Advice How strong are players in locals / weeklies, should I try going?

[Predatoria]

I've kind of wanted to start getting more involved with Smash, but am admittedly a bit intimidated by the idea of going to locals or weeklies because I'm worried I am not of sufficient skill yet. I'm not afraid of fighting against players who are better than me or who I will lose to, but I definitely don't want to show up and just get 3-stocked by everyone there and want to at least make sure I can play respectably before showing up.

I just started learning the game's mechanics more in-depth over the past few months. Prior to Ultimate, I never took any iteration of Smash seriously, and mostly found interest in this game due to the inclusion of Ridley. I have been working more and more of the game's intermediate mechanics into my gameplay like learning how to get more out of play by use of the game's buffering system to move and follow up faster, learning more advanced or difficult combos and how to close frame leaks to make them true, getting better at spot dodging and teching landings on platforms as part of my defense (but no deliberate parries, yet), incorporating reverse aerials (especially back air) in, stuff like that. I've already gotten very comfortable with when and how to use basic tilts, aerials, smashes, grabs, or special moves under most circumstances and feel comfortable with basic use of my mains complete moveset fluently. I have one alt that I'm moderately confident with as well, but would prefer to just stick to Ridley regardless of his tier placements or matchup struggles. I feel like I'm getting to be a fairly decent player, but kind of feel like most the people on here or in Discord seem to know so much more than I do about all these very advanced techs and stuff which makes me doubt whether I should go yet as I may end up just getting super discouraged.

I hit Elite Smash once a while back and have kind of stopped playing online due to my dislike of how much laggier it feels than real-life play. I never bothered with arenas.

Should I consider trying out my area's local scene and just see what happens, or should I keep training more first.

 

[Kankato]

I've kind of wanted to start getting more involved with Smash, but am admittedly a bit intimidated by the idea of going to locals or weeklies because I'm worried I am not of sufficient skill yet. I'm not afraid of fighting against players who are better than me or who I will lose to, but I definitely don't want to show up and just get 3-stocked by everyone there and want to at least make sure I can play respectably before showing up.

I just started learning the game's mechanics more in-depth over the past few months. Prior to Ultimate, I never took any iteration of Smash seriously, and mostly found interest in this game due to the inclusion of Ridley. I have been working more and more of the game's intermediate mechanics into my gameplay like learning how to get more out of play by use of the game's buffering system to move and follow up faster, learning more advanced or difficult combos and how to close frame leaks to make them true, getting better at spot dodging and teching landings on platforms as part of my defense (but no deliberate parries, yet), incorporating reverse aerials (especially back air) in, stuff like that. I've already gotten very comfortable with when and how to use basic tilts, aerials, smashes, grabs, or special moves under most circumstances and feel comfortable with basic use of my mains complete moveset fluently. I have one alt that I'm moderately confident with as well, but would prefer to just stick to Ridley regardless of his tier placements or matchup struggles. I feel like I'm getting to be a fairly decent player, but kind of feel like most the people on here or in Discord seem to know so much more than I do about all these very advanced techs and stuff which makes me doubt whether I should go yet as I may end up just getting super discouraged.

I hit Elite Smash once a while back and have kind of stopped playing online due to my dislike of how much laggier it feels than real-life play. I never bothered with arenas.

Should I consider trying out my area's local scene and just see what happens, or should I keep training more first.

Region is really important. Over in SoCal we have PR and top players show up to Ultimate Nimbus on a weekly basis (more so for melee than Ultimate, but both do show up). If you live in Socal you should totally go! If not, check out a nearby weekly to see if it's worth your time.

Weeklies are also a way to make local friends since they have regular attendants. Go for it!

 

[Nah]

If there is a local that is convenient for you to go to, I say go to it. Having access to tournament players that you can fight and talk with will do a lot for your improvement, and is a luxury that not everyone gets. Don't worry about if you're "good enough" to enter a local. Unless the people of whichever local you can go to are absolute scum, it shouldn't be a problem.

