New player; big issues

[HaveNoFears]

I'm fairly new to FFR and just now beginning to play songs with an acceptable perfect accuracy. Although I can visibly see my abilities improving, I feel like I'm being held back a lot by a few problem areas. I'm hoping someone can help me out here or at least give me the relief of knowing that I'm not the only one with these problems.

1. My quality of play affects my future quality of play. Say I go halfway through a song and I randomly miss my first note. I can visibly see the resulting string of misses/boos for the remainder of the song. It's becoming a really bad habit of mine where I seemingly become too lazy to even attempt to do well the remainder of the song.

Example: Going for a FC here. You can see I opened up (to my standards) very nicely. And then right towards the end of the song, I get 1 average, then it's shortly followed by a miss, then all of a sudden it's like I'm just aimlessly pressing buttons for the rest of the song. (Sorry to the experts out there... I know you're better than me :P hopefully you can enjoy my awfulness at least.)

2. Getting lazy after a slow section. I don't have any replays of this as I would never even think to save them out of pure embarassment :P but sometimes either during or right after a "slow" section of a song, I'm not at full focus and it really throws off my ability to read when I need it again.

3. Hitting extra keys by accident (Free boos! ). Sometimes I know it's me being distracted by checking the left side for miss/boo counts, other times I just get lazy (problem #2) and then press the wrong keys and quickly adjust to hit the arrow, resulting in a good and a boo and then sometimes I just straight up press an extra key for... no reason? I'd normally say that this is an inability to read fast enough but it happens to me even on really easy songs sometimes.

[Evascythe]

Originally Posted by HaveNoFears

1. My quality of play affects my future quality of play. Say I go halfway through a song and I randomly miss my first note. I can visibly see the resulting string of misses/boos for the remainder of the song. It's becoming a really bad habit of mine where I seemingly become too lazy to even attempt to do well the remainder of the song.

3. Hitting extra keys by accident (Free boos! ). Sometimes I know it's me being distracted by checking the left side for miss/boo counts, other times I just get lazy (problem #2) and then press the wrong keys and quickly adjust to hit the arrow, resulting in a good and a boo and then sometimes I just straight up press an extra key for... no reason? I'd normally say that this is an inability to read fast enough but it happens to me even on really easy songs sometimes.

I do #1 all the time. Usually I'll just restart the song, though. If I'm in a mood (ie. the song is pissing me off) then I'll lazily play through the rest. <______< #3 is annoying... a slow part will come up and my eyes will dart around the screen (hey ADD) and by the time the next set of arrows appear I can't adjust quickly and make a mistake.

[icontrolyourworld]

1. Maintain focus (even in easy parts, you never know when a random hard part can come) and go for FC's while keeping your boos under a certain amount as best you can
2. Consider playing harder songs

For now you're doing good so keep it up!

[TwistedPhoenix]

It helps when you have a bit of a goal to work for. If you're just playing without any motivation, then you don't try hard. I know that I focus a lot more on a song when I'm trying to, say, full combo it, or AAA it. Conversely, on Stepmania, almost all of the time I spend on there is pleasure time, and I'm missing a whole lot more.

[HaveNoFears]

Well I'm trying to improve my perfect accuracy and my ability to read right now. So I've been playing songs that I simply cannot read yet to improve on that, and songs that I can just barely read fast enough to work on my perfects. Then I'd like to start going for some AAA's since all I have right now is like 40 FC's and only 2 AAA's (neither of which are impressive by any means, not even to me lol)

During the replay I was going for an AA, but once I knew that wasn't a possibility my motivation dropped through the floor :/

My overall goal is to just improve so I can begin getting some respectable FC's and AAA's.

[ice_lazer3]

If you find that you glance over at the left where the PA counter is when you get non-perfects, you can hide it by clicking on the arrow above it. That's what I do; if I don't hide the PA counter while I play, it gets way too distracting. I also hide the total number of notes in the bottom right corner (which you can do by going to the settings) because otherwise I glance at it and mess up.

EDIT: As far as improving your overall skill, play songs that are just a bit outside what you can play comfortably. Stuff that you can read but you might not be able to move your fingers fast enough to hit all the notes. And don't get discouraged if you can't FC certain songs, just play some other ones! Don't let it get you down. You will see improvement if you keep at it, trust me.

[prefx]

Don't even WORRY about your accuracy on notes until you're done the song, if you're using the velo engine and have the accuracy window up and in view, you're playing very very wrong and setting yourself up for a ragequit, all as a result of distraction.

[HaveNoFears]

I like to keep it in view so I can check during 'down times'. Unfortunately you're right it has multiple times been the culprit of ending a good start.