Don't Approach: Melee's Flaw Dissected

[ShroudedOne]

If I recall correctly, Jiggs can sweetspot the ledge with sing.

 

[Glöwworm]

Im a falco player, you dont think I have tried mixing those things up? like seriously I became second best in europes best country after 1 year with falco without knowing that you can delay and do early aerials. yeah.

I dont see him at a disadvantage overall because of his SHINE, I just said that the AERIAL pressure is at disadvantage.

@Hax: WHAT? We were gonna play a MM and we both had 2 stocks when you said that you had to go play teams WF. That was the only match we played >_>.
oh and it was with my fox which I barely used at the time, I was saving my falco for if we met in bracket lol.

Um, right. "I jv4 stocked you 1 minute 20 seconds" and then you are saying that I MANIPULATE THINGS THROUGH OUR WORDS. LOL.

and man, Im happy that you got a one stock lead versus a ****ty secondary in a 5$ MM. Must be your first time.


I sincerely hope that you are stoned out of your mind because I havent seen such ****ty argumentation skills in a long while hax.


and yeah M2K, the real danger is imo from the shine/multishines/shinegrabs, not from the aerials.

Dedicated to Rock Lee

If I recall correctly, Jiggs can sweetspot the ledge with sing.

That is correct.

 

[leffen]

I really don't get that quote glowworm.


Oh and Hax, just fyi, that horrible post was the one that headed the thread for the worse. Just fyi

 

[Mew2King]

OH and btw I jv5 stocked you 3 games in a row therefor your arguments suck and your argumentation skills remind me of my grandma


omg stop denying it I let you keep your money yes I did man
and your CF is bad because you missed a knee 2 times which led to a combo this is my legitimate opinion and dont deny it because you like to put your genitals up mens butts
and yes I remember it and you dont and thats that because you missed 2 knees and I did a combo yeah and also you are immature and you talk bad to ppl .


What? this isnt the lying and talking out of our ***** about pointless matches thread?

..................................

ughhh *facepalm* leffen why do you post like this

 

[TheCrimsonBlur]

Hax v. Leffen 100 dollar money match on the APEX livestream. Make it happen.

(Damn I'm such an instigator)

...I know the big boys are talking, but isn't the claim that Mango is the *only* top offensive player really, really wrong? Maybe I'm crazy but I've always thought Axe is the most rushdown, in-your-face guy you'll ever find. Dude just goes nuts.

I also think people are calling certain players defensive when they are just mixed. Shroomed is super defensive now? Maybe I didn't get the memo...

 

[leffen]

M2K you really dont get why? like have you even payed attention to hax's posts?

and I'm up for a moneymatch lol, grudge MMs are the only ones that I dont feel bad for winning lol

 

[Mew2King]

leffen i wasn't talking to hax with that post you mentioned before, i was talking to you. I seriously am tired of this debate and the insults you keep throwing around for no good reason whenever you disagree with someone. Just please stop acting immature

the MM should be interesting i hope it gets recorded

 

[leffen]

-___________- I was making fun of hax by impersonating exactly how he had posted in this thread. Sarcasm is hard yeah.

and "whenever I disagree with someone". The only one I've insulted are Hax and to some degree you (which I apologised for and said that it was kind of unwarranted) and that was AFTER he started whining on how bad I was and how it made my arguments unrelevant.

Oh and I think I have the (silver) controller that you whined about being "broken". Best controller I've used thus far LOL.

 

[PEEF!]

Hax v. Leffen 100 dollar money match on the APEX livestream. Make it happen.

Unfortunately there is only one stream for both smash games and AStrife won't let me or any other smasher run a secondary stream from the event so this certainly won't happen.

 

[leffen]

I'll just outplace+beat hax in tournament then lol.

still looking forward Hax starting to timeout and playing supergay in tournaments and instantly becoming the best.

 

[ShroudedOne]

Dedicated to Rock Lee

When I read them at first, I didn't understand. But then I read it again, and put together Rock Lee and the orange text, which was really important. And then I understood. And then I laughed.

