Q&A Smash Ultimate Q&A thread

[Ze Diglett]

What are some good ways to avoid just "pushing buttons," as the good players say, and improve my general mindfulness/awareness while playing?

 

[Pikopiko]

Thanks for everyone's help so far!

I was wondering if anyone had any advice. What is the best way to execute a forward tilt attack? I either perform a forward smash or dash attack and can't seem to get the timing right for a forward tilt. I am using Lucina. I am hoping to not have to remap the buttons on the controller because I like have the separate button for the smash attack.

Any advice?

 

[FireEmblemMain86]

Ok so I need help, and I have tried YouTube, I have tried googling, and now I am desperate enough to make an account real quick and try here. But I need help with the Lucina challenge in adventure mode. Thing is, I have no idea what battle I have yet to win, is I have done them all (or so I thought. I got the True ending and fought everyone I came across. Even went back to ones I had to skip like some of the 4 stars)

Nevermind, I just found out how to get rid of the obstacles

 

[Pyra]

What are some good ways to avoid just "pushing buttons," as the good players say, and improve my general mindfulness/awareness while playing?

This is something I've struggled with in the past and still do whenever I pick the game back up- but it all comes down to practice (I know, I know, that's kind of a not great answer).
But seriously- mindfulness in anything gets better with practice. In order to be able to focus on what your hands are doing and how they make your character react (instead of mashing A and hoping something hits) is to maybe practice mindfulness separate from Smash Brothers.

If you really don't want to do any mindful exercises, you can try and start playing easy CPU matches while working on how attentive you are to your hands.

 

[JiggyNinja]

What are some good ways to avoid just "pushing buttons," as the good players say, and improve my general mindfulness/awareness while playing?

You just have to stop "pushing buttons" and shift your mode of thinking to deciding what attack you want to use, and executing that attack. Practice against weak CPUs first, because this shift will make you play worse at first. You can't practice properly if you feel pressured to win. Don't even worry so much about using the right move for the situation, worry the most about executing the move you decide to use.

So you'll start thinking about things like this "short hop nair, then dash attack, then fair, another fair, f tilt, run off the ledge and dair".

Is that string of attacks actually good to do? I don't know, but that's not important right now. You need to get used to making deliberate decisions and properly executing those decisions. Don't worry yet about how good those decisions are, you need the proper foundation for that first. If you can't even execute your current bad plans properly (or even come up with a plan in the first place), you have no chance of being able to develop and execute good plans.

Thanks for everyone's help so far!

I was wondering if anyone had any advice. What is the best way to execute a forward tilt attack? I either perform a forward smash or dash attack and can't seem to get the timing right for a forward tilt. I am using Lucina. I am hoping to not have to remap the buttons on the controller because I like have the separate button for the smash attack.

Any advice?

If you refuse to switch to tilt stick, practice practice practice practice. Get in vs mode with a low level CPU and wail on it using as many tilts as you can. Stick them in the middle of other strings, like maybe dash attack -> up tilt if they jump over your dash. Or some sh nairs mixed with d tilts for poking. Slowly crank up the difficulty so that you can get used to this input discipline under pressure. My stick movements get a lot faster when I'm under pressure so it's harder to avoid smashing/dashing. That's why I switched to tilt stick.

 

[Legg0]

I've got some questions.

I have experience with plenty of other fighters but new to smash and trying to wrap my head around a few things.

I understand frame data well but I'm trying to understand how frame advantage works in this game compared to other games. I notice I don't see a lot of resources on the +/- of situations but that's probably because there are many variables. But if anyone could try and help me understand a little more that would be much appreciated.

Say a dash attack is blocked.. How can I find out the frame advantage of the situation? Do active frames play a roll in this and will hitting the dash attack late change the frame data?

Say an aerial attack is blocked.. Same questions.. Does jump height and when it hits play a roll? Are blocked jump attacks in the shield or attackers advantage? (As a general rule because I'm sure every attack is different)

I know I can just go test the situations, count frames, and find my punishes but I would like to have a general idea of how the mechanics in this game work.

 

[DelugeFGC]

What are some good ways to avoid just "pushing buttons," as the good players say, and improve my general mindfulness/awareness while playing?

