Spreading Skill Gaps between friends?

[Mithost]

Hi there.

My friends come over to my house every couple of days to play Project M. Until a few days ago, we were pretty much even. Over the past few days however, I've developed my skills considerably, picking up ZSS and getting much better across the board with my regular characters. Matches are starting to be hopeless from the character selection screen for my friends and it's not a fun experience, especially when the goal of playing the game is generally to improve. My friends would know if I just kept jumping to my bad characters or sandbagging, but I don't want to keep playing so many skewed matches with my mains. It would insult them either way.

I can't just tell them to "get better", because they are trying to. They are practicing their mains more than I am, yet the little progress that is made gets pushed back when I catch onto their new tricks and change accordingly. What should I do? Have you guys ever had this happen to you? What did/would you do?

 

[Translucent]

Do they have their tech skill as high as they could? That would be one thing to practice, otherwise have them keep playing against you and see if they can figure out your patterns, or try playing games using certain patterns to see if they can pick up on it.

 

[CyberZixx]

Why do you think you improved so much in such a short time?

 

[Mithost]

Maxwell, I recently got a breakthrough regarding shffling and wavedashing, making my spacing better and general game faster. I think that has something to do with it, but I didn't think it would improve my reading as well.

Translucent, I can say right now that their tech skill is not near max. One of my friends is improving well with Wolf (currently learning his side B shenanigans), and another picked up falcon after watching Ken vs. Scar.

 

[traffic.]

basically, consider what things you just recently focused on that you attribute your progress to. I recently have fallen a bit behind in tech skill progress and it's exposed quite handily what things i'm not doing consistantly because i watched my friend practice something more than me. identify the things that make you better, and get them to focus on that.

 

[CyberZixx]

So I guess they need to practice techskill to keep up with your speed.

 

[metroid1117]

Translucent, I can say right now that their tech skill is not near max. One of my friends is improving well with Wolf (currently learning his side B shenanigans), and another picked up falcon after watching Ken vs. Scar.

Just from this, the problem might be that your friends are playing characters that get punished really hard but reap massive profits if they have the tech skill to follow up; if they don't have the tech skill to profit from hits nor the spacing to avoid hits, matches are going to be difficult for them. Independent practice would really help them, as well as recording matches to see what they're getting punished for and how they can avoid it.

 

[Oro?!]

Yeah trying to learn PM or Melee starting with a tech skill heavy character can be really punishing. Even though I played Falcon for years in tournaments for Melee, I started playing Marth and Sheik to get my tech skill down and more importantly, how it is implemented into your game.

 

[leelue]

Probably has something to do with the fact that this game's techncal floor is mind bogglingly high for someone who doesn't have a lot of exposure. It's been my least favorite thing about the game for ages. More than Fox. More than that stupid **** that makes you fall of ledges when you interrupt your dash attack with a few characters.
It's why I dislike having so many ATs in the game. I really had wished there'd be some initiative to clean some of them up, but "options > intuitiveness" is the way they want it.

Imagine how many more people would go to their friend's house and pick up toon link if they thought they could learn how to AGT. A lot of people just don't think that they can ever learn all of this advanced stuff. And a lot of arrogant people say "**** them if they don't want to learn and put in the time we don't want them anyway." Like motivation is that easy. Like time is that easy. Like seeing something you don't think you'll ever reach and watching yourself fail at "just hit R right before you hit the ground" is that easy.


Only reason I learned how to play this well is because I was obsessed with melee and idolized the crew DBR. Oh and I ended up living a bus ride away from the best PM player on the seaboard. It took a year and a half, 12 hour days, and 2 hour bus rides once a week to elis house just to feel comfortable enough to go to a tournament. And that was just so I could play sonic and Down B my way fraudulently into second place.

I have this problem now. Besides Eli, I am unquestionably better than almost everyone I play with. I pick joke characters to even the odds a bit, get good with them (DDD, G&W), and then I have to move on to another joke character (ROB now). I think it's affecting my ability to play seriously. I don't play hard anymore.

