Q&A -Fox Advice/Questions Topic-

[Charlie G]

Umbreon's pretty funny. He won't be happy until everyone plays just the way he wants them to

 

[Jim Morrison]

He's the more local Overswarm.

 

[Deleted member]

Oh, so you weren't joking lol. Imo there are better ways of dealing with making better in game decisions than disabling things that are potentially harmful, yet very crucial to your gameplay. You may as well just put more thought into using what comes with l canceling and shine than to just not do them. You're going to be using them in serious play, so you should practice using them so you know where they fit into your game best. There's no better practice for something than just practicing what you wanna get better at. Taking things like that out of your game seems like an unecessary chore.

Thinking about playing someone actually good like that seems like a really bad idea. You wouldn't even be able to use defensive bairs reliably in a lot of situations, among other things besides nairs. You'd basically have to develop a whole new unecessary style just to rid yourself of a few bad habits that can be exterminated easier than such. Foxes should be experimenting with what they'll actually use when they're improving, even if it means getting ***** and not knowing exactly how to use it for a while

You're right in the long run, but not in the short run when using the exercise as an experiment. You should definitely play to improve most of the time- but this isn't playing to improve. This is simply taking a hands-on approach to learning the theory of why Fox's movement is exceptional and the true basis of what his gameplay should be. Theory is very useful because it lets you take a mental shortcut in your learning, although true application of that theory into dynamic play is difficult and takes a lot of time and experience. When I say "play this very specific way" I expect you to lose and to have to adjust your playstyle, that's the whole point. Ideally after you've been able to adjust to start doing better despite your restriction, you can better understand why I am saying the things I am saying and you can implement them back into your regular play with a better and more experienced point of view. Just as a bonus, having to find new answers to old problems can show you have really interactive this game is and can remove inflexible thinking that we're all guilty of as we build bad habits from playing over the years.

I know it's sounds silly, and I know you'll lose a lot and have to adjust. Playing in a restricted manner for 1 hour won't ruin you. Try it out, post and let us know who you played and how it went.

 

[Engo]

My goal was to make him feel like there's no escape once I hit him.
to make him feel like there's no escape once I hit him.
to make him feel like there's no escape
like there's no escape
there's no escape

 

[unknown522]

lol, There's no escape!

Tell your friends that when you're playing them to make them feel uncomfortable.

edit: Also, I can't play without ATs. It's second nature and I will always do it by habit. It would probably be crippling having to think about not doing the ATs.......well l-cancel at least. I could maybe play without WD or DD

 

[Rocketpowerchill]

i dont need overswarms guide anymore
instead i turn it on and listen to the music

 

[BTmoney]

I'll go ahead and say congrats to Mango and his Fox. That was some really really solid play.

 

[Engo]

More than 1 or 2 foxes in top 12 for the first time in so long.

 

[Smooth Criminal]

More than 1 or 2 foxes in top 12 for the first time in so long.

Smooth Criminal

 

[Ijuka]

Really interesting discussion about approaching.

I got to say that in my opinion it is by far best for you to catch your opponent jumping. If you land a nair on a jumping opponent it's nearly always million billion damage or even the entire stock right away. About overshooting being a mindgame as they can hit you out of your dash, not really. You shouldn't be just dashing obviously, you should be wavedashing and dash dancing a lot. I actually never run at all, I only fox trot as my movement on the main platform. This is why if you run at them and then wavedash back and they try to hit you out of it, they will get punished. In addition, if they reactively wavedash / dash dance back, you gain position on the stage.

In my opinion Fox is pretty weak when the opponent is grounded, I'd just spam laser or perhaps try a grab. When the opponent is jumping, you have nair / bair into a million dmg, utilt into a million dmg and just a rising bair or stuff like that. Even uair can work if they do something really weird or space poorly. Most of my stray hits are against jumping opponents and that's what I wait for.

The only character who Fox cannot really force to jump is Falco because... well, his jumping zoning/approach option(SHL) beats most of your options. His normals also are just flat out better versions of your normals. My most troublesome matchup, but being able to be sharp and creative with combos really helps, especially when you learn their DI tendecies.


