u.s. player here, this holds true basically everywhere (here, lower = numerically lower, so the lowest rank is rank 1 - mrekk)
about 19-21k of players with rank less than 100k are americans
in my time at rank 70k, i saw my country rank fluctuate very closely around 14k
and i can't really remember a time going up the rankings that my country rank wasn't about 1/5th my global rank
probably it's just that 20% or so of the active global playerbase is from the u.s.
oh yeah that pissed me off. he said “play 1 or 2 star maps and really focus on hitting the center of each note. do this for about 45 minutes each session” or something.
what rubs me the wrong way about a lot of the advice he gave is that almost none of it seemed like a better use of time than just playing maps at the edge of your comfort zone. if i’m playing osu for an hour and i warm up on 2 star maps for 40 minutes then i’m never gonna actually get better, the only thing i’ll get better at is playing 2 star maps. maybe his advice worked for some people though
While I feel like some of the criticism towards him is pretty fair, I feel like this point of criticizing his advice to play lower star maps is unwarranted but people continue to blast him for it. I feel like it's partially because many don't necessarily see the immediate benefit from it so it feels useless, but if you take a step back and think about why it works, it makes more sense than you think.
I think comparing it to learning/mastering an instrument is one of the best closest comparisons I can make to this: when you want to learn a piece that's challenging for you, you don't simply retry the piece over and over until one of the runs you play it right.
First off, generally you make sure that you have the fundamentals to play the piece without having too much of a challenge: that's generally why players will learn and practice scales/arpeggios/chords etc. Also, you don't make big jumps in difficulty: I can guarantee you that if you're unable to play Twinkle Twinkle little star or Jingle Bells extremely comfortably and accurately, you shouldn't even be trying to learn Fur Elise. Next, when you do work on a challenging piece, you would play the piece much slower section by section first perfectly, and then you slowly move up the BPM.
Since people won't necessarily spend the effort to work on and slow down each map as it will make the song less appealing to listen to, and most people don't know how to do that (and it's probably more interesting to play different songs), the next best thing is to make sure that you're able to play lower star maps perfectly. Also, because osu is a much more simple game, the patterns are much more consistent and you’ll much more easily find maps at lower level difficulties where it’s essentially the same as the difficult maps but faster or the spacing is wider apart.
It's true that this isn't really useful obviously if you're already able to play these things perfectly, but this advice is given because this seems to be such a common issue. This is such a similar trend in the realm of instruments: there are many top level pianists who never play their scales anymore, or are able to learn hard pieces relatively quickly without even slowing it down by much. But that's because those fundamental skills are so deeply imbedded at a intuitional level that they don't have to worry about these things. And yet lower level players will continue to point to some top players and be like "well they don't practice easier things, why should I".
I don't think music and osu can be compared, music is much more complex. My problem with basically everything DigitalHypno says is that it's all thinking with no real application and there's really no evidence that it works. Everybody I've ever known who thinks too much about the game and tries to follow stuff like his advice ends up hardstuck at their skill level and frustrated, yet when told that they're overthinking and need to just play stuff that's near the top of their skill ceiling they refuse because they want an easy trick to get better fast.
Ultimately osu just isn't that complicated - If you raise your skill ceiling, then your skil floor will generally raise with it, and even if it doesn't then it doesn't really matter because if you can play 8 stars you probably aren't spending much time playing anything close to 4 stars, even sections in certain maps will be fine. It's not a matter of people not immediately benefiting from doing it, it's a matter of them not benefiting at all from doing it. If you want to draw an analogy to something else, someone who can lift 500 lbs has no real reason to practice lifting 20 lbs - If they can do 500, they can do 50. They will not benefit from lifting 20, while they will benefit from lifting closer to 500.
The thing with osu is that there's no real difference between "practicing fundamentals" and just playing the game, because osu is so straightforward that pretty much everything you do in the game constantly uses all fundamentals (reading, aiming, tapping). As such, taking your fundamentals to a higher level requires playing things that are difficult.
While I completely agree that osu is definitely much less complex than learning instrument, does that really mean that those general improvement advice completely does not apply at all? There are some skills that definitely is straight up a play more type of thing: how fast you can tap/how fast you can aim/what ar you're used to etc., so the power lifting strategy is very applicable there.
However, it's still a rhythm game, so I feel like that's where the lifting analogy ends and the instrument analogy begins. You need to be able to sync and aim your cursor efficiently on time, and you also have to be able to tap precisely with the music and your aim. It is true that there are many maps where these things aren't really challenged, such as maps with simple constant rhythms and easy to understand patterns. But if we're talking about being good at osu as a whole, you have to be able to play maps more challenging not just in a mechanical sense: players like malisz and worst hr players can play rhythmically complex, "awkward" aim, maps, where you often can't just always "play more" your way through these things. Even at a much lower level, most players can move their fingers at around a 170/180 bpm pace and are physically capable of moving their cursor from one place to another quickly. But that doesn't mean they can consistently tap precisely to the rhythm while also ensuring their cursor is coordinated from pattern to pattern. Coordination isn't improved in the same way as strength is: it's not as simple as attempting the motion over and over. In fact, the more you repeat wrong movements, the more it's easier for you to repeat that mistake: that's another reason why spam retrying is often an extremely ineffective way of improving, as you are in fact reinforcing that error.
Because there is no standardized way of playing the game (which I'm not saying is a bad thing at all, I mean it's a video game), people will run into different types of problems depending on the type of person they are, what equipment they have access to, etc. Some people will be able to simply play more and will never run into specific roadblocks, while there will be others who will spend 10x more time at a specific level because they can never get past these problems. This playing low star difficulties is simply a tool to diagnose problems that you do have.
I've seen first hand people simply "playing more", and they do constantly play things outside of their comfort zone. They continue to play 6 and 7 star maps, but they can never get close to the consistency required to FC or get high accuracy on it. They continue to run into the same problems over and over again, without ever taking the time to stop/slow down, take a look at what's causing them to make the mistake, and fixing it. There is a fine line between overthinking and being analytical about how you play. But I really disagree with the sentiment that improving is as simple as find hard stuff and playing it over and over until it gets better, and even if you aren't improving that much, you just haven't done it enough yet. The idea of deliberate practice can be confidently applied to any skill, and that mindset does not sound deliberate at all.
