Feeling disheartened about trying to get better

[Keeshu]

Anyone ever just feel like it's just not worth trying to get better sometimes?

I'm just feeling a bit disheartened at the moment. Was playing Mario's "america" alt costume cause July 4th cause why not try something different. Did decent except for one guy who clearly spends a lot of time on the game and lost every game to him. Figured I switch to my main Meta Knight for the last one and he went Mario and whooped my butt (though not playing MK in a month, and also feeling defeated didn't help my gameplay any). Of course his Mario was twice the speed of my Mario. That short hop reverse short hop fast fall is such a good pressure tool. I just flatout cannot do it.

I do try to get better at short hopping from time to time with meta knight, but it's never consistent. I try to do the exact same thing and it never seems to be the same result. I'm just so tired of spending hours in training just hopping around hoping that eventually something will click and I get better at short hopping. That's not even combining short hopping with reverse back air fast falls... I just don't have time to play video games like I used to. So sometimes I feel like I should just stop with Smash even though it's one of my favorite things in life. Would be nice if there's something I could do about that.

Do you ever feel like you get down from time to time when trying to get better at Smash?

Edit: I should probably mention that I feel better about trying to get better at Smash now. Thanks for the help guys. Also didn't expect the thread to go on as long as it did. Short hops are still a pain in the rear as of 7/17/2018, but I'm still working on it. It does get a little bit easier overtime, but gosh it's annoying.

 

[Nohbl]

If you look at this table, you'll see the number of frames each character's jumpsquat lasts:
http://kuroganehammer.com/Smash4/Jumpsquat
Meta Knight is 4 (the fastest possible in SSB$), and Mario 5. You probably already know this,
but in order to short hop, one needs to have the jump button released before the character is
supposed to leave the ground. Holding it at that point produces a full hop.

I found shorthopping in Project M difficult with 3 frame jumpsquat characters like Fox;
while it is something you get used to, there's no shame in just not being quick enough
or that exact timing not coming naturally. For me, 5 frame jumpsquat (which translates
to 6 frames in SSB$) is more my speed.

At the very least, you should practice short hop fast falling with characters that have 6 frame
jumpsquats and higher, if not to find a character better suited to you, then to at least assure
yourself that you can pull off the technique at all, and become better acquainted with your
timing. Falco and Donkey Kong's back air should finish their animation before you touch the
ground, if you throw it out A.S.A.P.. That way, you won't have landing lag tripping you up.

Spoiler: irrelevant advice

You should also consider the possibility of maining someone else.
Perhaps it's just me, but I don't think anyone can play anyone. We're all suited to different
characters and kinds of characters. If you never end up nailing that timing with Mario or Meta
Knight, it's maybe in your best interest to try investing your time in a different character,
for the sake of your fun and continued playing.

 

[Keeshu]

Well, if the rumors of Smash Ultimate's window for short hopping is 3 frames across the board, and that carries into the final game, I'm going to have to get better at short hopping no matter what character I pick. I love a lot of fast characters, so having to deal with the shortest window for short hopping in the game comes along with that. Meta Knight, Cloud, Sheik, Samus are all characters I love to play a lot of, but have 4 frame jumpsquat (really hinders Samus's performance the most though).

I'll try the Falco and Donkey Kong thing and see how that works out. Even though I never use those characters. I love Falco so much, and his moves, but he's just waaaaaay too slow for me to enjoy. Hoping he'll be near Fox's speed in Smash 5 and then I'll consider using him as a secondary. Donkey Kong Just isn't fun to fight or play because his neutral is so bad that it's just someone else wailing on him until he dies or they slip up 2-3 times and DK KOs them for it.

As for maining other people. I used to play a ton of Link whenever the tough get going, after all I learned Smash off of Link. I could short hop fast fall attacks with him all the time (I love that short jump and 3rd fastest fast fall speed in Smash 4 thanks to the 90% opposed to the normal 60% fast fall btw). However, having a preference to do forward air over back air with the short hop fast falls never really gave me a reason to practice short hop reverse back air fast fall with Link. I usually win whenever I play Ike, Ganondorf, or Charizard, but with those characters, once someone has a way to force me to approach and they just react to what I do, that's when it all falls apart (generally fast safe projectiles, and really good Marth/Lucina players spacing their forward air perfectly). Besides, I just like the gameplay of Ike + Ganondorf + Charizard because their hits feel good, I don't really care a whole lot about the characters. Lack of caring about a character is one of the two major reasons why I stopped playing Marth even though Marth was my Main in Melee despite his gameplay feeling so perfect (the other being the range nerf he got. Whiffed constantly in the short time I played Brawl, and early Smash 4 and that's pretty big for a character all about the tip. Though now it's not so bad, but Marth's blandness really makes it hard for me to go "YES! I main this character"). Shulk is a character I've decided to stop trying to get good with in Smash 4, but will pick up again in Smash 5 because the monado art changing just took the fun out too much in Smash 4. With that said, I usually did pretty well with Shulk most of the time, even if I didn't get the nice looking combos some people get with him.

Meta Knight used to be my worst character until I forced myself to get better with him to the point where he is my best because I love Meta Knight the most out of the cast. I have been trying to make myself stick to a character a month for a bit. Two months ago was Sheik because I never gave Sheik a chance before, and Sheik got so much easier to use after I got better with Meta Knight, and Sheik is really fun to play. Win ratio with Sheik is a pretty weak 50/50 (that's almost Meta Knight levels bad before I tried to get really into maining Meta Knight) at the moment but gosh Sheik's so fun to play that I do want to get better with Sheik. Last month was Zelda 'cause my niece was leaving town, wanted to get better with her main so I can give her better tips, and Zelda is absolutely terrifying in the hands of someone good (which 95% of Zelda players aren't). I was starting to like her, especially after some mediocre Fox made me feel good because he started off 2 stocking me, and by the end of some matches, I was 2 stocking him everytime once I knew how to deal with his speed overwhelming me. This month I'll try to be doing Lucario because I love that character almost as much as Meta Knight, yet for some strange reason I never have an urge to play him. Probably because I never got good enough with him to get a good enough feeling for how he plays so I could never get the urge to play something when I don't know it exists. Then there's a bunch of characters I'm interested in, but have some problem that made me not want to main them as hard as Meta Knight. Corrin, Dark Pit,Fox McCloud,Little Mac, /Marth/LucinaPikachu (mainly because of pikachu main friend. After fighting Pikachu, realized that while Pika is different from Meta Knight in a lot of ways, there's many things very similar about the two compared to the rest of the cast),Robin,Ryu,Toon Link (T.Link feels so vulnerable compared to normal Link because he has a much harder time getting back to the ground. Hard to get used to him because I sometimes will go for what regular Link wants, not what Toon Link wants. I should learn what Toon Link wants)Zero Suit Samus. Smash 5 will be out before I get around with all these characters.Ridley and Wolf have a good chance to be mains in Smash 5 if Meta Knight doesn't work out. Snake is fun and hilarious to play, so he has a good chance to be a good secondary.Inklings feel right up my alley, and I'll be forced to use them at least a little bit because of a Splatoon Discord I'm in.

It's because of all these characters I love that I get afraid to attempt maining someone other than Meta Knight. There's only so much time to spend on playing characters.

 

[Nohbl]

I wasn't necessarily suggesting that you try to main, like Donkey Kong, you know.
Just that it might be easier to practice shorthop aerial or SHFF aerial.
But you're right: since the new game has 3 frames for everyone,
you will have to learn to do it eventually. It's just a matter of route.

That's a lot of characters you've considered. I can see why it would be hard to pick.
Other people might say just to main who you have the most fun with, or whose
character you like the most, but these don't have anything to do with a player's
strength or weaknesses. If you can figure that out about yourself, then it would be
easier to choose perhaps. But this game is in such a weird state that it matters less
ultimately.

Since I don't know you, I've got no further advice to offer. But as far as I know, being
good with Meta Knight means being good at evading and baiting and punishing,
juggling, and gimping. If those are your strong suits, as opposed to for example
keeping an opponent away (zoning), then he's not so bad a choice after all.

 

[MarioManTAW]

Don't forget that in Ultimate, the short hop aerial mechanic should make up for the low jumpsquat.

 

[Keeshu]

I wasn't necessarily suggesting that you try to main, like Donkey Kong, you know.
Just that it might be easier to practice shorthop aerial or SHFF aerial.
But you're right: since the new game has 3 frames for everyone,
you will have to learn to do it eventually. It's just a matter of route.

That's a lot of characters you've considered. I can see why it would be hard to pick.
Other people might say just to main who you have the most fun with, or whose
character you like the most, but these don't have anything to do with a player's
strength or weaknesses. If you can figure that out about yourself, then it would be
easier to choose perhaps. But this game is in such a weird state that it matters less
ultimately.

Since I don't know you, I've got no further advice to offer. But as far as I know, being
good with Meta Knight means being good at evading and baiting and punishing,
juggling, and gimping. If those are your strong suits, as opposed to for example
keeping an opponent away (zoning), then he's not so bad a choice after all.

The problem is I'm not sure where my strengths and weaknesses are. Growing up videos games were my go-to thing, and I wanted to master pretty much every game I touched. So I had to get good with pretty much every type of normal gameplay style at some point.

If I had a way to find out what my strengths and weaknesses are as a player, I'd totally do that. I just don't know how.

Don't forget that in Ultimate, the short hop aerial mechanic should make up for the low jumpsquat.