I think that freestyle fast-paced Fox combos are a very crucial part of his gameplay and I'm not sure why it seems to be such a dead art with every competitive Fox just seemingly being all right with racking up a few stray hits here and there. Dash dancing during combos to get the proper momentum for example is very underrated and doing SHFFL nair -> turnaround utilt can earn 20-30+% or even the entire stock with just that, as can utilizing weak hits when you expect survival DI.

 

[SilentJ]

Not sure if this is where i should be going with this but ive been working on my waveshines and was noticing that my perfect wavedash seems to go farther when i wavedash the way my character is facing as opposed to backwards, is this an actual game mechanic or do i just need to practice more?

 

[Silent Wolf]

Not sure if this is where i should be going with this but ive been working on my waveshines and was noticing that my perfect wavedash seems to go farther when i wavedash the way my character is facing as opposed to backwards, is this an actual game mechanic or do i just need to practice more?

Its easier to go further when facing the direction you're wavedashing in because your thumb can creep the control stick towards the direction you're gonna wavedash in before you jump out of shine, whereas you'd have to make sure you jump before hand if wavedashing back. Its a bit harder. You can turn around in your shine as soon as you do it and wavedash out forwards to make it easier; there's usually time for that

 

[SilentJ]

Ok that makes sense, thanks.

 

[ant-d]

Fox's wavedash is 10.1 feet, backward or forward.

Source:
Wavedash Distances + Stats

Not sure if this is where i should be going with this but ive been working on my waveshines and was noticing that my perfect wavedash seems to go farther when i wavedash the way my character is facing as opposed to backwards, is this an actual game mechanic or do i just need to practice more?

 

[Rocketpowerchill]

hey got a general question for both fox and falco
i suck when getting chaingrabbed
i dont know how to react
i just mix up di but always get out much later than optimal
i saw leffen shine out of pewpewu this weekend at like under 20%
can someone go off on how to di upthrow and when shine comes out
i need a mentality for when im being chaingrabbed for both fox and falco

and is chaingrabbing even good, if its only good at getting like 10% is it even worth it. or do marths rely on getting the chaingrabs then regrabs to tipper.
wud definitely like to know how to improve on this

 

[BTmoney]

hey got a general question for both fox and falco
i suck when getting chaingrabbed
i dont know how to react
i just mix up di but always get out much later than optimal
i saw leffen shine out of pewpewu this weekend at like under 20%
can someone go off on how to di upthrow and when shine comes out
i need a mentality for when im being chaingrabbed for both fox and falco

and is chaingrabbing even good, if its only good at getting like 10% is it even worth it. or do marths rely on getting the chaingrabs then regrabs to tipper.
wud definitely like to know how to improve on this

Past like Mid/high teen percent Marth has to start pivot grabbing (dashing out of the range of a shine, dashing back and doing a JC grab, watch m2k do it) otherwise if the spacie doesn't DI or DI's very slightly behind Marth he'll get shined. PPU wasn't exactly doing it correctly. If Marth is chain grabbing you in place past mid/high teens percent you can shine him as he's about to grab you

 

[Rocketpowerchill]

that helps, slight behind di
but can i just be mashing b to shine and mashing y to jump out or does that mess the timing up
i feel like m2k is the only marth that will cover all options in chaingrabbing, marths need to be like m2k more

so sick how marth cant chaingrab at 0 if slight behind di from falco

 

[noobird]

i would recommend against jumping out because a lot of marths just uptilt... and then you lose your double jump which can be bad. you just need to wiggle out and shine shrug.

m2k doesn't cover all options - i honestly haven't seen him pivot grab at all lol. at least recently. He opts for uptilt most of the time and that just lets spacies get out for free. but then he gets another grab and at that percent uptilt actually leads into something so shrug.

 

[Bones0]

hey got a general question for both fox and falco
i suck when getting chaingrabbed
i dont know how to react
i just mix up di but always get out much later than optimal
i saw leffen shine out of pewpewu this weekend at like under 20%
can someone go off on how to di upthrow and when shine comes out
i need a mentality for when im being chaingrabbed for both fox and falco

and is chaingrabbing even good, if its only good at getting like 10% is it even worth it. or do marths rely on getting the chaingrabs then regrabs to tipper.
wud definitely like to know how to improve on this

You already saw this post, but maybe you forgot about it... or didn't read it in the first place...

