Subtractive Playstyles, Part 3: Case Studies

Subtractive Gameplay, Part 3: Case Studies

I've discussed in part 1 and part 2 the pros and cons of the subtractive playstyle. For the third part, I'm going to look at players who demonstrate this playstyle, for better or worse.

B-stick

For starters, somebody you probably don't know. B-stick is an Arizona Marth player who has managed to remain near the top of AZ's Melee scene for a long, long time. His playstyle has always, for at least 4 years now, consisted almost entirely of of grabbing and forward-smashing.

Unless you are perfect at sweetspotting and edge-teching, he will almost always perfectly time f-smashes and tippers to keep you off the level. He happily stays near the edge for most of the match, using dash-dances into grab and shield-grabs to throw you off the level so he can f-smash away. Occasionally he uses full-jumping forward-airs from his shield, and I swear I once saw him up-tilt. He can wavedash and short hop, but he'd rather walk and smash.

Why is his playstyle so successful? For starters, Marth's f-smash is a really really good move. Damaging and far-reaching, decent speed when it comes out, and with appropriate spacing almost impossible to beat. Its weakness, of course, is its long ending lag; additionally, many bad Marths overuse it and it becomes very exploitable. You can shield it and then wavedash out to punish it, you can roll behind him or simply dodge. Such a good move is bound to be overused, and therefore become predictable and easily beatable.

B-stick seems to break this convention. His f-smashes seem perfectly timed to reach through and hit you just when you decided you wanted to aerial, and at least half of them are tippers. He's very good at judging its spacing, and reading opponents' movements to call when they will leave themselves open. When it comes to using this move, B-stick is a pro. (His advice to a Marth player who was having trouble winning against Peaches was "less technical, more forward-smash," and the player immediately improved).

On top of that, his shield grab timing is very precise, which lets him deal nicely with most characters' shield pressure. He can also actually combo and chase people around the level with aerials when the opportunity falls in his lap, but he prefers to f-smash and grab, which works out nicely for him.

B-stick is hardly perfect though. For one thing, though he's very precise at what he does, he has a definitive technical limit. He almost never short-hops out of shield, he doesn't wavedash out of shield, and he has trouble dealing with people who are just too fast for him. He rarely travels out of state, so he lacks experience and can have trouble reading players from different regions, and sometimes he's bewildered by uncommon matchups.

However, he's been of tremendous benefit to the Arizona scene. He forces people to learn how to deal with his playstyle and the wall of priority that Marth can throw out, he forces them to learn to sweetspot, and he forces them to adapt to his patient yet brutal method.

HugS

HugS is a Samus player whose successful career began based around almost a single move: up+b out of shield. While the meta-game began revolving around Foxes and Falcos with powerful shield pressure, HugS mastered one of the best anti-pressure moves in the game. Using his shield almost as a weapon, he made it very difficult for most players to even attack him as he wormed his way in.

His second major claim to fame was his f-tilt. HugS spaced f-tilt about as perfectly as it could be spaced. He coupled it with wavedashes, erratic dash-dances, and confused people's spacing. They ended up pressuring his shield and eating an up+b, or they would try to space and get poked.

Mastery of these two moves gave HugS a foundational, positional playstyle that let him sneak in a few of Samus' other moves. He loved poking shields, so it came as a surprise when he'd throw out a seemingly random grapple, and when the opponent became too impatient, he'd have an f-smash or charge shot. Combined with solid up-tilting for edgeguards, HugS ate most space animals alive.

He didn't stop there, though. He gradually began adding components to his game that gave him more options and made him more difficult to read. He added up-air and f-air to his Samus game, giving him an extra degree of aerial pressure and combo ability. He also pioneered the use of Samus' n-air to edge guard: when his opponents were focused on sweetspotting and escaping the wrath of his u-tilt, he'd simply run off the stage and n-air them while they were vulnerable (and very surprised). He remained a top player on the West Coast for a long time with his own distinct style until he retired. He claims he'll be making a comeback though, so I'm looking forward to that (but not to playing him in tournament :/).