Moral: No johns, people.

 

[Paju]

 

[Viiper]

OP is lame.
People always find new ways to play games, maybe to counter an old strategy or just to simply try something new.

If people always would get punished for approaching, people would stop approaching. But people is still doing it because they find value in it. If you'd call people who approach and get punished for it stupid well then the other player is smarter and wins, right?

 

[trahhSTEEZY]

re-ruining threads

sick wit it

 

[Hax]

I'm down for the MM; Jason can MM him for another 100 afterwards since he hates leffen more than I do. I hope it gets recorded too, Jason, considering nobody's matches with leffen ever happened if they weren't recorded lmao

Oh and I think I have the (silver) controller that you whined about being "broken". Best controller I've used thus far LOL.

leffen i don't think you understand that no amount of fellatio is going to make M2K like you LOL

lets get this thread back on track; not responding to anymore of your posts, leffen.

I just finished watching some of Axe's matches, which have made me reevaluate Pikachu

Pikachu is an interesting character that Jason and i are considering adding to the list of offensive characters. while Axe's offensive play gets him into trouble sometimes (i.e. his neutral airs vs me in the Genesis 2 crew battle), it typically overwhelms people (just as it did to me at Pound 5). IMO, Axe was nervous during the Genesis 2 crew battle and played recklessly. I drew my earlier conclusions about Pikachu too quickly based on this match; in plenty of videos where he's on his game, Axe's offensive Pikachu play certainly looks like the optimal way to play the character.

this is no coincidence.

I'm starting to realize that there's a correlation between Fox/Falco/Peach/Pikachu, the 4 characters i've listed as offensive: an extremely fast nair that has high priority, lasts long, does good damage, and covers the majority of the character's body. this type of nair tends to be great at safely poking at CC's/shields, and is consistent with all 4 characters i've listed as offensive.

the reason he's lower than the other 3 offensive characters on the tier list is that he doesn't have broken shield pressure while on the ground. rapid jabs are pretty good, but they're no spacies shine or peach dsmash. still, Pikachu is able to pressure CC's and shields fairly well with his great nair + mobility.

I'll be asking Axe to comment on this part of the thread soon

 

[choknater]

those observations make me want to pick up pikachu

however i don't agree that an optimal peach is of an aggressive nature.

 

[Hax]

Peach is borderline offensive; she can play offense well, but defensive Peach is just as good if not better

since we're only discussing human level play from now on, I suppose the purpose of this thread is to establish which characters can play offense at top level, since there aren't very many

 

[Winston]

Depends how you define offensive. I'm sure you would agree that you are disadvantaged with a character like falcon if you literally NEVER do an attack moving towards them. (And vs. a character with a projectile you would never win)

 

[Grim Tuesday]

Hax: Ice Climbers could in theoretical play with perfect desyncs, but it doesn't play out that way in practice.

 

[ZeldaFreak0309]

because of this dilemma, a more accurate way to describe the way I envision optimal human play would be "fake offense." meaning, generally defensive play with occasional baits that attempt to trick your opponent into doing something offensive and making himself punishable. the most elementary example would be dashdancing forward, then backward, then forward again to bait -> grab an aerial; of course, 10 years into the game, we see far more complex baits than this one - it was just an example.

I wouldn't call it a "healthy balance" between offense/defense (which is what Kevin calls it). I'd call it defense designed to look like a healthy balance between offense/defense in order to trick your opponent into making mistakes.

This is just a matter of semantics, then. It depends on if you define "Defense" to INCLUDE the punishing attack--that is, if a Fox nairs at a Marth, and the Marth dashes back and pivots a grab, does that pivot grab counts as part of the "defensive action"? If it does, then Melee IS a healthy balance of offense/defense.