 

[Xyzz]

i would recommend against jumping out because a lot of marths just uptilt... and then you lose your double jump which can be bad. you just need to wiggle out and shine shrug.

m2k doesn't cover all options - i honestly haven't seen him pivot grab at all lol. at least recently. He opts for uptilt most of the time and that just lets spacies get out for free. but then he gets another grab and at that percent uptilt actually leads into something so shrug.

You don't have to wiggle out of tumble to be able to shine
And yeah, m2k clearly is not the "one grab = consistent death" - monster many people make him out to be. He's good at it, and really good at covering for his slip ups by techchasing / whatever, but he's clearly not inescapable.

 

[Rocketpowerchill]

yea just read your post and i pretty much like everything said, i dont care about minimal damage done from chaingrabs aslong as im taking everytime i get in an uthrow situation, i shud just let them mess up and then look for shine out from slight behind di at like mid teens

 

[Redd]

GGs evo foxes. Think I'm close to breaking through. We'll see what happens.

 

[Rocketpowerchill]

get that top5 redd
#newyear
lol thought you and android were related
good **** at evo

 

[Jesus aka jman]

Evo was fun as hell glad I got to go thanks to every1 who supported me

Sorry I did not do good to every1 who expected me to but I learned so much about the game and how far the meta game has changed

Like I said be4 tho im deff here to stay and get back to my prime level

Good **** to the fox players who repped fox and did good

See u guys at rom

 

[Iron Dragon]

i've just spent the last however long reading max's posts and liking all of them.

on that note, i really think i am going to try that no l cancel/shine cancel exercise because i think a lot of people are missing the core of what makes fox gameplay.

 

[Zoler]

Amazing tournament for fox.. GJ Mango, SW, Leffen, Sfat!

Nice to see you are staying Jman!

Super hyped for Melee now.. Time to practice.. cya at Apex

 

[Silent Wolf]

GGs evo foxes. Think I'm close to breaking through. We'll see what happens.

Who ended up knocking you out?

 

[killazys]

Question about jumping out of shine: it seems the timing is different depending on whether you hit an opponent with the shine. Does the hit take one frame, meaning that you can't jump out until the third frame, as opposed to just shine w/o touching anyone which means you can jump out on the second frame? This is what it feels like to me: I can't drill-shine-drill unless I slightly delay the jump after the shine..

 

[Rocketpowerchill]

hell yea
*d1 voice
JMAN IS BACK

 

[Overswarm]

Oh, so you weren't joking lol. Imo there are better ways of dealing with making better in game decisions than disabling things that are potentially harmful, yet very crucial to your gameplay. You may as well just put more thought into using what comes with l canceling and shine than to just not do them. You're going to be using them in serious play, so you should practice using them so you know where they fit into your game best. There's no better practice for something than just practicing what you wanna get better at. Taking things like that out of your game seems like an unecessary chore.

Thinking about playing someone actually good like that seems like a really bad idea. You wouldn't even be able to use defensive bairs reliably in a lot of situations, among other things besides nairs. You'd basically have to develop a whole new unecessary style just to rid yourself of a few bad habits that can be exterminated easier than such. Foxes should be experimenting with what they'll actually use when they're improving, even if it means getting ***** and not knowing exactly how to use it for a while

I name search when I'm bored and thought I'd come in here.

What you are describing is a learning style that equates to "hit or miss" and is generally a recipe for failure. It might not be the case for those who are merely missing tech skill and have no bad habits, but generally speaking removing elements from a process to facilitate learning is a good one.

Part of my "real world job" and studies is to design and maintain systems that encourage learning and retention. One of the universal truths in ANY learning exercise is that the worse you are at something the faster you learn how to use it properly. A Fox main comboing out of a nair or a u-throw is very common and if you decided you wanted to improve on that aspect (say people were SDIing out of your 2nd u-air hit so you wanted to practice hitting deeper into the hitbox) your improvement would likely be slower because instead of learning something new you're altering something you already "know" (hitting with the tip of the hitbox).