Chu Dat

Chu more or less invented most of the tricks Ice Climbers players use, and he was singlehandedly responsible for raising them up to high-tier Melee's metagame. He's been, for most of his career, a top contender in every tournament he attends. There was a long period, in fact, where it would be a shock to everybody if Chu did not take top 3 at a tournament, regardless of size and location.

Chu's game, however, was based around surprisingly few things. When he grabbed people, he would have Nana blizzard, and then d-throw d-air them. If they were at KO percents, he would grab smash. When not grabbing, he would focus on spacing d-smashes around his opponent's approaches, intercepting people in the air with u-air, and then throwing out surprise b-airs as his wildcard approach.

What really defines Chu's ICs, however, is the way he moves. The ICs are naturally an erratic character; their wavedash allows them to move in bursts, but their running speed is relatively low. Chu maximizes that by dashing, then shielding to immediately stop his momentum, then wavedashing out of the shield. Sometimes he shields for seconds at a time, sometimes he shields for only a few frames. Sometimes he keeps dash-dancing, sometimes he fox-trots away. The opponent almost never seems his actual decision to attack or retreat coming.

He couples that by slowly figuring out his opponent's timing and favored approaches. This often costs him stocks and even the first game of his set--it's not uncommon for players far beneath his level to take the first game against him, myself included--but by the second game he's unconsciously assimilated his opponent's style. These two skills--they aren't even actual moves--are the main reasons why Chu has always been so good regardless of the state of the metagame: he's difficult to read and a very fast learner.

He's hindered somewhat by the fact that his favored chaingrab, d-throw d-air, is escapable, and more players are familiar with the timing of the smash DI needed to escape; as a result, his grab punishes aren't as deadly as they once were and he's lost some of his efficiency. Nevertheless, he's still an amazing player.

Others

Those are the players who really stand out to me with this playstyle (and they're the ones I've really stopped to analyze). Here are some other examples:

--Hungrybox, a Florida Jigglypuff and recent national breakout, was known for initially relying almost exclusively on Jigglypuff's b-air.

--Drephen, Sheik player from Ohio, was known for happily abusing Sheik's d-smash, and mixing it up with the occasional tilt, grab and f-air. You can see this highlighted in his combo video "All this nigga do is grab."

--JMan, Fox from NY and mentioned in part 2, is incredibly fond of using n-air as his cure-all move, and he's very good with it.

--Just about every community's got one, really.

And that's about it. It's important to know that mastering a technique doesn't just mean being good with one or two moves. Often, it also means skill with your character's movement and understanding their attributes. It means knowing the crucial peculiarities that set your character apart and knowing how to exploit them to maximum advantage. It means knowing how to keep the fight in a place where you have control and forcing the opponent to fight at a pace you dictate.

I hope this has been an interesting and educational read for everybody. Peace out.

A couple things: recent tourney and approaching backwards

Recently went to a tournament in Tucson, have some sets up against Axe and Forward. Here's the thread.

Those vids should highlight how important it is never to mess up your guaranteed combos. I lose quite a bit of percent and even stocks off mistimed infinites, which is not at all bueno.

It's been awhile since I've fought really fast Falcos; they're scary. You can also see Axe using a lot of f-throw, which (for some reason) makes Nana drop her shield when he grabs you. That keeps her from being able to shield grab, which sucks. The throw hitbox also has strangely powerful knockback, meaning the two of you will get separated in a heartbeat. Falco can also CG with it at low percents :(

And his pressure game... ouch. The real trick to getting away from his lasers and shield pressure is simply calling whether you should roll.

You also see me having to fight off a lot of f-smashes; it isn't until the end of my set vs. Forward that I start spacing around it. Forward likes to predict the rhythm of people's movement, so by the end I was consciously trying to kill off my rhythm and make him whiff. It worked once or twice, I think :D

There's also a spacing against the f-smash where you can shieldgrab it, but I don't know what it is. You might need to wavedash into your shield so that your momentum keeps you from sliding back so far. It might also just be if he simply smashes too deep. Anybody who knows should tell me ^_^

--

Part 2! This strategy seems to work decently well against many people and has helped me out a lot against Captain Falcon players. I've known about it for awhile but I'm only recently really exploring the concept of constantly facing away from Falcon.

