Death Piano: A History of the chart and the current AAA

[DossarLX ODI]

Timeline
Death Piano was released April 1st, 2008. Except it stayed in game -- the April Fool's joke that wasn't a joke.

This thread also brings a more convoluted timeline than Reluctantly Accepting Temporary Overexhaustion, which was released in December the same year.

Some key milestones:
- September 27th, 2008: First handcam video for Full Combo
- September 15, 2009: Less than 100 goods
- December 18th, 2010: Less than 20 goods
- April 21, 2011: Less than 10 goods
- September 3, 2011: First handcam video for less than 10 goods (7-2-0-5)*
- November 14, 2011: All hard sections of Death Piano AAA'd in isolation
- March 7th, 2022: AAA

The above milestones do not include the botted scores (which gets into the convoluted timeline later on in the post).
*less than 10 goods referring to the good count itself, not the combined score


Score Progression

2008
While it's not entirely clear when the first FC happened on Death Piano, what is clear is that back in 2008 just a Full Combo on Death Piano already landed you in the top 10 scores.

An August 30th, 2008 snapshot shows that only two players had above a 3,700,000 break on the chart. Keep in mind too that back in this time period, scores were determined from a combo-based scoring system. 3,700,000 is roughly the equivalent of a 370 goods full combo (any combination of goods, averages, and boos).

The top score of 3,732,305 would remain until December 25th, 2008.

However, no video was up at this time that showed a full combo on the stepchart (at least to my knowledge). The earliest video of a full combo on this chart I could find was my FC video from September 27th, 2008.

December 25, 2008:
The 3,732,305 score was overcome on Christmas the same year, as seen in this post.

While the original score image doesn't display anymore (dead imageshack link), this was the 3,744,950 score at the time.

The 9/9 tier point requirement for Death Piano at the time was a 300 goods or fewer score.


2009
An August 28th, 2009 snapshot shows an improvement from 3,744,950 to 3,753,840.

September 15, 2009:
This was when a 378 break happened on Death Piano (roughly 80 goods FC score equivalent at the time).


2010
Flash Flash Revolution went down in the end of December 2009, and came back up October 10th, 2010. A week later more advancements were made to the point of getting sub-50 goods after a week.

In 2010 there was an ongoing rivalry at the time of MrRubix and myself, but it was eventually found that MrRubix had used a visual bot to get the better scores.

October 17, 2010:
A 379 break happened (37-1-0-12 / 3,791,240).


October 19, 2010:
22-3-0-8


At this point a teens good score (<20 goods) was in sight.

October 20, 2010 there was a score from MrRubix that was 12-4-0-2, but for the purposes of this timeline it doesn't count for the analysis that happened in 2012.

November 3, 2010:
Not quite <20 goods but getting closer with 21-0-0-4.


This same day, MrRubix posted an AAA on Death Piano. For the purposes of this timeline it doesn't count for the analysis that happened in 2012.

December 18, 2010:
The day where less than 20 goods was achieved.

14-4-0-4


13-0-0-4


13-0-0-4 is the same run as in this YouTube video. Unfortunately this didn't have a handcam video, but one would come later in 2011.

2011
At this point the next goal was to get less than 10 goods. Needless to say, score progression was much slower.

April 21, 2011:
The day when less than 10 goods was achieved.

8-0-0-1


At the time I didn't know that there was a double tap during the trill so it offset the rest of my vibrating during it, else it would have been a 4-0-0-0 score. I had 3 goods up until the ending, and got 1 good at the end of the left jack in the 32nd trill. The 4 other goods and the boo were from the double tap on the right arrow jack of the 32nd trill.

There wasn't a video of this specific 8-0-0-1 run, but on September 3, 2011 a 7-2-0-5 handcam run was posted on YouTube.

November 14, 2011:
All hard sections of Death Piano AAA'd in isolation as shown in this post.


2012
The 8-0-0-1 score would last as rank 1 until 2019 when SillyFanGirl got 7-0-0-2. However, before going there, in 2012 the topic of MrRubix's Death Piano AAA score was brought up again.

In March of 2012, MrRubix's replay data was analyzed to be botted. Around this time period, the 8-1-0-2 replay data from MrRubix on Death Piano was recovered from Velocity and it showed similar hits to Gigadelic and RATO AAA. This resulted in the removal of MrRubix's AAA from Death Piano (along with a scorewipe).

