I had a feeling that my offset was not set correctly since I had alot of trouble getting SS with no mods on fairly easy difficulties so I went to search on the forums to see how am I supposed to do it. Found a method on the wiki and tried to do it but failed miserably as it couldn't be described. Before I was playing with universal offset 15ms and beatmap offset from -20 to 20 ms.
This is where I start getting insanely mad from my incapability to do anything with it.
My results were spinning me around a completely unreasonable 60ms back to 30ms sometimes even -30ms so I saw a post from someone saying using 20ms universal offset, so I did that, I did "somewhat" better. Tried to swtich to 60ms but then a bunch of maps started having a "jolt" where it would adjust the beatmap as I'm supposed to hit the first note, on top of that playing any beatmap in general was reallyconfusing me since the scorebar (arrow and a line with a few colors) was showing that I was hitting too early/late, and even after adjusting beatmap/universal offset, it was still on the same spot. Am I doing something wrong? Or do I just suck so badly?

Some specs that may or may not be useful:
maps up to 2.2 difficulty (4k, 5k:2.0, 6k:1.8, 7k: forget it I suck at it)
playing fixed speed 25
JBL J65BT wired headphones (bluetooth capable)
Win7 x64
Ge Force GT 540M
Intel i7-2630QM
6GB RAM
playing fullscreen 1680x1050 full graphics and getting solid 120FPS
EDIT2: deleted old and made one in the Gameplay section

1: Ensure that you are playing mania specific maps. Some older maps for standard have bad offsets and can throw your timing off.
2: Only use beatmap specific offsets when you know that the offset for a specific beatmap is bad.
3: Some people prefer to leave global offset at 0 and instead change the height of the judgement line by editing the skin.ini file. What this does is changes the location on screen that the notes need to line up with in order to be on time. I haven't made any changes to my judgement line, but from what I've heard it can be a lot more helpful than changing the global offset.

If you could post a screenshot showing the timing bar, or better yet, the accuracy popup that shows up when you move your mouse over the life graph after playing something that might be helpful. Here's an example of what I'm talking about:


In this example, it shows that on average I'm playing about 1ms early. If I was perfectly on time those numbers would be -25 and +25.

I suggest finding 2 or 3 maps that you can play well, play them a few times and check if your timing is consistent between each play. When you're doing this, don't change your offset until you can find something that you can get consistent timing on, even if you're consistently off by a certain amount. The information you're looking for is whether you're playing early all the time, or late. When you're trying to figure out your offset, don't use any maps that have speed changes either, since these can really throw your timing off.

Note: I can't give any sort of offset value for these screenshots

This is the most difficult song I ever got a good grade on (2.22) it's also the one that's been bugging me forever to get a better accuracy on since it gives out alot off pp right now. This is a result on an old PC where I was playing non-fullscreen 720p. With my new PC I can't even get close to that accuracy, the most I ever got was 96.7% and it was after about 50 tries


This is again on the old PC I had. I got a better score with my new PC though. 1.92 difficulty


This is on my new PC. On the old one I had nearly perfect (~99.66%)


I'm starting to just think I'm not good at keeping a beat. Because on the song on the first screenshot I'm having trouble with (terms I got from "how to improve in osu!mania" in forum) short trills, brackets, short stairs (3 or 4 keys long) and some basic alternating notes

EDIT: did a few tests with universal offset +300, -300m -264, +221, +100 and got LITERALLY the same in terms of accuracy and average hit error.
Tried also not having hitsound only, not having music only, not having both and the only sutuation with worse accuracy was when I had no sounds at all.
The tests were done on a 4k 1.94 difficulty

Do you play with 120 fps locked? Try without limiting the FPS or desactivate the vsync. Also it might be just you as well.

juankristal wrote:

Do you play with 120 fps locked? Try without limiting the FPS or desactivate the vsync. Also it might be just you as well.

