Pomf
Smash Rookie
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2015
- Messages
- 6
Hi, I'm POMF. I have been playing Smash Bros. competitively for 2+ years now, and I follow the scene adamantly. I have participated competitively in every game, and I feel that I am "good" in every game except for Brawl. On /r/SmashBros, I had conversations with users including John Numbers on what indicates "skill" and several other things in a thread about Nairo talking about tournament inconsistency. I made several theories and postulates about the things discussed and I am here to share them with you.
SKILL - It's split up into 2 categories. Player skill, and technical skill. It's indicative of a player's performance.
Player Skill - How good a player is. Player skill is used to compare the skills of players. If Player A has a higher skill rating than Player B, then Player A is a statistically better player. Player skill is only useful in the game played, so if a player is very skilled at Smash 4, they might not be as skilled at Melee. There is no way to accurately measure player skill in my opinion, but you can measure player skill without accuracy. Example: ELO rating.
Skill Gap - The difference in skill between two players or groups.
Player Skill Ceiling - The highest level of play ever demonstrated by a player. Ex: Ally's demonstration of skill vs. Kamemushi at EVO was the best anyone has ever played Smash 4. Therefore, any play has to be worse than the player skill ceiling, otherwise the skill ceiling is raised to match the new, superior play. The PSC statistically is the skill rating of the player demonstrating the highest level of play achievable at the time of the demonstration.
Technical Skill - Technical skill can be measured, but has no certain definition. Technical skill involves things like Actions Per Second, or Perfect Demonstration of Difficult Techniques. Technical skill can be translated between games, but cannot define player skill. Ex: Even though Hax is the most technical at Melee, he does not have the highest player skill rating of any melee player.
Technical Skill Ceiling - Perfection. 20XX. With perfect tech skill comes perfect play, and with perfect play comes perfect skill. Therefore, Technical Skill Ceiling = Highest Theoretical Skill Ceiling. Which means, Player Skill and Technical Skill are actually related! However, it is literally impossible for any human being to reach the Technical Skill Ceiling.
Metagame - Defines what is good and bad. Fox has a strong place in the Melee metagame, but Kirby does not.
So basically, we cannot determine whether or not the player skill ceiling is higher or lower in Melee than it is in Smash 4. We can assume that Melee's is higher because the Meta is much more developed (Smash 4's current Meta is only a few months old because of patches), but that's just an assumption and assumptions can be wrong.
We cannot even assume that Melee is more technical than Smash 4. If we compare the highest measure of technical skill by a player in Melee to that of a player in Smash 4, we would probably see that the Melee player is more technical. However, we have no way of even knowing about the Technical Skill Ceilings of either games, because not all techniques have been discovered in either. As far as we know, perfect Melee is abusing invisible ceiling glitches to push your opponent into the blastzone.
So, we do not know if Melee is actually more technical than Smash 4. We will probably never know because we will have to understand both games to the smallest detail.
SKILL - It's split up into 2 categories. Player skill, and technical skill. It's indicative of a player's performance.
Player Skill - How good a player is. Player skill is used to compare the skills of players. If Player A has a higher skill rating than Player B, then Player A is a statistically better player. Player skill is only useful in the game played, so if a player is very skilled at Smash 4, they might not be as skilled at Melee. There is no way to accurately measure player skill in my opinion, but you can measure player skill without accuracy. Example: ELO rating.
Skill Gap - The difference in skill between two players or groups.
Player Skill Ceiling - The highest level of play ever demonstrated by a player. Ex: Ally's demonstration of skill vs. Kamemushi at EVO was the best anyone has ever played Smash 4. Therefore, any play has to be worse than the player skill ceiling, otherwise the skill ceiling is raised to match the new, superior play. The PSC statistically is the skill rating of the player demonstrating the highest level of play achievable at the time of the demonstration.
Technical Skill - Technical skill can be measured, but has no certain definition. Technical skill involves things like Actions Per Second, or Perfect Demonstration of Difficult Techniques. Technical skill can be translated between games, but cannot define player skill. Ex: Even though Hax is the most technical at Melee, he does not have the highest player skill rating of any melee player.
Technical Skill Ceiling - Perfection. 20XX. With perfect tech skill comes perfect play, and with perfect play comes perfect skill. Therefore, Technical Skill Ceiling = Highest Theoretical Skill Ceiling. Which means, Player Skill and Technical Skill are actually related! However, it is literally impossible for any human being to reach the Technical Skill Ceiling.
Metagame - Defines what is good and bad. Fox has a strong place in the Melee metagame, but Kirby does not.
So basically, we cannot determine whether or not the player skill ceiling is higher or lower in Melee than it is in Smash 4. We can assume that Melee's is higher because the Meta is much more developed (Smash 4's current Meta is only a few months old because of patches), but that's just an assumption and assumptions can be wrong.
We cannot even assume that Melee is more technical than Smash 4. If we compare the highest measure of technical skill by a player in Melee to that of a player in Smash 4, we would probably see that the Melee player is more technical. However, we have no way of even knowing about the Technical Skill Ceilings of either games, because not all techniques have been discovered in either. As far as we know, perfect Melee is abusing invisible ceiling glitches to push your opponent into the blastzone.
So, we do not know if Melee is actually more technical than Smash 4. We will probably never know because we will have to understand both games to the smallest detail.
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