On the flip side, it is likely you don't know the intricacies of Fox's back throw from the center of the stage nearly as well. If you decided you wanted to practice using only that throw all game you'd find yourself quickly learning effective practices via that throw. It wouldn't be nearly as effective, but you'd learn faster for that particular instance.

When it comes to learning most real world skills it has been traditionally considered that "adaptability" is a skill in of itself, separate from intelligence. This has largely been disproven. Turns out people with well rounded experiences typically learn faster and more "completely" and people that have limited experiences learn slowly and take far, far longer to improve on mistakes because to the "limited experience" guy he's doing several independent tasks while to the "well rounded" guy he's doing one overall task. In your case, "Playing Fox". Take two guys and have one of them play a couple of matches using only certain moves and techniques and teach the other guy u-throw to u-air and nair shine and the 2nd one will probably beat the first in a match later that day. Then put a player way better than them against the two and the first one will learn far, far faster than the second.

Learning is a series of building blocks and if you decide to only do the best possible course of action in any circumstance, you're using an outdated learning style that promotes mediocrity unless you get absolutely everything right when you first think "this is how the character should be played".

Umbreon is correct in his assessment that theory is a "shortcut to learning". Having a well rounded understanding of a character (including the useless stuff) gives you a more natural understanding of the character. Many moons ago when I was making Fox guides using bair as a weak hit (for both Sheik and Fox) was considered laughable because "nair to shield is punishable man". Future play has shown the weak hit of both Sheik and Fox's bair to have dozens of applicable uses, but that precedent had to build.

"If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" is a valid quotation here. Removing l-canceling and shining from your play (or any other commonly used technique in your arsenal) forces you into a position you are worse at (see: learn faster) and makes you come up with well rounded, consistent, applicable solutions to scenarios both common and uncommon.

i dont need overswarms guide anymore
instead i turn it on and listen to the music

Glad you liked it, Nathan Bostick created it.

You can find more of his music free here: http://www.ourstage.com/profile/nathanbostick/songs

Can't believe people still watch those. To give you an idea how old those are, people were still using file sharing clients to share Melee videos and it was originally hosted on Google Video.

 

[BTmoney]

Question about jumping out of shine: it seems the timing is different depending on whether you hit an opponent with the shine. Does the hit take one frame, meaning that you can't jump out until the third frame, as opposed to just shine w/o touching anyone which means you can jump out on the second frame? This is what it feels like to me: I can't drill-shine-drill unless I slightly delay the jump after the shine..

Hitting someone or their shield causes hitlag, frames where you can't act. I think it's more apparent on something like Falcon's dair. You can waveshine or jump out of a shine faster on air than you can when you're hitting something that being said the timing isn't different enough for me to think about it

 

[noobird]

Question about jumping out of shine: it seems the timing is different depending on whether you hit an opponent with the shine. Does the hit take one frame, meaning that you can't jump out until the third frame, as opposed to just shine w/o touching anyone which means you can jump out on the second frame? This is what it feels like to me: I can't drill-shine-drill unless I slightly delay the jump after the shine..

yes. you can practice the timing by playing against a lvl 1 bowser with 9 handicap. hitting a shield is also the same as hitting an opponent so yay

 

[Tarv]

@Approaching conversation: Thanks again for all the information regarding approaches, positional advantages and some insights on Fox's gameplay. I set out with the question of basically, "What separates a good fox from a bad fox?" And to be expected there was an interesting conversation regarding the technical side of melee (chalk full of back and forth about what makes a good approach and even some conversation regarding how to play fox "properly")

