MookieRah
Kinda Sorta OK at Smash
------------Preface------------
I've recently made my reappearance back to these boards after a somewhat lengthy smash hiatus to find that A LOT of people have been making some seriously awesome articles/threads recently. To say nothing else, I am very excited, because seemingly out of nowhere a lot of people are coming to some of the same conclusions about high level play that I discovered a little while back. I don't think many people remember my old thread: Simple Effective Melee Advice, and sadly towards the end it devolved into an ideological battle between Forward and I over what was better for improvement, Playing to Learn or Playing to Win, but no matter, A LOT was said that is strikingly similar to these newer threads (albeit they worded them better and went far deeper than I did with it) which only further proves what I already thought to be true.
Mad props go to Wobbles and King for their current threads.
For those interested my old thread is here: http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=85827
----------------------------------
A lot of people, a lot of smashers here, aren't even aware of one of the most basic functions of high level play. You will ALWAYS see people discussing tech skill and mindgames. Mindgames, the term at least, has become a joke throwaway word for the most part, because so few people actually realize what mingaming is and it is often misunderstood. Still, all you see are topics about those 2 things, but never do you come across a thread talking about observation.
EVERYTHING in smash comes down to observation. EVERYTHING. Did I say that enough? I don't think I did. Once again, EVERYTHING branches from your ability to process as much data as possible visually. Most players play the game half blind, to be blunt and honest. They look only at their character, and focus on trying to get those hot, stinky, wet, nasty combos. Everybody loves dem combos!!! All they see is the most basic set of information going on in the match, which is their character's placement in conjunction to their opponent. The thing is, there is so much more out there to look for. For starters, why do most players focus on their own character in the first place? What information do you get by focusing on your character? You are making your own inputs, so you *should* know what you are doing most of the time without needing to look at your character. The focus should CLEARLY be on your opponent. This is a small tip that goes A LONG way, but you never ever hear it discussed. Of course, from time to time you might stumble a wavedash or not do that dash when you hit the ground like you wanted to or what not, but even if the focus is on your opponent you can still see your character. Keep in mind you can see the whole screen and focus your attention on one spot. You don't have to predict your own moves, or look for your mistakes as much as your opponent. The ability to be able to see through your opponents strategies and take advantage of their mistakes is a lot harder to determine than your own.
I first began to notice the power of observation by ****ing around. My marth was crap, total and utter crap about a year ago. I didn't have jack **** tech skill with him, didn't really know any combos or setups and what not. Complete garbage. One day though, I got bored. So instead of trying to beat my friends in a match, I was just trying to make them look stupid. I didn't realize this, but it was the first time I gave my entire attention to my opponent. All the sudden, I'm winning by spamming well spaced smashes at oppertune times. All the sudden, I'm seeing and responding to missed techs with smashes. My opponents, while not as good as I were, were not horrible players. There was no reason in my mind why this was happening, I was not just winning, I was ******, by spamming no more than 6 attacks. I later dubbed this strategy the "Make you feel stupid Marth."
So how did that work? How was I able to see more all of the sudden? Simple really. I changed my goals. My focus was only to get in tippers and smashes. I limited myself to just one thing, and when I did that, I could see ALL of the openings for that one thing. Normally I would look at the big picture, and I wouldn't notice all of the small things going on. I was clouded by thinking I should have to do some combo, or some lead in, when the most obvious and most effective answer was right in front of my face. Once I realized this, I knew what I could do to improve my observation.
It's easy to improve your observational skills, but it does take some time. The trick is try looking for one new thing at a time. Keep doing it until it becomes second nature. Eventually you are used to doing it, and it requires little thought and effort to do. Some examples of things to look for in matches are as follows:
Missed Techs
Habits in your opponents techs (IE: if your opponent is prone to teching to stand, or rolling left or right predominately)
Opponents using their Second Jumps
Habits in your opponents recovery and ledge game
Discovering your own habits
Discovering your opponents strategy
Determining the morale of your opponent
There are loads more things than that, but that should be a good grounding. Keep in mind, that being able to notice just one of these things will improve one QUITE a bit. Also, the more and more you observe, the easier and easier it becomes to learn to observe other things in the match. It builds on itself until it gets to the point that you see just about all their is to see in the match. The more you see, the more you begin to realize that what you do and how very much affects your opponent. All of the sudden mindgames develop on their own from your understanding of what is going on around you. Instead of waiting for your opponent to fall into things on his own, you can actively pursue to MAKE your opponent fall into them. In effect, mindgames, or just smart playing, is a direct result of good observational skills and nothing more. It's sad how simple all this is, but because it has been so vaguely described and mysterious, most people don't know about it.