Yeah, but if I'm having a hard time just doing simple short hopping in general, I don't think short hop aerial mechanic is going to help. Besides I use the R button to jump and C stick to do an attack so I can more easily keep my momentum with my jumps (and is an absolute must when trying to do the up air combo with Meta Knight) so it's not like I'm using the same finger and I'm waiting on that finger to move. I'm using two fingers to do two separate things so I don't have to wait for my finger to move.

 

[War Anvil]

I feel just as discouraged about getting better as you are, mostly because I really don't need to be playing video games all day.

Don't just play, read up on strategy discussions and watch videos of Mario's matchups. Analyze them and compare with how you play, and hopefully you'll figure out your own strategy. Trust me: the actual sensation of the game is a great way to hone your fundamentals, but it isn't the be-all-end-all.

 

[smashingDoug]

Nope

I play on a first gen 3ds with both of the shoulder buttons broken so I had to switch my x to grab, y to shield,

so now I have to use tap jump cause my L and R don’t work I need to grab and shields

Got no c stick

I’m not giving up

 

[Keeshu]

I feel just as discouraged about getting better as you are, mostly because I really don't need to be playing video games all day.

Don't just play, read up on strategy discussions and watch videos of Mario's matchups. Analyze them and compare with how you play, and hopefully you'll figure out your own strategy. Trust me: the actual sensation of the game is a great way to hone your fundamentals, but it isn't the be-all-end-all.

I will definitely look at specific character matchups once I know 100% a character I will main. I've only gotten close to doing that with Meta Knight and looked up a few matchups with him. Especially the Pikachu matchup I wanted to have better duels with my pikachu main friend and I wanted to give suggestions based on watching top level play of the two characters, and telling him what I fear about his Pikachu and ask why he doesn't do other things. Though I kinda stopped looking at individual matchup threads pretty quickly because in general wherever I look I usually find info that makes me go "yeah no **** sherlock!". Most of the time it's the same advice to fight that character with Meta Knight as it is with any character in general, that's even if you can find a good thread for the matchup. It's so bad I've been tempted from time to time to make videos on matchups since there aren't any out there, or at least good ones (but will never happen because I don't have the time). I may not do it for Sm4sh, but for Smash 5 I will probably look at individual matchup threads once I lock-down a main in that game.

I do look at my replays from time to time though. My worst 2 habbits are always attacking/grabbing when I dash at someone, and never bait when I dash at the enemy. The other one is panic shielding. Pretty much anything else that I do that is bad is a case of "stupid fingers". I often feel like other people have better control of their characters, but lack in the mind game area, so I often get more opportunities to attack and usually far longer than I should, but I never perform the combos I should to deal 3-5 times more damage since my fingers aren't the greatest at executing certain things.

 

[NINTENDO Galaxy]

If you are looking for another place that has Mario information and videos, you can try the Smash 4 Mario discord on smashcords.com.

 

[Crystanium]

I take it Meta Knight, Cloud, Sheik, Link, Lucario, and Samus are characters you use. What I'd like for you to do is the next time you have your Wii U on, go to Vault and check Records to see who you play as the most. Then see who is the second most used character. Focus on those two. If MK is the character you use the most, and if the second character is a character you would not use as a secondary, find a secondary character who you like and feels right for you. Focus on those two characters. When you have too many characters to play as, you spend less time on each one. Or, perhaps you spend most time on one and neglect everyone else. Also, feel free to read from the link in my profile.

 

[OhMyBanana54]

So here’s an idea: go on for glory and try winning a match as Marth, Mario or Captain Falcon while only short-hopping.

You’re probably thinking, “that’s a terrible idea,” and it kind of is. I just think you need to get the muscle memory down. Short hopping is hard -and I know you’re giving it your all but I think practice makes perfect.

Why those three characters? Well in my opinion, they’re the best “fundamentals” characters in the game. If you learn them, you’ve learned the game. They also have good aerial attacks so that’s important. Feel free to use whoever though because I’m just some random guy on the internet.

I also suggest going back and watching early mkleo footage. If you see what other Meta Knights do and how they play, you could try to replicate it in your own games.

Here are a few pretty solid (but potentially outdated) meta knight videos:

 

[Keeshu]

I take it Meta Knight, Cloud, Sheik, Link, Lucario, and Samus are characters you use. What I'd like for you to do is the next time you have your Wii U on, go to Vault and check Records to see who you play as the most. Then see who is the second most used character. Focus on those two. If MK is the character you use the most, and if the second character is a character you would not use as a secondary, find a secondary character who you like and feels right for you. Focus on those two characters. When you have too many characters to play as, you spend less time on each one. Or, perhaps you spend most time on one and neglect everyone else. Also, feel free to read from the link in my profile.

I did just delete my data on my old Nametag a few months ago, because before it wasn't too uncommon to hit "random" because I still had fun playing the game casually for a while. Recently I've been trying hard to improve like never before. So the data pretty much isn't there. So I have to rely on the system's stats instead of name tag. Since I'm basically the only one that ever plays, that should be accurate enough right?

Results for battles is:
699 Meta Knight - I did force myself to get better with him after all. So a high amount of matches is to be expected. Of course, I wouldn't be too surprised to see a bunch of people here have matches in the thousands. Probably around 50-100 of these matches are fighting a friend who is a Pikachu main. Which did help me discover that I have a bad habit of not baiting dash attack/grab and doing something else. Also that I sometimes default to panic shielding. In For Glory, people usually don't have time to learn that I dash attack/grab without ever baiting it, so once I played a friend for that long, it felt extremely weird to finally get punished for that because Meta Knight's dash attack/grab is pretty darn good compared to most characters.
458 Link - Learned Smash off him in Melee, so I did default to him for a while. It was rare to for him to lose... However, I haven't used him much since I got my lan adapter. Now I'm wondering if I was winning cause of random lag, or if I've slowly gotten worse with Link because I'm more used to Meta Knight now, or if I just ran into a big bunch of good players, because I was losing for a bit recently with Link since I got my Lan Adapter. Then again, I've only swapped to Link when someone was kicking my butt in the first place, so there's that too.... I sometimes like to swap characters to see if I can find a weakness in someone's playstyle, and then swap back to the other character and try to imittate it with my previous character.
221 Samus - Samus in Sm4sh feels like the best version of her so far. So I played her a lot, and I used to default to her whenever I'm not feelin Link or Meta Knight. Also, I love swapping to Samus when someone plays Fox/Falco. They always lose because they focus too hard on reflecting my charge shot.
209 Ganondorf - Few reasons for this guy. Sometimes I use him so I can train my brain to not be so aggressive, because it's not really a thing you can do often with Ganondorf because he's so slow. Also it's for when I get frustrated when losing with my other characters, and want to have a simple character to absolutely wreck the opponent with and it clears my head up faster than taking a break from the game. I don't know why, but a lot of people don't seem to know how to fight Ganondorf properly. Of course, I have a hard time refusing a Ganondorf ditto.... I mean I love dittos in general, but Ganondorf dittos make me even happier.
143 Shulk - Surprised I have so many matches with him. I bet a bunch are when Sm4sh was new and I was trying to get used to him. I honestly don't know if I'm good or not with Shulk (I just know I'm not amazing). I do seem to do somewhat well with him though. Putting off playing Shulk in Smash 4 now, waiting for Smash 5 because the selecting of Monado Arts was my biggest problem with Shulk because it would take me out of the game.
141 Cloud - Easiest character I've ever played in any smash game. I usually end up winning with him and his advent children outfit looks cool. He doesn't feel very complex compared to many characters either so I didn't play him as frequently because I felt like playing more matches with him wouldn't effect much. My friends don't know how to deal with Cloud, and a lot of For Glory players don't either. I can only imagine how much easier Cloud would be if I could short hop easily and master his frame cancels. Clouds biggest problem for me is that I don't have the nostalgia and love for Cloud like I do with other characters, so it's hard to find the drive to play with him. Marth suffers from this too, but Marth's case is a bit more extreme since I don't care about Marth as a character at all (aside from the cool cape and flashy sword which is just appearance). Marth feels pretty perfect gameplay-wise.
115 Charizard - Once upon a time I wanted to try maining Charizard. Though as time moved on I realized that he never really gets more complex due to the end lag on his moves and just the way his moves are. Even when looking at top level players, he looked so basic and predictable. Easy to do well with Charizard at least, I just didn't see much room for improvement with him.
103 Little Mac - I love underdog characters, and Little mac is so friggin fast. Of course watching Sol play Little Mac is a big reason. Especially watching him fight some Toon Link and watching his patience to find a time to push through the barrage of projectiles was so cool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdLnGJRv08g I doubt this is his best performance, but the pace of the battle is a lot different from what I saw in most smash battles I see. Another reason why I play Little Mac is that I used to have a tendency to want to jump into the air constantly, so playing a character all about being on the ground was a drastic change of pace and actually got me to learn how to be more smart on the ground with other characters as well. Also, I love playing Little Mac because people don't expect him to be good, kind of like Ganondorf, but not as well known for it like Ganondorf is. If I never saw Sol play Little Mac, I probably would never have thought about playing Little Mac competitively.
91 Lucario - All the way down here...... Like I said earlier, I love the character a lot despite him rivaling Meta Knight for being favorite on the roster, I just never had an urge to play him. I put 15-20 matches on him last night because this month I was going to try to get a lot better with him. I was horrible with him before. However watching Tsu play him, and Izaw's guide on Lucario, I improved drastically compared to the previous times I played Lucario and I'm really digging his style. I never felt like I was in a losing battle... Well except against some extremely skilled Mewtwo player. I think that was the second time in my entire time of playing smash where I've been wrecked so hard that I didn't even touch the enemy before I lost a stock. Mewtwo is just so much faster, longer range attacks, and you can't use aura sphere as easily against him as with most characters because of a reflector and his own projectile. Of course, he also kills lucario early because of his glass canony nature. If I ever try to get amazing with Lucario, that's a matchup I'll have to learn for sure.
68 Kirby - 10th place..... Safe to say Kirby and everyone bellow him don't get played much at all. There's a couple times I wanted to get good with him because that copy gimmick is very interesting to me and would force me to look more into certain match ups more often.
61 Zelda - Probably all of these matches are from last month when I was trying to get good with Zelda. Never used her much in Brawl or Melee (cause sheik), and my niece wanted to main Zelda so I gave it a shot so I could give better advice to her. I feel like I need more time with her to really know though if I like Zelda or not. I just love that a good Zelda (which is hard to find), is incredibly scary, and that interests me.
60 Mii Fighter Swordsman - I wonder how many of these are against cpus compared to vs friends. I love the mii fighters so much because their movesets look awesome (they were made specifically for smash of course). Of course, lack of being able to play them on For Glory, and finding out that tournament rules on them are never the same really made it impossible to want to main them. Hoping they are playable online in Smash 5, because they are really fun.
Apparently I've only done 40 matches with Sheik (ranked 19th), probably all from that month I was practicing Sheik. I really really want to do more matches with Sheik because she's so darn fun and every match feels different..I do feel like not all battles are shown however, because Bowser Jr only has 2 matches on him. I know for sure that I definitely played more than 2 matches with him because I was very curious about that character at one point and I definitely remember playing at least the Bowser jr, Lemmy, and Roy skins.