Yes I highly suspect that I'm just bad at keeping a beat or my fingers are "jittery" and hit spontaneously. I don't use Vsync, but I do lock the fps at 120. I'm gonna try without the limiter though

I have some friends who had that "acc issue" and most of the times just leaving frames unlimited fix the issue. When you have 120 locked you have like, less amount of frames to actualy hit the 300. Not sure if thats how it works but if you look at your bar behind your gameplay field while you play you will notice the diference between 120 fps locked and unlimited.

Things I noticed in the past 15 minutes:
- I rely too much on note position and too less on the beat itself, that's why I'm always hitting too early no matter the offset
- Even getting up to 700 FPS there is no difference in the accuracy I get.
- My sense of beat is absolute shit because I can't do simple trills properly:

I slowed it down to speed 15, but I usually play at 25

So I assume my suckyness can't be fixed and I accept it so I'll forget about it

The only thing that might change that is (if you hit notes early all the time) is to change your hitposition. You have a guide here about how to do that: t/203554

Hello there! Apart from what juankristal already said, I want to add that you might have a bit of troubles the first time you play any beatmap. Sometimes you will find yourself off for 20 ms, sometimes for -10 ms. Depends on the song, basically. Try adjusting it according to the values you get from the unstable rate of any beatmap and tell me if that helped you out somehow.
Just remember that this will not happen everytime, it's just that sometimes you'll play a map with a different offset than the original one. That's preference (or what you can actually hear while playing the game).

Yuii- wrote:

Hello there! Apart from what juankristal already said, I want to add that you might have a bit of troubles the first time you play any beatmap. Sometimes you will find yourself off for 20 ms, sometimes for -10 ms. Depends on the song, basically. Try adjusting it according to the values you get from the unstable rate of any beatmap and tell me if that helped you out somehow.
Just remember that this will not happen everytime, it's just that sometimes you'll play a map with a different offset than the original one. That's preference (or what you can actually hear while playing the game).

Yeah, I agree that the first few times won't be easy to get any sort of consistency, but when it gets to the point where you can't SS a 1.4 difficulty song with 20 tries it's pretty obvious something is wrong

juankristal wrote:

The only thing that might change that is (if you hit notes early all the time) is to change your hitposition. You have a guide here about how to do that: t/203554

Thank you, that one is really useful and makes alot of sense, I'll see how to do it tomorrow and update if I can

Cool, I will be waiting for your update then!

Aesis wrote:

but when it gets to the point where you can't SS a 1.4 difficulty song with 20 tries it's pretty obvious something is wrong

To be honest, I'm rank 2130 and I still don't have a single SS on anything. Even on something easy (which for me is anything under maybe 3.5 stars in 4k) I can't manage an SS.

Some players have a much harder time playing accurately than others. Another thing to consider is that as you improve at harder songs, your accuracy on easier songs will also improve.

Bobbias wrote:

Aesis wrote:

but when it gets to the point where you can't SS a 1.4 difficulty song with 20 tries it's pretty obvious something is wrong

To be honest, I'm rank 2130 and I still don't have a single SS on anything. Even on something easy (which for me is anything under maybe 3.5 stars in 4k) I can't manage an SS.

Some players have a much harder time playing accurately than others. Another thing to consider is that as you improve at harder songs, your accuracy on easier songs will also improve.

I went to see your profile and noticed that you play alot with flashlight, I can't even pass a song with it let alone someone getting SS on it. I don't use mods most of the time, if I do I use DT or HC if the song has simple notes and nothing that has notes that are very close to each other.

Aesis wrote:

Things I noticed in the past 15 minutes:
- I rely too much on note position and too less on the beat itself, that's why I'm always hitting too early no matter the offset
- My sense of beat is absolute shit because I can't do simple trills properly

it's good that you noticed it, many players go for years without realizing this and then blame the games and try to fiddle with offsets instead of just improve themselves. Once you realized this from here the only road is practice.

