Guide Drastic Improvement

[FrootLoop]

how is this not clearly about working towards a goal of improvement?

 

[Rarik]

came here to post something like this.

my main goals in melee are to have fun and to try and learn more about how the game works. i don't need to stick with one character or spend a lot of time practicing tech skill to accomplish these goals.

i agree with you most of the time umbreon, but who are you to tell me that i'm a scrub for wanting to testing my skill with multiple characters? who are you to tell me the "right" way to play melee? people play this game for tons of different reasons, and they have every right to do so.

I think the point is that if you want to drastically improve (thus the title) then the best way to do that is to stick to one character.

 

[john!]

seemed to me like his post took a condescending tone towards anyone that wasn't 100% committed to making winning their only goal. sorry if that wasn't his intention.

 

[Deleted member]

i agree with you most of the time umbreon, but who are you to tell me that i'm a scrub for wanting to test my skill with multiple characters? who are you to tell me the "right" way to play melee? people play this game for tons of different reasons, and everyone has different goals. what's wrong with that?

by all means, don't feel forced or obligated to listen to me. people who really want to get better at this game will end up here or contacting me privately on their own.

 

[john!]

by all means, don't feel forced or obligated to listen to me. people who really want to get better at this game will end up here or contacting me privately on their own.

don't get me wrong, i think your post had a lot of great stuff. i just don't think you should go so far as to call any sub-optimal playing "self-sabotage"

 

[Deleted member]

don't get me wrong, i think your post had a lot of great stuff. i just don't think you should go so far as to call any sub-optimal playing "self-sabotage"

and i think that's just strictly wrong, at least in application for this game in the narrow confinements we apply to it. i fully understand that my ideas are extreme in some regards. i'd challenge you to sway me from them if you want to kick up some discussion.

 

[john!]

and i think that's just strictly wrong, at least in application for this game in the narrow confinements we apply to it. i fully understand that my ideas are extreme in some regards. i'd challenge you to sway me from them if you want to kick up some discussion.

well, "self-sabotage" to me means any action that you take which gets in the way of your goals. when i use a secondary in order to try out a new matchup or strategy, and my goal is to learn more about the game, then i don't consider that self-sabotage because i'm working towards my goal. that's why it seems like you're assuming the reader must only have the goal of winning when you make statements like that. if i pick a secondary, and lose, but i still learned something valuable that i wouldn't learn by playing my main, then that sounds like a success to me.

 

[gnosis]

Purely optimal play is sometimes sub-optimal. For example, rps ai tournaments. Pure random is 'unbeatable', but it also isn't very good at winning, seeing as its odds of winning are 50/50 against any conceivable strategy or lack of strategy.

Any deviation from pure random opens up exploitable patterns, but also allows you to better beat exploitable patterns in your opponents. Adaptive AI will crush 100% rock every time, and 'optimal' pure random play will still only go 50/50. However, adaptive AI runs the risk of being better adapted against.

Is melee a game that forces you to dip into 'sub-optimal' play in order to better your odds of winning, or can you really abstain almost entirely? If you can, does that mean melee is more or less solved?

Is melee even a good game?

 

[Double Helix]

I feel like optimal play is a paradox. If there is a single best option every time, a person becomes readable if both players know it. Therefore the optimal play becomes reading the best option. The best option is no longer the best option because it will be read. Therefore the optimal play is not the second best option. Therefore, sub-optimal play and optimal play are very hard to distinguish, and sometimes the "less good" option will yield better results than the "best" option. In regards to character choice, if you assume the goal is winning all the time, choosing a secondary for the sake of WINNING a matchup is optimal, but using a secondary to LEARN a matchup is sub-optimal. In a tournament situation, sub-optimal play is self-sabotage. But outside of it, "self-sabotage" is a very useful way to apply different options and learn whether an option is even close to a good idea.

Sub-optimal play is necessary to maximize game knowledge and vary your options, but determining whether an optimal play is optimal is a bit more of a gray area.

 

[gnosis]

I feel like optimal play is a paradox. If there is a single best option every time, a person becomes readable if both players know it. Therefore the optimal play becomes reading the best option. The best option is no longer the best option because it will be read. Therefore the optimal play is not the second best option. Therefore, sub-optimal play and optimal play are very hard to distinguish, and sometimes the "less good" option will yield better results than the "best" option. In regards to character choice, if you assume the goal is winning all the time, choosing a secondary for the sake of WINNING a matchup is optimal, but using a secondary to LEARN a matchup is sub-optimal. In a tournament situation, sub-optimal play is self-sabotage. But outside of it, "self-sabotage" is a very useful way to apply different options and learn whether an option is even close to a good idea.

Sub-optimal play is necessary to maximize game knowledge and vary your options, but determining whether an optimal play is optimal is a bit more of a gray area.

Well how I'm reading Umbreon's post, it seems like he says there's optimal play available where it doesn't matter if your opponent knows what you're going to do, in the same way it doesn't matter if you know the rps ai you're up against goes pure random - you still can't formulate a winning strategy against it. Go ahead and read that I'm going to play in a way that leaves you no options for counterattack, new options aren't going to materialize.

