I remember more about DreamHack Austin 2018 than my first kiss. I wrote those words on Aug. 23, 2019.
That convention was everything. The Hearthstone Grand Prix tournament I competed in, taking Cydonia to game five and reverse-sweeping TerrenceM, the elation I got from a hard-fought win and the heart-sink I felt after a loss. The celebration afterward with friends despite only getting 68th and all that being sponsored by a team.
Gottem
I fell in love with competition. For the first time in a while, I felt human.
It’s a feeling I’ve been chasing unsuccessfully for two years.
On March 8, I signed up for a best-of-13 osu! exhibition match against the University of Texas at Austin. These are my experiences of repeatedly punching my desk, swearing in Italian, “playing out of my goddamn mind,” and finally realizing the wisdom of a mechanical egg.
I’m not a very competitive person. I just constantly play games only to improve my rank, have been top 100 NA in Hearthstone and 300 in Teamfight Tactics, competed in three DreamHacks and created a TFT practice group with the main goal of winning tournaments. No big deal.
So, when I saw an opportunity to compete in a game I play fairly casually, I said ‘why not?’ I get to play with UTA Esports osu! players against UT and I get to scratch my competitive itch.
Little did I know the week of torture I signed myself up for.
To explain why practicing for the match was so painful for me, I need to explain approach rate, or AR.
In osu!, circles appear on your screen, you move your mouse over the circles and click them. Simple, ya?
The higher the AR, the faster the circles close in and the less time you have to react to the note. You’d be tempted to think the higher the AR, the harder the beatmap, and vice versa. However, in the middle rankings of osu!, the intermediate ranks as we were called by tournament organizers, slower maps can be just as difficult, if not harder. Allow me to explain.
My osu! rank was about 250,000 in the world, a far cry from being top 300 NA in the other games I’ve competed in. At about this rank, most maps I play are about AR 9. This means I’m used to a very specific timing window of about 35 frames to hit a note. I’ve played on this timing window for years. The timing has become a subconscious habit.
An example of AR 9. I usually play songs on reaction, especially jumpy parts like the last 10 seconds.
If maps are a bit faster, I can hit notes based on reaction, which has mixed results, but it’s still basically subconscious. See note, hit note. Simple.
The problem arises when I need to use my brain.
When hit circle timing is even a few frames slower, I no longer get to play based on reaction. I have to think before almost every single note.
Usually, I see a note, start moving toward it, then glance somewhere else and use my peripheral vision to hit the note I was moving toward. With slower maps, depending on how slow, the process can become way more complicated.
Even something like an AR 8 map, which is about 10 frames slower at 45 frames per note, the process might involve looking at a note, moving my cursor, then looking at another note in the meantime. However, now I look back at the note I hovered over, wait for the circle to close a bit more to get the timing, look back at the next note, and finally click the note using my peripheral vision.
So, with a map that’s just a bit slower, it goes from look, move, look, click, to look, move, look, look back, look back again, click.
An example of AR 8. It's more difficult to play the song on reaction, especially during the breaks in notes. A strategy I use is to move my cursor slower to get a better grasp of the timing.
And to clarify, these are technically easier maps that are giving me so much trouble.
I went back to look at the screenshots I took from a day of practice, and I barely have any idea what the hell I’m looking at. There’s circles on top of circles in patterns I never see at my level.
I genuinely challenge you to stop, look at these three pictures, and tell me the proper order the circles are supposed to be clicked.
So, when a wise man told me that practicing AR 3 maps, that are literally three times slower, as in the notes are up for 110 frames instead of 35, it took a lot of willpower not to call him an idiot, quit the showmatch and leave the #osu chat in UTA Esports’ Discord server.
It turns out he was right and I was the stereotypical “hardstuck” player who blames everything like their teammates, unfair mechanics and bad design, but never blames themselves.
Yes, I’m the bad guy in this story, but I promise there’s a Fornari redemption arc; don’t worry.
Now typically, I focus on strategy games because it’s easy for me to see what I’m doing wrong and improve. I feel like I have a pretty good mentality and philosophy on improvement, especially thanks to coaching from GamerRVG and Sushin. It’s not perfect, but it’s constantly improving and evolving.
But, as I learned from practicing for this match, this doesn’t apply to games I play casually.
The day the maps were released, I was excited. To my disappointment, most of the maps were AR 8 or below, with one of the maps being AR 6.
There were still a few fast maps I could play with the Double Time and Hard Rock mods, or DT and HR, which both increase the AR. DT also speeds up the map itself by, you guessed it, 1.5 times. Ya, 1.5 time doesn’t sound as catchy.