There is one last important thing I will take about, and that is the flow of the match. Remember my "Make you feel stupid Marth" example from earlier? There was more to it than me being able to see tips I didn't notice before and abusing it, a lot more. My opponent felt dumb, stupid, humiliated, and helpless to what was going on. How did this happen? What the hell is going on?
Establishing fear, or the feeling of helplessness, is something that even fewer people realize. All of us have felt it before, all of us has caused it before; however, few people understand truly how they did it or how they fell into it. It's also amazingly simple.
My best example is once again Marth, whom has become my champion in terms of establishing fear. Marth is already a character MANY players hate to play against, and a lot of players go into the fight already afraid of tippers and early ledgeguard kills. KNOW THIS. People are nervous at tournaments, even high level players are a bit nervous. You can USE this, as long as you stay calm. All it takes for me to scare an opponent is to make a few smart moves in the beginning. Focus on getting a few of those tippers off. All it takes is a few tips. While I don't advocate it, smack talking amplifies things. Catch your opponent in a few stupid tippers, and remind them that they were careless or just downright stupid to be caught in it in the first place. All you are doing right now, is working on their morale.
Once you have landed a few (or if you have landed a few) your opponent will already start to feel a lot of pressure. Especially in the case of Marth. They will start to fear your tips, and this places doubt in their mind. They begin to second guess themselves and are easily frustrated. At this point they make a lot more mistakes which leads to a lot more tips. It's a snowball effect that leaves most players on their knees, unable to realize what is really going on namely because most players aren't fully aware of what is going on. It gets worse and worse, and by the end of the first match, they have already lost the set. You have completely and totally destroyed their morale. Not only that, they will probably even play worse in their next matches. Ever wondered exactly why you were having a bad smash day? A lot of times it wasn't so much you were playing bad, it's because your morale has gone so low that you are afraid of everything your opponent throws at you.
Hopefully by now you are beginning to understand why I'm passionate AND frustrated over the subject of observation and the role it plays. All to often I hear dudes rambling on about their favorite mindgame and I wish I could punch people through the internet. Hopefully this cleared a lot of things up.
I've recently made my reappearance back to these boards after a somewhat lengthy smash hiatus to find that A LOT of people have been making some seriously awesome articles/threads recently. To say nothing else, I am very excited, because seemingly out of nowhere a lot of people are coming to some of the same conclusions about high level play that I discovered a little while back. I don't think many people remember my old thread: Simple Effective Melee Advice, and sadly towards the end it devolved into an ideological battle between Forward and I over what was better for improvement, Playing to Learn or Playing to Win, but no matter, A LOT was said that is strikingly similar to these newer threads (albeit they worded them better and went far deeper than I did with it) which only further proves what I already thought to be true.
Mad props go to Wobbles and King for their current threads.
For those interested my old thread is here: http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=85827
----------------------------------
A lot of people, a lot of smashers here, aren't even aware of one of the most basic functions of high level play. You will ALWAYS see people discussing tech skill and mindgames. Mindgames, the term at least, has become a joke throwaway word for the most part, because so few people actually realize what mingaming is and it is often misunderstood. Still, all you see are topics about those 2 things, but never do you come across a thread talking about observation.
EVERYTHING in smash comes down to observation. EVERYTHING. Did I say that enough? I don't think I did. Once again, EVERYTHING branches from your ability to process as much data as possible visually. Most players play the game half blind, to be blunt and honest. They look only at their character, and focus on trying to get those hot, stinky, wet, nasty combos. Everybody loves dem combos!!! All they see is the most basic set of information going on in the match, which is their character's placement in conjunction to their opponent. The thing is, there is so much more out there to look for. For starters, why do most players focus on their own character in the first place? What information do you get by focusing on your character? You are making your own inputs, so you *should* know what you are doing most of the time without needing to look at your character. The focus should CLEARLY be on your opponent. This is a small tip that goes A LONG way, but you never ever hear it discussed. Of course, from time to time you might stumble a wavedash or not do that dash when you hit the ground like you wanted to or what not, but even if the focus is on your opponent you can still see your character. Keep in mind you can see the whole screen and focus your attention on one spot. You don't have to predict your own moves, or look for your mistakes as much as your opponent. The ability to be able to see through your opponents strategies and take advantage of their mistakes is a lot harder to determine than your own.