 

[CyberZixx]

I don't find the tech stuff as hard to do as in melee. It's more difficult to learn how to properly implement those techniques than do them. Plus learning this stuff is just part of the game. Not like it's an insane amount of tech.

 

[ELI-mination]

I think that if you hold that point of view, you should bring Project M to a group of gamers that never played smash before, and see how long it takes for them to get used to it. Revisit them later and see if they can compete with you.

 

[hamyojo]

It took a year and a half, 12 hour days, and 2 hour bus rides once a week to elis house just to feel comfortable enough to go to a tournament. And that was just so I could play sonic and Down B my way fraudulently into second place.

Made me giggle. <3 Sonic

But to address the rest of your post, and the rest of everything else, practice on your own does seem to make gaps pretty big.
I'm (obviously) not as good of a player as you, Leelue, but I feel the exact same way. You operate on a completely different level, but I have a group of friends I play with at my school (High school, best school on earth, we have a big P:M set up and a smaller Melee set up, and we get to play on it all before school, during lunch, and after school. The scrubs all play on P:M, but the best of us play the more exclusive Melee corner. Still, Melee and P:M are similar.), and there's an ever fluctuating gap between me and the school's second, third, and fourth best.

The difference is practicing at home. And it's too bad. They wants to get better, I want them to get better, and then we all get upset when I come in and start three stocking everyone.
I actually adopted the same silly strategy that you did of picking up silly characters. Now I main Fox, Yoshi, Mewtwo, and Pichu. (I've gone through getting okay with Roy, Young Link, Ness, Bowser, Ganon, and a lil' Mario.) The three I've really come to love are listed above.

(I'm so glad I picked up Yoshi, I love the weirdo, but that's besides the point.)

It's crazy how becoming just a little bit more comfortable with movement and the game's physics is a complete game changer.



On the skill gap... I like it. I get that it's an elitist-like mindset, but the idea that the skill ceiling is so high, and that to even get in the room that has the ceiling you have to pass WDing and L-canceling (which are both crazy hard to learn), is such a wonderful thing. Noobs can have fun with the game too, and we all know that. It's just a different game to them, and most of them don't even know about the room a few WD's away, and they're happy.
Why would you ever want to limit a game with a lower ceiling? I don't get it, personally.

The more strict a timing is the more satisfying it is to pull off and apply, and if you just want to watch items fly around and make silly things happen, that's fine too, it's just for a different audience.


I don't have your issue of playing seriously when I need to. I have my serious character, Fox, and when I switch to him my brain switches in to uber try hard mode, so yah.

 

[Vashimus]

My playing buddies and I are pretty even in skill level, but there are somethings I get annoyed with where I know a better player wouldn't do. One of them seemingly never goes for grabs, another refuses to edgehog (finds it cheap and prefers to get his kills honorably or something), and a lot of them roll quite predictably when I'm close to them. It's kind of making me worse since eventually I'll be expecting those little things every fight against an opponent.

 

[CyberZixx]

I think that if you hold that point of view, you should bring Project M to a group of gamers that never played smash before, and see how long it takes for them to get used to it. Revisit them later and see if they can compete with you.

From never playing smash before it would probably take a while. I had no tech skill coming into PM and have been getting better at it with stedy practice. I still miss some L cancel's and wave lands but i'm learning. I have played smash casually since the first one. So I knew the basics at least.

 

[CyberZixx]

My playing buddies and I are pretty even in skill level, but there are somethings I get annoyed with where I know a better player wouldn't do. One of them seemingly never goes for grabs, another refuses to edgehog (finds it cheap and prefers to get his kills honorably or something), and a lot of them roll quite predictably when I'm close to them. It's kind of making me worse since eventually I'll be expecting those little things every fight against an opponent.

I don't get that attitude. Not edgehoging as they find it cheap. How do they feel when other people edgehog them?

 

[leelue]

The people I play with can do all the regular stuff.