The maps were sectioned off based on what mod could be used. Some maps had to be played as is, including the AR 6 map, and others could be modded freely. But for brevity, only modding those with HR is relevant to this article.
So, practice began.
Day one was good. I played mostly the DT maps as I'm very familiar with that mod, and there was a version of Gangnam Style that was very similar to a version I’d practiced a lot, but more on that later.
However, day two was hell. I would’ve loved to just specialize on the faster maps and let my team carry me for the rest, but that wouldn’t be possible as there were no substitutions allowed and all players would have to play every map selected.
Also, since there was a large rank differential between us and UT, as in their average rank was about 205,000 and ours was about 345,000, our strategy was clear: play slow maps that we’re more used to than they are.
However, that meant I’d have to learn how to use my brain in osu!, a skill I’d forgotten years ago after passing my first four-star map.
Since the pool was released, I made an effort to practice only those maps two hours a day.
I didn’t play Monday for reasons I don't remember, and was planning on practicing two hours Tuesday night. Then, I got a message from a wise man named timeregg who was also one of the TOs, jokingly telling me to practice.
And as a side note, bless his heart, that man stays positive no matter what.
But I was pissed. I was already annoyed at the map pool and frustrated at my second day of practice, and now I’m getting stalked by a TO.
He wanted practice, I’ll show him heccing practice.
I started spamming one of the lowest AR maps, Bad Apple, which was AR 3, but with DT was, well I guess it was still lower than AR 6 because DT isn’t exactly twice as fast. So I guess this was literally the lowest AR map.
After an hour of playing just this map, I vented in chat asking how anyone can read the map.
Then, I read the wisest osu! advice I ever saw in my life. timeregg told me to practice it without DT, meaning I would have to deal with that cancer at an even slower rate, a rate of approximately 110 frames as I calculated the day of writing.
A wise man once told me to practice AR 3 maps to improve at AR 9 maps
— Kevin Fornari (@Kevin_Fornari) March 25, 2020
I was enraged. In fact, I think that was the angriest I’d been in over a year.
As I said, it took a lot of willpower not to call him an idiot, quit the showmatch and leave the #osu chat in UTA Esports’ Discord server.
I proceeded to literally punch my wooden desk, like, not slam my hand on the top of it, actually punch, like a cross punch, the front of the desk. And I guess IKEA is high quality, or maybe I’m just hella weak, because I don’t see any marks at all on the front of the desk.
After that, I continued practicing and continued raging. Typical gamer stuff. Swearing in Italian, not so typical. I’ve definitely not punched holes in two separate walls because of League of Legends.
I literally couldn’t comprehend parts of the map. Even looking back now, it took me more than 10 seconds to figure out the order I’m supposed to hit the notes here.
I tried messing with my settings, trying different skins; nothing was helping.
I asked who chose this shit fun and interactive map and it was none other than eggboi himself.
Oh, the anger just kept flowing.
Thirty minutes pass and I’m still plugging away.
Before two hours pass, I finally pass the map. People were very positive in the Discord, but I didn’t care. I said I learned nothing and in two weeks I’ll forget how to play the map.
How comically wrong I was.
timeregg kept being positive, but I wasn’t having it. He said the pool trained fundamentals, but I didn’t believe him. I went on Twitter to heavily misrepresent what he said by saying someone wanted me to play AR 3 maps to improve at AR 9 maps.
“I noticed the large rank difference between both teams so I decided to really focus on maps that challenged the player's reading ability,” timeregg said. “Playing fast is cool, but I wanted every player to learn that there is so much more to the game than playing fast.”
Now, again for the sake of brevity and also to not further disparage myself by sharing my mentality toward timeregg at the time, I won’t go into the two wonderful Hatsune Miku maps, nor will I talk about them being 10 years old. I think they are all fantastic, and by that I mean, I will never voluntarily play another Hatsune Miku map in my life.
Progress was slow and steady, and I eventually passed every map other than one, a Hatsune Miku map of course, but I was pretty content with where I was. I still had two days of practice before the match; it’s poppin’.
On Friday, I start spamming maps. I’m not looking for just passes, I’m looking to crush them. And honestly, I play most maps pretty well, especially the ones most of my teammates like.
I keep going, getting scores I’m really happy with. Then, something strange happened. Usually, if I play a bunch of fast maps, there’s no way in hell I can play a slow map. But that day, it didn’t matter what speed I was playing, it didn’t change my performance at all.
At that moment, I thought there may be something to what eggboi was saying.
I finished a lot of the maps with only a few misses. My mentality changed. I was playing calmly. I was learning.
Sure, there were still maps I would do poorly on, but I knew our opponents would do just as poorly, if not worse.