I first began to notice the power of observation by ****ing around. My marth was crap, total and utter crap about a year ago. I didn't have jack **** tech skill with him, didn't really know any combos or setups and what not. Complete garbage. One day though, I got bored. So instead of trying to beat my friends in a match, I was just trying to make them look stupid. I didn't realize this, but it was the first time I gave my entire attention to my opponent. All the sudden, I'm winning by spamming well spaced smashes at oppertune times. All the sudden, I'm seeing and responding to missed techs with smashes. My opponents, while not as good as I were, were not horrible players. There was no reason in my mind why this was happening, I was not just winning, I was ******, by spamming no more than 6 attacks. I later dubbed this strategy the "Make you feel stupid Marth."
So how did that work? How was I able to see more all of the sudden? Simple really. I changed my goals. My focus was only to get in tippers and smashes. I limited myself to just one thing, and when I did that, I could see ALL of the openings for that one thing. Normally I would look at the big picture, and I wouldn't notice all of the small things going on. I was clouded by thinking I should have to do some combo, or some lead in, when the most obvious and most effective answer was right in front of my face. Once I realized this, I knew what I could do to improve my observation.
It's easy to improve your observational skills, but it does take some time. The trick is try looking for one new thing at a time. Keep doing it until it becomes second nature. Eventually you are used to doing it, and it requires little thought and effort to do. Some examples of things to look for in matches are as follows:
Missed Techs
Habits in your opponents techs (IE: if your opponent is prone to teching to stand, or rolling left or right predominately)
Opponents using their Second Jumps
Habits in your opponents recovery and ledge game
Discovering your own habits
Discovering your opponents strategy
Determining the morale of your opponent
There are loads more things than that, but that should be a good grounding. Keep in mind, that being able to notice just one of these things will improve one QUITE a bit. Also, the more and more you observe, the easier and easier it becomes to learn to observe other things in the match. It builds on itself until it gets to the point that you see just about all their is to see in the match. The more you see, the more you begin to realize that what you do and how very much affects your opponent. All of the sudden mindgames develop on their own from your understanding of what is going on around you. Instead of waiting for your opponent to fall into things on his own, you can actively pursue to MAKE your opponent fall into them. In effect, mindgames, or just smart playing, is a direct result of good observational skills and nothing more. It's sad how simple all this is, but because it has been so vaguely described and mysterious, most people don't know about it.
There is one last important thing I will take about, and that is the flow of the match. Remember my "Make you feel stupid Marth" example from earlier? There was more to it than me being able to see tips I didn't notice before and abusing it, a lot more. My opponent felt dumb, stupid, humiliated, and helpless to what was going on. How did this happen? What the hell is going on?
Establishing fear, or the feeling of helplessness, is something that even fewer people realize. All of us have felt it before, all of us has caused it before; however, few people understand truly how they did it or how they fell into it. It's also amazingly simple.
My best example is once again Marth, whom has become my champion in terms of establishing fear. Marth is already a character MANY players hate to play against, and a lot of players go into the fight already afraid of tippers and early ledgeguard kills. KNOW THIS. People are nervous at tournaments, even high level players are a bit nervous. You can USE this, as long as you stay calm. All it takes for me to scare an opponent is to make a few smart moves in the beginning. Focus on getting a few of those tippers off. All it takes is a few tips. While I don't advocate it, smack talking amplifies things. Catch your opponent in a few stupid tippers, and remind them that they were careless or just downright stupid to be caught in it in the first place. All you are doing right now, is working on their morale.
Once you have landed a few (or if you have landed a few) your opponent will already start to feel a lot of pressure. Especially in the case of Marth. They will start to fear your tips, and this places doubt in their mind. They begin to second guess themselves and are easily frustrated. At this point they make a lot more mistakes which leads to a lot more tips. It's a snowball effect that leaves most players on their knees, unable to realize what is really going on namely because most players aren't fully aware of what is going on. It gets worse and worse, and by the end of the first match, they have already lost the set. You have completely and totally destroyed their morale. Not only that, they will probably even play worse in their next matches. Ever wondered exactly why you were having a bad smash day? A lot of times it wasn't so much you were playing bad, it's because your morale has gone so low that you are afraid of everything your opponent throws at you.
Hopefully by now you are beginning to understand why I'm passionate AND frustrated over the subject of observation and the role it plays. All to often I hear dudes rambling on about their favorite mindgame and I wish I could punch people through the internet. Hopefully this cleared a lot of things up.
