"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.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
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.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Let's Talk About Being Good: A Rant
What is skill? How do you define being "good" at a game?
I've got a pretty simple definition of what it means to be good at something. How good you are is determined by how often and to what degree you succeed at it. That's it. I think it's a nice, universally applicable definition that can apply to pretty much any game.
Let's say you've got some guy, a professional bowler. This guy can bowl a perfect game every time he goes into an alley. You'd agree with me that this guy is pretty good at bowling, yeah?
Let's get peculiar. Let's say this guy bowls by throwing the ball over his head with both arms at the pins. He just chucks the ball as hard as he can down the lane. Every game he scores a 300, perfect consistency. His methods are unorthodox, yes, but wouldn't you agree that he's still technically bowling well? In fact, no bowler in the world--that I know of, which isn't saying much--can get those scores so consistently, so he'd arguably be the best in the world.
Now let's say that it's illegal in the sport of bowling to throw the ball that way (maybe it already is? I don't know). You have to use an underhanded roll, and any other kind is against the rules. This guy is no longer good at bowling, because what he does is not technically bowling anymore. He's good at throwing a giant sphere of plastic polymer with deadly accuracy, but he's not good at bowling. This is important, because games are defined by their rules, and if he isn't playing the game anymore, how can we say he's good at it?
Or let's take a look at the movie Happy Gilmore. Wouldn't you agree that the eponymous main character is good at golf? Sure, he swings the club like a maniac and has a hockey-stick-shaped putter, but at the end, his score is better than everybody else's. He also--during the movie--becomes consistent enough to beat a bunch of golf pros who are significantly more orthodox than he is. So he's consistent and he wins. By my definition (which I don't think is very terrible) he's a good golfer.
I bring this up because there's a mentality in the Smash community--and a lot of other gaming communities that I've experienced--that there's a "right" way to play. There exists some weird kind of skill, called "real skill." Some players win, but they don't have "real skill." Doesn't this seem silly to you? Somebody plays by all the rules of the game, has access to the same tools, beats other people, but somehow he's actually worse. He doesn't have "real skill."
In Smash, what is this mythical "real skill?" Is it the ability to hit all your L-cancels? I don't think so. There's a stigma attached to being a technical player who doesn't adapt well; we say things like, "they're technical but they still aren't good." Is it the ability to read people? Well, not really. You can't really say that's "real skill" if you can't back it up. You can't prove you knew what the other guy was going to do if you walk into it on accident anyhow, can you?
So "real skill" probably exists, but it's really tough to define. We know it when we see it. Certain players have it, some don't. Hungrybox, for instance, does not have "real skill." I'm not sure what he has, but that's not it. He wins tournaments, takes top 3 at just about every national, beats almost every character with his Jigglypuff, but let's be clear, he does not have "real skill."
Why not? Well, he doesn't SHFFL. He clearly doesn't have any mindgames. He just spams one move and waits to rest you. Admittedly, the many other Jigglypuffs that can't SHFFL, have no mindgames and tried to spam b-air and rest haven't had nearly the same level of success as HBox, but that's not the point. He's not ACTUALLY good. No "real skill," remember?
I'm not sure how he beats people who have more "real skill" than him, actually. I guess he has a lot of fake skill? So much of it that it overwhelms all the "real skill." Which, as we've established, [i][b]Hungrybox does not have[/i][/b]. Someday we'll find the real secret behind why he wins so much, and we'll be happy because it will give us something to add to the list of what real skill is not. (I think this is something that separates SSBM from crappy games like golf. We have "real skill.")
Let's talk about skill! Being good means having skill. So what is it? (Not "real skill," we can't really define that. But we know it when we see it!)
Well, there are lots of different kinds of skills, so I like to think that your overall skill is determined by combining the individual skills you possess.
Some skills work together synergistically. They are good skills to practice together because they complement each other. I could practice shield-grabbing and SHFFL'ing b-air, or I could practice shield-grabbing and then chaingrabbing. I think that overall I would get more milage out the second combination than the other, because better shield-grabs would help me land chaingrabs, and better chaingrabs would make my shield-grabs worth more.
I also have no qualms in saying some skills are worth more than others. Some people will practice things like pivoted jab and moonwalk b-air with Fox, then be awful at sweetspotting. Usually, these kinds of people do not win a whole lot. They spend their time on skills that lack solid value and it costs them in tournament. SHDL is great, but finding ways not to get gimped four stocks per match is better. Being good at gimping them for all four stocks before they can gimp you is pretty good too.
