Attention Smashers

[Silent Wolf]

Stop using the term "mind games" in reference to how smart one is as a player, come on now.

 

[Dark Hart]

You mad cause scrubs think you're all tech skill.

btw Darksyde says hi

 

[CloneHat]

How good you are is really how many times you can multishine. Amirite SW?

Seriously though, he does have a point. Smash isn't divided into "tech skill" and "mindgames". That's a pretty flimsy definition of the "player understanding" part of smash.

 

[Pengie]

Agreed 100%

 

[KirbyKaze]

Mindgames is such a nasty, broad term. It barely means anything lololol.

It's like "tech skill".

 

[Bones0]

Mindgames is just when you make a mistake and it ends up working and making you look awesome. Example:
I am Captain Falcon. I go to jump cancel grab a person shielding. They jump out of shield to avoid the grab and at the same time I accidentally flub the jump cancel and end up kneeing them out of the air. This is madness!

Madness?!

THIS. IS. MINDGAMES!!!!

 

[Dark Hart]

Mindgames is such a nasty, broad term. It barely means anything lololol.

It's like "tech skill".

This... is actually a very post.

 

[Pengie]

Mindgames is just when you make a mistake and it ends up working and making you look awesome. Example:
I am Captain Falcon. I go to jump cancel grab a person shielding. They jump out of shield to avoid the grab and at the same time I accidentally flub the jump cancel and end up kneeing them out of the air. This is madness!

Madness?!

THIS. IS. MINDGAMES!!!!

What are you talking about? No one EVER messes up in Melee, people actually have those Daigo level psychic reads...

Spoiler

*Is guilty of randomly up airing with fox instead of grabbing and actually comboing from it =p*

 

[P.C. Jona]

who gives a crap

 

[Fly_Amanita]

I only approve of the use of the term in a sardonic context.

 

[SnowMan]

who gives a crap

Lol, right?

 

[makoforce]

Getting read would be the proper way to put it.

Like on ROM 3 GF's when m2k was marth and he was tech chasing pp and PP got up into a shield expecting a F smash but m2k grabbed him. Thats actually a legit mindga... I mean thats "getting read."

 

[Bamesy]

anticipation would probably fit better


I don't have mindgames, I have mind****s

 

[Velox]

There are mindgames, such as Isai walking to the middle of the stage and down smashing randomly with Falcon and then raptor boosting immediately afterward (most people, well, most people in the previous metagame thought there was enough lag on the d-smash to get in a grab even if properly faced, but they'd be sadly meet by a raptor boost to knee... this is a mindgame), however, to be good at the game you have to just be smart, mindgames are a rarity, and you must actually be good at the game to be winning, mindgames won't get you there.


But yeah Silent Wolf, I totally agree, the banality of its overuse has always been annoying to me too.


@ lol at KirbyKaze, the tech skill reference is so true too.

 

[KirbyKaze]

The Isai trick could be considered a mindgame, since it's definitely tricking around with someone's perception of how punishable the D-smash is by attacking their unfamiliarity with how low lag it actually is... but then that just seems like a bait. Doesn't really seem all that different than Jigglypuff whiffing something, then ducking to try and get Sheik or whatever to grab so she can score the free Rest.

The trouble with mindgames is that it's become such an umbrella term (which was never really defined very well from the get-go) and most of the things that people are calling "mindgames" have better, more specific terms that we already apply to those types of situations.

Breaking smash down into a binary of "tech skill" and "mindgames" was a terribly flawed idea from the start.

 

[Pi]

^ mindgames

 

[JesiahTEG]

Breaking smash down into a binary of "tech skill" and "mindgames" was a terribly flawed idea from the start.

No way, I think that's awesome. It's good to have two very basic concepts from which you can then begin to break the game down from. Mindgames and Tech Skill are just terms we use for Mental and Physical, or Thoughts and Execution. I mean, really those terms are more specific but they just kinda developed that way. As long as you understand that I think you're fine.

In terms of the more specific, technical definitions of those terms, yeah I agree we use them "wrong" so to speak, but who cares when you know what they mean.

 

[KirbyKaze]

Splitting it along "tech skill" and "mindgames", as in "execution" and "combat smarts" (I know you said "thoughts", but that's not really what "mindgames" actually are when you think of what a literal mindgame is and how the word is commonly used), was stupid because it didn't account for "game knowledge". Game knowledge is your understanding of the characters, the matchups, the way things generally work. It's what allows people who understand the game to sit down and perform well in MUs even when they don't have oodles of experience with those characters.