 

[Johhny_C_Bad]

Just go, because no matter your skill level you can always learn something new at a local weekly. This is coming from someone who goes and gets 3-stocked maaaaany times. It's cool seeing the local metagame and seeing the best local players play. Try and get in on friendly matches because you can learn so much when facing opponents you don't regularly play against.

 

[Predatoria]

I appreciate all the replies! I have couple friends who may be interested as well too which I play with on a weekly basis, so we may go together or something. Where would be the best place to figure out any local Smash meetups?

I live in Raleigh, North Carolina, so I imagine there's very likely to be a pretty solid scene around here.

 

[Crystanium]

While it's understandable that you probably would want to avoid attending a local tournament if you don't have some sort of grasp at the game, you seem to have some competency based on your ability to make it to Elite Smash. There are people who still haven't achieved that. It might not be much, but even good players will gain more points than others. You'll also never know how well others are at this game until you play against them. This is one disadvantage you encounter in Public Arenas or Smashcords. I'm sure you'll gain some new insight on what you can do to improve. Just remember, there's only one winner, so set a reasonable goal for now.

 

[MarioManTAW]

https://smashcords.com/smash-5
This site has links to several Smash Discords, both for character and region. You could probably find tournament info in the North Carolina Discord.

 

[Predatoria]

https://smashcords.com/smash-5
This site has links to several Smash Discords, both for character and region. You could probably find tournament info in the North Carolina Discord.

Oh this is exactly what I'm looking for. In the NC Discord, there's a link to a list of Facebook groups that do weeklies. Turns out I'm very close to two separate groups! Thanks for the info, I appreciate it.

While it's understandable that you probably would want to avoid attending a local tournament if you don't have some sort of grasp at the game, you seem to have some competency based on your ability to make it to Elite Smash. There are people who still haven't achieved that. It might not be much, but even good players will gain more points than others. You'll also never know how well others are at this game until you play against them. This is one disadvantage you encounter in Public Arenas or Smashcords. I'm sure you'll gain some new insight on what you can do to improve. Just remember, there's only one winner, so set a reasonable goal for now.

Thanks! I think for now, my main goal is just to get a bit over some of my social anxiety over going to meet up irl with people I don't know, break the ice, and have fun with playing a game I really enjoy.

 

[xwingz900]

I'm glad I came across this thread. I'm coming up on my 1 year anniversary of getting into competitive smash so I was thinking about going to a weekly to officially test my skill (and to probably get bodied).

 

[Predatoria]

I did go tonight to my first weekly, even though I was so insanely nervous at first, especially when I walked in and there were so many people. It looks to be a very active weekly group. There were 54 participants in the weekly tournament, and even more who were there just for friendlys that didn't intend to participate in the tournament itself. It was super scary at first since I knew nobody there until, surprisingly, two separate groups of people recognized me, which I wasn't expecting, which helped me settle in quite easily.

In the tournament, I got knocked out immediately, 0-2, and realized very quickly I have some serious practicing I need to do. I was expecting this though and wasn't really bothered by it, though I was also extremely nervous still about the tournament matches and definitely didn't play at my best. I fared quite a bit better in the friendlies, and managed to play respectably. I fought a lot of extremely tough people, people that were vastly better than anybody I have fought before, but held my ground and managed to do alright. I even won a few games!

The people there were all really friendly once I started talking to them. It was a very positive atmosphere that I enjoyed attending. Nobody was super salty or mad or arrogant or rude or anything to me, and they were happy to see someone new come to the group and show interest, even though I was so new I didn't even know how to do simple stuff like pick / ban maps, delete nametags to make my own, or set the language back to English on the Switch to type in my tag.

I found a group of new friends who want to start playing as a group once a week to train as well, and they're coming over to my place tomorrow to play smash all evening. One of them knocked me out of the tournament, so I'm definitely looking forward to that training session.