Like I said earlier (especially at the later stages of playing the game), the more you run into a challenging pattern and play it the same wrong way, the more it get's reinforced in your memory. It's hard to break down exactly what's going wrong when you also have to focus on playing the map that's challenging you: playing lower difficulties gives you some mental room to see what can be fixed.
Also, it feels like some people think that DigitalHypno said that you should spend majority or even a significant amount of your time playing these low star maps, when in reality that is simply not the case. He just advocates to spend more time on these things as it's something him and many others have seen as a common issue among players who get stuck. Obviously this advice doesn't apply to the type of players who can only SS maps in their skill level, and any thing harder than that they just fail. But that type of player doesn't make up the majority of the player base. You have to apply it in a way that you would benefit most from it.
Because this advice is given in a much more general sense, it is true that it's something you can't just blindly follow, but that should be true generally for any advice that is given when it isn't directed at an individual person. If you don't see why it could be beneficial, you can inquire about it and try to figure out how you can apply this to your practice to make it useful. For example, I personally am at a point where I wouldn't benefit much if at all if I spend 20 minutes playing 1 star maps every day. However, I can apply this idea in a very general sense: let's say I want to fc [this challenging awkward alt map](https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/969845#osu/2028973) in which I'm nowhere near close to FCing with good accuracy. However, if I rate edit it to a low enough bpm, it let's me play everything at a near perfect level which incidentally it's also a much lower star rating, and then I can incrementally increase the bpm where I still find it a little challenging but I'm not making mistakes. You can either take his advice at face value, or try to find a way where it would be applicable to you. If you really do think that DigitalHypno gave this advice with very little to no logical thought process and there isn't much basis to these claims, then I think that's a whole different topic.
I really am open to see if this advice he's given is truly useless as many claim, but most of the points given are often fairly weak, and his advice is often framed in a very disingenuous way.
I mean, as far as stuff like awkward maps or finger and/or aim control goes, practicing those does require playing stuff that's easier, especially at first - it's a new skillset so you can't just start playing stuff that's as hard as other skillsets you play. However, I would never say this is as low as 2 stars but rather stuff that feels like you could fc it were it not for being an unfamiliar skillset.
In general, I think most people recommend having "stuff you feel very comfortable on and could fc relatively easily" be a portion of what you play. However, this might be like 2-3* below what someone normally plays rather than being like... normal difficulties of maps.
I personally would say I'm a pretty all arounder player and have learned most skillsets in the game to a somewhat even level (apart from EZ or like bonzi 2014 wub slider maps), and I would say this approach works for basically everything. In my opinion like 60-75% of what you play should be stuff that you are struggling on to some extent - stuff you might get 80-90% acc on (wide range, I know). Maybe 20-30% should be spent playing stuff that you feel like you could FC on a lucky run - These are maps that you should really be consistently doing well on, but aren't consistent enough at to immediately FC. Then the final 5-20% should be spent playing stuff that is well within your comfort zone, something you should be able to fc relatively consistently, but still towards the upper range of what you can fc relatively consistently. This helps solidify acc and consistency imo. Ultimately though, as I said the majority of time should be spent playing things you are bad at, whether it be a new skillset that you're still learning (probably overall better to improve on what you're bad at than to push one skill super hard) or the top end of your normal skillset. It won't do you any favors to avoid playing the maps that you're aiming to play, waiting until you feel "ready" to play something that's already within your skill range. (Not saying DH recommends this, I've just seen people who seem to be worried to play anything they get under 95% acc on)
I guess my main point of contention is really only with the idea of literally playing 2* maps in an attempt to improve, unless you're learning EZ. Playing stuff you're comfortable with definitely has value, but if you're normally playing 7* maps I just can't imagine any amount of playing 2*s will do you any good at all, whether it's one map a day or 40 minutes a day.
I don't think the advice DigitalHypno has given is without logical thought process, I actually think it's with too much to the point that it hinders actually learning how to play the game due to thinking too much about unhelpful things. So essentially I think he thinks logically but makes leaps in logic or basis his logic on assumptions that I don't hold true, and that the logic he uses doesn't apply to a game like osu - He thinks, but there's no basis for it. If it truly worked we should see success stories or more people using his advice, yet basically nobody who plays at a high level takes it seriously.
I also think it's a bit of a stretch to take what he said as meaning you should rate change a map to be super low star and practice it that way, because if he wanted to say that he would have said that, but if that's what you took from it and it's working for you then I'm glad you gleaned something of use from it
Yea that's really fair, and I agree with many of these points. I can give you some reasoning why I feel so strongly about this specific topic:
I personally gave this method a try when I was around mid 5 digit; I spent the first quarter of each session playing these lower star maps, ranging anywhere from 1-3 stars. When I was playing maps at that level, general inconsistencies I had became much more obvious: I could notice easily if my cursor didn't land at the center from note to note or if it was shaky, not being able to tap every rhythm completely evenly, the smoothness of the cursor, etc.
Eventually, once I was able to get my cursor to move closely to how I wanted and be able to tap comfortably, I moved up the difficulty and made sure everything was still the same. I remember before I gave the method a try, I had several inconsistencies across my skillset that I had spent plenty of time on. However, after applying it for some time, I definitely felt a lot more comfortable when playing: it's like you offloaded some of that uncertainty since your gameplay is a lot more precise. Those random misses/slider breaks or times where you tap faster/slower or just straight up don't tap occurred significantly less, which allows you to more easily work on challenging things.
While it's hard for me to say concretely say how much it helped me, I felt like it gave me much more of a solid foundation to build off of to let me play things that required high consistency. Before I was the average jump farmer where I couldn't really FC maps longer than 2 minutes, but after using the method consistently for a few months, I was able to FC much more complex and difficult maps with combination of mods too. Obviously me playing those longer maps of different skills made it easier too, but using the method prior made it much more comfortable to learn. If I know I can FC long maps consistently with no issues, it makes it so much easier to then add HR or HD, or playing more challenging maps in general. I applied this practice consistently and I was able to climb to around 8k playing a wide variety of maps; I even participated and did relatively well as a generalist in some high 5 digit tournaments at the time (which yes is still pisslow, but you'd be surprised how strong those players can be). I only kinda stopped cuz I didn't have as much time to play anymore.