Use HR and use slower scroll speeds than what you're used to for training every once in a while, this will help you read timing more accurately. Also, play a lot of high bpm notes charts. i.e. not high song bpm, because it means nothing if the song is 220bpm but all the notes are 1/2 beat, a 140bpm song with lots of 1/4 beat notes would be "faster". Try to play stuff that has a lot of fast notes, that stuff helps reading tempo better.

Aesis wrote:

I went to see your profile and noticed that you play alot with flashlight, I can't even pass a song with it let alone someone getting SS on it. I don't use mods most of the time, if I do I use DT or HC if the song has simple notes and nothing that has notes that are very close to each other.

I've been playing FL only for over 2 years. At this point I can't play without it, and I'm much better than I was before I began playing FL only.

As Aqo said, there are some ways you can practice beyond simply playing the way you usually do.

1: Slower scroll speeds mean you will have to focus harder on listening to the song to understand the exact timing (instead of relying on your reaction and the visual timing cues). I would argue that using a mod like HD or FL full time (or the majority of the time at least) can also help you keep from using visual cues as much.
2: Playing with HR will increase the OD, making timing even harder, which will help you get used to being more accurate.
3: Playing maps with denser patterns that require more finger speed than you are used to will push both your finger speed and your ability to read notes that are closer together. All of these things can help you improve more quickly than something like focusing on playing songs you can S all the time.

By forcing yourself to focus on the music more than the visual timing cues, you will get a better sense of timing overall.

By playing with more difficult timing windows, your brain will begin to adapt, and timing will begin to feel easier when you play without it.

Pushing your finger speed and ability to read patterns that are denser on screen also improves your ability to get accuracy on easier maps because it takes less time for your brain to understand which fingers to move, and when, and it also improves your fingers' ability to hit the key on time once your brain has figured that out.

Bobbias wrote:

By playing with more difficult timing windows, your brain will begin to adapt, and timing will begin to feel easier when you play without it.

This works for me to a certain degree. I would play HR and then without, and my accuracy would be better for a couple maps before going back to what it normally is. I would say that I probably don't HR enough, but I get the feeling that's not the reason. It seems I can feel the hitwindow and know when a hit would likely be a 300 or a 200, forcing me to subconsiously adapt to whatever is given. I can hit accurately if it's below 3.8 stars, but I rely on muscle memory beyond that. I cant target dead center beyond those difficulties and go by the hitwindow timing instead. Dunno, that's what I think is happening.

abraker wrote:

I would play HR and then without, and my accuracy would be better for a couple maps before going back to what it normally is.

the reason this happens is that you don't play long enough HR sessions.
The longer your HR session is, the longer the accuracy boost would last. try playing only HR for a week and you'll see the magic

Going on an HR diet starting now
RIP rank, you were never going to go as high as you were once were anyway

Aqo wrote:

abraker wrote:

I would play HR and then without, and my accuracy would be better for a couple maps before going back to what it normally is.

the reason this happens is that you don't play long enough HR sessions.
The longer your HR session is, the longer the accuracy boost would last. try playing only HR for a week and you'll see the magic

You are 100% correct. This goes for every sort of training that someone can do. The only thing to be careful about is vision mods. If you spend too long playing with vision mods you may find it difficult to play without them (see: my complete inability to play nomod now). But that takes quite a while to happen.

Well I guess this can be called a bump but here's an update on my situation.
Some of the techniques that were given did not work (ex:hit position wasn't changing after editing the file, for all key sets)
Others did (ex:forcing to listen to the beat more than the position)

But I found something that could be called a "solution" on my own:

-My performance is somewhat "forced": knowing most of the song by heart helps, I made a test yesterday with a song where I was getting 98% on average, throughout the day (in the bus, on breaks, etc) I listened to that song on repeat (about 20 times total) and in the afternoon I tried it again, I got 99.5% on the 3rd try with no misses (well, for the most part of the song, after that my fingers started shaking) So I thought that I need a "forced mechanism" to have better accuracy than usual.

