This is something I have found difficulty with in everything I do.

Basically, I start doing something because it's extremely fun, but I eventually focus more and more on the rank associated with it. It can actually get to the point where the drive to improve because of the rank entirely replaces my motivation to play in the first place, which causes me to have no drive to play if I feel I've stopped improving (because the original drive is gone).

It's not like this with osu! yet, but I'm beginning to feel myself care more about the stupid rank. I don't want the same thing that happens with this game to happen with everything else I do. I want to maintain the pure love of the game because it's fun to click circles to the beat.

I'm not even sure what to do. On one hand the rank obsession drives me to improve (and I actually work to improve and don't just play pp maps), but on the other hand, if left unchecked, it will destroy my drive to play. I'm wondering if I should just stop using rank as a motivator altogether, but that's nearly impossible considering it's on my profile and CONSTANTLY in game for me to look at and see if it rises after every song.

I just... I just want to enjoy game.

Should I try and squash this competitive desire I have or learn to live with it? I'm not sure I can trust myself to balance it, but I don't know how to crush it either.

Play underranked maps.

pandaBee wrote:

Play underranked maps.

I play everything. I see your point though. The thing is, let's say I spend months playing underranked maps and become much better. Who has the self-control not to cash in on that skill eventually? All the while I'd see that rank sitting there; coaxing me by whispering "farm just a few songs" into my virgin ears. I don't think I could do it. My current system of just playing everything from a 9000 song library I got when I first started is working well, because I don't know what's ranked and what isn't.

But in the end that's a short-term strategy to a long-term problem. And so would playing offline.

I guess I left out or didn't clarify some crucial information. I don't want to run away from the issue. I want to be able to play ranked maps without it consuming me, and to do that I think I need to live with the desire to see the rank go up.

It's normal to want to play something competitively if you invest a lot of time into it. The key is learning balance. Utilize collections. Play maps for practice, but then for 10% of your playtime for that day, play "pp" maps (you could have a collection for this that you f2 through) that you enjoy 1-2x a shot all the way through. If you FC it and get PP, cool. If you don't, just move on.

So if you play for 2 hours a day, spend like 15 minutes playing maps that you have a decent chance of FCing with 98%+ accuracy.

pandaBee wrote:

It's normal to want to play something competitively if you invest a lot of time into it. The key is learning balance. Utilize collections. Play maps for practice, but then for 10% of your playtime for that day, play "pp" maps (you could have a collection for this that you f2 through) that you enjoy 1-2x a shot all the way through. If you FC it and get PP, cool. If you don't, just move on.

So if you play for 2 hours a day, spend like 15 minutes playing maps that you have a decent chance of FCing with 98%+ accuracy.

Thanks, that's just what I'm looking for. Will trying to snipe scores from people around my level also work for the PP farming?

Playing multiplayer every once in a while definitely helps

SpasticSurgeon wrote:

Thanks, that's just what I'm looking for. Will trying to snipe scores from people around my level also work for the PP farming?

If that's what floats your boat, don't see why not.

Play for ranked score instead of pp, scratch 1-2* for that matter and you'll very likely improve while also gaining ranks. (Just on a different ladder)
It will also force you to play new maps, punishes retries because it will be inefficient, and it exposes you to a vast variety of patterns and massively improves reading and overall skill, rather than just seeing the same 2k16-2k18 pp patterns all the time.
It also forces you into playing long maps because the longer they are the more efficient they are in terms of time/reward for score.



Maybe it's just something you have to learn for yourself over time, but nothing will change no matter how high you climb. You still wake up the next day, log in, and all that changed is your rank and that "good feel" that your pp gain yday gave you will most likely already have vanished, and instead of rank x you're now rankx-1k, which doesn't matter anyway.


I wrote this in a different thread already, but noone gives a crap about your rank except yourself, and you should truly ask yourself what you actually want when you say you want your rank to improve.
It should be common knowledge that your pp doesn't reflect your skill if all you do is just abuse the system to increase that number, and by now everyone knows how to do it.



You might have a competetive drive, but you don't seem to have an innate drive to improve yourself, which is what is inhibiting your improvement right now. You just want to get "ranks" and not actual improvement. The latter for a lot of people is just the tool they want to get to their goal, when it should actually be the goal itself.





Also, just like the other guy you don't even have 100h played. The only way to make it far in this game, ultimately, is by sinking more time into it. No matter how much you read up on reddit, forums or pros ask.fms, there won't be some magic tip out there that will suddenly make you a god, not even improve you by a bit.

The way you get better at this game is just learning patterns / reading and improving your aim and tapping. All of this is only possible by "playing more". You won't get better aim by reading online essays. There might be some tips on how to improve your mindset or how to avoid bad habits, but nothing that really affects your physical abilities.




