The World is a Big Place
Gah, I still have so much to say about this tournament. My mind has wandered so much, I wish I were smart enough to articulate it all.
It's still just so incredible that at this stage of the game we can have so many prominent players from literally everywhere. Demonstrating that talent and dedication can birth champions from almost any location. We still have such a wide variety of styles for such a simple game. Our foreign competitors have always come in and done so well since the first Genesis, I wouldn't be surprised if we had foreign mid tiers come splash on the US in the future. (I predict Link will take top spots again in the future.
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@Cosmo! Thanks mang, I definitely wanted to attack more, but I felt like he was too low to make it work because I was testing his reactions the whole match. He convinced me that I would most likely trade or straight lose if I tried it. I undoubtedly squandered many opportunities against him though. He was always floating at such intimidating heights where I thought he would trade against me if I tried.
@BunBun- Thanks.
Yeah, I get really nervous, and I do my best to try and use that predictability against people, but sometimes I feel like I just gotta commit to my teleports just because it generally is safe even if they call it unless they time their attacks correctly. I usually just want to forcibly take back the middle even if I lose some percentage doing it.
I've been in the scene so long and I still get nervous at tournaments. I'm pretty sure everyone gets nervous, too. The crowd hype, the cheering, the random dude that yells about how much you suck, all of it makes you nervous. I did what I could to deal with it, but I'm not sure how I can improve in that regard. I tried headphones, and I felt like it was working, but the ones I had kept falling out of my ear mid-match.
Even with music, the jitters are always there, I guess suppressing them the best you can is all you can do unless you just thrive off of the pressure.
The last time I felt this humbled after a tournament was when DSF beat me at the first tournament I entered. I have a new-founded appreciation for how good everyone is, and how much our bottom line has improved. The average player now, would top 32 competitors in 06. It's crazy how far everyone has come along.
I'm very rarely in a position, even playing against monsters like Forward over time, where even though I get outplayed I never feel like I'm just playing someone to take stocks. I might not have put enough thought into this, but I think that could be what separates a lot of up and coming players and discourages them depending on who they play.
I remember when I was just a local hero, people would often have contests among themselves to see how many stocks they can take off of me, or how high of a percentage they can get me to if they couldn't take stocks. I ended up molding my style around not giving them the satisfaction, lol.
When I play someone like Armada and Mango, perhaps it is evident in the way that I approach the match-ups, but I'm looking for ways to win the match and not just take a respectable number of stocks. If I can help it, I would rather just 4 stock or get 4 stocked by everyone on the planet, but that's unrealistic. I'd rather resign when I'm out played than play for a morale stock. It's interesting how matches vary so much and yet the matches average out and get close. Some people obliterate eachother, others have a super tight game where each stock is a struggle, and yet we often have tight sets because of it.
Addressing the few people that think that I should've kept trying despite the odds. I couldn't beat Armada, I couldn't see a way to win, and I wasn't in the right mentality to beat him. Can I beat him in the future? I don't know, I'm getting kind of old and I'm not sure how much potential I still have left. I'm trying to pass everything down to Tai, but I'm a terrible teacher, lol. I would love to be the Alex Valle of this game if the community is still strong when I'm that old.
I thought the first Genesis was going to be my last tournament, but I have too much fun playing this game with everyone. I definitely learned a few things from this tournament, and I found the direction I need to move toward improvement. Will I ever be on the top 5's planet when it comes to skill? Can I learn to hit as hard as M2K with Marth? These are just a couple of things I'm going to work on, but I suppose reality is what's going to determine if I can do it or not. Regardless, I'm going to always play this game for fun. I love the community, I love the game, and I'd rather not let my desire to compete poison that for me. You can call me a loser, and you'd be right.
I don't like losing like most other people, but I suppose as I'm getting older I'm starting to understand more that SOMEONE has to lose, respect why you lost, reflect on it, get better from it, and if you dislike losing, do your best to keep it from happening again. Basically, don't let your hatred of losing turn you into a salty *******. Watching EVO last night, I'm really glad that the majority of those top players seem to understand that. They played with so much passion and pride and a lot of them held their heads up when they lost despite the pain of losing. That's the attitude that's healthy for their community and their competitive spirit, and it's something we in the Melee community have had for a long time and I've never really thought about it much.
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Since it was requested, I'll talk a little bit about my more notable matches at Genesis 2.
Armada: Before the match, I was thinking to myself for the longest time. Actually ever since Hbox cleaned up my last stock in crews at Apex... If I play either of these guys, my match has to go to time. I've been trying soooo hard to convince myself I needed to play that way in order to win against those players as Mewtwo. I'm still convinced that with my skill-level that the matches would have to play out that way.