Start paying attention to everything your opponent does and download it mentally. As the match starts (esp with someone you've never played) just go for your safest options with whatever character you use in neutral and just.. watch. You can play optimally and rely on general strategies to get you through a few rounds of neutral and maybe into an advantage state or out of a disadv state.. maybe even take a stock.. or get your stock taken. Through this, think about all the things the person has done and begin to deduce what kind of game they're going for. Are they just going for true / bread and butter combos as follow ups when landing a stray hit in neutral, or are they maybe trying to play in a reactionary way, only extending themselves when YOU make decisions / act? Are they just running to the side of the stage and spamming the B button? If you get to a point where you REALLY feel like you know a player, you can start going for hard-reads to punish bad decisions with moves that you'd otherwise have no business landing.

Once you boil down a player's habits, it becomes very easy to know what you should be doing.. provided you have a good understanding of your character and have gotten a good feel of said character through labbing out time and blood in training mode, preferably with a human being DIing. It's fairly straight-forward to learn what works as a potential option for x, y and z through labbing out stuff in training, but knowing what to do with all of that stuff when in real games playing through neutral is another thing. Learning to read habits and figure a player out plays a big part in knowing WHEN to go in and start trying all that stuff you've spent time grinding in training. Once you start doing this in real matches, you'll get better and better at it.

Other basic stuff would include intimately knowing how to space your moves, and how to be able to get into position via good movement to use certain moves when in certain situations where it's a good idea. For example, on a character like Cloud you have a fat BAir that's quite easy to land, has a hitbox the size of a house and kills pretty well to boot. BAir, obviously comes out behind you, so learning techniques such as the RAR (Reverse Aerial Rush) and getting good at quick turnarounds at rest are crucial to being able to incorporate moves into your play.

It's a mix of being able to read habits and play through neutral, being able to rely on your experience and execution skills once you've won neutral to take stocks, knowing how to use movement and quick thinking to position yourself well and just generally being quick on the draw with your inputs so to speak. Every attack you input should have a clear and defined purpose going in, you should always keep a good reason for doing something.. especially if it's an option that forces more of a commitment out of you.

It's a journey that never ends, really.

 

[Coccinelle]

I am more like a beginner at SSB and was currently working on aerial combos with Falco. When trying to rapidly repeat short hop Upairs I had a weird problem: sometimes my input would result in a Nair instead of Upair. Obviously my input is bad but I don't understand why because I am using the Cstick for tilts (and aerials). I do not understand what (wrong) input with the stick + jump can result in a Nair, since as far as I know, neutral moves can be done with A button only, not with the Cstick.
Iam unsure but that seems to occur when I a buffer my short hop up air "too early" ; this would result in a Nair instead of an Upair.
Is that possible?
I know it is a pretty basic question, any explanation would be welcome.

 

[JiggyNinja]

Any chance you're accidentally fat-fingering the A button when you hop?

 

[DelugeFGC]

You can C-Stick NAir in Ultimate due to the buffering system. That's what it sounds like to me.

C-Stick in Ult is a macro, not a direct input. It's a macro for directional input + A, so when jump + c-stick is hit in quick succession, sometimes the directional input gets ate and it turns into a NAir. Another reason I'm not a big fan of 'fusion' attacks and do most of what I do off of manual short hops.

 

[Coccinelle]

Any chance you're accidentally fat-fingering the A button when you hop?

No, I.am sure of that. What I noticed is that the earlier I do the "up stick"+ jump input, the more likely it will result in a Nair. For this reason I find difficult combo wigh fastly repeated upairs

 

[DelugeFGC]

No, I.am sure of that. What I noticed is that the earlier I do the "up stick"+ jump input, the more likely it will result in a Nair. For this reason I find difficult combo wigh fastly repeated upairs

You're C-Stick NAiring due to the buffer system + C-Stick's status as a macro input. I'm 100% sure of it.

 

[Coccinelle]

You're C-Stick NAiring due to the buffer system + C-Stick's status as a macro input. I'm 100% sure of it.

What can I do to avoid that? Just slowing down the input?

 

[DelugeFGC]

What can I do to avoid that? Just slowing down the input?

