Community Growth Discussion

[Ace55]

Wow, people really want our game to die out or what? Supreme Dirt gives a Brawler's (who wants to get into melee) view of our community and immediately gets attacked by same type of people who cause that image.

This isn't about brawl vs melee, this is about growing/retaining the melee scene. 99% of other competitive gamers look at smash and say: party game. Brawl players already see past that. They also have a good amount of the basics down. Aside from (arguably) Smash 64 there is no easier stepping stone for melee than brawl. Nowadays people are much more likely to get into brawl than melee because of the Wii's 'succes' and the fact that it's the newer game. However a good percentage of those people will also be put off by it's defensive/campy nature. Those are the people that are perfect recruits. However nowadays chances are they have come to, wrongfully, view the melee community as a bunch of elitist jerks who insult them/their game at any chance they have and will be reluctant to join.

I understand melee players are very passionate about melee (I am too) and were thoroughly disappointed in brawl (I was too) but chasing away, what should be, our main source of new players isn't gonna solve anything. It will only make our community smaller/extinct over time.

 

[Supreme Dirt]

Finally somebody who actually understands what I'm getting at.

 

[Massive]

Finally somebody who actually understands what I'm getting at.

I'm pretty sure we all understand what you're getting at, you just don't respond to being trolled well. You said it yourself, the melee crowd is older than the brawl crowd.
Trolling young'uns is something older people have enjoyed for centuries.

Several valid arguments have been presented against brawl in this thread, they are stereotypes for a reason and you must have, like it or not, encountered them already at any level of competitive play. It's best just to accept them, because otherwise you're going to keep getting hung up on this stuff. That being said, the reasons listed are very likely the ones that made us stop playing brawl and go back to melee.

We are keenly aware of the problems that are inherant in melee as well and the vast majority of us have come to accept them. We still feel the good greatly outweighs the bad and keep playing (with growing numbers, actually).

Finally, the vast majority of the guys here are actually really cool people. Even the ones trolling you would probably be very kind and accomadating if you met them in person. You're falling victim to internet tough guy syndrome, don't let it get to you.

 

[Marth307]

I'm pretty sure we all understand what you're getting at, you just don't respond to being trolled well. You said it yourself, the melee crowd is older than the brawl crowd.
Trolling young'uns is something older people have enjoyed for centuries.

Several valid arguments have been presented against brawl in this thread, they are stereotypes for a reason and you must have, like it or not, encountered them already at any level of competitive play. It's best just to accept them, because otherwise you're going to keep getting hung up on this stuff. That being said, the reasons listed are very likely the ones that made us stop playing brawl and go back to melee.

We are keenly aware of the problems that are inherant in melee as well and the vast majority of us have come to accept them. We still feel the good greatly outweighs the bad and keep playing (with growing numbers, actually).

Finally, the vast majority of the guys here are actually really cool people. Even the ones trolling you would probably be very kind and accomadating if you met them in person. You're falling victim to internet tough guy syndrome, don't let it get to you.

I agree and Lmao XD

 

[King Funk]

Oh well I entered this thread, the title having given me the impression that I'm gonna read hopeless stupidities, but then I saw Ace's post on this last page. Props, Ace. ^^

 

[adumbrodeus]

As much as I love just trolling Brawl, a part of me seriously doubts that there is any real viability of Melee recruiting players from Brawl. I can't imagine anyone who is currently playing Brawl now would change their mind about which game they favor. All the stories I've heard about people who switched are just people who got good at Brawl fairly quickly, and switched to Melee cause it's obviously more deep. At the risk of stereotyping Brawlers, I doubt they care about how deep the game they play is because anyone who did probably couldn't stand playing Brawl for more than a few months. It's painfully obvious at any competitive level above complete novice that the game promotes camping heavily, and anyone bothered enough by it to switch games will realize that on their own after seeing the trend in virtually every video where people spam projectiles and play "avoidance mindgames" for 8 minutes straight.

Brawl is simply for casual players, and recruiting casual-minded players for a game like Melee doesn't seem like an effective strategy at all. I would think it'd be much more efficient to spend our time convincing other competitive fighting game communities that Melee has much more to offer than the party-game label it's been carrying around for years. Even other competitive games like first person shooters or RTSs are valuable sources of new players, especially if you can catch their interest before they get engrained in the more traditional track of fighting games.

Quite frankly that's not what the Brawl community is like (well, except me, but I like melee more anyway, I just enjoy timing people out in melee too), nor is that what the game is like.


