Yo, really well put man. It's not just that you lose, but that you understand why you lost. Dig within yourself and converse with the people besting you, and it will unravel bit by bit. But that's only if you translate what you should be doing out of what you shouldn't be.
Sure. Part of learning from your loses come with asking your opponent questions too.
If you keep dying when you try to recover, maybe your opponent could give you some tips on how better to do so or some insight as to how they're keeping you from recovering.
If you keep getting hit after you dash attack (or whatever) maybe they have some other options you could practice or might be able to help you realize what isn't working.
A lot of players will just throw out words and terminology when you ask them for advice and a lot of it will be stuff you don't understand (or shouldn't be worrying about yet). It's hard to put yourself into a teaching role, so you'll find that people generally have a hard time translating information into something comprehensible. Pick up what you can though and start with what you think you can handle.
I saw a new player a couple months ago ask what he should work on in his game. Some guy was trying to glorify DI and Wavedashing as the holy grails of Smash without realizing that this player needed a fundamental understanding of movement and spacing before any of that would be relevant. They needed to get comfortable with the physics of melee first.
If there's anything I could say to a new player it'd be to play as much as you can.. and when you play to try to be aware of what's happening at all times. Learning how far your moves reach and getting an understanding of what your attacks do (how they hit the opponent, how long they last, etc) is a great way to start, and from there you can start to look at your opponent's position and their capabilities. Only after that can you really start to understand spacing; the relative distances between you and your opponent. And only after a rudimentary understanding of that can you start to see the reasoning behind dash dancing, wavedashing, platforms, etc. With any luck this'll be the information you need to understand why you were getting hit after every dash attack and why your recoveries weren't quite working.
If you go into a room with the right mindset you'll notice dramatic improvement on whatever you choose to focus on. There's so much to learn that it'll be hard not to take something away while you're getting started.
It's not to discredit the people that will tell you to sit and grind tech skill, but there's a time and place for that. Melee is (imo) more fun with other people and you can pick up at least the bare basics in games.
EDIT:
Where can we get information on local tournaments and how they usually work? How does the down time work in between matches? Are their warm up stations or whatever? Is their a standard for most tournaments to go by, or does it just depend on the tournament?
Seems most of this has moved to Facebook groups.
Check here to see if there's a group listed in your area.
If there's not one exactly where you're located, try joining one relatively close and maybe they'll have some information about people close to you (may have to ask).