People were, overall, thrilled I showed up and played as Ridley too. It's a character that seems to have almost no playership in the weekly went to, and they respected the choice and found it to be a refreshing fight. I got a very positive response from my choice of main, and seem to already be potentially the resident Ridley main at the local, provided I continue going.

I am writing this because I want to say I had a good time and want to encourage other people to go.

 

[M2 Is God]

Going to weeklies is a good experience for players of all levels. I may not have gone to one before but from what I have experienced on online tourneys , experienced players are very welcoming to newer players. It would be a good experience for you. I say go for it and give it shot.

 

[Staub]

I've kind of wanted to start getting more involved with Smash, but am admittedly a bit intimidated by the idea of going to locals or weeklies because I'm worried I am not of sufficient skill yet. I'm not afraid of fighting against players who are better than me or who I will lose to, but I definitely don't want to show up and just get 3-stocked by everyone there and want to at least make sure I can play respectably before showing up.

I just started learning the game's mechanics more in-depth over the past few months. Prior to Ultimate, I never took any iteration of Smash seriously, and mostly found interest in this game due to the inclusion of Ridley. I have been working more and more of the game's intermediate mechanics into my gameplay like learning how to get more out of play by use of the game's buffering system to move and follow up faster, learning more advanced or difficult combos and how to close frame leaks to make them true, getting better at spot dodging and teching landings on platforms as part of my defense (but no deliberate parries, yet), incorporating reverse aerials (especially back air) in, stuff like that. I've already gotten very comfortable with when and how to use basic tilts, aerials, smashes, grabs, or special moves under most circumstances and feel comfortable with basic use of my mains complete moveset fluently. I have one alt that I'm moderately confident with as well, but would prefer to just stick to Ridley regardless of his tier placements or matchup struggles. I feel like I'm getting to be a fairly decent player, but kind of feel like most the people on here or in Discord seem to know so much more than I do about all these very advanced techs and stuff which makes me doubt whether I should go yet as I may end up just getting super discouraged.

I hit Elite Smash once a while back and have kind of stopped playing online due to my dislike of how much laggier it feels than real-life play. I never bothered with arenas.

Should I consider trying out my area's local scene and just see what happens, or should I keep training more first.

I'll put it this way, you cannot get better online. It is god awful, just listen to Leffen talk about it for five minutes and you could write a college level thesis fro your own experience after that lol. Go with a friend if possible to your weekly. I am fortunate enough to have a buddy I practice with, and we just started going to a weekly in Boston for the past 5-6 weeks. We started playing smash 8 weeks ago... so you are already way better than we were. We have grown exponentially from seeing techniques, timing, strat, speed, and learned so much from better players. It is quite literally the only way to grow in this game. Go and have fun!

 

[Predatoria]

I'll put it this way, you cannot get better online. It is god awful, just listen to Leffen talk about it for five minutes and you could write a college level thesis fro your own experience after that lol. Go with a friend if possible to your weekly. I am fortunate enough to have a buddy I practice with, and we just started going to a weekly in Boston for the past 5-6 weeks. We started playing smash 8 weeks ago... so you are already way better than we were. We have grown exponentially from seeing techniques, timing, strat, speed, and learned so much from better players. It is quite literally the only way to grow in this game. Go and have fun!

I did, and played like 5 hours of friendlies and already am learning just how much of my game needs adjusting / work.

Some other good news is that the friend group I regularly play with during the week is all going to the next one too.

 

[Staub]

I did, and played like 5 hours of friendlies and already am learning just how much of my game needs adjusting / work.

Some other good news is that the friend group I regularly play with during the week is all going to the next one too.

AYYYYYYYYY THATS WHAT I LIKE TO HEAR!!!! Good for you!!!

 

[Lunardog15]

how does ohio look for locals?

