Okay. I've been here before, in many respects.
Over the years I've improved slowly and painfully, then plateaued, wanted to quit, and forced myself through it. I broke through those walls and became better, even if it was only a tiny margin at a time.
I want to believe that I can still improve, and that I can finally break down this one barrier that's been eating me alive for so long, which is my technical inconsistency.
I can't seem to communicate to people just HOW BAD this problem is. I don't really get frustrated when I lose, I get frustrated when I play poorly. Particularly when I make lots of stupid technical errors that I shouldn't be making after playing for 6 years.
Things like trying to wavedash, and failing, then attempting to fast fall to avoid eating the aerial that I'm now in range of, and double jumping with my joystick. Or trying to waveland onto the stage, but just standing up; then when I try to wavedash back onto the edge so I can try again--and see if my controller doesn't need resetting or something--then I roll by mistake. Then I decide "whatever," and try to short hop and get the edge, only to full jump.
Somebody said that I make lots of bad decisions, and it's hard to explain to people that your decisions aren't really your own when your hands don't cooperate. I'm constantly at odds with my own body to actually communicate my desires to the game. Some games more than half of my attemped inputs come out as errors.
This is not an exaggeration. WD d-smash becomes WD f-smash because of a c-stick flub, followed by an attempted roll that turns into a spot dodge or jump because I spaz on the joystick. My next JC'ed grab is a full jumped f-air to which I then miss the fast fall (and subsequent L-cancel). Upon landing, I airdodge horizontally, failing to wavedash again. My next short hop n-air is a dash attack because I miss my jump button. And so on.
Again, not exaggerations; these are specific examples taken from recent smashfests and friendlies I've played. And when I tell people that I'm frustrated because these mistakes are getting me raped, they say things like "everybody has bad games." I am trying to explain that this goes beyond most people's definition of a bad game, and it happens with a consistency that people think I'm embellishing.
This would not be as big of an issue if I had some safe baseline to fall back on, some technical elements that I NEVER mess up so I can play safe while I calm down... except I don't. I cannot handle the controller without some risk of missing buttons or slamming the joystick in some random direction. Most people find themselves overreaching their tech-skill sometimes and saying "okay okay we'll tone it down." I cannot tone it down to an error-free level.
Sometimes this is clearly tied to my mental state; when I'm frustrated or agitated I often play worse, and when I'm calm and focused I typically play better. Durr, obvious I know, but yeah. However, even when I'm practicing solo in a relatively calm state I will still make these silly mistakes. When I'm nervous, in high-pressure tourney situations... well, most of you have seen what happens.
I have accepted that I don't really have a talent for this game beyond my obsessive nature. But this is at an extreme that I don't know how to cope with anymore; the amount of practice I invest does not seem to correlate at ALL to my technical proficiency, and I'm starting to lose hope. I come up with new systems and ideas to try and rectify it, but nothing's working. My past month-plus of dedicated practice, of going back to basics and hammering them in with constant repetition, has yielded absolutely nothing. I still screw up these fundamentals at a rate far beyond what is acceptable for any player trying to legitimately call themselves good at this game.
The worst part is that I can't just give up and call it quits because there's something inside me, a small petulant voice made of spite and ambition and idealism, that refuses to let me. I'm not going to keep playing if I honestly believe I can't get any better, and apart from this voice, that's what I'm coming to believe the more and more I practice.
tl;dr: bah. If somebody has any advice on how to fix this nonsense, please send it to me.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Smash Workout
Warning: long post ahead. It's also rambly. Beware of "magical philosophizing."
So one of my recent hobbies--being pretty isolated in Texas, with me, Darkrain and DoH all being on completely different work schedules--is working out. Mostly I do a lot of bodyweight stuff, working my way towards one-armed pullups and pushups, hanging V-raises, one-legged squats, stuff like that. And, massive nerd that I am, I've thought about it and want to see what I can apply to Smash.
My most recent tournament, TO6, was pretty depressing for me for a couple reasons. One, I'd just taken 5th at APEX and had 3 1st place finishes in tournaments before that, all of them with pretty stiff competition. I had high expectations for myself, I took 4 days off work to go, and I wasn't playing as well as I liked. That and having the entire crowd against me put me in a bad mood. I lost to Raku, a Sheik player--who was surprisingly good, truthfully, he deserved his win 100%--and thanks to my high expectations that put me in an even worse mood. I went to loser's and started off by getting stomped by RockCrock, and ended up quitting. You can call it a rage-quit I guess, but it was a quit meant to pre-empt rage. I promised myself awhile ago that if I started getting too frustrated during matches I would just forfeit before reaching a point of no-return on my anger.
So after a lot of thought I decided that my main weakness is--and has always been--my technical skill. I don't make perfect guesses and decisions 100% of the time, but often I still screw up when I do, which is a big part of why I rely on simple chaingrabs and such; I'm incredibly inconsistent across the board, and the grab-game is the easiest for me to execute, so naturally I gravitate to it. But I've been using it as a crutch for far too long, and I decided that if technical inconsistency is my biggest weakness, I will just have to train my ass off to turn it into my biggest strength. If I can couple that with my generally smart play, then I'll be a much stronger player as a result.
But how to train? How can one develop technical skill? What is it?
