Alrighty folks, get ready
So, I'm going to go ahead and preface this with something very, very important. A lot of people in this have no actual understanding of what "neutral" actually is. A prime example of this is the fact that they are posting here at all. This thread is useless, unproductive, and generally harmful. I'm gonna end that there, you'll understand what I mean by the end of this.
First and foremost. You need to take everything you think you know about "neutral", within a character based context, and pretty much throw that out because it's wrong. Characters don't have "neutrals". People play neutral. Characters have neutral tools. If you ever have written, will write, or think about writing that X fighter has Y arbitrary "neutral" ability, you need to take that thought and throw it away.
People play neutral.
Characters have neutral tools. What is a tool? Well besides the obvious, a tool is an option that is either safe or unsafe depending on the matchup. There are no inherently bad or good tools, they are just tools. A tool can be used properly or improperly. Again, you, as the player, are controlling your character. You are playing neutral, not the fighter.
For instance, I'm going to give an example. MK's ftilt is a tool. Is it a good tool? No, it's just a tool. It's a tool that happens to be effective in certain matchups and situations that you must be able to identify. MK's ftilt is extremely useful in situations where it will outrange or out frame data another character's tools. For instance, in the MK vs Mario matchup, MK's ftilt has extreme levels of utility. With proper spacing and movement (perfect pivoting, walking, etc) you can easily outspace against all of Mario's grounded normal attacks, and the final hit will intercept Mario's short hop, due to it's high vertical range. Does this mean you should use ftilt a lot in the matchup? Not necessarily. You should use it if it will be an effective tool in context. This is important.
Now, you might be thinking, OK well if I shouldn't grade a character's neutral itself, surely I can evaluate how good their neutral tools are?
Nope, wrong again.
Looking at this in such a narrow vacuum is
unproductive and generally harmful. It's harmful for you, yourself, to understand it in this way, and it's harmful towards the people reading what you post (either because they believe you, or because they get a massive headache reading it)
This has definitely been mentioned before, so I won't get into too much detail, but I will make some points I haven't seen mentioned.
When you, as a player, are playing your neutral game, the actions you take are based on what your goals are and what things you want to avoid happening to you. As MK, your goals are fairly simple: I want to kill my opponent as efficiently as possible, with the minimum amount of effort/overextension. As a result, players, especially at the low and mid levels of play, will often focus on doing solely one thing. They will either:
1. Stand in one spot and wait for their opponent to commit to an unsafe action
2. Randomly mash their face on the A button
Remember how I said that a character's neutral tools are neither good, nor bad? Well how
you play neutral can most certainly bad (in fact it almost assuredly is)
Playing neutral is not about mashing out a character's "good" options until you win, as many people would have you think.
Fighting games are hard. They are hard because you are constantly having to predict to/react to/anticipate/apply pressure to your opponent. If you aren't playing this game, it's because you either have no understanding of how this game actually works, or your opponent doesn't and you don't either (The latter accounts for the case that you are winning against other people).
OBVIOUSLY, if you run around and mash dash attack, you're going to be punished. Coming on smashboards and ****posting about MK afterwards is not helpful. Learn from your mistakes.
Now, I can say what I really wanted to say with this point. MK's entire gameplan, and how you execute it, is entirely based on the risk/reward of the options you choose. Look at early MK play from >1 year ago, before ladder combos were exploited. MK was still a functional fighter... with a completely different playstyle. Did you see MKs randomly mashing dash attack? No, they played safe bait/punish games focused around MK's strong kill moves and good frame data on the ground. How the character was played changed
dramatically when the fighter's advantage state became better. You must understand this. You cannot separate these things.
I'll give a practical example. Say Sheik's upb gets nerfed, it recovers less than half as far as it did before. Is Sheik played the same was as she was before? No. Every single attribute of this fighter has been adversely affected by this change. She can no longer go as deep to chase after people because the risk/reward has been skewed. As a result, you will no longer see Sheiks play their neutral game exactly the same way because they know that, hey if get into a position where I'm taking you offstage, and I mess up, I will die 100% of the time.
