How do i fix my mistakes and improve as a new SSB and FG player?

[Tonywright]

Hello everyone!





Sorry for the long post and ramble. I'll try to give a TL: DR in the end but I would advise you guys to read through the whole thing to get a better understanding to my situation!

This is my first time ever posting on this SmashBoards and I'm pretty excited to hear your thoughts on my issue! A little background about me, I'm your average PC gamer before I got into Ultimate. I've played numerous PC games competitively over the years ranging from games such as League of Legends, World of Warcraft, and CS: GO. all those games that I have played I would say that I've done fairly decent at. With league, My highest peak in ranked was Platinum I. Usually played with low Diamonds at some points. I know it's not the best rank but high platinum, low diamond is considered a fairly decent rank at the time. League of Legends taught me a lot of things such as map awareness, countering people by building against them ( i.e: Building a Hex drinker against a mage as an assassin ), decision making, punishing players on bad moves, and playing aggressive and passive at certain points of the game so that I can play off a lead if I achieved one. Now why I'm saying all of this is just so I can display that there were a lot of aspects that helped me improve in the game and I had to investigate and research a lot of those things online like watching guides and tutorials to reach that level. for example, in World of Warcraft, I've reached around 2.4k MMR in PVP which again is considered a fairly decent rating. But I was hard stuck at a low rating at one point of the previous expansions, I fixed that issue by playing a lot and noticing errors and faults from my gameplay. I've even gotten a BlizzCon champion ( Blizo: Rank one Arms warrior ) to come and help me improve which greatly fixed my gameplay drastically. and finally, in CS: GO, I've achieved Supreme Master First Class even got really close to getting global (was off one game) which is considered an impressive rank. With CS: GO, it was all about muscle memory, decision making, and crosshair placements. I'm not an FPS player by nature, I just have many interests in a variety of games. But CS: GO I must say was my peak and I've stopped due to poor anti-cheat systems and hackers.

Now, what does all of this stuff have to do with Smash Bros? Well smash is a fighting game and I've heard from many people that fighting games are hard and a struggle to get good at. I've always wanted to know how it felt to be extremely good at one. With the release of SSBU, I felt like this is a good time to start. But when I play online in quick play, Either two things happen. I get an opponent who spams smashes and specials like Ganon's wizard's Foot constantly, or I get an insanely good opponent who just 3 stock bodies me and reads everything single thing I do. I'd try to add variety to my foxtrots and try to bait him to pull off a move so I can punish. but sometimes it won't work and he would already read me and counter my moves and everything's ruined. I try to apply the learning methods of other games I've played with smash such as punishing, countering opponents with certain abilities (grabbing a shielding target or hitting someone who whiffed grab for example), changing the way I play and approach the opponent differently throughout the game. but nothing seems to work. I felt like I was facing an AI from the future who could read every single thing I've done when I faced a 2.1M GSP Daisy. Even when I mix up aerials and tilt attacks nothing works. I feel like I've hit a brick wall and all of a sudden, my Luigi's at an embarrassingly low GSP of 30k.


I'm trying a lot of characters but I do not even know what character I should start out with. People told me Cloud was an easy character to start out with to learn the fundamentals of Sword characters. But after I realized how Cloud is a hated character throughout the community I didn't want to play him. I know this is a stupid assumption to not play a character because someone else hates them but it's something I've done with countless games I've played and it's kind of a habit (Example: not playing Yasuo in LOL because the character literally gets camped because of how much of a controversial champion he is). I tried playing Ridley but I felt like the character was too big and got combo'd easily. When I played him his abilities are stale and boring in my opinion and I dropped him instantly when I noticed that. I've always loved the idea of Captain Falcon, not only because I'm a huge F-Zero fan, but also because he's that flashy character who pleases the audience in locales and tournaments, but I've heard He's a glass cannon and gets flung out the blast zones easily, from what I could understand he's a high-risk high-reward character. and when I played him I've had a hard time kill confirming people and would get people up to 250% and they still would not die. Basically, to sum this whole post up, I have a lot of problems in improving in the game and I need to know what I'm doing wrong. Achieving elite smash seems like a very distant and unrealistic dream at this point. I know I need to give the game more time so I can adapt to the playstyle of certain opponents but I just want to know how did you guys start off in any fighting game? was it hard at first like my experience? did it take you a very long time to improve in the FG you're playing? And how did you overcome your difficulties?

TL: DR - I suck at the game but I've been good at many other games and I can't seem to apply the skills I learned from the other games to a game like Smash. how do i improve?

 

[RepStar]

Repitition. Just keep playing all day.

 

[Orlando BCN]

Play matches against other people. Observe where you’ve gone wrong in your replays. Practice them in training mode so you don’t slip up again. Play with stronger opponents who will give you advice. Watch pro footage of your main and point out key details about their playstyle.