Soon, Saturday is upon us. I finished refining the maps I didn’t have much practice on and refreshed myself on a few others.
An hour before the match, I repurposed the spreadsheet with the map pool to act as a survey where everyone would rate their comfort-level on a map from one to five. With that, we could determine our picks and bans.
It was a bit wonky at first, but we had a solid strategy, and, more importantly, it gave everyone the feeling of being further prepared.
So, my strategy was to keep the team positive and try to only play slow maps.
I talked with the team captain. We discussed what our picks should be and soon the match was set to being.
Right before we started, timeregg informed us one of their players couldn’t play. This meant we could sub out a player before a map was picked.
In my mind, this changed everything.
I no longer had to play every song and could focus on the fast maps. I wasn’t just ready, I was overprepared. However, this wasn’t the only confusion of the day.
The match was now five versus four and due to the stream setup, they only wanted eight of nine to play a warmup map at a time. One of our players didn’t want to play in the first warmup and I really wanted to because it was UT picking the first map and I could gauge their skill.
Despite a teammate not wanting to play, me messaging both admins and spamming Discord, they still went ahead and played the warmup without me.
Any of my teammates could’ve not readied up or the admins could’ve increased the lobby size for just the warmups.
Nope, none of that happened. I was pissed.
Cue the swearing and banging again. Ya, I’m the bad guy in the story; we’ve already established this.
My mental was boom. I went to the bathroom and did some breathing exercises to cool off. It mostly worked and to be fair, I didn’t let anyone know my frustration.
My objective was to win, so publicly, I was the face of calmness and confidence.
That even worked as once you put a mask on, some of it stays. Throughout the match, my nerves calmed. Despite starting the match angry and being down three-zero before scoring a point, I was fine, even excited. I wasn’t acting anymore, I was laughing despite being so far behind.
The vague memories of DreamHack 2018 were coming back to me.
I was playing at about the level I expected myself to play at. The games went back and forth and I was subbed in and out depending on the type of map. Then, Gangnam style was selected by our opponents. I told you I’d get to Gangnam Style.
I missed randomly early on and when most players usually lose their nerves, I was calm. The pressure was off because I can no longer full-combo the song.
I played perfectly until the break and realized two things:
Firstly, the score was close and I had the highest combo, meaning I would probably have to carry. Cue the nerves again.
Secondly, I was playing out of my goddamn mind. So, I decided to slam my fists on my chair and exclaim “I’m playing out of my goddamn mind!”
After that, no note could escape me. I was playing insanely well for my standards, nerves be damned.
After the map finishes, we win it. Same thing, slam, yell.
Unfortunately the stream had technical difficulties during Gangnam Style, so this is the next best thing.
That’s the feeling. It’s back. The excitement I get from outperforming my own expectations, outperforming others’ expectations while also having people watch live.
I even had my housemates knocking on my door to let them watch. Screw that, I need to maintain a “quiet” environment.
At this point, the score was five to four.
Unfortunately, it was too little too late. I overperformed on a map and carried, but didn’t really have an impact after that. We did take a higher-ranked team to game 12, narrowly losing seven to five.
To be honest, I didn’t have much of an impact the whole match other than that one song. I played average and most of my contributions were picking and banning maps.
But despite losing and my team’s morale being low, I tasted the intense emotions of competition again, even for a brief moment. It was nowhere near to what I felt two years ago, but it brought those memories front and center.
UTA managed to take the match to game 12 despite the large rank difference.
I’m hopeful one day to have that intense feeling again, maybe through TFT, but enough on that.
I promised a Fornari redemption arc and I shall deliver.
Two days after the match, I booted up osu! I’d been dreaming of a time when I didn’t have to play songs from the pool. Almost immediately I noticed a significant improvement.
Wait.
Then I played another map and crushed it.
Wait.
Then I played an AR 8 map and crushed it.
Wait.
Then, I opened up a forbidden song folder I made over two years ago. A folder of songs I’ve come close to passing but never have.
The folder had 19 unpassed songs. Then 18, 17, then 16.
Wait.
Then 15, then 14. Wait.
Then, I started spamming what I think was the map that made me want to make the folder in the first place: EGOIST - Ame, Kimi o Tsurete [Prismatic].
This is an AR 9.1 map that’s rated at 5.2 stars. It’s considered a jump map meaning notes appear on different parts of the map and you jump to them.
However, for some reason, my brain malfunctions on this map. I’m usually good at jump maps, but for some reason, I rush the map, meaning I hit the notes extremely early. For that map, my offset is -50ms, meaning I hit the notes 50 milliseconds early.
I’m not sure what information can be extrapolated from this, but okay.
