Yeah wizzy making sonic look like a braindead character is more the design as opposed to wizzy being dumb. Sonic was a WERID character to play against back then and there's a reason only wizzrobe did well with him
@@painter5391 facts bro, I think she could get pushed way further. Obviously not like, Mario or Link level, but with enough top player investment I could see her being comparable to like Mewtwo. She's super fun and I'm glad she's been getting more love recently :-)
I used to play Melee (Marth). I was PR'd at #10 once, in an admittedly weak region. Now I only play Ult and PM. I picked G&W as my main in Ult for a few reasons, and one of those is his simple (and effective) OoS game. If someone attacks my shield, I can up-b. If they're misspaced, I get a combo. If they space well, I'm in slight disadvantage but am mostly safe. I don't have to play the crossup mixup game that most other characters do and I also don't have to learn technical OoS punishes like footstools. This led to some confusion when I watched Void's video on "playing ultimate", because I had never experienced what he described (someone hits your shield, you jump OoS, then land on their shield with an aerial). It's just now dawning on me that the reason his video was confusing was because I never have to jump OoS, and unlike say Fox, I also don't have a compelling reason to land on someone's shield with an aerial. G&W has two moves he can do safely on shield: fair (bomb) which is very plus, but hard to make someone shield, and cross-up nair, which is terrible in the situation Void describes because the fish (hitboxes) start above G&W and it takes a long time before the fish get to his sides. Basically it's easy to anti-air. I think, generally, having tools that let you bypass a "fundamental skill" means that you won't learn that skill. Melee Samuses can't learn to dashdance while playing Samus. I am only now (like three years into Ult) learning to do things like jab OoS when people space well around up-b. I had a similar problem with Marth in Melee - it took me a long time to learn to approach, because most of the time I could just dashdance in the corner and grab the people approaching me. I think if a character's tools mean you can't or don't have to learn enough fundamental skills naturally, playing that character will leave you with blind spots that you will have to think carefully about to overcome.
Hello Toph I just wanted to leave a comment in the perspective of a league player relatively new to melee: League is similar to melee in the sense that there are two distinct “mechanics” to learn and master in the game, your champions’ skills, and the macro roles for your position. For example, top laners typical role in the game is to either split push for pressure, tank and absorb damage (and attention off the carries) or roam. There was a video I watched on how certain champions counter champions that in theory should technically destroy said champion (example being lucian should beat seraphine mid, but seraphine has the winrate advantage). That is because seraphine compared to lucian is a mechanically simplistic champion. Her role is to mindlessly clear minion waves and spend her off time supporting teammates. Lucian (in the mid lane) acts as a fighter who deals out hella damage when using the correct sequence of abilities. Because mechanically harder champions require more attention to tech skill, their mind is thinking less about the macro (looking out for ganks, warding, minimap awareness) and just trying to output dmg while less mechanical champions are free to think with ample amounts of time. In that sense, I think this reason could relate to why low/mid tier characters (or floaties in general) trump the average spacies player. Only the pros who have mastered their character can pull off tech skill without a lot of effort which leaves their brain space to focus on footsies and neutral control. But someone like me (falco main trying to execute tech skill) would ultimately lose or be at a disadvantage for neutral because my brain energy is focused on execution. So many times I start a pillar combo going only to get stopped by an aerial that I could have anticipated if I wasn’t just focusing on executing the pillar combo pattern.
ua-cam.com/video/GEyeAedn1f8/v-deo.html this is the video referenced; if you want what I talk about is explained much better in this video (around 5:00 mark) but I highly recommend the whole video as it is a great and informative watch.
I started as a puff... felt like she simplified character interactions and I wouldn't grow as a player. I switched to Falco... felt like the player interactions were too one sided and I wouldnt grow. I switched to doc... felt like 90% of unranked players quitting out on me wouldn't help me grow. I switched to ganon... now I'm happy pissing off everyone reading their full hops with fair. I've grown. Jab.
When I decide to stay and play a couple matches against a doc instead of leaving immediately but they end up being toxic from the get go? Like shouldn’t you just be happy I stayed to play??? Probably tilted cause everyone else left.
Hey Toph! I mainly compete in ultimate nowadays, but have played melee competitively in the past. In my opinion, I think that learning fundamentals and learning your character don’t necessarily go hand in hand. In my experience, learning the character necessarily proceeds learning the game (although I acknowledge this may just be my personal process for learning). As such, I think characters with more simple, “applicable-out-of-the-box” tools allow one to learn the game faster due to less complicated game plans/flowcharts. Character specific strengths that allow the player to skip portions of the learning process (i.e. Flip Jump/ Quick Attack for disadvantage, Charge Shot/Steve’s Mining for neutral etc) may slow down a player’s personal growth, but are necessary in understand and abuse in order to win. In ultimate specifically I’m not sure that picking a low tier hinders player growth, but the built in option-select of “I lost because I play a bad character” can foster a poor competitive mindset. Overall, I’m not sure any particular character is better to learn the game with, but I think picking simpler characters can help beginners! Picking good characters is also probably a good idea for competition, moreso in Melee/other FGC games.
