How many hours do you consider a "lot of time" put into a character?

[Duplighost]

I have about 70-75 hours put into both Palutena and Sheik, those two characters being among the most trained with. I'm not sure if that's a measly amount of time, or an ample amount. What do you consider enough hours for...

1. For Glory?
2. A tournament?
3. A character to become a main/secondary?

Also, once you put your version of a "lot of time" into a character, is it worth switching them for another character?

 

[Ralugi]

Playing your main 3-5 hours a day, everday for a few months will get you very practiced. I became a very good Luigi after about 130 hours of memorizing combo strings, jab locks, and combo percentages.

With a more technical character, several hundred hours need to be put in. Only 50 hours into Fox and I was about as useless with him as I started.

 

[Pink'd]

As Ralugi noted, technical characters take a lot longer. With Ryu, I'd consider a "lot of time" to be 300, 400+ hours, and even then, you still haven't reached his peak, most likely. As for Shulk and Palutena, I'd say Shulk is around 140-160 and Palutena...well, I have no idea.

 

[Dilan Omer]

I put 60 to 50 hours on my ZSS and Marth and I can do a lot of slick **** with them

Most of the time spent with them is Online or practicing against level 1 CPU

 

[Crystanium]

I've only been able to play for four months. I am currently unable to play, but if I had been playing at least 2 hours for four months, then I can come up with an idea. I mainly used Samus. 2 hours for 7 days is 14 hours a week. There are at least 4 weeks in a month, so that's 56 hours a month. So I have at least 224 hours of using Samus.

 

[Deleted member 269706]

This is a difficult question.

Personally, I don't think it's how much time you put into a character per se, but how much time you put into the game. What you'll notice is, the more you play the game, the better you can play several characters. Once you learn the core mechanics of the game picking up new characters becomes much easier. With that said, understanding the core mechanics and fundamentals is what takes so long. I'd say at least 200 hours to be considered remotely fluent, although that in itself is probably a major underestimate.

 

[PGH_Chrispy]

I somewhat agree with @Rawkstar and his line of thought about how character time doesn't matter. Instead of saying it's game time that matters, though, I'd specify that it's focused practice time. Just playing matches over and over again isn't going to improve your play as much as also doing match analysis, character theorycrafting, and focused practice on combo/option consistency (eg. landing wavebounces or perfect pivot combos without input error).

 

[QualityQ]

Anyone can make the argument of "time vs. intelligent practice," in that time spent unproductively is worse than less time spent in a useful matter. Also tournaments are way different from For Glory IMO.

But even then 100 hours seems pretty weak. 100 hours is 1 hr/week over 2 years. 2 hr/week gives 100 in one year. Do you play this game more than 2 hours/week? ...Probably.

If it were a real "main" I would aim for at least 200 hours, especially since matchup knowledge is really important in this game.

 

[Crystanium]

Anyone can make the argument of "time vs. intelligent practice," in that time spent unproductively is worse than less time spent in a useful matter. Also tournaments are way different from For Glory IMO.

But even then 100 hours seems pretty weak. 100 hours is 1 hr/week over 2 years. 2 hr/week gives 100 in one year. Do you play this game more than 2 hours/week? ...Probably.

If it were a real "main" I would aim for at least 200 hours, especially since matchup knowledge is really important in this game.

100 hours by itself doesn't say much, which is all we're left with in the poll. There are 24 hours in a day. (It's really 23 hours, 56 minutes.) There are 7 days in a week. 24 * 7 is 168 hours. I doubt anyone is playing for a full 24 hours, however. So let's say someone played 10 hours a day. (Let's face it, there are people who do this, so it's not outside the realm of possibilities.) That's a total of 70 hours. 1 hr/week is at least 52 hours, which is plain sad if you want to be good at something. 2 hr/week actually gives you 104 hours. Either way, for anyone who plays, I'd say aim for 2 to 3 hours a day if you can.

 

[FamilyTeam]

Hm... I set myself a goal for when I get the Wii U version: Fight 1000 battles with Lucina, and that should be enough to make me as good as I'm gonna get with her without tournament experience.
If every battle takes an average of 2 minutes, that's 2000 minutes, which is about 33 hours. To me, it's not how many hours have you played, it's what you did with them. Playing 33 hours against top players or players with tournament experience is gonna be worth far more than 100 hours at For Glory or bots.
You should dedicate as much time to the game as you can, but you should also try to practice against the right people.

 

[Floor]

This is a hard question. The more you play, the better you get. To ZeRo, 100+ hours is nothing. If ZeRo got 100+ hours more into his Diddy, we wouldn't see the difference. To most others, 100+ hours will show some notable progress. I have about 1,500 hours (???) Into the game and spent about 80% of that as Marth and Lucina (mostly Lucina). Yet, Im still no where near ZeRo level. The amount of time you and I spend playing may seem like a lot to us, yet it's nothing to ZeRo, who might have, what, 5,000 hours???

 

[MagicSchlong]

100+ hour. More time = more practice. Just use time wisely. Think like Goku in Hyperbolic Time Chamber.

 

[Duplighost]

Hey guys! I edited the poll to make it have higher numbers, so please change your answer accordingly!

I would add more hours but the poll is honestly getting a little long and I cannot delete previous entires.

 

[Jamaz]

I kinda believe anyone who wants to have a chance at being the best player at their local and competing well in regional tournaments put over a thousand hours into their character. As der Rabe mentioned, 2-3 hours a day is a believable routine that competitive players (even ones that have jobs plus studies) can do. And if the top-ranked players are anything to go by, a lot of them don't think they've mastered their character completely yet; very few of these players play secondaries except for fun.