PP, I'd like to hear your thoughts, as well as other people's thoughts on this quote from streetfighter player Daigo Umehara:
"By 'reading' an opponent (memorizing their habits, tells, and methods), you take your focus off of yourself and what you are doing. While knowing an opponent's habits can vastly improve one's odds in a match, to rely on this knowledge leads to very selective methods that will rarely work on multiple opponents. It also does not allow the player to grow. 'True strength is achieved when you can read your opponent, but defeat them without exploiting their weaknesses.'"
My interpretation of this is that it's Daigo saying that while you can have room for adaptation in your gameplan, you shouldn't make your gameplan fully built around habits you notice your opponent has. I think that it's correct, and brings up interesting ideas about player vs player and player vs character mentality.
Do you agree/disagree with this statement or my interpretation of it? To what extent can this thought process be applied to Melee, an admittedly different game from Street Fighter? What kind of balance should a Marth player ideally strike between PvP philosophy and PvC philosophy?
Regardless of character, PvC is the ideal mindset. You need a framework for neutral and punish, especially when you're playing a better player. The framework you have includes different situations and their expected values. PvC means that you're playing to reach the next level. A PvP mindset assumes that your opponent is going to mess up, while PvC means that you're outplaying them.
Suppose Falco is playing against Marth. Falco is still new, he's learning shield pressure (baiting grabs with double jumps, nair shine, retreating backair). Marth has been playing for about the same time. Each stock, Falco pressures Marth at the ledge. Falco flubs his pressure though, and Marth sees that Falco doesn't have good shield pressure. Therefore, Marth shieldgrabs every single time at the ledge into dthrow-dtilt to win the game.
In this situation, Falco had the PvC mindset, and Marth had the PvP mindset. Falco eventually learns how he wants to approach Marth in shield at the ledge (wait it out, bait the grab, or go ham with shine nair). Marth continues through the bracket, where he loses 2-0 to someone who doesn't get dthrow-dtilted because it's just not a high level gameplan.
To reverse the roles, Marth is working on his tech chasing. He's not there yet, sometimes he doesn't space quite right. He does some down-throws at low percent, but is a frame or two slow against Falco. Falco buffers spot dodge-shine whenever he gets grabbed, and so off of a lot of followups Marth gets spotdodge shined. Falco learns that this Marth's punish game needs some work, and stops worrying about getting grabbed because he's getting free combos.
Falco has the PvP mindset because he's thinking - this guy can't punish, I'll just shoot lasers and if he grabs me I'll shine him. He plays M2K next. No, actually he plays someone with a good enough punish game to capitalize off grabs. The Marth on the other hand slowly gets better at learning the situations where he needs to wait for spot dodges, and gets faster at following up on tech chases.
Lets say Fox is dash dancing right outside Marth's forward smash range. The last few stocks, forward smashing paid off. It's the last stock, and a similar situation to the last time. If Fox gets forward smashed here, it's because Fox messed up. If Marth forward smashes, then he just threw the game to a better player.
Ultimately, you will find the most growth as a player if you play it like a negotiation. Given where we are, what can I do and what can my opponent do, and how do we get to a situation where I still win even if my opponent executes properly?
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