Now, with all this said, I'm going to go ahead and address specific issues people have with MK + his options and tell you why you're wrong (sorry)
This is wrong. MK has exactly the same amount of options as every other fighter. (besides Ryu o
Are they good options? Damn you like asking this question. They are effective options if you are using them correctly. MK's fair is an awkward move. Does that mean it's bad? No, it has uses. You need to recognize this. For instance, Abadango has innovated with this specific move a lot. Watch Abadango play against a Rosa player. He will fall onto Luma with fair extremely often and kill Luma because of it. It's a tool you must learn how to utilize or you won't be a complete player.
I don't think I need to tell you why this is wrong.
OK so I take a lot of issue with these particular statements for a number of reasons. First and foremost, MK is quite comfortable stalling and waiting. MK has no issues with this. Why you think he does, I have no idea. And it's not like he's defenseless in doing so. MK has extremely effective anti-airs and anti-approach tools. There are only a few moves he truly has issues dealing with (they are pretty much sheiks forward air and ZSS's aerials in general, though in zss's case there is strong counterplay)
As for not being able to force approach, I just need to remind you that neutral is not something you can look at in a vacuum (again)
Any time you are fighting an MK, you are living in fear of him. Plain and simple. You are afraid at all times. This will affect your play. As the MK player, if you can keep your opponent afraid, you don't need to force any issues. You can apply pressure through movement but you don't need to truly commit to anything. You can wait. Or you can just call them out on their passive play and grab them/dash attack them/sh uair them.
You just.. completely don't have any understanding of mind games/footsie mentality at all. I recommend you watch this video. It's really good:
Oh boy. Where to even begin. Honestly, I get such a headache reading this, I don't even want to read it the amount of times I would need to, to be able to properly respond. Hang on. I'm gonna get another cup of coffee.
Much better...
OK. So, I'm just going to break this down, one sentence at a time, so as to prevent an aneurysm.
OK, maybe this was a bad idea. How about, we just dont space with fair then? Wow, it's like, the problem doesn't exist if you don't make it exist. Next.
Why are you approaching with dair holy ****. Yeah. MK has no "always effective" approaching sh aerials. And uh, also, have you ever even used dair? The hitbox is a lot better than you're making it out to be. Also FH dair is safe on shield 100%. You have to understand this tool. It is effective for what it does. Over extend a little bit? Try FH dair, it will get you out of trouble a lot. Don't rely on it though.
You know who else has really good grounded options minus specials? Captain Falcon. Does Captain Falcon have a good neutral? That was a trick question. You should know by now. Bad.
See, you don't understand what makes perfect pivot good at all. If you did, you would see the fact the MK has one of the longest perfect pivots in the game, and say "wow, this option would be really good for positioning/baiting/dodging in almost every situation, because it goes far and has zero commitment."
But, you didn't see that, and you didn't think that. Instead, you only looked at in the context of "Hey, if I perfect pivot, whats the fastest way I can mash my face on my controller immediately after?"
Oh jesus
I think you forgot a ton of options there, first off. I don't even think I need to address the second statement at this point.
I'm not sure you even know what 50/50 means.
Let me bring you back to Captain Falcon. Captain falcon has a bad neutral amirite
Well. I don't really have anything more to say, besides that I'd like to take you back to my preface. In conclusion, please delete thread thanks. It's stupid and awful and I'm sick of being linked here when people say stupid **** about Metaknight.
Thanks for your time.
Disregarding the comments that you have made about having this topic closed, it seems as though the core of your argument actually revolves around Meta Knight warranting a higher placement as opposed to anything else, interestingly enough.