 

[leejaybird]

First of all I actually read the post

And don't feel bad about using Cloud. People complained about him in the last game because his hitboxes were ridiculously big and he was just an extremely good character overall. He has been toned down a lot in this game but he'a still very solid so don't drop him just yet. He's a lot of fun to play.

As for your difficulty playing well, part of it will come in time. The experiance you have playing competetively in other games will translate to this one, but it will take time for everything to click. Smash Bros is deceptively complex if you want it to be. I assume it took you longer than two weeks to reach your master CS:GO rank.

My main advice would be to watch pro players that main your favorite character. Look up combos for your character and practice them in training mode until you do them out of muscle memory. Learn each character's strengths and weaknesses. Similar to LoL, almost every character is unique. Some have long range and some have short. Some are heavy and some are light. Some fall slowly and some fall fast. Some have weapons that can't be hit but they can hit you. It's important to know your opponent's character just as much as it is to know your own.

Of course all of this will take time but it will be worth it. One last piece of advice is to save replays of your matches when you don't know what you did wrong. Analyzing your mistakes is one of the best ways to improve. If you aren't able to recognize your mistakes as you're playing in real time then you just need more experience. Best of luck to you

 

[Slappy Dee]

First of all I actually read the post

And don't feel bad about using Cloud. People complained about him in the last game because his hitboxes were ridiculously big and he was just an extremely good character overall. He has been toned down a lot in this game but he'a still very solid so don't drop him just yet. He's a lot of fun to play.

As for your difficulty playing well, part of it will come in time. The experiance you have playing competetively in other games will translate to this one, but it will take time for everything to click. Smash Bros is deceptively complex if you want it to be. I assume it took you longer than two weeks to reach your master CS:GO rank.

My main advice would be to watch pro players that main your favorite character. Look up combos for your character and practice them in training mode until you do them out of muscle memory. Learn each character's strengths and weaknesses. Similar to LoL, almost every character is unique. Some have long range and some have short. Some are heavy and some are light. Some fall slowly and some fall fast. Some have weapons that can't be hit but they can hit you. It's important to know your opponent's character just as much as it is to know your own.

Of course all of this will take time but it will be worth it. One last piece of advice is to save replays of your matches when you don't know what you did wrong. Analyzing your mistakes is one of the best ways to improve. If you aren't able to recognize your mistakes as you're playing in real time then you just need more experience. Best of luck to you

Is there a way to save replays besides the 30-sec video capture?

 

[leejaybird]

Yes after the match is over you can press Y I think during the results screen. It's on the lower right part of the screen.

 

[REZERO]

This video will help you REALLY master the fundamentals to get you started. After watching that watch jtails snake video, good character to learn with for understanding kill percentages and he has a decent recovery.

 

[Tonywright]

First of all I actually read the post

And don't feel bad about using Cloud. People complained about him in the last game because his hitboxes were ridiculously big and he was just an extremely good character overall. He has been toned down a lot in this game but he'a still very solid so don't drop him just yet. He's a lot of fun to play.

As for your difficulty playing well, part of it will come in time. The experiance you have playing competetively in other games will translate to this one, but it will take time for everything to click. Smash Bros is deceptively complex if you want it to be. I assume it took you longer than two weeks to reach your master CS:GO rank.

My main advice would be to watch pro players that main your favorite character. Look up combos for your character and practice them in training mode until you do them out of muscle memory. Learn each character's strengths and weaknesses. Similar to LoL, almost every character is unique. Some have long range and some have short. Some are heavy and some are light. Some fall slowly and some fall fast. Some have weapons that can't be hit but they can hit you. It's important to know your opponent's character just as much as it is to know your own.

Of course all of this will take time but it will be worth it. One last piece of advice is to save replays of your matches when you don't know what you did wrong. Analyzing your mistakes is one of the best ways to improve. If you aren't able to recognize your mistakes as you're playing in real time then you just need more experience. Best of luck to you

Oh yeah, so that's why people don't like Cloud i see! hmm you know i may try to play him more often, Yesterday i've been playing some captain falcon and i've been doing pretty decent with him. Wouldn't hurt to get a 2nd character in like cloud

I've been watching loads of streams such as zero, nairo, and mango. Mango's still starting with the game i like to watch him just to get an idea of how he learns the new mechanics and playstyle of the game. also The replay advice works wonders. i actually haven't watched any of my own but i've been saving replays left and right, so i'll get into watching them pretty soon one day. I've even had the chance to get a hold of Jtails and ill be starting a coaching session with him on the 31st! so i hope that works out aswell!
Thanks for the heads up really appreciate it!