I was originally intending to contribute to this conversation with ideas of my own on what separates a good fox from a bad fox, but other questions took the forefront that may be even more important in the long run. The question now is: Why do people lose? And not to sound egotistical but I think that I figured it out. In my opinion it boils down to 3 main (very broad) elements that contribute to victory or defeat. In my opinion the three pillars of victory are: Control, Adaptability, and Mental Fortitude. I am considering writing a topic in the Melee Discussion boards or making a blog about it. If I'm right about this it could easily be applied to any fighting game not just melee. However, I don't want to make the post without first refining my theory and hearing different opinions from people. So if you're at all interested in discussing this beginning of a theory (not full fleshed out at all) feel free to contact me via AIM, or Skype (please no calls, I can't hear well). I would love to hear what you think about this idea even if you disagree on every level. I have no doubt that people will disagree with me but like I said I would want to refine the theory and bounce ideas off of people who are interested without taking up space in the fox boards or missing something and subsequently sounding like a fool. Send me a PM in smashboards if you're interested in this discussion.

Thanks! Now I will leave you all to do foxy things.

 

[Bones0]

@Approaching conversation: Thanks again for all the information regarding approaches, positional advantages and some insights on Fox's gameplay. I set out with the question of basically, "What separates a good fox from a bad fox?" And to be expected there was an interesting conversation regarding the technical side of melee (chalk full of back and forth about what makes a good approach and even some conversation regarding how to play fox "properly")

I was originally intending to contribute to this conversation with ideas of my own on what separates a good fox from a bad fox, but other questions took the forefront that may be even more important in the long run. The question now is: Why do people lose? And not to sound egotistical but I think that I figured it out. In my opinion it boils down to 3 main (very broad) elements that contribute to victory or defeat. In my opinion the three pillars of victory are: Control, Adaptability, and Mental Fortitude. I am considering writing a topic in the Melee Discussion boards or making a blog about it. If I'm right about this it could easily be applied to any fighting game not just melee. However, I don't want to make the post without first refining my theory and hearing different opinions from people. So if you're at all interested in discussing this beginning of a theory (not full fleshed out at all) feel free to contact me via AIM, or Skype (please no calls, I can't hear well). I would love to hear what you think about this idea even if you disagree on every level. I have no doubt that people will disagree with me but like I said I would want to refine the theory and bounce ideas off of people who are interested without taking up space in the fox boards or missing something and subsequently sounding like a fool. Send me a PM in smashboards if you're interested in this discussion.

Thanks! Now I will leave you all to do foxy things.

Unfortunately, your theory seems to ignore the main deciding factor as to who actually wins or loses, which I would think is strategy. Control, adaptability, and mental fortitude are all great traits to have, but they are practically useless if you're using them for a suboptimal or completely ineffective strategy. Someone who has good marks in those categories will still lose to a player with minimal control, adaptability, and mental fortitude if the opponent has a more reliable and efficient underlying strategy. If you are a Fox that thinks the game should be played by running away and lasering until the opponent is at KO percent, it doesn't matter how much tech skill you have, how focused you are on camping them out, or how well you are able to run away and laser vs. varying strategies. You're still relying on a dangerous and ineffective game plan. If that same Fox had first tried all of the general ways to play the game, he would have realized how much more reliable and effective strategies other than laser camping were and could have saved tons of wasted time and effort.

If I were to summarize the pitfall of your theory broadly, I'd say it encourages players to focus too much on how they are doing something and not enough on what they are doing. I would consider focusing on what to do a much better way to learn and improve because you get quick results. If you pick a strategy at random and dedicate to learning every detailed way to do it, you risk finding out a long way down the road that you've been studying and practicing the ins and outs of a suboptimal strategy. If you instead focus on what to do first, you will try all the general approaches to each matchup and situation and learn what appears to be optimal. From there you can pick the top few approaches and flesh them out with a more reliable guarantee that the developed strategies will actually be worth something. Of course, you will occasionally get strategies that seem bad on the surface but become optimal only after you finetune your control, adaptability, and mental fortitude, but I'd say those examples are few and far between.

I know most people are probably thinking they already know what they should be doing, but I've thought the same thing way too many times to count over the course of playing this game, so I've basically abandoned the idea that I might know how to play the game, at least until I have reached an absurdly high level of skill. Even then, I think top players that stay on top tend to be the ones who don't take anything for granted. As soon as you start assuming you know how to play, you unnecessarily limit what your strategy could encompass which not only makes you easier for opponents to figure out and solve, but it holds you back as the metagame continues to progress in a direction away from the current status quo.