Looking at how low the amount of battles there are on some characters, it makes me wonder. How many battles should you do with a character/all characters before you say that you will probably never/probably not main/secondary them?


On a side note. Really loved that essay you linked in your signature btw. All that stuff you said in there is kind of stuff I tell other people in other games all the time when they are learning a game. Nice to see someone else saying it. Only piece of advice in it that I never really follow whenever someone tells me it, is to reward yourself after getting something done. That has never worked for me in my life because I will go "why wait till after the reward when I could have it now?". Also since I've been eating a lot healthier now, I don't even have a food reward system, so I don't even know what I could use as a reward. I mean video games are basically my reward for tough stuff in life though, but trying to reward myself within a video game, I have no idea what I could do to reward completing some annoying task (like short hopping for hours... I really hate that).

So here’s an idea: go on for glory and try winning a match as Marth, Mario or Captain Falcon while only short-hopping.

You’re probably thinking, “that’s a terrible idea,” and it kind of is. I just think you need to get the muscle memory down. Short hopping is hard -and I know you’re giving it your all but I think practice makes perfect.

Why those three characters? Well in my opinion, they’re the best “fundamentals” characters in the game. If you learn them, you’ve learned the game. They also have good aerial attacks so that’s important. Feel free to use whoever though because I’m just some random guy on the internet.

Mario short hopping..... I'll save that for when I want to get better at short hop reverse back air fast falls. I'll give Marth and Captain Falcon a short. I miss playing Marth, so that should be interesting. Captain Falcon.... I've never really played seriously. I generally just try to see how many people I can beat with only falcon punching (and I get away with it too often in for glory.) I only know a few things about captain falcon so I'll give it a shot. I'm usually inclined to not be afraid of captain falcon. He may look intimidating with his speed and have some nasty combos, but opponents using him always seem to struggle KOing me with him. I'll give it a shot though, since if I can win with just spamming falcon punch, I can probably win trying to get better with short hopping.... assuming I can even short hop with Captain Falcon. He's 5 frames so that should be a bit easier than Meta Knight, but not too easy like it is with Link/Ganondorf.

As for the videos you've posted:
Ah Izaw's training session with Oblivious Loser. I have both of those videos on a playlist, and I sometimes just leave those videos on in my house when I'm doing stuff so when I take a break from doing whatever I'll look up and see them fighting. Also Oblivious Loser's 2nd video, he's so much better and it's a bit inspiring. Also helpful that Oblivious Loser is one of the people I like the most out of the people Izaw has trained, so it's very easy to just listen to them talk. Izaw's training session videos are very nice. Haven't watched them all of course, but ocassionally there will be some specific tips that pop up that I never see anywhere else and helps me use all my characters better. It's random stuff that you can't really just search for and find.... Since I love listening to Izaw's training sessions, perhaps I'll write down all the tips and time stamp them and post it somewhere someday.
Izaw's Link in Brawl made me get interested in competitive Smash because I loved the Link vs Snake (Calzorz) offline friendlies matches so much (before, I either didn't really care for it, or didn't like it because of other competitive scenes in games being so toxic. So I never even though about whether it'd be fun to be competitive or not in Smash). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiNu0dqERIQ This first video has a dumb annotation at the beginning. just click the X. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NppxHEtrTw Since I learned Smash with Link, I looked for Link videos and Izaw popped up. I loved seeing how many trap-like projectiles were being tossed out in the Link + Snake matchup because it's a lot more interesting compared to most fighters. Izaw always had a very flashy Link that is so fun to watch. Some of his matches with Haze were good too. Though, he definitely has improved at the game a bit since these videos... I mean, kinda obvious, almost 10 years since these were uploaded. His Smash 4 Link's gameplay is much different from his Brawl Link's playstyle, but it's still pretty flashy.

Ah smash corner's meta knight video. I've seen that plenty of times. However it was made before the final patch, and if I remember right some things do not work quite as well anymore because the up air got nerfed since that video was made. However, I never got around to taking notes about which specific things still work and which ones don't..... Also that video is a constant reminder that I need to do reverse short hop back air fast falls with Meta Knight because that jab lock combo is so nice.

Maybe I'm just spoiled by watching other Meta Knights, but Zero really makes a ton of small mistakes in that Meta Knight For Glory. It's really funny to me. He must be too distracted by trying to explain things. 12:30 "see how jab is amazing, you can just hold it there" and immediately gets down aired because the end lag on jab is really bad. I'll watch the rest of the video later (probably with dinner), but just hopping around, he seems to be really struggling to use Meta Knight compared to other characters. Which is strange because I have seen Zero use Meta Knight well sometimes in some other videos (or maybe I was so bad before that I didn't see the problems with his Meta Knight). I will try to take some notes though. Forward Smash is a move I neglect a lot, because it's just so unsafe if the opponent knows when you're going to use it and it's very easy to punish a Meta Knight that doesn't use Forward Smash correctly since it locks him in place making him incredibly vulnerable from above. I have made a couple Meta Knights stop using Forward Smash, and it makes me smile everytime I make a Meta Knight stop forward smashing. :3


Then a match with MK Leo. Ah so much better than watching Zero play with him. The control over the character is so beautiful and I love to watch it. I need to look at some Tyrant and Abadango Meta Knight plays as well because I've gotten much better since the last time I saw their videos. So I should be able to understand why they did the things they do more now. All I remember is that there playstyles for Meta Knight were a bit different from each other. On a side note, I don't know anything about competitive peach gameplay. So it was a bit harder to know why MK was doing certain things just because I don't know Peach, thus don't know what to avoid/take advantage of. I can't even remember the last time I saw someone play peach.

 

[Crystanium]

I did just delete my data on my old Nametag a few months ago, because before it wasn't too uncommon to hit "random" because I still had fun playing the game casually for a while. Recently I've been trying hard to improve like never before. So the data pretty much isn't there. So I have to rely on the system's stats instead of name tag. Since I'm basically the only one that ever plays, that should be accurate enough right?

That should be fine. Since Meta Knight is a character you seem interested in using for a main, stick with him. He's a good character. Link is probably better than Samus, but he doesn't seem to match the fall speed of Meta Knight, which might actually not help maintain some sort of consistency. You like Sheik, so why not use her as a secondary? She's got excellent spacing and zoning tools, she's fast like MK, she can deal a lot of damage in a short time, and she's somewhat technical. F-air is an excellent aerial, since it's quick and she can zone very well with it, even if the opponent shields. You just have to make sure you either cross up with it or keep at a distance to avoid getting grabbed.

I originally tried using Zero Suit Samus as a secondary, but she didn't feel right. I tried Mario, but he felt too basic. Sheik felt right, and she is somewhat technical, although not as technical as ZSS in my opinion. (I like to say that Sheik is what ZSS should have been.) In the end, I decided to stick with Sheik for a while and recently picked up ZSS again. I think what's best is to maintain your familiarity with your main and gradually develop with your secondary. If you pick up Sheik, just know that it can be difficult to kill. While Link has the second highest points, it might be best to just use a character who is similar to MK. This is why I suggested Sheik, especially since you seem to have fun playing as her. I also think using Sheik could help teach you to space and zone better.

Looking at how low the amount of battles there are on some characters, it makes me wonder. How many battles should you do with a character/all characters before you say that you will probably never/probably not main/secondary them?

It depends on who you're interested in playing as and the amount of time you want to invest in that character. If a character like Marth doesn't appeal to you, for example, then don't use him. I'm that way as well. I could try to learn to use Bayonetta or Cloud, but I don't like either character outside of SSB.

On a side note. Really loved that essay you linked in your signature btw. All that stuff you said in there is kind of stuff I tell other people in other games all the time when they are learning a game. Nice to see someone else saying it. Only piece of advice in it that I never really follow whenever someone tells me it, is to reward yourself after getting something done. That has never worked for me in my life because I will go "why wait till after the reward when I could have it now?". Also since I've been eating a lot healthier now, I don't even have a food reward system, so I don't even know what I could use as a reward. I mean video games are basically my reward for tough stuff in life though, but trying to reward myself within a video game, I have no idea what I could do to reward completing some annoying task (like short hopping for hours... I really hate that).

