I just realized that I've now been a member of this site for four years. It doesn't seem like it's been that long, but maybe that's in part because my old computer couldn't handle the game and I had to basically stop playing for a while. Things have certainly changed over the years, but it's still a fun game to pass the time. Back when I started, I was terrible since I had never played a game like this before. I'm much better now -- certainly not one of the best in the game, but I generally do OK as long I'm not playing songs in the hardest third (by difficulty). When I started, I don't think I'd imagine I'd be doing that now or even necessarily playing for this long. I guess that's how good this game is, it keeps you hooked. :)

Recently, I tried out the random song feature that was added to the game, and it's a nice option. I think the game is a bit more fun using it. I usually pick songs to play by looking at my best score spreadsheet, picking a difficulty rank, and selecting songs I can try to improve on. With the random selection set to the range I want, I can play songs around my level without worrying about how well I did on them before, which doesn't influence my choice of what to play. I can do it more for fun than for trying to improve. Often, when I'm trying to improve, I get upset if I don't. Random songs take that aspect away and make it more fun to just play songs. It also makes me play some songs that I haven't played in a long time, which can be good.

My overall rank has been slowly getting worse as I haven't been playing as much lately. I know it's not a really big deal and doesn't mean much, but I would like to try to stay in the top 1000. I guess I'll have to try to play a bit more to maintain my rank. Maybe I can try to catch up more on weekends; I tend to have more free time then.

With a few more easier PCs today, I've brought my AAA bar here to 50. I've got more than that, but the bars here don't count all of the songs in the game. Most of my other PCs/AAAs are on the beginner level skill tokens.

I have mixed feelings about this event as described in the initial post about it. First, I don't like the fact that all of the new songs appearing this week are crazy hard. There aren't a lot of songs at the 11-12 difficulty though, so I guess they were bound to add more sooner or later. Unfortunately, having a lot appear in such a short time is going to kill my hand and prevent normal playing, because my only chance at getting a halfway-decent score on these songs is to mash the heck out of them. And as bad as my scores may be for these songs, I'd rather have something and a rank on them than be dead last on them by not playing them at all.

On the other hand, some of the beta fixes and features becoming public will be a good thing. It sounds like they're useful things and it will be nice to have them available to the general public.

So while the songs are going to be a pain to get through, especially with them constantly getting harder, the release of new features will be welcomed.