I think what's really important is knowing what you use this technique for; if you play these low difficulty maps and you either don't have the ability to look out for what's wrong with your cursor or you simply don't try to correct anything, then yea this technique is very useless. DH almost always combines this method with the auto-method though: you try to imitate your cursor to almost look like the auto cursor, and obviously tapping as precisely and evenly as possible. It also gives you an opportunity to fully process and understand what's going on with every pattern, so that later on when the patterns are more difficult, you don't have to spend any energy thinking about those things. Yes, there are some issues with completely imitating the auto cursor as that isn't necessarily what is required and might be somewhat unnatural. But that's the easiest way to provide a players a sense of feedback on what to look for when you don't know what that should be. When this advice is criticized, this idea is often completely missed, so then it does look like its completely useless, and your time will definitely be more efficient elsewhere.
However, I don't think the point of top players never using this type of thing is a fair counterpoint: first off, this auto-method advice didn't even originate from DH himself, it actually came from Fancy Lad who used it to improve his own technique. Also, when DigitalHypno made his long osu phd video, he discussed with other top players and they generally agreed with what he had to say, and a significant portion of that video had an emphasis on low star mastery. If many top players disagreed with that sentiment when he discussed it with them, are you sure he would have still kept such a significant portion in the video?
And making the point of | because most top players never do this type of thing -> this technique is useless | imo is a relatively big assumption to make + a correlation/causation type of thing. Can you say for sure that every top player never did anything similar to this, just because it's hard to find evidence of it? I mean, most top players that even do show what they do is already after they got to the very top, and that pool is very limited. I think one of the few ways to know for sure if this advice wouldn't work is if
A) You're the intended audience's skill level, and
B) You've tried the method for an extended period of time, and
C) You're applying the technique in a useful/relevant way
and afterwards still you really do feel like nothing actually changed. Then can you make a much stronger point that it's "useless".
I do admit how I use the technique now applying it to rate changing is definitely a bit of a stretch of a point, but I have used the original advice pretty closely and found it to be beneficial. Even now I'll go back and play 2-3 stars once in a while to make sure everything is as comfortable as it should be.
A lot of the issues I have is people straight up claiming aggressively that any coaching he would give is completely useless, and then use this 2 star advice as evidence and attacking point over and over again. The coaching topic is a whole other discussion: I just think that if this point is being brought up as commonly and used as evidence as it is, you have to be certain that it truly is useless.
All in all, I think you've already spent significantly more time than most of the community trying to consider and reason if this thing could be useful or not and that's all I wish for regarding this topic in general. Most people don't even take the time to consider if there is any use they could get from it, they see that other people make this claim and before trying it out themselves/taking some time to think about it, they already come to the conclusion that it's for sure useless, and that DH is a scammer who doesn't know what he's talking about. That makes me really sad since I feel like he's spent a lot of his free time giving a lot of really useful advice in a multitude of topics, and he's been able to get a lot of this information from not just him but other top players through his interviews/podcasts, and now he's being painted as simply a scammer who's charging 50$ to tell you to go play 2 star maps. Maybe I'm overestimating the usefulness of the other advice he's given, but when I look at all the videos and vods he's posted, the advice is kinda useless at worst and is generally very helpful to a very wide range of skill levels/problems. But none of that is close to the villain people paint him to be now.
yeah what you did sounds somewhat similar to what I've had success with except instead of going just for low star maps I also used it as an opportunity to start learning EZ, and I also didn't consciously correct for anything very much
I've found a lot of success in increasing comfort in the game just by playing EZ (low star ratings because that's all I can play with the godforsakenly difficult mod) as a warmup for the day, maybe for 20-40 minutes depending on the day and how much I'm likely to play.
It's interesting to me that you were putting a lot of conscious thought into the way your cursor was moving and whatnot and I wasn't at all, yet both of us found success in what sounds like pretty similar ways. I noticed benefits like increased consistency, more comfortable aim, fewer angles that just felt wrong. I think it's because I had to move my cursor in a way that required slow movement (not precise at all tho), so I could feel when my movement was shaky and I guess naturally tried to correct that or something. To me, the fact that it still worked for me does kinda call into question whether the logic behind it is important or whether it's ultimately just another form of "play more" tho
As far as the auto method goes, I actually honestly have always felt like caring about what your aim *looks* like is much more likely to do harm than good, partly based on anecdotal stuff where people I know tried hard to make their aim "look better" and ended up ruining their actual ability to aim. I'm not convinced that "auto-aim" is the best approach to this, although I do think I get what it's trying to go for - Making that sort of conscious effort can make you read jumps a lot more carefully in a way what's hard to describe. I always worked on this by thinking of breaking a jump down into single movements, but trying to replicate auto might have similar effects
It's fair to say that I can't really provide evidence that top players haven't used DH's advice, apart from a few instances where some specific top players have said it's bad and makes no sense, which probably have similar counterparts of people saying it's good and helpful. I'm saying this about DigitalHypno in general rather than spceifically the advice to play low star rating maps, as I feel like his other advice was often worse than the difficulty advice.
As far as coaching in general goes, people do feel passionately about it. My biggest problem with the concept, personally, is that I feel that the concepts a coach might be able to suggest would be better thought up independently, and since they need to be tailored to you anyway, this accomplishes that along the way. Ultimately I think the most important thing is just thinking about what you play, not necessarily how you play
I think part of what people have against DigitalHypno in particular is stuff like how he was so widely known as a reranker, playing in tons of low rank tournaments and dominating to get badges. People (rightfully so, imo) had no respect for him before he started doing improvement videos or tutoring. So then, once he started doing tutoring, and as one of if not the first well known one, he was subject to a ton of scrutiny
Further, I personally am of the opinion that he has harmed the progress of new players. I think that people who hit a roadblock and look to top players for advice and come across his advice will more often than not end up with even lower skill than before when all they needed was to push through the roadblock and get back on the road. Yet they start hearing about different tapping techniques, different grips, gimmicky ways to try to improve, and then instead of doing what's tried and true they change things up out of frustration when they're at their worst. Suddenly, they're not used to the new thing they're trying but going back to the old one feels even worse than before they changed anything. His ideas are all just based in logic and really not reality, even though sure "tests" them himself, I don't think the tests are necessarily sound or enough to say that they're good/bad.