The community is eternally frustrated by the defensiveness of the game due to the lack of parity between offense and defense, but the game's core concepts are surprisingly deep. Furthermore, the "game of tag" that you're suggesting is quite rare, only a few characters revolve around "avoidance mindgames" for 8 minutes straight", and even those are primarily used as a way to get a counter-attack. Granted there are infinite stalls, but the majority of brawl players seem unwilling to actually use them.


Frankly, most Brawl players are FAR more suited to playing Melee then brawl, so I think there's a great deal of opportunity to draw Brawl players to also playing melee.


But making the relationship between the two communities MORE adversarial is the fastest way to limit this frankly. It makes the melee community seem far too unwelcoming and makes people defend Brawl against these attacks, making them stubborn about joining the melee community.

 

[Ace55]

Finally, the vast majority of the guys here are actually really cool people. Even the ones trolling you would probably be very kind and accomadating if you met them in person. You're falling victim to internet tough guy syndrome, don't let it get to you.

But why would they want to get to know you if you 'troll' them? Like you say melee players are generally older making us already harder to approach for them. You can 'call them out' about not responding well to your 'trolling' but they're mostly just a bunch of (insecure) kids.
About the arguments made against brawl, it's 2011, people know brawl is campy and slow, what's the point in repeating it endlessly? Let's take the one thing brawl has to offer to us: new players.
At this point 'trolling' brawlers is basically satisfying your own desire to pick on 'kids' at the cost of our community. If you care about melee go pick on kids IRL or something.

 

[Bigfish]

I'm just waiting for raging against my Young Link. I literally was up until 5 this morning, practicing my spacing, getting used to how his moves work, all that stuff. Going to play so ****ing campy, make you think it's summertime.

Funny joke dude...

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

I wish people were more like N.A.G.A.C.E, -Ran, Adumbrodeus, or Ace55, since that is the correct approach to help growth in a community over tearing it down.

 

[EPsilon933]

Melee's a terrible game

 

[Massive]

If you care about melee go pick on kids IRL or something.

I do, actually. Ask Strong Bad or Jace about it sometime.
Good natured ribbing can actually bring a crew closer together.
Most of the smash players I've met love busting each other's chops, its what lets us bond as players and gives us a sense of community.

That being said, we're probably not going to convince many brawl players to join the ranks of melee on smashboards. Very few people can be convinced in the medium of text, regardless of how well it is worded. An avatar with a blurb of text saying something contrary to what you just wrote is pretty offensive from a personal standpoint, it's hard to see someone else's perspective if they're just some packets in a HTTP stream to you.

The best opportunity for melee players to get brawl players involved with our scene is to befriend them at tournaments and give them opportunities to play the game with us. Show them that we're cool people and a few of them will likely be amenable towards melee.

Our game will not live forever. Don't take it so seriously and enjoy it while it lasts.

 

[KirbyKaze]

Melee is far from perfect.

Useless comments aside, I feel one of our biggest issues is that our "How to Play" videos are not character specific and were made several years ago. I mean, all accessibility issues aside, even when some Melee communities do get new players, it's really difficult to teach them and we don't have tools like BlazBlue's character tutorial videos to help us do it.

Our lack of teaching resources only adds to the numerous other barriers new players face when they're trying to get into smash.

 

[Marth307]

I wouldnt mind a how to pwn with marth vid

 

[EPsilon933]

There are a few good video tutorials of Melee out there. But sadly most aren't so good

 

[gghhh3]

There are a few good video tutorials of Melee out there. But sadly most aren't so good

Heres another good video to add

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx1rHcifg-o

 

[EPsilon933]

Heres another good video to add

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx1rHcifg-o

But before I watch it, aren't SmashTom's videos kind of... bad? 84 likes vs 135 dislikes. We can aim higher

 

[gghhh3]

But before I watch it, aren't SmashTom's videos kind of... bad? 84 likes vs 135 dislikes. We can aim higher

I was just jokin around. The video is terrible. Funny, not much else.

 

[N.A.G.A.C.E]

this is a little off this thread topic but... I agree we as a community should make tutorials to make it easy for newcomers to get into the game. i also feel like there should be some group assigned to go around to all the sticky threads and update the data in them. Ive looked around most of the character boards and sure some of the stuff still makes sense (the games been out for like 10 years so plenty info from 2007 is still relevant) but some of the info is outdated. I feel many of the MU threads are terrible out of date as are the video threads (making it hard to find good recent vids of your character) I sort of feel the melee part of smashboards needs some refurbishing but it would be a big job were ether we need to elect people to do it, have the melee back room do it when the new member selection thing is over, or have everyone work as a community and fix it.