Yeah, you're gonna have to learn the timing. If you keep C-Stick NAiring, you're probably relying on 'fusion' aerials which are buffered short hop attacks that come out automatically when inputting jump and an attack at the same time. These will always come out as a short hop, and will always come out rising / at the peak of your jump.. neither are gonna be what you need all the time. I highly recommend getting used to manually short hopping, THEN inputting your attacks. This will help avoid C-Stick NAirs in general. I'm not saying never make sure of fusion buffer attacks, but try to make the majority of your SHFF aerials manual ones.

 

[Coccinelle]

Yeah, you're gonna have to learn the timing. If you keep C-Stick NAiring, you're probably relying on 'fusion' aerials which are buffered short hop attacks that come out automatically when inputting jump and an attack at the same time. These will always come out as a short hop, and will always come out rising / at the peak of your jump.. neither are gonna be what you need all the time. I highly recommend getting used to manually short hopping, THEN inputting your attacks. This will help avoid C-Stick NAirs in general. I'm not saying never make sure of fusion buffer attacks, but try to make the majority of your SHFF aerials manual ones.

I guess you are totally right, thanks. My problem is that I find manual SH so difficult to do! Getting SH aerials by inputing jump+attack as I do is suboptimal but easy.. I will try to improve at manual SH in the future.
Any advice for manual SH? Is there a button that would make the trick easier?

 

[DelugeFGC]

I guess you are totally right, thanks. My problem is that I find manual SH so difficult to do! Getting SH aerials by inputing jump+attack as I do is suboptimal but easy.. I will try to improve at manual SH in the future.
Any advice for manual SH? Is there a button that would make the trick easier?

I use a GCN controller and my primary means of jumping for short hop aerials and other things is Z, the only thing I use X jump for are fusion NAirs on my DThrow combos and such with Falcon.

If you use a GCN, Z jump is great. If you use a Pro, try a bumper or a tripper. I use Z because I can easily slide my index finger off of the button, whilst also having my thumb free to flick the C-Stick or hit A.

 

[Aurane]

This place likely has more attention than a thread I know this question is more appropriate in, but its affecting my smash experience and I can't afford a new controller.

My pro controller's analog stick keeps going either up or left. I tried cleaning it didnt work. Any suggestions?

 

[DelugeFGC]

This place likely has more attention than a thread I know this question is more appropriate in, but its affecting my smash experience and I can't afford a new controller.

My pro controller's analog stick keeps going either up or left. I tried cleaning it didnt work. Any suggestions?

Take it completely apart and clean it. If still, it could be an issue with the stick motor itself or something not easily fixed. I'd recommend getting a new controller ASAP when you can, Gamestop even takes used ones in trade if you have old ones lying around.. anything to get you back up. The USB Pro Controllers (these are low quality, just an FYI) aren't very expensive, neither are the 3rd Party USB GCN clones (these aren't great either outside of the Wireless PowerA which is $50 and it STILL lacks compared to an official GCN con) if you can find them. I recommend going official, though.. even if you have to be down for a bit. 3rd Party stuff is total crap in my experience.

 

[Aurane]

Take it completely apart and clean it. If still, it could be an issue with the stick motor itself or something not easily fixed. I'd recommend getting a new controller ASAP when you can, Gamestop even takes used ones in trade if you have old ones lying around.. anything to get you back up. The USB Pro Controllers (these are low quality, just an FYI) aren't very expensive, neither are the 3rd Party USB GCN clones (these aren't great either outside of the Wireless PowerA which is $50 and it STILL lacks compared to an official GCN con) if you can find them. I recommend going official, though.. even if you have to be down for a bit. 3rd Party stuff is total crap in my experience.

Well. I'll see what I can manage. However, GameStop will not take used controllers. I already know this from past experiences.

 

[DelugeFGC]

Well. I'll see what I can manage. However, GameStop will not take used controllers. I already know this from past experiences.

My man I just got a brand new official GCN controller from a local GS with nothing but used controller trade credit. It's even on their website.

They ABSOLUTELY do. Otherwise they wouldn't sell used controllers.

 

[Aurane]

My man I just got a brand new official GCN controller from a local GS with nothing but used controller trade credit. It's even on their website.

They ABSOLUTELY do. Otherwise they wouldn't sell used controllers.

My man, I tried selling three controllers to them last month and they said they do not take used controllers.

