Optimizing Your Character

[0gweSMASH]

For a beginner smash player, the workload seems overwhelming to 'git gud' at Melee. Most will fail, but to those who don't, will soar above the average casual and their hard work will pay off. Perseverance is key, and most of the information is out there to acquire enough knowledge to develop the skill of playing this beautiful game.

The point of this thread is to open up discussion on the road to becoming half-way decent at this game. There's a clear distinction between a newcomer, an experienced played, and a seasoned player. This wonderful forum we have here provides us with means to reach out and whatnot, and to access information that's available to everybody. It's truly a wonderful thing.

Now of course, for the beginner, you figure out your basics. Your aerials, wavedashing, l-cancelling, all that jazz. The work doesn't stop at learning those basic concepts. There's hitboxes to figure out, knockback distances, OoS options, etc. It's not something you wake up one day and are able to do, it requires diligence and effort to be able to master all these concepts, and even then you're still only crossing stepping stones.

The lengthiest part of a smasher's "training" is application of all these concepts. You may have learned to multishine, but if you're too nervous during a tournament to apply it to your opponents shield, what's the achievement there? It's experience that allows you to be able to utilize the concepts you've been learning. These things have to become muscle memory, an instinct, to perform. These things have to be so ingrained into your conscious that you don't have to "try" to do a combo once you started, it just happens. In essence, you have to not think about the actions you have to perform, they must be a reaction to the analysis you've made about the situation you're in.

So, there's plenty of information to take in when you're learning a character. Everyone starts somewhere. Pillaring isn't per sae something a newbie is familiar with, but it's a core concept in Falco's combo game. Nobody is born knowing how to chaingrab/tech chase, the Shieks have to practice practice practice. For every character, there is a certain "way" that the character is supposed to look when all the options are being optimally used. It is once you break the textbook example of how a character is generally supposed to look that you can begin to witness your style affect your play. No character plays the same, and no player plays a character the same as the next. Every Falco is different. Every Marth is different. Every Fox is different. It is dependent on how you apply all the tools each character has.

Mentality is probably the largest factor in how you play. This game is fairly taxing on the mind, as it requires a sharp mental cognitive presence in order to play at your best. You will find yourself just setting down the controller and taking a break, and in this game's case, it's a behavior to heed. It doesn't take a set amount of hours to reach the level you desire, just know it takes loads of them. To keep yourself at peak condition, it's more than just knowing the game and having had put in the work. It's taking care of yourself, and maintaining a rather healthy lifestyle to be able to keep your head above water. Don't overdo it, it's just a ****ing game after all and having m2k hands cus you did 5 miles of waveshines because some scrub told you to 'gid gud' is not worth it. You can't sit on 20XX for months on end and attend a tourney and expect to win. It takes simply playing the game with other people enough to learn all the situations and how to apply your options, which is the beauty of it.

So, how has your journey with Smash been? I myself have yet to take a tournament set at this point, but I see my potential. I love this game, it's probably the best game out there in terms of game mechanics, in my opinion.

Also, for the experienced folks out there, what do you recommend to the newbies and intermediates out there? What did you do to advance your skill? What continued the climb after a plateau? What separates your Marth from other "textbook" Marths?

 

[fiddlediddle123]

just beat up a lvl 1 cpu for an hour a day

in no time you'll be wrecking scrubs

 

[-ACE-]

You want to become strongly familiar with the concept of zoning, and the risk/reward dynamic involved in decision making. Once you are fully familiar with your opponent's options, you'll know how much respect to give them. Then it's determining which punishes are optimal. To illustrate the risk/reward scenario, look at Marth vs Fox on FD vs the same mu on another stage. The reward for grab is higher on FD because the 0-death combo that can result is extremely flow chart-ish. On other stages, more important decision making is required to continue the grab to death. So in scenarios where grab yields a better reward, you should be more likely to attempt grabs in situations where you're debating between grab and another option. In contrast, on non-fd stages (aside from DL essentially, a heavy chaingrabbing stage), grab yields slightly less reward and should be favored slightly less in the type of scenarios I just mentioned.

