I have went to many locals and even placed top 8 at one. I completely understand the experience of being good at this game, and the amount of hours it takes to lab, and to play nonstop. My brother never wants to play with me anymore and it makes me think that all this time i’ve put in really doesn’t bring me as much joy as hanging out with family. While I absolutely love hanging out with people at my local and the joy of seeing me in top 8 at my local was an amazing feeling, I really wish that people I see everyday would enjoy playing a casual party game with me. I an still extremely lucky to have my friends who enjoy playing Mario Kart and Smash with me but I can definitely see how heartbreaking it is when nobody wants to play with you at all. As for the video, you are extremely underrated and the commentary on this video was a 10/10. Improvements to your editing will definitely help you grow, the commentary was great and I really enjoyed it.
i fall into the same situation but we did find many solutions >Classic Mode >Home Run Contest >Mob Smash >Smash Tour (Yes I Still Play That From Time To Time) >Team Up Against A Beefed Up Amiibo Because Thats Really All I Can Do
You've ever heard about Team battle? Seriously though, good vid! Gave a hefty overview about the strange being that is Smash Bros. I wish that it wasn't made this deeply competitive, but with a game of this scope, it's basically unavoidable. Oh, and I joked about team battle, but it's true: If you're constantly winning against your friends in a game, team up with them and play against other players/bots! Or that's at least how me and my friends handled the skill gap. Worth a try..? Regardless, keep making videos! And don't shy away from sharing you perspective, like you did in this vid.
I call this dilemma "casual competitive standard" where you're too practised to be casual, but far too casual on attitude or time to be competitive. I suffer this in the majority of the games I play, because improvement is fun for me. I like winning. But I don't have the time to truly dedicate myself to an esport. So I get good, good enough to brag to friends but nowhere near good enough to enjoy matches against people who truly take the game seriously. I find the massive problem with fighting games especially that the majority of the skill is in knowledge, as you highlighted. Mechanical advantage you can handicap. "I won't use the optimal combo", "I'll go for fun strings only", "ok this game I've unbound block". But knowledge? How do I unlearn wave dashing? How do I unlearn a prediction I spent hours grinding years ago for a tournament? How do I just ignore that my friend always goes for 1 move when I'm airborne? It feels unfun for you, as the better player, to be more concerned with how to stop yourself playing well than actually playing the game. But it's unfun to lose because your friend had absolutely no life a few years ago. I've found online games are actually best for this. You get placed in a high rank, and basically compete with people in the same situation as you. Good enough to be out of bronze, silver or gold, not quite good enough to be master rank and not really trying to. You can play against friends and give them advantages occasionally, but it's usually fatigue that drives friends away from playing with their competitive skilled buddy, so getting the majority of my fix through ladder and supplimenting it with couch play helps to strike a balance between my skill and my friend's fun. Just what I've found works for me.
In any competition, a big skill gap makes a match boring. The problem with smash specifically is it's historically been advertised as the alternative to people who want to play fighting games but aren't good at them. Street fighter, Tekken, mortal Kombat, guilty gear, NOT ONE of them has ever advertised themselves that way. The same thing occured with Mario kart, but it's competitive scene is much smaller because you can't turn off items. Like think of it this way, monopoly (and fortune street) is a competitive board game, there is slight RNG but there's almost deterministic strategy there. Someone who wants a light board game experience is gonna choose candyland over it 90% of the time, if there was a candyland community making it more like monopoly you lose the intended candyland audience
Competing smash ruins the game for me because no one wants to play with me anymore. That hit hard man😢(its so true it apply for a lot of games)why is getting better being punished. This vid is relatable
Playing the same five stages for YEARS 💤 and if camping/stalling becomes an issue, that's where items come in, then dodging center stage endlessly is suddenly not such a hot idea. Smash is criminally underappreciated
I have the same problem with having to warn my siblings and I'm good at smash before I play against them. But even then sometimes they still beat me because they are surprisingly good.
