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TAS Assisted Fox v TAS Assisted Jiggs

MalanoMan

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Who would win? Theoretically its Fox right? Waveshines and all....

Is there any way that a TAS assisted Jiggs could beat a TAS assisted Fox?
 
Last edited:

CAUP

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This is an interesting question. You couldn't know for sure without a lot of theorizing and actually making the TAS.

That said, I do feel confident saying a few things about the matchup at TAS levels. I think it's very very unlikely that Puff could force a hit on Fox if Fox was just trying to avoid damage. Fox has three pretty solid methods of camping at TAS levels: running away, camping ledge, and standing still. Puff probably isn't fast enough to catch Fox. And Fox just just switch ledges if Puff threatens to take ledge while stalling invincibly. And the only move Puff can challenge Fox with if he is standing still is rest. But Fox also has a 1 frame move with a larger range. Between these three defensive tactics I think it's very unlikely Puff could hit Fox.

Could Fox force a hit on Jigglypuff though? This is the part of the matchup that is harder to predict without real testing. Puff's main gameplan to avoid getting hit would be platform camping. It'd be very tricky for Puff to avoid getting hit by Fox since Fox has lasers to force defensive options in the air and also can react to Puff's drift perfectly to attempt to intercept any landing. Also Puff doesn't have access to any fast aerial attacks except raw rest, which isn't going to be useful. Claiming one platform and camping it out and trying to prevent Fox from ever safely landing on it is an option, since Fox has very few ways to no impact land on side platform. He's always going to have some frames of landing lag when reaching a platform, which Puff can threaten with rest and shield drop rest. The problem is to be close enough to punish the landing lag with an unpunishable move, Puff has to risk getting shined. So it's probably not safe for Puff to actually punish Fox's landing lag.

I think overall Puff's problem in this matchup at TAS is that she doesn't have any fast unpinishable moves besides rest, which is probably basically impossible to find or threaten. I'm guessing Fox wins the matchup but I might be wrong and it might be a stale mate (though that is unlikely).

Keep in mind TAS has no real correlation to how good characters are at the theoretical top human level of play.
 

MalanoMan

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CAUP CAUP I really appreciate your well thought out response! Thanks for taking the time to answer my question. I think my understanding of TAS is flawed. TAS is created by a user, then the computer inputs the commands right? Its not just the computer controlling the character right?

I was also wondering how the TAS play would reflect human play. I edited my original post to make it shorter, but the purpose of me posing the question was to examine the current meta and ask "Is Puff really that good?" Based on your answer, the answer is "no". I would guess that if you had a fox player that was above and beyond Leffen or Armada in terms of skill level, then maybe HBOX's puff could be defeated.

How would TAS assisted Puff matchup against Falco? Sheik? CF? Marth? Pikachu? I wonder...
 

CAUP

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I don't exactly understand what you want clarified about TAS. But it usually works like, a player goes into an emulator and slows the game down so that they can advance frame by frame and have as much time as they want to make a decision. Once they've decided what they want to do, they go to the next frame and then decide for that frame. There are 60 frames in a second. Usually when making a TAS, they make savestates so they can also go back and redo a decision they don't like. If two opponents are battling in a TAS, they have infinite time to make the decisions they want each frame, though they probably can't take decisions back.

Like I said at the end of my post, how good a character is at the TAS level does not reflect how good a character is at a top theoretical level of play for real people. There are three big distinctions between TAS and normal gameplay. One, TAS has infinite time to make the perfect decision. Two, TAS can be perfectly precise everytime in the decision they make. Some techniques require very exact timings or controller inputs which TAS can get everytime. Three, TAS has an inhuman reaction time. They can see and react to what happened instantly. Whereas for a human, it takes about 18 frames to differentiate what just happened on screen. As you can tell these are some really big differences between optimal human play and TAS play lol. For instance at TAS play grabs have little use for most characters. Why? Because spot dodge comesout frame 2 and grab comes out frame 7. So at TAS, your opponent tries to grab you, you react frame 1, spot dodge, and punish the grab. So Marth has no very strong strengths at a TAS level. This obviously is different than a peak human level because humans can't react to grab coming out and dodge in time. TAS values different character strengths than top theoretical human play. For instance Mr. Game and Watch has a move that comes out frame 1 (up b). That alone makes him better than most of the cast at a TAS level, since frame 1 moves are the only moves that can't be reacted to. Similarly Bowser has an up b invincible frame 1, so he can only be attacked by frame 1 moves safely at TAS. These characters being stronger than most of the cast at TAS levels does not mean they are on top at human levels. Hopefully that makes sense now. Just because Marth is mediocre in TAS doesn't mean he's a bad character.

It sounds more like you're wondering how good Puff is at a top level of human play, where is Puff on a modern tierlist. This is really hard to say and a lot of people debate the topic. I'll say that at worst, if you judge Puff as harshly as possible, she's the fourth best character in the game. Armada and Leffen have Puff as the best character. I think Mew2King and Plup have her as 2nd best though I'm not sure. Hungrybox thinks she is the 4th best character. A tier list was voted on collectively by Reddit recently and Puff was 3rd best. There's a lot of debate and it's hard to say. That said, it can be said that Puff is absolutely a top tier in Melee. Like she is definitely the absolute top of the pack. She's probably a top 3 character, in a tier apart with fox, marth, and puff in some order. That's not a very definitive answer but no one knows for sure how good Puff is. She's really good though lol.

I'll speculate super quickly about the matchups you mentioned on a TAS level:
Falco > Puff
Sheik = Puff ? Puff could maybe win
Captain Falcon = Puff
Marth = Puff ? Puff could maybe win
Pikachu = Puff

There can be ties at TAS level if neither player can ever hit each other.

