Haven't played in 8+ years, SO happy to be back. Got a bunch of questions!

[Hakulyte]

Here's a few random thoughts about how I view playing FFR - The Game overall.

I initially joined FFR because of how easy it was to just make an account and jump in the game without installing anything. I do not even like music that much, I simply was interested into challenging myself with goals.
What I care the most about FFR is having fun while giving myself goals that I consider realistic.
I consider trying to become the best unhealthy/unrealistic mostly because I cannot conceptualize how I could personally have fun pushing myself this hard into getting better.
I believe that the best way to look at it is to try to get as good as you can without expectations to free yourself from any form of pressure.
This may be one of the things that was slowing me down the most because playing at D7 level requires a more serious investment into playing well.

The secret behind getting Grandtotal #1 is to have fun playing the game and to maintain that fun.
A lot of players here have fun getting better at the game, but they don't necessary have fun playing the game for specific reasons. They tend to mix up other rhythm games and do a rotation instead of only playing FFR which is fine.
The reasons why you play will tend to change as you get better and face obstacles while you're trying to improve.

FFR Ranks checks your top 15 scores only. That means that in terms of performance, you should be looking up for the hardest songs that you can do well on which allows you to perform beyond the difficulty standards.
This will allow the current you to achieve the best scores possible with what you can do if you currently only care about getting the best scores you can at this point and time.
The problem with that logic is that wanting to achieve the best scores possible doesn't give you the best scores. Only your ability to accurately hit each patterns in the songs will decide that.
In order to learn about which songs correspond to that, you have to play enough to learn about your own skillset @ what you're good at and also to find the ideal songs to play for yourself.
The better you get at each skillset, the more options you will have to get a great scores on the harder songs.

I know this is counterintuitive, but I suggest to forget about the competition aspect of the game with the other players unless it's indirectly motivating you to improve yourself at the game.
Your main focus should be to play to learn and to decide on what feels fun to try to do in terms of playing and to be self-aware of how you use your play time to benefit yourself the most.
At the end of the day, this is all about you vs the game itself. If you don't play for yourself, you will eventually burn yourself out or find the game unappealing because fun is that important in games.

Anyway, this is what my top 15 looks like under leaderboards.



If you're fairly new or coming back, you probably haven't played enough to know the songs well so, I'll just tell you. These are songs that mostly involve technical patterns, jacks and pattern manipulation.
This is what I personally do well on, but I'm also slowly trying to work on basics. I just had more fun playing "technical" songs.
In my case, if I AAA any difficulty 90 songs or lower, I won't even move up in FFR Ranks at all and this is quite a surprise because I haven't AAA'd any difficulty 90 songs or higher.

Does that mean I shouldn't play the easier songs? I would tend to say no because the easier songs may contain patterns that I have weaknesses at.
Sometimes I also don't have the concentration to perform well on the hardest songs and I prefer to try to AAA the easier songs "for fun".
Most players tend to consider this a waste of time regardless and I guess this is fair as it comes to preferences at this point. Logically, I should be avoiding these songs and only pushing myself on the harder songs all day to get better.
I do it sometimes, but I tend to get bored faster because it's like I'm forcing myself to improve rather than doing it because I feel like it.

I have to try to get 20 goods or lower on songs rated 95~101 range and 5 goods or lower on songs rated 93~95.
FCs are also meaningless with raw scoring, but it's interesting to keep in mind that 1 miss = 2.4 goods and 1 average = 1.8 goods.
AAA equivalency works with "raw goods" and if you're really going purely for scoring, you may want to do tricky things like getting 1 miss on purpose to avoid 5 goods etc.

---

You may be wondering, "is it realistic to aim for AAAs on the hardest songs" ?
The answer is "not really" unless you're so good that you can AAA the hardest songs in the game and this applies to nearly no one.

I believe the highest AAA done by a player atm are on Powerflux (103) and The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku -Theatrical Version- (103) which is one of the 15 hardest songs in the game.

It's better to see each song as its own mini game with the end goal being AAA, but if your goal is to move up in FFR Ranks, this isn't the right idea.
If you want to go for a secondary goal like getting the lowest FFR Average Rank possible, getting a lot of Rank 1 should be a lot more interesting.

If you're curious about the FFR "end game" content, these are currently the 15 hardest songs that counts in the leaderboards.

110	Undici
109	Reluctantly Accepting Temporary Overexhaustion
108	Death Piano
105	Dreamin' attraction!! (Extended) (token)
105	OWA Raged at Home Run Derby (token)
104	You Universe
103	Odd-22
103	Make the Fire Burn
103	The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku -Theatrical Version-
103	Powerflux
102	Heterochromia Iridis
102	Staple on Smile
102	White Walls, Part 2
102	Metro (token)
102	Revolutionary Etude (token)

Vertex Beta vROFL doesn't give AAA equivalency despite displaying AAA equivalency when you play it. So, this song is the same as the songs rated 0 for unranked.