I got ahead early on him every time I played him, and I don't know if you guys can see it, but I saw the way I was screaming at myself after I got ahead to just STAY on the ledge the whole game. It's why I can teleport stall for almost an hour at a casual rate, it's why I can do the hard stall under pressure for at least three reps... I had to camp him out to win, because I'm not good enough and too nervous to hold the focus to toe-to-toe him the rest of the match.
I love playing for the crowd, lol. The hype made me want to crack his float camp even when I was too timid to commit to anything, and so I returned to the stage and got *****, lol. I definitely squandered a few opportunities where I probably should have up tilted or even returned to my old style and try to space down tilts against him. I think I was just too scared from his precision, too worried about eating his spaced aerials into downsmash, too worried that he'd be fast enough to react to my approach and force trades on me that I think I just fell apart.
When I went Marth game three in Winner's against him, I was too nervous about messing up the blind recovery on PS on my 3 stock that I recovered high and decided to just eat a turnip and regain my focus for the sweetspot and that stichface just BLEW me away mentally and obviously in game. I HAD to gg there, because at that point I lost so much focus that there was no way I was going to win and I had to resign. Armada is just so slippery against Marth, Peach in general always feels like that, but Armada just takes it to another level. He distorts reality and he reaches me when I'm running away, he feels like he's clearly in range and I whiff and get down tilted... EVERY TIME. It's incredible and I really have to go into the lab and find a way to compete with that crazy timing and spacing.
PP-
I was all super nervous and stuff, I don't think I have as much to say about the matches because they were pools. I was really nervous, I got lucky where it counted, my nervous increased my reaction and focus in certain aspects. My powershielding and movement were good, but I ended up trying to mind game instead of react in certain situations and PP owned me for it very thoroughly, lol. I always need to keep reminding myself that I'm not that smart when I play.
I think I kind of sensed his nervousness, too. I'm not sure if it had more to do with the flow of the match or if he felt like I pressured him, but I feel like I sensed something and I started playing more aggressively toward the end of each match. I feel like we both kind of shifted our roles during each match where I played passively and he was cracking my shell and then I started charging for him and he started baiting me out. Excellent Falco, PP.
I wouldn't be surprised if he scrapes me next time we play and he's healthy with his stack it up crew behind him. I kind of had every psychological advantage on my side except for being favored to win. I had the crowd, he was sick, and I had the element of surprise since I am a nobody. GG's despite those circumstances though.
Even though my pool had three Falcos in it, they were all really good and gave me more trouble than everyone else, lol.
Mango (Falco)- He shoots less lasers than other Falcos. He basically seemed to play me like Axe except less technical and less vulnerable. He timed his lasers just like Axe would so I started adapting to that, but they were still pretty flawless approaches and my unfamiliarity with him made the matches super hard. It was like playing Forward if I had forgot exactly how he played or something. The only thing that let me keep my composure through the set was just that it was Falco. It was my favorite match-up and it didn't matter if it was the best player in the world playing it. Axe has a lot more muscle in his pressure than Mango, but Mango was just a lot more flexible in his approaches. His angles were just a bit more potent and he was a bit wiser with how he challenged me by the ledge than Axe would be.
G$ was definitely throwing me off the most. The crowd and the cheering wasn't helping, but having someone yelling out how much you suck gets to me, lol. In the future, I may reciprocate this behavior to EC just to show them how it feels and I might even do it angrily, because just thinking about it is irritating me right now. I've never been in a fight once in my life, but I can see myself blowing up if they take it too far.
Mango is the most talented player in the world, to me at least. He is someone that can basically do anything in this game (except play Mewtwo
). Armada is the champ for now though, he earned it.
Against his Fox- NOPE. He tapped me so hard. I went in with a losing mentality and he definitely demonstrated that I was a loser haha. I wasn't prepared for Fox, let alone that monstrosity of a Fox. People said I should have gone M2 from match 1, and they were probably right. I wasn't even thinking of winning at that point, I think I was just waiting to see if he'd make a mistake and when I saw no chance of winning, I acknowledged it. I know it sucks to some people that I don't go all the way, but it's just the way I see the game. Mewtwo would've gotten me better results when my head is messed up, but it wouldn't have won me a game let alone a set with the way he was playing. I'd rather Mango keep that hotness so we have an amazing GF than burn him out trying to crack my defensive M2.
I've made 3-4 stock comebacks plenty of times in my career, the thing is... I do them when I see how it is possible. At this stage of Melee, it should be less surprising that players like M2K, Wobbles, Forward, and myself might resign against prominent players when the probability of winning is highly improbable.
It's like playing SC and trying to win against a supply capped Protoss with 4 bases as a 120 supply Zerg on 2 bases. Possible? I guess, but highly improbable still against someone that knows what they're doing. We've seen comebacks like that in the past, but there is usually a REASON that those comebacks happen.
Well I guess that's enough Johns for the day.
I've got so much more to say, but I guess I'll leave that for Part 3...