While your statement about people playing the neutral, and characters having neutral tools isn't exactly false, it isn't exactly the truth either. When people talk about the neutral, they generally talk about both the characters and the players collectively, from what I have gathered. However, what is erroneous is that yes, while certain neutral tools yeild much more effective results (or less effective results) depending on the matchup, it doesn't exactly disregard there not being "good neutral tools" and "bad neutral tools". This is because there are two additional factors to consider. The first factor is the combined synergy that a character's entire moveset has with eachother in regards to the neutral state (or any state for that matter), and the second factor is the combined success rate that a character's specific neutral tool/entire neutral kit has with the entirety of the cast. Like you have stated, the neutral can vastly differ from matchup to matchup. However, the overall combined value of a character's potential in the neutral can only be stretched so far. Results, frame data, tier lists, and etc all point towards this being true. Because math is always going to be involved. Despite the ludicrous number of variables and options to consider, the "bigger numbers" are more likely going to win. Are they the only factor? Certainly not. Player skill, matchup strengths/weaknesses, your character's overall entire kit of options, and etc will push past the supposed success rate that those said numbers would otherwise quantify as. But this sort of potential can only be pushed so far. And just like with tier lists, "the neutral" that I am trying to look for isn't just "character X beats character Y". But rather, "character X has a far higher chance of beating character Y due to their overall potential", because the overall rate of a character's maximum potential when utilizing their tools in the neutral can't be stretched to infinity. Some characters will just end up drawing a shorter stick than others. It's as simple as that. Well, not really, but in the grand scheme of things once every variable and possibility and level of skill and etc is taken into factor. This is certainly a lot of data to try to compare all at once, but this project is nowhere near being done to begin with. It would take a very long time to complete. Easily longer than a year. Especially since the competitive metagame will always be shifting and changing, and nobody knows when a surprise patch could just bombard us out of nowhere. But that's okay. There's nothing wrong with waiting, and giving time for something to grow. At least, in my eyes, anyways. I have an extremely ample amount of patience for something like this, though I completely understand if others aren't the same way as I am. (Just to be clear, I am not saying that you are impatient/I am just speaking out loud, is all)
And yes, while looking at things in a vacuum is certainly harmful, I feel as though that "locking things in a closet" can be equally as harmful. If not more-so. The Smash community has been around for a very long time. And in that time, people's level of understanding on how each game's metagame plays out have vastly improved, and our ability to process this has become faster and faster with each iteration. So while the amount of characters, and therefore variables, in Smash 4 is definitely the largest, and by extension it makes things easier to look at into a vacuum; I am not too worried. Because, thanks to conflicting information and different opinions (yours included), it becomes far easier to judge things on a more efficient and more factual level as opposed to me looking at this alone. Will things be perfect this way? No, and they never will be. But will it be better? Certainly. If I alone was to try to look at all of this information by myself, it would easily be impossible. But thanks to both the supporters and opposers of this thread, the lines within the data become clearer to see, and I can feel more and more confident in the overall collective thoughts that have been gathered for the characters, and how they can be judged. Because I try to do my best to look at this as a community, and not just my own thoughts weighing in against everyone else's. Does that mean that I am free of bias? Or anyone free of bias, for that matter? Hell no, lol. But I am okay with that, because I don't mind working with other people. Not to mention, other people such as yourself can keep me in check, and vice-versa. So while my opinions will definitely differ from yours in a number of areas, I am still very appreciative of what you (and everyone else) has posted, and I try to keep everyone's opinions and feelings in mind when making these lists. The thing is? I want them to be judged, because I want them to be better. If this topic was completely free of criticism or differing opinions, it would most certainly produce undesired and more-biased results, and I definitely don't want that to happen. But whenever someone finds enough interest to post here, even if it is just to criticize, it helps this topic grow for the better. And that couldn't be accomplished without opinions like yours. A little bit of spice to mix into the pot, which I don't mind at all. So even though you personally don't like this topic, I thank you for posting in it.
The way that I value the three states is somewhat complicated, to say in the least. I see them separately from eachother, and at the same time, I don't. So when I consider what is the "Neutral State", the "Advantage State", and the "Disadvantage State", most of the time tools for one will bleed into another. The best way that I explain how I look at this is from a matter of perspective. For example: Protons, Neutrons, and Electrons. Every atom is comprised of these same components, and yet said atoms can turn out vastly different from eachother depending on the structure of said atom. Each individual part that makes up the atom can be viewed separately, but at the same time, they are still connected together. It is still all just one atom.