The following are reasons why I think it's a good idea:

1) D-smash comes out behind you, so you have those few extra frames to take him by surprise. Catching people when they DI badly is how I land a lot of my KOs.

2) His forward+b is punishable from your shield with short hopped b-air; for that matter, you can wavedash into your shield, then suddenly b-air from it, and you can catch him by surprise.

3) This lets you f-tilt-guard into blizzard really really quickly as you advance. Since hitting him with de-sync'ed blizzards can give you crucial openings, finding ways to sneak them into the normal flow of battle gives you a big edge.

4) It makes your grabs very surprising, because most characters don't grab while sliding at you backwards. Facing the wrong way is a good way to bait the opponent into shielding.

Points 1 and 3 are applicable against a lot of characters, really.

That's all for now ^_^

A brief note about johning and complaining

It occurred to me last night that making johns and complaints turns you into a worse player. Any time something happens to you and you seriously complain that it's "broken," "unfair," or "gay," you are making yourself a worse player.

If you shift the blame for a loss onto something besides your own mistakes or your opponent's successes, you are telling yourself that you aren't really responsible for losing. It's not that you weren't good enough, something "gay" just happened to you. It's inevitable that this stupid thing happened to you, it was inescapable, it's broken, etc.

Was it really? Don't cement that into your mind. Once you declare to yourself that a matchup is unwinnable or a situation is always going to happen to you, you lose the ability to keep it from coming true.

A personal example: the ICs infinite in Melee is declared broken by some on the basis that it's impossible to avoid getting grabbed, and that every time you get grabbed you will die. It also means that IC players who are "worse" than other people will beat them anyhow.

I noticed something though, which is that the people who didn't seriously complain about the infinite are the ones who did the best job of avoiding grabs. Of course, I still managed to land grabs on them, but they were focused on the solution to the problem. They tried to keep me split apart from Nana, to efficiently KO her; if I was protecting her too well, they would focus on zoning me and shutting me out as much as possible. Even if watching for the grab meant they got hit by other attacks more often, that was fine with them because an isolated u-air is far better than losing a whole stock.

Some people complained that it was cheap, broken, gay, etc., and almost everybody who said that would get their asses handed to them. It's okay though, because I wasn't better and I wasn't outplaying them, they were just victims of my bullshit. They didn't have to improve, I was playing brokenly. I was the "worse" player, they were really "better," and their game didn't have to change. They just had to ban my broken tactic and I'd lose like always.

Maybe the IC infinite *is* broken? Doesn't matter. As long as you have to deal with it, complaining isn't the answer. Same with any other tactic in the game. Marth's f-smash is really good, but it's punishable and avoidable. Peach's d-smash can be DI'd and teched, or baited and punished as well. People complain about how unfair these moves are, and as a result they conclude it's not their fault they lost. This doesn't help them improve; it does the opposite.

I've DEFINITELY been a culprit of this mindset of thinking. ICs vs. Peach is genuinely a difficult matchup, but I've slowly been finding answers and ways to mitigate some of the advantages she has. I spent years whining to myself about how broken and unfair and stupid her character design was, and how she seemed custom-made to rape my ICs; the moment I stopped and said, "okay, let's assume there's a way to deal with Peach. How can I find it and stop losing?" I immediately started doing better. Some of it was simply "space better and outthink her," some of it was tactical, but I wasn't able to find it until I stopped complaining and looked. I still lose to Peaches (it's a genuinely difficult matchup after all) but my attention nowadays is focused more on solving matchup problems, and I do way, way better.

In Brawl--which I play less intensely--I use Wario and he has trouble dealing with campers. His amazing air control makes up for priority deficits against other top tiers, but he still has no projectile and can be grab released into extreme pain. At first I just complained and johned endlessly believing that Wario "shouldn't be able to win," but then... why were other Wario players winning? The fault was clearly mine. I started using his air control to deceive my opponent, DACUS to quickly and surprisingly approach projectile campy characters like Olimar, and as a result my game immediately expanded. I just lost against a Diddy in tournament, so I decided to practice glide tosses and mixing them with DACUSes; I can't wait to see how it works out, if only because it's better and more productive than complaining that Diddy's banana game is unfair.

