I'm just quoting this whole thing. I know you started by saying you don't know much about Melee, but I'm going to tell you again: You don't know much about Melee.
Different players have different playstyles. I play CF and my strat is to knee repeatedly. There is only one other player who plays similarly, and that's G-Reg, but he does way more things that I never do. Some people only DD grab, some people start combos from aerials, some people run away with CF's superior speed and just poke until a simple throw>knee will kill. I have a friend whose strategy is to sit somewhere with CF and try to mindgame people to roll or otherwise walk right into his smash attack. There is a lot of variety in the ways people play. Falcos are interesting because they seem to have different playstyles by region. NJ Falcos laser spam better and faster than any other group of Falco players in the world. Forward encouraged Falco comboing to be the core of gameplay, an extreme example being Reik, who will 0-death you if he hits you. A local player named Bass will simply laser repeatedly and punish approaches with reverse utilt, another older player combos out of fB consistently.
All of these are just silly examples. You are saying there is one overarching strategy. My point after all this is that there are many effective strategies. Certain strats counter other strats, and some players cannot change their strategy mid-set and win vs. a player who counters their style.
This is because Melee is an old game and certain players are set in the strats they have been using for months/years. You won't find this in Brawl because strats are at absolute most 1.5 months old.
False. A CF player needs to have extreme knowledge of the other character, technical ability, and reaction speed to play ultra-aggressive all the time and win. Hax is the only one I know to be able to do this. Darkrain can do anything.
I love this about Melee. Only 2 people in the world (to my knowledge, probz. Mach Dash and others too) can rush all the time and win vs. the best competition the Melee world has to offer. Other players can still win, they just rely on other strategies.
False. Since SHL is so overused most seasoned Melee players have learned to get around it to the point where it can be ignored. Some players, especially low-tier users, however, can be simply stopped by SHL. Not all characters can deal with it well.
Jiggly's wall of pain is what I would argue is the best strategy at this point for almost all characters in Brawl. Their floatiness and air controll allows them to jump in, poke, and retreat. Effectively camping over and over.
I argue that this is because bread and butter tactics have yet to be established. We think we know the best strats for a given situation, but there is no way to know all the gimps possible in every given matchup in a game with 35+ characters. Everything will equilibrate, and I think simple camping strategies will dominate the competitive world.
Melee involves very complex, very different strategies with lots of characters. Some are limited to one, i.e. DK who camps monkey punches and cargo uthrow>uair combos. Most low tier characters have to camp and play gay in order to win, but high tier characters have amazing amounts of individual personality and flair.
I think you misunderstood me a bit.
I know that there are several really effective ways to approach with characters, I admitted that. I guess I shouldn't have said an ultra-aggressive Falcon was the best way to play with Falcon, but that was supposedly within the context of how I play Melee. I'm very well aware that many other people play very differently with other Falcons (I've been very interested in the Melee Falcon for a while, so I've gone to a few tournaments and seen a lot of online vids just to watch and learn), and it's dumb to assume to this doesn't apply to other characters as well.
What I meant, though, is that Falcon, despite being absurdly versatile, can stick to one overarching strategy and ultimately have it win. It doesn't necessarily matter that there are many different kinds of overarching strategies to choose from, ultimately one works.
Okay, let's take your knee-spamming strategy for one (which I personally find isn't very effective, but hey, that's me, this is you). Even if your opponent is Samus and is playing an excellent projectile/grapple game to keep you away, sticking to the knee strategy will still either work or not work because it's going to be moderately effective anyway. Taking my own strategy of being ultra-aggressive, if there is a Falco who's also being very turtley, I'm not necessarily going to change my game because I know my strategy still applies to this situation anyway.
And like I said before, don't get me wrong. I know that, especially with Falcon, it's quite important to understand what your opponent is doing, and this may affective your overarching strategy. But, once you chosen an overarching strategy, it tends not to change.
The flexibility here for Melee, I think, is that there are many different overarching strategies you can choose with a character. I think this eventually determines style, which is why there can be a match with two Falcons/Falcos/Foxes what have you and they could look completely different based on what their users have grown to use. But they won't necessarily have to change their styles/overarching strategies mid-game, because they know it's worked before and, if they do it correctly now and more effectively and precisely than the opponent, it'll work again.
In Brawl, however, I've, personally, found that it's
impossible to stick to one over-arching strategy
in one game, especially against certain characters. I've already mentioned Wolf and Diddy's banana games. But strategy change-ups are also required with lots of other characters like Pokemon Trainer, another R.O.B., Toon Link, etc.
Let me take them one by one:
Pokemon Trainer, by virtue of being three characters in one, needs three different strategies whenever there is a change. Often, it's necessary to use the one you're currently using, even if you've been forced into a switch due to a stock loss. This is primarily due to the massive lag changing Pokemon inquires, which can be easily followed up with a charged f-smash by an opponent who knows a lick of what he's doing.
The overarching strategies for each of these characters are obvious, but even within each of these guys there can be change-ups mid-game. For instance, Squirtle is the speed character, but he can do well either spamming aerials one after the other or approaching quickly on the ground with Withdraw, etc. Ivysaur and Charizard, I've found, can both be either very aggressive with effective results or very turtley with slower but still effective results.
In either of these situations, Wolf needs to try a different strategy. Wolf has loads of priority over Squirtle, so if Squirtle decides to approach from the air Wolf is in good shape. However, if Squirtle is rushing in and spamming u-tilts and u-smashes effectively, Wolf is in trouble. This requires him to take advantage of his f-smash, which has massive priority, speed, and the first jab of which, if the second doesn't connect, may induce a trip which leads to an opening and a combo.
Like I've said before, R.O.B. can either be a projectile/turtle beast or very aggressive aerial/dashing attacker. I've found that, against a turtling/projectiling R.O.B., there are two very good ways of dealing with him. The first one is obvious, in that approaching with a few blaster shots and an f-smash should handle the problem (the blaster shots wear down the shield a bit while the f-smash breaks through the shield). The second way, by turtling yourself, is more interesting because it forces the R.O.B. player to change his strategy as well. Quite frankly, Wolf is a better turtler than R.O.N., so if R.O.B. is turtling projectiles, Wolf could lay back all day near the ledge and shine/blaster his way into comfort. Usually, this goads the R.O.B. player into frustration and forces him to attack, upon which Wolf can then switch back to an attacking strategy.
Toon Link is the same principle, except that his aerial game is better than R.O.B.'s and that his projectile are not as effective at spamming. Nevertheless, a similar style of change-up for Wolf used with R.O.B. can also be applied here depending on what Toon Link is doing.
I'm not saying that Melee can't have change-ups of overarching strategy mid-game. I've most certainly seen it happen, and sometimes it works really well (a particular video I watched of HugS comes into mind...). But I'm saying that it's not really necessary, because I've personally kept using the strategy in games and it's eventually worked because it's effective enough to work consistently. On the other hand, in Brawl, I've found it next to impossible to do this because of all the various forced change-ups. It's actually quite invigorating.
P.S. Wiseguy: About the Smashball thing, I can tell you for certain that where the smashball spawns, deeeefinitely impacts who is going to get it. I can't tell you how many times I've had a smashball appear above me when I was R.O.B. and all it took was a f-air and a u-air to unleash Diffusion Beam hell.
P.P.S. Koga: It's the Havok physics engine. I was excited because it was also the engine used as the basis for the Source engine, but then it turned out that it was to make crates roll around like crazy.