Speaking of gimps, I just remembered something about HBox. He plays "gay," which trumps "real skill." I forgot. Silly me.
Back to skill. You can agree that some skills are worth more than others. You may also agree that your overall skill as a player is the combination of the things you have chosen to master. I think it is then logically sound to say that picking different things to master will lead to different levels of overall skill. Now, if you factor in that some skills are good against others, and it actually becomes rather difficult to tell who is "better" than somebody else. Even if somebody wins one particular matchup, they might not be more solid all-around and lose a larger number of matches than the other guy. (It probably doesn't matter much to you if you're the guy who gets eliminated, though. Then again, if you don't want the internet to make fun of you, you have to make sure everybody knows the other guy isn't actually as good you, so make sure to post about it a LOT).
But being good at certain things is worth more than being good at others, particularly if your skill choices synergize. That leads to you being better, which helps you win, which is good.
Unless, of course, you play gay. What's interesting is that even though--for instance--HBox plays gay, he doesn't camp (apparently you can be offensively gay, which isn't the same as finding gayness offensive). It's the fact that he only uses a few moves and somehow beats all these other people.
Let's get serious. There's a reason I am coming back to HBox so much. It's because people have an idea that there is a right way to play this game, and a wrong way. For whatever reason, certain players rarely receive the credit they deserve. HBox is my case study because no other player has had so much success met with so much communal ambivalence. There are other players like him though, who don't get credit because they don't play the "right way." They don't have "real skill."
Pardon me for being so emphatically vulgar, but what the **** does that mean? They aren't winning? Clearly they are, or we wouldn't even bring them up. They aren't playing the game that you want them to? Who the **** cares? In fact, if doing things you don't expect and want them to do helps them win, who's going to blame them for doing it? You? Of course you would, you lost. They're not entertaining? If we wanted the winner to be more entertaining, we would play bonus mode. They used the same move too many times? Put the abacus down, pointdexter, because you don't lose stocks for getting Stale Moves.
We do not have rules regarding entertainment. We do not have rules regarding proportionality in your moveset. You have 4 stocks and 8 minutes to put more hurt on the other guy than he can put on you and that's most of it. Nobody says you have to find every playstyle fun. I thought HBox's combo video was boring as hell. But the moment you start talking about "real skill," I start questioning your sanity. This applies to every last player in every last community. It's up to each person to master skills they believe will win, and when they DON'T win, to figure out what they lacked and then adapt. HBox can b-air like a champ, rest like a champ, avoids dying four times in a majority of his games, he rests more than most other Puffs and he gimps better than most other Puffs. Those are his skills and they help him win. Unless you're Mango, it probably means he wins more than you.
Here's my take on it. You pick the skills you want to master. You try and get them to synergize and you try and get them to give you the largest probability of winning against the largest number of people possible. After that, it's just execution (which is a skill of its own). If the skills work out and you win, fantastic. If they don't, get back to training mode and learn from your mistakes.
And don't ****ing john about it.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Selective Attention and The Empty Short Hop
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo
Go there and watch that video before you read.
Anyhow, the video is a meant to be a test/demonstration of selective attention. That is, in a given situation, our minds often ignore and completely blot out things that they do not expect to see, especially when our attention is focused elsewhere. About 50% of people do not actually see the gorilla in the video. It doesn't have anything to do with profession, peripheral vision, or anything like that; people just sometimes don't see it.
I brought that up because this basic thing happens all the time in Smash, particularly in doubles. Things that you do not expect to see will completely blindside you, to the point that you might not even realize they happened at all until it's too late to deal with them. Ever lose your jump and fall all the way to the bottom of the level before you realize it? You hit jump, nothing happens, and instead of anything else registering in your brain, you just watch yourself fall? Or maybe you thought you would grab on to the edge of the stage, so you just watched the edge. Somebody else got it first though, and you just stared while you plummeted off-screen. Technically, you were looking right at your character, but you never even saw it happen.
A fun example from playing with one of my friends: the very first time I used a Captain Jack grab with Mario (you know, canceling a dash attack with grab so that you hear the "Wa-hah!") he literally stopped playing. He was grabbed. But his brain was trying to tell him, from the sound cue, that he had been dash-attacked. He did not realize that he was being held, and just kept trying to see where the dash-attack was. (Afterwards, he thought this was so funny that all I had to do to beat him with Mario was send him into laughing fits by CJ grabbing)
Selective Attention--and more specifically, any inherent expectation you have regarding the match--is a liability. Like any liability in a multiplayer game, you can use it as a weapon. The most commonly used form of it that I know is the empty jump.
