BEST advice to a noob

**TheBlackOmen** · 03-5-2009, 01:15 AM

If you really think this game is cool and you really REALLY (and i mean really) want to "beat" it, you need to vigorously practice the following everyday, in some way:

-Left trills (left+up arrows)
-Right trills (right+down arrows)
-Alternating left/right trills (up+down arrows)
-Left jacking
-Right jacking
-Simultaneous jacking (both hands together)

Also, you need to be able to "vibrate" and it doesn't necessarily take forever to achieve. You can quickly speed up your vibrating abilities by:

-Practicing (obviously)
-Work your arms for speed and endurance, in a kind of twitching motion (tricep+bicep) - this can be done by simply tightening your whole arm and concentrating on transferring that twitching to your finger tips. Sometimes it helps to give your active finger support with your other fingers. Develop a technique that suits you.
-Get 20-25 lb dumbbells and work on doing forearm curls. Face your forearm botton side up, like your going to do a bicep curl, and curl the weight towards your bicep first while keeping your forearm in 90 degrees to your arm. This will help the downwards jack. Also, there is upwards jacking involved as well, to quickly bring your wrist back up. Work this motion by reverse curling (that is, curling the weight the same way except with the top of your forearm facing up). This may feel weird and unnatural so use less weight, like 10-15 lb or more.
-Repeat until forearms are on fire, then finish and let heal for a day.
-Next time you jack/vibrate you will be faster or better in some way.

The better, faster, and more efficient your hands get, the more training it will take to improve them. This is where some people quit, because they feel as though they have stopped improving. However, as long as you keep training, as far as I've seen, your hands have a lot of potential. I've noticed significant improvements in my playing abilities just by working these exercises as hard as I can for an hour a day. The hardest movement is still left hand jacking.

Well, hope this helps anyone who wants to get good.

tangomango · 03-5-2009, 01:24 AM

Just saying this, you can play FFR just fine without ever learning to vibrate. You will only need to vibrate if you want to do something say, FC Crowdpleaser.

**TheBlackOmen** · 03-5-2009, 01:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tangomango

Just saying this, you can play FFR just fine without ever learning to vibrate. You will only need to vibrate if you want to do something say, FC Crowdpleaser.

When I say "beat" this game i mean literally going as far as you can go.. Maxing yourself out. That is my goal, personally =P I've apparently had the fastest improvement, compared to most other people I've seen (I started just over a year ago). The only other person I can think of who topped me is MinaciousGrace. According to him he started less than a year ago, and he just BF'ed Eclipse. I don't know his secret and I wish I did. Maybe hes just a god idk xD

**TheBlackOmen** · 03-5-2009, 01:44 AM

btw, you do make a good point though.. for most people its very unlikely that you will even be able to start practicing such a delicate skill as vibrating, until you are relatively skilled in this game already.

tangomango · 03-5-2009, 01:49 AM

Minacious had an alt, and played SM before iirc.

The only reason I pointed out that vibrating really isn't necessary in most FFR songs is because you titled this as advice towards novice players. Imo, to tell someone that vibrating is a necessary skill is herding them towards the wrong direction.

**TheBlackOmen** · 03-5-2009, 01:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tangomango

Minacious had an alt, and played SM before iirc.

The only reason I pointed out that vibrating really isn't necessary in most FFR songs is because you titled this as advice towards novice players. Imo, to tell someone that vibrating is a necessary skill is herding them towards the wrong direction.

yea your right good point. but eventually it must be utilized to beat certain songs. Its not as though practicing anything in anyway will negatively effect somebody anyways. Once all physical aspects of the game are met, improvement of reading the notes accelerates and its far easier to catch on. If anything, from personal experience, the thing that hurts skill is coming to a plateau, in which you can easily read what you see and yet you cant hit it right and it sounds sloppy. This can really affect the way you perceive the beat of the arrows. Until you fix it in your head that it. (if that makes sense)

and wow, I thought he did wut a liar lolzzz

**wargasm1** · 03-5-2009, 02:24 AM

understanding the color code of notes has to be a factor too imo. I went from playing challenging to vc the week i realized i was doing goods and misses mostly on yellow arrow and it was because i didnt know they were closer to each other than blue or red arrows.