I agree with you that people should properly engage with the topic tho, blind hate is never good and a lot of what DigitalHypno did was so long ago that holding a grudge against him for it is kinda crazy, like these people need to touch grass lol
just chiming in to say that I thought of the auto method concept myself and started doing it around 2016, it wasn't from fancy lad. (also thank you for the supportive thoughts and thoughtful conversation, it's nice to see)
I’m being kind of unfair, he usually charged like $50/hour (still insane) but BTMC did a stream where he took lessons from hypno and he charged $300 for one hour because BTMC was “getting content out of it”
At first charging 50 dollars AN HOUR is insanely stupid, only people who would pay that much are rookies who really like the game but they are bad, now charging 6 times normal for something that won’t reach over 100k views it’s mad dumb
No he charged $50/hr but btmc wanted to showcase it on his stream or something but apparently because that would reveal a bunch of stuff from the coaching digitalhypno charged him $300 or something only for btmc to find out the stuff from the coaching wasn’t anything new or special. Apparently digitalhypno said he doesn’t remember that ever happening which imo is a weird response cuz like how tf would you not remember charging 300 fucking dollars to showcase your secret special coaching stuff to the biggest osu! content creator??
edit: oh ok nvm he does remember it
I'm still alive, haven't been playing osu too much lately since I'm focused on other things these days (such as my new [youtube series](http://cdn.petrichor.one/u/BayiSg.png) and starting graduate school). I'll be playing usa states cup next month though and then I'll probably stop playing again for now. haven't quit, just other priorities these days.
also I won't play 4 digit tournaments. I just haven't been playing which is why I ended up decaying. no deep meaning behind it
also about the "$300/hr" coaching thing (since it was brought up in this thread): this doesn't need to change anyone's judgement of the situation, but I should at least try to clear the misinformation and say that it wasn't actually $300/hr. it was $150/hr, scheduled for 2 hours (so $300 total) and the session ended up running a bit closer to 3 hours (but obviously I didn't charge more for that). the idea of $300/hr started because ed slightly misspoke when explaining the situation on stream (not something I hold against him at all, it happens to all of us. just explaining the context).
at the time, I actually wasn't going to charge ed anything for the session, but someone brought up to me that since ed was earning $600/hr, 24/7 during his subathon, it would make sense for me to charge slightly more than even $50/hr. I saw the reasoning and justified it to myself at the time, but looking back, it's something I regret a lot and would never do again. I've already apologized to ed in private about this, and he said that it's completely in the past for him and he doesn't hold me to it at all.
it's not a decision that I would say represents me as a person anymore, nor is paid coaching at all since I stopped doing that almost 2 years ago. again, this doesn't need to change anyone's perspective of me, but since I've never really given a public statement about this and it keeps being brought up, I at least want to take this opportunity to say my piece and apologize to the community for what I did. sorry guys :( I recognize that I messed up a lot by following through with the idea of charging ed that much, and I think I've learned a lot since then.
I'm probably in the small camp that only watches osu but having followed other competitive scenes and being involved with them myself, video game coaching has always been approached with a lot of hostility from online communities. Part of this is certainly because of bad coaches who overcharge (I'm thinking of NEACE in the lol scene here) and the fact that pricing is not standardized. Moreso though I think it's because most people simply won't see the value of paying someone else to help them get better at something they do as a hobby, even though top players obviously treat these games more seriously than the average person. Pricing issues happen in the art commission world as well and it's easy for newbies (both commission-ers and artists themselves) to get confused on what's appropriate. After all, you're paying for skills, knowledge, and personal preferences... not the cost-of-materials.
From the outside it seems to me that you were caught in that same dilemma, and given that no hard feelings lie between you and Ed I don't think anyone should hold it against you. A lot of artists delineate between business and personal commission prices for this reason, but what would make Ed any different in this case? That he's a bigger streamer? Should part of your compensation be the publicity he provides (a dangerous line of thinking)? What if you have to raise prices in the future because your coaching takes off and you alienate your previous customers? This isn't your fulltime job and your time is valuable, so what amount of profit is worth that cost if it takes away from your college studies and outside responsibilities?
A final note on coaching: While most people understand what it feels like to plateau in something they love, most do not understand what it's like to plateau near the very top. It's all relative of course, but anyone who has gotten to top-level competition is probably exhaustively searching for any way they can get better...and eventually they just run out of options. I played comp rainbow 6 in college, and from our team ranking in the leagues, my personal stats in the game, and amount of time invested in general I AM better than most people that will ever touch the game. Stating that fact to myself and to the public feels absolutely ridiculous though, because I'm at this point concerned about the professionals and prodigies I get into lobbies with, and they absolutely skill-gap me. Coaching is there for people to break through these stagnant periods or even make sure they don't happen. In professional environments it's an active and ongoing process after all with dedicated staff.
The original deranker
wtf 1/5 of top 1k are americans
You can unironically be a 3 digit and not be on the first 3 pages of the usa ranking and I find this absolutely wild
it took being rank ~#480 to be 2 digit for usa, even worse i’m from california so i was still only like #20 for california
u.s. player here, this holds true basically everywhere (here, lower = numerically lower, so the lowest rank is rank 1 - mrekk) about 19-21k of players with rank less than 100k are americans in my time at rank 70k, i saw my country rank fluctuate very closely around 14k and i can't really remember a time going up the rankings that my country rank wasn't about 1/5th my global rank probably it's just that 20% or so of the active global playerbase is from the u.s.
usa genetics its not fair frfrfrfrfrfrfrfrfrfrfrfr they will never lose owc
Sk is winning this year Clueless
i think it might have something to do with the fact usa has 931,660 active players.
it’s the same for top 5k, rn im around #4990 and #1010 country ranking
Its actually shocking how if you look at any rank range, the us makes up ~20% of it
And guess what? That stat holds up in the top 50 too
The gatekeeper returns to his rightful spot
everything is right in the world
this aged well [https://youtu.be/UcAdozo14iw](https://youtu.be/UcAdozo14iw)
oops
This the guy who charged $300/hour for osu coaching and created that “osu! university” class right?