This is just my opinion

 

[Teczer0]

Melee is far from perfect.

Useless comments aside, I feel one of our biggest issues is that our "How to Play" videos are not character specific and were made several years ago. I mean, all accessibility issues aside, even when some Melee communities do get new players, it's really difficult to teach them and we don't have tools like BlazBlue's character tutorial videos to help us do it.

Our lack of teaching resources only adds to the numerous other barriers new players face when they're trying to get into smash.

This might actually be really helpful.

I would love to see if someone that frequents a character specific board would be willing to do this for the character of their choice.

A lot of new comers would benefit and I could just direct everyone to *insert how to play character*.

 

[SmashMac]

This game still has potential. I've noticed just from my 5 years of playing how much this game has grown. The metagame, professionals list and tier-list has drastically changed just in my time of being here. Faces like Mang0, HungryBox, Dr. Peepee, and much more have come into the scene fairly recently, and have changed the game and what we thought we knew about it, essentially revolutionizing the game and some character specifics. Everyone was a newbie at one point, and had a goal to become like someone at some point ... but eventually accomplished their goal and if not, are still moving forward to it.

I'm pretty sure that one of the biggest things for new players is having a goal to reach when they first start. New players that are brought to smashboards realize how foolish they've been for thinking they're amazing at smash (because that's how we all thought before we got here) and the first thing they do is go to their regional zones and character specifics. That being said, making available character tutorials in my opinion is pretty key to community growth. Sure, guides are amazing/great/informative/long. But to be honest, a guide is going to take a while to read so making a visual of that guide, be it a tutorial or a combo video or whatever usually helps that out a lot and has quicker results for new players. Remember, players don't know the Melee Advanced Tactics lingo yet until being a little seasoned on these boards.


One thing that I've seen a lot as well is the lack of having people around to play with consistently that are newbs as well. Newbs need to find players to play with and in some cases, that is not easy to find. Some newbs are either stuck playing people that are far above their level or playing no one at all. In the first case, the newb is overwhelmed and can hardly learn anything. In the latter, there is simply no way to get better without practice. Newbs in those cases would usually have to be really motivated, wanting to go to tournaments and smashfests locally to meet new people to play with so they could get better and learn more. You can only learn so much from watching things on the internet. Reading and watching something is totally different than the application of it, especially when it's situational.

Just by making "The Doctor's Checkup" vid. I've received thanks from so many people that I don't even know telling me they learned Doc. better because of that tutorial. Doc isn't even a character that is played that often. Imagine if someone made an informative like CunningKitsune's Fox Guide into a visual tutorial. The fact of the matter is, tutorials really help newbs so they know what to practice and how to practice it.

As far as the MBR goes, I'm not sure how that would work out. I'm not part of the MBR and I don't know their rules as of yet, but for the most part, the people that are there all have experience in what they're talking about and know the game fairly well. If the MBR were available to non-MBRoomers, it should be in a read-only format honestly. It would keep it under surveillance so flamers/trollers couldn't just ruin important topics.

That's all I really have time to respond with but I'll try to get back to this thread later on.

 

[KirbyKaze]

I wish we had a better way of explaining directional terms, to be honest.

"DI away" just totally baffles some people. I know in other fighters they use the number pad to explain directions. Now, granted, Smash doesn't really have a need for such a thing in most of their moves (Bair and U-throw are intuitive enough) but stuff like "slightly behind" or "slightly away" or "into it" can be really confusing and I really just wish we could use the number system or a clearer way of explaining it. "Away" can mean in front or behind depending on the throw. It's just... very confusing for new people.

 

[Walt]

I don't think the terms are that bad, the fighting game community in norcal at least seems to understand them. When I go to guilty gear/blaz blue tournaments and end up talking about smash they usually have an idea what I'm talking about, what people I think have the hardest time with in melee is the precision needed on the control stick. I've never had trouble explaining DI, just stuff like utilts, 1/16 directions for aiming smashes/tilts(more of that 1/16th directions exist at all really), and how pixel perfect you can purposely air control to do stuff like edge cancels and the sort. Being able to do 632146 or whatever at the best ratio of speed:accuracy is all that matters in other fighters.

 

[KirbyKaze]

I may just attract the stupidest people whenever I'm explaining things; it is a possibility I've strongly considered.

 

[Metal Reeper]

I could make some really crappy vids on how to play. I'm average but noobs would eat it up.