And hamyojo, all of the stuff I take issue with are things that I think don't add enough to the game to justify existing. The most debateable one is AGTing, mostly because of the links and how it makes people who want play toon link feel inadequate. But it adds a lot to what the character feels like when you're good, so I'm torn. Instant throwing (?) might be able to exist without AGTing and I do love me some instant throwing.

...<3...

I'm (obviously) not as good of a player as you, Leelue... You operate on a completely different level.

AW




And for the record I don't practice on my own

 

[Juushichi]

I wish I had someone like Eli that would help me improve as much.

Luckily, the skill gaps between Columbus players isn't that amazingly vast... but I think once I finish downloading Carls' Wario, I might be in the same position as you until I can find BuckOh and that crew again. And I didn't think I was that far off from them either.

 

[leelue]

I wish I had someone like Eli that would help me improve as much.

Luckily, the skill gaps between Columbus players isn't that amazingly vast... but I think once I finish downloading Carls' Wario, I might be in the same position as you until I can find BuckOh and that crew again. And I didn't think I was that far off from them either.

Damn and Buck and his crew didn't even get to play me in the tournament. I was too busy winning matches and not getting into the pmbr with my prize money

 

[Juushichi]

sometimes it is a curse to be so talented, leelue

 

[Phaiyte]

I don't know where your friends are at right now, but, tech skill is far less important than the basics like general positioning, spacing, hitbox knowledge across as many characters as possible, etc. Having that set of skills will automatically make you far better than someone that focuses on mainly on tech skill. I'm by no means saying that tech skill isn't important, but there's plateaus to climb before moving on beyond basic movement options.

Edge hogging is by no means "cheap". The entire basis of the game almost literally has nothing to do with damage, only getting the opponent off the stage and keeping them there. Damage is only a supplement to help with that. A kill is a kill and that's all there is to it. There is no "honor" in not doing exactly what you're supposed to do to win. There is no "honor" in competitive video games at all besides maybe sportsman-like conduct outside of the monitor. The main thing anyone should be worried about if they want to win, is how to kill their opponent(s) as fast as possible. The slightest amount of unnecessary action could very easily be the end of your own stocks.

Grabs are practically the easiest and one of the most common sources of damage in the game. Over 75% of the cast has such good grab options that it's basically insane to not utilize them.

smdh

 

[standardtoaster]

waveglitching is cheap

 

[leelue]

"the scrub invents rules for himself"

 

[hamyojo]

The people I play with can do all the regular stuff.

And hamyojo, all of the stuff I take issue with are things that I think don't add enough to the game to justify existing. The most debateable one is AGTing, mostly because of the links and how it makes people who want play toon link feel inadequate. But it adds a lot to what the character feels like when you're good, so I'm torn. Instant throwing (?) might be able to exist without AGTing and I do love me some instant throwing.


And for the record I don't practice on my own

But those are special. Those are the most special of them all.
I don't think there needs to be a balance between time/payoff of the silly tech skill thing you did.

I think I get what you're saying, maybe, and that's that every character's most important and relevant things should be simple building blocks that are easy to grasp, and from there you can learn the advanced techs?

Well, that makes sense, sure. But I think it's important to know the characters noobs can win with easier, and that it's perfectly okay for the roster to be lopsided at earlier stages in a Smashlings development. As long as at the higher level everything's more balanced it's all K.
Hopefully, the Smashling and his Smashlinglets will all duke it out and constantly counter and better each other, until they all reach the same countered achievement of being "Okay." From there, the Toon Link main can counter the Shiek that's been getting in his way, the Shiek can finally beat that Bowser, and the Bowser can chea-armor frame through Toon Link's projectiles.
I'm rambling now I should be in bed.

Whatever, they all beat each other now, and that's when the game gets at it's most fun (imo.)

Point is I think the games lopsided AGTing, moonwalking, multishines, shines in to everything, Sonic, etc. brings more charm than harm to the game, and learning your jank characters/ATs is only adding fun to the game.

A game where every character is the same at every level of play would be boring, and also impossible.