 

[Predatoria]

how does ohio look for locals?

https://www.facebook.com/groups/706380352829505/

Looks like there are a lot of locals. Hopefully one is near enough to where you live to go to. I got lucky and found one 10 minutes from my apartment to go to in North Carolina.

 

[Lunardog15]

thanks for that

 

[Venclaire]

Accept early on that the other players will be better than you, don't get over-confident that you're going to be the best player.

Either way, the ONLY way to get better is to play in person. So get out there and have fun! You're gonna meet a lot of new people, tournaments are definitely the best way to improve.

edit: oops just saw you went

Looks like you had fun though!

 

[Sean²]

I'll put it this way, you cannot get better online. It is god awful, just listen to Leffen talk about it for five minutes and you could write a college level thesis fro your own experience after that lol. Go with a friend if possible to your weekly. I am fortunate enough to have a buddy I practice with, and we just started going to a weekly in Boston for the past 5-6 weeks. We started playing smash 8 weeks ago... so you are already way better than we were. We have grown exponentially from seeing techniques, timing, strat, speed, and learned so much from better players. It is quite literally the only way to grow in this game. Go and have fun!

You need to take Leffen's words with a grain of salt, because if you watch him try matchmaking, or look for public arenas, there aren't any. He waited for a match in quickplay for like an hour the one day. It's mostly his location that hurts him. If you're in North America, you're better off.

Anyway, you actually can improve online. Just not in quickplay. I went from washing out in pools at 25th-33rd at locals, to playing Smash 4 For Glory all the time, to making top 8 in the same tournaments. It teaches you how to play neutral, teaches you matchups, and teaches you how to deal with different strategies. Moving into Ultimate, I managed to get 5th at a local from another region just using those same fundamentals I built from Smash 4. If you can get a discord group together online and play regularly, that's nearly as good as playing offline only. There have been wifi warriors who broke into the tournament scene and performed very well so far, so it's not as terrible as you think. Just the matchmaking is unbearable.

When you live in an area with virtually no local tournaments, you learn to make due with what you have. As long as you play offline here and there (and don't have a terrible internet connection in general, you can adjust to the input delay differences fairly quickly.

 

[Predatoria]

Accept early on that the other players will be better than you, don't get over-confident that you're going to be the best player.

Either way, the ONLY way to get better is to play in person. So get out there and have fun! You're gonna meet a lot of new people, tournaments are definitely the best way to improve.

edit: oops just saw you went

Looks like you had fun though!

I went again tonight, and this time, rather than going 0-2, I went 2-2! I hate playing online, so going to these is a much better way for me to find a challenge and have fun rather than just going online and getting annoyed at everything. Most the players here don't play online, and just train offline in training mode, with friends, or at the weeklies / other events.

There were 55 people in the tournament this week. One of my losses was against the 12th best player in NC, according to some people I'd met and talked to about it later. He mained Cloud. He showed me how map banning and all that worked before the match too, so now I don't feel super nooby anymore.

One thing I am noticing is that at the weeklies, a lot of the frequent goers are very, very good at teching landings / hits up against the sides of platforms, executing combos very well, are very well-versed in their character, are very on top of dodging / fast falling, and are really good at pretty much all the other stuff I'm still practicing and studying up on. Twice tonight, I actually teched a hit up against the side of the stage and survived because of it, which is something that I've never even done before until the weeklies.

The skill level is very high. A sect of my gameplay has revolved around punishing missed techs where a player would lie prone and be forced to get up or roll. I'd become very good at punishing my friend group for this, especially with skewer and down smash with Ridley. A lot of the people I fought tonight gave me little to no opportunities to do these because they landed 90+ % of their landings properly. It means I need to find different ways to play instead of relying on this to get hits in.

Some crutches I rely on to win start really being exposed when I play at the weeklies.

Grabs are way harder to get off than ever before as well, so my combo-based play off grabs is a lot harder to start up.