But then isn't there just one character you should be playing, whoever can actually do that most reliably in the most matchups?

Along these lines, doesn't that make Melee something more like a racing game on separate tracks? You both should be executing 'optimal strategy', in a way that it doesn't really matter who you're playing against as you aren't really interacting with someone - you're playing your optimal strategy and it just comes down to who makes a tiny technical error first.

We feel dissatisfied when a match ends due to someone missing a waveland on to the stage and suiciding, but in this light, isn't every match where both people are playing right come down to ending for the exact same reasons, just in different forms?

 

[Double Helix]

I think that we haven't learned enough of Melee to do that. Fox and Falco still have so much room to grow, and some low tiers haven't even developed really. If there was a way to have that sort of optimal play, we wouldn't know about it yet. Besides, best options are still going to be best options, but reads are going to sometimes beat those options. If there IS such an optimal play available, I certainly don't think we have found it.

 

[gnosis]

Somewhat along these lines, a lot of what Umbreon says in this thread seems tinted by a Marth perspective. Is that just me?

 

[Double Helix]

Umbreon usually has drastic views, whether it is meant to be thought provoking or satire. I haven't seen that many posts cuz I'm not old-school, but Umbreon is generally not very hateful. In terms of optimal play, I think Umbreon MAY be correct theoretically, but I would like proof.

 

[gnosis]

Hateful? What do you mean? I didn't mean to imply I thought he was rude or anything. I like reading Umbreon posts.

 

[clowsui]

It's not really a marth perspective lol. It's just easiest to apply these concepts w marth and see concrete improvement quickly because it's really apparent when a marth makes suboptimal plays

 

[Double Helix]

Well to be fair, I play Ness. I am the an embodiment of suboptimal. But that big-headed kid is so much fun. In any case, I want to think that optimal plays aren't really as cookie cutter as I get the impression it seems to be.

 

[gnosis]

It's not really a marth perspective lol. It's just easiest to apply these concepts w marth and see concrete improvement quickly because it's really apparent when a marth makes suboptimal plays

Kinda like double helix was going on with his mention of Ness, it's more marth's ability to play so optimally that I think makes this post take on a Marth tone. The whole avoiding RPS situations, avoiding attempts at conditioning/'mind games', avoiding mixups, etc. that Umbreon preaches doesn't seem nearly as available to most of the cast as it does to Marth and his 'i beat all of your options with positioning and waiting' playstyle (although admittedly I don't know how much of that talk is even in this post or if I'm importing things I've read from him elsewhere, like, say, the Marth boards...).

 

[Deleted member]

Kinda like double helix was going on with his mention of Ness, it's more marth's ability to play so optimally that I think makes this post take on a Marth tone. The whole avoiding RPS situations, avoiding attempts at conditioning/'mind games', avoiding mixups, etc. that Umbreon preaches doesn't seem nearly as available to most of the cast as it does to Marth and his 'i beat all of your options with positioning and waiting' playstyle (although admittedly I don't know how much of that talk is even in this post or if I'm importing things I've read from him elsewhere, like, say, the Marth boards...).

it's much more accessible to the better characters because they have the most degenerate options from neutral. all of the best characters have this type of gameplay because it's a major reason that allows them to be as good as they are. in particular, i think fox is the best at setting up absolute situations more than any other character. if you extrapolate what i'm saying through a marth lens, that's fine if it helps you understand where i'm coming from but it's hardly specific to that character. you should absolutely choose when to attack as fox, master your CG as sheik, use peach's float to leverage positional advantage, and so forth.

 

[gnosis]

So maybe it's not Marth, it's just good characters as opposed to bad characters. Does the tier list as far down as Luigi really have strong acces to it though? I'd say that it's much more limited, maybe top 7 or 8 characters?

edit: I understand that whatever character you play there is some optimal way to play it. But I don't think most of the characters optimum play is able to effectively use things like aggressive movement to control the stage, reactive punishing to stuff any attempts to oppose that control, etc. and end up having to 'trick' the opponent a lot more often (and hoping they don't know the matchup).

 

[FrootLoop]

There are still such situations with worse characters such as edgeguarding/tech chases/maybe some platform stuff. Their lack of options and coverage means they have to go farther from neutral for this stuff and probably just have to accept that you're getting back to neutral eventually and try to tack on some damage.

Worse characters are not really relevant to winning tournaments for this reason. Maybe you can outplay someone with great guesses, but it's unreliable to expect to go the distance set after set in a bracket based on guessing your opponents thoughts. This is made even more impossible because you're going to run into better characters that don't have to guess very much and might not even have to at all due to your characters badness. There won't be a great read to make. You'll only chance is to hope they mess up which is also unreliable for winning brackets.