For starters, I think technical skill--the kind that really matters--boils down to consistency. It's not the ability to sprint, but to run a marathon. To keep a consistent pace the entire match long so that even if you can't take advantage of every tiny opening with blinding flashy speed, you can give nothing away through mistakes. And, once you can run the marathon, to improve your time. Or, if we're going to compare it to a weight workout, we're looking at low weight with high reps first. Master the basics, ingrain them utterly, and then slowly scale up.
When I first started playing competitively, I practiced a lot with Fox and he became my tournament main. I learned how to do most of his stuff via something I call the "high-score" method, which is pretty simple. Pick a technique, be it short hopping, wavedashing, whatever, and do it over and over and over again. Keep track of how many times you can do it in a row before you make a mistake. That's your high score.
Now, try to beat your high-score. Keep going, keep beating your high-score. Get to a really high number, because remember, you're going to be doing these things a LOT in any match. Can you short hop 100 times in a row with Fox? You'd better be able to if you're a serious Fox main, because you will be doing THOUSANDS of them in one day at a given tournament, and you can't afford to have an 80% success rate.
High-score method is how I managed to actually learn my tech skill originally, and I improved at it pretty rapidly. Why did I stop? Beats me. But I'm starting again. But what do you practice?
Here's another thing for weightlifters to consider when they work out: compound lifts versus isolation. A compound lift is any lift that targets numerous muscle groups and forces them to coordinate to complete the lift. A squat, for instance, doesn't only use your thighs and glutes, but you have to use your shins and calves to balance, as well as flex your back to lower yourself, then stand. A squat works a lot of muscles. In general, compound lifts are more effective for training your coordination, for giving balance in your muscular development, and even for saving you time in your workout. Unless you're a bodybuilder specifically focusing on sculpting a single muscle group, it's almost always more beneficial to use compound lifts.
But what's interesting is that a "compound exercise" might not be the best idea for Smash practice. It trains multiple skills at once, but sometimes it can give you the wrong kind of muscle memory. This is because tech skill in Smash is also very heavily mental!
What do I mean? Let's talk about inhibition reflexes. (told you this is long and rambly)
Normal reflexes kick in when, let's say, your computer says "click when the screen turns green" and then hey, it turns green, so you click. Inhibition reflexes involve making judgments and sometimes NOT taking certain actions. If your computer says "hit enter when a letter appears, but DON'T hit anything if it's an X," then that tests your inhibition reflexes. You have to check for a value, then decide on a response, sometimes inhibiting your decision to press Enter.
Smash matches do not follow a script. The longer and more involved a technique is, the less likely it will be strictly applicable to every scenario. Practicing short-hop turn-shine waveland fast-fall off the platform into b-air is fun and flashy, but sometimes you don't want to do that. The more you practice it though, the more ingrained that entire action becomes. The more of a habit it is to do that, the more you will have to actively prevent yourself from taking that action during a match.
But what if doing that is a great idea? What if you know you can bait them into jumping out of their shield and you'll clip them with a b-air while they DI badly? You want to be able to perform the maneuver. So maybe you can just practice turn shines in one instance (that's kind of isolated), then practice waveland b-air in another (also pretty isolated), and every now and then put them together to make sure you can do it.
Now for another fun psychological experience: attentional blink. Attentional blink refers to when you shift focus from one piece of information to another; as you can imagine, in Smash you have to do this A LOT. You have to mentally move to the next step in the match, and sometimes it happens at blinding speed. Somebody jumps up above you and wavelands on a platform, then falls off with b-air and hits your shield. It's not enough for you to think, "okay he's going to waveland and b-air me," but then you have to quickly move forward into, "now I think he'll dash-dance away then come at me with a tipped n-air."
One of the things about attentional blink is that it WILL compete with your inhibition reflex for space in your mind. You cannot consciously process two pieces of information simultaneously. You can shift rapidly between them, but you can't actually think about them both. If you have to put attention on on stopping yourself from turn-shine waveland b-airing, you will find it difficult to actually make a new decision. Because you can't come up with a good decision, you may find your hands flubbing for a response. And even if you CAN settle on a response, your hands won't be prepared to execute it well.
How does this relate to your smash workout? Well, here's my theory: if you want to have good tech-skill, and you also want to be able to make good decisions even under pressure, you must have strong isolated skills and quick attentional blinking speed. You have to separate situations into the smallest pieces possible, and be skilled at executing all of them.
SO, with all that long-winded shit in mind, here's how I'm trying to "work out" with Smash.
Wavedashes: 200 in a "set." I cannot afford to screw these up because ICs rely on them heavily every game. I find that by around 200 in a short time, my index finger is too cramped to keep pressing the trigger, so this is where I stop. If I mess up, I start over.
Short hops: I short hop for a lot of reasons, but it's important not to do the same thing out of your short-hop every time. Empty short hops, dashing short-hops, dashing into a backwards short-hop, short-hopping all your aerials, short-hopping with and without fastfalls, these all come into play for mix-ups and good decision making. I start with empty ones, shooting for fifty in a row, then I start short-hopping random aerials (with the most emphasis on my b-air and u-air, because they're the ICs most applicable aerials and the easiest to mess up).
