Competitive Character Discussion - Subforum Involvement Poll

[Conda]

Hey all, I've created a poll to see how many players in the competitive smash community visit their character subforums and engage in competitive discussion. The difference between character subforums are large currently, likely based on character popularity and trends.

Sometimes this can affect the development of some characters who aren't having enough attention paid to them, yet have untapped competitive potential (aka 'sleepers').

I wanted to determine just how many players are involved in the discussion and development of their characters competitively. It's an important aspect of metagame development. So here's a poll! Vote for the characters who you often read-up on and engage in discussion over.

If you don't visit the character subforums - do! Engage in your characters' competitive communities and help the meta grow and develop.
Then come back and vote.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

I think I'm the first one to vote so the results look kind of funny right now. 100% of people participate in Rosalina discussion and no one else.

That said I plan to try and pick up Shulk and/or Robin and re-learn some of the veterans like Peach and Ness, so eh.

 

[Aunt Jemima]

To be honest, so few people actually participate in Kirby discussions that you can usually see everybody on the same page in a thread. It's one of my goals to help Kirby develop competitively and bring out his potential. As of now, my main goal in terms of that is to discover everything that can be done with Copy Abilities.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I find the character forums just too scattered, and I play a lot of characters. Right now I'm "maining" Rosalina, and honestly, I'm just not sure I trust other people's judgments on her since she's really complicated. This is compounded by the fact that I kinda get a sense reading a lot of discussions that people are playing For Glory or otherwise not assuming optimal custom load-out use all the time which just changes how she plays completely (both Shooting Star Bit as an amazing neutral option and her need to deal with a variety of quality anti-Rosalina customs, these can't be additional considerations but must be first considerations). There's that and the fact that I just plain don't have a lot to share right now; I'm starting to really get a feel for how she works and wins, but I'm not sure there's a lot meaningful to say at this point that's not of the flavor "if you get a read on a high recovery, fair is a really good punish" or something else mundane like that.

 

[LancerStaff]

To be honest, so few people actually participate in Kirby discussions that you can usually see everybody on the same page in a thread. It's one of my goals to help Kirby develop competitively and bring out his potential. As of now, my main goal in terms of that is to discover everything that can be done with Copy Abilities.

Pit/Dark Pit discussion ain't all that active either...

 

[Dust the Baptist]

I like discussing strategies about characters but I feel a lot of the forums are cluttered, but this may be because i'm still fairly new to smash boards. Also i wish the link thread was more active.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

I find the character forums just too scattered, and I play a lot of characters. Right now I'm "maining" Rosalina, and honestly, I'm just not sure I trust other people's judgments on her since she's really complicated. This is compounded by the fact that I kinda get a sense reading a lot of discussions that people are playing For Glory or otherwise not assuming optimal custom load-out use all the time which just changes how she plays completely (both Shooting Star Bit as an amazing neutral option and her need to deal with a variety of quality anti-Rosalina customs, these can't be additional considerations but must be first considerations). There's that and the fact that I just plain don't have a lot to share right now; I'm starting to really get a feel for how she works and wins, but I'm not sure there's a lot meaningful to say at this point that's not of the flavor "if you get a read on a high recovery, fair is a really good punish" or something else mundane like that.

One of us...

Ahem.

I suspect discussions in the context of custom moves will pick up in the future once a) the majority of people have the ones they care about unlocked and b) more tournaments start accepting and using them. For Glory is simply the most convenient outlet for competitive flavor Smash 4 to a lot of people, myself included. (Case in point: There's a tournament this Saturday in my town, but it's Melee/PM only. No official 3DS event, although there'll probably be friendlies and I plan to attend for that alone.) It stands to reason that a lot of the discussion and impressions will therefore have some degree of bias, such as the Omega only stage list and no customs. For my part I try to avoid this by couching my statements in qualifiers, but it's still a thing in general.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

One of us...

Ahem.