-There is no "correct" offset for me, there is only a "relatively usable" offset, today I made another test where I played a song many times on the same offset, then switch to another one: A song where I had trouble with the beat, I was using the full blue part of the score bar in the first 30 seconds (sometimes even getting 200s) after ~10 tries I started using about 50% of the blue part, then I changed the offset from -20ms to -10 ms and noticed that I once again was using the full blue part, and again, after 10 tries at the -10 ms offset it got to 50% like with the -20ms offset (there was a slight obvious overall error, but not as much as 10ms, which is the difference between the two)

So I concluded that I have some sort of "adaptation" where I have to set myself a specific offset and play with it for a while to get used to it, if there is an overall error, I change that accordingly and see the results after a few tries. And it makes sense to me that my accuracy is getting destroyed when changing offset because I remember that in the past when I was trying to get a better result on a song that was giving me a lot of pp, I was changing the offset constantly so I (or my brain, since I do that unconsciously) didn't have time to adapt to that offset. Also this point also proves the 1st one since I play the same song again and again and eventually learn it.
I guess I'm a weird gaming specimen, lol.

I would suggest trying to find a way of avoiding having to change your offset all the time. I'd bet that as you improve as a player, adapting to the changing offset will become more difficult.

When your timing drifts away from the center area, does it drift early, or late?

The reason I ask is because I've noticed that when I have a problem reading a pattern fast enough, my timing drifts a few ms later. When the problem is with connecting the pattern to the music, instead of simply reading the pattern to begin with, I tend to play a bit early instead.

I'd suggest avoiding songs you know well and focusing on playing as many different songs as you can and trying to learn to sightread better. This will mean you won't be able to use your knowledge of a song to improve your scores, forcing you to listen closely while you play. It will also have the benefit of being able to find lots of other maps you enjoy that you didn't know about before.

Bobbias wrote:

1.I would suggest trying to find a way of avoiding having to change your offset all the time. I'd bet that as you improve as a player, 2.adapting to the changing offset will become more difficult.

3.When your timing drifts away from the center area, does it drift early, or late?

The reason I ask is because I've noticed that when I have a problem reading a pattern fast enough, my timing drifts a few ms later. When the problem is with connecting the pattern to the music, instead of simply reading the pattern to begin with, I tend to play a bit early instead.

I'd suggest avoiding songs you know well and focusing on playing 4.as many different songs as you can and trying to learn to sightread better. This will mean you won't be able to use your knowledge of a song to improve your scores, forcing you to listen closely while you play. It will also have the benefit of being able to 4.find lots of other maps you enjoy that you didn't know about before.

1.Exactly from what I found is going to remove that constant offset changing.

2.I gotta do stuff one thing at a time man, I haven't reached the difficult part yet XD

3.Most of the time it drifts early (somewhat like you except that because most of the time just depend on the positions instead), unless I lack dexterity for the notes coming up, then it goes late. Sometimes I just don't distinguish how notes go, for example I'm having a constant flow of alternation between trills and "heavy beat" hold notes, but suddenly there are a few notes more condensed than the usual ones, I see them, I know what I'm supposed to click, but the fact that I need to click faster than usual slips away from me until I fit the first note (then I get late timing on 2nd note and early timing on the few notes after that, when they come back to normal). I tried to change my hitposition but no matter how I did it, nothing changed the hitposition itself.

4.I'm quite picky about music, but I also have a wide range of preferences (from heavy metal to dubstep to symphonic rock et J-pop) and I don't have enough time on my hands to take the time to search.

There isn't much that I can do from where I am until I get more free time to mess around with stuff and experiment

Quite frankly, no matter how much you worry and change your settings for it, you WILL find a way to get accustomed to it. People switch games after all and their accuracy transfers over after a while. One thing that should be stated is that this isn't just a music game, it's also a game with complexity outside musically. If you have a mental block on some pattern cause you just can't get the feel of it just right ("Chords" for most people at first) you wont hit it accurately consistently; it's a given.