 

[Xelrog]

Don't sell anything to Gamestop. In fact, don't sell anything video game related to any video game retailer, ever. You will never, ever, EVER get your money's worth. Video games degrade in value faster than milk. It is NEVER worth it to sell games.

 

[Glerma]

When will their be rankings for ultimate players under the rankings tab? I was looking for a community agreed tier list on here and the consensus seemed to be 6 months before looking at a tier list just to get a large enough sample pool and through a few patches. Is it the same way for professional players or different, and why?

Don't sell anything to Gamestop. In fact, don't sell anything video game related to any video game retailer, ever. You will never, ever, EVER get your money's worth. Video games degrade in value faster than milk. It is NEVER worth it to sell games.

I would say it is worth selling video game stuff if you do it independently through ebay or something along those lines. Then you get more money than you would of if you sold it to a retailer and the person buying pays less than if they bought said used stuff from a retailer. But that takes more effort so give and take.

Start paying attention to everything your opponent does and download it mentally. As the match starts (esp with someone you've never played) just go for your safest options with whatever character you use in neutral and just.. watch. You can play optimally and rely on general strategies to get you through a few rounds of neutral and maybe into an advantage state or out of a disadv state.. maybe even take a stock.. or get your stock taken. Through this, think about all the things the person has done and begin to deduce what kind of game they're going for. Are they just going for true / bread and butter combos as follow ups when landing a stray hit in neutral, or are they maybe trying to play in a reactionary way, only extending themselves when YOU make decisions / act? Are they just running to the side of the stage and spamming the B button? If you get to a point where you REALLY feel like you know a player, you can start going for hard-reads to punish bad decisions with moves that you'd otherwise have no business landing.

Once you boil down a player's habits, it becomes very easy to know what you should be doing.. provided you have a good understanding of your character and have gotten a good feel of said character through labbing out time and blood in training mode, preferably with a human being DIing. It's fairly straight-forward to learn what works as a potential option for x, y and z through labbing out stuff in training, but knowing what to do with all of that stuff when in real games playing through neutral is another thing. Learning to read habits and figure a player out plays a big part in knowing WHEN to go in and start trying all that stuff you've spent time grinding in training. Once you start doing this in real matches, you'll get better and better at it.

Other basic stuff would include intimately knowing how to space your moves, and how to be able to get into position via good movement to use certain moves when in certain situations where it's a good idea. For example, on a character like Cloud you have a fat BAir that's quite easy to land, has a hitbox the size of a house and kills pretty well to boot. BAir, obviously comes out behind you, so learning techniques such as the RAR (Reverse Aerial Rush) and getting good at quick turnarounds at rest are crucial to being able to incorporate moves into your play.

It's a mix of being able to read habits and play through neutral, being able to rely on your experience and execution skills once you've won neutral to take stocks, knowing how to use movement and quick thinking to position yourself well and just generally being quick on the draw with your inputs so to speak. Every attack you input should have a clear and defined purpose going in, you should always keep a good reason for doing something.. especially if it's an option that forces more of a commitment out of you.

It's a journey that never ends, really.

So I am going to save this and read it when I want to die after getting bodied by an Olimar so fast I did not even see it.

 

[DelugeFGC]

So I am going to save this and read it when I want to die after getting bodied by an Olimar so fast I did not even see it.

I main the Space Cowboy myself (competitively), so if you need any help with the MU let me know.

 

[Glerma]

I main the Space Cowboy myself, so if you need any help with the MU let me know.

Any general tips to and how best to deal with Pikmen would be greatly appreciated!

 

[DelugeFGC]

Any general tips to and how best to deal with Pikmen would be greatly appreciated!

Know what they each do, it gives you a pretty good idea of what he's going for based on Pikmin assortment and ordering. Purples are the heavy hitting, early killing Pikmin that have the ability to create hard knockback out of a Side B Pikmin Throw and have the most HP of all of them (6HP I believe). If you see Olimar readying purples, or you see them in his lineup, know that not only does he have the usual FSmash as an option in neutral, but can now Side B you from the air to knock you back. He can also kill you far earlier than he could otherwise with his aerials / smash attacks, though they have less range than usual.