I wouldn't mind if MORE ATs were thrown in to the fray of things, just more stuff for us better-than-everyone-else-ers to learn and show off and siphon hope with.


AT's are fun and exciting time wasters that have kept me interested in this game longer than any other game ever, and I wouldn't ever want to lose them or the charm they bring to the game.
Noobs should practice movement every day until the game and them are connected as if their control is liquid they can freely move their hands through and watch Phawks fly around the stage with. They should work harder and if they can't keep up but you want to keep the interested, pick up a crappy character that has a high tech ceiling. That's my advice, and it'll keep you nice and warmed up while they struggle to catch up, then once they get where you were before you switched to Yosh-Luca-any crappy character with a high tech ceiling, you'll be able to come back in with your high tiers and be faster than ever, only to bring their hope back down.

tl;dr everyone who's better than all their friends should pick up Yoshi. (Or maybe Lucas or R.O.B. in P:M)

I didn't mean only on your own, just outside of when you're playing with your normal crew. It's always best to practice with people, especially people better than you.

I need to finish my english homework it's due tomorrow morning.

 

[leelue]

Do your homework. Close the tab. Trust me.


Also, I play Yoshi very well. Played him for that reason.

 

[hamyojo]

Omg we Yoshi buddies <3


also yolo

 

[Phaiyte]

I pretty much mained Yoshi in N64 and Melee. Good times. Big hopes for PM Yoshi D:

 

[Kink-Link5]

We talking Yoshi now? Aw ****, let me in on this DJC crosscounter nair business.

 

[Phaiyte]

I usually preferred approaching with djc bair > f/dtilt in melee. In N64 it was all about them djc'd fairs and breaking shields with dair.

 

[SpiderMad]

Made me giggle. <3 Sonic
The more strict a timing is the more satisfying it is to pull off and apply

Until it's uncomfortably hard or not able to be under your full control, but people with too much time on their hands derive pleasure from both of those.

Like time is that easy.

That's a few of my friend's problems above anything else. They and I know they wouldn't catch up to my level unless they wasted close to the plethora of time I have, and that lowers their motivation since they are busy people unlike half of the smash community. If I did convince them to that could turn out to subtract their time from more important matters and I'd be essentially making their priorities crooked. Feels like trying to get other people addicted to drugs so I can enjoy them doing it with me.

 

[leelue]

lolyolobro

 

[Mithost]

This is some good information. I think they are more in the "I might be using charizard's side B too much" stage, where they are looking at them selves objectively but cannot find the flaws in their game. Today I'm going to try to point out what I am reading from them, and try to help them improve like that. There is obviously some tech-skill issues for all of us (I can only reliably WD as Marth for some reason), but I think if they get to the point where they are practicing the correct habits and moves, It'll start to work out. I'll link them to some tech skill and character specific guides afterwards and tell them to take them in mind.

 

[Phaiyte]

If you're literally reading them that hard, prove it by saying so every time you do it. That's what I did to get a lot of friends better at Blazblue. Fact is they may not actually believe you when you say you're reading them that well. Let them know basic things afterwards like "you do this too much so it makes it really easy to counter you by doing this". Also, I don't really think almost anyone uses Charizard's side B all that much. It's good, but nair and dtilt just provide much more versatile options most of the time. It's good if you're trying to play a keepaway game in the air, but that's kinda counterproductive to most of Charizard's gameplay imo.

 

[EpixAura]

I'm pretty much in the same place. Try to give your friend some coaching. Let him know what he's doing wrong and what you've started doing differently. It may just be a matter of learning curves. It's possible that in another month, he'll be beating you more often than not.
Really, the best solution is to find new people to play with in your area. If you usually go even with someone, it's pretty hard for either of you to improve quickly. However, getting dominated by someone completely better than you can help you understand what you're doing wrong and what you could be doing better. It would probably help both you and him.

 

[leelue]

Actually, people learn faster if you focus more on what they do right. Tell them to do X, and when they do X congratulate them. When they don't do it, don't bother them too much about it.

At least, that's what my psychology education has taught me.