It wasn't just Death Piano, but also other files as well.
- Gigadelic AAA*
- RATO AAA

*Note that OMGWTFT0k3N used to be Gigadelic before it was changed to Winning.


2019
The 8-0-0-1 score remained rank 1 for 8 years. In 2019, SillyFanGirl achieved a 7-0-0-2 score that became the new Rank 1 record. Several other notable mentions that were playing for an SDG were 11brendon, AlexDest, One Winged Angel, and so on -- if your name wasn't listed here don't worry, your scores can be seen on the scoreboard

This score was achieved August 3rd, 2019 and would remain rank 1 for 2 years.

2022
A bounty was put up for a Death Piano AAA at the start of 2022.

In February 12th 2022, Eliminate294 registered a 4-0-0-0 score on the chart. This would remain a new Rank 1 record before jakads returned and played Death Piano for 5 hours to achieve an AAA.

March 7, 2022:
The big date. jakads gets an AAA on Death Piano.
- Replay Link
- Youtube Video
- Twitter Post


jakads had already gotten single digit goods within the first hour, but I can tell you from personal experience playing Death Piano that the second half is incredibly stressful to piece together. After you get past the jump and quadjack speedup after the break section, it is very easy to slip up on the fast 16th jumpgluts, which then leads to a very uncomfortable jump transition into hands and polyrhythms -- and that goes into the 32nd roll into the 32nd trill.

The 32nd trill going into the 48th roll is also a big hit or miss in many plays. If you're vibrating the 32nd trill you can hit the up and right arrow as a jump, and then just vibrate it through. But in the case of jakads, he was using overlay setup (two fingers on the same key) so there were a few runs where he had the AAA going but then one of his fingers accidentally touched the up arrow key and got a boo.

It should also be noted that in 2016 jakads got the Rank 1 record for RATO and it held for two years. jakads had been on FFR before and this was a very welcome return to complete the AAA of both boss songs added ingame in 2008.

Congratulations again to jakads, and a special shoutout to SillyFanGirl for being the first player to beat the long standing 8-0-0-1 record and also AAAing RATO.

[FlynnMac]

yoooo

It's funny seeing how jakads was involved in both the RATO history and the Death Piano history

[klimtkiller]

now it’s time for etienne to make this into a video

[M0nkeyz]

Nice read

[Jonlovesddr]

this is some nice FFR lore

[WirryWoo]

Congrats on the AAA jakads

His score progression the day before was 2-0-0-0 and 0-0-0-1 (also got a 0-0-1-1 run). He has Tweets sharing that and there are discord messages under #events tracking that.

Thought it would be at least worth mentioning.

Eliminate294 also got 5-0-0-6 for some time too before getting 4-0-0-0.

EDIT: I don’t remember if the 5-0-0-6 or the 4-0-0-0 score was obtained on Discord stream, but there were a lot of folks there, and a history of messages under #vc-chat detailing her progress. Also worth mentioning in my opinion.

MOD UPDATE: After the appropriate conversations and actions have taken place, the Death Piano 5-0-0-6 and 4-0-0-0 scores are now attributed to Eliminate294.

[xXOpkillerXx]

Sick progression~


Looking at these old threads, I can only be nostalgic for the spicy ffr drama that used to occur daily lmao

[ToonE156]

Originally Posted by gold stinger

Wouldn't announce it as a Game Manager if we didn't.

Can finally put the semantics/theorycrafting around it to rest now.

When did you announce it

Also who tf is kane

And how did you find that out

I still have a ton of questions lol

[PhantomPuppy]

Originally Posted by ToonE156

When did you announce it

Also who tf is kane

And how did you find that out

I still have a ton of questions lol

Originally Posted by mrpreggers

this is before your time friend!!!!

ah shit, here we go again

[rushyrulz]

Etienne video waiting room

[kmay]

Damn I didn't know all that about Mr. Rubix

[gold stinger]

Originally Posted by ToonE156

When did you announce it

Also who tf is kane

And how did you find that out

I still have a ton of questions lol

>in the OP

>osu player

>replays & a few other things

>none of which will get proper answering due to privacy and I don't want people bugging them about it outside of the accounts used on FFR either. There's reasons they didn't use their main name and it should be respected, it was included here for sake of properly crediting them and their contribution historically.