I think people who aren't in the know fail to realize that at the birth of the competitive smash scene (melee early years) there were quite a few tournaments where lots of stages were legal and items were on. The problem was noone could collectively agree who was better/who was winning by skill vs luck because of these factors, causing everyone to eventually agree on items off and slowly wittling down the stages to what they use now. It was just a big hassle and made the competitive experience feel less earned so things changed into what competitive smash is today. They also banned stuff that both casual and competitive players would absolutely hate like ice climbers wobbling (infinite, inescapable grab combo) because it was game breaking. Imagine you play your cousin and he just grab combos you to 150% and 1 shots you 4 times in a row, you'd never play smash again, casual player or not.
I'll be honest. The fact that competitive Smash plays the game with so much more limits, that honestly makes me feel as though they are making the game seem less than what it is. I am of the opinion that items, stage hazards, and time limits SHOULD be in competitive Smash. While it will have to be tweaked and looked at to prevent matches from having the game decide who wins for competitors, I feel as though it can both add to flare of matches, and allow a completely different set of skills to become part of the game. The fact is, real sports, have elements that lead to random luck deciding wins, so I don't see why it's considered evil to have the same in eSports. I know it will never happen, and that my idea does have some major flaws to look at, but at least don't dismiss it outright.
I would recommend you look into the brawl tournament where a random kid on vacation beat one of the best players in the world. I think its Ken vs CPU on youtube. Items were on and the kid won the whole tournament cuz final smashes and items were on, people denied the results and said the kid won only by luck (imo kinda true honestly) people played smash with items on back in the day and it just caused more issues than it was worth
Love the video and it offers an interesting look into how a lot of these "party" games can quickly falter when one player is simply better. But it's kind of an ugly truth that better/more experienced players will almost always have a leg up in these types of games. Even if you hadn't put in your practice, there's a good chance you'd still be better if you simply played more than everyone else (the same can be said for games like Mario Kart or even Mario Party). Much like chess, the game is extremely fun when player skill is similar, and the greater the skill disparity the less fun it is for all parties involved. This isn't a fault of the game, its competitive side, or your (former) willingness to improve, it's simply a reality when dealing with any individual-based PvP game where winning is the incentive. With Smash in particular, I've always felt the ignorance to the competitive community and resistance to it's concept was a poor excuse to design the game more freely and directly or indirectly led to the problems you're describing. The best party games - regardless of type or genre - are ones where players EACH have a reasonably even chance of winning REGARDLESS of opponent skill or experience. I've always disliked how Nintendo ignores the possibility of people competing and designs their games with exclusively casual play in mind, but that's a different point entirely. Personally, I believe the best party games lean heavily into providing player experiences, collaboration, and/or pure chaos so that skill is either irrelevant or mostly doesn't influence the outcome. Smash doesn't meet these requirements the moment an individual has superior skill to those they're playing against. I would argue that Smash is a poorly designed game for its intended genre, and Nintendo flat-out ignoring and disparaging the competitive community only proves this point further. Smash is the only "party game" with a large competitive following that almost defines the game's reputation. You can't ignore the reality that Smash's design essentially INVITED competitive play, and I can't think of any other party game title that has found itself in a similar situation.
Very well articulated, however, I don't know if I can agree that the game is "poorly designed". The community manages to persist despite Nintendo's clear disapproval. While this is not an endorsement of Nintendo or their archaic approach to community events, its not a fault of the designers for having an intended demographic and sticking with it. The way Smash was designed aims to create a specific type of friendly competition. When it comes to design, it's difficult to create a game that allows for multiple diametrically opposed play groups, it's inevitable that one will be favored (even unintentionally). Competitive Smash, as seen through lens of the community that built it, is closer to a modification of the game than it is a faithful engagement with the established systems. I wouldn't call Mario 64 a poorly designed game because a group of speed runners can beat it in less than 10 minutes. Either way, thanks so much for watching/commenting! ❤️
love that last point you made. Plus, it's not like they didn't try to incorporate a lion's share of chaotic and diverse mechanics to mitigate the skill gap. One power up in particular in ultimate lets you summon a random npc to fight for you, allowing you to potentially win games without actually making risky or skillful attacks yourself. Maybe try playing a game where that is the only power-up. I tried that once and it became quite absurd.@@SeppoCJ
leaving my two cents: -Even if you dont compete at tournaments you'll going to get very good at the game if you play it enough, in my case, Ill never competed in a smash tournament before, but since smash 64 I played and mained one of the most difficult characters to master at the time, Samus, now in ultimate I can easily adapt to both free for alls and 1v1 with her since all that chaos makes you good at improvising and quick thinking. -while you cant play on even grounds against most casual players anymore, there's plenty of comp players that are down to play with more varied rulesets than what appears at first sigh, I always find at least 3 arenas in ultimates online that are 4 player free for alls and final smashes allowed, making the experience more even. -while this is a personal experience, I got many friends that are at my level as we still play the game casually constantly, I adapted to them, but they also adapt to me, so is still more fair.
