Elyssa Xey Hexen
Broken!
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2008
- Messages
- 19,345
Foreword (you know not forward)
After observing a variety of conversations and other threads and personal experience, I have come to the conclusion that it is very important to focus on mentality.
By mentality, I am referring to many things. But I will get to that in a bit. Your eyes and ears pick-up signals, then your fingers execute an action. Either your body can skip conscious thought and purely react and rely on muscle memory, or you can direct your actions consciously.
Through sheer repetition, you can become a rather competent player. The moment someone attacks your shield with a move, your body knows how to punish it. This does have limitations. Your actions and reactions in this case become habits. Your opponent is a thinking being and can adjust to this. He can try to trick your body into making a reaction such as properly spacing an attack on shield and you miss a grab leaving yourself vulnerable.
Many of us I feel practice and practice to only build up reactions and muscle memory and completely neglect the mental aspect of game play. Mentality comes with time, but there must certainly be ways in which we can actively train it and abuse it to make us better players.
Mentality Defined(sort of)
Now, what do I mean by mentality? In the broadest sense, I mean anything with which you can use your brain to affect the match; mainly in decision making. As you should be able to tell, this should include a large list of things. My mind can play an active role in deciding: what punishes to use, what particular sequence of moves to use next, what I observe about the match, what basic strategy I focus on, and many other things. Our emotions are easily another factor we have to consider.
Problem ??
The problem I feel many of us have probably have is "What should I be doing?" Snake is a character that has tools at his disposal, but he is no Meta Knight who can throw out moves willy-nilly and be safe. Every time we had a match-up discussion, its always "camp and space", or "ftilt and use nade". None of us should be able to use Ftilt and nades without any regard to how and when we use them. Many factors make it more complex at when and how to use a move.
Each move Snake has its list of strengths and weaknesses and we need to somehow combine the knowledge of our character, the opposing character, the stage, our opponent, ourselves, and all the random things that might change as the fight goes on.
Solution (not 42)
But, how can we go about assessing all of these factors? I believe we have to actively use our minds and think about a scenario one at a time. We need to consider as much as we can and come to some conclusion about either a decision or course of action. Afterwards, we put theory to practice and test out our path of action. Then, you reassess the same situation with your new knowledge. If it works, continue to practice it until your body will start to do the muscle memory for you. Then, you can move onto another problem.
In a simplified format,
1) Theorize
2) Test
3) Evaluate
Repeat until solution found
4) Practice until muscle memory.
With this as a template, we need to be more specific. However, all possible things to consider in a match is really, really, large probably infinite.
Here is a quick list of all the things I have thought up:
-How do you deal with emotions in a match?
-How do you recognize when your habits are getting you into trouble?
-I am in a set for only three matches; How can I quickly figure out their habits?
-What should I be doing in the neutral position against X character?
-What are my recovery options?
-What should I do between stocks?
-What do I do against someone: in the air, on a platform, offstage?
-What do I do when caught in X sequence of attacks?
-Might there be other sports perhaps which are analogous to playing smash and help me out?
-Are there physics factors like sleep, food, drink, toxins which effect how I play the game?
Epilogue(Times New Roman Edition)
With all of this said, I think it would be beneficial for all of us to pick-out some scenario and analyze it. Pool our knowledge to gather of all our experiences and figure out something.
As quick conversation starter, How do you deal with your emotions?
For myself, I have noticed I have a couple of problems with being nervous at tournaments or getting cocky. Moments before a match my heart pace quickens quite a lot and it feels difficult to execute moves. Not entirely sure how to calm down. I have been considering thinking to myself over and over again something like, "calm down, calm down, calm down..." or taking deep breaths. It seems to work momentarily, but nothing long term.
Another issue is getting cocky. There is someone I am facing who I feel should be worse than me and I find out its a close match and start getting rather aggressive and I lose all patience. I believe a solution is to never get into that feeling that I am better than my opponent ever. Instead of thinking about how I should be winning right now, I need to focus on a few quick thoughts to myself "be patient" or think about something constructive for the match in order to deceive myself out of my destructive way of thinking.