No johns, Wobbles.

Edit:

It bears mentioning that sometimes things *really are* broken, unfair, or imbalanced. The important thing is that you look at things honestly and not shift blame from yourself as an automatic ego defense.

Subtractive Playstyles, Part 2: Problems and Solutions

Let's quickly list the pros and cons of a subtractive playstyle.

Pros:

--Allows for low-energy play; by focusing on abilities that you are good at, you don't need to expend unnecessary mental energy executing them.
--Gives you concrete, measurable improvement.
--You quickly become good at some aspect of the game.

Cons:
--It can be difficult to learn which skills are worth improving and focusing on. How do I know which skill I should be putting my focus on, and which ones aren't worth my time right now?
--You may wind up with a gimmicky style and stagnate as a player.
--You may become easy to read.
--If you practice against people who aren't very good, you may think you've mastered a skill but really haven't, and this comes back to haunt you later.
--If you play against somebody who is better with your specialties than you are, or they have mastered a counter to your specialties, then you have nothing to fall back on.


The pros are great, and don't really need elaborating on. Instead, let's look at the cons and find ways to counteract them. After all, I managed to list more of them than the pros, which kind of makes you rethink whether this is a worthwhile endeavor.

Problem: It can be difficult to learn which skills are worth improving and focusing on.

Solution: Study higher level players and pick important, successful parts of their game to emulate. It's tempting to spend time mastering neat tricks that look really cool but have no use or application. I used to devote a lot of time to practicing things like triple shine into short hop reverse double laser; it goes without saying that I've never used it to any effect in an actual game. I should have been watching videos of the top players and seeing which aspects of their game were successful. If they use some move as their bread and butter approach, pay close attention to how they use that move and try to use it in the same way. Learn everything you can about that one move and why it works so well for them, then master it.

Think critically, and focus on subtle details. For instance, look at JMan and his use of Fox's n-air, like in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMAu3XYdVk0 Look at about 0:14, when JMan starts n-airing Scar from the right side of Dreamland across the stage. The first n-air comes out almost the very frame JMan leaves the ground, and he fast falls as soon as possible. He does it again with the second one; JMan is n-airing as fast as he possibly can. However, after jabbing Scar off the ground, he uses a third n-air that is NOT as fast as the first two. This is because if he had n-aired sooner, he'd have hit Scar's shield too early and risked getting shield grabbed; delaying it put him as close to the ground as possible . I'm willing to bet JMan quickly recognized that; he understands how to use n-air properly even when the situation changes in a subtle way. Sure enough though, after he shines against Scar's shield he throws out a fourth very fast n-air to prevent Scar from escaping his shield pressure.

So on the one hand, you may watch JMan and think "if I can n-air as fast as he does, I'll be a top player," which is incorrect. You should be able to control the n-air as well as JMan, and understand its situational uses as well as JMan, and then... you will be able to n-air as well as JMan, and that's it. But it's a great start, and n-air is a great move.

There is a downside to doing this method: with pure imitation you can only become as good as the player you emulate. However, by watching their videos you can also see what sorts of things they get punished for, or where they fail to follow up effectively. That gives you a good roadmap for how you can eventually surpass them. If they're very effective with a character's b-air but they space f-air poorly, you have a clue as to how you can later develop a skill that they don't have.

That brings me to another point: make your own videos and look for some part of your game that gets you into trouble a lot. Focus your energy on improving those parts of your game; if Peach's d-smash destroys you, deliberately let yourself get hit by it and practice teching out of it, practice DI'ing it so you only get hit by it once, learn how to space away from it when Peach CC's you; focus on all the ways that you can get around the destructive power of this one move. When it's no longer an issue for you, train the next trouble spot of the matchup. You may not even need videos if you have a decent memory. Just think of the things that beat you, and turn all your attention to countering one of those things. Once countering it is second nature, move on.

To start with, however, here are some examples of skills that are good to work on and improve: tech chasing with grabs, spacing moves to avoid shield grabs/CCs, dash-dancing away from a move to punish it, sweet-spotting your character's recovery, perfectly timing shield grabs, absolutely mastering your character's chain grabs (if you have one). Lastly, being able to viciously gimp Fox and Falco will always come in handy in tournament, so master that too; pretty much every character can do it :)

Problem: You may wind up with a gimmicky style and begin to stagnate as a player.