 

[Supreme Dirt]

Advanced How to Play videos. THOSE were freaking amazing. Helped me get down the basics. Now if there were character specific versions of those, especially for mid-low tiers, it would be perfect. The AHtP videos are perfect for players coming from Brawl, since most Brawl players probably learned the more intricate ATs for their characters - whether it be Ganon's Flight of Ganon, Dedede's buffered pivot grab, or GaW's NAir -> DSmash true combo - by watching video explanations of them.

Also, SmashMac, newbs don't just need players to play with to get better. Yes it helps. But specifically, we need players who are significantly better than us to practice with. Not to say you should 4-stock us every match (I personally don't get frustrated by this, but a lot of people do), but I know I learn a lot from playing against people better than me in Brawl, the same should easily work for Melee.

 

[Beat!]

Why do you assume that everyone learns the same way as you?

I'm sure that a lot of players would rather benefit more from playing with an equally good player while a significantly better player watches them.

 

[Supreme Dirt]

If you're terrible, and you're playing an equally terrible player, you can pick up bad habits. Bad habits that can be hard to break. A bad player will not be able to punish bad options, or may simply not know how. Playing people better than you, picking up these bad habits will be harder, because you WILL be punished every time you screw up, you WILL be punished for rolling, you WILL be punished for doing things you shouldn't (Sheik's chain comes to mind), you WILL have to work for your CGs.

 

[Beat!]

If you're terrible, and you're playing an equally terrible player, you can pick up bad habits. Bad habits that can be hard to brea

That's why I said a good player would be watching you, telling you habits and how to fix them.

Playing someone who's WAY better than you might not help that much actually, since you won't have any time to adjust. You can't get rid of any bad habits, because you will get destroyed before you are able to show any.

 

[Supreme Dirt]

That makes sense.

 

[Massive]

This thread is making me think I should make an "Advanced How to Play: Kirby" video. lol.

 

[Ace55]

Playing someone who's WAY better than you might not help that much actually, since you won't have any time to adjust. You can't get rid of any bad habits, because you will get destroyed before you are able to show any.

I agree, playing much better people isn't really gonna help much. You need to be able to at least to somewhat keep up with them to grasp wtf is even happening.

 

[Bones0]

I believe it was Cactuar who posted something about how playing a variety of skill levels is optimal. Playing better opponents gives you broader knowledge of the game, playing worse opponents lets you experiment and practice techniques you can't yet do just right, and of course playing evenly matched opponents because it is the most accurate form of your play style, and it tends to be the most fun because the matches are closer.

As far as videos to create, I don't think we need to go character specific. There aren't that many character specific techs that beginners will need. Shine stuff would probably have to be mentioned, and maybe a few projectile techniques, but most could be left for them reading. I feel like the biggest issue is new players have a general idea of what they are supposed to do (watching a few videos of any character generally gives you a good idea of this), but they don't know HOW to set up those instances. You can tell a new player that Falco's nair is good for approaching, but if he doesn't know how to use lasers to keep his opponent locked down and how to use dash dancing to make sure it's safe to nair it won't help him at all. He will just throw out predictable nairs and wonder why every other Falco player can do it.

There should be a video series that covers a list of general techniques and tactics that can apply to any character. Then there could be related text guides that give a BRIEF break down of character specifics (like for the "Approaching" video, players would go to the thread for the video and read about their specific character's best moves for approaching and best set-ups to do so safely). For many of these, there could be multiple videos, and if people are willing to do videos for specific characters, that'd be we better than just having the thread. Here's the kind of stuff I was thinking:

- Stage Spacing (abstract and pretty advanced, but new players should be introduced to this asap so they can continue to build on it as they improve since it's so crucial to improvement; dash dancing; WDing; wave landing)
- Spacing Attacks (sweet spots vs. sour spots; disjointedness and priority; avoiding shield grabs)
- Directional Influence (normal DI; DIing perpendicularly into corners to live longer; crouch canceling; crouch cancel counters; ASDI; SDI)
- Approaching (a little bit of specific stage spacing and attack spacing; best attacks)
- Mindgames/Baiting (manipulation of opponents; simple things like dash forward, WD back or empty SHs -> grab)
- Punishing (shield grabbing bad aerials;
- Teching (when to tech; which way to tech: left, right, in place, or missing techs into rolls/get up attack; avoiding jab resets)
- Tech Chasing (spacing on opponents who missed a tech to cover options; how to best punish each tech option; jab resets)
- Ledge Tactics (wave landing; using invincibility)
- Edge Guarding (edge hogging; ledge hopping attacks)
- Recovering (best done by character dependence, but not all of it; recovering high vs. low; using walls to your advantage; ledge-teching)
- Chain grabbing (matchups where it is prevalent; percentages it is effective; pivot grabbing)
- Power Shielding (running power shielding; best options after power shields; mixups to avoid people powershielding against you)
- Shielding (light vs. hard shield; tilting to cover poke areas and mess up L-cancels; options OOS such as jumping, WDing, shield dropping)
- Avoidance (spot dodging; rolling; air dodging)


