairs. Quite possibly the most unnerving thing that's ever happened to me regarding keyboards, since I've been using this thing for so long and never actually noticed. Jesus, this makes my practice really, really annoying. >.<

Maybe I shouldn't play until I get a good keyboard.

Have you tried to find alternate key combinations that work better?

I had to move m right hand over one key (from JKL to HJK) because the L key was blocking J and K from working properly. Simply moving it to HJK fixed things. Its worth looking into.

Mind you, I wouldn't suggest a wireless keyboard for mania due to the delay because the keyboard is wireless. If you're going to use that thing in mania, it would be a good idea to try to adjust your global offset to deal with the delay from being wireless.

After reading your reply, I tried out some different key combinations. My default for 7k is WERspaceIOP (having it at the homerow feels kind of cramped), and I changed it back to the homerow, so that it was SDFspaceJKL. This didn't help; my keyboard behaved in the same way. I tried out your example, and still, the problem wasn't fixed. And I tried all kinds of weird combinations like 234n890 and all of them had the same problem. Any chord that is three notes or more has a noticeable delay between the notes, even when I press all keys at the exact same time. And even simple 2 key chords have the same problem.

I tried out that simple rollover test that I found online, and when I typed out "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" while having both Shift keys pressed, I had a sentence that came out like this: "TE UIC RW JUS VER TE LAY DG". I have a feeling that while my keyboard's lack of key rollover is a minor annoyance at my level, it'll get more and more detrimental if I start playing harder songs.

Do any mania players use a keyboard with dome switches? I feel like I should just hold off on playing mania until I replace this crappy keyboard that I have lol

Many players dome keyboards and within them a good handful prefers dome ^^ though it's worth noting they are more bad quality dome keyboards than good orz

They'd be no point in "holding off until xxx" if you're planning on playing -anyways- since you could still gather a good amount of meaningful practice until then, no matter how crappy a setup is :p

Seriously, i seen some people play better than me with keyboards I'd have trouble simply navigating the web with...

...That's kind of inspirational LOL. Alright, I'll stick at it even if all of the chords make me cringe! ^o^ By the way, thanks for your guide; I'm not sure I understand most of it yet, but a lot of it was beginner friendly and encouraging!

If you can afford to, it might be worth investing in a new keyboard, but that's entirely up to you. It's surprising what people can manage on sub-par equipment but it looks like you're got a particularly unfortunate keyboard :/

Also, I play on a laptop with scissor switches (which use rubber domes) and I manage fine.

Use Old keyboard (1990 ~ 2006) it's good dome :v

Also, one tips; never buy the USB keyboard. Anti-ghosting up to 6 buttons, fix. PS/2 still the best one.

LShift simulta7K would like a word with you ^

i was stuck with a 3kro keyboard for years ;-; could practise for now on no fail even if its nessecary not worrying about score but if your able to keep up with the notes, im not sure but i now have seen in the newer laptops, keyboards that arent mechanical have 7kro no problems although definetly not every rubber dome will have that, just be careful before buying and you should be fine

If you're a new player then you're probably also struggling with setting your scroll speed correctly (the thing you set with F3/F4). I've written a simple tool that calculates and sets your scroll speed correctly for every song. You can find it here: t/226611. Be sure to check it out!