I mean I think the reason I feel that way isn't the same, but I understand. For the smash communities fundamental way of being just doesn't work for me. They have shitty rulesets for both games that are popular, the viewers and top figure heads complain and don't care about making the community better (Also they have just shitty views about good characters especially in the new games), when they do its very back handed like with Liquid and their crypto sponsors, despite how much the melee community has been told to not be elitist and that their game isn't objectively the best, there is still excessive elitism in smash in general and just blatant bullying that is ignored at tournaments, the legacy players like leffen, mango and Nairo still refuse to actually take responsibility for their actions for being a bad influence on the community, homophobia, transphobia and ableism more then all of them still is a rather well known problem that goes unaddressed in the community, similarly I found it recently that there is a whole subsection of the community that is far right and those people apparently have not been completely removed from the community and the community has actively ruined opportunities for us that would have made smash as an esport prosper for a long time while not utterly banning people who continue to harm us with their pressence to this day like Technicals, Leffen and VGBC. Lets not forget too that Coney made a video a bit ago about stage lists and while I don't like the guy necessarily that much anyway he still has a point, the TO's don't care about our success they are just avoiding the most outcry and complaining from the community which is why they don't even try to experiment. The top players are not helpful with the rulesets either because they don't want variance they want consistency cause all they care about is winning, not how fun the game is. The commentator have left the building basically and the viewers are cannabilistic no thanks to themselves not nintendo. Like Nintendo is a parasite in all this but this community could give two shits about each other. Among many other things, but yeah I just can't find myself to go to locals where I know these people lowkey think this way, and everyone that I knew went on to play other shit because this community is just that bad. Its like what I tell the ultimate people everytime I used to argue with them: its not Smash 4 bayonetta and Ultimate Steve that are killing these games its your open hatread of them that is effecting everyone and is making everyone not want to be around you, the characters were always rather managable and were not that polorizing, its you and the communities behaviour towards these characters that has made everyone leave competitive smash. P.S. Obviously Meta Knight in brawl is not included in that last part, he actually should have been banned., same with doubles cloud in smash 4.
I wish Smash would try to be more aware of the compettitive scene in it's design (why is there no short hop or separate tilt button, for example) but I also wish that the Smash scene would be more open to what the game actually has to offer. Why don't we play squad smash, use the ultra-metre, play on more stages? Many of these mechanics are not even random (or not more random than Luigie getting a missfire). There is so much variance just left on the table.
Competitive smash community sucks for one reason, if smash is at a party, someone who's heard of ZeRo or Hbox is going to ruin the party because they're focused on the meta and shit. Meta takes the fun out of any game if you're a casual player Don't even get me started with the battlefield only, 1v1 only shit, number 1 way to kill my vibe at a party. To sit and wait in line to play a game that has enough slots for all of us. And worse, can't even enjoy a good final smash bait
Ill say that squad strike has been played in tournaments, but barely Im weird cuz im both casual and comp cuz i can dumb myself down cuz i can go autopilot easily, but im still too good for normal casuals, and the deeper knowledge is big for me, i just like learning :)
Heartbreaking: Man Too Good at Fighting Game to Enjoy Playing Against Friends But Not Good Enough to Play Competitively
I have went to many locals and even placed top 8 at one. I completely understand the experience of being good at this game, and the amount of hours it takes to lab, and to play nonstop. My brother never wants to play with me anymore and it makes me think that all this time i’ve put in really doesn’t bring me as much joy as hanging out with family. While I absolutely love hanging out with people at my local and the joy of seeing me in top 8 at my local was an amazing feeling, I really wish that people I see everyday would enjoy playing a casual party game with me. I an still extremely lucky to have my friends who enjoy playing Mario Kart and Smash with me but I can definitely see how heartbreaking it is when nobody wants to play with you at all.
