Hey everyone. I want to use this random thought to help people optimize their gameplay on FFR. Any questions? Leave me a message.

**By all means, post comments and other tips for other people to see!

#1. Whore songs on Stepmania until your hands bleed to death. Why? It has a more stricter timing (and can tweaked to a further extent) than FFR. Therefore, after a couple of SM sessions and a bit of time to once again get accustomed to FFR's timing, you will be much more accurate with hitting arrows. The difficulty of the songs, depending on which packs you get, are also significantly harder than the ones on FFR which enhances you to skill boost even more. Give it a try! Find all your pack needs here: http://stepmaniaonline.net/index.php?page=downloads

Song pack recommendations?:
beatmaniaIIDX 17 SIRIUS Megapack (1, 2, 3)
Hard Songs Megapacks: (1 & 2)
hard shit: (1 & 2)
Rebound Dump Collection Megapack
Rebound Vibrajacking Packs: (1, 2, 3, & Finale)
Midare's Packs: (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
Nuclear Blast: (1, 2, 3, 4)
Mina's Mini Mega Packs: (1 & 2)
These files / dumps will improve all your speed, jacking, and accuracy needs. Put fail off if you're having trouble passing those files legitimately!

Too hard? Okay. A bunch of other members recommended these packs to me as well (better for MA / accuracy purposes until you can handle the packs above!):
Community Keyboard Pack 4
Dark Chanchellors Pack
FFR Community Packs: (1, 2, 3, SU '11, AU '11, WI '11, SP '12)
Keyboard Collaboration Packs (2 & 3)
Light Chancellors Packs: (1, 2, 3)
Melon Collaboration Packs: (1 & 2)
Mystery Packs: (1, 2)
ODI Packs: (1, 2)
Piano Minipack Of Elegance
Puritanical Penis Packs (1 & 2)
Red Fraction Pack
SMGpacks: (1 & 2)
Xoon 4: (Red, Blue)
Xoon 5

Still too tough for you to handle / Are you a newcomer? Just start out by playing easy songs on FFR.

#2. Quality. Turn quality to low and turn off Aero effects if using Windows 7 or Vista as your OS.
#3. Switch to spread as your dominant style (Index and middle fingers on both hands).
#4. Decision time for spread players. Play with keys closer together or farther apart? I personally play farther apart (`1*- setup) which covers the whole keyboard. Some players love playing close together to hit patterns with other fingers. Everyone has their sweet spot.
#5. Play in MP. It's a good way to meet new people and strive to be better than the others.
#6. Sit in a proper position, seriously. I usually play better in an upright position than opposed to sitting on my legs.
#7. Up your speed from time to time. I've gone from screen cutting, to 1.25, 1.5, 1.75, 1.8, 1.875, and now 1.9 over 7 years. Arrows starting to get clustered? Follow this tip.
#8. Mask your combo when playing on either the Legacy or Velocity engine. It really helps for Legacy since you can see the arrows rise or fall much clearer. As for Velocity, without masking combo may pose as a mere distraction when looking at it with your peripheral vision.
#9. Upscroll or downscroll? Or perhaps a sidescroll? You decide which is most comfortable for you to read.
#10. Standalone player. Reduce the lag. Get it. Now. See which version suits you best.

Flash Player 8: http://www.mediafire.com/?yhay5pin2b2wdo2
Flash Player 9: http://www.mediafire.com/?51ck1fczckk7tlm
.swf engines (Copy & Paste to standalone engine):
Legacy Engine - http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/ffrndanotherway.swf
Velocity Engine - http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/~velocity/ffr_Wide.swf
How to login / get your stats on a Standalone: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UB2Eqt9YvA

