Being stuck with scrubs...

[LinkoHakurei]

I picked up Captain Falcon (thanks to Trifroze's speed and power Inspiration) probably a month ago and i've been loving every second of it. I've improved a lot since i picked him up but sadly the only people i am able to play with is my nephew and my sister's bf, and well... as the tittle says they are sadly scrubs. I have taught them stuff like teching off a wall to not get stage spiked and reading air dodges and rolls to punish and even combos they can do with their mains but... they just wont learn!

Like whenever we have captain falcon dittos for fun they only go for down throw to knew or dash attack to knee over and over and over and over agaaaaaain!!! Worst part is they never land it but they keep doing it no matter what so i end up winning from 10 to 20 games in a row till i finally get bored and chose a random character to give them a chance or i just tone it down a lot and start playing stupid going for falcon punch and falcon kick no ****s given lol! That's actually all fine since they don't main captain falcon and we only do dittos for the hype kills YESZ!

The problem is when they use their mains and start playing uh... a bit serious i guess. My sister's bf uses Falco and he always goes for down throw to fair every single time, took me a while to get the correct DI so it wouldn't true combo and end up dying early but he still goes for it no matter what like that's the only combo he knows! The other thing he likes to do is up tilt until i am knocked up far enough to actually be able to escape it but it gets me up to 40% without me being able to do anything since air dodging ends up being a free grab or another up tilt for him and if my second jump was already used i am stuck there until he either stops or i just get knocked up far enough to escape. Another of his habits is walking up and crouching over and over till he gets close enough for a down tilt, that one is just funny but the real problem is when he tries to punish me off stage and ends up killing himself 90% of the time and also using side b to the stage even tho i up-tilt spike him 70% of the time he goes for it OH AND he doesn't side b to up b when hes off screen he goes all the way down then up b to his death even tho i've told him a million times he can side b then up b whenever hes that far.

My nephew recently started playing Pikachu and man is it annoying, all he goes for is grab throw off stage then bair fast fall killing himself in the process because he didn't have a second jump... And no matter how many times he ends up dying he keeps going for it over and over till he finally gets me once in like 20 games and i've been able to tech half of them unless he somehow gets off me before the last hit and i end up air dodging to my death lol! He's been doing it alot less lately but he still goes for it from time to time to not get the hit, yet he still prioritize grabbing to throw off stage over anything every time we play to no avail. I taught him some of pikachu's tricks but the only one he seems to use is fair to up smash which almost never works cuz i see it coming a mile away. Another bad habit is using his side b even if hes right beside the stage so i end up spiking him with an up tilt but he won't stop doing it!

In the end i always end up winning 80-90% of the games but i just don't feel like improving at all because it all just feels like an annoyance dealing with people who only go for the same pattern over and over again so i usually end up playing lazier than when i started and they finally win, and i don't learn anything useful from the MU except how to deal with a bad falco or a bad pikachu... So what exactly can i do to make them improve and actually learn their character instead of going for the same scrubby strategy every single game with no improvement? I've already taught them some stuff but they don't seem to apply it on an actual match and just go for the same old plan and think i'm crazy good (which i'm clearly NOT) when i up tilt or dair spike their side b or bad recovery option when in reality it's just them being so predictable that adapting to it makes it easy to punish.

I think playing with someone better than you in a way he destroys you but gradually closing the gap to finally being able to beat them is a lot more satisfying than winning every time against average players but sadly they are the only people i can play with offline and they don't seem to close the gap at all... Also it's hard to go back to for glory after playing offline since the minor 15 or in some rare cases 30 frames of input lag is enough to throw me off completely so i end up playing extremely bad and losing to projectile spammers and the usual for glory stuff.

 

[Parranoid]

Aside from this being an enormous wall of text, I'm not really sure what you're asking for here, is it:

1. Help with dealing with "scrub like" tactics?
2. Asking how to help these people improve?
3. Asking how to improve yourself when only able to play against these people?
4. A long ranty frustration post?

If you want to help these people to improve, but they themselves dont really seem to be interested in playing optimally or competitvely, you're not going to be able to. What you've been doing is probably going to be all you can do, until they have their own drive to learn and want to improve.

If its for your own improvement, try just practicing your fundamentals while playing them. Reads, spacing, punishes, edgeguards, dancetrotting, fastfalling your arials where appropriate. You could even practise knee setups like FF up air ->knee. Learning to do this as a punish on a real player is very different to just hitting a cpu in trainin.

Past these, you might just need to try anthers as a For Glory repalcement.

 

[LinkoHakurei]

It is actually all of those reasons together lol! What you say is true tho, if they themselves don't want to improve then ill just have to master my character and SHOW THEM MY MOVES! Maybe that way they will show interest in mastering theirs.

Also practicing fundamentals definitely seems like a good idea to do in these matches, specially dancetrotting and foxtrotting since i've gotten a lot better at teching and spacing already. That FF up air->knee needs alot of work tho.

 

[Swagmaster]

It sounds to me like they may not want to get better like you do. I've played with many of my friends, and I normally beat them every single time. They don't really try to get that much better because they don't want to play that way. Goofing off and always going for the cool stuff can be just as fun. It's all I did before I started training and practicing. So I think that you could play the scrubs for fun or basic training, and if you really want to train, use training, for glory, or anthers ladder.

It is actually all of those reasons together lol! What you say is true tho, if they themselves don't want to improve then ill just have to master my character and SHOW THEM MY MOVES! Maybe that way they will show interest in mastering theirs.

Also practicing fundamentals definitely seems like a good idea to do in these matches, specially dancetrotting and foxtrotting since i've gotten a lot better at teching and spacing already. That FF up air->knee needs alot of work tho.

Good idea. And I now how you feel. I can only play with my brother, who plays as Sonic and Yoshi on Palutena Temple and just runs away the whole match, and with my 5-year old sister, who's still learning how to up-b. I don't get much training in these matches, so I play a lot of For Glory.

 

[LinkoHakurei]

For glory is a No-No for me!
I can never play for glory anymore after getting used to how fluid offline is, i've tried for glory a couple times after and the slight 15 frames of input lag is too much for me to do anything right, i still win some matches but even then it doesn't feel like a win at all instead it feels like i lucked out with my opponent not being able to react on time for the same reason as me.

 

[Swagmaster]

I know what you mean, and input lag is any smasher's worst enemy. I just don't normally have noticeable lag when I play, but if you do, then, yeah...

Amiibos are good except for the fact that they sometimes play a lot like CPU's, and can't really teach you much.

Maybe you could sign up for a local tourney if there are any. For Glory's all I've got, but if you want to play good people, you need to find them. Either with good enough internet, or with other means that can connect you offline.

Just a basic breakdown
Hope it helps