 

[Deleted member]

So maybe it's not Marth, it's just good characters as opposed to bad characters. Does the tier list as far down as Luigi really have strong acces to it though? I'd say that it's much more limited, maybe top 7 or 8 characters?

edit: I understand that whatever character you play there is some optimal way to play it. But I don't think most of the characters optimum play is able to effectively use things like aggressive movement to control the stage, reactive punishing to stuff any attempts to oppose that control, etc. and end up having to 'trick' the opponent a lot more often (and hoping they don't know the matchup).

you both pretty much got the right idea. you want to shy away from the lower characters because they don't have the same range of stage control and ability to cut off the opponent's options. there's a polarity toward the best characters because the returns to good stage control tactics become exponential when used in tandem with each other. let me try that again in plain english though with an example:

falcon has good air to ground control with his dashdance, but doesn't really have a good ground game on his own because his ground moves suck. like let's be real, falcon only has grab and aerials from neutral. so his ability to deal with a grounded opponent without jumping is pretty much limited to DD grab, which is fine but not great. let's compare this to sheik, who has about the same air to ground control (landing lag vs a ready sheik/falcon is miserable against both of those characters) but sheik far excels at having a real ground game because her grab, tilts, dash attack, and dsmash are all fantastic. because sheik has access to both while falcon is only good at one of those, sheik's stage control is MUCH better than falcon's rather than only somewhat better. this is because she can transition to either type of play to maintain a consistent state of interaction with the opponent. so while sheik gets to still be sheik, falcon is pretty much only allowed to dashdance better than his opponent. the idea here is that the sum of the parts leads to something greater.

back to the main subject, low tiers can't do this. on the other extreme, falco has stage control and positional advantage everywhere forever. so when i'm telling you that you should seek to minimize interaction from your opponent with you, or to maximize your interaction with your opponent, you have to understand that this is definitely restricted to character choice. realistically i personally don't think it's possible to go national status unless you're on fox falco sheik marth peach jigglypuff ICs, but i know some people will still want to play like falcon and doc or whatever and that's on them. I can't honestly tell people that they're fine playing like yoshi though. if that all makes sense.

 

[gnosis]

Totally. I've always felt the same way about Falcon's limited nature. I've actually wondered how strong/potentially busted he would be with like... Marth's grab range and a real dash attack. Lol

 

[Medaka444]

I found this whole thing massively confusing. At one point, it says I need to want self-improvement as much as I need oxygen to survive. Well, when you put it like that, it sounds like I can't improve myself at anything, since there are very few things I want as much as oxygen. Rule 3 says that the only way to win is to be an emotionless robot. It says you can still have fun, but that feels like a huge contradiction. If I need to remove emotion, how can I find satisfaction in what I do?

The post says I can only improve by going to tournaments or making friends at tournaments. I guess I was wrong to assume this was a guide for training before taking such a huge leap. On practice, I don't understand what it's saying about practicing with theory. If theory contributes nothing towards, then what good is a manual or combo guide? Should I ignore them and try to find out every bit of info by myself? I doubt I could've known about wavedashing on my own. And I thought learning stuff like that does make you get better. It reminds me of how this says that there is no excuse for bad tech skill. Not even lack of training? I should be skilled at techniques the second I pick up a controller? There are many things I want to do, but can't at my current skill level. It's like it's saying something, but I can't interpret it correctly.

On Strategy Evalution: Useless, it's too bad the writer won't dwell on it for long, since that example of of Fox juggling Luigi sounds quite useful, indeed.

And some minor things, really. There was a lot I couldn't understand. Thus, if I have misinterpreted anything, I apologize/

 

[Deleted member]

I can't help you. No one can help you.

 

[Ziodyne]

/stuff

Imma try adressing your points. I don't agree with umbreon on everything (and neither should anyone else for that matter), but I like a lot of his posts and many times he does bring up very strong points.

First and foremost, from what I can tell this isn't a guide for you. You should like a player who just recently got into the competitive scene and trying to navigate through it. Drastic improvement will come the moment you play against competitive players, because you are a fair amount behind the curve but thankfully it shouldn't take you too much effort to catch up.

This guide feels more of less for people who go to tournaments and are already pretty familiar with the competitive scene. It's dramatic improvement for these people if they feel themselves hitting a glass ceiling even though countless other, better players exist.

BTW, the way to improve IS to go the tournaments or at least play with other established members of the competitive community. I mean, there is no other way to get experienced in deep player vs. player interactions unless you play with someone who has the experience IMO. There should be no qualms about being "tournament-ready" because quite frankly, no amount of self-practice will make one "tournament-ready" for their first tournament. It's also not as huge of a step as one would think. It's just a bunch of people who like playing smash in the same room, no more and no less.
On emotion in tournament play, what Umbreon's trying to get people to do is to stop doing dumb things in tournament due to heat of the moment. He might be exaggerating a point, but he's not telling you to become an emotionless robot when you play, he's just telling you to be clear-headed when you play and think rationally about what options you choose when you play. This is especially important in tournament play because nerves are generally at an all-time high.

