How fast did you advance when u wer a noob?

[Arch0wl]

Well for a *long* while the games didn't have marvelous timing so only at the latter half of my playtime for SM was I able to play with marvelous. Without marvelous timing, it makes it very hard to advance quickly timingwise.

The key to getting better is consistancy. You can play 6 hours a week for all I care but if you aren't consistant about how often you play you will never truly get much better. I'm so good because I play it every day, even if for only 5 or 10 songs or whatever, it doesn't matter a whole lot how much in that day I play. Sure, I could be A WHOLE LOT better if I played 2 or 3 times more than I do now, maybe an hour a day, which I kind of scare myself thinking about how good that would be (probably at least a SDG on Gaussian Blur with index's). But I'm perfectly fine with how good I am now.

Everyone says to practice, but no one really gets in depth when they say practice. You gotta be consistant with your practice, not play one long session for 10 hours once a week or whatever.

[Could_Strife007]

Arch read this again I edited it!

Yea you're right, I should practice to be more consistant. I know I havn't gotten good in terms of timing, but I've gotten to the point where i can survive songs that I couldn't have imagined "beating" a month ago.

Thanks for your well thought out answer, I'll definitely practice with the marvelous feature in SM. Now I realize that its not all about how much you play but how you play. (Actually I kind of knew that, but I only played that much because I'm hooked!!! ^_-)

I just played Secret Zombie Room and I realized that I'm not even at the point where I could practice for timing, I survived it, but I couldn't even recognize some of the patterns while I was plaing the song. I gues I was just gawking at the fact that I had over 40,000,000 points[!] and over 500 credits[!] (and 11 secret songs, which I now realize is the maximum and the same thing as getting 550 credits, after reading the "Secret Songs" post in the noob forum). These things don't show how good you are at all though, anyone could achive this if they sat playing as long as I did, the stats that I was crediting so highly are in fact worthless in terms of how much skill you have. I have gotten better at recognizing basic patterns tho, I'll give myself some credit there, but I'll get better.

Thanks Arch for your feedback!

*sig* (I'm makin one at the moment)

[evilbutterfly]

i remember when i first A'd something on Konamix (on light, or, easy, whatever it was called in Konamix) and was so happy. that was at least 3 years ago, probably more. well, idunno, i cant remember exactly when i started playing, but i think it was in the mid to late 9th grade. just finished 11th, so that means about 3 or so years.

anywho, i sucked at first. i've always been better than some people tho. my first song i ever played was Let's Groove, and it's because some people were playing and 1 guy got off and the other was like "anybody wanna play this last song?" so i stepped up and i liked it. of course, later i was told i exhibited all the traits i now see as common in newbies (hands held in fists up high like u're retarded, fumbling around, using 1 foot for everything, going back to the middle, etc).

then, we got Konamix and i started playing alot on controller and got pretty good at light songs. i played in the arcade here and there, but not much to speak of, which kept me from getting better faster. by the time we got DDR MAX i was alot better, and i had started playing heavy songs. i remember hating MAX300 and how i couldnt pass it. about 9 months ago i got an A on it (on controller. i've been able to AA it on keyboard for about a year).

so yeah, before MAX2 came out, we got stepmania and some songs. not many, but some harder ones (nothing like what is out there now. nothing above 10 feet). i played MAX 317.838 so many times and i always thought it was so hard. now i can AA it pretty easily. i remember at first that i was worse on keyboard than on controller because i wasnt used to it. i improved some, but i didnt have any REALLY hard songs to play, and as we all know it's easiest to get better when u play things harder than what u can do.

oh, and i found FFR before that, but i didnt like it because it sucked. yes, FFR sucked back in the day (still does, kinda). i barely remember the old interface and such because it was so long ago. i just remember Hellbeat being the one of the hardest songs, and there were no "characters" to choose from. i got back into FFR not too long ago, then i realized that Stepmania was infinitely better.

since i've been playing the hard songs, and since i took it off judge 1 (i didnt know that was a bad idea) i've gotten a ton better. i played on judge 6 for a while not too long ago, and it helped alot. i'll prolly go back to that pretty soon, it just pisses me off when i cant AA anything.

as far as advancing on foot, i've gotten MUCH better very fast. last year i couldnt do Witch Doctor on heavy. now i do it just for kicks when i'm bored with other songs. thankfully my mom works at a place that has DDR, so i get free tokens whenever i go (which is only a few times a month) and i get to play a whole lot. i went today and played for 4 hours straight. i started doing doubles a while back, and now i can do some heavies consistently (Matsuri Japan is the hardest one i can do so far). i finally passed MAX300 on foot not too long ago, and i've gotten better about not using the bar. i used to hold the bar all the way through So Deep and barely pass, but now i dont touch the bar and do a ton better.

my one flaw is my timing is off. i cant AA anything on foot, and i cant AAA anything on keyboard. it's annoying, but something makes me always hit things offbeat slightly. i can pass really hard songs easily, but i cant get high scores on easy songs.

ok, so this post is obscenely long. i'm cutting it off here :P