Thanks. I wish it would have been posted in the front page of Smashboards, since it received so many likes in a very short amount of time. As for rewarding yourself, it just helps if you've accomplished a goal. It can help motivate you to repeat your behavior. It's also good to give yourself a break. So, sure, you could reward yourself whenever you want, but I wouldn't really call it a reward when it wasn't earned. Eating healthy isn't a problem, either.

 

[Keeshu]

That should be fine. Since Meta Knight is a character you seem interested in using for a main, stick with him. He's a good character. Link is probably better than Samus, but he doesn't seem to match the fall speed of Meta Knight, which might actually not help maintain some sort of consistency. You like Sheik, so why not use her as a secondary? She's got excellent spacing and zoning tools, she's fast like MK, she can deal a lot of damage in a short time, and she's somewhat technical. F-air is an excellent aerial, since it's quick and she can zone very well with it, even if the opponent shields. You just have to make sure you either cross up with it or keep at a distance to avoid getting grabbed.

I originally tried using Zero Suit Samus as a secondary, but she didn't feel right. I tried Mario, but he felt too basic. Sheik felt right, and she is somewhat technical, although not as technical as ZSS in my opinion. (I like to say that Sheik is what ZSS should have been.) In the end, I decided to stick with Sheik for a while and recently picked up ZSS again. I think what's best is to maintain your familiarity with your main and gradually develop with your secondary. If you pick up Sheik, just know that it can be difficult to kill. While Link has the second highest points, it might be best to just use a character who is similar to MK. This is why I suggested Sheik, especially since you seem to have fun playing as her. I also think using Sheik could help teach you to space and zone better.

Talking about Link not matching the fall speed of Meta Knight. Meta Knight's fall speed is faster being 1.66 (ranked 16) compared to Link's 1.6 (ranked 24-27). However, Link's Fast fall speed is where it's interesting because he's the only character in the game who has a 90% increase in fall speed, leading him to have 3.04 fall speed (ranked 3rd) compared to Meta Knight's 2.656. I absolutely love the 90% increase. However, this little advantage Link has could easily go away in the next game. It's really nice to be able to control how fast you return to the stage. With other characters the speed feels a lot like the same, so I love Link's fast fall speed. I wonder if they'll do that with more characters in the next game, or if Link will just flatout lose it. http://kuroganehammer.com/Smash4/FallSpeed
Maybe I'm just tired from work so I just missed something, but is there a reason why you brought up fall speed in particular?

Link and Samus feel so different I have a hard time comparing how good they are. I used to swap between the two to get better matchups before I really got into Meta Knight. However, I could have done so much better with Samus. I didn't know how versatile her up airs were, afterall I never saw other Samus players using the up airs in the many ways it can be used. Also Samus pretty much needs the short hop, which can be kinda tricky for me to do with Samus because she feels so dang slow most of the time yet she has a 4 frame jumpsquat making her the hardest character to consistently short hop with. At least with fast characters your fingers are always warmed up and ready to press something quickly. Also the devastating combos that Samus has is something I would have to learn if I got super into Samus. Link feels a bit more reactionary with his combos compared to Samus. But yeah, I did have a preference over Link because I get to fling out more projectiles making each match a bit more unique and he was overall fast compared to Samus. A huge draw for Samus for me is her charge shot. I love seeing the way change their playstyle once you have a fully charged charge shot.

As for the Sheik secondary thing. I really do think that's going to be a thing now. Thing is in Melee (when I was much much younger) I was like "this character is weird, I don't like them" (same thing happened to Samus), and didn't help that later I associated Sheik with tier whoring once I found out about tier lists and got tired of seeing the same characters in top competitive play. Took me a while to really appreciate Sheik over the years because of the purely stupid emotional reasons why I didn't like her before. Smash 4 really helped me like Sheik (ditto with Samus as well). However, I never really could get into Sheik for the longest time because she was probably too different from anything else I played. Once I buckled down and got better with Meta Knight, Sheik became significantly easier to use and understand so now I'm really loving the heck out of Sheik. Her attack options seem a bit more varied than Meta Knight in Smash 4 and that makes things a lot better.

It depends on who you're interested in playing as and the amount of time you want to invest in that character. If a character like Marth doesn't appeal to you, for example, then don't use him. I'm that way as well. I could try to learn to use Bayonetta or Cloud, but I don't like either character outside of SSB.

This is one of the hardest things to decide on. Of course loving a character itself does help a ton when it comes to sticking with a character, but their gameplay is important too. I mean I love speedy characters, zoning/trap characters, but trying to compare the two is really hard to do. Then there's probably other types I like that I'm not thinking of right now, and Smash also has some rather unique gameplay styles as well. It's hard to know which one I would like the most, much less which I'd like the most at a competitive level. Another problem is I don't even know what my favorite type of gameplay style is in most games. I often go towards stealth or support in games, but sometimes I wonder if I do that just because I want something unique as opposed to the bazillions of tanks/DPS type characters in any genre of game.

When it comes to favorite characters when they are outside of smash. It's probably be Meta Knight

Spoiler

of course, and that's why I did try so hard to get good with him. Despite hating his gameplay at the start because it frustrated me so much that I had to swap to another character from time to time so I didn't stop playing Smash that day. He's fun to play now though.

Also there is Mewtwo

Spoiler

(mainly because of of his movies), but even if he's a really cool pokemon with a cool backstory, I just can't stand his interpretation in Smash. Why would a pokemon that always is using psychic attacks be punching and whacking enemies with his tail like a fighting type? It's like if peach started going around with a knife and stabbing people, it's just really jarring because it's not like the original character at all.

I love Lucario

Spoiler

because of his movie interpretation of the character (because I haven't played a game with Lucario outside of Smash. but he doesn't look like anything to write home about). Though, it's been a long time since I've seen the movie so my love for Lucario isn't quite as strong as it once was. Though he is still top 6 of my favorite pokemon though (from generation 1-6 at least... I gotta look at the new gens).

I often prefer the air in video games all the time, so Falco

Spoiler

is up there for being one of the characters I like in Smash. It's surprising though because he can be quite a jerk sometimes and I usually don't like characters who are jerks. Falco just has that charm I guess. Problem in Smash is that they nerfed his speed sooooo hard into the ground it makes me sad. Of course, it's been a while so I should probably try him again, because I do like his style and I do love fighting Falcos. I just never thought much about Falco because I love Wolf so much more, I'm a sucker for anti-heros (which he was a bit in Star Fox Assault, the only star fox game I played... someday I'll play the others).

Sonic

Spoiler

is a character I didn't use to like much since I assumed he was just a typical good guy type of character. Though overtime I've warmed up to him seeing some particular things about his character. I definitely like his optimistic attitude and just doing whatever he wants, even if he makes people angry. He doesn't try to make people angry (except eggman, and maybe shadow), it's just the way he is. Also, the "It Doesn't Matter" theme for Sonic in Sonic Adventure 1 did wonders for making me warm up to Sonic as well because I viewed him completely differently before that song happened. Sonic isn't a "OMG BEST CHARACTER EVER!" he's just a character I like more than other people in the roster as a character. With that said, the side characters in Sonic are usually more interesting than Sonic himself. I would definitely try to get good with Shadow if somehow he ever got in. I have a lot of history with Shadow. Edit: Forgot I haven't mentioned why I don't play him. It's mainly because other characters caught my interest before Sonic so I didn't play him much. Then after a while I saw top competitive play of Sonic and also people complaining about him and it turned me off to him in Smash 4... Maybe Smash ultimate this will change.

Most other characters in the roster I either know nothing about, or are blank slate characters. So it's hard to like them based on character when there is no character to base off of. Style and gameplay can be enough to want to play a character though. Bayonetta, Cloud, Charizard, Captain Falcon,Corrin,Fox, Greninja, Ike, Little Mac. Link, Marth/Lu Cena/Roy, Pikashu,Robin, Samus, Shulk..... Dishonorable mention to Ganondorf. Since I don't care for him as a character, his style is bleh, and his gameplay is so-so. Just the reputation he gets for being bad, and then kicking people's butts with him makes him fun (his evil laugh really helps this too). Yet, I don't get the same satisfaction when playing any of the other bottom tiers.



Oh yeah. I should probably mention now that I'm feeling a lot better about improving..... we'll see how long that lasts once I start practicing short hops again. I swear, I can't wait to have my fingers be fast enough to short hop consistently.
Edit: Apparently taking a break was what I needed. Apparently now I'm having a rather simple time doing short hops (still not perfect though). Whereas before I was struggling so much with just executing short hops in the previous times I was practicing short hops. I wonder why it's different this time. Well hopefully I can continue to improve on the short hops, since after doing short hops I can finally practice more interesting things and drastically speed up my gameplay.
Another Edit: I think I just determined why my short hops are so inconsistent. Because of the way my control's R button is, I have to press it just the right way or no input happens, even if the button is pressed. Tried short hopping again after the previous edit of this post and had difficulties. It seems I need to find a proper way to hold the controller that won't effect pressing the other buttons and then once I find that position, just train my hand to not slip around on the controller because just a tiny bit is enough to mess it up. That's what I get for buying the cheap knock off controllers. After taking out my Wii U pro controller, it's incredibly easy to short hop compared to the controller I was using before. Still having the same difficulties where sometimes pressing the button doesn't execute a jump. However at least the R button isn't super wiggly on the Pro controller, so it's a lot more consistent. Probably going to stick with the old cheap controllers though because the button layout is different on the Wii U pro controller compared to the Switch Pro controller and I don't want my pro controller to get a lot of wear and tear on it. My cheap controller already had the soft padding on it stripped away on the left analog from moving so much with it.

