ok so, i finally have some time to sit and recall my experience... and believe me, it was definitely an experience... at the start of the day, it was a pretty standard tournament, until we realized that there were only around 30 people total for doubles... playing friendlies, we were looking around and every single person there was a solid player... pastaboy, diddy, showed up later, as doubles was finishing and I heard him say "wow, this is going to be intense"... i'd been feeling that since i walked through the door
I won't recount any things in particular, but I would like to summarize what I learned, partly for you guys, but to also help me isolate exactly what it is that I'm deciding to take out of this...
matchup experience is KEY... knowledge of how an opponents moves work, work together, and work against your moves, is crucial... if there's ever a situation where you think to yourself "huh, I didn't know xxxxx would happen" then you've already lost...
a loose extension // philosophical gameplay of this would be to keep in mind zones of control... recently I've been thinking more in this way and I've noticed an improvement in my play... i dunno how many of you saw this picture, but someone overlayed all of pictochat's hazards ontop of each other and came up with a "safe zone"... ever since then, I've been trying to apply that concept to characters... mentally mapping all their attacks at once... by doing this for both characters, if you can keep more of your options open and viable, while limiting theirs (and to an extent limiting their ability to move into zones where they can balance this or move so they have more options) an opponent becomes predictable, frustrated, and in essence will lose the match...
the concept of "prediction"... in the past, I've stated that I find you guys pretty predictable overall... i actually asked cam/bryant how often they thought I was predictable and they said about 50% of the time... this is in _great_ contrast to what I know randy would say, where the match ends and neither of us have been surprised by any of the other's moves all game lol... this again is loosely tied in to match experience (because you must have thorough knowledge of an opponents options for this) but it's a lot like poker... when someone in poker has a good hand, there are tells... a twitch in the eye, a smirk, getting chatty, shutting up... something that they do sub-consciously... for smash, it's watching the spacing of the moves... as with poker players, if you can eliminate your tells (or make them less noticeable) you will get better... if you know that you are spacing for one move, so does your opponent... if you start using the same spacing for multiple moves, there's no way the opponent can read you... a _lot_ of what we call "prediction" is just the ability to read larger patterns in play which give away our intentions
having one, two, or even three "bags of tricks" will never be enough to win... good players will be caught once, and that's that... this is semi against what sirlin says about having a move, and then a counter to the counter... in brawl, there are too many options to look at it that narrowly, and too often one move, used in a way you hadn't thought of, will counter all of your tricks, and then you're boned... the key is to watch and learn and come up with strategies on the fly.. know your character, know theirs, and know when one move you have beats everything they have, and then strike... KingAce is very good at this (he's improved a lot... a lot) and would just shield until I moved in a way that he had some disjoint attack that would beat anything I had, or if I didn't he'd get close, pressure, and the tornado... it was solid, our games weren't close, i lost big...
recover at all costs... sure, trying to get back onto the ledge without getting hit is important, but if there's a way to get safely back onto the ledge and take 30%, I'd rather do that than put myself in a 50/50 situation where I'll take 0% or die... this is of course an excessive example but it demonstrates my point... why would ally not even attempt to get back onto the stage, and then back off, C4, and explode himself under the level 3x (teching off the bottom of BF 2x) to cross under and get back on the stage, ending up at ~190%?... because he would have died from a proper ledge guard otherwise... he didn't die after that...
SDI is good, but DI is better... any "west coast" moment is basically unacceptable, and will cost you the match... period... and this includes "Infzy DI"... if you don't fast-fall your best/shortest aerial, you're failing at DI... can't really say much more on this...
edge guarding... put simply, we all suck at it and do it wrong... I can't count the number of times my opponent got off the ledge just fine, while I found myself, as rob, struggling to get back... they either totally committed to a fight off the edge (metaknight) or stayed back and edge pressured, keeping stage control... basically, those are the _only_ two options... too many of us are waiting to take the ledge away from our opponent... that scenario didn't come up once against anyone (where I was on the stage... i gimped brose with it, but I was off the ledge too beforehand)...
on the question of tiers... yes, they exist, and it's painfully obvious... this isn't to say that everyone should drop their characters for MK now though... it's completely possible to come out of nowhere and beat a top tiered character being played by a relatively good player... unfortunately, the ONLY way to win against a top player would be to also be a top player, with crazy mindgames (see previous part on spacing for multiple options), because a top player will have the matchup experience needed to make the match incredibly difficult for you... i guess in the end, tiers are for people who want to win... low tiers are for people who love to beat people with a low tiered character... that is unfortunately
my conclusion
(it's more optimistic than it sounds, I can't explain this one right with words)
anyways, this concludes my wall of text... I hope I've given you guys food for thought, and I said this to randy on msn but I figured I should add it here too... I love the community the way it is, and I love hanging out with this group of people, but I'm going to do whatever I can to get better now, and if people want to follow me, I hope they will be able to continue to enjoy the game and have fun like I've been doing... if not, that's totally up to you and i'm fine with that, I just hope you don't think of me too badly for some of the things I may be doing lol