As for the video, you are extremely underrated and the commentary on this video was a 10/10. Improvements to your editing will definitely help you grow, the commentary was great and I really enjoyed it.
CJ Khaled: Suffering from Success
20:30 I not only feel your pain, but I actually suffer the same pain.
That's some HOT TAKE right there.
i fall into the same situation
but we did find many solutions
>Classic Mode
>Home Run Contest
>Mob Smash
>Smash Tour (Yes I Still Play That From Time To Time)
>Team Up Against A Beefed Up Amiibo
Because Thats Really All I Can Do
Absolutely eye opening perspective, very well said! Even if I disagree with it.
Very well said comment! Thank you for watching
You've ever heard about Team battle?
Seriously though, good vid! Gave a hefty overview about the strange being that is Smash Bros. I wish that it wasn't made this deeply competitive, but with a game of this scope, it's basically unavoidable. Oh, and I joked about team battle, but it's true: If you're constantly winning against your friends in a game, team up with them and play against other players/bots! Or that's at least how me and my friends handled the skill gap. Worth a try..?
Regardless, keep making videos! And don't shy away from sharing you perspective, like you did in this vid.
I have to go 1v3 against my family when we hang out on holidays. It still didn’t make a difference lol.
3:25 Thank you for your definition
I call this dilemma "casual competitive standard" where you're too practised to be casual, but far too casual on attitude or time to be competitive. I suffer this in the majority of the games I play, because improvement is fun for me. I like winning. But I don't have the time to truly dedicate myself to an esport. So I get good, good enough to brag to friends but nowhere near good enough to enjoy matches against people who truly take the game seriously.
I find the massive problem with fighting games especially that the majority of the skill is in knowledge, as you highlighted. Mechanical advantage you can handicap. "I won't use the optimal combo", "I'll go for fun strings only", "ok this game I've unbound block". But knowledge? How do I unlearn wave dashing? How do I unlearn a prediction I spent hours grinding years ago for a tournament? How do I just ignore that my friend always goes for 1 move when I'm airborne? It feels unfun for you, as the better player, to be more concerned with how to stop yourself playing well than actually playing the game. But it's unfun to lose because your friend had absolutely no life a few years ago.
I've found online games are actually best for this. You get placed in a high rank, and basically compete with people in the same situation as you. Good enough to be out of bronze, silver or gold, not quite good enough to be master rank and not really trying to. You can play against friends and give them advantages occasionally, but it's usually fatigue that drives friends away from playing with their competitive skilled buddy, so getting the majority of my fix through ladder and supplimenting it with couch play helps to strike a balance between my skill and my friend's fun. Just what I've found works for me.
In any competition, a big skill gap makes a match boring. The problem with smash specifically is it's historically been advertised as the alternative to people who want to play fighting games but aren't good at them. Street fighter, Tekken, mortal Kombat, guilty gear, NOT ONE of them has ever advertised themselves that way.
The same thing occured with Mario kart, but it's competitive scene is much smaller because you can't turn off items. Like think of it this way, monopoly (and fortune street) is a competitive board game, there is slight RNG but there's almost deterministic strategy there. Someone who wants a light board game experience is gonna choose candyland over it 90% of the time, if there was a candyland community making it more like monopoly you lose the intended candyland audience
Competing smash ruins the game for me because no one wants to play with me anymore. That hit hard man😢(its so true it apply for a lot of games)why is getting better being punished. This vid is relatable
Playing the same five stages for YEARS 💤 and if camping/stalling becomes an issue, that's where items come in, then dodging center stage endlessly is suddenly not such a hot idea. Smash is criminally underappreciated
I have the same problem with having to warn my siblings and I'm good at smash before I play against them. But even then sometimes they still beat me because they are surprisingly good.