Accuracy really starts to show later on when people have a good underline foundation on how to play most simple patterns. Currently your hit timing doesn't seem much worse than most experienced players; by this I mean your - to + ratio (3ms late from what I saw? That's not that bad. I can imagine there are some patterns that take some time to react to which can affect your timing)

I personally usually have a consistent +3 on my hit timing, however this is mostly on stuff I'm uncomfortable playing, which further reinforces the point I am making. Although unstable rate is a different story, timing is something that gets developed naturally as the game/patterns you play become second nature. Reading and the mental aspect of the game is a completely different book altogether. From my experience, dwelling on something like this at an early level will help temporarily find a play style that is fitting to you, however a lot of the time players will dump these quirks after some time. (I used to play with a hitposition of 350 on my skin, which made the judgement line go 1/3rds up of the playing field where as my receptors were visually 1/4ths of the screen.)

TL;DR is pretty much that the reasons why you are hitting inaccurately could be much more complex than what you are currently trying to solve, and those issues usually subconsciously get resolved as you get more experienced. I used to be literally unable to 99 anything and I would just tell myself that I was bad at timing things, however this got better over time as I got more accurate on harder stuff. I'd say try to observe WHERE you're missing the 300s and not why the song in general is hard to SS. It could tell you why you're having issues with timing at the moment. Certain patterns are hard to hit accurately for some, and I believe that the main issues people have with timing accurately are fully mental things that get better as time progresses. When players get better either way, they revolve their timing both on visual cues and the speed of the song and less the individual song.

Edit: I just re-read this and wow is this incoherent. Sorry.

It's rambling, but mostly true. Mental blocks are a real thing. Difficult patterns are a real thing. And dedication and practice overcoming these issues is also a real thing. On top of that, everyone is different, and some people have more difficulty with certain things than others.

Now, finding some quirky setting that seems to work at lower skill levels does have some benefit. It helps your self-confidence, which in turn helps keep people motivated to keep playing, and if the setup works properly, it gives the player the foundation from which to improve their skill. Of course, it can also hold players back. An important step in learning is figuring out when to try to move on from a quirky setup to something that will work better for you in the long run.

The thing that many new players never realize is just HOW HUGE the skill ceiling in a game like this is. I can play 7k maps in the 5-6 star range depending on the exact patterns, which seems almost godlike to many new players (or people who don't play at all), and yet I feel the same way when I see someone able to S 8 or 9 star maps.

What I'm trying to point out here is that Aesis, you're still in the very early learning stages. The important thing is to find something acceptable and stick with it till you get things down. Once you've gotten completely used to that setup, keep using it until you've made some real progress. Once you've made that progress, make the decision to switch to a more normal setup, and stick with that until you adjust. It can sometimes take weeks or months to adjust to something (or it might not, it depends on how fast you learn), so don't try something for a day then decide it's not working, you need to stick with something for a while to truly see if it's working or not.

Bobbias wrote:

It's rambling, but mostly true. Mental blocks are a real thing. Difficult patterns are a real thing. And dedication and practice overcoming these issues is also a real thing. On top of that, everyone is different, and some people have more difficulty with certain things than others.

Yeah so true ... if u hit the first REAL wall u want just run away and FUCK this game but if u stick to it you will do it some day.
For me sometimes a brake for 1 or 2 weeks is like a Wonder and helps me.
But i have two types of Patterns i cant play at all Stairs they are easy but my ACC on them ... dont wanna talk of it

The second are cords for example this map https://osu.ppy.sh/b/641639&m=3 the 7k another diff.
When they are slow i can play them without problem but as soon they are a bit faster its like a brain overload and i cant see shit and fail/spaming through it this wall is for me the big thing i stuck on it now for almost 6 month still getting in trouble on cord maps and i improve like a turtle on it xX