Solution: Don't. Resist laziness and keep finding new skills to improve. If you start seeing results and you wind up winning a lot of your games, you may start thinking that your game doesn't need expanding. However, you must remember this: the more mastered skills you have at your fingertips, the more unpredictable, versatile, and creative you can be. Not only that, it often happens that when you learn a new skill it improves the efficacy of your old ones; you get more mix-ups and more follow-ups, which in turn makes you deadlier.

Against some players you can get away with a lame and gimmicky style. Don't let that spoil you into stagnating; the end goal is expanding your game, not limiting it. Remember this, particularly because of the next problem...

Problem: You may become easy to read.

Solution: At first, there really isn't one. Hopefully you'll be *so* good at whatever your technique is--maybe dash-dance camping into a grab, or tech-chasing with u-air on a platform, or something--that the opponent can't avoid it even if he knows it's coming. However, at high levels of play that's very unlikely, because top players are experienced at dealing with many different situations and will probably know the counter to your technique.

Right now though, we're assuming you're NOT at that high level of play, and you're just trying to improve. Don't worry about those top players at this moment. A lot of people have trouble dealing with various tactics; make your technique as unstoppable as it can be, and you'll quickly surpass all those other people. Then you can add new techniques and become *more* unstoppable. As you learn the intricacies of each skill, you end up making better and better decisions, and you can handle more situations.

I reiterate: the only way to avoid the problem of being gimmicky, stagnant, and easily read is to keep mastering new and useful stuff. For now, accept that your game will be limited and move on.

Problem: If you have poor competition, you may think you've mastered a skill when you really haven't.

Solution: Hopefully, you *do* have at least one person in your area as motivated as you. Even if they aren't good, they can still be a sparring partner for training specific situations.

Try this: set a match to time mode and turn the timer off. Pick something to practice, like drill-shining a shield versus shield grabbing. The two of you will be competing to see who is better at the situation, and you just play at it. Even if your opponent isn't good in the context of a real match, the two of you can still improve in this one area, in that one context. Because the timer is off and there is no stock, there's no pressure; you can experiment with the timing, and if you get shield grabbed or shined... so what? You try again, and again, and cement the proper timing into your hands and mind.

You can also try gimmick matches; your opponent will ONLY edge-camp with Sheik and you'll be Fox, and you'll both try to win that scenario again and again. You will only play on Pokemon Stadium during its transformations; when you're not in it, you both just dash dance around and practice movement tricks.

The goal of this is not only improving your skill at these situations, but to make your competition better.

If you *don't* have a training partner or your local scene is far beneath your level, then you'll have to be imaginative. Even when practicing Brawl by himself, Mew2King tried to imagine and construct in-game situations that he could practice. He'd send a computer Snake into the air with Metaknight, then intentionally up-air beneath him and miss, pretending that the computer was a human who would try to fall and air dodge through him. M2K would fall as he u-aired, then jump and n-air, tracking the computer's movement.

If you're alone, try and practice situations that are very likely to occur. For example, you might play as Marth against a computer and throw it onto a platform. Then you practice hitting it with a tipper after it misses its tech. Try to learn where you need to stand to have the most control over the platform, so that when an enemy is stuck above you, you never miss the tipper. Do the same thing with up-tilt and f-tilt, learn the different spacings on Battlefield, Yoshi's Story, and Pokemon Stadium.

Watch videos and practice scenarios as though you were in those matches. Even though no two matches are identical, most situations are remarkably common and you can find ways to rehearse them, even without an opponent.

Problem: If you play against somebody who can counter your specialty, you'll have no contingency plan.

Solution: There isn't one. In a lot of ways, it's not even a problem. You can say "I should have practiced something else," but that's not very helpful; the same problem will still occur, maybe even against the same opponent. You may wish you were better all-around, but if your opponent is experienced that won't help much either. You may wish to plan and be ready for every scenario and every kind of opponent, but that's not realistic. It's highly likely that you will come against some player or some tactic that simply outclasses what you've got at the moment. Understand that these kinds of losses are possible and then use them as maps. Use them to tell you what skill you should train next, or how you can further expand the one you're using.