 

[BryE]

I'm pretty much in the same place. Try to give your friend some coaching. Let him know what he's doing wrong and what you've started doing differently. It may just be a matter of learning curves. It's possible that in another month, he'll be beating you more often than not.
Really, the best solution is to find new people to play with in your area. If you usually go even with someone, it's pretty hard for either of you to improve quickly. However, getting dominated by someone completely better than you can help you understand what you're doing wrong and what you could be doing better. It would probably help both you and him.

I'm in the same boat as well.

I have a friend that I play PM pretty frequently. We used to be pretty even in Brawl but I had more of an advantage in Melee since his tech skill is kinda lacking. When PM rolled around, it basically stayed the same. But I when I started getting better, I usually ended up 2 - 4 stocking him in every match with my mains. What's worse is that some of my other friends would play PM and they are basically near my level or better than me while he struggled a bit to keep up with us.

I try to coach him but some stuff still doesn't get through.

I tell him to tech skill stuff with Falco (since he's learning Falco as well) in training mode and he claims he can't do it since he mainly learns from playing actual matches.
I tell him to stop doing certain bad habits and he continues to do them.(e.g. getting greedy with kills, crouch cancelling a lot
I play as his character and show him some of the stuff I know but he's not able to do some stuff due to lacking the tech skill for it. (e.g. waveshining, footstool setups & etc.)

He's a solid player, however he just needs to learn from his mistakes and practice his tech skill. He makes somewhat smart decisions and has decent pressure when I play against him. Hopefully some of my advice will sink in though. (Although I don't give out really good advice imo.)

 

[metroid1117]

Actually, people learn faster if you focus more on what they do right. Tell them to do X, and when they do X congratulate them. When they don't do it, don't bother them too much about it.

At least, that's what my psychology education has taught me.

In my opinion, teaching Smash through positive reinforcement has it's limits. If you're playing against someone who's much better than you and can adapt very quickly, it's very hard to focus on the "good things" you're doing because they'll change their strategies and turn that "good thing" into a "bad thing"; in other words, it's hard to learn from a compliment if you suddenly start getting punished for that compliment. For example, if you condition someone to sweetpot the edge to avoid getting hit from the stage, you can edgehog them. If you condition them to up+B early to avoid the edgehog, then you just bait the up+B and hit them from the stage. In this example, the ambiguous comment of "good mix-up between sweetspotting and early up+B" is a lot harder to learn from than "good sweetspot" or "good early up+B." There are some things like L-canceling that are assisted by operant conditioning (like the white flash that your character gives off), but complex concepts are harder to teach through this method.

 

[leelue]

It shouldn't be too complicated in theory. You are asking for compatible behaviors.
Start with something like "sweetspot", and use shaping to go towards more complex things. "Sweetspot, unless I'm *here*, then go *there* instead." This is where pulling up on the reins can be a good thing.


I'm surprised you didn't mention spacing as a skill that can be learned this way. I think it's one of the most profound examples. Especially if they have a character like Ganon or someone else who can space really well with tangible results.

 

[ELI-mination]

That's so smart!

 

[leelue]

My Phone isn't working eli

 

[hamyojo]

There should be an established tech skill curriculum, and certain levels that actually have values like F, D, C, B, A, or S.
S would be just stupid crazy amount of tech skill, like Dark would be S+
Doing one multishine with Fox or Falco would be A, and probably having wave shines.
B is getting your movement all they way down, with flawless wavelands, WD's, grapple stuffs, and to have at least a general understanding of AGT.
C could be simply having your SHFFL all the way down, including moving during/out of it and a basic understanding and application of DJCin'.
D is getting WDing down, applying shield grabs, FFing, and teching.
F is scrub.

Or something like that, and something WAY more in depth to learn every level.
Especially because people don't seem to know how to practice on their own. Getting a curriculum could really help them out.
And I know there are plenty of tutorials, and WAKs advanced SSBM vidyas are fabulous, but putting some qualifications to tech skill could make it all more clear, and there needs to be something that can easily be referred to as "you need to be here."