Dash-dances: Joystick control is imperative. It's very important that ALL players are good at keeping track of the direction they're actually pressing it, for the sake of your air-control, DI, and sweet-spotting. I pick a spot on a given stage (like the center of the Pokeball in Pokemon Stadium) and dash-dance within that strict distance for as long as I can. Twenty seconds of rapid dash dancing without a flub is pretty good, and I've found it's already given me much better control with my left thumb. Can't hurt to shoot for higher though!
L-cancels: These are tricky to train because their timing changes so much depending on your given situation. If you hit two shields, a light-shield, a taller character, if you're fastfalling out of a short hop, or fastfalling out of an aerial from a different height... these all change the timing. This is where quick attentional blinking really makes a difference; recognizing how the timing changes, being ready to land your L-cancel based on new information and then quickly move on to the next step of the match.
Well, that's all I've got for now. Believe it or not, there's going to be a follow up to this!
Hope you didn't think that was too weird or stupid. Peace.
So one of my recent hobbies--being pretty isolated in Texas, with me, Darkrain and DoH all being on completely different work schedules--is working out. Mostly I do a lot of bodyweight stuff, working my way towards one-armed pullups and pushups, hanging V-raises, one-legged squats, stuff like that. And, massive nerd that I am, I've thought about it and want to see what I can apply to Smash.
My most recent tournament, TO6, was pretty depressing for me for a couple reasons. One, I'd just taken 5th at APEX and had 3 1st place finishes in tournaments before that, all of them with pretty stiff competition. I had high expectations for myself, I took 4 days off work to go, and I wasn't playing as well as I liked. That and having the entire crowd against me put me in a bad mood. I lost to Raku, a Sheik player--who was surprisingly good, truthfully, he deserved his win 100%--and thanks to my high expectations that put me in an even worse mood. I went to loser's and started off by getting stomped by RockCrock, and ended up quitting. You can call it a rage-quit I guess, but it was a quit meant to pre-empt rage. I promised myself awhile ago that if I started getting too frustrated during matches I would just forfeit before reaching a point of no-return on my anger.
So after a lot of thought I decided that my main weakness is--and has always been--my technical skill. I don't make perfect guesses and decisions 100% of the time, but often I still screw up when I do, which is a big part of why I rely on simple chaingrabs and such; I'm incredibly inconsistent across the board, and the grab-game is the easiest for me to execute, so naturally I gravitate to it. But I've been using it as a crutch for far too long, and I decided that if technical inconsistency is my biggest weakness, I will just have to train my ass off to turn it into my biggest strength. If I can couple that with my generally smart play, then I'll be a much stronger player as a result.
But how to train? How can one develop technical skill? What is it?
For starters, I think technical skill--the kind that really matters--boils down to consistency. It's not the ability to sprint, but to run a marathon. To keep a consistent pace the entire match long so that even if you can't take advantage of every tiny opening with blinding flashy speed, you can give nothing away through mistakes. And, once you can run the marathon, to improve your time. Or, if we're going to compare it to a weight workout, we're looking at low weight with high reps first. Master the basics, ingrain them utterly, and then slowly scale up.
When I first started playing competitively, I practiced a lot with Fox and he became my tournament main. I learned how to do most of his stuff via something I call the "high-score" method, which is pretty simple. Pick a technique, be it short hopping, wavedashing, whatever, and do it over and over and over again. Keep track of how many times you can do it in a row before you make a mistake. That's your high score.
Now, try to beat your high-score. Keep going, keep beating your high-score. Get to a really high number, because remember, you're going to be doing these things a LOT in any match. Can you short hop 100 times in a row with Fox? You'd better be able to if you're a serious Fox main, because you will be doing THOUSANDS of them in one day at a given tournament, and you can't afford to have an 80% success rate.
High-score method is how I managed to actually learn my tech skill originally, and I improved at it pretty rapidly. Why did I stop? Beats me. But I'm starting again. But what do you practice?
Here's another thing for weightlifters to consider when they work out: compound lifts versus isolation. A compound lift is any lift that targets numerous muscle groups and forces them to coordinate to complete the lift. A squat, for instance, doesn't only use your thighs and glutes, but you have to use your shins and calves to balance, as well as flex your back to lower yourself, then stand. A squat works a lot of muscles. In general, compound lifts are more effective for training your coordination, for giving balance in your muscular development, and even for saving you time in your workout. Unless you're a bodybuilder specifically focusing on sculpting a single muscle group, it's almost always more beneficial to use compound lifts.
But what's interesting is that a "compound exercise" might not be the best idea for Smash practice. It trains multiple skills at once, but sometimes it can give you the wrong kind of muscle memory. This is because tech skill in Smash is also very heavily mental!
What do I mean? Let's talk about inhibition reflexes. (told you this is long and rambly)
Normal reflexes kick in when, let's say, your computer says "click when the screen turns green" and then hey, it turns green, so you click. Inhibition reflexes involve making judgments and sometimes NOT taking certain actions. If your computer says "hit enter when a letter appears, but DON'T hit anything if it's an X," then that tests your inhibition reflexes. You have to check for a value, then decide on a response, sometimes inhibiting your decision to press Enter.