#11. Whore every single day, even if for a couple games. You will definitely see improvement in your reading and hand-eye coordination as time passes. Also prevents skill drops.
#12. Play in a lighted area. I don't know about you guys, but as long as there's no glare, I'm able to concentrate better on the arrows.
#13. Headphones vs. Speakers & Key Taps vs. Louder Sound. Experiment whether you like listening to your key taps to better find the beat of the music, or listening to the music so that the key taps won't screw you over.
#14. Nails or no nails? For example, I play better with longer nails as to my friend, LJRoX, plays better without them. Your call.
#15. Blinking. Only blink during breaks of the song. Train your eyes to do so!
#16. Tap lightly on your keyboard when hitting arrows. Smashing hard on the keyboard depletes your stamina quickly, so try to find a sweet spot in-between hard and light taps.
#17. Have a mind block or two on a song? Mirror it in settings to freshen your game.
#18. Are songs offbeat to you? Use the offset function wisely! Play around with offsets between -2 and 2 to find that right fit.
#19. Replays. A HUGE help to getting rid of mind blocks. Play the blocked song, save the replay, pause the area of your mind block, study, replay, profit. Helped with my EHHS AAA.
#20. Don't get discouraged. Build confidence in yourself and don't say that you'll never be the best or that it's impossible. Be the competition.
#21. Learn to play songs with only sight without sound. Your hand-eye coordination will greatly increase. It's a great skill to have for clearing Synth songs (blue arrowed charts) and songs you just can't bear to listen to.
#22. Set goals for yourself. Without goals to achieve, this game will become very boring and stale in the long run.
#23. Challenge yourself to harder songs. If you keep in your comfort zone, there will be no improvement.
#24. Keyboards. Flat, mechanical, or rubber? You choose. As for me, the switch from a bulky keyboard to a flat rubber one allowed me to tap lighter on my keys and helped my stamina overall.
#25. Felt like you've played too much? If you're starting to develop mind blocks on songs, take a break.
#26. Play for fun, not for scores. You'll eventually have more fun not stressing about a certain blackflag or what could've been an FC of some sort.
#27. Concentrate on PA more than mashing. Anyone can mash but not everyone is accurate. Also, due to the recent MP fix, raw score is now worth more than total score which means PA is more important than combo when in a match.
#28. Join tournaments. Same logic applies along with playing in MP.
#29. Search for rivalries on the forum. Same logic as above.
#30. Isolation / Dump Engines. Need help with certain, messed up files? Too lazy to download StepMania? Warmup with these FFR engines (Courtesy of Justin_ator):

Hakulyte's Isolation Engine - Legacy | Velocity
Dossar's Engine - Legacy | Velocity
Community Engine - Legacy | Velocity
Dragon's Fury Engine - Legacy | Velocity
Tarrik's Engine - Legacy | Velocity
Indeed Engine

#*. Have friggin fun.

» 5th Official FFR Tournament (D3) - 12th place (Eliminated in round 7/10) «
» Divine God's 1st Unofficial Tournament (Advanced) - 1st place «
» Dragons Fury Welcome Back Tournament (D4) - 1st place «
» The Krunkykäse Tournament! (D6) - 2nd place «
» SocoNhydro's Tournament of Eternity (June) (D6) - 1st place «
» 6th Official FFR Tournament (D6) - 13th place (Eliminated in round 5/8) «
» Dragons Fury: Custom Tournament #7 (D6B) - 2nd place «

FMO AAA Count: 49
Latest: Chaosmaid ~ 19/05/12 ~

For Guru's Only AAA's

1. Ketsarku Mozgalom ~ 16/10/11 ~

BFs

Mourning the Lost (Booflag)
Time to Eye (Blackflag)
Nomina Nuda Tenemus (Blackflag)
Frictional Nevada (Blackflag)
The Adventures of Lolo (Blackflag)

Other

Sparkle Downer (2-0-0-0)
mutant corecore (2-0-0-4)
honki sentai majirenjaa -MAJI eurobeat version- (2-0-0-1)
I Hate The 80s (3-0-0-0)
Magical Higan Tour 2009 (3-0-0-1)
NaiNai 69 (3-1-0-2)
Gunkienen Tarasuigin (3-1-0-2)
Jamais Deux (3-1-0-3)
Einstein-Rosen Bridge (3-0-1-4)
Indo No Sobaya (t+pazolite Remix) (4-0-1-1)
Across Rooftops (5-0-0-0)
Tsugihagi Construction (5-0-0-3)
Tageri (5-1-0-6)
Pants (6-0-0-0)
Reality (6-1-0-2)
Grand Gallop Chromatique (6-3-0-5)
Mathsma Attack (8-0-0-2)
Little God Channel (9-0-0-2)
Hardkore Atomic (9-0-0-9)
Halcyon [xi] (10-0-1-0)