If you think about it, your rank obsession is holding you back. All the time you spent reading and checking rank is time you could spend playing maps, and all the demotivation you get from not achieving your rank is affecting your mood and motivation, which will result in less hours played and more tilt which results in poor play.

As I said, try to replace your addiction for pp with the one for ranked score, because that actually reaps more benefits. It also usually will end up with you never being overranked and being able to make atleast a little ranks everyday due to bonus pp, and truly improves you as a player because reading is 90% of this game, and you heavily limited yourself by just playing the maps that give most pp, because those repeat the same patterns all the time.

Rayne wrote:

Play for ranked score instead of pp, scratch 1-2* for that matter and you'll very likely improve while also gaining ranks. (Just on a different ladder)
It will also force you to play new maps, punishes retries because it will be inefficient, and it exposes you to a vast variety of patterns and massively improves reading and overall skill, rather than just seeing the same 2k16-2k18 pp patterns all the time.
It also forces you into playing long maps because the longer they are the more efficient they are in terms of time/reward for score.



Maybe it's just something you have to learn for yourself over time, but nothing will change no matter how high you climb. You still wake up the next day, log in, and all that changed is your rank and that "good feel" that your pp gain yday gave you will most likely already have vanished, and instead of rank x you're now rankx-1k, which doesn't matter anyway.


I wrote this in a different thread already, but noone gives a crap about your rank except yourself, and you should truly ask yourself what you actually want when you say you want your rank to improve.
It should be common knowledge that your pp doesn't reflect your skill if all you do is just abuse the system to increase that number, and by now everyone knows how to do it.



You might have a competetive drive, but you don't seem to have an innate drive to improve yourself, which is what is inhibiting your improvement right now. You just want to get "ranks" and not actual improvement. The latter for a lot of people is just the tool they want to get to their goal, when it should actually be the goal itself.





Also, just like the other guy you don't even have 100h played. The only way to make it far in this game, ultimately, is by sinking more time into it. No matter how much you read up on reddit, forums or pros ask.fms, there won't be some magic tip out there that will suddenly make you a god, not even improve you by a bit.

The way you get better at this game is just learning patterns / reading and improving your aim and tapping. All of this is only possible by "playing more". You won't get better aim by reading online essays. There might be some tips on how to improve your mindset or how to avoid bad habits, but nothing that really affects your physical abilities.




If you think about it, your rank obsession is holding you back. All the time you spent reading and checking rank is time you could spend playing maps, and all the demotivation you get from not achieving your rank is affecting your mood and motivation, which will result in less hours played and more tilt which results in poor play.

As I said, try to replace your addiction for pp with the one for ranked score, because that actually reaps more benefits. It also usually will end up with you never being overranked and being able to make atleast a little ranks everyday due to bonus pp, and truly improves you as a player because reading is 90% of this game, and you heavily limited yourself by just playing the maps that give most pp, because those repeat the same patterns all the time.

Thanks for the tips, I think your advice is pretty valuable.

I don't really retry much besides a few specific songs I had grudges on. But I never retry on miss and always play through the song. Try to play 90% different songs when I play or at least unpassed ones.

Can I ask what you mean by "scratch 1-2*"? I don't think I understand.


Also I don't play the maps that give the most PP unless I did it by accident, I just downloaded a 9000 song library and play through it systematically. The first time I really purposely "farmed PP" was yesterday and that was just playing get Jinxed a few times that day. Most of my high plays are sightreads or at least the first time I played it that day.

Also the very first day I played I spammed Claris song 150 times, but that's because I didn't know what to do lol.

Also Rayne, if the maps I'm playing are focused on PP then where can I find better ones? I thought my library was pretty balanced.

SpasticSurgeon wrote:

Rayne wrote:

Play for ranked score instead of pp, scratch 1-2* for that matter and you'll very likely improve while also gaining ranks. (Just on a different ladder)
It will also force you to play new maps, punishes retries because it will be inefficient, and it exposes you to a vast variety of patterns and massively improves reading and overall skill, rather than just seeing the same 2k16-2k18 pp patterns all the time.
It also forces you into playing long maps because the longer they are the more efficient they are in terms of time/reward for score.



Maybe it's just something you have to learn for yourself over time, but nothing will change no matter how high you climb. You still wake up the next day, log in, and all that changed is your rank and that "good feel" that your pp gain yday gave you will most likely already have vanished, and instead of rank x you're now rankx-1k, which doesn't matter anyway.