A combo guide or a manual is not theory. Notice how in his post, he seperates DI, wavedashing, etc. from theory. Those techs aren't theory, they're important tools that cannot possibly hurt someone to learn. However, many people will theory-craft on these boards. They will talk about what the best possible option is in certain situations and why. If you take most of these at face-value, you will not get better. If you try to understand the underlying principles behind these claims, you can take what's useful to you from the post and make yourself a better player.

There is no excuse for bad tech skill means that bad tech skill is no excuse for someone to lose a tourney match. Did they lose because of sloppy tech skill? It's their own fault for not practicing more than the other person or for not going into the match prepared (cold hand johns, etc.). Instead of making these excuses when they lose, people need to accept their loss, their potential tech skill weaknesses, and just work at polishing them so that it doesn't happen again.
That strategy evaluation actually is not that bad IMO. I'm pretty sure most people have their own criteria about how to evaluate strategies, but Umbreon doesn't do a bad job of setting ground work or at least putting into words what most good smashers just do instinctively.

 

[gnosis]

Hey Umbreon, when you say you'd rather be the most technical than the smartest player, that gives me a bad impression of Melee. But I might be interpreting it wrong. To me that is saying the decision making in this game is actually pretty shallow, and matches come down to tiny technical errors (i.e. the right play is obvious enough often enough that being smarter than your opponent isn't nearly as big of a deal as always doing what you intend to). Is the decision making in this game shallow enough that average intelligence/knowledge/etc. + great tech skill > average tech skill + great intelligence/knowledge/etc?

If so, why isn't like, Lovage/SilentWolf/etc. the best players? Wrong kind of tech skill (breadth/depth of ability vs in-game consistency)? Just not technical enough and you were talking about more of an inhuman level of tech skill (in which case I would easily agree and not really look down on Melee for it)?

Or is my interpretation of what you mean wrong and you meant smart more in context of 'mindgames' and being clever enough to 'trick' your opponent (as opposed to clever enough to analyse and adapt optimally in realtime)?

I have lots more questions but I don't know if my questions are very good ones.

 

[Deleted member]

Hey Umbreon, when you say you'd rather be the most technical than the smartest player, that gives me a bad impression of Melee. But I might be interpreting it wrong. To me that is saying the decision making in this game is actually pretty shallow, and matches come down to tiny technical errors (i.e. the right play is obvious enough often enough that being smarter than your opponent isn't nearly as big of a deal as always doing what you intend to). Is the decision making in this game shallow enough that average intelligence/knowledge/etc. + great tech skill > average tech skill + great intelligence/knowledge/etc?

If so, why isn't like, Lovage/SilentWolf/etc. the best players? Wrong kind of tech skill (breadth/depth of ability vs in-game consistency)? Just not technical enough and you were talking about more of an inhuman level of tech skill (in which case I would easily agree and not really look down on Melee for it)?

Or is my interpretation of what you mean wrong and you meant smart more in context of 'mindgames' and being clever enough to 'trick' your opponent (as opposed to clever enough to analyse and adapt optimally in realtime)?

I have lots more questions but I don't know if my questions are very good ones.

your questions are excellent questions. however, i'm going to wait a few days to see if anyone else answers them for me for perspective. i know a lot of smart people skim threads like this without necessarily posting.

so, someone take a stab at it.

 

[Rarik]

Taking a stab at it.

What I believe Umbreon is referring to is the fact that given enough time, any game will develop to the point where there's only a few strategies left, the best ones that aren't easily beaten and have few to no weaknesses.At this point in time, the people who can get as close to perfectly executing the strategy will win.

Starcraft (1 and 2), at different points in its life span, has had a similar situation to this in which the metagame was so developed that the best players were the ones with the best mechanics. Every strategy remaining was good enough against the rest of the strategies that all that mattered was who executed better. Who could micro their marines better, or who could manage their economy better. In essence the strategy of the entire game could be written ahead of time; what they planned on doing, their build order, everything. There was just a few simple conditions because there was more than one optimal strategy, but that was easily discovered by scouting a couple minutes into the game, early enough to react accordingly because just by seeing when/what building was built you would know the rest of their game plan. Fortunately Starcraft can be patched and shake up the whole metagame every now and then, giving the smart players an advantage for a tournament or two, but then the new strategies are figured out and the most technical players go back to wining until a new strategy is discovered, or the game is patched.

Another example is League of Legends. While League of Legends is still fairly new and patched very often, it frequently experiences top level teams just getting outplayed mechanically. It didn't matter that the losing team's strategy was better than the winner's, the winner played their strategy better, more effectively, and more consistently. This just happened <2 days ago in the TSM vs SKTT1 game. TSM had a better strategy and a better team comp, but they misplayed it early on, allowing SKTT1 to get a lead and keep that lead for the rest of the game. For reference TSM is the 2nd best North American team, and SKTT1 is considered the best Korean team.