Smash matches do not follow a script. The longer and more involved a technique is, the less likely it will be strictly applicable to every scenario. Practicing short-hop turn-shine waveland fast-fall off the platform into b-air is fun and flashy, but sometimes you don't want to do that. The more you practice it though, the more ingrained that entire action becomes. The more of a habit it is to do that, the more you will have to actively prevent yourself from taking that action during a match.
But what if doing that is a great idea? What if you know you can bait them into jumping out of their shield and you'll clip them with a b-air while they DI badly? You want to be able to perform the maneuver. So maybe you can just practice turn shines in one instance (that's kind of isolated), then practice waveland b-air in another (also pretty isolated), and every now and then put them together to make sure you can do it.
Now for another fun psychological experience: attentional blink. Attentional blink refers to when you shift focus from one piece of information to another; as you can imagine, in Smash you have to do this A LOT. You have to mentally move to the next step in the match, and sometimes it happens at blinding speed. Somebody jumps up above you and wavelands on a platform, then falls off with b-air and hits your shield. It's not enough for you to think, "okay he's going to waveland and b-air me," but then you have to quickly move forward into, "now I think he'll dash-dance away then come at me with a tipped n-air."
One of the things about attentional blink is that it WILL compete with your inhibition reflex for space in your mind. You cannot consciously process two pieces of information simultaneously. You can shift rapidly between them, but you can't actually think about them both. If you have to put attention on on stopping yourself from turn-shine waveland b-airing, you will find it difficult to actually make a new decision. Because you can't come up with a good decision, you may find your hands flubbing for a response. And even if you CAN settle on a response, your hands won't be prepared to execute it well.
How does this relate to your smash workout? Well, here's my theory: if you want to have good tech-skill, and you also want to be able to make good decisions even under pressure, you must have strong isolated skills and quick attentional blinking speed. You have to separate situations into the smallest pieces possible, and be skilled at executing all of them.
SO, with all that long-winded shit in mind, here's how I'm trying to "work out" with Smash.
Wavedashes: 200 in a "set." I cannot afford to screw these up because ICs rely on them heavily every game. I find that by around 200 in a short time, my index finger is too cramped to keep pressing the trigger, so this is where I stop. If I mess up, I start over.
Short hops: I short hop for a lot of reasons, but it's important not to do the same thing out of your short-hop every time. Empty short hops, dashing short-hops, dashing into a backwards short-hop, short-hopping all your aerials, short-hopping with and without fastfalls, these all come into play for mix-ups and good decision making. I start with empty ones, shooting for fifty in a row, then I start short-hopping random aerials (with the most emphasis on my b-air and u-air, because they're the ICs most applicable aerials and the easiest to mess up).
Dash-dances: Joystick control is imperative. It's very important that ALL players are good at keeping track of the direction they're actually pressing it, for the sake of your air-control, DI, and sweet-spotting. I pick a spot on a given stage (like the center of the Pokeball in Pokemon Stadium) and dash-dance within that strict distance for as long as I can. Twenty seconds of rapid dash dancing without a flub is pretty good, and I've found it's already given me much better control with my left thumb. Can't hurt to shoot for higher though!
L-cancels: These are tricky to train because their timing changes so much depending on your given situation. If you hit two shields, a light-shield, a taller character, if you're fastfalling out of a short hop, or fastfalling out of an aerial from a different height... these all change the timing. This is where quick attentional blinking really makes a difference; recognizing how the timing changes, being ready to land your L-cancel based on new information and then quickly move on to the next step of the match.
Well, that's all I've got for now. Believe it or not, there's going to be a follow up to this!
Hope you didn't think that was too weird or stupid. Peace.
Monday, October 11, 2010
It's about time you started losing.
"I've missed over 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." -- Michael Jordan
I don't like making mistakes. Anybody who plays with me on a regular basis will tell you that. I miss a short hop or an L-cancel, I have to go into mental damage control mode.
I'm a perfectionist. I hate screwing up. I hate losing. I hate the thought that people watching me will think I'm anything but a great player. This applies in friendlies, money-matches, and tournament. I've mellowed out a lot over time, but this is still very much true of me, regardless of what I'm doing, regardless of whether I've even done it before.
Have you ever worked a dish-washing shift in a restaurant? I hadn't, until about a week ago, when they stuck me in front of a sink during lunch rush and said "go get 'em tiger." I panicked. I could spray shit with water, but that was about it. I didn't know where things went, or which detergents to use on which type of dishes. What I can just rinse off, and what has to go in the industrial torrential bacteria annihilator we call a dishwasher. And every time I got something wrong or fell behind or put something in the wrong place or someone corrected me, I got irritated. Over something I had NO REASON to expect myself to do well at. Ridiculous? Yeah, I'd say so.
You can tell where I'm going with this. Losing a friendly kind of sucks, but who cares? What matters is that you learn from it. The example I give to people is this: you and a friend play 100 matches. 98 of them are friendlies, and you lose all of them. You spend them trying new stuff, practicing new techniques, figuring out what works, what doesn't, and your friend just plays the same the entire time. The other two are tournament matches, and you 2-0 him. That's 1 in 50 wins, but you advance in the bracket. Which matches matter more? Which matches do people care about?
"Oh, but I beat him in friendlies." People say it all the time, friendlies don't matter. Or rather, they do matter, but only because of what they teach you. People remember the tournament results. They remember who took first.