Hopefully this was helpful and cleared some things up.
 

zuloon

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This is an interesting question. You couldn't know for sure without a lot of theorizing and actually making the TAS.

That said, I do feel confident saying a few things about the matchup at TAS levels. I think it's very very unlikely that Puff could force a hit on Fox if Fox was just trying to avoid damage. Fox has three pretty solid methods of camping at TAS levels: running away, camping ledge, and standing still. Puff probably isn't fast enough to catch Fox. And Fox just just switch ledges if Puff threatens to take ledge while stalling invincibly. And the only move Puff can challenge Fox with if he is standing still is rest. But Fox also has a 1 frame move with a larger range. Between these three defensive tactics I think it's very unlikely Puff could hit Fox.

Could Fox force a hit on Jigglypuff though? This is the part of the matchup that is harder to predict without real testing. Puff's main gameplan to avoid getting hit would be platform camping. It'd be very tricky for Puff to avoid getting hit by Fox since Fox has lasers to force defensive options in the air and also can react to Puff's drift perfectly to attempt to intercept any landing. Also Puff doesn't have access to any fast aerial attacks except raw rest, which isn't going to be useful. Claiming one platform and camping it out and trying to prevent Fox from ever safely landing on it is an option, since Fox has very few ways to no impact land on side platform. He's always going to have some frames of landing lag when reaching a platform, which Puff can threaten with rest and shield drop rest. The problem is to be close enough to punish the landing lag with an unpunishable move, Puff has to risk getting shined. So it's probably not safe for Puff to actually punish Fox's landing lag.

I think overall Puff's problem in this matchup at TAS is that she doesn't have any fast unpinishable moves besides rest, which is probably basically impossible to find or threaten. I'm guessing Fox wins the matchup but I might be wrong and it might be a stale mate (though that is unlikely).

Keep in mind TAS has no real correlation to how good characters are at the theoretical top human level of play.
in other words, foxes just need to get good instead of whining about hbox's DOMINANCE tbh
 

MalanoMan

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I don't exactly understand what you want clarified about TAS. But it usually works like, a player goes into an emulator and slows the game down so that they can advance frame by frame and have as much time as they want to make a decision.
Ok so my understanding was close but not quite there. I assumed that it programmed by a user which is what I meant by "TAS is created by a user, then the computer inputs the commands". Its always the user inputting the controller commands, and they slow the game down and can make save states.

Like I said at the end of my post, how good a character is at the TAS level does not reflect how good a character is at a top theoretical level of play for real people. There are three big distinctions between TAS and normal gameplay. One, TAS has infinite time to make the perfect decision. Two, TAS can be perfectly precise everytime in the decision they make. Some techniques require very exact timings or controller inputs which TAS can get everytime. Three, TAS has an inhuman reaction time. They can see and react to what happened instantly. Whereas for a human, it takes about 18 frames to differentiate what just happened on screen. As you can tell these are some really big differences between optimal human play and TAS play lol. For instance at TAS play grabs have little use for most characters. Why? Because spot dodge comesout frame 2 and grab comes out frame 7. So at TAS, your opponent tries to grab you, you react frame 1, spot dodge, and punish the grab. So Marth has no very strong strengths at a TAS level. This obviously is different than a peak human level because humans can't react to grab coming out and dodge in time. TAS values different character strengths than top theoretical human play. For instance Mr. Game and Watch has a move that comes out frame 1 (up b). That alone makes him better than most of the cast at a TAS level, since frame 1 moves are the only moves that can't be reacted to. Similarly Bowser has an up b invincible frame 1, so he can only be attacked by frame 1 moves safely at TAS. These characters being stronger than most of the cast at TAS levels does not mean they are on top at human levels. Hopefully that makes sense now. Just because Marth is mediocre in TAS doesn't mean he's a bad character.

It sounds more like you're wondering how good Puff is at a top level of human play, where is Puff on a modern tierlist. This is really hard to say and a lot of people debate the topic. I'll say that at worst, if you judge Puff as harshly as possible, she's the fourth best character in the game. Armada and Leffen have Puff as the best character. I think Mew2King and Plup have her as 2nd best though I'm not sure. Hungrybox thinks she is the 4th best character. A tier list was voted on collectively by Reddit recently and Puff was 3rd best. There's a lot of debate and it's hard to say. That said, it can be said that Puff is absolutely a top tier in Melee. Like she is definitely the absolute top of the pack. She's probably a top 3 character, in a tier apart with fox, marth, and puff in some order. That's not a very definitive answer but no one knows for sure how good Puff is. She's really good though lol.
This is exactly the response I was looking for. Thank you. Like you said, TAS is inhuman. Therefore, the outcome of TAS games comes down to the game's mechanics. Fox always wins. In reality, many people have dominated the Melee scene with Fox, but it's very hard to do consistently. Humans are not capable of TAS-like skill. Therefore, other characters win because we are all flawed. The Melee meta-game skill cap is dependent on human ability. Hungrybox's Jigglypuff is clearly the best thing going in the game right now, so If someone were to copy his strategy perfectly, they too would win games and eventually face Hbox in a grandfinals someday. In my opinon, this puts Jiggs near the top of the tier list because within human ability, she has the best capability to win in the current Melee meta-game.

I'll speculate super quickly about the matchups you mentioned on a TAS level:
Falco > Puff
Sheik = Puff ? Puff could maybe win
Captain Falcon = Puff
Marth = Puff ? Puff could maybe win
Pikachu = Puff

There can be ties at TAS level if neither player can ever hit each other.

Hopefully this was helpful and cleared some things up.
If youtube videos of these TAS assisted videos dont exist yet, it could make for a decent channel. Ties sound like fun lol. I appreciate your knowledge and time. Thank you for your responses!
 
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