I was working with PCB earlier this year, (I think it was during early Winter) mostly practicing stages for Lunatic and doing some credits, greatly suffering from the lack of consistency. - As usual with the higher difficulty, I was having trouble with patterns a lot during full runs, even though I could manage on practice just fine. I did finish a few credits, but I wasn't very satisfied with the scores I got.
I don't feel like pointing any fingers, but I'm fairly sure that the main hindrance was lack of dedication. - I only ended up doing a few thousand attempts and only worked with the same stages for a day or two when I was doing practice, not sufficient to gain decent ability to both survive the patterns and be able to execute the few grazing techniques I had planned doing.
I soon grew bored and transferred my efforts to IN, netting some new Extra scores and planning down a route for Marisa Normal, to the point where I was fairly satisfied with my stage 1-5. The FinalB stage portion, however, felt overwhelming (I'll admit that I didn't practice much, again) and not breaking more than three familiars during the stage started feeling like a stretch I didn't want to make, so I once again decided to put the category down for a while and return later.
There were also a few updated Easy scores, but those didn't require very much planning or practice, as I was already familiar with the category and didn't try for a higher score. (I generally play the difficulty for a few credits when I see a new replay for it or if there is talk of it somewhere and see if I can update my highscore for that category.)
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Once I laid down IN Extra and Normal, I was considering returning to PCB Lunatic, but quickly noticed that I didn't enjoy it very much, the category being a bit too difficult for me, at least for now. In late April, I decided to try PCB Hard, which was a fairly new category for me to play in. (I had cleared it a few times before, but never really done any practice or planning for it)
I quickly found out that I felt a lot more comfortable with Hard than I did with Lunatic. I played a few credits without practice and got some 1.8B scores just using some combination of my Lunatic/Normal route. It became apparent that I could get 2B if I did some practice. I spent the majority of June doing nothing but practice for the stages 3-6 (mostly 3 and 4), and started putting in credits late into the month, when I felt fairly consistent in stage practice. The plan was to have a route slightly above 2B and then manage the said goal with a large amount of mistakes allowed.
Shortly after that, I hit the score target, two things coming into my mind. First of all, the run felt fairly rushed (which it was), with a combination of safer-than-usual play and multiple mistakes. The other thing, I thought PCB Hard had felt more comfortable to score in than Lunatic or Normal. The pattern difficulty wasn't as tough as on Lunatic, so I felt I could dodge most of it, and a large amount of the grazing didn't feel as tight as it was on Normal. I have no doubts that on higher level of play Hard is more difficult than Normal, but on this casual level I play on, it's probably the other way around. I had a short chat with another player about it and we came to the same conclusion, although I'm not sure if I confused him when I shared my musings on it.
Playing a category where I was not aiming for high level scoring (95% of WR or more) was a rather refreshing experience. My IN goals are often fairly high for me (goals I rarely meet, resulting in sorrow), so I think playing PCB Hard rejuvenated some old feelings and reminded me of what I seek from these games: cheerful and silly times in practice figuring out routes and remaining somewhat comfortable while doing some easier scoring strategies. Instead of anxiety and worry, I got excited during the final minutes of the run, which I don't think has happened for a good while.
This is hopefully a good sign.
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All in all, considering how little I have played during 2014 (somewhere in between 100 and 200 hours), I've been lucky to be able to update as many old high scores of mine as I have.
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I have no experience in formal blog posting, so I have no clue whether or not this will suffice. A friend told me that I used to go into specifics of certain run when I formerly posted on the
sm.org scoreboards and expanded upon my feelings over there (in a very unsuitable fashion for a scoreboard), but I didn't feel like doing that for now. (I don't think I had any fruitful input to give on PCB Hard considering how new I was to the category.) With future scores I might do some analysis again, in case this blog thing lives.
