Exemmar wrote:
I WAS willing to play harder maps when I was playing autoconverts (for now I want this thread to be closed because there's no point of keeping it up anymore) and I know exactly how it works, maybe im newb/noob in mania but in standard I didn't have any problems with ranking up.
Ok, so I'll try to explain a few things about why you got such a negative response here.
First, most experienced mania players dislike autoconverts specifically because it gives a bad first impression for a whole number of reasons. The patterns are terrible, they suggest that 4k is always easier than 7k, among other issues.
Second, asking for advice tells people you are looking to improve at the game. When you then tell people you have no desire to actually improve, this essentially means that anyone who spent time writing a serious response to that question just wasted their time.
Third, the attitude that it's impossible to enjoy yourself while also trying to improve is insulting to many of us. It's my personal opinion that at higher difficulty levels, because there is a wider range of pattern styles available to play, the game is actually more fun than at lower difficulty levels. I'm not saying you need to play the hardest maps in order to have fun though.
Ideally you should be able to strike a balance between playing to improve and playing for fun. I understand that it's not fun for most people to feel like they're failing miserably at something, but I also think that osu standard warps people's opinions of what is a good score. In osu, if you dont have a 98%+ FC your score is basically worthless. In osumania, it's not necessary to get scores with extremely high accuracy or full combos to get a decent score.
Osumania will reward A's and B's on harder songs much more than an S or even an SS on something much easier. In fact, if I were to SS anything, I can guarantee that it would be so easy that I wouldn't gain any PP for it, because all of my top scores are on maps much much harder than that. Although to be honest, using rank as any indicator of skill is a terrible idea.
I also want to explain something that few people seem to talk about. When someone suggests playing songs that you consider 'too hard' we're not saying 'you can't have fun until you get better'. There's this effect that happens when you play songs that you would normally consider too hard. When you play them more often, your brain slowly gets used to the harder patterns, and while that happens, everything you feel comfortable playing will begin to feel even easier. Instead of getting 97% on something you might start getting 98's or 99's. Even if you don't see any improvement on the harder songs, this happens. The other effect is that when most people encounter a pattern that is a bit harder than they're used to, they tend to panic and either freeze up or mash keys uncontrollably. As you get used to seeing these patterns you stop having that sort of panic response, and you start being able to make sense of what you're seeing.
As for the 7k issue: yes, it takes longer to start seeing improvement in 7k, but I will warn you right now, if you don't practice 7k until you get much better at 4k, you will find it even harder to learn 7k. Look at staiain, he has YEARS of being one of the best stepmania players and osumania players in 4k, but in 7k, he's still having a really hard time learning, and is still nowhere remotely close to his 4k skill level. I began with 7k, when barely even played 4k until a few months ago, and my 4k skill is relatively close to my 4k skill without any practice. It's much easier to transfer skill from higher key numbers to lower ones than the other way around, so it's still a good idea to stick with 7k, even if you don't see improvement as quickly.