After observing a variety of conversations and other threads and personal experience, I have come to the conclusion that it is very important to focus on mentality.
By mentality, I am referring to many things. But I will get to that in a bit. Your eyes and ears pick-up signals, then your fingers execute an action. Either your body can skip conscious thought and purely react and rely on muscle memory, or you can direct your actions consciously.
Through sheer repetition, you can become a rather competent player. The moment someone attacks your shield with a move, your body knows how to punish it. This does have limitations. Your actions and reactions in this case become habits. Your opponent is a thinking being and can adjust to this. He can try to trick your body into making a reaction such as properly spacing an attack on shield and you miss a grab leaving yourself vulnerable.
Many of us I feel practice and practice to only build up reactions and muscle memory and completely neglect the mental aspect of game play. Mentality comes with time, but there must certainly be ways in which we can actively train it and abuse it to make us better players.
Mentality Defined(sort of)
Now, what do I mean by mentality? In the broadest sense, I mean anything with which you can use your brain to affect the match; mainly in decision making. As you should be able to tell, this should include a large list of things. My mind can play an active role in deciding: what punishes to use, what particular sequence of moves to use next, what I observe about the match, what basic strategy I focus on, and many other things. Our emotions are easily another factor we have to consider.
Problem ??
The problem I feel many of us have probably have is "What should I be doing?" Snake is a character that has tools at his disposal, but he is no Meta Knight who can throw out moves willy-nilly and be safe. Every time we had a match-up discussion, its always "camp and space", or "ftilt and use nade". None of us should be able to use Ftilt and nades without any regard to how and when we use them. Many factors make it more complex at when and how to use a move.
Each move Snake has its list of strengths and weaknesses and we need to somehow combine the knowledge of our character, the opposing character, the stage, our opponent, ourselves, and all the random things that might change as the fight goes on.
Solution (not 42)
But, how can we go about assessing all of these factors? I believe we have to actively use our minds and think about a scenario one at a time. We need to consider as much as we can and come to some conclusion about either a decision or course of action. Afterwards, we put theory to practice and test out our path of action. Then, you reassess the same situation with your new knowledge. If it works, continue to practice it until your body will start to do the muscle memory for you. Then, you can move onto another problem.
In a simplified format,
1) Theorize
2) Test
3) Evaluate
Repeat until solution found
4) Practice until muscle memory.
With this as a template, we need to be more specific. However, all possible things to consider in a match is really, really, large probably infinite.
Here is a quick list of all the things I have thought up:
-How do you deal with emotions in a match?
-How do you recognize when your habits are getting you into trouble?
-I am in a set for only three matches; How can I quickly figure out their habits?
-What should I be doing in the neutral position against X character?
-What are my recovery options?
-What should I do between stocks?
-What do I do against someone: in the air, on a platform, offstage?
-What do I do when caught in X sequence of attacks?
-Might there be other sports perhaps which are analogous to playing smash and help me out?
-Are there physics factors like sleep, food, drink, toxins which effect how I play the game?
Epilogue(Times New Roman Edition)
With all of this said, I think it would be beneficial for all of us to pick-out some scenario and analyze it. Pool our knowledge to gather of all our experiences and figure out something.
As quick conversation starter, How do you deal with your emotions?
For myself, I have noticed I have a couple of problems with being nervous at tournaments or getting cocky. Moments before a match my heart pace quickens quite a lot and it feels difficult to execute moves. Not entirely sure how to calm down. I have been considering thinking to myself over and over again something like, "calm down, calm down, calm down..." or taking deep breaths. It seems to work momentarily, but nothing long term.
Another issue is getting cocky. There is someone I am facing who I feel should be worse than me and I find out its a close match and start getting rather aggressive and I lose all patience. I believe a solution is to never get into that feeling that I am better than my opponent ever. Instead of thinking about how I should be winning right now, I need to focus on a few quick thoughts to myself "be patient" or think about something constructive for the match in order to deceive myself out of my destructive way of thinking.