I don't mind splitting it along "Smarts" and "Execution" because that allows you to break it down into the various forms of smarts that can exist in this game, but "Mindgames" and "Tech skill" was a horrible way to split everything.

 

[JesiahTEG]

yeah you get what im saying though...game knowledge can fall under smarts ( or as you hate it to be called, mindgames :-P). i dont think its big enough to warrant its own category alongside the two

 

[KirbyKaze]

Mindgames is a ****ing ******** term. Correct play and game smarts do not necessarily have anything to do with "mindgames".

At many levels of play (including the middle regions of high level play) you can win without "tricking" your opponent at all, and simply by doing the correct moves over and over again and it can be extremely robotic.

That isn't a mindgame at all because you're not playing with their head or habits or anything like that, you're just doing correct moves based on the MU or whatever.

If you want to generalize it to just "Smarts" then that's fine, but the term "Mindgames" to account for every aspect of intelligent play is very misleading and inaccurate.



On that note, I think game knowledge is what enables a crapload of "mindgames" and strategies to be created in the first place. So, yeah, I think it's a big thing. You can think otherwise, but since it's the basis of every MU and virtually every standardized strategy in the game, I'll probably think you're stupid.

 

[JPOBS]

"Game Knowledge" is such a vast term I don't see the point in referencing it at all.
It includes everything from matchup knowledge, to tech skill knowledge, to mindagames. I mean EVERYTHING you do you do because of "game knowledge"

You could say waveshine->upsmash is tech skill, but you can't/wouldn't do it unless you had the game knowledge that it was even possible to do to begin with.

I don't see the point in using such an all encompassing term. atleast "tech skill" and "combat smarts" break the game into two, (sorta)mutually exclusive catergories.

 

[TheDekuNut]

ok lets just leave it as : "Silent wolf is a good player." the best use of the word "mindgames" was when prog typed it to 300 viewers on downed livestream and the chat got hype while starring at a black screen and a bunch of text.

 

[Velox]

The Isai trick could be considered a mindgame, since it's definitely tricking around with someone's perception of how punishable the D-smash is by attacking their unfamiliarity with how low lag it actually is... but then that just seems like a bait. Doesn't really seem all that different than Jigglypuff whiffing something, then ducking to try and get Sheik or whatever to grab so she can score the free Rest.

The trouble with mindgames is that it's become such an umbrella term (which was never really defined very well from the get-go) and most of the things that people are calling "mindgames" have better, more specific terms that we already apply to those types of situations.

Breaking smash down into a binary of "tech skill" and "mindgames" was a terribly flawed idea from the start.

Indeed, the Jigglypuff thing and the Isai d-smash are one and the same, they are categorized as "mindgames" for sure, we cannot deny this. "Lag Baiting" (as I call it) is one of the central types of mind games. However, yeah, I know what you mean though, the simple two category system (mindgames and tech skill) was and still is ********.

At many levels of play (including the middle regions of high level play) you can win without "tricking" your opponent at all, and simply by doing the correct moves over and over again and it can be extremely robotic.

That isn't a mindgame at all because you're not playing with their head or habits or anything like that, you're just doing correct moves based on the MU or whatever.

Yeah, you're completely right, I'm on the same page as you in regards to the ACTUAL mindgames used in matches.

It's nice when the game gets stagnant though and you really need a hit in (like at high percent when both have one stock at the end of the match) to be able to trick someone into a move (preferably with lag baiting) to get that last kill in and win the game.

 

[ERayz]

you're just doing correct moves based on the MU or whatever. [...]

That sounds alot like what I was thinking about recently.

There's nothing such as mindgames IMO, I think it's more about knowing what to do in every possible situation, depending on the MU, stage, player's style, and to some extent, the rules.

If there really were mindgames, it would be more like baiting, but baiting is a much proper term.

 

[Pi]

no bro
when i **** something up
and then profit from it
i just mindgamed you

 

[Hydro_Smasher]

mind games can be described as:

someone who cares.

or luring someone to the nose of the plan on Corneria, jumping off, reflecting the bullets back at the guns before you got destroyed, shine spike the other player, and do a victory dash dance.

^one of the prime moments in my career.^

 

[Masmasher@]

i dont get why people talk like smash even invented the term mindgames lmfao. its been in fighting games forever and is a ambigious term used in passing for various conceivible situations

anyways using it is just as relevant as people saying "dont get hit"

*slow claps*