I could go on for years because as you can tell, I'm basically trying to summarizing the entire metagame of Melee into a list of labels and it's not that simple. You might also notice how much topics vary in their own properties. Some are very vague, other very specific. I'm sure as other people mention things that could also be discussed in the video, we'd realize we have 3 different areas of a single subject. I'd imagine that if we already had short tutorials for each of these (maybe just 3-4 minutes long each) that new players would already be MUCH more enthusiastic about learning to play because it'd be much more organized. As it is now, players are introduced to tactics with no semblance of connectivity.

With a series of videos like these, players can see a much obvious connection between Mindgames/Baiting and how Punishing follows right after. They will learn to bait, and then once they realize they are baiting correctly, they can learn to punish correctly. As they focus on each tactic separately, they will practice much more efficiently and improve much more quickly than if all of these were thrown at them at once and they tried to learn an entire encyclopedia of Smash wisdom. If anyone is actually still reading this Wall of Text, what do you think? I'd be more than happy to make a new thread to make this an actual project. I can't record anything myself, but I feel like I know enough about the game to create a general outline of most of the tactics and game play mechanics, and then people can help to fill in the gaps. Once we have a general outline, it will just be a matter of getting people to take an hour or two out of their day to record some game play and upload it with a bunch of text that would hopefully already be prepared to explain what is in the video.

 

[Supreme Dirt]

A thought occurs.

Now, Brawl has a much more liberal stagelist than Melee.

Perhaps a thread somewhere, explaining in depth, exactly why each stage is banned that is. I mean, I myself am mystified as to why Mushroom Kingdom II is banned.

 

[Bones0]

A thought occurs.

Now, Brawl has a much more liberal stagelist than Melee.

Perhaps a thread somewhere, explaining in depth, exactly why each stage is banned that is. I mean, I myself am mystified as to why Mushroom Kingdom II is banned.

Get waveshined. All walk off stages overcentralize the game into getting OHKOs off the sides. Who needs comboing when I can get a single back throw and kill you!

 

[Cobalt]

I was already planning on making an updated advanced how to play video with a different focus than Wak's, though it's not quite what Bones is saying. I think that the first AHtP video a new player sees should do two things first and foremost.

First, it should provide, up front, some integral skills and concepts that immediately make the player feel their improvement in the game. This is most easily done I think with SHFFLing and wavedashing. Mastering the mechanical ability to do those two things is relatively simple, and instantly and visibly improves someone's play. This encourages the player, since they already see significant improvement, and makes them more willing to seek out new things to learn and get more involved in the game. This is paramount to building the community--people need to feel like they can get better at the game quickly, so that they can have fun.

The second thing an AHtP video should do is introduce other concepts, which perhaps a new player won't be able to do for a while, that allows him to parse top-level matches. Watching the grand finals of a major national tournament doesn't do anything for a new player if they can't follow what's going on. For this reason, it's worth it to explain things like edge teching on the mechanics side. Additionally, on the strategy side, the video should explain basic spacing concepts or common baits. One example I can think of would be the tomahawk--it's a very obvious technique when used, so whenever it's seen in a top-level match, the new player feels that they understand at least some portion of the game, which is again encouraging.

Those two things are, I believe, the most important things a video should do if it wants to encourage new players to join the scene. Players need to immediately feel their skill increase, and they need to feel like they can follow a top-level match. Going too far in-depth to anything in an introductory video would be counter-productive, though. Deep spacing ideas (e.g., Cactuar theory) shouldn't be in an intro video. New players most likely don't even understand the properties of most moves, so trying to explain how to space around these moves wouldn't do anything.

The purpose of an intro video should not be to provide new players with all of the information they need to compete. Such a video would be far too long and too abstract for most people. An intro video should be exactly that--a video that introduces a new player to the game. Once the video is done, the player should want to master the mechanical concepts he saw, and also be encouraged to learn more about the game and its tougher ideas. Granted, with the current state of most character boards, this is very hard for a player to do, and making intermediate-level and/or character-specific videos would help greatly with that. But in the intro video, just prime the player's curiosity and encourage them to join the scene and learn. Any more than that and you risk scaring the player off by throwing too much at him at once.