It's good to think of options, if possible, that skip heavy decision making. Basically skipping neutral game and going straight to punish. M2K does this when he camps ledge. Despite his top player skill and usual large advantage in neutral game against his opponent, he will often take ledge and see if his opponent will make the grave mistake of getting too close. Because if they do, he can ledgehop punish into grab and start a very linear sheik combo that usually leads to death. The decisions he makes during punishes are brainless compared to his decisions in neutral. Not only is this very efficient (and lame), but it will frustrate your opponent and often cause him to make zoning errors due to his desire to get revenge.

There are a lot of ways to think about this game, but as you know, it's about understanding options and covering them as systematically and optimally as possible.

Gimps are huge. Edgeguarding is underrated. Get them offstage asap.

 

[EPsilon933]

An adult's brain uses 25% of the body's energy. Competitive gaming puts that into high gear. Fighting games keep it on high gear for constant durations because there's always an opponent who could attack you. Timings and situations change rapidly in Smash, even on small actions, so you'll always need to react to new, small things. It's pretty stressful

Practicing techniques alone will help you simply learn how to do them. It will help you do them in actual games against human players, but not perfectly. Practicing alone gives you memory cues on how to do them in your own setting, but in other settings, you won't have the occasions psychologically set yet. You'll need to practice doing them against human players to get used to doing them in these environments. I recommend even forcing techniques you're trying to practice into actual games at the cost of winning/performance. You're playing to learn, not to win a friendly

There's also a matter of familiarity that helps players. Experienced players can do a lot of good stuff automatically because they've been doing them for a long time. It builds more efficient neural pathways for them to execute these actions

So, how has your journey with Smash been? I myself have yet to take a tournament set at this point, but I see my potential. I love this game, it's probably the best game out there in terms of game mechanics, in my opinion.

Also, for the experienced folks out there, what do you recommend to the newbies and intermediates out there? What did you do to advance your skill? What continued the climb after a plateau? What separates your Peach from other "textbook" Peaches?

My journey with Smash has been pretty fun. I met a lot of great people during my 7 years of tournament going

I recommend to anyone to just play the game. It's pretty fun. But I'm a casual, so I don't have much of anything valuable to say about playing to win. But I guess just playing the game can help players improve. They're simply getting more experience. Also, don't follow what others say too heavily. They should do more of their own stuff because it's what they're good at. It's better to improve strengths than to turn weaknesses into (near) strengths

Taunting and down smashing ^.^

 

[0gweSMASH]

You want to become strongly familiar with the concept of zoning, and the risk/reward dynamic involved in decision making.

It's good to think of options, if possible, that skip heavy decision making.

There are a lot of ways to think about this game, but as you know, it's about understanding options and covering them as systematically and optimally as possible.

Gimps are huge. Edgeguarding is underrated. Get them offstage asap.

This is probably my next step in improving my game, personally. My movement still requires a little work, but reacting to my opponents plays will help me learn how to implement all the tech I've been practicing. Very good post, I like this lots.

An adult's brain uses 25% of the body's energy. Competitive gaming puts that into high gear.

Practicing techniques alone will help you simply learn how to do them. It will help you do them in actual games against human players, but not perfectly.

My journey with Smash has been pretty fun. I met a lot of great people during my 7 years of tournament going

I recommend to anyone to just play the game. It's pretty fun. But I'm a casual, so I don't have much of anything valuable to say about playing to win. But I guess just playing the game can help players improve. They're simply getting more experience. Also, don't follow what others say too heavily. They should do more of their own stuff because it's what they're good at. It's better to improve strengths than to turn weaknesses into (near) strengths

Taunting and down smashing ^.^

It's all about the more you play, the better you get.

I like that you outright claim to be a casual, generally in this community being a "filthy casual" is frowned upon, but that's not the case at all. Although this game has a huge learning curve to become "good," this game is just as viable to casually play with others as any other game. Not everyone can intend on becoming the best, as those are huge shoes to fill. Contrary to popular belief, it's a smart idea to just casually play this game and attend tourneys for the sake of meeting new people. Not all losses are salty, and not all rivalries are bitter.

Smash as a spectator is a beautiful thing.