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its been a year .... when do i get good ?

shaxstax

Smash Cadet
Joined
Dec 5, 2014
Messages
66
Location
fort erie ontario
hey everyone now I know this is a probably a some what boring and common topic but none the less I thought I would ask you wonderful people the question . why am I still playing badly ? I practice every day and actually have a solid work ethic towards the game and have kept it up for a year but tournament results don't reflect my work at all . im not considering quiting or anything because I love this game but it would be nice to just win once in a while lol . I don't have many people near me that play so im mostly restricted to cpus iv been trying to get 20xx working on my pc but with no success . I feel if nerves didn't affect me as much and if I could concentrate more I could play well but I always lose to gimmicks and just forgetting small things ( effective edge garding , taking stocks quickly etc ) if anything I feel like its a slump overall and the other question im going to ask is , would taking a break maybe help ? thanks for reading I know this seems some what like a rant but im just confused and didn't know where else to go :p .
 
Joined
Oct 5, 2008
Messages
7,187
It's more about work than about time. Someone could play 2 games of Melee over a span of a year and they won't get as good as someone who plays 200 games in a span of a week

There are also factors to consider; how good your region is, how many active players it has, its diversity, your talent, the ways you practice, and the amount of time you do these practices. There is no set answer because a variable can change it easily

Why are you playing badly? Have you analyzed your own games? What are you practicing? What about other players in your region? Are you sure that you're outpracticing them by a good margin?

If you're limited to fighting CPUs, you might be capable of a lot of tech skill, but you're going to be dumb because you never practice the strategic aspect of the game (enough) against human opponents

You're suffering from bad occasion setting. It's a psychological thing about conditioning. When you play actual games against human opponents, you're in a completely different environment than what you're used to. You don't have the memory cues for all the stuff you learned in that situation that you have in your own room. Remembering the stuff you practiced will be harder. Keep playing in that situation. That's the only way to develop the memory cues for it

Breaks can help refresh you, but It doesn't look like the problem from what I can see
 

shaxstax

Smash Cadet
Joined
Dec 5, 2014
Messages
66
Location
fort erie ontario
It's more about work than about time. Someone could play 2 games of Melee over a span of a year and they won't get as good as someone who plays 200 games in a span of a week

There are also factors to consider; how good your region is, how many active players it has, its diversity, your talent, the ways you practice, and the amount of time you do these practices. There is no set answer because a variable can change it easily

Why are you playing badly? Have you analyzed your own games? What are you practicing? What about other players in your region? Are you sure that you're outpracticing them by a good margin?

If you're limited to fighting CPUs, you might be capable of a lot of tech skill, but you're going to be dumb because you never practice the strategic aspect of the game (enough) against human opponents

You're suffering from bad occasion setting. It's a psychological thing about conditioning. When you play actual games against human opponents, you're in a completely different environment than what you're used to. You don't have the memory cues for all the stuff you learned in that situation that you have in your own room. Remembering the stuff you practiced will be harder. Keep playing in that situation. That's the only way to develop the memory cues for it

Breaks can help refresh you, but It doesn't look like the problem from what I can see
I think your right as far as not knowing how to play humans goes I just get very shaky and like you said get very uncomfortable ( like iv never played the game ) but I will do as you say and just play as much as possible in tournaments to gain confidence and eventually play better :) . also yeah I do go back and analyse a few of my sets I have but I feel like I know what im doing wrong theres just some kind of wall when I play that limits me lol idk maybe its just johns but I will work to improve .
 
Joined
Oct 5, 2008
Messages
7,187
It really just takes experience. If you can, try to put as much pressure on yourself. Get on stream/recording setups if you can, maybe also try to pull a crowd to watch you play a tournament set to help you get used to a high pressure setting. When playing under the pressure of being watched becomes a simple task, being watched will make you play better (another psychology thing I know, social facilitation)
 

shaxstax

Smash Cadet
Joined
Dec 5, 2014
Messages
66
Location
fort erie ontario
its hard but I will try to just put more attention on my self I guess so I can get used to it lol literally what I dread at every tournament
 

Twinkles

Smash Lord
Joined
Mar 5, 2011
Messages
1,022
Location
SoCal
Might be mental focus.

This post is a good indicator you may waste precious mental energies on the fact that you aren't "good" despite having been playing for awhile, when you could be focusing your attention single-mindedly on improving all aspects of your game (tech skill, neutral, reads, etc.). If you were single-mindely focused on improving, you wouldn't be making this post, you would probably be thinking about anything and everything you could improve on. We call Melee a deep game because no matter how good you get, there's always something you could improve on!

When you go to tournament, try to force yourself onto as many friendlies as possible, focus as hard as you can on what you can improve on as you're playing. Take notes if you have to in order to remember, and plan how you're going to improve your game after.

EDIT: Things you can always think about improving are punish game (how do I get that one extra hit in/kill people off one stray hit), neutral (why did I lose this situation, what can I do to win next time), and DI/recovery (how do I make it as hard as possible for someone to get the punish on me).
 
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Roukiske

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Oct 13, 2014
Messages
377
Location
CA
Training with CPU's won't get you as far as you think (with any fighting game which many think otherwise). You have to play more and more people. You could Ken combo a CPU Ganon all day, but a human will pick up your habits or weaknesses and exploit them. Not to mention learning to beat the AI is different from learning to beat a training partner.

Defense, spacing, punishment, quick decision making, mixups and option coverage are just a few things I can think of where you can only learn by playing more and more people, not CPU's. If there's no one around you to play, netplay is something you can do. Even if you believe there is lag, you'll at least get exposed to valid strategies and actually learn to play against them.
 
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shaxstax

Smash Cadet
Joined
Dec 5, 2014
Messages
66
Location
fort erie ontario
Might be mental focus.

This post is a good indicator you may waste precious mental energies on the fact that you aren't "good" despite having been playing for awhile, when you could be focusing your attention single-mindedly on improving all aspects of your game (tech skill, neutral, reads, etc.). If you were single-mindely focused on improving, you wouldn't be making this post, you would probably be thinking about anything and everything you could improve on. We call Melee a deep game because no matter how good you get, there's always something you could improve on!

When you go to tournament, try to force yourself onto as many friendlies as possible, focus as hard as you can on what you can improve on as you're playing. Take notes if you have to in order to remember, and plan how you're going to improve your game after.

EDIT: Things you can always think about improving are punish game (how do I get that one extra hit in/kill people off one stray hit), neutral (why did I lose this situation, what can I do to win next time), and DI/recovery (how do I make it as hard as possible for someone to get the punish on me).
i agree for sure and i took some time to think about it when i got home and came to the same conclusion :p
 
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