Your example of baiting a grab isn't an example for why offense is worse--in fact, it shows an easy and common way people punish DEFENSE. Let's use the example of Marth vs Fox again; the Fox jumps forward as if he's going to nair, but wavelands back at the last second; the Marth dashes back and pivots a grab, but misses, and the Fox runs in and usmashes him.

The Marth who got baited into grabbing isn't performing an offensive action, he's performing a DEFENSIVE one. Likewise, the Fox, though he didn't actually commit to an attack at first, is performing an offensive action (baiting the grab so he can usmash) to punish a common defensive action (dash backing and grabbing).

If you want to argue that the Marth leaves his "defensive stance" of dash dancing and takes an "offensive action" when he commits to making that grab, then of course offense is more punishable than defense, but it also voids "being defensive" of any useful meaning, since EVERY player has to make offensive commitments to win a game.

It's counterproductive, I think, to define offense and defense as what your character is doing exactly at that moment. It has much more to do with the positioning and intent of your overall actions, and the pressure/response relationship between the characters. The Fox threatening to nair into the Marth, but baits the grab, is in an offensive position. His whole goal is to pressure the Marth into performing a predictable defensive action that he can then punish. A defensive Fox would be running away, shooting lasers, and dash dancing to bait some sort of attack from the Marth. These are very different playstyles, and to call them both "defensive," while you could be technically correct, is not ultimately productive. From what I can tell, you are more concerned with the overall playstyles that are developing, so your example of baiting as defense > offense doesn't exactly support that. The reason Mango's offensive game is so strong is BECAUSE he's excellent at forcing people into predictable defensive actions that he then punishes. I agree with the idea that because of recent innovations/advancements in defensive options, the defensive metagame is dominating, but soon people will come up with ways to punish those defensive options (like Mango has been doing).

 

[trahhSTEEZY]

Peach is borderline offensive; she can play offense well, but defensive Peach is just as good if not better

since we're only discussing human level play from now on, I suppose the purpose of this thread is to establish which characters can play offense at top level, since there aren't very many

pretty hard to tell given how many characters are sooooo underdeveloped

if you hadn't watched axes matches, you'd probably still think pikachu is a full-defense type character, which i would think also.

 

[Divinokage]

Ya but obviously it's definitely possible to play a defensive character with an offensive style... like me. So I mean, Idk.. I'll try to add more later, I have to go for now.

 

[leffen]

Is it just me or why arent ppl talking about amsah? he plays a much more offensive sheik than most... it was him that really started the shfair/bair approaches lol.

though everyone just thinks of him vs jman when they think of him I guess.

 

[Mr.Jackpot]

Pichu

Spoiler

10char

 

[_Rocky_]

Hax you freaking ***** stop worrying and get camped the **** out by me at apex

 

[Armada]

This thread is ****ed up which is sad cause the subject is kinda fun to talk about.

First of all: I agree with Hax that deffensive is better then offensive in most cases (most chars). But I don´t think it´s nearly as good as I feel he does so this leads me to something between Hax/PP.

It feels like many approaches has openings that is not way to hard to punish. But the player that is playing offensive have (like mention in this thread before) better stage control and also more of a "choice" in what is coming next.

A friend asked me once "Isn´t deffensive games built on misstakes from the opponent"

It is true and I honestly think when people becomes even better the gap between deffensive and offensive will be a little bit closer to even between them. But stuff like CC/SDI laggy landing moves and poor mobility in the air will at least always give deffensive a better shot (maybe not with spacies).

But I think many in this thread is NOT open minded and have already takeing decessions about "the way it is"

People always complain about things and think they have seen the "right" answer before everyone else. The metagame is shifting in EVERYTHING and im sure this community isn´t the only one that have this kind of discussions.

Hax: I feel like you is overrating many of Peachs pros. First of all the pressure is really good but not even close to the point you seem to say.

If you rolling away for example you can´t play on reaction you have to read them beforehand.
If you are trying to stop a roll with Jab for example then it´s a risk with shield grab

She has a really good pressure but it´s not that safe or without any kind of mindgames. She also has a poor speed that makes it even harder to actually corner the opponent to actually being able to play more aggresive.