Reds are general damage dealers that are his bullets to load into FSmash / USmash, aerials and Side B throws for racking damage. If you see Olimar ordering to a red, he's planning on going on the offense or possibly for the kill.. they also have a fire effect. Yellows have an electric effect and extend the hitboxes of his moves, so when he goes for these know he's probably gonna try to either outspace you (Pikmin hitboxes beat pretty much everything I think, so he can do this pretty well), start trying to juggle you or start throwing out retreating aerials and such. Blues power up his throws, if you're at high percents and Olimar has a blue out, stay the hell out of his grab range because he can easily UThrow you (grab range with 3 Pikmin is insane, albeit the laggiest one) for a quick kill. If not at high percents, he can DThrow you for a ton of damage and start popping off aerials on you after. These two (Blue and Yellow) can also be used for general Side B stuff, so be wary of that as it builds damage VERY fast.

Whites have a TON of Side B range and he can stick you with them from very far, though offensively they're less valuable. They rack up a ton of poison damage once clung to you, and they also extend his grab range by a decent amount so take that into account as well. Also take into account he can have two different colors of Pikmin out, and the more Pikmin he has out the worse thing things get. His Up B is at its absolute worst with 3 Pikmin and is very slow (though he can toss Pikmin quickly to fix this) and punishable, though he CAN immediately act out of his recovery when cancelled ala Snake's Up B so be careful trying to contest it. His grab, while it gets more range with more Pikmin, also gains way more endlag and is super punishable if he whiffs.

He can also Down B to break out of your combos earlier than normal and the move comes out EXTREMELY early frame-wise, but there's not much you can do to stop it, just be aware of it. Moves like DTilt have deceptive range and can be a threat in neutral even when he has no Pikmin, and moves such as UTilt and NAir can actually start combos / juggles in some MU's / situations. FTilt can kill at high %'s. His jab is very fast and will usually beat anything you try to throw out due to this if in CQC range, though it has poor range. FSmash and USmash are the biggest problems, though they're currently bugged and do not build % when charging so keep that in mind for now as well. USmash is safe on and usually also out of shield in a ton of situations, reaches platforms, can catch landings and also comes out fast enough to beat out a ton of other moves in CQC range. If you're at high percent's and he hits you with a Purple/Red USmash, that's your stock most of the time.. and that's VERY easy to have happen due to that move's speed and hitbox.

FSmash is a nightmare and it makes approaching him on the ground a bad idea most of the time unless you play a fast character that can REALLY get in quick or at least rely on projectiles and/or large disjoints to break through Pikmin walls (which you also need to take into account, his Pikmin protect him from a LOT when trying to contest his moves) if you can. His aerials are basically lagless and have some pretty good disjointed hitboxes on them, DAir is also a pretty powerful meteor.. he can also combo the hell out of you out of a variety of punishes / setups and has VERY good juggle ability.

All that said.. he has a pretty meh disadvantage state. It's not the worst, he's pretty floaty, lives deceptively long for his size and has enough tricks up his sleeve and room for smart plays to reset neutral in a lot of situations.. but he's almost always gonna eat at least a few attacks before that happens. In some MU's, he can REALLY have a hard time here when he loses neutral. Knowing this, make damned sure you capitalize HARD on every hit, punish, grab, read or etc you land in neutral on Olimar, because he WILL suffer for it most of the time.

That's all the general basics of Olimar I can get into without filling the post with an even bigger mess of a wall of text, I've been playing him in competitive settings for a little bit of time now (switched out from solo maining Captain Falcon, who I had used for a while prior competitively, still do as a dual-main but he's not my primary anymore) and I can go into more MU related specifics if you want to DM me about it. He's a character with an extremely strong neutral and advantage state, he's also fairly good at edge guarding and he can also ledge trap / 2 frame well with moves like DSmash. He's definitely a scary little top tier dude, but he's not invincible and he does tend to suffer pretty hard at times when his player makes mistakes. Know what his options are, respect them and make sure you capitalize on EVERYTHING you get in on him, HARD.

General Olimar MU tips:

Grounded approaches are almost always a bad idea.

Pikmin hitboxes beat everything, do your best to avoid contesting them unless you can out-and-out outspace them with your own disjoints or something.

He has a bad disadvantage state that he can suffer pretty hard in, so capitalize on all your neutral wins as hard as you can.

He can kill you earlier than you can kill him in a lot of MU's, for a lighter character.. with good DI he lives deceptively long due to his recovery which is amazing when has tosses most / all of his Pikmin and can be cancelled / acted out of.