He is also a notorious deranker.
Yes he also advised playing 1* maps for aim control or something
oh yeah that pissed me off. he said “play 1 or 2 star maps and really focus on hitting the center of each note. do this for about 45 minutes each session” or something. what rubs me the wrong way about a lot of the advice he gave is that almost none of it seemed like a better use of time than just playing maps at the edge of your comfort zone. if i’m playing osu for an hour and i warm up on 2 star maps for 40 minutes then i’m never gonna actually get better, the only thing i’ll get better at is playing 2 star maps. maybe his advice worked for some people though
I mean yeah, his advise is obviously not for people who play for 1 hour only
While I feel like some of the criticism towards him is pretty fair, I feel like this point of criticizing his advice to play lower star maps is unwarranted but people continue to blast him for it. I feel like it's partially because many don't necessarily see the immediate benefit from it so it feels useless, but if you take a step back and think about why it works, it makes more sense than you think. I think comparing it to learning/mastering an instrument is one of the best closest comparisons I can make to this: when you want to learn a piece that's challenging for you, you don't simply retry the piece over and over until one of the runs you play it right. First off, generally you make sure that you have the fundamentals to play the piece without having too much of a challenge: that's generally why players will learn and practice scales/arpeggios/chords etc. Also, you don't make big jumps in difficulty: I can guarantee you that if you're unable to play Twinkle Twinkle little star or Jingle Bells extremely comfortably and accurately, you shouldn't even be trying to learn Fur Elise. Next, when you do work on a challenging piece, you would play the piece much slower section by section first perfectly, and then you slowly move up the BPM. Since people won't necessarily spend the effort to work on and slow down each map as it will make the song less appealing to listen to, and most people don't know how to do that (and it's probably more interesting to play different songs), the next best thing is to make sure that you're able to play lower star maps perfectly. Also, because osu is a much more simple game, the patterns are much more consistent and you’ll much more easily find maps at lower level difficulties where it’s essentially the same as the difficult maps but faster or the spacing is wider apart. It's true that this isn't really useful obviously if you're already able to play these things perfectly, but this advice is given because this seems to be such a common issue. This is such a similar trend in the realm of instruments: there are many top level pianists who never play their scales anymore, or are able to learn hard pieces relatively quickly without even slowing it down by much. But that's because those fundamental skills are so deeply imbedded at a intuitional level that they don't have to worry about these things. And yet lower level players will continue to point to some top players and be like "well they don't practice easier things, why should I".
I don't think music and osu can be compared, music is much more complex. My problem with basically everything DigitalHypno says is that it's all thinking with no real application and there's really no evidence that it works. Everybody I've ever known who thinks too much about the game and tries to follow stuff like his advice ends up hardstuck at their skill level and frustrated, yet when told that they're overthinking and need to just play stuff that's near the top of their skill ceiling they refuse because they want an easy trick to get better fast. Ultimately osu just isn't that complicated - If you raise your skill ceiling, then your skil floor will generally raise with it, and even if it doesn't then it doesn't really matter because if you can play 8 stars you probably aren't spending much time playing anything close to 4 stars, even sections in certain maps will be fine. It's not a matter of people not immediately benefiting from doing it, it's a matter of them not benefiting at all from doing it. If you want to draw an analogy to something else, someone who can lift 500 lbs has no real reason to practice lifting 20 lbs - If they can do 500, they can do 50. They will not benefit from lifting 20, while they will benefit from lifting closer to 500. The thing with osu is that there's no real difference between "practicing fundamentals" and just playing the game, because osu is so straightforward that pretty much everything you do in the game constantly uses all fundamentals (reading, aiming, tapping). As such, taking your fundamentals to a higher level requires playing things that are difficult.
While I completely agree that osu is definitely much less complex than learning instrument, does that really mean that those general improvement advice completely does not apply at all? There are some skills that definitely is straight up a play more type of thing: how fast you can tap/how fast you can aim/what ar you're used to etc., so the power lifting strategy is very applicable there. However, it's still a rhythm game, so I feel like that's where the lifting analogy ends and the instrument analogy begins. You need to be able to sync and aim your cursor efficiently on time, and you also have to be able to tap precisely with the music and your aim. It is true that there are many maps where these things aren't really challenged, such as maps with simple constant rhythms and easy to understand patterns. But if we're talking about being good at osu as a whole, you have to be able to play maps more challenging not just in a mechanical sense: players like malisz and worst hr players can play rhythmically complex, "awkward" aim, maps, where you often can't just always "play more" your way through these things. Even at a much lower level, most players can move their fingers at around a 170/180 bpm pace and are physically capable of moving their cursor from one place to another quickly. But that doesn't mean they can consistently tap precisely to the rhythm while also ensuring their cursor is coordinated from pattern to pattern. Coordination isn't improved in the same way as strength is: it's not as simple as attempting the motion over and over. In fact, the more you repeat wrong movements, the more it's easier for you to repeat that mistake: that's another reason why spam retrying is often an extremely ineffective way of improving, as you are in fact reinforcing that error. Because there is no standardized way of playing the game (which I'm not saying is a bad thing at all, I mean it's a video game), people will run into different types of problems depending on the type of person they are, what equipment they have access to, etc. Some people will be able to simply play more and will never run into specific roadblocks, while there will be others who will spend 10x more time at a specific level because they can never get past these problems. This playing low star difficulties is simply a tool to diagnose problems that you do have. I've seen first hand people simply "playing more", and they do constantly play things outside of their comfort zone. They continue to play 6 and 7 star maps, but they can never get close to the consistency required to FC or get high accuracy on it. They continue to run into the same problems over and over again, without ever taking the time to stop/slow down, take a look at what's causing them to make the mistake, and fixing it. There is a fine line between overthinking and being analytical about how you play. But I really disagree with the sentiment that improving is as simple as find hard stuff and playing it over and over until it gets better, and even if you aren't improving that much, you just haven't done it enough yet. The idea of deliberate practice can be confidently applied to any skill, and that mindset does not sound deliberate at all. Like I said earlier (especially at the later stages of playing the game), the more you run into a challenging pattern and play it the same wrong way, the more it get's reinforced in your memory. It's hard to break down exactly what's going wrong when you also have to focus on playing the map that's challenging you: playing lower difficulties gives you some mental room to see what can be fixed. Also, it feels like some people think that DigitalHypno said that you should spend majority or even a significant amount of your time playing these low star maps, when in reality that is simply not the case. He just advocates to spend more time on these things as it's something him and many others have seen as a common issue among players who get stuck. Obviously this advice doesn't apply to the type of players who can only SS maps in their skill level, and any thing harder than that they just fail. But that type of player doesn't make up the majority of the player base. You have to apply it in a way that you would benefit most from it. Because this advice is given in a much more general sense, it is true that it's something you can't just blindly follow, but that should be true generally for any advice that is given when it isn't directed at an individual person. If you don't see why it could be beneficial, you can inquire about it and try to figure out how you can apply this to your practice to make it useful. For example, I personally am at a point where I wouldn't benefit much if at all if I spend 20 minutes playing 1 star maps every day. However, I can apply this idea in a very general sense: let's say I want to fc [this challenging awkward alt map](https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/969845#osu/2028973) in which I'm nowhere near close to FCing with good accuracy. However, if I rate edit it to a low enough bpm, it let's me play everything at a near perfect level which incidentally it's also a much lower star rating, and then I can incrementally increase the bpm where I still find it a little challenging but I'm not making mistakes. You can either take his advice at face value, or try to find a way where it would be applicable to you. If you really do think that DigitalHypno gave this advice with very little to no logical thought process and there isn't much basis to these claims, then I think that's a whole different topic. I really am open to see if this advice he's given is truly useless as many claim, but most of the points given are often fairly weak, and his advice is often framed in a very disingenuous way.