I think people who aren't in the know fail to realize that at the birth of the competitive smash scene (melee early years) there were quite a few tournaments where lots of stages were legal and items were on. The problem was noone could collectively agree who was better/who was winning by skill vs luck because of these factors, causing everyone to eventually agree on items off and slowly wittling down the stages to what they use now. It was just a big hassle and made the competitive experience feel less earned so things changed into what competitive smash is today. They also banned stuff that both casual and competitive players would absolutely hate like ice climbers wobbling (infinite, inescapable grab combo) because it was game breaking. Imagine you play your cousin and he just grab combos you to 150% and 1 shots you 4 times in a row, you'd never play smash again, casual player or not.
VERY well made video, good stuff homie
I'll be honest. The fact that competitive Smash plays the game with so much more limits, that honestly makes me feel as though they are making the game seem less than what it is. I am of the opinion that items, stage hazards, and time limits SHOULD be in competitive Smash. While it will have to be tweaked and looked at to prevent matches from having the game decide who wins for competitors, I feel as though it can both add to flare of matches, and allow a completely different set of skills to become part of the game. The fact is, real sports, have elements that lead to random luck deciding wins, so I don't see why it's considered evil to have the same in eSports. I know it will never happen, and that my idea does have some major flaws to look at, but at least don't dismiss it outright.
because some items are completely broken ig
I would recommend you look into the brawl tournament where a random kid on vacation beat one of the best players in the world. I think its Ken vs CPU on youtube. Items were on and the kid won the whole tournament cuz final smashes and items were on, people denied the results and said the kid won only by luck (imo kinda true honestly) people played smash with items on back in the day and it just caused more issues than it was worth
Love the video and it offers an interesting look into how a lot of these "party" games can quickly falter when one player is simply better. But it's kind of an ugly truth that better/more experienced players will almost always have a leg up in these types of games. Even if you hadn't put in your practice, there's a good chance you'd still be better if you simply played more than everyone else (the same can be said for games like Mario Kart or even Mario Party). Much like chess, the game is extremely fun when player skill is similar, and the greater the skill disparity the less fun it is for all parties involved. This isn't a fault of the game, its competitive side, or your (former) willingness to improve, it's simply a reality when dealing with any individual-based PvP game where winning is the incentive.
With Smash in particular, I've always felt the ignorance to the competitive community and resistance to it's concept was a poor excuse to design the game more freely and directly or indirectly led to the problems you're describing. The best party games - regardless of type or genre - are ones where players EACH have a reasonably even chance of winning REGARDLESS of opponent skill or experience. I've always disliked how Nintendo ignores the possibility of people competing and designs their games with exclusively casual play in mind, but that's a different point entirely.
Personally, I believe the best party games lean heavily into providing player experiences, collaboration, and/or pure chaos so that skill is either irrelevant or mostly doesn't influence the outcome. Smash doesn't meet these requirements the moment an individual has superior skill to those they're playing against. I would argue that Smash is a poorly designed game for its intended genre, and Nintendo flat-out ignoring and disparaging the competitive community only proves this point further. Smash is the only "party game" with a large competitive following that almost defines the game's reputation. You can't ignore the reality that Smash's design essentially INVITED competitive play, and I can't think of any other party game title that has found itself in a similar situation.
Very well articulated, however, I don't know if I can agree that the game is "poorly designed". The community manages to persist despite Nintendo's clear disapproval. While this is not an endorsement of Nintendo or their archaic approach to community events, its not a fault of the designers for having an intended demographic and sticking with it. The way Smash was designed aims to create a specific type of friendly competition.
When it comes to design, it's difficult to create a game that allows for multiple diametrically opposed play groups, it's inevitable that one will be favored (even unintentionally). Competitive Smash, as seen through lens of the community that built it, is closer to a modification of the game than it is a faithful engagement with the established systems.
I wouldn't call Mario 64 a poorly designed game because a group of speed runners can beat it in less than 10 minutes.
Either way, thanks so much for watching/commenting! ❤️
love that last point you made. Plus, it's not like they didn't try to incorporate a lion's share of chaotic and diverse mechanics to mitigate the skill gap. One power up in particular in ultimate lets you summon a random npc to fight for you, allowing you to potentially win games without actually making risky or skillful attacks yourself. Maybe try playing a game where that is the only power-up. I tried that once and it became quite absurd.@@SeppoCJ
leaving my two cents:
-Even if you dont compete at tournaments you'll going to get very good at the game if you play it enough, in my case, Ill never competed in a smash tournament before, but since smash 64 I played and mained one of the most difficult characters to master at the time, Samus, now in ultimate I can easily adapt to both free for alls and 1v1 with her since all that chaos makes you good at improvising and quick thinking.