Also dont mash. Its quite tempting to mash to get a few fc's but its not making u any better.

Stats mean what u want them to mean, if u dont like doing aaa's then focus on fc. if people see u with alot of fc and very little aaa they might think ur a masher while u are not u just dont whore songs but u dont care. Alot of players quit playing cause their stats suck or the amount of work requiered to improve them significantly is too big.

**qqwref** · 03-5-2009, 02:41 AM

I'd say there are three real steps to being good at FFR (and I expect many/most newbies won't be in the third yet, which is where advice on forearm strength and stuff will matter most):
1. Learning to read and hit the notes. This is probably the hardest part if you've never played rhythm games before; obviously you should start with the easiest songs and get used to hitting single arrows, then move up to songs with groups of arrows in a row, and finally do harder songs to learn some basic patterns (jumps, stream, trills,
2. Going for FCs. Once you can consistently hit arrows and groups of them, try to full combo songs, again starting with easy stuff and going up from there. Don't play the same song lots of times to try for a full combo, but rather just play lots of different songs and move up in difficulty when you can usually play through the song without missing a note.
3. Going for AAAs. Once you can consistently FC songs of, say, difficulty 8, go for accuracy. Again you should start with the very easiest songs and make sure you can reliably get a perfect on single arrows, and then move up from there. This step never really ends :P and once you get good at AAAing songs you're going to want to start doing what TheBlackOmen said in the first post, so that you can combo and AAA even harder stuff.

btw I also think vibrating is only really useful for SM - there are maybe 3 public songs on FFR that "require" vibrating, and even out of those you could probably FC half of them by just being really good at wristjacking.

**TheBlackOmen** · 03-5-2009, 02:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wargasm1

understanding the color code of notes has to be a factor too imo. I went from playing challenging to vc the week i realized i was doing goods and misses mostly on yellow arrow and it was because i didnt know they were closer to each other than blue or red arrows.

Also dont mash. Its quite tempting to mash to get a few fc's but its not making u any better.

Stats mean what u want them to mean, if u dont like doing aaa's then focus on fc. if people see u with alot of fc and very little aaa they might think ur a masher while u are not u just dont whore songs but u dont care. Alot of players quit playing cause their stats suck or the amount of work requiered to improve them significantly is too big.

right you are! and its the winners that don't quit. Like rubix.. ive seen him play at his best, and if skill like that is possible, then skill far better than it is possible as well (just watch BlueMystik play Azul 1.2x IT IS BEAST AND INHUMAN). And yes, the color coding is important. As far as I know, the SM noteskin called "skittles" replicates FFR's arrow colors ([Tera] made it i beleive). Its the noteskin I use too. But yea, about the AAA's I havnt played ffr in a long time till recently, been playing hardcore on SM, then I came back here, re-adjusted and got a crapload of AAA's without whoring, just playin n crap, and almost AAA Jeanine and Carol (2-0-0-0) and Hajnal I BF'd. Im mainly concentrating on getting my skill as far as I can get it, by doing the above and doing physical training outside of the game itself (yea Im a dork, w/e idc lol). I'm playing this game to test my limits and see if I can really be #1. I dont mind sharing my secrets =P

and ps. about the mashing, mash outside of the game to build your stamina. FEEL THE BURN, let it heal. If your a true fan of this game youll be glad you did. It really is 1000x more fun when its played well. good luck to u sir! xD

**TheBlackOmen** · 03-5-2009, 02:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by qqwref

Don't play the same song lots of times to try for a full combo, but rather just play lots of different songs and move up in difficulty when you can usually play through the song without missing a note.

Good advice there! I am an avid follower of that. Everytime I used to play and play to try and fc/aaa, it would just anger me more and more. A true AAA should be done on the first try with little effort (if you can easily move the way you need to move, an AAA on this game is simple, the timing windows are easy).

**retching oesophagus** · 03-5-2009, 03:18 AM

yup good tips i pretty much started taking ffr seriously since last july, making some time most days just to pratice every pattern i can think. i don't know if that's sad lol. plus building hand/forearm strength for stamina was pretty much crucial when i first started fcing fmos, at least for me.

i think i'll always have problems with left handed jacks/ left sided chain patterns though (fuk u club, radioheads) no matter how hard i work out my left hand.