Btw: Leffen is a really good player (seriously) so don´t in****ing my contry

Maybe I took this part wrong but talking about how people should have won and throwing their sets away is a bit of insulting to players I think.
I have seen many players that many times almost have to deffend theirself because of this kind of situations when they "shouldn´t" have won.

I really don´t care what people think about me against Mango or anyone else for that matter. But I know it is some people that actually care and it feels wrong when some people lose it is just because they had a bad set and if they win they clearly are better players.

I know this kind of subjects is a bit tough sometimes but I hope you know me good enough to understand I used your post so more people could see what I wrote. So they can understand my point.

But yeah this is a really good thred Hax and I hope we can discuss this subject in a good way.

 

[ph00tbag]

The nature of approaching in Melee is a bit more nuanced than just jumping in. The real issue is that "approach" is a very unwieldy term when it comes to fighting games. Does it mean jump-in? Does it mean dash attack? Does it mean WD forward? Does it mean Fox Illusion toward your opponent? It's pretty much meaningless, and you'll find that a lot of 2d fg players only use it in the vaguer sense of referring to finding your way into the spacing that most suits your character in a given match-up.

A great example is Marth. Marth does not approach his opponent. He approaches a position a sword's length from his opponent, or just outside of that location. This is important to note, because sometimes, Marth is between this position and his opponent, and to approach properly, he needs to move away from his opponent. This action looks defensive, but usually it is done specifically so that he can properly mount pressure and offense. Marth's zoning and footsies that he uses to occupy this position fall under what most tradition 2d fg players would call an approach. But Melee players insist that this is defensive, or worse, "gay" play.

It just so happens that the two best characters for jump-in style strategies are also two of the best characters in the game. So it makes it look like something is wrong with the other characters. Moreover, a lot of Melee players have some really immature opinions of safe play. This really prevents a lot of players from properly learning how to manipulate their opponent's positioning without losing their own positional advantage, because playing to win is considered "gay," despite nearly ten years of the best players trying to tell people that you don't want to take unnecessary risks.

I would recommend to Melee players that want to gain an appreciation for Melee's positioning game pick up a copy Street Fighter IV. Footsies and zoning are just about all that that game is about, and the game punishes you hard for bad jump-ins or duck-ins, not unlike Melee. Ultimately, a game that promotes this kind of play is not "flawed." It's just different. Learning to appreciate this kind of play is essential to learning how to get better at Melee.

 

[Mew2King]

i learned some tricks from amsah

as far as playing gay goes, I simply think what I do is efficient (I'm even more efficient in brawl but I only focused on 1 character in brawl), but suddenly it is labeled as gay whenever I find any really efficient strategy that is not fun to fight against. I would say I am very efficient in all the smash games but it just gets labeled as "gay"

 

[KirbyKaze]

KK yeah but honestly, the way brawl worked, the REAL Reason like no BS (which pro ban will tell you cuz they make up ANY EXCUSE EVEN INFINITE DIMENSION CAPE WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN A PROBLEM OR ISSUE EVEN ONCE and is EASY TO ENFORCE) that that happened was simply because more people benefited from choosing "yes" to banning MK on the poll than "no" (by quite a bit/lot), and then the TOs who host tournaments (that are in the URC) are biased as hell (as a whole).

btw leffen, Falco's shield pressure is definitely in his favor, he's not at a disadvantage when using it in terms of options covering and also the overall risk/reward scenarios. That's what I tried to tell you. Try mixing up those 3 things I just told you and see how it works for you.

I wasn't referring to MK at all. I was just referring to how the term "broken" is thrown around so callously nowadays. I wonder if people even remember what it once meant. Degenerative; unhealthy for the game in a violent, over-centralizing way; causes people to literally not want to play the game because of how unfair it is, and how the only way to beat it is to join it, etc.