They're also very good at finding and punishing habits or nuances in my play, which has shown me just how frequently I choose certain moves over others in various scenarios. An example of this is, tonight, one player during friendlys was really getting me good because I would always jump off of a ledge hang and do a neutral air. He pointed it out to me and then I realized that he was getting free hits on me and keeping me off the edge every time.

I am learning a whole lot, and already feel I have improved a lot. I always stay for hours of friendlies after the tournament. Tonight I spent over an hour fighting a couple players who main Pichu and Pikachu, two of Ridley's worst matchups, so that was great practice to get in.

 

[Venclaire]

I went again tonight, and this time, rather than going 0-2, I went 2-2! I hate playing online, so going to these is a much better way for me to find a challenge and have fun rather than just going online and getting annoyed at everything. Most the players here don't play online, and just train offline in training mode, with friends, or at the weeklies / other events.

There were 55 people in the tournament this week. One of my losses was against the 12th best player in NC, according to some people I'd met and talked to about it later. He mained Cloud. He showed me how map banning and all that worked before the match too, so now I don't feel super nooby anymore.

Glad you're enjoying your entry into the Smash competitive scene! Hope to see you grow into a great player. I can't offer much advice, but I'd definitely check out IzawSmash's video on the basics (and advance) parts of Smash Ultimate.

Also, it's great to see that you're keeping a level-head as you're going into the Smash scene! Some players get waaay out of line and think they're gods when first starting, lol.

Continue to have fun, hope you meet great people! I know a few people in North Carolina, they have an amazing, welcoming scene.

 

[T∅XIC HYDRA]

I went again tonight, and this time, rather than going 0-2, I went 2-2! I hate playing online, so going to these is a much better way for me to find a challenge and have fun rather than just going online and getting annoyed at everything. Most the players here don't play online, and just train offline in training mode, with friends, or at the weeklies / other events.

There were 55 people in the tournament this week. One of my losses was against the 12th best player in NC, according to some people I'd met and talked to about it later. He mained Cloud. He showed me how map banning and all that worked before the match too, so now I don't feel super nooby anymore.

One thing I am noticing is that at the weeklies, a lot of the frequent goers are very, very good at teching landings / hits up against the sides of platforms, executing combos very well, are very well-versed in their character, are very on top of dodging / fast falling, and are really good at pretty much all the other stuff I'm still practicing and studying up on. Twice tonight, I actually teched a hit up against the side of the stage and survived because of it, which is something that I've never even done before until the weeklies.

The skill level is very high. A sect of my gameplay has revolved around punishing missed techs where a player would lie prone and be forced to get up or roll. I'd become very good at punishing my friend group for this, especially with skewer and down smash with Ridley. A lot of the people I fought tonight gave me little to no opportunities to do these because they landed 90+ % of their landings properly. It means I need to find different ways to play instead of relying on this to get hits in.

Some crutches I rely on to win start really being exposed when I play at the weeklies.

Grabs are way harder to get off than ever before as well, so my combo-based play off grabs is a lot harder to start up.

They're also very good at finding and punishing habits or nuances in my play, which has shown me just how frequently I choose certain moves over others in various scenarios. An example of this is, tonight, one player during friendlys was really getting me good because I would always jump off of a ledge hang and do a neutral air. He pointed it out to me and then I realized that he was getting free hits on me and keeping me off the edge every time.

I am learning a whole lot, and already feel I have improved a lot. I always stay for hours of friendlies after the tournament. Tonight I spent over an hour fighting a couple players who main Pichu and Pikachu, two of Ridley's worst matchups, so that was great practice to get in.

Glad to hear you're getting involved and enjoying going to tournaments! Also repping NC. You should consider going to Just Roll With It this Saturday in Raleigh! It's the biggest tournament the state has each season and 2GG is sponsoring it. It'll be my first tournament outside a 30 minute radius or so and will be far larger than anything I've played in so far, as I'm pretty new to tournaments as well. Should definitely be a fun new experience.