To relate this back to Smash, take two pros, say Mew2King and Dr PeePee, playing Marth vs Falco on Battlefield. They both know exactly how that matchup should work. They both know what they should be doing, and what their opponent should be doing (it might not be the most optimal at this point in time, but we're assuming M2K didn't suddenly come up with some crazy new strategy for the Marth V Falco matchup that makes it in marth's favor). The player who's going to win is the player who makes the least mistakes. (As a side note, a single big mistake can be worse than a few little ones depending on how hard they're punished.) Now, M2k and Dr PP didn't come up with their strategies. At least not all of it. Instead it's a compilation of the knowledge gathered from the last 12 years, which they've learned from others, and helped discover as well. A better, more effective strategy is still slowly being discovered, and as better strategies are discovered they'll replace the old ones, everyone will learn the new one, and the person who makes less mistakes will win. Fortunately Melee is at a point where quick decision making still matters as the best possible moves in every situation hasn't been completely figured out.

As for Lovage/SilentWolf/etc, they aren't the best for one of three reasons. Either A.) They aren't using the current most effective strategies, B.) They're actually just flashy, not technical, and they're messing up in the technical aspects that actually matter, or C.) They aren't consistent enough and make too many mistakes under pressure.

Anyways, short version without examples, Technical > Smart in the long run because a technical player just has to keep up with the current effective strategies (that they don't have to develop) and then outplay their opponents mechanically (making less mistakes). Smart players need to constantly come up with new strategies to strategically outplay their opponents, because as soon as their latest strat gets figured out, they're going to make more mistakes and get outplayed mechanically. However, I'm just going to add that smart players are good for the metagame as they further the level of play. If dash dancing had never been discovered and then implemented by some smart player, the game wouldn't look quite the same. Same goes for wavedashing, chaingrabs, etc, etc. Purely technical players rely on smart players to come up with new and better ideas, they then adopt it, play it better, and then win everything.

 

[john!]

i'll let you guys decide whether this is a "smart answer" or not, but IMO it just boils down to options (like any fighting game)... an extremely smart player can choose the correct option 100% of the time, but their lack of tech skill could limit the options they have to choose from. obviously this all depends on how "smart" and "technical" the players in question are.

for example, if the smart player can't waveshine with fox, then that limits their combo potential against peach and marth, whereas an extremely technical player would just waveshine without a second thought, because anyone with any knowledge of this game knows to do that when given the chance. the technical player will be able to SDI fox's uair, and chaingrab perfectly with marth, and execute falcon combos flawlessly.

and as we explore the melee metagame further, people are going to agree more and more on how to best play each character, there's going to be less and less variation in playstyles, and the smart player will have less and less room to innovate and be unpredictable. that's pretty much how it goes with any field of study. remember all the famous chemists you learned about in school? wanna know why they're so much more famous than living chemists? because chemistry is so thoroughly explored that any improvement today is the result of hundreds of people, billions of dollars, and years of hard work. being smart just isn't good enough anymore. same goes for melee: being smart could get you pretty far back in the day, but today you will get steamrolled unless you have sufficient tech skill.

p.s. regarding silent wolf/lovage/etc., not only are they not as smart as the top players, but i actually don't think their defensive technical skill (SDI, teching, etc.) is very good, probably because lots of their tech skill comes from comboing CPU's instead of getting comboed by other people.

edit: beaten to the punch by 8 minutes lol

 

[gnosis]

Another example is League of Legends. While League of Legends is still fairly new and patched very often, it frequently experiences top level teams just getting outplayed mechanically. It didn't matter that the losing team's strategy was better than the winner's, the winner played their strategy better, more effectively, and more consistently. This just happened <2 days ago in the TSM vs SKTT1 game. TSM had a better strategy and a better team comp, but they misplayed it early on, allowing SKTT1 to get a lead and keep that lead for the rest of the game. For reference TSM is the 2nd best North American team, and SKTT1 is considered the best Korean team.

I think TSM's loss was more because of tactical errors than mechanical errors. That or it was things that ride the line too much to clearly call as one or the other.

For example, Xpecial taking turret aggro too early in the 3v1 dive - do you really wanna say that Xpecial's hands are so sloppy that that was a mechanical error and he accidentally clicked renekton too early, or was it more mental, jumping the gun due to nerves/excitement at an opportunity, whatever.

Anyway, I get that once a game is solved it comes down to pure execution, but Melee I think is fast-paced enough that even if it's 'decently' solved, recognizing and implementing the right move in real-time, for me, still seems to require a lot of intelligence. When I lose Melee matches, I don't generally feel like my hands aren't listening well enough, though that does happen, I feel more like I'm not keeping up tactically. Even if after the game I can look back and say 'oh yeah I know what I should've done there', in the moment, I feel more like dumbness than hand speed is holding me back - I feel like I can grow tactically more than I can, realistically, grow mechanically. And that's what excites me about the game and keeps me playing. When someone says 'no you should just be more technical, this game is figured out enough that you don't have to be smart', it just doesn't line up with my experiences.

So with that said I think this conversation has more to do with unclear and strange words like intelligence and how different people view them. And probably I don't know enough about this game.