Here's something to keep in mind though; in the tough matches that matter, you may have to take risks to win. Perhaps you *will* have to do something with a low chance of success because it's the only path to victory, or it's just more likely to succeed than your other options. It may be something that you're bad at, something that's crazy and situational, or even something that's just really really stupid. There's nothing wrong with going for these, provided you believe it's pivotal to winning that particular game. You never want to give up on a match, or completely assume at any moment that it's hopeless for you. I've seen people drastically improve in the middle of a match to come back and beat people they "should have" lost to; in a few rare instances, I've done it myself.

Furthermore, don't let any kind of pride dictate the way you play. You are not forced to win with your chosen style, or finish with a signature combo. You also aren't forced to play in an entertaining way, or mix up your game when it's disadvantageous. Pick the path that you believe will lead you to victory. If it's your specialty, fine. If it's something you've never done before, fine. If it's boring, fine. If it's risky and exciting, fine. Just remember that in a serious match, you are playing to win by whatever means available to you.

Please comment if you have any questions or comments; this section can be organic and I'll add to it if people raise important or interesting points.

Subtractive Playstyles, Part 1: Theory and Method

First, a Shaolin proverb, slightly paraphrased:

"I do not fear the ten thousand kicks you have practiced once. I fear the one kick you have practiced ten thousand times." The meaning behind the proverb is simple: a bunch of awkwardly performed kicks are no match for a single one done with utter mastery.

Second, an interesting article on game design courtesy of David Sirlin: http://www.sirlin.net/articles/subtractive-design.html

I recommend you read it, but if you don't want to, this is the main point some of the most powerful and interesting games have, at their core, very few elements to them. This is because the developers took time to deeply explore those few elements, polish them, and ensure that they were perfect (or near to it). Anything that detracted from those elements was then removed or changed to complement them. He mentions two of my favorite games, Portal and Braid, and I felt gratified because I previously thought--in significantly less concise and enlightening terms--the same thing about them. At their heart they are simple games, but the gameplay they deliver is top-notch; their simple components can be twisted and shaped in countless ways because they are well-developed. That is why those games are deep, entertaining, and acclaimed.

I've learned a lot of lessons about competition and life from playing Smash: consistent performance is key, find ways to turn disadvantages into advantages (and when you can't do that, play in a way that keeps those disadvantages from becoming an issue), honing the basics is an absolute must if you want to be a top pro, and so on. In light of Sirlin's article, I thought about a theory behind how any player can practice, improve, and become high level players. I feel that many people get discouraged when they hit a wall, and the reason most give up is because they do not know how to push past it. They don't have a method for improving, so they practice and train haphazardly, go nowhere, and eventually quit from frustration.

In other sports, there are countless coaches and teaching methods designed to make players improve. For instance, if you don't know why your golf swing is bad, hire a coach and he'll (hopefully) be able to tell you what you need to do to change it. This kind of resource is significantly harder to find for competitive gamers. I really like Melee and I don't want people to quit; playing it seriously against a skilled opponent can be a lot of fun and it sucks when players stop for the wrong reasons. You decide the game isn't for you, fine; you have other life issues that take higher priority, no problem; you really want to get better but don't know how and the game stops being fun, that's bad.

It's really hard to find a concrete method that says "here is how you get better," because every player is at a different point in their development. So all I can really do is offer basic recommendations; hopefully it helps.

Let's go back to the proverb and the article by Sirlin. The most terrifying kick to a Shaolin monk is one that its user has practiced ten-thousand times. The deepest and most entertaining games are ones that have a few elements that are explored and polished as much as possible. I believe that the reason the best players are as good as they are is because they have mastered a few key areas of their respective characters. Then, they try to make the match take focus on those areas as frequently as possible, and stay away from situations outside their mastery.

That said, the method for improvement is simply put: pick a single, important aspect of your chosen character, and train it exclusively until it becomes as flawless as possible. Once you have done that, choose another aspect of that character, and train *that* until it is flawless. Keep doing this, and your game will expand. When you play important games (tournaments and money matches), do your best to keep the game within your areas of mastery.

