I think I might be overanalysing myself

[GofG]

After a decent fest, I go through all the recorded battles that I participate in against people who I believe to be equal or better than me and I analyse myself.

I do this by taking the video into my editor and cutting out every piece of video that isn't me hitting the person. I save that as an mpg.

I then go through what is left and cut out anything that isn't me doing an attack meant to hit the opponent (not mindgaming) that he avoided or dodged. I save that as an mpg.

I go through what's LEFT and cut out anything that isn't an attack hitting me.

Doing this, I am able to successfuly determine what attacks of mine work most often, what attacks I should avoid doing, what I need to work on, what I need to learn to do better, all against that single person. I am also able to determine what attack patterns that person has been using and how to destroy them.

As my smash community is rather small, I have been able to do this with almost everyone. I still suck majorly, because I'm just not good at the game, but I am able to beat everyone I play because I know them inside and out.

As far as I can tell, doing this has helped me analyze people while playing them better. I am able to determine weaknesses the first time I play them, if they are similar to weaknesses I have encountered already. This is cheating because I'm not actually mindgaming and predicting, I'm simply matching patterns to other patterns.

My question is, is this a waste of my time?

 

[GofG]

lol@17 views after a full 12 hours on smashboards. (Oh snap, I double posted. I think an answer to this question would be worth the -1 point I got.)

 

[Rune]

There's no such thing as cheating unless you poke your opponent in the eye during a match or such.

That said, you're doing exactly what most mindgamers do, except you do it on a really small scale. Since you only have so few opponents, you over analyze those few instead of vaguely remembering the patterns of yet another random opponent and adding those to your intern database on what opponents do. Hard to explain, but whatever.

What you're doing is not wrong (though the whole video cutting thing sounds a bit unnecessary), it's all you can do. The reason people like Ken got so great at mindgames (apart from natural talent) is because they fought tons and tons of different people. Try to do the same the best you can.

 

[Rapid_Assassin]

I agree with Rune here. Fight more people. Or you'll just be analyzing the patterns of the same handful of opponents, and start attacking in a pattern that beats them regardless of who your opponent is this time.

 

[Pye]

I agree with them. Rewatching old matches is a fantastic way of learning about yourself while you play. You may see things you didn't even know you were doing. You might find that pattern your opponent beat you on.

Though I feel that you might be hurting yourself more then helping if all you're learning to do is memorize players. You can't do that for every smash player on earth. You did say that what you were doing helped you analize your opponents INGAME, so if that's true, disregard this paragraph.

IMO, beeing able to analize your opponents' patterns in mid-game is a very important skill in Melee, and of course, the earlier you can find patterns, the better. Anything you do that helps you develop that skill is worth it automatically.

 

[GofG]

The only thing I am conciously seeing is whether they have a habit of teching away from me or toward me when I hit them. A lot of other stuff, though, comes subconciously. I'll realize halfway through the match that they're doing the same thing as X player, where they do Y action, or maybe they're doing the opposite as them. I think there are only a certain number of playstyles in the game, and you mix-and-match different styles together to form your own style, but it's still made of the basics.

The videos do help, I can tell you that. For a while, my main approach was a shuffled nair until I cut up the video into what attacks missed and I realized that it only actually hit them about one in twenty times. Little things like that are hard to realize by just watching yourself, you have to really look for them.

 

[WayChuDat]

are you asian

 

[Che_Lab]

lol @ ur sig WayChuDat, Pc Chris and Milktea look almost the same.

 

[WayChuDat]

haha yea, that was all rickety's work.

 

[GofG]

No, I am not Asian. lol@someonewhoisn'tchudat replying to my thread.

Back on topic? Pretty please?

 

[Dreadlord Santa]

Yeah, it seems like you're spending an awful lot of time doing something that won't help you much. It seems like a really time-consuming project to undertake for every match vid you have of yourself, and you admitted yourself that it isn't really helping your conscious ability to analyze your opponent.

Think about it this way. I have a brother and a cousin. My cousin's family is pretty dysfunctional, so he spends a lot of time over at our house, and when he's here, we play Smash for several hours every day, and he usually spends 2-4 days over here at a time. This, needless to say, is a TON of matches. And I win pretty much every one, so I'm playing the vast majority of the matches that the 3 of us play. I know every single aspect of the way that my cousin plays, and I can do pretty well against my brother most of the time, but he's really more random and stupid about the game, so he throws me off a bit. Then, despite the fact that I'm actually a pretty darn good Marth player (Modesty? What's that?), I go to tournaments and get pwned by people for a good half-hour.

The moral of the story? Getting too accustomed to the same opponents can only hurt you when you play someone who plays differently. You might recognize small aspects of your friends' playstyles in different people, but that's just not enough to get you through matches when that's all you know. Granted, I can't think of any better ways for you to improve if you can't travel a lot... if you're really intent on doing this, why not do the same thing with videos besides your own? Breaking down pro matches in this way would probably give you a fresh perspective on how to play against certain characters (Marth *is* probably the most matchup dependent character that's still considered competitive, after all...)

Sorry about another wall of text; I really need to learn how to explain myself in a less verbose manner...

 

[Vice Lord]

it's a cool idea breaking apart your matches and analyzing certain areas, but overall i don't think you'd gain too much from this, because you wouldn't know what put you in the situation to do the mistake that you did, or if messing up helped you get ahead of your opponent (eg. small loss for bigger gain situation) anyways this is just my 2 cents, if it works for you keep doing it and disregard this.

 

[Battousai780]

You sound like mew2king jr.