The Redundancy of Mains

[Lautsuu~]

You can never have too much Marth.

When I go on For Glory, fighting Little Mac and Captain Falcon get's redundant incredibly fast. Nothing against the characters, I just seem to be playing against them all the time.

For me, I start out with Marth, then Lucina, Robin, Shulk, Zamus, Sheik...then I branch out to Ike, Palutena, etc.

 

[JAZZ_]

I feel like an odd ball here, I haven't had a main since 2006.
My reason being is simple, my cluster of friends that I only played the game with werent able to beat me yet, and i felt alienated and almost resented. By forcing myself to pick RANDOM every match for the past several years ALL my friends want to choose RANDOM. which in turn helped us all grow in our knowledge of the game without any exposure to professional exposure.

so for years I've played as EVERY character. It was only after entering a local tournament that me and my friends realized we play the game SO drastically different from everyone else. Before the tournament we played around with a couple guys on brawl for a bit, this one guy's only main was Snake, and man was he crazy good. but after being surrounded by people that chose RANDOM every match he caved in on his own and threw his cursor token into the random slot and boy did he get smoked.. but it was tons of fun for everyone.

After buying a Wii U a couple weeks ago and playing smash online I knew i wouldnt win many matches, but I do notice my random character choices have an odd effect on my opponents, they'll follow suit after 3-4 matches, making things extremely more entertaining, and the matches are a 50/50 chance of win or lose.

Lately though trying to learn how to compete with advanced players has been difficult with RANDOM and I don't learn much. so lately ive developed a new way to play. In a 1v1 match I'll start with Samus, (after training a samus amiibo im a little attached) then after I either win or horribly horribly lose I'll choose a different character each match, avoiding characters that wont work well against my opponents main. the hope being that I learn a few strategies, clean up my 1v1 game (I play like a 4 player free for all), and ultimately have fun.

Is Samus my main? No. Do I have a go to main? not yet no
Will I? probably not, I have too much fun playing as everyone.

I think my local group of friends and I play in such a unique way that I wanna keep our little RANDOM community alive, Not many people would understand, but after a few years playing this way I don't ever want to change

 

[Morbi]

My partner is the same way, I usually just go Fox or Falco to start off our play-session. I continue alternating between Fox and Falco while she cycles through a list of 5-10 characters that she is familiar with. After awhile, she wants me to switch and mix things up. Obviously I oblige, but it is a problem that I am not usually aware of until 10-15 matches in. She prefers more diverse match-ups and I usually just use my mains. After fighting the same person over and over again, you start to feel when it is time to use another character. So I have a couple of decent pocket characters that I would never really use if I was playing seriously, but it is good to expand your character knowledge beyond your main and secondary every now and again.

 

[Jdaster64]

The funny thing is this past year in grad school, a friend and I played Smash 64 on a near-daily basis for an hour or so at a time. We played with all items on (occasionally excepting healing items), but nearly always on Dream Land, and 90% of our matches were my Mario/Ness versus his Luigi/Ness. And we never got tired of it (due to playing with items and Nesses, most of our play was psyching each other out with Star Rods and d-airs anyway).

Now that I have 50-ish characters to choose from in Wii U, I'm only now gravitating towards a couple of "mains", and there's easily five characters that I really want to be good at. And the saddest part is I rarely have time (or opponents) to play offline.

 

[Jeronado]

Fighting the same match up over and over can get a bit tiresome after awhile, I agree. Ditto matches get old for me really quickly. My main (heh) problem is that I not nearly as good with my other characters as I am with my main, and I think it shows. I switch it up sometimes, but I don't have any friends that I play smash with so I usually just pick a different match on For Glory when I get bored.

 

[Savangardius Corsio]

I only get bored fighting against the same character IF my opponent loses match after match. On the other side, if my opponent wins using the same character every time, I don't get bored easily, not until I win consistently, plus, I gain experience each match.

And as for myself, I play using my main almost always, and I don't get bored... well, I do, but after a lot of matches. I don't know, I'm one of those players that take a really long time trying to find a main (in any game), and when I find one character I like to play as, It's hard for me to not use it constantly.

Now, when I do get bored fast is when I play against someone who is using the same character as me over and over.

 

[RIP|Merrick]

It becomes pretty apparent when I personally try out other characters beyond my two current mains that I haven't experimented with them enough to really bother branching out. I've become increasingly comfortable with Luigi from the second I tried him out back when the 3DS version released, and have continued trying to perfect him and improve in every way I can to this day. Character variety is always nice, especially if you're competent enough with a good selection of them. But for me personally, learning the matchups, the advantages and disadvantages, and techniques of one character very closely is very key to my own self improvement. I very rarely switch out from Luigi to my R.O.B secondary unless the matchup is absolutely brutal for him, and even then I always strive to work around my weak points in that particular match and stick with him. I struggle with certain characters, particularly Link in tourneys, as finding an answer to his projectile game has been hard for me. But I stick with it and learn because I know I won't improve unless I play my worse matchups. Plus this way, when fighting someone who, too, plays as strictly one character, I pick up on things much more quickly than if they switch to a less polished character they don't really play.

Based on what I've read throughout this thread, it's nice to see so many varying opinions on those like me who have strict 1-2 mains compared to others who branch out for a variety of characters.

 

[stancosmos]

This thread title might be a little bit misleading, but it is technically what I'm talking about I guess.

So we all have mains I'm sure, characters we enjoy playing as, who we train as and get better as constantly, we play them more than every other character. But when you're fighting someone who seems to only play as their main, does it not get a bit annoying? Repetitive in some cases?

For instance, I have a friend who mains Marth. And he's pretty good as him too. I still win, the problem isn't that I constantly lose against his Marth or anything, that's definitely not the case. But so many games as Marth, constant Marth, Marth Marth Marth. I just get a bit bored of him. He occasionally plays as Lucina instead, no difference really, and every so often he'd play as another character like ZSS, Zelda or Robin. But the overuse of Marth really just bores me sometimes, and it actually puts me off fighting the character in general.

I always try my best to be a good opponent in Smash, one that's fun to fight. As such, I make sure to choose a range of characters when fighting against friends, to mix it up a little. I never just constantly use one character, for courtesies sake if nothing else. I may be able to do this because I still haven't decided on a single main, I've fluctuated between a number of characters. I've gone from Sheik, to Marth, to Ness, to Mario, and now I'm moving towards Wario. But even then I don't restrict myself to these characters.

I don't want to sound like I'm whining, but is it just me who gets incredibly bored fighting the same fighter so many times? I appreciate they may want to get better as them, but as their opponent it's just oh so very repetitive.

Generally people don't pick their character based on making their opponent have a good time. Especially competitively. But yeah with friends i usually work on my secondaries or **** around with characters i enjoy but don't want to play competitively. (rob, mario, dacunt)

 

[Terotrous]

In casuals I play every character, precisely for this reason. When I care about winning I use Yoshi.

Besides the fact that playing one matchup over and over is boring, I feel like I'm only playing 1/50th of the game if I only play one character. One of the best things about Smash is that the controls are simple enough that you actually can play multiple or even every character with some degree of competence. I also feel that playing as some of the characters helps me get a better feel for their capabilities.