-while you cant play on even grounds against most casual players anymore, there's plenty of comp players that are down to play with more varied rulesets than what appears at first sigh, I always find at least 3 arenas in ultimates online that are 4 player free for alls and final smashes allowed, making the experience more even.
-while this is a personal experience, I got many friends that are at my level as we still play the game casually constantly, I adapted to them, but they also adapt to me, so is still more fair.
I mean I think the reason I feel that way isn't the same, but I understand. For the smash communities fundamental way of being just doesn't work for me. They have shitty rulesets for both games that are popular, the viewers and top figure heads complain and don't care about making the community better (Also they have just shitty views about good characters especially in the new games), when they do its very back handed like with Liquid and their crypto sponsors, despite how much the melee community has been told to not be elitist and that their game isn't objectively the best, there is still excessive elitism in smash in general and just blatant bullying that is ignored at tournaments, the legacy players like leffen, mango and Nairo still refuse to actually take responsibility for their actions for being a bad influence on the community, homophobia, transphobia and ableism more then all of them still is a rather well known problem that goes unaddressed in the community, similarly I found it recently that there is a whole subsection of the community that is far right and those people apparently have not been completely removed from the community and the community has actively ruined opportunities for us that would have made smash as an esport prosper for a long time while not utterly banning people who continue to harm us with their pressence to this day like Technicals, Leffen and VGBC.
Lets not forget too that Coney made a video a bit ago about stage lists and while I don't like the guy necessarily that much anyway he still has a point, the TO's don't care about our success they are just avoiding the most outcry and complaining from the community which is why they don't even try to experiment. The top players are not helpful with the rulesets either because they don't want variance they want consistency cause all they care about is winning, not how fun the game is. The commentator have left the building basically and the viewers are cannabilistic no thanks to themselves not nintendo. Like Nintendo is a parasite in all this but this community could give two shits about each other.
Among many other things, but yeah I just can't find myself to go to locals where I know these people lowkey think this way, and everyone that I knew went on to play other shit because this community is just that bad. Its like what I tell the ultimate people everytime I used to argue with them: its not Smash 4 bayonetta and Ultimate Steve that are killing these games its your open hatread of them that is effecting everyone and is making everyone not want to be around you, the characters were always rather managable and were not that polorizing, its you and the communities behaviour towards these characters that has made everyone leave competitive smash.
P.S. Obviously Meta Knight in brawl is not included in that last part, he actually should have been banned., same with doubles cloud in smash 4.
I relate to this super hard. We are more or less in the same position 😂
I wish Smash would try to be more aware of the compettitive scene in it's design (why is there no short hop or separate tilt button, for example) but I also wish that the Smash scene would be more open to what the game actually has to offer. Why don't we play squad smash, use the ultra-metre, play on more stages? Many of these mechanics are not even random (or not more random than Luigie getting a missfire). There is so much variance just left on the table.
Fire video
If guilty gear gets a spot in the roster of a the next smash bros, Potemkin should be the one represinting the game
Competitive smash community sucks for one reason, if smash is at a party, someone who's heard of ZeRo or Hbox is going to ruin the party because they're focused on the meta and shit.
Meta takes the fun out of any game if you're a casual player
Don't even get me started with the battlefield only, 1v1 only shit, number 1 way to kill my vibe at a party. To sit and wait in line to play a game that has enough slots for all of us. And worse, can't even enjoy a good final smash bait
Ill say that squad strike has been played in tournaments, but barely
Im weird cuz im both casual and comp cuz i can dumb myself down cuz i can go autopilot easily, but im still too good for normal casuals, and the deeper knowledge is big for me, i just like learning :)
Yipeee new video!!
Super interesting!
This is why you play 2s with other people
ngl, im in a similar position.
I just play my worst character
"I love Smash!" exclaims the competitive player, as he ignores and derides 98% of the content of the game he "loves."
uhmm akshually.☝🤓 no it doesn't. smash is a game made for all types of players, competitive, non competitive, skillful, etc. it matters not