 

[Bones0]

I think it's a huge mistake to assume anyone has a grasp on what the most effect strategy is. If a top player occasionally makes tech flubs more often than his opponent, he will still win if he has the better strategy. Melee is so complex that you can't simply copy and paste strategies into your gameplay and expect it to be optimal. If M2K develops some new anti-Falco technology, it isn't going to be some obvious thing that everyone else can emulate. It will be really subtle and heavily dependent on how the rest of his style operates.

 

[Rarik]

I think TSM's loss was more because of tactical errors than mechanical errors. That or it was things that ride the line too much to clearly call as one or the other.

For example, Xpecial taking turret aggro too early in the 3v1 dive - do you really wanna say that Xpecial's hands are so sloppy that that was a mechanical error and he accidentally clicked renekton too early, or was it more mental, jumping the gun due to nerves/excitement at an opportunity, whatever.

Disclaimer: the stuff from this point until the edit is badly worded and doesn't really convey what I wanted it to convey. Hopefully my later posts clear it up, but I'm leaving this here because people may refer to it, and I'm completely fine with people calling me out on being unclear.

Eh, I guess I can go with that interpretation. Important part is that he misplayed the dive. He wanted to dive them, and he did it wrong. Going off of Umbreon's definition "Doing exactly whatever it is that you want to do" it's a technical error. (This is going off the assumption that Xpecial knows exactly how he should've done that dive, which means that he didn't do what he wanted to do, thus technical error. I'd be surprised if this assumption was wrong.) People often tread a fine line when talking about mechanics and decision making, especially with what we're used to in Melee or Starcraft where mechanics is only the pressing button part rather than the decisions involved with what buttons you press and when. Some people take mechanics to include the decisions behind those button presses, some don't. Which is why I like Umbreon's definition as it makes it clear that we're simply talking about doing what you wanted to do, and therefore anything that prevents you from doing exactly what you wanted to do would result in a technical error. So, when I say mechanics or tech skill, or technical error I'm using that definition. Which I feel Xpecial's play would fall under. Yeah I def agree that this conversation is about stuff people generally don't have a strict definition for.

I want to relate this back to smash but it's 2AM right now and I'm too tired to come up with something coherent. Yada yada Smash at high level seem to me to be more about execution. This includes EVO and wobbles going on a rampage. He executed super well and with some exceptions of the top 8 just playing it flat out wrong, he just out executed them. Then Mang0 was like **** this **** I'm the best and played pretty much flawlessly. I'll probably come back and edit this so it makes some sense.

Edit:

I think it's a huge mistake to assume anyone has a grasp on what the most effect strategy is. If a top player occasionally makes tech flubs more often than his opponent, he will still win if he has the better strategy. Melee is so complex that you can't simply copy and paste strategies into your gameplay and expect it to be optimal. If M2K develops some new anti-Falco technology, it isn't going to be some obvious thing that everyone else can emulate. It will be really subtle and heavily dependent on how the rest of his style operates.

I agree because I don't think Melee is anywhere near the point where everything is figured out to the tiniest little details. Mainly because there's so many tiny little details. However I still feel like high level play is mostly about execution.

 

[john!]

@bones do you at least agree that the number of viable strategies will drop over time?

 

[Divinokage]

@bones do you at least agree that the number of viable strategies will drop over time?

What does that mean?

 

[Rarik]

That means as the game progresses the number of strategies that work will decrease as old strategies, that are inferior, get pushed out by superior ones. Translating that to Smash it would mean that as the metagame continues to develop the best options will be discovered and inferior options will no longer be considered as they are easily covered by making optimal decisions, possibly progressing to the point where the most optimal way to play a matchup is discovered, and if the opponent tries something else their hope lies in unfamiliarity rather than it being a legitimately good playstyle/option.
I guess another way to put it would be as the game progresses the number of "viable" playstyles will decrease until the most optimal playstyle for each matchup is discovered and the best choices for nearly every situation is discovered and covered by this playstyle. Viable meaning it gives you the current best chance of winning.

It's a pretty natural progression of competitive games. As the strategy and metagame develops, and as people get better, the number of strategies or playstyles that actually work tend to decrease. This has already happened to Melee to a certain extent. The way the game is played now compared to '07 is much different, and it really wouldn't be a stretch to say that the number of playstyles that work at the highest level has decreased since 07 in favor of playstyles that are more consistent, more efficient, and revolve around proper movement much more heavily than they used to. This will likely continue to happen and the differences will get more and more subtle as time goes on.