 

[Bones0]

I definitely agree with you that everything should be kept as simple as possible, and I also agree that one of the easiest ways to make people feel like they are improving is to teach them tech skill (which they have to learn before they can execute any decent strategies anyway). I don't think your idea is independent of mine, though (not sure if you think that). I feel like the current AHTP is sufficient in teaching the techs themselves, but I think if there were videos with the basic strategies I listed (spacing was probably too advanced to try to list, which I figured) they would feel like there is much more reason to learn the techs. The problem there seems to be with the ATHP video now is people watch it, they "practice" the techs for a little until they can do something resembling it a fraction of the time, and then they desperately seek out more stuff to learn, but they've run out of stuff.

Someone new to the game may understand that you use WDing to space and move around, but I feel that when you have a video with a more concrete tactic such as baiting (dash forward, WD back) they identify an actual use for the tactic they're spending time learning. In this way, they aren't learning to WD as much as they are learning to bait people better, and WDing just happens to be an effective way of doing that. Teaching techs alongside actual tactics makes them seem more useful, and like you said, they can then use that example to identify examples of WD usage (or w/e it is) in higher level videos.

 

[Cobalt]

Oh, I didn't mean that our ideas were independent, just differently-focused. It seems like the thing you're designing prioritizes explaining strategic concepts and then how mechanics can be used to execute them. I envision a video that builds mechanical knowledge from the ground up, giving examples of strategies that those mechanics can open up.

For example, in an outline I made, I had an entire section devoted to what you can do out of a jump, since that's so integral to many mechanics and strategies in the game. The things I had listed were: rising aerials, JC grab, JC Upsmash, and (technically) Up-B. Immediately after that section are various OoS options: grabbing, rolling/dodging, and jumping. Here I would make note of the fact that since you can jump out of shield, you can also do all of your out of jump techniques out of shield, then give common strategic things like Fox upsmashing out of an aerial approach, or Link Up-Bing, etc. I feel like this establishes a greater relationship between the various mechanics than Wak's video does, where all of the techniques seem fairly self-contained.

But yeah, in the end, I think we're in agreement that a video should give new players concrete new techniques to try which make them feel their improvement.

 

[BigWenz]

It honestly depends on the good player your facing. Some good players just **** ur faces off and leave it at that, while others take the time to help you out.

Personally, i learn alot from getting my *** handed to me over and over again, and other people feel the same way, but for that to happen imo, ill admit you probably need to have a good understanding of the game.

Also, I forgot who said it but, if you quit/ get discouraged from getting 4 stocked by people waay better than you, smash and melee in particular isnt the game for you. I remember my first time playing a pro was at Shell shocked 3 when i played friendlies with Cactuar. I didn know at the time that he was known for beating the sht out of falcons. As a result i got 4 stocked repeatedly, sometimes doing no more than 30 damage total. However, i didn get discouraged but instead realized that im terrible at the game and have a long waay to go before i can even call myself kind of good at the game. And even then, which i didn have a good concept of the game(i thought i did but i really didn looking back) i was still able to pick up a thing or two from him just destroying me like how falcons side b is really easily punished and if im going to use i need to be smarter about it.

Point is with some type of intelligence you can still learn from being owned by pros, regardless if they feel like helping you or not.

Edit: I feel that character vids may not be as necessary(although nice) b/c once you know what to look for(such as spacing, what combos) i feel watching tourny matches is good enough in addition to the written character guides for most chars.

 

[Bones0]

Cactuar is the best person to get destroyed by because his play style is basically:
1. Stand still and let the opponent make a mistake.
2. Hit them over and over.

First time I played him I used to roll from the edge literally EVERY time. I had pretty much stopped by the end of 30 minutes of friendlies cause he just stared at me until I rolled, and then he turned around and usmashed. -.-

I think most people can deal with getting destroyed once they understand that they really are that much worse than the other person. I feel like frustration comes from not knowing why you're getting dominated, which unfortunately applies to new players who are the ones that will be dominated the most often. Once you realize you are too impatient, rolling too much, not doing a certain attack often enough, etc. you stop getting frustrated and start improving. Basically, if you play someone good, you're either getting better or getting angry.

 

[Beat!]

Getting destroyed by Amsah was one of my most memorable smash moments lol

Memorable in a good way, that is

lol