Tournament players learn to SHFFL aerials. It's just a thing that you learn unless you're playing one of like, three characters that don't really utilize it. Peach, Samus, and... Yoshi. I don't know.
Point is, you learn SHFFLing. You come to believe that anytime somebody is in the air, especially if they're against your shield, that they're going to do an aerial. So you watch for it, so you can shieldgrab, or roll away, or up+b out of shield, or whatever. And you watch. And after awhile, you become so conditioned to seeing the aerial that you won't realize it if the other guy doesn't do an aerial at all. You'll just keep waiting. By this point, he's landed and grabbed you. At this point, you might finally notice, but odds are you won't even DI the throw. Or, in the ICs case, mash out before I infinite you.
Another example: using the ICs d-throw d-air on Fox is kind of risky, because he can smash DI and then buffer a roll to get away. It's escapable, and can be a waste of a grab if the other guy knows how to get out.
But what if you know they're going to roll? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGq7X37ypEA#t=1m05s
In this case, Forward SDI's away and down, then rolls like you're supposed to, and I take a big risk in just dashing towards his landing spot. I d-smash him, and he DIs with it. Note the percent; grab at 30 percent, dead at 61% because he can't recover.
Forward's a good player with pretty decent reaction time. What makes somebody like that DI badly? I'm willing to bet that, because after a d-throw d-air, Popo is *supposed* to go for a grab, he didn't even realize that I hadn't done it until it was too late. He may not have even really seen me dashing towards him, or at any rate he didn't process it. The only way you can get a very good player to make errors like that is by doing things you shouldn't, and being where you aren't supposed to be. Wavelands are very useful for this for the same reason an empty jump works; you're supposed to do something in the air, and you're certainly not supposed to slide all over the place.
When does this sort of thing not work? If the other guy has a plan of action that counters your trick *as well as* the thing he expects, he might just go ahead and do it anyhow, and have it work out. An empty short hop doesn't work against somebody who uses up+b out of shield anytime you get close, because... well, he'll just up+b.
Kind of a short post, but it was something I thought of today when I read about that video and test.
Peace, folks.
Go there and watch that video before you read.
Anyhow, the video is a meant to be a test/demonstration of selective attention. That is, in a given situation, our minds often ignore and completely blot out things that they do not expect to see, especially when our attention is focused elsewhere. About 50% of people do not actually see the gorilla in the video. It doesn't have anything to do with profession, peripheral vision, or anything like that; people just sometimes don't see it.
I brought that up because this basic thing happens all the time in Smash, particularly in doubles. Things that you do not expect to see will completely blindside you, to the point that you might not even realize they happened at all until it's too late to deal with them. Ever lose your jump and fall all the way to the bottom of the level before you realize it? You hit jump, nothing happens, and instead of anything else registering in your brain, you just watch yourself fall? Or maybe you thought you would grab on to the edge of the stage, so you just watched the edge. Somebody else got it first though, and you just stared while you plummeted off-screen. Technically, you were looking right at your character, but you never even saw it happen.
A fun example from playing with one of my friends: the very first time I used a Captain Jack grab with Mario (you know, canceling a dash attack with grab so that you hear the "Wa-hah!") he literally stopped playing. He was grabbed. But his brain was trying to tell him, from the sound cue, that he had been dash-attacked. He did not realize that he was being held, and just kept trying to see where the dash-attack was. (Afterwards, he thought this was so funny that all I had to do to beat him with Mario was send him into laughing fits by CJ grabbing)
Selective Attention--and more specifically, any inherent expectation you have regarding the match--is a liability. Like any liability in a multiplayer game, you can use it as a weapon. The most commonly used form of it that I know is the empty jump.
Tournament players learn to SHFFL aerials. It's just a thing that you learn unless you're playing one of like, three characters that don't really utilize it. Peach, Samus, and... Yoshi. I don't know.
Point is, you learn SHFFLing. You come to believe that anytime somebody is in the air, especially if they're against your shield, that they're going to do an aerial. So you watch for it, so you can shieldgrab, or roll away, or up+b out of shield, or whatever. And you watch. And after awhile, you become so conditioned to seeing the aerial that you won't realize it if the other guy doesn't do an aerial at all. You'll just keep waiting. By this point, he's landed and grabbed you. At this point, you might finally notice, but odds are you won't even DI the throw. Or, in the ICs case, mash out before I infinite you.