 

[Davidk92]

If it makes you feel any better, mate, I don't even know what short-hopping is.

 

[Keeshu]

I only knew of the term "short hopping" once I started looking at competitive guides and such since the games never say it anywhere and I didn't know anyone that used that term.

Yesterday I played about 40 matches with Lucario. 19 against a pikachu main friend. Seems like I needed to learn matchups more since I always lost my first match, then did better/won the next 2 matches all day whenever I saw a new character. Been having a blast with Lucario. However, I think I'm going to be practicing the B-reverse, turnaround B, and wavebounce before doing more matches. Aside from Sheik (who I didn't play for long enough to play with it), I never really played characters that get helped significantly by those. It'll be nice to master it, and then have it slightly help all my other characters. Sorta like how Marth got me used to spacing my attacks, Snake and Samus got me using tilts, Ike and Ganondorf forcing me to pay close attention to what the opponent does since you can't just toss out attacks and expect it to go well, making it easier to do so with other characters, Little Mac got me using ground options more with other characters. I look forward to seeing what else I can learn from doing 100 matches with other characters I otherwise never would use. I was tempted to make a thread about characters that help you learn a certain part of the game that could help you with most/all other characters. Wouldn't be surprised if it's been done before though.

 

[Project_Dusk]

I was feeling not so hot once I repicked up sm4sh after a year+ and lost every for glory match for an hour. But I'm on the west coast now hopefully I can find a Smash community to be apart of..

Just practice with whoever you can, because sometimes the character you might be pretty awesome with is someone you didn't think you'd be good with lol.

 

[Keeshu]

I definitely know what you mean. I was horrible with Meta Knight. Like he was my worst character and just picking a random character I'd do better with them (Minus Wario and Villager. But still, that's 2 characters out of the whole cast, and I never use them.). If I didn't love Meta Knight so much, I would never have pushed through the cliff to get better with him. He's now my best character. However, with how many matches I got with him, I'd be surprised if he wasn't my best.

However, while I think I'm best with Meta Knight, it's possible that it's not true. I did learn Smash off of Link, so Meta Knight's movements aren't quite as smooth as Link's movement right now. I used to be pretty bad with Lucario compared to most characters, but now that I put more time into him and looking at some top level gameplay with him and guides, he's been having some very good results for me. I feel like I'm only losing with Lucario due to lack of match up experience. So far the worst matchup I've had with Lucario was Sonic just because it's so hard to hit Sonic at all. Cloud was by far the easiest matchup I've had with Lucario currently. However, I love playing cloud, and there's plenty of cloud players online, so I kinda know how to deal with Cloud. Currently loving loving Lucario a lot because he satisfies 2 very different playstyles at the same time. The combos with his fair and up air are fun like Meta Knight's Ladder combo and Sheik's gameplay in general. It feels good to constantly outplay an opponent at lower %s, and sometimes I can just KO someone at lower %s. Yet, later on he has more of a focus of hitting hard like Ike and Ganondorf. I feel like I'm playing multiple characters when I play Lucario. It's very tense because it's such a double edged sword that when Lucario is high aura, it'll be very tense for both players since any hit could mean their last. It's a balance I don't see many characters in the roster doing. Off the top of my head there's Captain Falcon and Ryu that also kind of strike that balance, though both those characters I have almost no experience with.....Seeing how many falcon punches I can land with Captain Falcon doesn't count.... even if I seem to do well at doing that against random people in For Glory doing that. I'll get around to playing them eventually someday. I have a feeling I should leave Ryu to be one of the last in the roster to do 100 matches with because he seems like he could be difficult to use. Also if I get a reason to play Street fighter, he'll ease me into it.

Next character I plan to play is Pikachu, since I know someone who is a Pikachu main. It's starting to get to the point where I just know exactly what he's going to do 90% of the time, and I want to help him get better before he burns out because I'm winning against him most of the time. Since we were evenly matched at one point. I know there are things that exist for Pikachu that are devastating but I haven't seen him doing enough of them. Besides, I kinda want to pick up Pichu when Smash ultimate comes out because I wanna be his little buddy. I also remember having fun using Pichu in Melee, even if all Pichu matches I had in Melee were surely casual. I've always been interested in Pikachu because he's pretty quick. Just Pikachu never had a strong enough reason for me to play him compared to quite a few other characters on the roster. Who knows? I might turn out to be a PikaSHU main.

 

[Project_Dusk]

Yeah I remember going against a Pika main long ago when I was maining Peach and we were always neck n neck. After a while I, for whatever reason lol, got good with Lucina over Marth because I like rushing over worrying about trying to tip all the time and my friend couldn't adapt to my playstyle. My other friend mained Link but switched to Charizard to use his overall power and playstyle over mine but I was would usually at 3 wins over a win for him. I didn't expect to like playing Lucina but with how I was playing compared to how I was playing as Peach was just plain better. I've tried Shulk as well with some monado speed/jump/shield (rage) follow ups but playing as Shulk vs his Charizard was neck n neck. Anyway, I didn't expect to main Lucina but it just happened that way for me lol. As a secondary for me would be tied between Peach/Shulk...and a third being King Triple D.

Speaking of Pichu...in the last E3 trailer did Pichu have a bar by it's percentage whenever he "took" damage?

 

[Keeshu]

Speaking of Pichu...in the last E3 trailer did Pichu have a bar by it's percentage whenever he "took" damage?

I don't see a bar anywhere. https://youtu.be/L93H7YC-83o?t=8m28s I assume you're talking about this part. Talking about the red line bellow the %? Does kinda look like a bar, I've seen bars exactly like that in some other games. However, take a look at Marth and he has the same thing going for him. If there's some other E3 trailer I'm missing I'd like to know.

With that said, the idea of Pichu building up some meter the more it hurts itself would be interesting, especially if it's only damage to itself, damage from opponent wouldn't work. Couple of things I could imagine off the top of my head. He could build up to some sort of devastating attack, similar to Little Mac's KO punch. Another way is that it could build up power to one of the specials, the more damage you inflict on yourself, the more powerful that move becomes. Probably thunder, or perhaps his thunder jolt, however, once you use it, you lose the charge. I'm sure there's a bazillion more ways it could be done..... But I really doubt that it will happen even though it's interesting, and really, when are we going to see another character that hurting itself is actually one of it's big defining features?

. After a while I, for whatever reason lol, got good with Lucina over Marth because I like rushing over worrying about trying to tip all the time and my friend couldn't adapt to my playstyle. Anyway, I didn't expect to main Lucina but it just happened that way for me lol. As a secondary for me would be tied between Peach/Shulk...and a third being King Triple D.

If you like rushing over and not worrying about the tip, have you tried playing with Roy much? Or is that a little too much rushing in for you? Or is he just really different? I haven't tried looking at competitive Roy stuff. Despite being everyone's boy, I don't see him much.

Also if you didn't expect to main Lucina, who did you expect to main and why?


I expected to main Meta Knight (and did) because I love him so much. Though I still occasional feeling nagging at me that perhaps that his gameplay might not be the best of the roster for me, even if I do enjoy it a bunch. Most of the ones I didn't decide to main are ones I had a bad first impression with because of one thing I don't like about them, and then not spending the time to get over that because I looked at other characters. I had high hopes for Robin due to him using a sword and focus on Projectiles. Kinda like Link but more magic based, I could totally get into that. His limited use of tomes/sword mechanic turned me off to him hard, also he can feel sluggish at times vs certain characters. Also Link feels very fast when compared to Robin as well. Ninjas are cool, I like fast characters and he has a lot of moves I like, even if I'm not a big fan of water stuff. His sluggish fair and nair bothered me sooo much. Also finding out that his scarf was his tongue really made not want to play him, as silly as that may sound. I love projectiles a a bunch, so I figured Mega Man would be up there. Mega Man is just too different from the rest of the class. He definitely has a higher learning curve than other characters, and I just didn't have the time. I love the Mega Man games (despite not owning any), but I just do not care for Mega Man as a character at all. So I put him on the "to play" list, but never got back to him.Mii fighters in general were all considered because they have really fun and flashy movesets. Unfortunately, cannot play them on for glory, so no real way to practice them unless I wanted to annoy my friends with them. However, friends are only available so often, so I'd probably be constantly rusty with Mii Fighters when it comes to fighting human opponents. Perhaps Ultimate will make it all better. I'm a sucker for dragons and swords (even if Cloud's sword is a bit bland and looks dumb because it's so thick).Charizard and Cloud are among the easiest characters for me to pick up and do amazing with. However, they feel so simple and basic that diminishing returns seems to be pretty strong here. So I've been trying to get better with other characters in the meantime. Speaking of being a sucker for dragons and swords, Corrin combines both of those things. He was a bit harder to pick up than expect because he feels sluggish and awkward. Also him not really even looking like a dragon bummed me out a bit and I still haven't gotten over the way that his "dragon" form looks. He seems like fun to play though, needs more time. I actually love playing Mac a lot. Just he requires such perfect control of the character, that I decided to play him later in case some other characters I can figure out and be good with a lot faster. Funny I like him so much despite preferring the air so much in games. I guess his speed makes up for that.Love his big whooshy whooshy sword and taunts, and his character design isn't that bad. He's another character that I enjoy playing, but selecting monado arts is so annoying that it turned me off to him enough to play other characters. Ultimate seems to have changed that though.
In Melee I wanted to main Fox, but Link and Marth's swords were just more fun to play with since I was just learning the game. I also wanted to play Mewtwo once I found out he was in the game. However, a bunch of his moveset revolves around meleeing people, instead of using psychic attacks and that's very jarring to me. Perhaps someday I'll get over it and use Mewtwo, because Mewtwo is a pretty cool guy. Also, being so smart that you can destroy stuff with your mind is just so cheesily awesome to me.
In Brawl there was Meta Knight obviously (More fun to play with than his Smash 4 counterpart too), though I didn't use him much in Brawl because Smash 4 was announced soon after I got brawl. So I spent a lot more time with Wolf and Snake because they were cool and wasn't sure if they'd return, which they didn't. Their gameplay is so fun, and Wolf was kind of my main for a while in Brawl (which doesn't count for much since it was only against CPUs). Wolf is decently fast and has flashy moves. Snake loves to lay traps which is pretty fun. Lucario was another potential main, and the movie was still fresh in my mind so I was really into Lucario. I don't remember much about using Lucario in Brawl outside of just loving his Down air since it can stall you in the air, which it doesn't in Smash 4. I wouldn't pick up Lucario seriously until this month in Smash 4 and I'm having a blast with him.