 

[Silent Wolf]

I disagree, Overswarm. If I end up feeling like writing up a response I will. I can say, for now, that while that method of learning may be effective (for low level players, if anyone imo), I wouldn't dub it more effective than trial and error with what you would actually be using in conjunction with the right method of thinking about what you're doing.

 

[Tarv]

Unfortunately, your theory seems to ignore the main deciding factor as to who actually wins or loses, which I would think is strategy. Control, adaptability, and mental fortitude are all great traits to have, but they are practically useless if you're using them for a suboptimal or completely ineffective strategy. Someone who has good marks in those categories will still lose to a player with minimal control, adaptability, and mental fortitude if the opponent has a more reliable and efficient underlying strategy. If you are a Fox that thinks the game should be played by running away and lasering until the opponent is at KO percent, it doesn't matter how much tech skill you have, how focused you are on camping them out, or how well you are able to run away and laser vs. varying strategies. You're still relying on a dangerous and ineffective game plan. If that same Fox had first tried all of the general ways to play the game, he would have realized how much more reliable and effective strategies other than laser camping were and could have saved tons of wasted time and effort.

If I were to summarize the pitfall of your theory broadly, I'd say it encourages players to focus too much on how they are doing something and not enough on what they are doing. I would consider focusing on what to do a much better way to learn and improve because you get quick results. If you pick a strategy at random and dedicate to learning every detailed way to do it, you risk finding out a long way down the road that you've been studying and practicing the ins and outs of a suboptimal strategy. If you instead focus on what to do first, you will try all the general approaches to each matchup and situation and learn what appears to be optimal. From there you can pick the top few approaches and flesh them out with a more reliable guarantee that the developed strategies will actually be worth something. Of course, you will occasionally get strategies that seem bad on the surface but become optimal only after you finetune your control, adaptability, and mental fortitude, but I'd say those examples are few and far between.

I know most people are probably thinking they already know what they should be doing, but I've thought the same thing way too many times to count over the course of playing this game, so I've basically abandoned the idea that I might know how to play the game, at least until I have reached an absurdly high level of skill. Even then, I think top players that stay on top tend to be the ones who don't take anything for granted. As soon as you start assuming you know how to play, you unnecessarily limit what your strategy could encompass which not only makes you easier for opponents to figure out and solve, but it holds you back as the metagame continues to progress in a direction away from the current status quo.

You make some really interesting points, wall of text incoming...

Let me start off by saying thanks for replying and at least considering my idea. It feels somewhat strange having my theory scrutinized without really having the chance to explain myself but I suppose I was asking for it. I blame myself for that bit.

Secondly, I don't disagree with your ideas regarding the essentials behind ineffectual or sub-optimal strategies being an important factor in winning but in my opinion strategy falls under the "adaptability" category. I remember a post that Umbreon made (paraphrasing) where he basically said, "There's no such thing as different play styles just correct and incorrect ways of playing." And for the most part I agree with him there's a right and wrong way to play; the correct way it seems to me is the one that produces the best results. Even if someone were to understand a match-up on paper and could theorycraft a pre-game plan it wouldn't hold up if that person couldn't adapt to a situation. So basically what I'm trying to say is that yes strategy is important and there's a correct way to deal with a situation but I think it's a person's ability to adapt and consequently adjust their strategy to meet the circumstance that gives the player a victory. Now, you could argue that in theory a 100% perfect strategy would be unbeatable thus negating the necessity for adaptability and if this were a possibility a person's victory/defeat would rely primarily on execution of said "perfect strategy". However, since 100% perfect strategy can't really exist 100% of the time I believe that it calls for a never ending series of adjustments that get you closer to that unreachable height of: Perfect strategy. In short, adaptability to me is adjusting your overall strategy to produce the best results and finding the one that's most effective in that particular situation. I guess I really do agree with you in saying that strategy is important but by extension I think the ability to recognize when a strategy isn't working and adjusting it accordingly is a deciding factor on who wins matches.