**~Zero~** · 03-5-2009, 05:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheBlackOmen

I dont mind sharing my secrets =P

~Zero~'s Secrets

1: Play SM
2: Hit Arrows
3: Play FFR
4: Hit Arrows
5: Continue this until you don't suck anymore

**NekoGon** · 03-5-2009, 06:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ~Zero~

~Zero~'s Secrets

1: Play SM
2: Hit Arrows
3: Play FFR
4: Hit Arrows
5: Continue this until you don't suck anymore

that's pretty much it lol, just keep playing and you'll get it eventually
also be competitive, find someone active your own skill level and be rivals, keep comparing scores, you will own in no time

leonid · 03-5-2009, 06:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ~Zero~

~Zero~'s Secrets

1: Play SM
2: Hit Arrows
3: Play FFR
4: Hit Arrows
5: Continue this until you don't suck anymore

Gotta try!

o wai I've been already doing this wtf =)

He's ~Zero~ so he must be right.

**DossarLX ODI** · 03-5-2009, 08:21 AM

Uh, my muscle strength is pretty weak and I still vibrate friggin fast -.-

**woker-X** · 03-5-2009, 08:44 AM

Competition is always a good way to improve. Is fast and painful.

If there's no pain, there's no improvement.

Enter a tournament, play in multiplayer, etc.

**bballa48** · 03-5-2009, 09:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DossarLX ODI

Uh, my muscle strength is pretty weak and I still vibrate friggin fast -.-

That is a slight understatement.

MinaciousGrace · 03-5-2009, 09:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tangomango

Minacious had an alt, and played SM before iirc.

The only reason I pointed out that vibrating really isn't necessary in most FFR songs is because you titled this as advice towards novice players. Imo, to tell someone that vibrating is a necessary skill is herding them towards the wrong direction.

neop, I started on ffr first, somewhere between late dec and early jan 07, then moved to sm after ~6 months of ffr

and if you want to truly get good at ffr/sm, you have to stop treating it like a game and start treating it like a sport

**~Zero~** · 03-5-2009, 09:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MinaciousGrace

neop, I started on ffr first, somewhere between late dec and early jan 07, then moved to sm after ~6 months of ffr

and if you want to truly get good at ffr/sm, you have to stop treating it like a game and start treating it like a sport

FFR is no longer a game its a way of life.

MinaciousGrace · 03-5-2009, 09:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ~Zero~

FFR is no longer a game its a way of life.

live by the arrow bro

03-5-2009, 01:24 AM	#2
tangomango FFR Player Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 1,134	Re: BEST advice to a noob Just saying this, you can play FFR just fine without ever learning to vibrate. You will only need to vibrate if you want to do something say, FC Crowdpleaser.

03-5-2009, 01:44 AM	#4
TheBlackOmen FFR Veteran Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Montville, CT Age: 35 Posts: 67	Re: BEST advice to a noob btw, you do make a good point though.. for most people its very unlikely that you will even be able to start practicing such a delicate skill as vibrating, until you are relatively skilled in this game already.

03-5-2009, 01:49 AM	#5
tangomango FFR Player Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 1,134	Re: BEST advice to a noob Minacious had an alt, and played SM before iirc. The only reason I pointed out that vibrating really isn't necessary in most FFR songs is because you titled this as advice towards novice players. Imo, to tell someone that vibrating is a necessary skill is herding them towards the wrong direction.

03-5-2009, 02:24 AM	#7
wargasm1 Cowbelling FFR Join Date: Apr 2007 Age: 96 Posts: 1,289	Re: BEST advice to a noob understanding the color code of notes has to be a factor too imo. I went from playing challenging to vc the week i realized i was doing goods and misses mostly on yellow arrow and it was because i didnt know they were closer to each other than blue or red arrows. Also dont mash. Its quite tempting to mash to get a few fc's but its not making u any better. Stats mean what u want them to mean, if u dont like doing aaa's then focus on fc. if people see u with alot of fc and very little aaa they might think ur a masher while u are not u just dont whore songs but u dont care. Alot of players quit playing cause their stats suck or the amount of work requiered to improve them significantly is too big.