Here's an interesting flip side; people get mad about other people camping in friendlies, even though it's a strategy that you should learn to deal with if you want to be a top player. Friendlies are the optimal environment for testing new strategies and counter-strategies, but people don't want to practice against camping. Why? It's boring. You shouldn't try so hard to win in friendlies, etc.
Yet the very reason that those people are pissed off about camping is because they are losing to it! "You shouldn't try so hard to win in friendlies! Let ME win instead!"
Here's the point: friendlies are for practicing and trying new things, not for keeping score. You try to win them, but not because winning the friendly matters. It's because honing a skill properly so that it becomes a winning technique matters. And if you have to lose a lot so that you can actually win when it counts, so be it.
I don't like making mistakes. Anybody who plays with me on a regular basis will tell you that. I miss a short hop or an L-cancel, I have to go into mental damage control mode.
I'm a perfectionist. I hate screwing up. I hate losing. I hate the thought that people watching me will think I'm anything but a great player. This applies in friendlies, money-matches, and tournament. I've mellowed out a lot over time, but this is still very much true of me, regardless of what I'm doing, regardless of whether I've even done it before.
Have you ever worked a dish-washing shift in a restaurant? I hadn't, until about a week ago, when they stuck me in front of a sink during lunch rush and said "go get 'em tiger." I panicked. I could spray shit with water, but that was about it. I didn't know where things went, or which detergents to use on which type of dishes. What I can just rinse off, and what has to go in the industrial torrential bacteria annihilator we call a dishwasher. And every time I got something wrong or fell behind or put something in the wrong place or someone corrected me, I got irritated. Over something I had NO REASON to expect myself to do well at. Ridiculous? Yeah, I'd say so.
You can tell where I'm going with this. Losing a friendly kind of sucks, but who cares? What matters is that you learn from it. The example I give to people is this: you and a friend play 100 matches. 98 of them are friendlies, and you lose all of them. You spend them trying new stuff, practicing new techniques, figuring out what works, what doesn't, and your friend just plays the same the entire time. The other two are tournament matches, and you 2-0 him. That's 1 in 50 wins, but you advance in the bracket. Which matches matter more? Which matches do people care about?
"Oh, but I beat him in friendlies." People say it all the time, friendlies don't matter. Or rather, they do matter, but only because of what they teach you. People remember the tournament results. They remember who took first.
Here's an interesting flip side; people get mad about other people camping in friendlies, even though it's a strategy that you should learn to deal with if you want to be a top player. Friendlies are the optimal environment for testing new strategies and counter-strategies, but people don't want to practice against camping. Why? It's boring. You shouldn't try so hard to win in friendlies, etc.
Yet the very reason that those people are pissed off about camping is because they are losing to it! "You shouldn't try so hard to win in friendlies! Let ME win instead!"
Here's the point: friendlies are for practicing and trying new things, not for keeping score. You try to win them, but not because winning the friendly matters. It's because honing a skill properly so that it becomes a winning technique matters. And if you have to lose a lot so that you can actually win when it counts, so be it.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
One Thing
"I'll post more," he said. Takes him two weeks to post something, and it's not even smash related. What a noob.
Anyhow, I felt like posting something I was thinking about that applies everywhere. It's about self-improvement, learning, and achievement. It goes according to a rather significant quote:
"Today I will do what others won't, so tomorrow I can accomplish what others can't." -- Jerry Rice
I'm a fan of the "one thing" methodology, which is pick a single isolated skill, technique, or habit, and ingrain it within yourself until it becomes your instinct. Then pick something else, and repeat until you're done. Don't try everything at once.
So here's your homework, readers. Pick something today. It can be in Smash or school or work or whatever, doesn't matter what. Pick one thing, just ONE, that you don't normally do, or you think "I really ought to," and do it. No excuses, no johns, it's just one thing. You can manage it. It's that one thing you CAN do, but don't. Go do it.
And if you have to, be ready to do it again. That's it. You're identical to your old self except for this one thing, which you do a bit better. Now, overall, YOU are a bit better.
Now do it again.
Peace.
Anyhow, I felt like posting something I was thinking about that applies everywhere. It's about self-improvement, learning, and achievement. It goes according to a rather significant quote:
"Today I will do what others won't, so tomorrow I can accomplish what others can't." -- Jerry Rice
I'm a fan of the "one thing" methodology, which is pick a single isolated skill, technique, or habit, and ingrain it within yourself until it becomes your instinct. Then pick something else, and repeat until you're done. Don't try everything at once.
So here's your homework, readers. Pick something today. It can be in Smash or school or work or whatever, doesn't matter what. Pick one thing, just ONE, that you don't normally do, or you think "I really ought to," and do it. No excuses, no johns, it's just one thing. You can manage it. It's that one thing you CAN do, but don't. Go do it.
And if you have to, be ready to do it again. That's it. You're identical to your old self except for this one thing, which you do a bit better. Now, overall, YOU are a bit better.
Now do it again.
Peace.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Brief downtime and gratitude.
Even though the blog was only down for a short time, I heard from a surprising number of people (surprisingly quickly) that I needed to hurry up and bring it back. I didn't realize people actually enjoyed reading this thing!
