Isnt learning other stages and counterpicking an important strat in the game? it's something one must learn to do to have options and pull off tuff match up wins. Been this was since melee. So people are blaming an important tactic in smash as the reason they lost?
Yeah, it's an important strat because we make it important. I'm not saying in our metagame it's not important to learn RC and Brinstar, it definitely is. But it makes total sense that in a metagame where no one has to learn RC and Brinstar, when they come to play against a community that usually has those on and has to play on them to win, it's only natural that the community without the stages would be better overall.
It's not an excuse lol, Japan is better than us (and I've been saying it for a long time, but that doesn't really matter). Stating a contributing factor in why they're better than us isn't a john, or saying that we should've won.
- USA are just as use to starters as the japanese, it is the first stage we start on. And half the time the last stage we finish in a set.
Would you say that someone who plays Ice Climbers in atleast 66% of their matches would be as practiced as someone who plays ICs in 100% of their matches?
News flash, you been had that option. You just choose not to give a damm cause you just focuos at getting the win at all cost. You took the easy road out. There was no excuse to actually explore other possibilities and take your game to another level. You cause have learned to be more versitale and still you your counter stages and do some serious damage with what you learned/discovered.
I agree with all of this, too.
It's definitely not just ONE thing, though. Very rarely is there anything where there's just ONE reason for why an event occurred.
We were outplayed by Japan for a variety of reasons, and I would definitely say our strong focus on gimmicky stages, rather than on innovation and stronger basics, has held us back.
What I was saying in that post is kinda simple.
Say we have 10 potential stages (this is purely hypothetical). We have 50 practice/skill points (let's just say it's like an RPG for a moment). There are 7 stages that are gimmicky, and the strongest skills for those stages are skills that barely apply anywhere else, if at all. And then there are 3 stages, where the skills on them almost entirely apply everywhere else.
For every point we put into one of those 7 stages, we get 0.25 points put in the rest of the stages. And for every point we put into one of the 3 stages, we get 0.5 points in the other 7 stages.
So say that there's one community, where it has those 7 stages banned, so with the 3 that are legal, everyone puts all of their points into those 3. It makes them all around strong, but not nearly as specialized in those other stages as they could be. If they were to play on one of the harder stages, they might do really badly.
Then there's this other community, that has all of those stages, and a lot of importance is put on 1 or 2 of the 7 stages (and less, but still some, on the other 5 of those 7). Most of the points will go into the 3, more overall stages, but of course you have to put some into the really dangerous of the 7 stages, that way you don't get completely overwhelmed by someone who uses those stages really strongly as gimmicks. Basically to lower your chance of losing to random chance.
If there's any incentive to play on those other 7 stages, where the skills you get there apply less overall than the skills you gain from the first 3, it's only natural that people who ONLY play on the first 3 will have a stronger average spread, but not as much of a specialized one. And when the benefits from that specialization are removed from play, then they have points wasted, and less ability put into the stages that apply everywhere.
Of course this is kind of a ridiculous analogy, skill points aren't at all how it works, but is it really that ridiculous of a concept? That if you play on a stage where what you learn applies everywhere, you'll get better overall than if you played on 5 stages, where a large amount of the important skills you learn only apply to the stage they're learned on?
But choose not to, cause you relyed on cheap tatics to win and thought that is all you needed. Then when it all fails, you blame it on something as silly as stages. Take responsibility for your actions. Quit making excuses. Thats all the USA does. It never gets old.
This is true, too. It's not blaming it on the stages in that way. Relying on cheap tactics is I'm sure a major contributor. And a major contributor in cheap tactics being important in OUR community is our stagelist.
We didn't lose because we played on stages that they're better than us on, or we got gay'd or anything, we lost because we were outplayed, and one of the reasons we were outplayed is because we've relied on those cheap/gay/what-have-you tactics, and those tactics were largely relied on because there's a lot of emphasis put on them in our community/metagame. When that emphasis is removed it would make perfect sense that we'd do worse.
Not to say we would've won with RC or Brinstar legal, the emphasis on those stages being gone isn't THAT big of a factor anyways. But our lack of skill overall, partly due to focusing on those gimmicky stages maybe too much is probably a factor in why we were outplayed.
I agree whole-heartedly that players in general have a tendency to focus too much on playing gay/taking the easy way out/using cheap tactics/etc, but that's definitely not the ONLY factor at hand, and to address JUST it probably wouldn't help at all.
EDIT: Oh I had a whole page I missed out on. I agree with Seibrik's post completely