Another example: using the ICs d-throw d-air on Fox is kind of risky, because he can smash DI and then buffer a roll to get away. It's escapable, and can be a waste of a grab if the other guy knows how to get out.
But what if you know they're going to roll? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGq7X37ypEA#t=1m05s
In this case, Forward SDI's away and down, then rolls like you're supposed to, and I take a big risk in just dashing towards his landing spot. I d-smash him, and he DIs with it. Note the percent; grab at 30 percent, dead at 61% because he can't recover.
Forward's a good player with pretty decent reaction time. What makes somebody like that DI badly? I'm willing to bet that, because after a d-throw d-air, Popo is *supposed* to go for a grab, he didn't even realize that I hadn't done it until it was too late. He may not have even really seen me dashing towards him, or at any rate he didn't process it. The only way you can get a very good player to make errors like that is by doing things you shouldn't, and being where you aren't supposed to be. Wavelands are very useful for this for the same reason an empty jump works; you're supposed to do something in the air, and you're certainly not supposed to slide all over the place.
When does this sort of thing not work? If the other guy has a plan of action that counters your trick *as well as* the thing he expects, he might just go ahead and do it anyhow, and have it work out. An empty short hop doesn't work against somebody who uses up+b out of shield anytime you get close, because... well, he'll just up+b.
Kind of a short post, but it was something I thought of today when I read about that video and test.
Peace, folks.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
What It's Like To Play the Best Player in the World
Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. I've been hunting for a job by day and playing League of Legends by night, and on top of that haven't had much to talk about.
Recently though (especially with Nice Shot Hugo coming up, which I'd like to attend if possible) I was thinking a bit about Smash and something I'd like to talk about.
Not too long ago, I went to a Cali tournament and actually took second. I beat Lucky for the first time in two years, beat Zhu in tournament for the first time, and made it to Grand Finals against Mango where I even managed to win a round. Hats off to the TOs for letting me infinite, because I'm pretty sure it didn't hurt.
In fact, having it legal helped in more than one way. Obviously, I got to KO all my opponents off grabs, and that was certainly useful. More importantly though, it put massive pressure on my opponents not to mess up and not to give me grabs. This meant they were playing very safe, cautious, and kind of campy (which isn't an indictment, I support camping wholeheartedly provided it actually wins you the match).
I like playing against cautious players. First, I have relatively poor reflexes, so I don't handle rushdown very well. Second, because they take their time attacking me, I can take my time to figure them out, and come up with plans and tricks. When very technical Foxes and Falcos and Falcons rush in on me and don't give me room, I tend to panic and make dumb mistakes, both technical and mental.
The fear aura generated by the infinite gives me a big boost. It kept Lucky and Zhu from shield pressuring me into the ground. It gave me breathing space, and like most people, I enjoy breathing.
But not Mango. Mango has a few characteristics that are integral to making him the best player. The first one is that he's very aggressive, but he's not stupid about it. The poker term would probably be "tight aggressive." If he has an advantage, he pushes it. If he doesn't, he waits until he does. What distinguishes him, however, is that he pushes almost EVERY advantage he gets, regardless of how subtle or intangible it is.
Second, Mango is utterly confident in his play. He doesn't get shaken up. He rushes me down knowing he's not going to miss an L-cancel or space badly, and so he can continue to attack without giving in to the fear aura of an infinite.
Third, Mango is efficient. If there's a way to KO you, he does it. Right there. No messing around, no middle-man, pure destruction factory direct to you. At least, most of the time since fourth, he has a sense of humor and likes trying weird stuff, which is part of what makes him innovative and hard to read.
Fifth, he's hard to read. Sixth, he reads most players like a book. This is what interested me the most; Mango can combine technical rushdown with mind-games to a level no other Smasher can. Ken was not particularly technical in his time, and while M2K was incredibly technical, fast, and precise, most players agree that he tended to follow plans and formulas over adaptations. PC Chris was the most Mango-like of the three, in my opinion.
My strong suit, as a player, is my ability to read people. I tend to guess right a lot more than I guess wrong, and I play a character where a good guess can yield a stock, so that kind of covers the efficiency aspect too. What's better is not many IC tricks require a lot of tech skill (contrary to popular belief). Which isn't to say I don't mess up; my tech skill is terribly inconsistent even doing the most basic stuff.
Mango is really, really, really, really hard to read. Based on the people I've played, Mango is in the toppest of top tiers, mentally speaking. In the arena of reading people and being hard to predict, the only player I would place close to Mango is Chu Dat (right now, I know a lot of people would clamor for Armada, but this is based on who I have played. I would totally believe it though).