So I'm going to try and update more frequently, even if it's with smaller stuff, just so you folks who check here regularly can have something new to read every time you stop by.
Thanks for sticking with me so far, everybody.
So I'm going to try and update more frequently, even if it's with smaller stuff, just so you folks who check here regularly can have something new to read every time you stop by.
Thanks for sticking with me so far, everybody.
Monday, September 6, 2010
What do you want?
This blog is not entirely about Smash, but more about life. It's about something I'm thinking about right now, and I want to encourage other people to think about. I'm writing it as much in an effort to share my thoughts as I am writing it to try and understand my own. It was inspired by this video, specifically around 1:21: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvOUVil7W5s
What do you want?
Why do you want to be good at Smash? Why do you spend your hours playing this game rather than at your job, studying math, picking up girls, working out, learning guitar, writing your novel? What is your goal? Why is this important to you?
I've asked people what their targets are when they play, I've received lots of different answers. Some people just want to make it out of pools, some people just want to avoid going 0-2, some people want to be the best with X character, some people say "I want to be a top player." One answer I liked was "you know how when people play you they're like, 'oh shit I have to play Wobbles.' I want people to say that when they play me." Nice one.
Though I didn't ask him directly, my favorite answer came from Soft when I went to Alabama. I told him, "I'm traveling a lot because I want to get as much practice as I can, since I want to win APEX." You know what his response was?
"So do I."
I guarantee you that Soft will improve faster and rise to higher levels than most other players. He didn't manage to make it out of 2nd round pools, but doesn't that make his goal more impressive? People say, "I want to make it out of my pool," "I just don't want to get last." Soft wanted to take home the whole damn thing.
Remember this. Whenever you stop to pursue a goal, in that time you exclude everything else. When you sit down to play Smash, if you have some goal like "I want to have an amazing Falco," and you don't work towards that goal, then you are failing yourself. You only have so much time in your life. You absolutely MUST spend it pursuing whatever goal is most important to you, and if you're going to spend that time, do not spend it carelessly because you are spending it at the expense of the other things you could be doing.
I wanted--I don't know if I still do--to be the best player in the world. I did not care how many Mangos and Armadas and HBoxes and M2Ks and other top players I would have to surpass to do it; it was my goal. It was stupidly ambitious and audacious to believe it was possible for me, a player who demonstrated no recognizable talent when he started. But it was my target.
And to be honest, I did not have the dedication such a lofty goal deserved. I screwed around, I trained poorly. I've made johns and cop-outs and settled for less than my best. I not only picked a goal that I didn't work my hardest for, I did it at the expense of other things in my life, so I wasted time on multiple fronts. By some weird combination of luck and bursts of obssessive motivation, I've become one of the top players in the country. But I'm damn sure it's no stellar example of how to play and pursue your Smash career, or any other goal in life for that matter.
Don't mess around. Don't give maybes and don't lie to yourself about how you're trying your hardest but other stuff comes up. If something matters to you and you're going to spend your time on it, then don't waste that time. Every moment wasted is irreparable damage to the potential output your life could be creating. If there's something that gets in the way of your goals, then sit down and figure out how to make that obstacle fuck off. No johns, no "it's too hard," if you want it, then go for it, and crush anything in your path.
Peace folks.
What do you want?
Why do you want to be good at Smash? Why do you spend your hours playing this game rather than at your job, studying math, picking up girls, working out, learning guitar, writing your novel? What is your goal? Why is this important to you?
I've asked people what their targets are when they play, I've received lots of different answers. Some people just want to make it out of pools, some people just want to avoid going 0-2, some people want to be the best with X character, some people say "I want to be a top player." One answer I liked was "you know how when people play you they're like, 'oh shit I have to play Wobbles.' I want people to say that when they play me." Nice one.
Though I didn't ask him directly, my favorite answer came from Soft when I went to Alabama. I told him, "I'm traveling a lot because I want to get as much practice as I can, since I want to win APEX." You know what his response was?
"So do I."
I guarantee you that Soft will improve faster and rise to higher levels than most other players. He didn't manage to make it out of 2nd round pools, but doesn't that make his goal more impressive? People say, "I want to make it out of my pool," "I just don't want to get last." Soft wanted to take home the whole damn thing.
Remember this. Whenever you stop to pursue a goal, in that time you exclude everything else. When you sit down to play Smash, if you have some goal like "I want to have an amazing Falco," and you don't work towards that goal, then you are failing yourself. You only have so much time in your life. You absolutely MUST spend it pursuing whatever goal is most important to you, and if you're going to spend that time, do not spend it carelessly because you are spending it at the expense of the other things you could be doing.
I wanted--I don't know if I still do--to be the best player in the world. I did not care how many Mangos and Armadas and HBoxes and M2Ks and other top players I would have to surpass to do it; it was my goal. It was stupidly ambitious and audacious to believe it was possible for me, a player who demonstrated no recognizable talent when he started. But it was my target.
And to be honest, I did not have the dedication such a lofty goal deserved. I screwed around, I trained poorly. I've made johns and cop-outs and settled for less than my best. I not only picked a goal that I didn't work my hardest for, I did it at the expense of other things in my life, so I wasted time on multiple fronts. By some weird combination of luck and bursts of obssessive motivation, I've become one of the top players in the country. But I'm damn sure it's no stellar example of how to play and pursue your Smash career, or any other goal in life for that matter.