In other news, I would actually love Etienne to come out of review retirement to make a video about it haha. There was so much lore, history, drama and competition involved with scoring on Death Piano.

Crazy that I didn't remember Death Piano's release until it was brought up that top scores were in the 3.7m range. Maaan. I remember back then thinking it was crazy that scores full 100,000's off from the best score were in the top 10 at that time, because Combo Scoring was a thing and people had bad habits of dropping FC in the 32nd megatrill. Most songs had top 10 scores very similar because combo scoring made 95% of the final score, but it was noticeably different on Death Piano for top 10.

[Wiosna]

I remember losing a couple of potential top 3 raw scores (~30-40g raw) on Death Piano because it was so difficult to hold an FC on Death Piano at the time. My 1 miss score on the LBs is only there because it was the only run I've had where I FC'd all the way to the long trill. I think an alternate historical timeline of how close people were to SDG or even teens goods on Death Piano besides Dossar by analysing raw scores would be interesting to go through because I think there was progress even in 2013-2014, but that requires much deeper research into FFR score threads than what's already provided.

jakads' consistency during his AAA grind was what's most impressive to me. He was getting numerous 2g-3g runs over a span of 2-3 hours, and that kind of consistency I felt was unprecedented for a chart as difficult as DP. While it's true that most D8+ players will take most of their damage in the fast trill, and jakads had a method to AAA the long trill consistently, it's still very difficult to near-AAA the 24th trills in the midsection and ending gluts consistently. The chart is still a very technical ~105-106 without the long trill. And most players who are transitioning to FFR have lots of issues nailing technical charts without playing FFR for a long time.

jakads has shown interest in trying out FFR for longer, and given how consistent he was on even super technical charts like Death Piano without even adapting much to the game, it seems clear that he can probably clear out everything from 100-109 fairly cleanly, and even 110-112 seems doable for him given his past performances on osu!mania. The sky seems to be the limit for him.

Massive congratulations to jakads for AAAing one of the most notorious charts in the game, and big respect for donating 80% of his bounty to a group that direly needs our help.

[Shadow_God_10]

I'm still in disbelief that this actually happened so quickly

[Moria]

Fantastic documentation, the DP grind has been a ride for so many players over so many years. Its been amazing to see how far people have come as players and as people.

[kmay]

but do we see his MA?? I get that many goods when I play the damn song!

[MarioNintendo]

(Shoutouts to stargroup100 who will hopefully get to stop thinking about this stupid chart and the suffering it caused in the world)

[sweet2kill210]

Wow, what an insane accomplishment, and it happened a lot more quickly than expected after the start of that bounty! Congrats, jakads!

Edit: Oh yeah, and just wanted to join the FFR lore circlejerk. I, too, remember the top scores on Death Piano blowing my mind back in the day with combo scoring making up most of the score. It's funny how people would prioritize mashing over accuracy on many songs (or at least I did?) because it ultimately meant a better score even if it was an ugly PA-spread, haha. Was super disappointed when I found out Mr. Rubix was a cheater. But hey, can't AAA something until you can FC it.

[rayword45]

Originally Posted by kmay

Damn I didn't know all that about Mr. Rubix

You should go back and find the thread where it was all revealed. People were shitting on Dossar and saying "omg we ALL already knew it was a botted score, get over your superiority complex you f****t" and to this day that thread still pisses me off. Krunky was the one who was shitting on him the most, and I hope he's turned around since, but reading that thread still makes me mad as fuck and Dossar DID NOT deserve to be shit on for that, and all those motherfuckers were 100% lying about "omg we KNEW it was a botted score get over yourself Doss"

Seriously, people were straight up lying "we ALL knew it was a botted score" just to attack teenage Dossar, and it honestly still strikes me as one of the most enraging game-related forum moments on this website. These people did NOT know it was a botted score, no matter how much they claim they did, and lying about that to attack someone who was trying to protect the integrity of the game probably angers me more than it angers Doss himself lol

And this dude was 25 shitting on a 17 year old lol

[DossarLX ODI]

Thread has been updated with the most up-to-date information about the scores on Death Piano obtained after the bounty thread was created.

Eliminate294 was the one who got 5-0-0-6, then 4-0-0-0 in February 12th 2022. Then jakads got an AAA in March.