 

[NINTENDO Galaxy]

Keeshu Is your friend that is a pikachu main a competitive player? Hearing about the 100+ matches you have played with characters along with how you do better with characters for short while before switching to another character makes me think that you are not training vs competitive player. To add on to that, Ganondorf and Lucario taught you some fundamentals of smash 4 and fighting games which is good, but this could have been learned through guides and all characters can use the options you described earlier.

I'm confused if you are approaching this the right way and if you are getting anything meaningful out of it. It sounds like doing the hundreds of matches is getting you to the same conclusions as the rest of us but it just takes way longer. Are you fighting any For Glory players? Because to me if you are winning vs those players, it should not count for pretty much anything since it does not accurately reflect tough opponents that you will face in an offline tournament.

 

[Keeshu]

Keeshu Is your friend that is a pikachu main a competitive player? Hearing about the 100+ matches you have played with characters along with how you do better with characters for short while before switching to another character makes me think that you are not training vs competitive player. To add on to that, Ganondorf and Lucario taught you some fundamentals of smash 4 and fighting games which is good, but this could have been learned through guides and all characters can use the options you described earlier.

I'm confused if you are approaching this the right way and if you are getting anything meaningful out of it. It sounds like doing the hundreds of matches is getting you to the same conclusions as the rest of us but it just takes way longer. Are you fighting any For Glory players? Because to me if you are winning vs those players, it should not count for pretty much anything since it does not accurately reflect tough opponents that you will face in an offline tournament.

The Pikachu main is a competitive player, but he isn't super amazing. Probably because he spends a lot of time on Splatoon. Though he is better than most people that I see on For Glory he kicked my butt a bit when I first started playing him. Though I did lack some pikachu matchup experience and he's easily the best Pikachu I've seen so far. I can definitely tell whenever I see a competitive player on For Glory because their movement is so smooth and perfectly spaced. Usually I'll run into someone like that 1 out of like 30 people when playing for Glory. Though, before I have a chance to adapt to suddenly playing someone really good, they usually leave. Though I really appreciate the people who stick around for like 10 matches. Then I start to get really good and learn things, since it can be easy to auto-pilot with easier opponents. I would have to go out of town to find any good offline opponents which makes things a bit trickier. Also, got some anxiety, no where near as bad as it used to be but it still is something to deter me from going to places. Though, once I start a match that would immediately disappear. Just getting things started would be the hard part.

I wouldn't know if I'm learning correctly or not. I've looked at quite a few guides, but a lot of them have overlapping advice. Though I do try to look up guides occasionally and watch competitive matches. After all, for example I would never have even known of Lucario's shield jump canceled up smash because it's rather hard to perform. Or something more general like wavebouncing (which not all characters can use).

 

[NINTENDO Galaxy]

Have you watched Izaw's Art of Ike video? That can help you with neutral even though the video is focused on Ike. Also have you heard of the Beefy Smash Doods? They make a lot of Smash 4 content to help players and explain new or underused tech.

If you want resources to help you at fighting games in general, there are videos and articles for that too. I'm asking what you would like so I do not have to spam a ton of videos here that may overwhelm you or might not be useful to you.

 

[Keeshu]

I've watched all of Izaw's stuff, so yes, I've watched his Art of Ike videos. I was so happy when Izaw started making guides since his guides are the best I've seen out of anyone so far. I got significantly better after seeing the Art of Ike video and seeing him use it in the training session videos. Lately I've been leaving the training sessions on in the background when I'm doing chores in my house so stuff stays more fresh in my mind. I've always liked to help people get better at games, so I hope eventually I'll be good enough to do that at a higher level.

I am subbed to Beefy Smash Doods. I am really glad they do the stuff they do, but for the longest time the majority of what they posted was too specific for me to really use (especially with characters I never use. but will be nice for matchup experience later on). With that said, always going to learn something because it's stuff NO ONE ever talks about. Except for BIDOU (I also saw it on Smash corner too), which I did try for a little bit. Speaking of, I'll have to take a look at BIDOU again. I just remember Link mains saying it's bad for Link, and considering Link was my best at the time, that turned me off a bit. Also if BIDOU isn't in Smash Ultimate, then I'll probably never pick it up..... Even if it does look really cool when someone uses BIDOU.

I'd like to see stuff that'd help me get better at fighting games. Though Smash is the only fighting game I really care about. Other fighting games are boring to watch because they are so stiff, and Street Fighter always frustrated me when I tried to play it. I've tried multiple times to get into Street Fighter to just get burnt out because I realized I have to spend at least a 1000 hours so I have the muscle memory for doing the moves in it, Didn't care for the characters in Street Fighter combine that with literally no reason to play Street Fighter, I just gave up on it entirely. With that said, unless there's some new character I'd love to play, Vega was the character that interested me the most because he's so fast and can be all over the place, also having a mask + claw gives him some points towards making me like him.

 

[NINTENDO Galaxy]

Here's 5 videos plus an article that can help.
I'll update this post with more resources.

https://youtu.be/0iK7RaV0QOk
https://youtu.be/V9MSV9LTHRM
https://youtu.be/MCPC202uwR4
https://youtu.be/uXvKpe5MP0s
https://youtu.be/PBTraLrWAKs
https://smashboards.com/guides/neutral-game-basics-understanding-controlling-space.791/

Update 1:

42:13 https://youtu.be/dEHDN0RQJkU

2:58:00 - 3:01:00 in this video
https://youtu.be/f4GW3XQc0uM

Update 2:

https://youtu.be/hhe6M9ngypU
https://youtu.be/hKfrMT21VtM

Update 3 (laat update): Wrote this a while back. This includes alot of videos and articles (some being stuff I posted earlier today) but with text and my own thoughts on different videos. It's better organized rather than me hunting all of these resources again and typing similar dialogue with it each time I share it.

Spoiler

what makes a character overpowered OP VS BROKEN (bytruwunderdaweggqaming) https://youtu.be/vGk2uYaW6Zc

END

Disclaimer: Below is a ton of fgc information. Trying to learn all of this stuff in one day can be overwhelming and you may begin to think of quitting since you did not sign up for this to play a videogame, but this is how fighting games work, well to me at least. If you manage

1.

42:13 https://youtu.be/dEHDN0RQJkU - dealing with crisis situations


2.

2:58:00 - 3:01:00 in this video
https://youtu.be/f4GW3XQc0uM - mechanics vs strategy


3. https://youtu.be/8BogXp2F9Us - why tournaments can help you improve faster


4.

"I like the summary here about casual players at 0:35"

https://youtu.be/uQ2EZY1s9v4 - are esports bad for the fight game community

Note: The thoughts in the following videos are not shared by everyone but this guy is generally right and his videos have a great production value behind them.

https://youtu.be/ZbjSeBOP-MA - Analysis: the effects of salt

"This video literally explains what new fgc players go through
And new gamers in general
A common trend is that players expect instant happiness when playing a fighting game
Which does not usually happen
And training vs cpus does not prepare you for real human opponents"


5.

"Core-A Gaming has a playlist of FGC videos. Here, I picked out the ones that I think can help a new or struggling player"

https://youtu.be/AGrIR_jlLno - why fighting games are hard

https://youtu.be/pm9IECEnKHQ - getting better at fighting games

https://youtu.be/PElmAFZFoqQ - taunting and mind games

https://youtu.be/AGHGEttNjyo - how to pick a character

https://youtu.be/uQnfm911Xoc - what makes a move overpowered


6.

"this next video is different,
there are 2 parts to it
watch this and follow the steps in the drunkardshade article below it "

https://youtu.be/iSgA_nK_w3A - the consequences of reducing the skill gap

https://drunkardshade.com/2017/05/2...s-of-reducing-the-skill-gap-by-core-a-gaming/

"i did after some reluctance but this guy's side made more sense to me
his name on twitter, youtube, and discord is novriltataki;
he makes short videos going over crucial fighting game mechanics"

"Here is another article, this time by a different guy. If you have trouble understanding him in the video, the article below the video, is a 1-1 of what he says in the video"

http://fighter101.net/main/2017/08/...mmunity-old-school-versus-the-new-generation/


7.

