I need to stop playing.

[Slaves]

I know everyone says "Practice, practice, practice" when it comes to getting better a Touhou, and to a certain extent, that is true. However, I find a much better format is to just play casually when you want to play Touhou, don't think "I need to practice x or y", just play to play.

EoSD Normal was my first 1cc in the series and all I did was play 1 or 2 runs every few days. I find that when you start trying to practice and memorize things it just tends to cause more problems than anything else.

Defeating Flandre was ultimately my #1 Touhou goal and I accomplished that through casual play, so just take it easy and do other things when you get frustrated.

yeah.

recently, i've figured out that you don't even have to play the same game to be able to learn everything. i used to never get past stage 4 on PCB Normal, and after 1ccing UFO i went and tried again for the first time in about a month, and i 1cced it with 6 lives remaining.

practice, but don't practice too much.

[Quintafeira12]

I know everyone says "Practice, practice, practice" when it comes to getting better a Touhou, and to a certain extent, that is true. However, I find a much better format is to just play casually when you want to play Touhou, don't think "I need to practice x or y", just play to play.

EoSD Normal was my first 1cc in the series and all I did was play 1 or 2 runs every few days. I find that when you start trying to practice and memorize things it just tends to cause more problems than anything else.

Defeating Flandre was ultimately my #1 Touhou goal and I accomplished that through casual play, so just take it easy and do other things when you get frustrated.

I sort of found about this method with "Shoot the Bullet" of all things.
I could make a chart of my successful shot on each scene as I played, and it would invariably be a graph going down.
If I got some sleep, however, and returned to a troublesome scene later, I'd finish most on the first try. Maybe I'm just programed to be at my best after rest, but I started doing so for other games with decent success. If only I could start from Stage 6 and go down from there...

[SP]

I've had a ton of RAGE and frustration on and off with various Touhou games, mixed with times where I don't mind grinding to perfection.  I just play what's fun  :V

It certainly has made me stray away from lunatic (and for a while, StB) though.  I've built up my skill doing ridiculous challenges on levels that I enjoyed more, so that I could go to lunatic/StB then beat them without having as hard a time with them even though that takes a lot longer.  Weird, I know, but it keeps me from doing something like this.

[theshirn]

this.

I smash my keyboard drawer, not my keyboard (and not my monitor).  At least I have some control. :V

[ebarrett]

this.

I smash my keyboard drawer, not my keyboard (and not my monitor).  At least I have some control. :V

I broke the keyboard foot below the ESC key and promptly went into a one-week series of breakthroughs, so I guess a middle ground is possible.

[Yukkuri]

I think I broke my speaker in one of my rages since now it never shuts off. 

[Cabble]

I do in touhou what I do with music - slow it down until perfection, then speed it up little by little.

[lmagus]

I've been playing for 2 months and a half... almost 3 months now...
Been playing on Hard for about a month, and I've already broken 3 keyboards since I started...

The worst part is that I play a lot at work, and god damn it's hard to keep from swearing so people won't notice I'm playing a game :V

I ragequit a lot and I go through all windows games at least once a day, every day.

But I found a way to improve my skill slightly without making me rage so much.
My favourite boss fight is against Sanae, and I practice it a lot.

After I started playing MoF Stage 5 a lot on practice mode, my skill on everything else improved without having to get so angry at the game, because I know Sanae is hard, I don't expect to capture everything she has at once and i LOVE playing her and her stage.

Othar than that and MoF St6 I've never practiced a stage.. I find it too boring.

[Milkyway64]

I've been playing for 2 months and a half... almost 3 months now...
Been playing on Hard for about a month, and I've already broken 3 keyboards since I started...

Wow. That's bad. Three keyboards?

You've played for about as long as I have. It feels a lot longer than it's been.

I haven't really played any of the games since I made this thread, but, I occasionally booted CtC up. It's pretty fun, though I wish it had a vsync patch as well. That, and I can't seem to unlock Extra and despite many runs on all different scenarios and difficulties, no last words either.

I think I can keep going, just stop forcing my way forward and instead just do a lot of casual play as suggested.

[Slaves]

I've been playing for 2 months and a half... almost 3 months now...
Been playing on Hard for about a month, and I've already broken 3 keyboards since I started...

wow

it took me almost a year to start playing Normal

i don't think i've ever broken anything, though..

[lmagus]

I've broken two by hitting on them really hard.

The third one made me stop play for almost a week. I grabbed it and hit it on my desk lol.. :V

I'll never do that again =P

[Nine West]

I've broken two by hitting on them really hard.

The third one made me stop play for almost a week. I grabbed it and hit it on my desk lol.. :V

I'll never do that again =P

By god if I ever break anything...

Spoiler:

The laptop that I use to play Touhou is already dying.

That reminds me, I should play Touhou more often.

[Bias Bus]

I don't play Touhou as much as I used to, but I'm not good enough to 1cc anything (usually because I don't aim to do that, I usually just play it to see the end and quit after that). That doesn't mean that I had my moments of RAGE.

And those moments of rage are the reason why my printer doesn't work now. All I needed was to visualize the Touhou I hated the most at that moment and everything snowballed from there.

[Onozuka Nikuyokura]

Starting with one of the harder Touhou games as your intro to the series does a little for starting skill but still doesn't make up for practice in small bits. I think my first game over was on Satori Komeiji's stage on Easy.

I play quite a lot but I recently 1cc'd MoF for the first time on Easy, and damn all if I wasn't the happiest person in the library that day. This isn't a game I expect to get good at for a long time.

[Hieda no Aya]

Did this turn into "share your experiences with getting better at Touhou"? Kay!

I've been playing for almost a year now and I'm still terrible. Haven't managed to 1cc anything on normal, and I've done everything on easy at least once but there are a couple I can't get consistently.

Oh well. I don't want to ever stop improving, and seeing myself get distinctly better feels good when it happens, but I'm not a competitive person at heart and I've accepted that I have to move at my own pace, which is slow. I can't stand doing the same stage over and over again, indeed I can't really commit to playing every day even though I enjoy the games. And oversaturation definitely happens; there's a point when I know I've been playing too long because I start flying directly into everything, which is annoying if I still actually want to play. I'm not one to rage either. The games are what I came for and I have a lot of fun with them, but these days they're not my only draw by a longshot. I'd just like to be able to do Extra stages someday, even if it takes ten more years...

Oddly, although I've yet to 1cc a normal mode, the one I've come closest with is SA. Why? Because it's the most likely candidate for my favorite Touhou game overall even though it kicks my ass, and I've played the _literal hell out of it on easy. Surely, if I best SA normal, nothing should be able to scare me anymore! But I've barely played anything other than UFO lately.