KlWl
El Kiwi ᴶᴰ
Melee It On Me 2016 rankings just recently came out. Looking at the character usage, I saw that nearly half of the top 100 are using fox, and that only around 10% have Falco as a main or secondary. Being a fox/falco main, I was really curious as to way the much higher apm character that is trotted out as being the hardest character in the game to pick up was, being used so much.
At first, I figured it was probably because it was the best character in the game and that falco would probably be the second most used character. So I decided to look the amount of players with Marth or Shiek as main or secondary. Shockingly, around 20% of players played Marth and around 20% of players play Sheik. The results show that, clearly, character usage was not dependent on how good the character was or their tier placement.
After seeing this, I came to the realization that less people play Falco because he is the hardest character to play of the four top tiers. Now, bear with me, I know that I sound ridiculous, but after thinking about it for a while I have a pretty good case for why Falco is harder to pick up then other characters.
The main reason Falco is harder than any of the other top tiers, is because his punish is not at all as clear cut as any of the other top tiers in the game. When players first start off, they look to master the basics, and then see what combos they can do on their opponent, AKA the punish game. The punish game boosts players of low level's skill significantly faster than the neutral game. For Fox, Sheik, and Marth, the punish game can be easily practiced and with mastery of the basics, bread and butter combos are easy to get down. With Falco, his entire punish game relies on reacting to DI, tech chasing, knowing your opponent, and edgeguarding. This makes Falco a character that requires much more discipline and practice than any of the other top characters. While with falco isn't very hard due to his lasers and great aerials, his shine to aerial combos are much harder to perform and follow up on knowing that the opponent can DI in different directions. Tech chasing is also harder because of how slow Falco is on the ground and requires the player to make more reads, which is hard to do at a low level, causing people to drop him. At the highest level, most of the Falco players are so good because of their amazing neutral and not so much their punish game. Punishing is still important, but with players like Mang0 and PP, their neutral is so immaculate that even dropping punishes is not a huge deal. At a low level on the other hand, neutral game is still in development and is the hardest part of the game because it is mostly mental. Even Leffen dropped Falco, stating he requires much more discipline in comparison to Fox, and now I finally understand why.
At first, I figured it was probably because it was the best character in the game and that falco would probably be the second most used character. So I decided to look the amount of players with Marth or Shiek as main or secondary. Shockingly, around 20% of players played Marth and around 20% of players play Sheik. The results show that, clearly, character usage was not dependent on how good the character was or their tier placement.
After seeing this, I came to the realization that less people play Falco because he is the hardest character to play of the four top tiers. Now, bear with me, I know that I sound ridiculous, but after thinking about it for a while I have a pretty good case for why Falco is harder to pick up then other characters.
The main reason Falco is harder than any of the other top tiers, is because his punish is not at all as clear cut as any of the other top tiers in the game. When players first start off, they look to master the basics, and then see what combos they can do on their opponent, AKA the punish game. The punish game boosts players of low level's skill significantly faster than the neutral game. For Fox, Sheik, and Marth, the punish game can be easily practiced and with mastery of the basics, bread and butter combos are easy to get down. With Falco, his entire punish game relies on reacting to DI, tech chasing, knowing your opponent, and edgeguarding. This makes Falco a character that requires much more discipline and practice than any of the other top characters. While with falco isn't very hard due to his lasers and great aerials, his shine to aerial combos are much harder to perform and follow up on knowing that the opponent can DI in different directions. Tech chasing is also harder because of how slow Falco is on the ground and requires the player to make more reads, which is hard to do at a low level, causing people to drop him. At the highest level, most of the Falco players are so good because of their amazing neutral and not so much their punish game. Punishing is still important, but with players like Mang0 and PP, their neutral is so immaculate that even dropping punishes is not a huge deal. At a low level on the other hand, neutral game is still in development and is the hardest part of the game because it is mostly mental. Even Leffen dropped Falco, stating he requires much more discipline in comparison to Fox, and now I finally understand why.
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