Don't mess around. Don't give maybes and don't lie to yourself about how you're trying your hardest but other stuff comes up. If something matters to you and you're going to spend your time on it, then don't waste that time. Every moment wasted is irreparable damage to the potential output your life could be creating. If there's something that gets in the way of your goals, then sit down and figure out how to make that obstacle fuck off. No johns, no "it's too hard," if you want it, then go for it, and crush anything in your path.
Peace folks.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Here, Fishy Fishy.
Let's talk for a moment about the only man to ever beat Chuck Norris in a race: Captain Falcon.
Now, *aside* from his overwhelming manliness, how does Captain Falcon ever manage to make it back to the stage? Somebody saw fit to give the other characters some pretense of a chance at beating the Cap'n, so all he's really got is up+b. And with up+b, he can pretty much aim for the stage, or aim for the edge. He can also try and ledge-tech but once people found out you can edgehog that it became less handy. So he can go onto the level, or onto the edge. That's it. Regardless, paragon of the XY that he is, Falcon finds a way back anyhow.
The reason that Falcon can make his way back despite overwhelming evidence that he should *not* (besides being goddamn Captain Falcon of course), comes down to two things.
First is the fact that we, as players, are fish. We have a tendency to bite down on the juiciest piece of bait that lands in front of us. When we see something that makes us think, "hey I can punish this," we rarely stop ourselves from leaping in mouth-first. Impulse control is one of those useful skills that you don't talk about much.
The second is air control. There's a lot of hidden effort involved in using that one move to make it back to the stage. Let's say that you're Falcon and your opponent is a smart dude. You up+b, and right now the other guy is thinking "ah, he's going to the edge, but he wants to trick me." As you start moving forward the guy is watching you, looking for the trick, and then he sees it. You start pulling back, and so he quickly steals the edge. One stock down, three to go.
He's wrong though. You hit back on the joystick for just a fraction of a second, and when he saw you slow down he thought you were completely changing direction. Turns out you quickly hit forward again and moved into towards the middle of the level, out of range of a ledge-hop punishment.
One of the many differences between good players and great players is how they use air control. Much like how Starcraft players can always find something productive to do in just one second of dead time, great players add more dimensions to their game in places that good players don't think to look.
Most Falco players, once they fire their laser don't realize that they can still control their horizontal momentum to adjust their spacing, nor do they consciously implement this to make their approaches and zoning games more precise and safe. Watch a video of Mango's Falco and really watch his character model. Look at the tiny adjustments he makes in the air. Besides giving himself better spacing control, this has the effect of giving the other guy false information about his intentions. The slightest bit of DI in can convince somebody you'll be in shield-grab range, even though you immediately begin to DI out and they whiff the grab.
Or consider Jigglypuff. Most Puff players use a very predictable in and out rhythm of air movement. While this helps them space their moves, it also gives the opponent a handy metronome for anticipating the Puff's move placement. Once again, watch Mango if you want inspiration. Sometimes he abruptly stops in mid-air for not even a quarter of a second, giving you the impression that he's about to retreat and it's save to jump out; of course, that's when he has a n-air waiting for you. And then when you're busy watching for it, he'll spend some of the match moving in at full speed and being in range before you even realize it, clipping you before you have a chance to notice that he's up in your grill. And then sometimes he really does just completely pull back and you whiff an attempted counter-attack, letting him punish as he pleases. Once he's in your head like that, Mango can attack pretty much whenever he wants and you'll be too flustered to avoid it.
Back to the two main points: air control, and fish. As players those subtle cues in air control tell us where the opponent plans to go and what he plans to do. Why do you think that people still keep falling for Ganondorf's double-jump bait against shield? He jumps in on you with your shield up, fast falls and then jumps. The key? The fast fall.
Experience works against us here. Fast falling is a sign that you're using an aerial and you want to cancel lag on the ground as quickly as possible. It's the cue that many players use to tell if somebody is about to land, and having seen it you assume the other guy is about to land. Afterwards you think "of course Ganon was tricking me so he could double jump and stomp me in the face," but at the time throwing out that grab seemed completely reasonable, didn't it? Yes. If you're a fish.
As fish, we often react to the first piece of pertinent information we see, and use that as an excuse to go for the bait. Somebody dashes towards you, that's the cue to roll towards them and get behind them because they are OBVIOUSLY tech-chasing you away. And that open space behind them looks so damn inviting, doesn't it? Wait, why is Fox wavedashing backwards? I hope you remembered to DI his up-smash properly, little fish.
The bait can become a little more complicated. I love dashing up to a prone target with ICs and bringing up my shield, then wavedashing out to follow their roll. Because once I've shield-grabbed somebody's get-up attack eight times in five minutes, they start catching on. In fact, they lie there prone just to encourage me to run up and shield again so they can roll away, safe. Wait, why is Wobbles suddenly wavedashing backwards? Fishy fishy fishy fishy.
These situations happen a lot and they're pretty easy to understand and learn from, because the options here are very concrete and defined. Roll in, roll away, get-up attack, stand-up... not that complicated. But few realize just how easily and how often subtle air-control will bait something like a jump into an "obvious" move. HBox's air movement is full of alterations in timing and speed adjustments that make even really good and smart space-animals jump straight into his b-air.