He has more range than you in a vast majority of MU's, the best smash attacks in the game that are all extremely fast with good range / knockback and very good aerials alongside decent tilts and an alright jab.

He can break out of combos sooner than most due to Down B and how floaty he is.

He has way more options than most characters, always remember this.

Don't try to edge guard him, it's usually a bad idea, especially if he has a purple or a yellow loaded on him. Only do so if you have massive disjointed hitboxes or projectiles of your own.

 

[Coccinelle]

How to angle Wolf up and side B? It remains unclear to me why, I get it sometimes but not reliably/constantly.

 

[DelugeFGC]

How to angle Wolf up and side B? It remains unclear to me why, I get it sometimes but not reliably/constantly.

The same way you B reverse any input, as SOON as you input B + directional input, move the L-Stick in the direction you want it to go in and hold it there. I'm not sure if you can angle Side B, though.. and if you can it's gonna be something TINY in terms of difference made.

 

[Pikopiko]

Newbie question: I have my controller set so that my C stick is used for tilt attacks. So I am utilizing the A button + direction for Smash attacks. But I am wondering, with this configuration, how do you charge your smash attack? Is there a way to do this? Thanks for any advice.

 

[Xelrog]

Newbie question: I have my controller set so that my C stick is used for tilt attacks. So I am utilizing the A button + direction for Smash attacks. But I am wondering, with this configuration, how do you charge your smash attack? Is there a way to do this? Thanks for any advice.

You hold the A button down.

 

[MetroLSD]

How do i select costum stages in Smash mode? I've made 4 stages so far yet i don't see them on the stage select screen.

 

[Pikopiko]

You hold the A button down.

Perfect! Thank you VERY much!

 

[Xelrog]

How do i select costum stages in Smash mode? I've made 4 stages so far yet i don't see them on the stage select screen.

There's a tab on top of the stage select. Move off the "normal" one and click "custom."

 

[Luigi Linguine]

To those of you who got banned from Ultimate's Shared Content feature, can you still browse the platform or are you completely exiled from entering at all? Can you even get perma-banned in the first place or is it only temporary? I'd like to know this for future reference, lol.

 

[Cyn]

I’ll merge it with the Q&A section.

 

[Vincey_Boi]

How would you perfectly play Pit & Pichu in doubles and what 2v1 combos can be started between the 2 characters? Thanks

 

[Ze Diglett]

This probably won't get any attention, but **** it, it's worth a shot.

I've been having a downright awful time with this game lately. Every time I've played it in recent memory, I've come out of it a miserable, salty mess. It just feels really sloppy to play, and while I know in theory what I need to do to win, it all goes blank when I pick up the controller and I don't really know what I'm doing in matches. I'm a firm believer that games should always be played for fun above all else (unless you're playing professionally or whatever, which I most certainly am not) and if you're not having fun with a game, then you shouldn't play, yet for some reason, I keep coming back to this game that continuously makes me unhappy. Playing with randoms makes me anxious at best and ungodly frustrated at worst, and even when I'm playing with friends (which is basically the only time I do play nowadays), I'm rarely happy with the game. No other game stresses me out anywhere near this consistently; it only happens with Smash. It's literally gotten to the point where my friends are sick of my **** and I've limited myself to playing against CPUs all the time since it's the only aspect of the game that doesn't make me salty. (Yes, it is exactly as pathetic as it sounds.) As far as I can tell, it's a combination of nostalgia (my history with Smash goes back to my elementary school days, and I want to love it like I did back then), ongoing development (DLC and patches make the game an ever-changing beast), and sunk cost fallacy holding me back from dropping the game cold turkey, but I know that playing the game is unhealthy for me at this point. I guess my questions are, has anyone else been through a situation like this, is there any way for me to stop being so salty and have fun with the game again, and if not, what are some ways to keep me from compulsively coming back to the game? (Without destroying my copy, preferably - I'd like to at least keep the option to play the game open on the off-chance any of my most wanted get announced.)

Sorry for the wall of text, but I'm really stuck with this game and am desperate for some answers.

 

[Luigi Linguine]

This probably won't get any attention, but **** it, it's worth a shot.