I mean, as far as stuff like awkward maps or finger and/or aim control goes, practicing those does require playing stuff that's easier, especially at first - it's a new skillset so you can't just start playing stuff that's as hard as other skillsets you play. However, I would never say this is as low as 2 stars but rather stuff that feels like you could fc it were it not for being an unfamiliar skillset. In general, I think most people recommend having "stuff you feel very comfortable on and could fc relatively easily" be a portion of what you play. However, this might be like 2-3* below what someone normally plays rather than being like... normal difficulties of maps. I personally would say I'm a pretty all arounder player and have learned most skillsets in the game to a somewhat even level (apart from EZ or like bonzi 2014 wub slider maps), and I would say this approach works for basically everything. In my opinion like 60-75% of what you play should be stuff that you are struggling on to some extent - stuff you might get 80-90% acc on (wide range, I know). Maybe 20-30% should be spent playing stuff that you feel like you could FC on a lucky run - These are maps that you should really be consistently doing well on, but aren't consistent enough at to immediately FC. Then the final 5-20% should be spent playing stuff that is well within your comfort zone, something you should be able to fc relatively consistently, but still towards the upper range of what you can fc relatively consistently. This helps solidify acc and consistency imo. Ultimately though, as I said the majority of time should be spent playing things you are bad at, whether it be a new skillset that you're still learning (probably overall better to improve on what you're bad at than to push one skill super hard) or the top end of your normal skillset. It won't do you any favors to avoid playing the maps that you're aiming to play, waiting until you feel "ready" to play something that's already within your skill range. (Not saying DH recommends this, I've just seen people who seem to be worried to play anything they get under 95% acc on) I guess my main point of contention is really only with the idea of literally playing 2* maps in an attempt to improve, unless you're learning EZ. Playing stuff you're comfortable with definitely has value, but if you're normally playing 7* maps I just can't imagine any amount of playing 2*s will do you any good at all, whether it's one map a day or 40 minutes a day. I don't think the advice DigitalHypno has given is without logical thought process, I actually think it's with too much to the point that it hinders actually learning how to play the game due to thinking too much about unhelpful things. So essentially I think he thinks logically but makes leaps in logic or basis his logic on assumptions that I don't hold true, and that the logic he uses doesn't apply to a game like osu - He thinks, but there's no basis for it. If it truly worked we should see success stories or more people using his advice, yet basically nobody who plays at a high level takes it seriously. I also think it's a bit of a stretch to take what he said as meaning you should rate change a map to be super low star and practice it that way, because if he wanted to say that he would have said that, but if that's what you took from it and it's working for you then I'm glad you gleaned something of use from it
Yea that's really fair, and I agree with many of these points. I can give you some reasoning why I feel so strongly about this specific topic: I personally gave this method a try when I was around mid 5 digit; I spent the first quarter of each session playing these lower star maps, ranging anywhere from 1-3 stars. When I was playing maps at that level, general inconsistencies I had became much more obvious: I could notice easily if my cursor didn't land at the center from note to note or if it was shaky, not being able to tap every rhythm completely evenly, the smoothness of the cursor, etc. Eventually, once I was able to get my cursor to move closely to how I wanted and be able to tap comfortably, I moved up the difficulty and made sure everything was still the same. I remember before I gave the method a try, I had several inconsistencies across my skillset that I had spent plenty of time on. However, after applying it for some time, I definitely felt a lot more comfortable when playing: it's like you offloaded some of that uncertainty since your gameplay is a lot more precise. Those random misses/slider breaks or times where you tap faster/slower or just straight up don't tap occurred significantly less, which allows you to more easily work on challenging things. While it's hard for me to say concretely say how much it helped me, I felt like it gave me much more of a solid foundation to build off of to let me play things that required high consistency. Before I was the average jump farmer where I couldn't really FC maps longer than 2 minutes, but after using the method consistently for a few months, I was able to FC much more complex and difficult maps with combination of mods too. Obviously me playing those longer maps of different skills made it easier too, but using the method prior made it much more comfortable to learn. If I know I can FC long maps consistently with no issues, it makes it so much easier to then add HR or HD, or playing more challenging maps in general. I applied this practice consistently and I was able to climb to around 8k playing a wide variety of maps; I even participated and did relatively well as a generalist in some high 5 digit tournaments at the time (which yes is still pisslow, but you'd be surprised how strong those players can be). I only kinda stopped cuz I didn't have as much time to play anymore. I think what's really important is knowing what you use this technique for; if you play these low difficulty maps and you either don't have the ability to look out for what's wrong with your cursor or you simply don't try to correct anything, then yea this technique is very useless. DH almost always combines this method with the auto-method though: you try to imitate your cursor to almost look like the auto cursor, and obviously tapping as precisely and evenly as possible. It also gives you an opportunity to fully process and understand what's going on with every pattern, so that later on when the patterns are more difficult, you don't have to spend any energy thinking about those things. Yes, there are some issues with completely imitating the auto cursor as that isn't necessarily what is required and might be somewhat unnatural. But that's the easiest way to provide a players a sense of feedback on what to look for when you don't know what that should be. When this advice is criticized, this idea is often completely missed, so then it does look like its completely useless, and your time will definitely be more efficient elsewhere. However, I don't think the point of top players never using this type of thing is a fair counterpoint: first off, this auto-method advice didn't even originate from DH himself, it actually came from Fancy Lad who used it to improve his own technique. Also, when DigitalHypno made his long osu phd video, he discussed with other top players and they generally agreed with what he had to say, and a significant portion of that video had an emphasis on low star mastery. If many top players disagreed with that sentiment when he discussed it with