"if you want to learn fundamentals, forget the combos for now
if you lack fundamentals it is generally hard to pull of the combos you practice in a tourney if your opponent never gives you the chance to do so"

"this is a post i made
even though it is smash related, it focuses on mindset and fundamentals"

https://smashboards.com/threads/4br...insight-analysis.452108/page-60#post-21919938

"i think the important thing to take away from that link
is learning Yomi
i think that helps a lot of players
i know it helped me
sirlin has his own fg book
the full thing is available online
and its free in his website"

http://www.sirlin.net/ptw


Note: "You may be soaking in all of this at once
but some of us learned this over years
notice that while going over this information, there is a common theme is brought up a lot
i forgot off the top of my head what it is, but i think it's like determination or not giving up because it looks too hard from the outside looking in
fundamentals can carry you a long way over techniques
since if you understand the fundamental of fighting games and a particular game, you can avoid the traps that other players usally fall into"


Extra information but not really extra:

"Here are some more fgc related videos and articles that can help you become a better fgc player. These are just resources that I have linked to other players so I decided to throw them all here at the bottom since I did not think it would fit well above unless I was having a conversation with said individual over what they struggled with."


8. https://youtu.be/0U6ahedifJE - what makes a fighting game worth playing


9."read this until you get to example
and then scroll down to conclusion"

https://smashboards.com/guides/neutral-game-basics-understanding-controlling-space.791/

learned this from league of legends
there they call it zone of control
it's important to memorize the range of every character's moves and options in any given scenario
that way your mind does not have to focus on looking at your character when fighting
instead your eyes can be focused on your opponent
this can help to free up space in your mind when it comes to thinking
while also allowing you to react faster to the opponent's options

the link I gave is basically teaching you that once you get comfortable with fighting games, you want ro always keep your eyes on your opponent

10. "sirlin linked this in one of his chapters from the play to win book, this article was written in 2003 and is part of a series"

http://shoryuken.com/2003/07/21/domination-101-on-cheapness/

http://shoryuken.com/2008/07/21/domination-101-so-you-want-to-be-a-dominator/


11. "Comic-relief read. Thia is juart a list of complaints that super smash bros melee players have used, some of these may be fake or real, i have no clue but this is funny to read"

https://smashboards.com/threads/john.79482/

 

[Keeshu]

I love that "considering the ledge" video. Deku Tree has a lot of good videos. I believe I've seen all of his non-sheik videos, because I was going to look at the Sheik videos when I start to get good enough with Sheik that the information will actually help. Definitely a video I save. Izaw has had to tell quite a few people about the ledge in his training sessions, so that's been drillen into my head.

That Spacing/zoning guide. By god that video is terrible, but at least the information is really solid. It has some really nice examples of spacing/zoning. Just watching Izaw's videos got me to understand spacing/zoning, but I don't think he has a video specifically about spacing/zoning.

That neutral game video is probably the best short and simple version to explain the neutral game I've seen. Saving that one for whenever I help someone new to the game. Once again, a lot of Neutral game stuff I learned from Izaw.

The "How to be good at smash" aka learn to adapt, is a nice way to drive drill into someone's head how important it is to know how the opponent operates and how to change yourself to counter it even though they are doing the same. Adapting is entirely why I think I do so well. I don't have the best skill when it comes to performing moves right now (short hops are my bane), but I generally understand what other people are probably going to do. A lot of people like to auto-pilot on For Glory. This is also why Clouds are usually one of the easiest characters for me to fight, because I always know what they are going to do next. On a side note, I do love seeing when 2 people of equal skill are battling it out, then one of them just stands still for a moment, and it freaks the other player out so much that they start making mistakes for the rest of the match because they have no idea what the idling player was going to do so they can't adapt, putting them in a bad mindset.

That edgeguarding video was also good. Wish I saw it sooner. I didn't really think of how important edgeguarding was until I started using Meta Knight in Smash 4, since he can edge guard and go offstage pretty safely since he can hang in the air for as long as he wants, also because he can have trouble killing at times compared to the other characters I played (particularly Link and Samus ). Now I edgeguard and go off stage with all my characters now.

Then the text guide on the neutral is a nice more in-depth thing on the neutral game. I've never heard someone use the term "dead space" in smash though.

I feel pretty good right now since I know all these particular things.


Edit: I see you added some things while I made this post. There's just way too much stuff to look at in one day, so here's what I have to say for today.

Dealing with Crisis situations. Accepting it's tough, and getting better because you're working around the fact that it's tough. I've known this my whole life basically. I got a big story as to why I decided to get good at games, and why I try to get better at Smash. I was introduced to video games through the NES, and most games on the NES are very unforgiving. I loved video games more than anything else in life as a kid, so I either had to endure the difficulty to see more of the games or stop playing games, which wasn't going to happen. I wanted to be the best like no one ever was (don't know why though), so I fought against other people in video games whenever I could, but it was never close and I always beat the other person in whatever game I played easily, even if I didn't play the game before, and they've had the game for a long time. Combine that with a lot of people becoming upset when they lose, I sorta just gave up on competitive gameplay. So I went more towards team-based games. Some PvP, some Pve, and try to carry teams as much as I possibly could. Whenever I didn't want to carry, I'd handicap myself in some way, a generic example of this would be using a melee weapon in a shooter where melee weapons are underpowered. Which would make me learn how to do other things better as a result. While usually I was the equivalent of 3-5 other players depending on how much the game rewards skill, there would sometimes be another super awesome player that I would have to duel who was also carrying their team. Some of those duels were extremely fun, but I didn't have a game to really duel with. I didn't have a game to really duel people with until Smash 4 (got brawl 1 week after servers shut down. ha). However, the most skilled each player is, the more fun the duel is, so that's why I try to get better. Of course, another reason is that because of playing so many team games with randoms, I've come to love teaching people how to play games. However, you have to know a lot about the game to be able to give good advice, and that's a hell of a lot easier to do when you are good at the game and have the experience yourself.
The only thing I worry about "giving up" when it comes to smash is because there's so many other video games out there that might take me away from Smash (in a Splatoon discord, so that's a likely game to take my attention away from Smash since they both overlap in being competitive games. There's a few non-nintendo games too that have a chance as well). There's also other hobbies I'd like to get better at. Making music, perhaps make a video game. Art in general, even if art is the only thing I've never been able to do well with once I've tried to put some effort into it. Though it interests me because of that, along with reasons for actually wanting to draw things myself. Perhaps someday I will draw myself some avatar for example. I am getting better though, just like I am with Smash.


Mechanics vs Strategy and winning with five-ish moves video. I never try for combos first in any game I've played. I always try to know exactly why each move does the thing it does, and then let it flow naturally which can lead to combos. Besides, combos often don't even feel guaranteed in Smash. I also know this very strongly, because when I was a kid I tried to play Mortal Kombat for the gameboy. I did know one of sub'zero's moves where the input was the same as Ryu's hadoken, but once I started getting to harder opponents, that move was useless. So I just stuck with using 2 moves, jump kick, and uppercut. I would space myself and time my attacks just right so I would be able to hit the opponent. I had some trouble with Shao Kahn, but I managed to beat him so I won the game. Also I beat a few many people in Street Fighter 4 using simple stuff like that (I was using Vega btw) in the short time I played Street Fighter 4, even though everyone else was using special moves.

The "What ARE fighting games" video. Something I learned a while back, but this is a nice video I can link to people, since a lot of the things here disproves some misconceptions, making it easier for someone to get into them. After all, I believed a few of things back in the day before I really got into playing Smash.

What Makes a character OP vs Broken video is something I kinda figured out, but this is a nice video I can show other people.

"Immersion Learning" aka learning by doing, but particularly by going to tournaments. I kinda know this, but actually going to a tournament seems unlikely for me to actually do. I don't want fame for winning (or losing), I don't care about the money (because I probably won't win it anyways, which will probably end up in spending more money), and it's hard to enjoy talking to people in-person (talking online is just fine though).


"Analysis: the effects of salt". It's one of the reasons why I stopped playing competitively when I was younger. A few people would quit the games I played because they lost (but hey, kids and younger teenagers are likely to do that). So for a long time I just couldn't get into doing 1v1s against people. So like I said earlier, I went into doing team games. I used to get salty when I was younger, though even when I was a kid where my emotions would go into the extremes, I never yelled in anger from a video game. Now that I don't really care about winning anymore, and just care about getting better, I never get salty. Unless someone stops fighting me, and then leaves after the match is over. That makes me annoyed. It's like someone stopping the movie just as the story was about to do something big that was building up the whole movie. It's just a terrible feeling. I get happy losing, because I like seeing someone else who is good, and I get happy winning, because I know I'm still good. So not much room for salt. Even with "broken" moves, they'll just leave me confused instead, and it's like a puzzle for me to solve.