I've been having a downright awful time with this game lately. Every time I've played it in recent memory, I've come out of it a miserable, salty mess. It just feels really sloppy to play, and while I know in theory what I need to do to win, it all goes blank when I pick up the controller and I don't really know what I'm doing in matches. I'm a firm believer that games should always be played for fun above all else (unless you're playing professionally or whatever, which I most certainly am not) and if you're not having fun with a game, then you shouldn't play, yet for some reason, I keep coming back to this game that continuously makes me unhappy. Playing with randoms makes me anxious at best and ungodly frustrated at worst, and even when I'm playing with friends (which is basically the only time I do play nowadays), I'm rarely happy with the game. No other game stresses me out anywhere near this consistently; it only happens with Smash. It's literally gotten to the point where my friends are sick of my **** and I've limited myself to playing against CPUs all the time since it's the only aspect of the game that doesn't make me salty. (Yes, it is exactly as pathetic as it sounds.) As far as I can tell, it's a combination of nostalgia (my history with Smash goes back to my elementary school days, and I want to love it like I did back then), ongoing development (DLC and patches make the game an ever-changing beast), and sunk cost fallacy holding me back from dropping the game cold turkey, but I know that playing the game is unhealthy for me at this point. I guess my questions are, has anyone else been through a situation like this, is there any way for me to stop being so salty and have fun with the game again, and if not, what are some ways to keep me from compulsively coming back to the game? (Without destroying my copy, preferably - I'd like to at least keep the option to play the game open on the off-chance any of my most wanted get announced.)

Sorry for the wall of text, but I'm really stuck with this game and am desperate for some answers.

From what I could gather from your post, it seems like you just need to work a lot on your mentality. I don't know exactly what aspects of the game make you salty during play, but I assume it's mostly caused by losing neutral for an extended period of time and/or inputting unintended actions, as those are frequently the two most common contributors towards saltiness bar losing the match itself. There are a number of different things that you could try to improve your mentality so that you can enjoy the game more.

For example, when you said that it all goes blank when you pick up the controller, it sounded like you have a serious "auto-pilot" issue. To combat this, try paying much more attention to what your opponent is doing rather than what you're doing, and actively take mental notes on everything that they do, even say it out loud if you have to. This doesn't mean you have to remember their actions for the entirety of the match, but if you just "say" it to yourself as an observation, your mind should slowly drop its tendency to auto-pilot and become more alert of the game. Another thing you could do is that if you're just a stressed person in general, you could try chamomile tea to calm yourself down before a match and put yourself in an easier state of mind. The last thing that I could think of at the moment is that if you do struggle with unintended inputs like I mentioned before, your controller might actually be to blame. Not to encourage johning or anything, but the Switch pro controller and joycons are pretty notorious for gimping like crazy after extensive use. The only controller that is 100% reliable in my experience is the GameCube controller, so try that out if you feel the need.

Beyond those three things that I listed, the biggest step that you can take to rid yourself of your saltiness is to look at the game from an entirely different perspective where you aren't concerned whether you win or lose and simply enjoy your matches from moment to moment. That mindset can only be attained through personal growth and self-betterment; you have to truly be willing to lose if you want to have fun.

Now, this whole outlook of mine was admittedly dependent on a lot of assumptions on my part, so if I was off on anything, feel free to go into more detail about what precisely angers you about the game and I will likewise go into more detail about what you can do about it.

 

[JiggyNinja]

Does the Black Hole item have some sort of limit to how long you can hold onto it? It tried to use it in the Shine Sprite Spirit Battle a couple times and was sure I held onto it past the opening invincibility Rosalina gets, but it's never there when I go to throw it. It makes no sense. Does it just disappear if you hold onto it for long enough? I didn't see it get knocked out of my hand.

EDIT: Nevermind. On more careful review of my recording, I saw that it disappeared (RIGHT FROM MY HAND!!) when she used her Final Smash. What a load of garbage. Why does the Final Smash erase my held item?

 

[Coccinelle]

When I started to play ssb a couple of miontgs ago I lost so many games online before winning a few ones and my GSP is very low. Although still not great, I am much better now and would be curious to know what could be my GSP if I restarted my GSP from scratch. I tried to erase my data and had to unlock all characters again but my GSP is still there... My question is: is it possible to reset my GSP?