 

[gnosis]

Eh, I guess I can go with that interpretation. Important part is that he misplayed the dive. He wanted to dive them, and he did it wrong. Going off of Umbreon's definition "Doing exactly whatever it is that you want to do" it's a technical error. (This is going off the assumption that Xpecial knows exactly how he should've done that dive, which means that he didn't do what he wanted to do, thus technical error. I'd be surprised if this assumption was wrong.) People often tread a fine line when talking about mechanics and decision making, especially with what we're used to in Melee or Starcraft where mechanics is only the pressing button part rather than the decisions involved with what buttons you press and when. Some people take mechanics to include the decisions behind those button presses, some don't. Which is why I like Umbreon's definition as it makes it clear that we're simply talking about doing what you wanted to do, and therefore anything that prevents you from doing exactly what you wanted to do would result in a technical error. So, when I say mechanics or tech skill, or technical error I'm using that definition. Which I feel Xpecial's play would fall under. Yeah I def agree that this conversation is about stuff people generally don't have a strict definition for.

I want to relate this back to smash but it's 2AM right now and I'm too tired to come up with something coherent. Yada yada Smash at high level seem to me to be more about execution. This includes EVO and wobbles going on a rampage. He executed super well and with some exceptions of the top 8 just playing it flat out wrong, he just out executed them. Then Mang0 was like **** this **** I'm the best and played pretty much flawlessly. I'll probably come back and edit this so it makes some sense.

Edit:

I agree because I don't think Melee is anywhere near the point where everything is figured out to the tiniest little details. Mainly because there's so many tiny little details. However I still feel like high level play is mostly about execution.

My problem with that definition is its too potentially broad. I want to win - I didn't win - oh well clearly just an execution error. I think it needs more specification, and I prefer to think of execution errors of disconnect between hand and brain; your definition includes disconnect between strategy and specific implementation (i.e., Xpecial wants to turret dive, he attempts it in this specific way and executes that specific way accurately to his intentions; the error is in the middle there, a tactical error, not a strategic or technical one).

On EVO though, Wobbles himself specifically stated that he lost to Mango because Mango was faster at adapting and setting the pace of the game than him - he doesn't even bring up execution. This would seem to support my view of the game, in that the better player is more determined by who can maintain awareness of and control the tactical situation better, that execution is important but at a high level of play it's consistent enough that you generally aren't seeing a huge edge or deficit from it.

 

[Rarik]

So, looking back at my paragraph I needed to be a lot clearer when explaining things. Instead of saying oh I didn't do what I wanted to do thus it's a technical error, I should've instead said, I didn't do what I wanted to do thus a technical error was made. It does get a bit confusing when talking about stuff like strategy which is why we limit technical play to micro level decisions rather than macro level decisions. So, if I executed a plan perfectly, but still lost, the problem was the fact that I chose the wrong strategy. Normally we call this a strategical error so that everyone knows what we're talking about. HOWEVER, from a certain view point, it's an execution error. If you're only intent is to win, and you chose the wrong strategy, it IS an execution error. Why? Well, if the only thing you want to do is win, then the only correct decisions are the most optimal strategy. Anything that isn't the most optimal strategy works against you're desired goal, winning. So, if you're only goal is to win, and you don't do only the most optimal things, you're making execution errors. You're not executing the best decisions and doing so is counterproductive to you're desired result. You're pressing buttons that don't lead you to winning, thus you are executing the wrong things. This is a silly way to look at things for the most part.

Wobbles doesn't need to bring up execution. It's implied. Mango was faster at adapting and setting the pace than Wobbles. To me that sounds like a strategy, a strategy they're both attempting. Set the pace and adapt to what they do, and Mango was better at it. Sounds like Mango played better, and executed that plan better. You also say that the better player is determined by who can maintain awareness and control the tactical situation better. Again, to me that sounds like a strategy. Not a specific one, but an overall gameplan, where you maintain awareness and control the tactical situation. The better player at doing so wins. If everyone plays this way, then everyone has the same overarching strategy, and whoever plays that overarching strategy better wins.

Also Xpecial diving poorly isn't a tactical error. By military standards a tactic is a level of planning, the lowest level of planning (there's 3 total) with Strategy being the highest level of planning, and Operational level being the middle. The Strategy was to kill their "top" laner in order to secure the tower and get a gold advantage, the operational level is kinda irrelevant here as it's just someone making the call, and the tactic done to accomplish the strategy was to dive, they did so. The dive was misplayed however by starting it too early, the tactic was poorly executed. Execution error. Everything went to plan, except that a member went too early. The problem didn't lie in the planning but in the execution of the plan.

Edit: Realized I've greatly deviated from the original purpose in discussing this. Gonna elaborate on a few things I find the most important. I agree with the opinion that execution is the most important thing in any competitive game. While a game plan is important, game plans will change over time and new ones can be learned. It's quite easy to make comparison of games where the strategy is much slower paced and much more macro level when discussing this. Melee is not that kind of game. Melee will probably never get to the point where your game plan is so detailed that the focus is purely on your execution. This game will likely be focused on constant adaptation to your opponent and trying to force your opponent into something for a good while longer. However, being able to do what you want when you want is still incredibly important. If you see them do something silly, and take to long to adapt into something that punishes it, your plan of adapting to them isn't being played as effectively as it could be. In fact, you can train yourself to automatically react in a specific manner, although that could prove to be a bad habit in the long run if an option that beats your automatic reaction is discovered. Which means you would need to retrain yourself into a different reaction. Either way, for a while, I believe the best Melee players will be a mix of both quick thinking/adaptation, and incredible technical skill, being able to do whatever you want, whenever you want.