Basically, I view everything like this.. Where Red is the Advantage State, Green is the Neutral State, Blue is the Disadvantage State, and White is the overall value a character has once all of these things have been taken into account. Obviously, there are problems with this, since "the neutral" is overall going to be the largest and most important factor to determine a character's competitive viability...but the overall principle of how I view it still applies, despite my own personal problems with it. Magenta, Yellow, and Cyan are where the three states can bleed into eachother. So, if one were to look at things this way, more defined lines can be seen between the three rankings. They can be seen separately, due to the success rate brought about by their own individual qualities. But despite this, it is all secondary nature to the overall kit that the character possesses. They are all still connected. They are all part of a character's whole kit. It is all still a single image within a single hyperlink that you are seeing on your computer monitor. But regardless, the different colors can easily be spotted. And I feel as though that this applies to the characters as well. So, when I judge the characters, I judge these states both on their
individual qualities and their
overall combined qualities in regards to competitively play. The maximum amount of potential and success rate that can be stretched not just from each move, and each state that a character possesses. But also the total synergy that every single move, and every single state combined can provide to the character against the entire cast of characters and their tools/options, when optimal play is taken into factor ("optimal realistic play" anyways). So my thoughts on this can understandably be quite confusing. However, simply put: I don't disagree with the example you have provided for Sheik whatsoever in regards to how changing just her Up B would affect the character in her entire. In fact, it is quite the opposite. I wholeheartedly support it, and I agree with it.
However, the way that I see it isn't as simple as "A weaker Up B means that Sheik will have -3/-3/-3 in regards to her Neutral/Advantage/Disadvantage states". Rather, the way that I equate it to is "A weaker Up B means that Sheik will have a -3/-1/-4 in regards to her Neutral/Advantage/Disadvantage states". This is a very crude example, but it should get my thoughts across. A single change to just one of Sheik's moves was detrimental to the overall synergy of her kit. But this change affected each and every single set-piece of her kit
differently. Therefore, while all of these things dropped relative to eachother as a result from a single change, the way that it affected each individual state can't be viewed in the same way by comparison. The fact that
it made her weaker overall cannot be disputed. But at the same time, the fact that
it made certain qualities about her weaker than others cannot be disputed, as well. So, in summary, that is a basic example of how I try to view and judge each and every single possible part, variable, matchup, tool, and etc within this topic. And believe me, it isn't easy. But it is much easier to actually do rather than to explain. Especially since I know that my mind alone isn't the only one working on this. But rather, the combined minds of everyone whom wishes to partake in this topic of discussion. Granted, it is still a lot to take in, and there will be many disputes over the rankings/how they are judged/if they can be judged/etc will be different and all that. But I truly feel as though, with enough time, this topic can prosper if given the chance. And when anybody posts in here, I do the absolute best that I can to make sure that everyone has an equal chance to explain themselves, their thoughts, and their feelings in regards to the characters. But despite this, I also want everyone to know that I put a lot of thought into this. So when you see a character that is higher or lower than how you think/feel as though they should be, please understand that it has nothing to do with me not considering someone's thoughts/feelings, nor is it me trying to base characters by favorites. As neither thing is simply the case. And, if anything, it is likely that I might've overlooked something. Because that is very easy to do when you have 58 characters and god knows how many variables to consider all at once. So other people helping me out is greatly appreciated.
Going back to what you have said about MK, I will be taking all of your opinions into consideration,
Amadeus9
. And additionally, I do take "fear factor" into consideration, along with numerous other variables/qualities, when considering character potentials. And in this case, how MK can potentially function in the neutral. And how other players can react to him in the neutral.
