Just a word of warning to those starting out from my 2 weeks of OSU experience.
I think a lot of new players hear that it's good to always play things that are hard for you. But "hard" is difficult to define. I moved on to 4* maps way too soon only passing about 5-10% of them and just being reduced to mashing or instafailing on most of them. Now there's nothing wrong with playing harder stuff on occasion, but I thought I had "moved on" from 3 star just because I could pass most of them. For a while I foolishly thought I had hit a wall but it's just that I didn't spend nearly enough time refining accuracy in around the 3 star range.
I spent like all day today improving my accuracy by a few percent by ultra focusing on the beat and I feel like it's much more effective than when I was banging my head against 4 star. But now I can go to 4-star and even though I still can't past most, I see that my practice has helped a lot in confidently playing some parts of those maps.
If you are brand new, I think the best course of action is to play around 10-20 hours (or enough to see where you're at) and then start refining accuracy on songs where you can pass with 85+% and slowly pushing your boundaries while occasionally playing songs way too hard for you. That's just my theory from what I've learned so far. I don't want to spread misinformation though so veterans correct me if I'm wrong.
Tl;dr: You might improve a lot at first, but don't expect the same rate of rank improvement once you get into harder songs.
Instead of chasing songs that make you instafail and you can barely pass any of them, focus on improving skills like accuracy in songs that challenge you but don't outright destroy you.
I think a lot of new players hear that it's good to always play things that are hard for you. But "hard" is difficult to define. I moved on to 4* maps way too soon only passing about 5-10% of them and just being reduced to mashing or instafailing on most of them. Now there's nothing wrong with playing harder stuff on occasion, but I thought I had "moved on" from 3 star just because I could pass most of them. For a while I foolishly thought I had hit a wall but it's just that I didn't spend nearly enough time refining accuracy in around the 3 star range.
I spent like all day today improving my accuracy by a few percent by ultra focusing on the beat and I feel like it's much more effective than when I was banging my head against 4 star. But now I can go to 4-star and even though I still can't past most, I see that my practice has helped a lot in confidently playing some parts of those maps.
If you are brand new, I think the best course of action is to play around 10-20 hours (or enough to see where you're at) and then start refining accuracy on songs where you can pass with 85+% and slowly pushing your boundaries while occasionally playing songs way too hard for you. That's just my theory from what I've learned so far. I don't want to spread misinformation though so veterans correct me if I'm wrong.
Tl;dr: You might improve a lot at first, but don't expect the same rate of rank improvement once you get into harder songs.
Instead of chasing songs that make you instafail and you can barely pass any of them, focus on improving skills like accuracy in songs that challenge you but don't outright destroy you.