LOOKING TO CLICK THOSE CIRCLES CIRCLE WHISPERER!?!
A Brief Pitch For a Planned osu! Game Theory series by _OytheBumbler.

Hello everyone and welcome to this idea I had about showing specific ways I train to improve in this wonderful game known as osu!. I have many ways I want to approach this, and I decided on this insanely long essay.to start. It is long, and I'm sorry, but I found that I had a ton to say. I’ll give a brief explanation of my goal here before you dive into the depths. I've found the game to have much more nuance to it than just clicking the circles and "playing more." I plan to explore things I've gained from other people and what I've come up with by myself to develop a narrative on osu! game theory. There are guides out there already, but they seem forgotten. I plan to address some topics from those and explain how I applied them and maybe expand on them further. I’m looking to showcase my training and knowledge that has been developed over many hundreds of hours and thousands of plays, and explaining the “science” behind why I do what I do. tl;dr , just get to the point already.

A little about me. I started osu February 15th, 2014. A buddy had gotten me into it (Reservawr) after telling me it'd improve my League play, and I was interested. Didn't take long for me to realize it was much better to try and rank in osu than it was in League and I never looked back. I spent all of 2016 staying away from ranking and fully focusing on improving my game. Now, 3 years, 60k plays, 779 hours, and 35% to LVL 101 later, I’m still here, with everything I’ve learned along the way. This is a guide, not an autobiography; no one cares to hear your personal story here.

I’m not trying to brag or say my point of view is objectively absolute. I want you to look at these methods with an open mind. I may sound authoritarian in my presentation, but that’s because I’m speaking from personal experience that everything I’m going to cover, objectively worked for me. It may work for you, or it may not, but you cannot tell me it did not work for me. You can critique the method, maybe look to improve it, or add your own personal spin, but you cannot call it wrong or bad unless you can give a legitimate reason as to why. You especially cannot if you haven't spent the time experiencing the methods yourself. It may work for you. It may not. I’m merely here to put it out there for people to find. Nice, taking credibility away from yourself. I'm very open to a discussion over ways to train. There isn't one correct answer, and I'm always looking to learn new things and to change my mind. So, let’s get into it!

While play more is what you need to do overall, it doesn’t address those tiny nuances that need to be focused on to have great results. I took this game almost absurdly seriously and started writing thoughts on improvement my first year playing. I then started expressing my views to people on a small scale. Fair point. I like to sit in #osu chat and answer questions. I like PMing people to give more specific tips or advice. I like sharing my personal points of view on how to improve just to get people to think a different way. Sometimes I can come off as a bit arrogant about it, but only because I truly believe it can benefit anyone who commits to it. Uh yeah, unnecessary point that no one cares about.

I find the game to be about mindset most of all, but there are specific areas you can target train as well. If you really want to improve in this game, you have to commit to training it like a sport. Practice, practice, practice. Train, train, train. Michael Jordan didn’t make all those baskets and win those titles by only showing up to the games. Football clubs don’t complain about how hard it is to condition to win trophies. Hell, think of each FC as a UFC or Boxing match you need to prepare for. You must condition yourself. TRAIN! Top osu players, the legends, like (in no specific order) Cookiezi, Rafis, Angelsim, Hvick, Rrtyui, Sayonara-bye, Wub, thelewa, Ekoro, that maniac Vaxei, _index, Doomsday, etc.. (You’re not doing the reader a favor by referring to some of these players by their nicknames (i.e. Wub)) None of them just started FCing their first day. They all played more (anyone I missed or your personal favorites you can comment below, there’s so many out there). Even most people in the top 10k nowadays, have some sort of regime, training program, or warm up. You have to play the game to get good. You have to play more. Fair point.

But you also need to play smart.

As I said, the mindset is most of what goes into the improvement in this game. A poor attitude is going to hinder you more than your physical capabilities. Frustration kills concentration, and you start developing a toxic attitude that springs up a wall. When a person hits a wall, the trouble getting past it usually isn’t physically related. It’s normally because the person is negatively interpreting their progression. They encounter something that seems too hard to do, and they decide they can’t do it. Because they decide they can’t do it, they don’t bother trying, thus, never improving. I suppose I’ll coin it here as the “osu! Paradox.” Fair point.

You can probably see the flawed logic in the osu! paradox. I experienced it myself most of my first year playing. And even after a year, it was happening with my streaming. I felt like I couldn't stream, so I didn't find the point in trying. I would avoid maps with streams because I just wanted to FC with good ACC.

Well, when you don't do something, you don't get better at it. It makes no sense not to practice something you can't do, simply because you can't do it. Once you start trying, eventually you'll be able to do it. It's like magic. Unfortunately, people associate improvement with things that are extremely volatile and not guaranteed. I call these “consistency related goals." For example: getting FC’s or ranks; Setting quotas for the amount of FC's you want by a certain point; Deciding to be a certain rank by a certain time. These goals are fantastic to have, but not when you don’t have the fundamental skills to make them come easy. Obsessively retrying maps and only looking to FC is the slowest, worst, and most frustrating way to improve in osu! It’s what causes so many people to hate the game and their life. I see it in chat all the time.
Setting skill related goals are much more attainable than FC or rank goals. You can practice and train easily and apply it all to your consistency. At the current state of ppv2, consistency is what is needed for gaining rank. Most people understand that just gaining rank doesn't completely translate to being skillful. I look at it as a way to measure your consistency. Consistency is directly affected by your reading ability. I describe reading as the ability to sync your tapping and aiming. Shit missing is the #1 killer of FC's Way to make this sound tacky. Have you ever just stopped to think about WHY you actually miss? Fair point.

You know you can get pretty good ACC Why do you caps lock acc? You’re not emphasizing anything about it. You know you can play 6* or higher. You know you can aim. But you just can't seem to FC for pp. Well, reading directly affects your ability to not shitmiss, and improves your ability to hold combos. There are ways to train your reading, and mine is a method I got from another player. I think they changed their name because I can no longer find them, rest in peace MastersKitten. I will showcase this method though. It involves high density; low AR play to get you to associate your aim with your tap. It causes you to literally have to read and time your hits for good accuracy. This gets you to build that connection between your tapping and your aiming. Once you start doing it enough, you start shit missing less. It’s like building muscle memory in your aiming that allows you to go to the correct spot based on your tap timing. I don’t know If I’m going too deep on you here Nice, taking credibility away from yourself, but it really does give results and is coupled with another training method I plan on showcasing, which is the Target Practice mod. Good transition into next point, I guess.

Target practice is like a diamond in the rough under a pile of garbage. It appears to be a broken, forgotten, and useless mod. However, it’s actually one of the easiest and most efficient ways of training your aim, snapping, and hit ACC. Got evidence to back up this claim? This is based on an idea I got from a small conversation between a person and a user named Aqo. It also relates to advice in a guide from the consistency/ACC god If you’re writing a guide, then you should remain neutral; bias ain’t good thelewa. I'll explore this branch in that video. I also plan on probably doing a video on mindset as a subject on its own. Unnecessary to mention.

There are many negative thought patterns players slip into that prevent them from improving or even enjoying the game. Fair point. I'd like to address the ones I see the most and look to provide alternate ways at approaching their issue.

I’m looking forward to starting this process and I’m sure it’s going to spawn new ideas. Keep a look out for the first video and thank you for taking the time to read this! Unnecessary to say. Also, self-advertising in a guide? lol