As for that video, I've seen it numerous times by now. It is definitely good information for sure, and there is no doubt that the player has a ton of skill. However, he does take awhile to get to the point, lol
Speaking of SF4 though, I myself have played T. Hawk back in the day. So I know quite a lot about whiff punishing, reads, and the like. Such as using SPD to counter somebody's missed poke, letting people walk into my long-ranged kicks, and the nightmare that is approaching Akuma when he is using aerial fireballs. Granted, I have a much better understanding of these fundamentals now as opposed to how I did back then, but I am certainly not new to the subject.
Going off on a tangent, and to a personal request of mine: Currently, someone I know has been dealing with an aneurysm. This doesn't really have anything to do with the topic, but just as a personal request, please refrain from using the term so lightly. I don't mean to say this, or anything, to try to bring you down though. Rather, it is just a touchy subject for me atm. Thank you in advance.
Going back to MK though. In general, I agree with the things that you have stated thus far. I personally feel as though that MK's neutral is not as bad as people make it out to be (not really pointing towards any names or trying to insult anybody in this topic mind you). However, the way that you are approaching things is detrimental to good conversation. You raise really good points about the character's qualities and how you should apply them, but the way you do so in a condescending mannerism isn't necessary or helpful to anyone. You have really good information, but in order to get this information across in the most effective and productive manner possible, this is a quality you have to cut back on in regards to your posts. If your goal is to educate people, and make them understand something, you can't just step on them and insult them for not knowing the things that you do. Or not thinking the same way that you do. You have to understand that people learn things differently, and at different speeds. You have to teach them in a calm and collective manner. Everyone here is human, and everyone here has the ability to learn, so you should try to be aware and respect that. I understand that this can be hard in a number of situations, especially when you find something completely disagreeable with the way that you think/feel (even my own posts), but there are always alternative options and solutions to most problems in life. I am not saying that you should respect and be nice to everybody, but I feel as though that you should give others more leeway in regards to you discussing your opinions with them. More time, more of a chance, and etc. I feel as though that, if you did so, more positive outcomes will come to fruition as a result. I haven't looked down upon you or anything you have said so far, myself. And I am not exactly asking for you to do the same in return. But I have taken every single thing you have said seriously, and into consideration. So, all I ask is for you to relax. I want this topic to be fun and insightful for everyone. Or, at least for the people who care about its goals and my words. So even if you simply just cannot agree with what this topic does or what I say, you should still at least view and treat the people here as people. That is all.
Basically in a very short summary: I am more than willing to work with you, and the things that you have said. Your words on MK in particular were very helpful. But if you wish for others to work with you, you have to work with them, too. Since I am also trying to work with everyone here in this topic, as well. And again, although you have said that you wish for the topic to be deleted/that it is useless/etc; I feel as though that there is a deeper yet simple meaning to the overall posts you have provided in that your own words match your own feelings. You feel as though that your character, Meta Knight, is being undervalued in this topic. And furthermore, you feel as though that you have the knowledge and proof to support your claims/thoughts/feelings. And that is perfectly fine. But the way that you use these feelings as a crux to judge others upon isn't right, either. And that is something that you should understand.
Agree/disagree, stay in the topic/leave the topic, or etc. That is all up to you. If you wish to stay, and become more lax in the future, that is perfectly fine. The more the merrier, and I will treat you equally along with everyone else. However, just because you feel differently about something, doesn't mean that it is wrong, nor does it mean that other things and people should bend to your will. There are a lot of "truths" in life that are very much subjective, opinionated, temporary, and so on. Truths that are indeed true to some people, and yet false to others. And while there are concrete truths in life that nobody can really dispute, the difference in opinions here is not one of them. It is a grey area, although I myself do believe in the goals that this topic has. Though you are equally right to disagree with everything here, and deem it as false. But despite this, and despite what you choose, this topic will be here to stay. You, however, don't have to.
Regardless, thank you for everything that you have posted. And I hope that, at the very least, you understand the opposite side of the debate a little bit better. And that you will treat others in a more positive manner in the future.