So don't get lazy. You aren't on a fixed trajectory once you've jumped where the only difference is in the timing of your stupidly telegraphed aerial. Every character can do a little to screw with the other guy's sense of his location, and once you do, then you'll really be fishing.
Now, *aside* from his overwhelming manliness, how does Captain Falcon ever manage to make it back to the stage? Somebody saw fit to give the other characters some pretense of a chance at beating the Cap'n, so all he's really got is up+b. And with up+b, he can pretty much aim for the stage, or aim for the edge. He can also try and ledge-tech but once people found out you can edgehog that it became less handy. So he can go onto the level, or onto the edge. That's it. Regardless, paragon of the XY that he is, Falcon finds a way back anyhow.
The reason that Falcon can make his way back despite overwhelming evidence that he should *not* (besides being goddamn Captain Falcon of course), comes down to two things.
First is the fact that we, as players, are fish. We have a tendency to bite down on the juiciest piece of bait that lands in front of us. When we see something that makes us think, "hey I can punish this," we rarely stop ourselves from leaping in mouth-first. Impulse control is one of those useful skills that you don't talk about much.
The second is air control. There's a lot of hidden effort involved in using that one move to make it back to the stage. Let's say that you're Falcon and your opponent is a smart dude. You up+b, and right now the other guy is thinking "ah, he's going to the edge, but he wants to trick me." As you start moving forward the guy is watching you, looking for the trick, and then he sees it. You start pulling back, and so he quickly steals the edge. One stock down, three to go.
He's wrong though. You hit back on the joystick for just a fraction of a second, and when he saw you slow down he thought you were completely changing direction. Turns out you quickly hit forward again and moved into towards the middle of the level, out of range of a ledge-hop punishment.
One of the many differences between good players and great players is how they use air control. Much like how Starcraft players can always find something productive to do in just one second of dead time, great players add more dimensions to their game in places that good players don't think to look.
Most Falco players, once they fire their laser don't realize that they can still control their horizontal momentum to adjust their spacing, nor do they consciously implement this to make their approaches and zoning games more precise and safe. Watch a video of Mango's Falco and really watch his character model. Look at the tiny adjustments he makes in the air. Besides giving himself better spacing control, this has the effect of giving the other guy false information about his intentions. The slightest bit of DI in can convince somebody you'll be in shield-grab range, even though you immediately begin to DI out and they whiff the grab.
Or consider Jigglypuff. Most Puff players use a very predictable in and out rhythm of air movement. While this helps them space their moves, it also gives the opponent a handy metronome for anticipating the Puff's move placement. Once again, watch Mango if you want inspiration. Sometimes he abruptly stops in mid-air for not even a quarter of a second, giving you the impression that he's about to retreat and it's save to jump out; of course, that's when he has a n-air waiting for you. And then when you're busy watching for it, he'll spend some of the match moving in at full speed and being in range before you even realize it, clipping you before you have a chance to notice that he's up in your grill. And then sometimes he really does just completely pull back and you whiff an attempted counter-attack, letting him punish as he pleases. Once he's in your head like that, Mango can attack pretty much whenever he wants and you'll be too flustered to avoid it.
Back to the two main points: air control, and fish. As players those subtle cues in air control tell us where the opponent plans to go and what he plans to do. Why do you think that people still keep falling for Ganondorf's double-jump bait against shield? He jumps in on you with your shield up, fast falls and then jumps. The key? The fast fall.
Experience works against us here. Fast falling is a sign that you're using an aerial and you want to cancel lag on the ground as quickly as possible. It's the cue that many players use to tell if somebody is about to land, and having seen it you assume the other guy is about to land. Afterwards you think "of course Ganon was tricking me so he could double jump and stomp me in the face," but at the time throwing out that grab seemed completely reasonable, didn't it? Yes. If you're a fish.
As fish, we often react to the first piece of pertinent information we see, and use that as an excuse to go for the bait. Somebody dashes towards you, that's the cue to roll towards them and get behind them because they are OBVIOUSLY tech-chasing you away. And that open space behind them looks so damn inviting, doesn't it? Wait, why is Fox wavedashing backwards? I hope you remembered to DI his up-smash properly, little fish.
The bait can become a little more complicated. I love dashing up to a prone target with ICs and bringing up my shield, then wavedashing out to follow their roll. Because once I've shield-grabbed somebody's get-up attack eight times in five minutes, they start catching on. In fact, they lie there prone just to encourage me to run up and shield again so they can roll away, safe. Wait, why is Wobbles suddenly wavedashing backwards? Fishy fishy fishy fishy.
These situations happen a lot and they're pretty easy to understand and learn from, because the options here are very concrete and defined. Roll in, roll away, get-up attack, stand-up... not that complicated. But few realize just how easily and how often subtle air-control will bait something like a jump into an "obvious" move. HBox's air movement is full of alterations in timing and speed adjustments that make even really good and smart space-animals jump straight into his b-air.
So don't get lazy. You aren't on a fixed trajectory once you've jumped where the only difference is in the timing of your stupidly telegraphed aerial. Every character can do a little to screw with the other guy's sense of his location, and once you do, then you'll really be fishing.
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