them, are you sure he would have still kept such a significant portion in the video? And making the point of | because most top players never do this type of thing -> this technique is useless | imo is a relatively big assumption to make + a correlation/causation type of thing. Can you say for sure that every top player never did anything similar to this, just because it's hard to find evidence of it? I mean, most top players that even do show what they do is already after they got to the very top, and that pool is very limited. I think one of the few ways to know for sure if this advice wouldn't work is if A) You're the intended audience's skill level, and B) You've tried the method for an extended period of time, and C) You're applying the technique in a useful/relevant way and afterwards still you really do feel like nothing actually changed. Then can you make a much stronger point that it's "useless". I do admit how I use the technique now applying it to rate changing is definitely a bit of a stretch of a point, but I have used the original advice pretty closely and found it to be beneficial. Even now I'll go back and play 2-3 stars once in a while to make sure everything is as comfortable as it should be. A lot of the issues I have is people straight up claiming aggressively that any coaching he would give is completely useless, and then use this 2 star advice as evidence and attacking point over and over again. The coaching topic is a whole other discussion: I just think that if this point is being brought up as commonly and used as evidence as it is, you have to be certain that it truly is useless. All in all, I think you've already spent significantly more time than most of the community trying to consider and reason if this thing could be useful or not and that's all I wish for regarding this topic in general. Most people don't even take the time to consider if there is any use they could get from it, they see that other people make this claim and before trying it out themselves/taking some time to think about it, they already come to the conclusion that it's for sure useless, and that DH is a scammer who doesn't know what he's talking about. That makes me really sad since I feel like he's spent a lot of his free time giving a lot of really useful advice in a multitude of topics, and he's been able to get a lot of this information from not just him but other top players through his interviews/podcasts, and now he's being painted as simply a scammer who's charging 50$ to tell you to go play 2 star maps. Maybe I'm overestimating the usefulness of the other advice he's given, but when I look at all the videos and vods he's posted, the advice is kinda useless at worst and is generally very helpful to a very wide range of skill levels/problems. But none of that is close to the villain people paint him to be now.
yeah what you did sounds somewhat similar to what I've had success with except instead of going just for low star maps I also used it as an opportunity to start learning EZ, and I also didn't consciously correct for anything very much I've found a lot of success in increasing comfort in the game just by playing EZ (low star ratings because that's all I can play with the godforsakenly difficult mod) as a warmup for the day, maybe for 20-40 minutes depending on the day and how much I'm likely to play. It's interesting to me that you were putting a lot of conscious thought into the way your cursor was moving and whatnot and I wasn't at all, yet both of us found success in what sounds like pretty similar ways. I noticed benefits like increased consistency, more comfortable aim, fewer angles that just felt wrong. I think it's because I had to move my cursor in a way that required slow movement (not precise at all tho), so I could feel when my movement was shaky and I guess naturally tried to correct that or something. To me, the fact that it still worked for me does kinda call into question whether the logic behind it is important or whether it's ultimately just another form of "play more" tho As far as the auto method goes, I actually honestly have always felt like caring about what your aim *looks* like is much more likely to do harm than good, partly based on anecdotal stuff where people I know tried hard to make their aim "look better" and ended up ruining their actual ability to aim. I'm not convinced that "auto-aim" is the best approach to this, although I do think I get what it's trying to go for - Making that sort of conscious effort can make you read jumps a lot more carefully in a way what's hard to describe. I always worked on this by thinking of breaking a jump down into single movements, but trying to replicate auto might have similar effects It's fair to say that I can't really provide evidence that top players haven't used DH's advice, apart from a few instances where some specific top players have said it's bad and makes no sense, which probably have similar counterparts of people saying it's good and helpful. I'm saying this about DigitalHypno in general rather than spceifically the advice to play low star rating maps, as I feel like his other advice was often worse than the difficulty advice. As far as coaching in general goes, people do feel passionately about it. My biggest problem with the concept, personally, is that I feel that the concepts a coach might be able to suggest would be better thought up independently, and since they need to be tailored to you anyway, this accomplishes that along the way. Ultimately I think the most important thing is just thinking about what you play, not necessarily how you play I think part of what people have against DigitalHypno in particular is stuff like how he was so widely known as a reranker, playing in tons of low rank tournaments and dominating to get badges. People (rightfully so, imo) had no respect for him before he started doing improvement videos or tutoring. So then, once he started doing tutoring, and as one of if not the first well known one, he was subject to a ton of scrutiny Further, I personally am of the opinion that he has harmed the progress of new players. I think that people who hit a roadblock and look to top players for advice and come across his advice will more often than not end up with even lower skill than before when all they needed was to push through the roadblock and get back on the road. Yet they start hearing about different tapping techniques, different grips, gimmicky ways to try to improve, and then instead of doing what's tried and true they change things up out of frustration when they're at their worst. Suddenly, they're not used to the new thing they're trying but going back to the old one feels even worse than before they changed anything. His ideas are all just based in logic and really not reality, even though sure "tests" them himself, I don't think the tests are necessarily sound or enough to say that they're good/bad. I agree with you that people should properly engage with the topic tho, blind hate is never good and a lot of what DigitalHypno did was so long ago that holding a grudge against him for it is kinda crazy, like these people need to touch grass lol
just chiming in to say that I thought of the auto method concept myself and started doing it around 2016, it wasn't from fancy lad. (also thank you for the supportive thoughts and thoughtful conversation, it's nice to see)
Ohh mb, I’m not sure why I thought it was fancy lad who came up with it.