Think of it another way. When you play a match, a bunch of different situations crop up. You and your opponent will both be on the ground, making it a ground game. Then, one of you will be in the air, turning it into air versus ground, then vice versa. There will be aerial combat where you are directly above the opponent at 12 o'clock. There will be combat when you'll be beneath him, above him and in front, above and behind. There are times when you edgeguard and the opponent is high, times when he is low, times when he is even with the stage; likewise, you will be edgeguarded in those circumstances as well. There are a lot of different situations in any given match, and if you want to be good, it makes sense you need to be good at controlling those situations.

Now let's make up a number and say there are 10 skills you need to master to have a good Fox (it's probably higher but that's not important at the moment). Let's also say that you get... 400 points to split among those skills, and they max out at one hundred. Most players would then have about 40 in every skill. That's below average at each of the skilsl you need to be good at Fox. That makes you a below average Fox. With training you get more points, but right now, you're crummy everywhere.

Now imagine a player who has 100 in two of his skills, then 25 in the other eight. Same 400 points, but he's an absolute master of two of the necessary Fox skills. Any time he is using one of his two good skills, he's a champ. When he isn't, he's garbage.

If you were that player, you would try to make sure that when it counted, you were applying those skills and not using your others. Your game would only have two components, but they would be perfect. As long as you could keep the game going at your pace, you'd be untouchable.

Let's say that player gets more skill points; say he gets... eighty. He could evenly distribute them (100, 100, and eight 35's), or he could invest them in a single skill (100, 100, 100, a 30, and six 25's.) Which is the better choice? He could have another skill that he can always perfectly rely on, and then try to make the game revolve around his three skills. Or, he could continue to have eight below average skills, and keep trying to stick with his two mastered abilities when he plays seriously.

I would argue that the first option is far superior. When you have a useful skill perfected, it becomes a reliable tool that wins you games. The more reliable tools you have, the higher your odds of victory. If you take your unreliable tools and only make them slightly more useful, you guarantee nothing. Even more than that, when you have a skill heavily ingrained into you, it takes very little energy to use it. That leaves you with the energy to concentrate on other parts of the match. If you are constantly expending energy to use skills that may not even work, you weaken your own mind.

The conclusion: focus your training. Pick an important part of your game that needs work and focus on THAT AND ONLY THAT. Once it is mastered to the point where you can rely on it safely and comfortably, select a new part of your game to train.

In part 2, I'm going to talk about some of the problems and issues that arise from this style, as well as ways to deal with them. Part three will be case studies, examples of these playstyles in the Smash community :)

First non-introductory post: Focused Revelation

One of the nice things with messing around in Smash is that, to this day, I still find random things about it--specifically the ICs--that I never knew/noticed before.

A recent discovery is that you can up+b right as you dash off the edge of the level, turn around, and grab the edge while belaying Nana into the air. She gets her normal hitbox/invincibility frames, you grab the edge from the stage. Quick and kind of cool looking. Useful? Your mileage may vary :)

The best part about it is that I found with a crazy burst of logical insight. I thought, "you can turn around with their up+b, right? And if you jump just before you run off the stage, sliding off the edge will cancel the jump animation; that means I can up+b without using their double jump. What if I can just cancel this onto the edge and grab it?"

I guess the best term to describe this is "focused revelation." You put yourself in a position where innovation and discovery are possible, then put all your energy and exploring mutations of... something. In this case, I was noodling around with the ICs up+b and thinking of all the ways that up+b's can be manipulated. "Sheik has a trick like this, Jigglypuff has a trick like this, why not the ICs? After all, you can wavedash backwards off the level and buffer the up+b so you slide off as you begin, letting you grab the edge. Why not run off, turn around, and get the same effect?" And it worked! More often than not, your crazy ideas will turn out to be legitimately crazy and then flop, but sometimes they work out. This time, mine did. I found a new way to up+b cancel onto the edge with the ICs and look cool in the process.

