Your skill level is dependent on who you play? (How do you become mid-level?)

[L33thal]

Hi. So I'm from SoCal and I usually get close to making it out of pools at the bigger tourneys (I made it out of pools at the last Mayhem).

I have basic tech skill, follow ups, and punishes down and I generally have an idea or expectation for what my opponent is going to do (i.e. basic matchup knowledge) but I lack setups and mindgames. Against other people who are kind of like me in not having a strong mental game, I usually 3 or 4 stock them.

However, against better players, they know how to deal with those basic options like it's second nature. One thing I noticed is that good players have good micro-spacing where they space well even in mixups (i.e. "perfectly" spaced aerials against stationary opponents are bad depending on situations) and they have such good DI that they aren't afraid to do a higher risk-higher reward move because the trade-off is in their favor: the opponent has to be careful about choosing their escape option, while the reprisal for "missing" is minimal.

I know, people usually say to practice the more advanced tech (e.g. 20XX) and have all your timings and spacings down, but when it comes to practicing setups I feel like it's really dependent on playing people. And it's not just "playing people", but also what's important is who you play.

You know how random people on Youtube say they're unbeatable and people in the community usually respond with, "It's impossible to get good without going to tourneys"? I feel like that also applies to improving when you're within the community: you need to play better players to get better. Some tricks and setups work on people who are lower-level, but you need quality experience to play more and more optimal.

In Melee, it's rare for a string of options to be guaranteed and "perfect". Like for escape options, if you roll people can punish by reading it and WD back->grab for example. If you spotdodge, people can expect it and throw out an attack after you finish spotdodging. If you jump, people can cover it with an aerial. I feel like playing against people refines your sense of "reading" or even "feeling" other players, to a point where things become complicated guessing games where certain factors work to so-and-so's advantage.

So my question is, what should you do if you can't find those better players? What if we reached a point of perfection from solo training where the 20XX training pack can get CPUs to play out certain approaches and DIs and we can have a "database" of possible situations in our heads, kind of like chess? Kind of like how chess is deep and feels infinite, how do we make our algorithms of what strings of moves are possible--our sense of what could happen, and what we could do--better?

I know this sounds kind of weird, but any thoughts?

 

[KinGly]

I don't have any answers to this currently, but that was an interesting read. I'm going to be thinking about this the next couple of days I think, and maybe come back with an answer

 

[20YY SS | Saiblade]

This is definitely interesting. I'm not sure how I feel about it though.

 

[KP17]

i feel like you have answers to your own questions but dont have the discipline to sit down and think it through

just off of the chess analogy, work on imagining your decisions and your opponents decisions in RT. I'm sure you'll get better just through imagining/writing down/observing 2-3 actions from 2 players and thinking about the ramifications of the next action.

e.g. marth dashed at falco when falco was in the corner, and as a pure reaction falco wavelanded onto the side platform. As a pure reaction, marth ended his dash/positioned to punish from below. Falco noticed this as a pure reaction while on the platform and shielded.

There are obv many things i left out (the exact positioning is crucial) but from here you can start to build a framework of decisions based on your experience and theorycrafting. Try to evaluate the safety and as many factors as you can about potential reactions from there on

How safe is WD away off the plat? Access to DJ good enough to extend neutral?

How risky is shield drop to nair or dair punish? Is the marth ready? Is that decision punishable on reaction? How tricky is the spacing and timing needed to outprioritize his move?

How safe is staying in shield? what can marth do about it?

Just keep asking yourself questions about melee, as long as you dont fall into the trap of asking useless questions and as long as you dont stop trying to answer your questions, youll improve

EDIT: in short, to answer your question, develop algorithms on your own by analyzing what does and doesn't work. The more understanding you gain of the game, the easier this task will become, especially when you get good at seeing what the better players are good/bad at, and what they actively try to do in-game. hope this helps

 

[EPsilon933]

If you can't find players in your area to practice the guessing games, play Street Fighter online. That game is so much about guessing games

 

[Corigames]

"So my question is, what should you do if you can't find those better players?"

Watch videos. I don't mean, "Look at videos," I mean watch them. Analyze them. See what choices the pros are making, and try to figure out why that would be a better choice. If they have bad DI, figure out why that was: were they getting ready to do a different move and got hit, where they trying to back away and got hit, were they expecting a certain move and got hit by one that sends at a different trajectory? Look at where they are standing in neutral in respect to the edges and platforms. See at what distance the enemy gets before they commit to an action. See how often they repeat the same moves and how often they are punished for it, if at all.

There's a lot you can learn from watching other people play, even people worse than you. Of course, this won't help your muscle memory very much, but you should be more conscious of what you are capable of.

 

[Snorlaxes]

I think it'd help you to do analysis on specific situations and then following up with shadowboxing during practice. I'm fairly new to it as well, so I'm sure better players could offer more comprehensive methods, but here's an example:

Situation: As Fox, I'm trying to edgeguard a Falco that's a fair bit offstage at ~80% with his double jump. [I'll try to remember to include an image later today since specific spacing is important, but hard to write about clearly]

First, I try to get a rough list of Falco's options. Granted, each of these has many variations in timing and spacing. I've also just ignored other options to keep the example from getting too complex. In this situation, they'd be:

Double jump > Firebird high
Immediate Firebird at or below ledge height
Immediate phantasm to ledge
Double jump > phantasm to platform/high

From there, I want to create a sort of hierarchy of which options are the quickest/hardest to react to. That'd look something like this:

Immediate phantasm to ledge
Double jump > phantasm to platform/high
Immediate Firebird at or below ledge height
Double jump > Firebird high

Next, I create rough ways to cover each option. Phantasms to ledge can be covered reasonably with down-angled ftilt or dsmash. Phantasms to platform/high can be covered with quick double jump bair and nair. Firebirds at or below ledge can be jump-off shined. High Firebird is tricky and I'll get back to it.

Finally, you create a sort of flowchart of things you're looking for and prioritizing quicker options. Here, it'd be something like: First look for the immediate Phantasm and react with ftilt/dsmash until Falco's below the ledge. A double jump will probably happen once Falco's fallen below the ledge, but he could also Firebird. Since Firebird has significant start-up, prioritize the double jump. Once this is out, get ready for the jump > bair to cover high Phantasm. If you instead see the flames start, shine him.

Once your flowchart is sketched out, then go and practice shadow boxing with it. Visualize Falco in his offstage position and practice going through your mental steps and coverage as you visualize him trying to recover.

When you're playing a real opponent, you can start to skew the flowchart to fit them. Do the generic one initially, but place heavier emphasis on recoveries they've taken in the past. Returning to the high Firebird, since you can't cover all angles, you'll need to try and read where they go. If they don't sufficiently mix it up, you can go for harder reads.

For example, beginning players like to Phantasm right into you. If they always choose that option, you can just start charging a dsmash once they're off-stage. If a better player realizes that you're having a hard time dealing with the high Firebird, they might default to it. If that happens, you can read the double jump itself instead of their angle and position yourself for an easy shine. I think a good way to practice this sort of observation is to watch matches around your level and try to guess what a player will do while remembering their past choices.

The end goal of all this is to embed the generic flowchart into your subconscious so that conscious focus can be placed on observing the opponent. With time, I imagine that both the generic flowchart and the details of the "skewing" that comes from observation will become automatic.

TL;DR: Theory-craft flowcharts from common situations and practice executing them against an imaginary opponent. In-game, observe your opponent and emphasize reactions and option coverage to fit their habits.