So yeah, if you're at the top of Divison 7, these are the songs you want to play all the time and get the lowest score possible on.

I cannot seriously consider playing only these 15 songs all the time without eventually getting bored. So, I only occasionally go around and play them to compare my own progression as I get better. The majority of the players will also never have these songs in their top 15 because you need a surprisingly low "raw good" count to benefit from getting a good score on these songs. If you're curious about it, I suggest to check the top of the leaderboard and compare the top 15 of multiple players. Most of them have songs difficulty 98-101 in their top 15 instead of these 15 hardest songs and it's simply because these songs are very hard to score well on.

The point of this wall of text was that you should only care about songs within your difficulty range. You should try to AAA the easier songs for consistency. You should try to SDG songs around your level and you should try to play the harder songs once in a while to compare your past self with your present self. You can obviously only focus on the hardest songs, but you will have to make sure you don't form bad habits and learn how to hit patterns properly.

The players at the "end game" of FFR have to move to FFRMania/StepMania/Osu etc. to fill a void where they need to complete their skillset so they can come back and challenge the hardest songs, but what's cool if you're in Division 1-6 range is that you have plenty of songs to use to practice and improve. You can also use rates to cover the majority of the patterns that happens more rarely on FFR. (handstream/stamina(long songs)/heavy jumpstream/stream)
D7 mostly need exterior help because of pattern complexity, but this is mostly just a late game problem.

What's funny is that I realize certain players like KrazyKitsune mostly only played only Husigi Usagi Milk Tei (101) all the time and eventually got to D7 because there was room to optimize how to play by continually only playing the hardest songs so, this proves that what I'm saying isn't true in the sense that you can indeed only play the hardest songs if you choose to.

I just had more fun playing a large variety of songs while practicing even if it took longer to improve. At the end of the day, you'll have to decide how you go about playing.

I'm kind of troubled at the idea of picturing someone play Undici all day and get D7, but if you play with rates under 1 and slowly move back to 1, maybe it's possible too.

tl;dr: As you can see, you can play this game pretty much any way you want. Numbers are actually arbitrary and a large amount of players are a lot better than their own ranks because they haven't took the time to play everything and optimize it. So, feel free to play like you want.

Sorry if deviating thread, but OP looked interested about learning how others see this game.

[MinaciousGrace]

bmn vknbhmngjikbmnvjk, vl;/ki]o.['

[dAnceguy117]

Originally Posted by MinaciousGrace

bmn vknbhmngjikbmnvjk, vl;/ki]o.['

Oh god he finally short circuited

[icontrolyourworld]

Originally Posted by drakethelegend

* Who has the most AAAs in the game? Who has the highest rank? Who has the highest grandtotal? What settings do they use?

Find out what happens on the next episode of flashflashrevolution-Z

[MikeShinoda12345]

Haku you're really cool I'm a fan
Drake hopefully we haven't lost you in the ridiculousness of the thread but just keep playing and keep improving and keep having fun and all this stuff will make sense soon

[rushyrulz]

Originally Posted by Hakulyte

Here's a few random thoughts about how I view playing FFR - The Game overall.

<insert Haku's first novel here>

whoa

Originally Posted by Hakulyte

you may want to do tricky things like getting 1 miss on purpose to avoid 5 goods etc.

Trying to think of a scenario where this would ever happen btw

[Hakulyte]

Originally Posted by rushyrulz

whoa



Trying to think of a scenario where this would ever happen btw

I've been trying to find a middle ground on Dreamin' attraction because of how rough the jack transitions are and I ended up improving by saving up stamina from the hard parts (by missing!) to make sure I do okay on the easier sections.
Still not happy with that score, but I had 400 goods when I tried too hard to hit the jacks. I usually try to nearly AAA all the easier parts and slowly focus on key sections that I think I can do well on to improve scores on charts that are too hard for me in general.
It's like the goal turns into avoiding damage as much as possible by not committing as hard on the hardest patterns because I already know I don't have the speed/control to challenge it.

It's just a backup strategy. That kind of thinking doesn't work on stamina heavy charts like Serious Shit which is why I'm struggling on songs with a lot of density in general.

Since a good on an easy part and a good on a hard part has the same value, it's usually worth it.

tl;dr: You don't exactly miss notes on purpose, it's more about managing stamina vs hard parts.

I just have too many runs where I choke an entire segment or quit half way because I burned out all my stamina. That's the only thing I could think of as a middle ground.

[dAnceguy117]

it's not really the same thing, but I recently played paranoia survivor max oni on DDR for the first time in almost 10 years, and I know I'm super out of shape - so I intentionally hit most notes early throughout the chart so that I wouldn't have to expend as much energy trying to hit stuff cleanly

[Moria]

i love you haku

[Superbearhands]

Originally Posted by kommisar

thx blurk

you're welcome

[Rapta]

Originally Posted by rushyrulz

Trying to think of a scenario where this would ever happen btw

It happens to me a lot. For me it's when you have a split second to decide whether it will be better to miss or keep your pace and lose accuracy because you are too tense.