If I were to summarize the pitfall of your theory broadly, I'd say it encourages players to focus too much on how they are doing something and not enough on what they are doing...

I think I feel like I know where you're coming from here. Are you basically saying that a person should learn the correct/most effective strategy before devoting their time to it? Again though, wouldn't that series of "fleshing out" a strategy or fine tuning it fall under adaptability? If you went to a match and decided to stick with a certain strategy that works on paper or even if the strategy worked wonderfully the previous match if the strategy is no longer producing good results then no matter what happened before it has now become the "incorrect" strategy. Consequently, the match relies on who is better able to adapt their respective strategies.

Furthermore, by control I don't just mean "tech skill control" or even "stage control" Yes those are certainly parts of it but more importantly I think it's about being able to control your opponent so to speak. How many times have people lost to mew2king because they wanted to play his game (trying to fight him off stage)? Again though, you're right this could be boiled down to those players trying to use an ineffectual strategy in that situation. However, if you don't control your opponent, yourself or the stage then I don't really see you winning. Obviously I need to consider this further.

By extension I think the shakiest part of my theory is one regarding "mental fortitude". Originally I was considering people getting nervous or being distracted as one of the reasons why a person lost. It's easy to say "that person choked" but the more I think about it the basic factor is that they were unable to execute properly (the psychological reasoning behind their lack of execution doesn't point to why they lost which is the question). For that I'm considering replacing the "mental fortittude" portion of my theory with "execution"

Again though, I'm still working with this theory. And so far I'm enjoying the discussion.


Thanks gain Bones0

tldr: I agree with Bones0 but like to type lots of words anyways.

 

[Bones0]

I had figured you would say that strategy would be included in adaptability, but if you're going to include something as broad as strategy into adaptability, then by the same logic you could include control and mental fortitude in it as well. If someone loses game 1 because they were nervous, then relaxing so they aren't nervous game 2 would fall under both mental fortitude and adaptability. If by control you are referring to control over your opponent, then that too would be largely overlapping with adaptability. If these are really the traits you want to focus on, I think you need to present them as something other than the 3 pillars that lead to victory, and you also need to clearly define them in a way that they don't overlap. Lumping things that are as drastically as tech skill and stage control into the same category is very unintuitive. If you look at well-established models, they attempt to only view one perspective of a topic and each sub-perspective is clearly isolated on its own. Any given situation of your main perspective should only be able to fit in any one category. Models are ultimately a representative of how humans view and organize information. In the same way we might use flowcharts to show how to view edgeguards, we should use models to represent different spheres of thought that all come together to contribute towards victory or defeat. An edgeguarding flowchart that tries to force parallels to other aspects of the game into the same format will inevitably lead to misinformation. While there may be similarities or comparisons, there is no inherent link between the process of an edgeguard and the process of a combo, so trying to analyze them in a single model doesn't help or make sense.

But now I'm just rambling. If the question you want to answer is really "Why do we lose?", then you need to start by listing detailed examples of why people lose, and try to find a cohesive way of organizing all of them so that there is no overlapping. For example, if I wanted to answer the question of "How do you achieve good movement?", I would begin by breaking it down into ground movement, aerial movement, and platform movement. Any example of movement can be put decisively into those categories, so making those my three pillars makes sense. If you are asking why people lose and I say I lost because I got nervous, that seems like it would fall under mental fortitude. But like I've explained, maybe I got nervous because I couldn't adapt to a new tactic that prevented me from controlling the opponent and/or my character. Suddenly, the reason I lost falls under everything in your model, so what good is your model? It doesn't simplify the issue of why I lost, so solving the issue doesn't become any easier, therefore your model is worthless.

I don't even think I could recommend a better list of pillars for your model because why someone loses is just too complex. In order to make a sufficient model, you'd have to break down nearly every portion of the game and competition in general. There are a trillion reasons why someone might lose, and many of them are complicated and interconnected among each other. Even trying to break down "why did I lose?" into "offense" and "defense" yields a ton of issues with situations in which it isn't clear if the problem was offense or defense.