Anyway, it must’ve been two hours of spamming that map until finally a pass emerged. The map that I’m pretty sure made me create the folder was gone. A song I couldn’t beat for over two years was gone.
I have no idea how I passed the end. It looked like all my HP was gone.
I’ve never been better at osu!
Wait… TIMEREGG WAS RIGHT! POG!
In four hours I beat almost a third of the folder I couldn’t beat for years. Mechanics like streaming which I didn’t practice at all had been infused by eggboi.
It felt like he was Mr. Miyagi and I was Daniel-san. After a week of enduring Bad Apple and Hatsune Miku, I was starting to believe.
Now, I’m still relatively awful, but I’ve improved significantly. Significantly enough that when timeregg announced a third-party tournament not run by him, which ended up being the most poorly organized tournament I’ve seen in my life across the four games I’ve competed in, I jumped at the opportunity, because I could win.
The tournament is designed for beginners ranked between 200,000 and one million. However, the tournament was designed specifically for me because as I said, I could win.
Registration was announced, and many players on our now-disbanded team registered. However, nowhere on the page did it say players needed to also register on Discord.
Now, after talking with several osu! players, it seems like the consensus is joining the Discord is a common-sense requirement in every osu! tournament. However, I’ll counter that, in the over 70 online tournaments I’ve competed in, if it doesn’t say joining Discord is a requirement, then it’s not a requirement. Also, the tournament was marketed as a beginner tournament, so it’s probably some players’ first osu! tournament. I’d argue not 100 percent of players would join the Discord if it wasn’t explicitly stated, but that’s just me.
Anyway, I registered in time, but registered on Discord late. The tournament organizer personally messaged me and I’ll just show you the screenshot.
So, I’m sad and upset at the unfairness. Then, randomly one of my teammates posted the map pool and I was just curious to see what songs were picked. To my surprise they posted a schedule and for some reason I decided to check if I was on there. I was.
Well, there ya go. Sick management.
I’m not on the participant list by the way, only the schedule, but better to ask for forgiveness than permission. Worst case scenario, I learn some new maps.
And learn them I do, as most of them are AR 9.
Since the first round is only a qualifier round and I’m better than most players, I only practiced about four hours.
Turns out I was right. I loaded up in a lobby with three other players and after playing the six songs assigned to us, I won four and got second in two.
As they say in TFT, it’s a FUCKING first.
I just played in the first stage qualifier round of an @osugame tournament and let's just say it's a FUCKING first pic.twitter.com/D2TgEaEiCu
— Kevin Fornari (@Kevin_Fornari) April 16, 2020
I later learned that the MVP of the UTA vs. UT match, Bud64, who also had the same exact problem of being told he wasn’t registered for the tournament because of Discord, see, told ya this would happen to other people, was scheduled for a match and then kicked from the tournament because his rank exceeded 200,000.
I wanted to avenge my comrade and as I said, this tournament was made for me. I wanted to destroy it, take first and then tell the TOs how poorly run the tournament was.
And I wish I could tell you I clapped every one of my opponents. I wish I could tell you I prepared hard every round and won through hard work and spite. I wish I could tell you I took home first place and got the entire UTA Esports osu! community to cheer for me.
However, as poorly-run tournaments go, this one was the worst I’d ever been a part of. So it came as little surprise that when the placements were posted I wasn’t listed.
Going into the arguments I had with a server admin and a ref from a different server isn’t worth it in this already behemoth article. I’ll just say I was treated suboptimally, called a liar and pretty much laughed out of the server.
Unlucky.
But at least I learned some new maps and had that adrenaline rush from competing again.
Some nice memes came from this experience and I’m way more active in the osu! community than I’ve ever been. I’ve done some really incredible things for my mechanical standards and got to prepare and compete in two matches. I even climbed 70,000 ranks in two months.
All in all, I’d do it again if given the opportunity, but with less screaming. I just want to get that feeling I had from two years ago back and not just briefly glimpse at it.
I want to do my best. I want to regain the feeling competition gave me. The wild ride, acute thinking, extreme focus, the nerves and sickness in your stomach that gradually fades, the random thoughts that pop in and out in the middle of a match that have nothing to do with anything, the regret of mistakes and the planning for future matches. I want the congratulations from my opponents and friends and the condolences after a close defeat.
I want to remember what it’s like to fall in love with something. What it’s like to be human.
And that’s fine in a vacuum, but I put that pressure on myself, my team, and timeregg. I couldn’t contain my emotions and it was unfair to everyone.
For that, I apologize. I let my passion for the purity of competition corrupt my human empathy and hurt my friends.
But to be fair, I did have to play two Hatsune Miku maps.
