Coping With The Speed of This Game

[David Puddy]

Hey guys, complete noob here.

I've played a decent amount of Smash 64, recently stumbled across the competitive melee scene, and am completely blown away by the skills you guys have.

I picked up a copy of Melee (played it a bunch when I was a kid, but never seriously) and started trying to implement some of the techniques here on the board. I'm mostly playing Falco.

In training mode, I can SHL, Lcancel and kind of wavedash.I can shuffle without the fast fall -( I have no idea how you can be quick enough to fast fall and L cancel it!), however when I actually play against an opponent (one friend in particular), I get overwhelmed and fail to properly implement the tech. I instead resort to a lot of rolling and smashing vs trying to pillar or wavedash. I almost never have the confidence to SHL for fear i'll just get ***** while I'm trying.

I'm having a real hard time keeping up with the pace of this game and here is my question. The friend I play against does not implement ANY tech at all, but if I try, I'll get overwhelmed because I'm still not comfortable with it yet.

Would I be better off just training more (solo) before trying to fight human players? Should I use slo-mo or will this hurt me in the long run?
Would I be better off learning tech with someone other than Falco?
Should I just keep attempting to fight, lose over and over and eventually I'll get better? Discipline myself to fight using good tech?

TL;DR - This game is fast, I'm still pretty slow. Should I learn on a slower character than Falco? And/or should I get my tech flawless before fighting humans?

Thanks for the help, I have major respect for all of you!

 

[victra♥]

It just takes time to get used to.

Keep hitting the lab and practice on your own. Don't use training mode since you can't use c-stick. If you have an extra controller, just practice with a non-player using that extra controller. Otherwise, stick with lvl 3 CPUs. It takes some time to get passed Melee's steep learning curve and to get comfortable with all the mechanics, and the speed. Mango has said that players are not going to learn anything nor is it worth learning anything if they can't do the fundamentals.

Play against humans whenever you can. Don't sweat about the results, just play and get comfortable with the game even if you're not really learning anything from it. It's funner to play with other humans. That's a big misconception for a lot of new players. You don't have to dwell alone in your room for months grinding tech skill before joining the community and playing other players. First thing's first with Smash is you gotta make sure you're having fun. I think it's fair to say that most people (especially the older smashers from the golden years) got good just by playing with friends for fun and practicing their tech skill on their own time.

Melee just gets faster and faster the more layers you unravel. You're in for a wild ride.

 

[Walbytamer11]

It's great no matter what to have the resource of friends available, but like victra said, don't stress the outcome. I'd say practice until you get all the techniques down in Waks tutorial but by all means, don't worry about it if you can't SHFFL 10 times in a row without a screw up. It takes time! Friends will help you learn things like habit-reading and DI and shtuff, and at a point you're gonna wanna play with humans as much as possible as opposed to practicing tech ksill.

If you're worried about tech though, there's no reason not to practice with Fox IMO. He's very technically demanding and if you perfect techniques with him you will have an easier time picking up and handling a slower character rather than the other way around.

That being said, don't force yourself to play the quickest character because he might be the best.
On the other hand, don't force yourself to play a slower character because you aren't up to speed yet. If you're anything like me you're gonna cycle through half the cast and take quite a while before solidifying your choice of main(s).

Good luck!

 

[-Philip Coast Philip-]

Would I be better off just training more (solo) before trying to fight human players? Should I use slo-mo or will this hurt me in the long run?
Would I be better off learning tech with someone other than Falco?
Should I just keep attempting to fight, lose over and over and eventually I'll get better? Discipline myself to fight using good tech?

TL;DR - This game is fast, I'm still pretty slow. Should I learn on a slower character than Falco? And/or should I get my tech flawless before fighting humans?

Play computers, level 7s or 9s is fine unless you want 1s.

Personal tip that almost never see mentioned: Play lightning melee, but don't focus on tech, just play normally. Switch back to regular mode after about 30 minutes and the game will feel slow as molasses, allowing you to focus on your tech better.

Any high-level character will teach you tech, it's just a matter of the kind of tech. L-canceling is easier to learn on characters where you can predict and see the moment of contact and the reduction in lag. A move like fox's down+a is a little harder to l-cancel at first. Certain characters have different jump startup speeds (how soon they get off the ground), affecting how soon you can wavedash: the minimum 'time' is 3 frames (e.g. Fox, Samus, Ice Climbers) and the maximum is 9 (Bowser).

If you keep fighting and losing, you won't get better UNLESS you're improving things after each match. You won't learn much if you play a character you're unfamiliar with against someone who excels at their character because you'll be too busy compensating for getting punished instead of focusing on better gameplay: like the person above mentioned you have to learn the fundamentals first, and in this case that means getting comfortable with your character. In fact, playing worse players than you is highly beneficial because it allows you to see the mindgames in piecemeal and understand them more simply, in addition to giving you practice in executing certain techniques in a 'real' scenario. But yes you should discipline yourself to use good tech, like not miss wall or ground teching or most importantly learning to DI correctly.

That said, your technique will never be flawless and it's not technique that wins games (usually), but a limiting your technique will limit your options in-game.

I've said enough, good luck.