*Deep Breath*
I have read all 60+ pages of this thread, and there were some great points made, and some points that failed. Hypnotist, the tone of your initial post def. hurt some of the intelligent talk that could spark in this thread. Even though some manage to peek through the crap, you didn't really get the thread off on the right foot IMO.
Here is my personal stance: I am a casual smasher. Not because I don't care about winning, but because, for the longest I simply didn't know about winning on the highest level in smash. I have owned Melee since launch, and I played it, and played it, and played it, and bought a new disc when my first one got scratched just to play it some more. I think that a lot of people, particularly of the competitive crowd seem to have this notion that they have more dedication/love/passion for the game. I am full-blooded evidence to the contrary. I have given years of my life to this game, and the saddest thing is, to me, it almost seems like I hardly got anything out of it.
I never knew, nor heard of the competitive smash scene until a little more than a year ago. Until then, all I knew was playing my brother, one of his friends, and maybe two or three instances where someone would call me out, and I would proceed to beat them. Coming to college, however, was a huge shock, as I got rolled by many people. I wasn't an absolute n00b, but my lack of knowledge/experience didn't exactly help me. It was then that I started periodically looking on the internetz for these mysterious "Advanced Techniques" that I had heard about. That eventually lead me here, which was a blessing and a curse.
SWF has been the greatest source of information I could ever hope for when it comes to Smash. However, it has all but killed my desire to be truly competitive mostly due to two things:
1. I mostly lurk without posting on here (as you can tell by my post count), so I have read many threads about many different topics, by many different posters. However, the ones that always stood out were the flame wars about casuals vs. competitive. I'm gonna be honest, I never saw much difference in which side the flames came from. At most, the casuals seemed to be more of the horrible grammar ******* spamming threads, although it could have been the fools from the 'Chans during their attack on DylanT.
Either way, I grew absolutely disgusted at an argument that I truly considered pointless. Sure I have 2-4 friends who think C-sticking/Edgehogging is cheap, but I do it anyway, and say "Get over it". My point is that I have never seen a fanbase divided so deep at it's very core. I think that in itself is part of the reason that Smash lacks in respect compared to the more established games. Threads like this one only draw out the truly ignorant from both sides, and those who are sensible are quickly drowned out. In anything area of life, the extremists get more attention and are more memorable than the rational. That's why I don't like evironmentalists, animal rights groups, and feminists, but that's a story for another time (If I didn't have to jump through fifteen different hoops to get on the Debate Forum, I would do it)
I personally hate the "well if you would just try our way, you would like it better" logic from all the competitive side of the argument. Simply just doing it your way isn't going to magically stop the argument. Hell, you bash the ignorant casuals who tell you to use items and such, I mean wtf?
And the casuals can help themselves by not acting like they can take on the competitives in a match. The fact is, you will LOSE, probably BADLY, and if you don't, you're either an anomalous exception to the rule, or you should prolly try out a tourney after all, you might make some money, and that would be worth doing without certain items, etc for a day.
2. It just seems that there's really nothing left to do in Melee if you're not already established. For someone like me, who's all but on the outside looking in of the competitive scene, by the time I get myself right, Brawl will be out, and I'll be missing out on that too. Hell, I can't even pick a main in Melee. I've gone from C. Falcon to Roy to Samus to Doc to G&W to Falco to Ganon to Peach to Marth...and I suck with Marth! I don't know how to edgehop, attack out of a wavedash, or even wavedash consistently...it just doesn't really seem worth it at this point. I figure that I'll just start clean in Brawl and then see about getting to some tourneys, or even tourney good for that matter.
In the end, both sides seem to have their head up their ***** for the most part. Of course there are some rational people, but from what I have experienced, the former is more true.
Both sides need to realize a few things:
1. There are casuals (like me) who have all the respect in the world for competitive players, but prolly can't, or are working on getting to that level. Of these people, we don't like to be lumped in as one group of *******es with the disrespectful ones.
2. There are competitives who have no problem with casuals, and what they do, but just don't want to (and shouldn't) have to defend the way they play all the f'ing time.
3. It's 4:30 in the morning, and I decided to go on a rant about how frustrated I am at how I can't do hardly any freaking AT's and dressed it up as being on topic
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