To an outsider like me, MK looks like the clear best character in Brawl but I'm not really familiar with Brawl well enough to make statements about whether he was over-centralizing enough to warrant a ban (unless I'm trolling or something).

The MK ban reminds me of the (unofficial) wobbling ban to me, for some reason.

 

[Mew2King]

Kirbykaze if I just told you, BBR purposely made rules where MK was at his best (stage wise and timerwise), and the same people who vote to ban MK are the same ones sabotaging the rules and voting against ruleset changes that I've been telling them for MANY YEARS would be better but keeps getting voted down, would you believe me? Because for the past month (you can read in GREAT GREAT DETAIL in my post history) that is all I have been explaining to people a lot. If you want great detail on the issue I have plenty in the past month just click my name and go to Find more posts by mew2king

In other words, I don't think MK would be the best if the ruleset was good (like Japan or even Europe; small stage list, longer timer). (btw top 3 in japan is ICs, Olimar, ICs). For people in america, many pick him up because I've kind of paved a way for victory for them. Imagine if DrPP played falco like he does today back in 2005 or something super early maybe before then, and imagine how many more falco's would exist right now than there already do, and how much better they would be because of someone helping them and vids to copy, and inspiration to try to do the same thing.

 

[KirbyKaze]

I think I have glanced over some of your posts on it. Mostly stuff regarding the stage list being silly. I would say that's a valid argument; we made a lot of modifications to the stage list to keep Fox around and to avoid degenerative play.

I also think this topic is going to continue to go nowhere unless we come up with a definition of approaching that we can all agree on because, as ph00tbag's pointed out, even if you're attacking with Marth as long as you're being kind of safe about it many players will still consider it gay play. I almost believe that in order to be considered offensive by many smashers you have to have low range or incur a lot of risks when you attack.

Fox and Falco are strange creatures in a strange game.



.

 

[t3h Icy]

About the whole shoulda/woulda/coulda thing:

Hugs' Signature:

Hax vs HugS in a friendly set:
Hax: "I coulda won, you're just mad f***ing boring to play..."
HugS: "You know what's MORE boring?! Having to wait your turn to get on a TV again."

Loses 2-1 at Genesis 2

 

[Mew2King]

KK yeah, imagine fox with peach's castle, onett, and great bay on

it's not that extreme, but you get what I'm saying already. It's hella lame.

 

[Battlecow]

Yo, Hax+Leffen, I'm just gonna say that neither of you *****es can run away from this MM now. $100 at Apex, mahfahs, or take back the **** you said.

Make sure you record it =p

Also I'll accept paypal sidebets on Hax because AMERICA.

 

[ph00tbag]

I was just referring to how the term "broken" is thrown around so callously nowadays. I wonder if people even remember what it once meant. Degenerative; unhealthy for the game in a violent, over-centralizing way; causes people to literally not want to play the game because of how unfair it is, and how the only way to beat it is to join it, etc.

I'd say broken is an even more damming concept. Where it completely circumvents the mechanics of the game to gain an insurmountable advantage.

The reason ST Akuma is so often brought up as broken, for instance, is because his ability to move forward while throwing out a projectile meant that he never had to stop pressuring his opponent, ever, because there was no universal mechanic in the game that beat it. And only a few characters could even trade with it.

I could go into how that definition plays into the MK debate, but I really would rather not drag another thread into that quagmire.

 

[Mew2King]

I could go into how that definition plays into the MK debate, but I really would rather not drag another thread into that quagmire.

Good idea. ~Mic

 

[bolt.]

I find it odd that they didn't even try to change the rules, and just went to instant ban.

 

[The Star King]

Yo, Hax+Leffen, I'm just gonna say that neither of you *****es can run away from this MM now. $100 at Apex, mahfahs, or take back the **** you said.

Make sure you record it =p

Also I'll accept paypal sidebets on Hax because AMERICA.

Do you HAVE to make it about country? Seriously.

 

[Van.]

if you don't like making about the country, you're a terrorist

 

[Wake]

If you're not American, you're a terrorist.