03-5-2009, 02:41 AM	#8
qqwref stepmania archaeologist Join Date: Aug 2005 Age: 34 Posts: 4,090	Re: BEST advice to a noob I'd say there are three real steps to being good at FFR (and I expect many/most newbies won't be in the third yet, which is where advice on forearm strength and stuff will matter most): 1. Learning to read and hit the notes. This is probably the hardest part if you've never played rhythm games before; obviously you should start with the easiest songs and get used to hitting single arrows, then move up to songs with groups of arrows in a row, and finally do harder songs to learn some basic patterns (jumps, stream, trills, 2. Going for FCs. Once you can consistently hit arrows and groups of them, try to full combo songs, again starting with easy stuff and going up from there. Don't play the same song lots of times to try for a full combo, but rather just play lots of different songs and move up in difficulty when you can usually play through the song without missing a note. 3. Going for AAAs. Once you can consistently FC songs of, say, difficulty 8, go for accuracy. Again you should start with the very easiest songs and make sure you can reliably get a perfect on single arrows, and then move up from there. This step never really ends :P and once you get good at AAAing songs you're going to want to start doing what TheBlackOmen said in the first post, so that you can combo and AAA even harder stuff. btw I also think vibrating is only really useful for SM - there are maybe 3 public songs on FFR that "require" vibrating, and even out of those you could probably FC half of them by just being really good at wristjacking. __________________ Best AAA: Policy In The Sky [Oni] (81) Best SDG: PANTS (86) Best FC: Future Invasion (93)

03-5-2009, 01:15 AM	#1
TheBlackOmen FFR Veteran Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Montville, CT Age: 35 Posts: 67	BEST advice to a noob If you really think this game is cool and you really REALLY (and i mean really) want to "beat" it, you need to vigorously practice the following everyday, in some way: -Left trills (left+up arrows) -Right trills (right+down arrows) -Alternating left/right trills (up+down arrows) -Left jacking -Right jacking -Simultaneous jacking (both hands together) Also, you need to be able to "vibrate" and it doesn't necessarily take forever to achieve. You can quickly speed up your vibrating abilities by: -Practicing (obviously) -Work your arms for speed and endurance, in a kind of twitching motion (tricep+bicep) - this can be done by simply tightening your whole arm and concentrating on transferring that twitching to your finger tips. Sometimes it helps to give your active finger support with your other fingers. Develop a technique that suits you. -Get 20-25 lb dumbbells and work on doing forearm curls. Face your forearm botton side up, like your going to do a bicep curl, and curl the weight towards your bicep first while keeping your forearm in 90 degrees to your arm. This will help the downwards jack. Also, there is upwards jacking involved as well, to quickly bring your wrist back up. Work this motion by reverse curling (that is, curling the weight the same way except with the top of your forearm facing up). This may feel weird and unnatural so use less weight, like 10-15 lb or more. -Repeat until forearms are on fire, then finish and let heal for a day. -Next time you jack/vibrate you will be faster or better in some way. The better, faster, and more efficient your hands get, the more training it will take to improve them. This is where some people quit, because they feel as though they have stopped improving. However, as long as you keep training, as far as I've seen, your hands have a lot of potential. I've noticed significant improvements in my playing abilities just by working these exercises as hard as I can for an hour a day. The hardest movement is still left hand jacking. Well, hope this helps anyone who wants to get good.

03-5-2009, 03:18 AM	#11
retching oesophagus (^._.^) =^-ω-^= (^･o･^)ﾉ Join Date: Jan 2008 Posts: 805	Re: BEST advice to a noob yup good tips i pretty much started taking ffr seriously since last july, making some time most days just to pratice every pattern i can think. i don't know if that's sad lol. plus building hand/forearm strength for stamina was pretty much crucial when i first started fcing fmos, at least for me. i think i'll always have problems with left handed jacks/ left sided chain patterns though (fuk u club, radioheads) no matter how hard i work out my left hand. Last edited by retching oesophagus; 03-5-2009 at 04:27 AM..

03-5-2009, 08:44 AM	#16
woker-X .... :.. .:. :: Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 1,031	Re: BEST advice to a noob Competition is always a good way to improve. Is fast and painful. If there's no pain, there's no improvement. Enter a tournament, play in multiplayer, etc.

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