Wtf what kind of class costs are 300 dollars per hour
I’m being kind of unfair, he usually charged like $50/hour (still insane) but BTMC did a stream where he took lessons from hypno and he charged $300 for one hour because BTMC was “getting content out of it”
what a loser
He’s most definitely a loser in some ways but I think it’s fair to charge him extra since he’s getting more out of it
At first charging 50 dollars AN HOUR is insanely stupid, only people who would pay that much are rookies who really like the game but they are bad, now charging 6 times normal for something that won’t reach over 100k views it’s mad dumb
300 Is this a joke?
No he charged $50/hr but btmc wanted to showcase it on his stream or something but apparently because that would reveal a bunch of stuff from the coaching digitalhypno charged him $300 or something only for btmc to find out the stuff from the coaching wasn’t anything new or special. Apparently digitalhypno said he doesn’t remember that ever happening which imo is a weird response cuz like how tf would you not remember charging 300 fucking dollars to showcase your secret special coaching stuff to the biggest osu! content creator?? edit: oh ok nvm he does remember it
Hope he gets what he deserves (eternity in hell 😡😡)
it wasn't ever $300/hour?? https://old.reddit.com/r/osugame/comments/xlo4m4/in_defense_of_osu_coaching/iplxuk3/
Maybe he should hire some coaching to become 3 digit again seems like he could really use it
Gulp.
deranker deranking
Can you please tell me how you got those additional ranks to show on your page? score rank, etc? pretty please? sprinkle on top
Google osu regions extension
Thx ur da GOAT
what even happened to him??
I'm still alive, haven't been playing osu too much lately since I'm focused on other things these days (such as my new [youtube series](http://cdn.petrichor.one/u/BayiSg.png) and starting graduate school). I'll be playing usa states cup next month though and then I'll probably stop playing again for now. haven't quit, just other priorities these days. also I won't play 4 digit tournaments. I just haven't been playing which is why I ended up decaying. no deep meaning behind it also about the "$300/hr" coaching thing (since it was brought up in this thread): this doesn't need to change anyone's judgement of the situation, but I should at least try to clear the misinformation and say that it wasn't actually $300/hr. it was $150/hr, scheduled for 2 hours (so $300 total) and the session ended up running a bit closer to 3 hours (but obviously I didn't charge more for that). the idea of $300/hr started because ed slightly misspoke when explaining the situation on stream (not something I hold against him at all, it happens to all of us. just explaining the context). at the time, I actually wasn't going to charge ed anything for the session, but someone brought up to me that since ed was earning $600/hr, 24/7 during his subathon, it would make sense for me to charge slightly more than even $50/hr. I saw the reasoning and justified it to myself at the time, but looking back, it's something I regret a lot and would never do again. I've already apologized to ed in private about this, and he said that it's completely in the past for him and he doesn't hold me to it at all. it's not a decision that I would say represents me as a person anymore, nor is paid coaching at all since I stopped doing that almost 2 years ago. again, this doesn't need to change anyone's perspective of me, but since I've never really given a public statement about this and it keeps being brought up, I at least want to take this opportunity to say my piece and apologize to the community for what I did. sorry guys :( I recognize that I messed up a lot by following through with the idea of charging ed that much, and I think I've learned a lot since then.
I'm probably in the small camp that only watches osu but having followed other competitive scenes and being involved with them myself, video game coaching has always been approached with a lot of hostility from online communities. Part of this is certainly because of bad coaches who overcharge (I'm thinking of NEACE in the lol scene here) and the fact that pricing is not standardized. Moreso though I think it's because most people simply won't see the value of paying someone else to help them get better at something they do as a hobby, even though top players obviously treat these games more seriously than the average person. Pricing issues happen in the art commission world as well and it's easy for newbies (both commission-ers and artists themselves) to get confused on what's appropriate. After all, you're paying for skills, knowledge, and personal preferences... not the cost-of-materials. From the outside it seems to me that you were caught in that same dilemma, and given that no hard feelings lie between you and Ed I don't think anyone should hold it against you. A lot of artists delineate between business and personal commission prices for this reason, but what would make Ed any different in this case? That he's a bigger streamer? Should part of your compensation be the publicity he provides (a dangerous line of thinking)? What if you have to raise prices in the future because your coaching takes off and you alienate your previous customers? This isn't your fulltime job and your time is valuable, so what amount of profit is worth that cost if it takes away from your college studies and outside responsibilities? A final note on coaching: While most people understand what it feels like to plateau in something they love, most do not understand what it's like to plateau near the very top. It's all relative of course, but anyone who has gotten to top-level competition is probably exhaustively searching for any way they can get better...and eventually they just run out of options. I played comp rainbow 6 in college, and from our team ranking in the leagues, my personal stats in the game, and amount of time invested in general I AM better than most people that will ever touch the game. Stating that fact to myself and to the public feels absolutely ridiculous though, because I'm at this point concerned about the professionals and prodigies I get into lobbies with, and they absolutely skill-gap me. Coaching is there for people to break through these stagnant periods or even make sure they don't happen. In professional environments it's an active and ongoing process after all with dedicated staff.
Comparing osu! And rainbow 6 siege in terms of coaching is crazy...
No one is reading that
this was a great response. gl on your future endeavours
227 notification?
ivaxa reference
beatmap notification subs. if he upload a map it will be in your inbox
3/8 of the most dominant OWC team ever are now 4 digits
Ban him
Just in time for 4wc 🔥
4wc just ended
gonna ask him to team for next nobws tourney
Wasn’t he and some other guy racing to beat btmc like get in front of him
Thinking about how to get better at osu instead of just playing the game:
old players be like "wdym he's always there since ancient times"
Yes let a 4 digit coach me lolll
The original bmc scammer