Anyhow, playing against somebody that smart, fast, and efficient is... very unusual. I think against Mango I played some of my best Smash ever, because at times (very few times mind you) I felt like I was keeping up. I was linking as directly as I could into the mind of my opponent trying to see his intentions and his patterns, and most of the time I came up blank. Nothing. I didn't even have the faintest idea of what he wanted to do, or when he planned to do it. Every now and then though, something clicked, and it landed me a grab.
Not much else to say, really. I could have had a second game from him, but I botched a ledge CG that would have linked to an infinite and earned the last stock. After that though, it was more or less over. I really hope I get the opportunity to play him against at NSH this month, assuming I go.
Recently though (especially with Nice Shot Hugo coming up, which I'd like to attend if possible) I was thinking a bit about Smash and something I'd like to talk about.
Not too long ago, I went to a Cali tournament and actually took second. I beat Lucky for the first time in two years, beat Zhu in tournament for the first time, and made it to Grand Finals against Mango where I even managed to win a round. Hats off to the TOs for letting me infinite, because I'm pretty sure it didn't hurt.
In fact, having it legal helped in more than one way. Obviously, I got to KO all my opponents off grabs, and that was certainly useful. More importantly though, it put massive pressure on my opponents not to mess up and not to give me grabs. This meant they were playing very safe, cautious, and kind of campy (which isn't an indictment, I support camping wholeheartedly provided it actually wins you the match).
I like playing against cautious players. First, I have relatively poor reflexes, so I don't handle rushdown very well. Second, because they take their time attacking me, I can take my time to figure them out, and come up with plans and tricks. When very technical Foxes and Falcos and Falcons rush in on me and don't give me room, I tend to panic and make dumb mistakes, both technical and mental.
The fear aura generated by the infinite gives me a big boost. It kept Lucky and Zhu from shield pressuring me into the ground. It gave me breathing space, and like most people, I enjoy breathing.
But not Mango. Mango has a few characteristics that are integral to making him the best player. The first one is that he's very aggressive, but he's not stupid about it. The poker term would probably be "tight aggressive." If he has an advantage, he pushes it. If he doesn't, he waits until he does. What distinguishes him, however, is that he pushes almost EVERY advantage he gets, regardless of how subtle or intangible it is.
Second, Mango is utterly confident in his play. He doesn't get shaken up. He rushes me down knowing he's not going to miss an L-cancel or space badly, and so he can continue to attack without giving in to the fear aura of an infinite.
Third, Mango is efficient. If there's a way to KO you, he does it. Right there. No messing around, no middle-man, pure destruction factory direct to you. At least, most of the time since fourth, he has a sense of humor and likes trying weird stuff, which is part of what makes him innovative and hard to read.
Fifth, he's hard to read. Sixth, he reads most players like a book. This is what interested me the most; Mango can combine technical rushdown with mind-games to a level no other Smasher can. Ken was not particularly technical in his time, and while M2K was incredibly technical, fast, and precise, most players agree that he tended to follow plans and formulas over adaptations. PC Chris was the most Mango-like of the three, in my opinion.
My strong suit, as a player, is my ability to read people. I tend to guess right a lot more than I guess wrong, and I play a character where a good guess can yield a stock, so that kind of covers the efficiency aspect too. What's better is not many IC tricks require a lot of tech skill (contrary to popular belief). Which isn't to say I don't mess up; my tech skill is terribly inconsistent even doing the most basic stuff.
Mango is really, really, really, really hard to read. Based on the people I've played, Mango is in the toppest of top tiers, mentally speaking. In the arena of reading people and being hard to predict, the only player I would place close to Mango is Chu Dat (right now, I know a lot of people would clamor for Armada, but this is based on who I have played. I would totally believe it though).
Anyhow, playing against somebody that smart, fast, and efficient is... very unusual. I think against Mango I played some of my best Smash ever, because at times (very few times mind you) I felt like I was keeping up. I was linking as directly as I could into the mind of my opponent trying to see his intentions and his patterns, and most of the time I came up blank. Nothing. I didn't even have the faintest idea of what he wanted to do, or when he planned to do it. Every now and then though, something clicked, and it landed me a grab.
Not much else to say, really. I could have had a second game from him, but I botched a ledge CG that would have linked to an infinite and earned the last stock. After that though, it was more or less over. I really hope I get the opportunity to play him against at NSH this month, assuming I go.
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