I suspect discussions in the context of custom moves will pick up in the future once a) the majority of people have the ones they care about unlocked and b) more tournaments start accepting and using them. For Glory is simply the most convenient outlet for competitive flavor Smash 4 to a lot of people, myself included. (Case in point: There's a tournament this Saturday in my town, but it's Melee/PM only. No official 3DS event, although there'll probably be friendlies and I plan to attend for that alone.) It stands to reason that a lot of the discussion and impressions will therefore have some degree of bias, such as the Omega only stage list and no customs. For my part I try to avoid this by couching my statements in qualifiers, but it's still a thing in general.

Yeah, I get why they do it (but do any real life tournaments really not use customs these days? They're an assumed standard locally for me), but the fact that they do just doesn't make it terribly useful to me. I'm trying to build my understanding of Rosalina from the ground up on the presumption that I have Shooting Star Bit so I'll be able to leverage it as effectively as possible, and I'm finding all sorts of neutral situations in which it's a really big deal (like people just don't get used to being shot in the back when they "successfully" separate Rosalina from her Luma and are bearing down on Rosalina), and as an option, a lot of times Shooting Star Bit is competing with other ways I'd be positioning Luma so in a way it's a huge risk reading Rosalina strats that don't use it since they could be suggesting basic gameplay ideas that would be long term counterproductive. I do agree it will get better with time, but until it does, it feels hard to engage.

EDIT: Also, yes, I'm not going to miss a good top tier bandwagon, especially when it's for a complicated zoning character. Mario Kart already taught me that the Rosalina bandwagon is a good one; why not stick to it?

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Yeah, I get why they do it (but do any real life tournaments really not use customs these days? They're an assumed standard locally for me), but the fact that they do just doesn't make it terribly useful to me. I'm trying to build my understanding of Rosalina from the ground up on the presumption that I have Shooting Star Bit so I'll be able to leverage it as effectively as possible, and I'm finding all sorts of neutral situations in which it's a really big deal (like people just don't get used to being shot in the back when they "successfully" separate Rosalina from her Luma and are bearing down on Rosalina), and as an option, a lot of times Shooting Star Bit is competing with other ways I'd be positioning Luma so in a way it's a huge risk reading Rosalina strats that don't use it since they could be suggesting basic gameplay ideas that would be long term counterproductive. I do agree it will get better with time, but until it does, it feels hard to engage.

My own Smash scene is a bit meh (see my anecdote about no 3DS tourneys) but the videos I see online look like a roughly even split between customs/no customs, and odds are the stage list is Battlefield/Yoshi's/Omega. I think this is partially due to inertia, being used to the default movesets, and being unwilling to try out some of the more dynamic stages in case it turns out to influence grand finals or something, but it's still a thing in general regardless from what I've observed. (This is part of the reason I've been doing my stage research threads.)

So...yeah. If it's any consolation I think the Rosalina forum is pretty much in agreement that her customs are valid options, so it's not like we're ignorant of them or anything. This may be a discussion best carried on in PMs though, I don't want to get the mod hammer.

 

[Jellyfish4102]

You left poor out.

 

[guedes the brawler]

yes, a vote for pikachu

 

[ChronoPenguin]

Shulk boards are lively, inquisitive and deductive. Typically we are really feeling it.
i checked other boards some are real poor.
Part of it is probably tourney rep. need more miis and kirbys competitively.

 

[Plain Yogurt]

My thing is that I frequent a few boards (I put down Shulk and Ness, my mains, along with G&W, Olimar, and Ike), but I rarely actually post in any of them cause all the cool stuff gets found by other people.

 

[Conda]

My thing is that I frequent a few boards (I put down Shulk and Ness, my mains, along with G&W, Olimar, and Ike), but I rarely actually post in any of them cause all the cool stuff gets found by other people.

Conversation is always good though, but even just visiting is great. Some of the character boards need much more activity, and new players for some characters don't really have a place to go to learn about how the character works.

 

[andimidna]

It's hard to find stuff worth talking about on a 3ds for me. I've only really found Rosalina stuff interesting, but I've been paying attention to others too.
I'll vote in like January or something

 

[Conda]

Happy Hangovers to all, bumping this so we can get more votes and ultimately improve character subforum activity