Now for those FGC videos.
Not much to say about the why fighting games are hard.
For getting better at fighting games by having a strong will to win. I don't really care about winning, I just want to get better. I've seen enough wins when playing games, I only want to get better to do more awesome things and to have more intense matches with people. Also like I said earlier, perhaps even teach some people someday.
As for taunting+mind games. Just a nice video overall. I can't think of any kind of taunts or behaviors that get on my nerves, but perhaps that will be different if I go to someplace in person. I do some conditioning on people sometimes, but probably not enough. Probably will get better at that as I can control my characters better.
How to Pick a Character - I think I might have seen this video before when it first came out. Perceived strength I'm super familiar with as I was always trying to play with low-tier or using weird playstyles whenever I could in team games for a while. Sometimes I'd just totally roll people because no one knew how to counter it, so in some games I could take out more than half a team just by myself easily because of this, but people didn't pick it up later because it's either hard, or once people know what to do they can shut it down a lot easier. I usually accidentally fall into using meta stuff because in some games the meta is the most fun way to play (but I always find this out loooong after I was using it). Basically, I've been all over the board on perceived strength and it doesn't matter to me. Then as for the playstyle, I've played a bazillion different playstyles throughout many games, and sometimes I hate how a playstyle plays in one game, but it's the best thing ever in another game. Though I lean more towards loving all playstyles. Character based around purposely getting hit by the enemy usually deter me though, with that said I did have a ton of fun playing Assault in Global Agenda, and playing Heavy in TF2 is fun to turn my brain off to. Of course in TF2, my favorite classes were Engineer, Scout, Medic, and most importantly, the Spy. I loved cause entire teams to get so paranoid by me, that they weren't focused on fighting my allies, so my allies always got the jump on them. Now for character, that's the hard one. Similar to playstyles, I've seen so many characters, that taking one trait from them, that trait could be amazing by itself when portrayed one way, but be bad when portrayed another way. Then you gotta consider different traits being put together to make a totally unique feel and it's impossible to really know what character you like the most. Sometimes I like to edit my tier list of mains/secondaries overtime, and it does change overtime the more familiar I get with the characters. Meta Knight is the closest thing to a "main" that I have. He's just so cool, and I have history with him. After all, he introduced me to the concept of a duel, and was one of the inspirations for me to improve at everything, since he was like Kirby, but more skilled with the sword. Though, with the way his gameplay, while fun, I have a feeling that I might swap to some other character at some point, as most characters on the roster are fun. The ones that aren't fun are probably just ones I don't know how to use yet. I've had a huge blast with Sheik because the amount of quick control you have with her feels so good. I could go talk about half of the cast and how I love playing them and how I could see them all being a main if something happens to click with them.


As for reducing the skill cap. That's something I don't want to really touch at the moment.

 

[NINTENDO Galaxy]

Saw the edit. Just letting ya know, that I'm still checking this thread and it's to know that you know most of the things that I am sharing. I don't think it will take you long to improve. Now it sounds to me like you just have a mental block and have to push past that.

 

[Keeshu]

Short hopping is probably my biggest problem right now since it's pretty important to speed up gameplay with any character. Playing Lucario has been making me feel a lot better though, frame 5 is a lot easier than frame 4, and his full hop goes waaaay too high most of the time so I have to force myself to short hop everytime since he stays in the air forever if I full hop. Since Link's is easy to pull off because 7 frames, and Meta Knight's fast speed and short jumps + multijumps is very forgiving compared to other characters when it comes to not short hopping so I don't try to short hop nearly as much as I should with Meta Knight.

Also, last night I decided to stop taking it easy on players that aren't the greatest. Blame a Jigglypuff main who kept missing their rest on me for that and I got annoyed that they kept missing it. For the longest time I took it easy on bad players because I didn't want to make them feel bad when they get their butt kicked (probably something left over from playing people in real life. I know a lot of people that give up pretty easily in games). However now I'm just going to stop doing that and try my best no matter the skill level of the opponent. Let's me look at moves in a different way, since even players that kick my butt, they can be predictable at times, so I only have to use a certain set of moves to punish what they do. So I've been looking at my moves and setups a bit differently since then.

 

[NINTENDO Galaxy]

Yeah going easy on bad players does not make anyone happy in the end. I read something about that a few days ago. Couldn't find what I was reading so here is what I think about it.

Going easy on a bad player gives them the illusion that they are good, when they are really not. Plus you going easy on them will not teach either of you anything useful. Meanwhile, not holding back, you can improve as a better playing by testing out different scenarios and practicing against your unpredictable opponent.

Now the bad player may not like this, hate you/the game by calling it unfair or cheating or that they had no chance to play which is what's suppose to happen. You can attempt to explain the game and the mechanics to them but good luck on that, because some would rather not listen and just walk away to play another game since you just sucked the fun out of it to them.

I heard on SRK and elsewhere that another method is if a fighting game has a handicap feature, then use that to slowly get your friend or a new player to fighting games into the fgc. You can still use your regular gameplan, but it will make it slightly easier for your opponent to win if they manage to land a hit on you. Also since you now start the game with a health disadvantage, it can help get you comfortable in tense, low-life situations.

Edit: Found the article I was looking for. It's the "So you want to be a dominator" that I linked earlier. Here are 2 resources that you can check out.

This video just came out a few mins ago: https://youtu.be/7yS0BuuAUCM

This short article touches on the same topic from the dominator article: https://critpoints.net/2016/08/09/scrubs-vs-advanced-tech/

 

[Keeshu]

Using glitches as part of main gameplay. That makes me think of GunZ specifically because of the k-style and such and people loved the heck out of it. I used to think of such things as bad, but once I started doing a simple "Butterfly", which is a very simple melee into block canceling the animation of the attack, I was like "oh, there's something to this, I actually like this." So I tried doing other the other glitchy techniques that were actually really hard. Never used them in battle because most people mastered k-style long before I knew about this stuff but it was fun giving them a shot. I'm sure there's plenty of other cases where glitches allowed for fun playstyles in games. However, most of the cases I knew about were underpowered ones, so I was having fun seeing how well I could do with a playstyle many people didn't know about because it was so niche.
With that said, sometimes glitches DO break a game and it stops being fun to watch/play because it becomes repetitive because it's too good.


Also the "so you want to be a dominator" article. I don't think the lesson would have stuck with me just reading that. His wording kinda makes him look kind of like an elitist prick which can make it a lot harder to take him seriously. Especially when talking about whether or not to take it easy on someone. So I probably had to learn that on my own anyways. Good info, but damn I'll have to re-word what it says if I want to tell someone the info. Very quick way to make someone want to distance themselves from a game than to be insulted constantly if they didn't already know these things, which they probably wouldn't because why else would they be looking for advice?

Also the FGC video on bad habbits. Basically what I got from that is to play to learn, not play to win. Question is, how long do you think a new player would have to play before they can start watching their own gameplay to find out what they are doing wrong? I know I'm able to do that because I've been playing for quite a long time. I mean you can still figure out what you are doing wrong just by playing more matches, but I think it's a bit faster to learn when you take the time to watch some matches you've done from time to time.

Anywho, I've looked at all your stuffs now, except for the post you made on the tier list thread. Which is a pretty large post, but I'm a bit too tired to read it now. I'll probably read it tomorrow.

 

[NINTENDO Galaxy]

I'd say a new player would have to play long enough until they get comfortable with the game's mechanics and the characters (read as full roster); not just enough to where they come away with only a vague understanding. Learning as much information as you can about your character(s) helps too.

For me, I would lab my character and practice many things in different scenarios even if others found it useless. When it came to giving feedback on replays of others, I would go over the small things where it seemed liked no action was taking place (movement, whiffing attacks, shielding, etc). I would also try to figure out the thought process behind both players during a match as the actions listed above give out importamt information about each player even though they are not hitting each other. I would watch the same instance of a match where something caught my eye like why did X player get hit, or why is X player giving up stage control, or what move or option could have been used instead of repeating the same option that was really risky or put X player in a really bad situation that their opponemt failed to capitilize on. Even if a player shows they have a bad habit in a certain area, you could refrain from punishing it until a later game in the set where it could swing a match in your favor or win you the game.

I think of stuff like this, make notes of it and share it with the player whose VOD I am looking at. Once I got my own tournament VOD, I approached it the same way. The only difference is that I kept going back to it time and time again after a few weeks or like 4 months passed from the last time I watched it or if a fighting game certain match reminded me of my own. By going back, I was able to learn new things about myself as a player that could help me in future matches.

I don't think there is a certain level you must reach to watch a replay. Just watch one and learn what you can at that moment. As you improve, you will start to notice things that will become more clear to you along the way.

I forgot to sneak this in earlier, but learning the frame data of your character's moves vs your opponent's from a replay can really be important. This can help you think of new ways to punish attacks or when to be cautious to avoid taking damage by not playing careless and throwing out attacks just because they are near you.

 

[ArkBahamut]

I get disheartened all the time. usually when i do good against CPU's i get all hyped up and go into online and get curbstomped. All you can really do is keep in mind that you get better every time you play. No matter how mindnumbing or one-sided the match is you are always improving by playing. If it makes ya feel any better i have no clue what shorthops even are.

 

[Keeshu]

Keep playing no matter how one-sided can be hard. With playing good players, not so much because you get to try your hardest to see what you can do to outplay them. Besides, I used to win so often constantly in video games growing up that I actually love it when I lose because it makes things more interesting. Whereas a bad player it can be a bit easier to just not take them serious and get lazy about the way you play and then develop bad habbits. I try to stay aware of when I start taking someone less seriously. It can be hard to resist trying to KO people using nothing but Falcon Punches with Captain Falcon or 9s with Game and Watch sometimes though.

As for fighting CPUs, it's totally different from fighting players. Fighting CPUs is all about doing safe attacks since they can practically read your inputs sometimes. Fighting humans is more about mind-games. It's two different skill-sets. Most of my friends I can beat regularly, though I've heard time and time again of the stories how they start to improve once they start using a character like Ike or Ganondorf, because those characters kind of force you to focus on how your opponent is behaving since they are such simple characters and are limited in many ways. I do feel that's how I get most of my wins since I don't have the best control of my characters. If you could always know what move your opponent is going to do, then there's no way they can win as you can always avoid and punish stuff. Having better control of your character just makes your punish game a lot better, and easier to put them into situations to read them like a book again.