So yeah, focused revelation. Pick one thing in any environment, any field, any circumstance, and explore it as much as possible. Combine that thing with any other thing you can think of, mutate it, twist it, bend it, and see what happens. It works just about everywhere, I think, and is a key to developing personal creativity. Since this is a blog about Smash however, I've been thinking about how many follow-ups you have to any opener, and I'm getting some unusual results.

Example. I've been messing around with IC's jabs as an edgeguarding tool--I've seen how many times people die to random weak hits at the edge, and realized that being immediately below the edge with no control over your approach angle is a bad place to be for many recovering characters. So why not jab them, and see what happens?

Well, for starters, a lot of people randomly air-dodge and give me free KOs. That's great, since until the late 100's and onward, jabs are untechable, and if people start mashing R and L they may wind up air-dodging by accident. Second, the IC's jab has deceptive range *beneath* them. Against a Falcon, you can repeatedly jab (only really doable with two ICs, I think) as he up+b's and just poke him. He drops below the edge, up+b's again, and you jab again. Duck cancel the jab, and repeat.

In the case of Falco, I would normally try to tilt or smash their recovery, but now I've found that if I just jab, Falco becomes incredibly easy to finish. I can jab and wait for him to recover so I can smash. If he goes too low, I can just edgehog. But this is boring, and in the spirit of focused revelation, I want to keep exploring. What else do I have? Well, I can also try to tilt or grab his recovery if he comes above the level.

What else? I've covered jabs, tilts, smashes and grabs. How about B-moves? Blizzard is a nice soft poke that might stun him and cause him to drop again, but it has more lag than the jab and sometimes freezes the recovering opponent, popping him up and giving him his 2nd jump back. Iceblock would be great for gimping, but when they're right below the stage the angle is usually all wrong. Up+b could work; after all, I have a new trick for grabbing the edge quickly; I could fake him out by pretending to stay on the edge and edgeguard, then quickly get the edge and let him fall. I have an idea for forward+b, but this is the wrong circumstance for it.

This leaves me with my aerials. I could drop off the stage and suicidal d-air, but that has a low chance of killing him unless he's already low. B-air could work if I get the reverse hitbox and hit him away from the stage, otherwise I give him a chance to tech. F-air might pop him up or spike him, but he could meteor cancel. Alternatively, I could stay on the stage and try to edgeguard with both f-air and b-air, or I could grab the edge and try getting him with the ledgehopped d-air loop. I could go down and use u-air, but that defeats the purpose of hitting him that low; then again if he's at a low percent, the soft u-air might send him nowhere and set up for another hit.

Of course, that effect could easily be outperformed by using n-air, which is exactly what I've started doing. Jab the Falco while he tries to recover; when he falls beneath the level, walk off and n-air him as he tries to up+b. N-air's low knockback makes it very suitable for gimp KO's in this circumstance; it also has a quick recovery, meaning I can quickly forward+b with Nana to recover. If Falco tries to be persistent, I can also double jump and n-air again, then forward+b or up+b afterwards. Catching him that low with such a weak hit guarantees he will be sent at a bad trajectory, and it makes for a very easy, untechable, deadly edgeguard off the relatively easy to use jab. I like it!

In fact, now that I know n-air is so effective at dealing with Falco here, where else can I use it? No spoilers! Go explore!

Today we start climbing

This blog is about my growth as a competitive gamer. Specifically, I play Nintendo's Super Smash Brothers Melee in tournaments. I go by the name of Wobbles in the Smash community and play as the Ice Climbers.

Recently I announced to the community that I was going to retire, and that my gameplay/combo video Bipolar would be the last Smash related thing I did. That is not the case anymore :) Thanks to Genesis and the effort involved in making the video--still in production--my interest and passion has been rekindled. So the community hasn't managed to get rid of me yet.

Why start a blog? Well, for one thing, I was inspired by Sean "Forward" B, who started his own blog at http://forwardfox.blogspot.com/. Second, I intend to be a writer by profession, and the best thing any writer can do is keep in the habit of writing, no matter what he/she is writing about. Third, I like my fellow IC players, and if I keep updating here with things *I* learn, it might help them get better. Fourth, it's an ego boost. Yayhuzz.

Also, I picked the name, then found this: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=eskimo+sisters

Dammit.