I wrote this in a different thread already, but noone gives a crap about your rank except yourself, and you should truly ask yourself what you actually want when you say you want your rank to improve.
It should be common knowledge that your pp doesn't reflect your skill if all you do is just abuse the system to increase that number, and by now everyone knows how to do it.



You might have a competetive drive, but you don't seem to have an innate drive to improve yourself, which is what is inhibiting your improvement right now. You just want to get "ranks" and not actual improvement. The latter for a lot of people is just the tool they want to get to their goal, when it should actually be the goal itself.





Also, just like the other guy you don't even have 100h played. The only way to make it far in this game, ultimately, is by sinking more time into it. No matter how much you read up on reddit, forums or pros ask.fms, there won't be some magic tip out there that will suddenly make you a god, not even improve you by a bit.

The way you get better at this game is just learning patterns / reading and improving your aim and tapping. All of this is only possible by "playing more". You won't get better aim by reading online essays. There might be some tips on how to improve your mindset or how to avoid bad habits, but nothing that really affects your physical abilities.




If you think about it, your rank obsession is holding you back. All the time you spent reading and checking rank is time you could spend playing maps, and all the demotivation you get from not achieving your rank is affecting your mood and motivation, which will result in less hours played and more tilt which results in poor play.

As I said, try to replace your addiction for pp with the one for ranked score, because that actually reaps more benefits. It also usually will end up with you never being overranked and being able to make atleast a little ranks everyday due to bonus pp, and truly improves you as a player because reading is 90% of this game, and you heavily limited yourself by just playing the maps that give most pp, because those repeat the same patterns all the time.

Thanks for the tips, I think your advice is pretty valuable.

I don't really retry much besides a few specific songs I had grudges on. But I never retry on miss and always play through the song. Try to play 90% different songs when I play or at least unpassed ones.

Can I ask what you mean by "scratch 1-2*"? I don't think I understand.


But I don't mean to play the maps that give the most PP, I just downloaded a 9000 song library and play through it systematically. The first time I really purposely "farmed PP" was yesterday and that was just playing get Jinxed a few times that day.

Also the very first day I played I spammed Claris song 150 times, but that's because I didn't know what to do lol.

Scratching 1-2* was related to the ranked score farm. You'll see some ranked score players farm these 1-2* maps to gain score and polish their profile with S/SS ranks, but doing so won't improve you a player.
So if you do decide to do it, forget about 1-2* and just play 3*-x*, x being whatever is the maximum diff your comfy with.


Well if it is like you are saying then you're on a good way. Just keep playing and try to forget about the songs you care about. I have like 500 tries on Kokou no Sousei myself and didn't fc the 4* or 5* yet and I just left it. I still play it every now and then, but I try to not play maps like that more than once or twice per week.

You don't have to avoid pp maps either. Just play everything that's not too hard or way too easy for you, pp maps, tech maps, old maps etc. included. Everyone does a farming session when they feel like it (I do, too). It's only when farming / pp is all you want and play for that it becomes toxic for your progress.


Not leaving or retrying on a miss is a good habit to have. Always try to move on to the next map. Well, as I said you're on a good path, now it's just a matter of grinding out playtime / playing more.

Thanks Senpai I'll do as you say

i used to do that as well, although recently i just drifted off to playing multi with others and just competing with others, it's good that you have the drive to improve. Most you can do is to just find another way thats competitive but that you can do pretty easily, for me it's farming top 50s and playing through beatmap packs

play flashlight

Welcome to osu

To counter that instead of trying to FC PP maps I try to get scores that will be top #1000 or top #50 if I'm lucky enough xd

option 1: play multiplayer. i can tell you multiplaying is the way time goes by fastest for me, especially with a nice lobby where the people chat a bit more. sadly there never are good 6* lobbies so usually i have to get into 5* lobbies or even 4* at times but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ for you this will probably not be that big of a problem.
option 2: play medium pp farm maps. maps that are mapped well and might not be the most farmed but still can be kinda farmed. i don't know, you probably play around high 3* / low 4* maps looking at your top ranks, i don't really know much about maps in that range but usually longer songs, especially approved maps ~5 minutes are pretty good but can often be farmed and are great to build consistancy
option 3: just go on like you do. eventually the urge to play good maps will become stronger than the urge to farm pp at the point that it gets really boring. that's how it was for me just not to long ago. i farmed a lot and eventually it got so damn boring playing the same thing over and over again, now i've switched from farming to option 2, if i read sotarks or a r m i n i just don't play it. period. if it's shorter than 2 minutes the chances i'll play it are very low. but i often play medium-farm maps to stay a bit competetive. (in my case something like 'yooh - marianne' or 'sleeping with sirens - if you can't hang' instead of maps like hai tai or hime hime or santa-san)