 

[Divinokage]

That means as the game progresses the number of strategies that work will decrease as old strategies, that are inferior, get pushed out by superior ones. Translating that to Smash it would mean that as the metagame continues to develop the best options will be discovered and inferior options will no longer be considered as they are easily covered by making optimal decisions, possibly progressing to the point where the most optimal way to play a matchup is discovered, and if the opponent tries something else their hope lies in unfamiliarity rather than it being a legitimately good playstyle/option.
I guess another way to put it would be as the game progresses the number of "viable" playstyles will decrease until the most optimal playstyle for each matchup is discovered and the best choices for nearly every situation is discovered and covered by this playstyle. Viable meaning it gives you the current best chance of winning.

It's a pretty natural progression of competitive games. As the strategy and metagame develops, and as people get better, the number of strategies or playstyles that actually work tend to decrease. This has already happened to Melee to a certain extent. The way the game is played now compared to '07 is much different, and it really wouldn't be a stretch to say that the number of playstyles that work at the highest level has decreased since 07 in favor of playstyles that are more consistent, more efficient, and revolve around proper movement much more heavily than they used to. This will likely continue to happen and the differences will get more and more subtle as time goes on.

It's impossible for someone to know everything, old techs always re-surface at some point to catch people off guard. Melee is more of a game where everything works according to how you read your opponent. Your opponent cannot possibly react to everything. The players right now are simply playing a lot faster than before, I don't believe the tools used actually changed that much, they are just used differently. Having good technical skill is pretty much a must right now meaning you must have very good control of your character. What you do with those tools is entirely based on who is your current opponent.

The reason why not many players can touch the top players is because as a player they have crazy reaction time, they know many many situations, their spacing is ridiculous but that doesn't mean you still can't use a wacky style to beat them. The reason why I think that is because you cannot emulate another player, you can't go against the way your mind works, no one plays exactly the same but if YOU yourself can get up to a sick level then you can start to have a chance to do it your way.

 

[gnosis]

Of course execution/technical skill is everything if you're gonna use it in a way that, by definition, it includes just about everything. How useful is that term then though?

What you're saying is a lot like 'the most important part of playing the game is the part where you play the game'.

When I talk about execution or tech skill, I'm talking about your hand doing what your brain tells them to do - i.e., a tech error is strictly things like 'wtf i swear i hit shield'. I think the term becomes too broad to be very useful if you start including things like 'oh i shouldn't have even hit shield there, should've wavedashed back'. Those kind of things are clearly in the decision making process, the 'gameplan' area, the tactical, strategical levels, and not in the hands-listening-right level.

I think this is especially important in the context of improvement - big difference between someone making wrong decisions and executing them fine, and someone making the right decisions but flubbing the technical part. It also matters when talking about EVO. My interpretation of why Mango beat Wobbles has to do with decisions, not with input errors.

edit: I understand that execution can reasonably be a very broad term (decision making is execution too, after all). But this conversation was about tech skill to begin with, so any use of 'execution' by me was meant in the context of tech skill.

 

[Rarik]

@DivinoKage
Uh, agree with everything you say because you're pretty much agreeing with me in a weird way. I don't think Melee is at a point anywhere near where Starcraft was and where League eventually will be (barring Riot intervention), mainly because Melee is so much faster than those games. Unfortunately when talking about how technical play and the optimization of strategies, those are some of the best comparisons because it's actually happened whereas in Melee you can tell that some people are losing because they just didn't accomplish their gameplan, but it's not really the primary reason most people lose. I guess it would be worth noting that reaction time is part of being a technical player (in my opinion of course), so the top players having crazy reaction time and crazy spacing to me just means they have crazy tech skill and the knowledge to back it up.

So, in essence what I just got from you is that yeah, wacky plays can beat top players, but only a few times then they figure it out, and that the reason pro players are so good is because they have the tech skill to back up their knowledge. However, the thing with viable strategies decreasing over time is that the knowledge becomes deeper and deeper while at the same time being spread around enough that anyone who's willing to put the time in can learn it and take a shortcut to higher levels of play, aka knowledge = theory. They just need the tech skill to back it up. Also, the same tools being used in different ways is just the optimization of strategy. People are using the same tools more effectively than before, and the way you use the tools you have is pretty much your playstyle thus playstyles are also being optimized.

The one thing I really disagree with is that you can't emulate another player. Of course you can. It may not necessarily be as effective as the original, but I don't see why you can't fully analyze their play, and then train to play like m2k, mango, or Dr PP, etc. However since no one is playing optimally it's not really the best decision to only emulate one player at this point in time. Much better decision to take different aspects from all of them (the best aspects of course) and incorporate them together as much as possible. So, yeah, emulating another player isn't the best of decisions but I disagree with it not being possible.