So ultimately, I guess the problem with your theory is that it doesn't sufficiently answer your question. Your question is so broad and ill-defined in itself that no one could reasonably come up with a model that targets the whole issue. Viewing the even bigger picture, I'm not sure why you're trying to answer such a huge question in the first place. Currently, most people don't struggle that much in figuring out why they are losing if they really try to focus on the specifics of their matches and narrow their losses down to a few specific areas (I'm not edgeguarding, I'm not getting as much damage off of hits as I should, I'm making bad decisions during tech chases, etc). It's by no means easy to solve these problems, and some players will inevitably blame the problem instead of their solution to it (aka scrubs), but how would some overgeneralizing model with specific pillars for each aspect of the game help players trying to improve? I'd recommend really rethinking what problem you are trying to solve. If you keep coming to the conclusion that your problem is simply "losing", then I think your real problem is you don't know how to identify what your problem is. Maybe I'm completely missing the point of what you're trying to do though, idk.

 

[Overswarm]

I disagree, Overswarm. If I end up feeling like writing up a response I will. I can say, for now, that while that method of learning may be effective (for low level players, if anyone imo), I wouldn't dub it more effective than trial and error with what you would actually be using in conjunction with the right method of thinking about what you're doing.

It's not really an "agree or disagree" thing. Trial and error gives you exactly 0 progress unless you're on the right path. Every single mistake you make that you fail to realize is a mistake is a colossal longterm failure when you attempt to learn through trial and error. If you're on the right path, then yeah, there's no real difference. It'd be WAY faster if you sat down and just pulled a Smash savant and knew exactly what to practice and how to practice and what to do, but even today people don't know what to do.

Will it work eventually? Yes, over an infinite amount of time it will work. For low level players I actually encourage it; "Do it until it stops working" I tell them, although that's typically because they do things that they themselves wouldn't know how to stop and I want them to see their opponents overcome it.

Remember Jigglypuff's "wall of pain" being considered the only way to play Jigglypuff? It's because everyone who played Jigglypuff tried to cut corners and simply spammed bair and tried to win because "wall of pain is her best strategy". Then people like King came along and said "hey, did you know you can reverse nair to rest" and everyone's minds were blown.

It would take someone actually sitting down and saying "let's see what combos into rest" maybe a full day of tinkering around with a friend to figure out every basic rest combination. U-throw rest, u-throw u-air/u-tilt rest, u-tilt rest, CC rest, rest out of other people's combos due to invincibility frames (like Falcon's d-throw to knee!), forced tech chase to rest, whatever. Despite this, people rejected "theory" and took the shortcut and just repeated the same thing over and over again, stacking their building blocks taller instead of wider.

Turns out spamming bairs doesn't work, no matter how good you get at it.

Saying "learning through trial and error is a good way to learn" justifies every noob that has ever spammed Marth's forward smash, known only how to chain grab and d-throw to fair with Sheik, etc., etc. Those things are bad not because they don't work (they do at their level and to some extent at higher ones) but because they limit that player's progress. The Foxes that spam nair+shine on an enemy shield are just those same noobs with faster fingers.

It's very easy to see players as revolutionary when they look at a character differently, but all they did was forget "trial and error" and embrace anything that helps them win and not discount things simply because they haven't worked before.

Given that a multitude of Foxes today still like to nair-shine as their bread-and-butter and don't give a thought to their opponent's shield being up, I think we have real world evidence of this in the Smash community.


Really though, try it before you knock it. Use someone else as an example if you want. Tell them "no l-canceling, no shield" and just have them take their fingers off the triggers and watch them learn. They start realizing stuff they never considered before really fast.

 

[Smooth Criminal]

Thanks for explaining all of that, Overswarm. Umbreon's advice makes a little more sense now. Lol

Smooth Criminal

 

[Tarv]

snip.

I see what you're saying and if I understand you correctly then based on your comments I'm beginning to wonder if the question was worth asking at all. You're right my model doesn't solve anything and is worthless in that regard. It was more a practice in observation and attempting to simplify an impossibly complex subject that resorted to over generalizations. Ah well, this was mostly just a product of me being bored anyways.

Might reply more extensively later after dinner depending on how I feel.