I'm solely a melee player but I have some experience with playing low-tiers and I wanted to throw in my two cents. I used to be a Peach player in 2015/16 but quit after that and only picked up the game again when rollback slippi came out. When I started playing again, I started out with Peach, dabbled in a couple other characters until I eventually started maining Link. I feel that playing a mid-tier/low-tier has improved my reasoning/thought patterns in the game a lot, since you actively need to try to make your limited toolkit work against top-tiers. When I went to a tournament recently, I played Peach again during the entire bracket, and I noticed a genuine improvement in these aspects of the game which I don't feel they would've improved in the same way that they did I had stayed with Peach or another high-tier. If this is advocating low-tier usage or just me exposing myself for the lazy ass that I am, I'm not sure, but I felt that it was worth sharing none-the-less :).
I think the thing with wizzy/ICs players is they are able to dodge one of the biggest mid level traps in melee which is not developing a strong enough punish game. So many players don't seem to understand that the first step to playing real neutral is putting the fear of god in your opponent. They waste time spinning in circles getting on hot and cold streaks based on which neutral mixups they're favoring which makes it hard to develop consistent fundamentals. Zain talks about it a bit here ua-cam.com/video/UjNYPBe3hYw/v-deo.html once you've seen how you can condition people who are fearing your grab because you can 0-death off it, its a lot easier to understand what is happening and why in high level matches and develop a strong gameplan yourself. And then as you said, having access to high level players and playing them in close games allows you to learn about other characters through osmosis. I haven't practiced falco in years, but mine has gotten a lot better in just the last month or so since the new matchmaking came out cuz Im regularly seeing what combo routes all the good falcos take. Great vid, love when you talk about other fgs cuz I only know melee. Also my falco once lost 7 stocks to Sonic in PM doubles in like 90 seconds 😂 dont think ive ever tilted harder
bro you sound like you still live in the early 2000s when high level players were actually saying stuff like " you gotta work on your mindgames" to improve or win. that doesnt exist. your first goal isnt to scare your opponent 😂🤣😂🤣
@@ForrestBreeze I feel that in recent times some players like feeling superior to those from the past as if somehow players now are so sophisticated and that past players are some kind of Neanderthals. I guess there's some satisfaction in saying things like "lol mind games? that's made up shit old players said because they didn't really know the game or know what they were talking about". That somehow players now are above this fairy tale "mind games" and aren't going to be so gullible to this silly thing. The thing is mind games are real. If you make someone fear something like grab, you can in a way force them into doing or not doing something to avoid the grab. Right there you just made them more predictable because now they're limiting their options, or at the very least using less safe options and using more punishable ones. It narrows down what they're likely to do. Ask any player who's played Chu Dat or Hungrybox. Many have said in the back of their mind they were thinking about how losing meant a "Yayuhz" or a popoff and the idea of that happening to them was unsettling. It made them more desperate to win. Call it mind games or fear conditioning. It's the same thing. Hell, look at all the comments in Twitch streams when Aklo taunts during a tournament game; many people get so heated by it, and they're not even playing him. Being able to get under someone's skin is a mind game. Look at how tilted people get on Slippi when they get cheesed one stock and just give up because "i'm not having it!", or when someone runs around taunting or spamming moves. People are still susceptible to mind games, and sometimes the mind games are caused by our own ego or emotions.
I think pretty much every character has draw backs to overall learning potential. For example, Falco players may learn good tech-skill but may not learn good edge-guarding because Down-Air is so powerful. Or a Falcon may learn good edgeguarding, but not great neutral because Falcon can over-rely on stray hits. A lot of it depends also on attitude. If you are a Peach player that must win every match, you'll probably spam Down-Smash, but not improve your overall game. You have to force yourself to improve.
I rejected playing May in Strive (who is quite similar to Honda) for this reason for quite some time. I pretty much agree with daigo, if you make the effort to play with fighting game fundamentals, you'll improve with most characters
The idea that playing just one character won't help you grow is (as you said) pretty ridiculous. Even those characters that you mentioned that are "better" starting characters still have specific aspects of their gameplay that they don't really have to worry about and hold you back if you want to switch. For example spacies which you mentioned as a good fundamental character get away with SO much stupid crap that no other characters really get away with because of shine and it will build up bad habits if you're gonna switch to other characters. At the end of the day maining any one character will force you to specialize in character specific stuff that won't really be applicable to other gameplay. In my opinion what is most important in your starting character is not how transferable to skillset is but whether you have fun because if you don't have fun your not going to play as much and if you don't play as much you won't improve. It's a video game so don't overthink it do what you enjoy.
while i agree, as a samus main i think that playing other characters casually to have an understanding of what they think is so important to general improvement
I also think its a mindset sort of thing, but one thing I think that is worth bringing up is that playing different characters can give new perspectives and freshen you up. When I first started, my first real main that I put a lot of effort into was Falco. I played into the balls to the walls aggression, and because no one in my friend circle could actually handle the execution tests I had practiced, I felt like I was 'getting good'. However, in retrospect what was actually happening was that I was abusing Falco's bread and butter kit against people who couldn't deal with it. I never had to learn how to actually deal with shield because I could just blast them if they ever decided to hold it. I never had to learn mixups or neutral, they just lost to the B button. Even edge guarding was just spamming dair. If I play faster, if I press more buttons, I win harder. So, I thought that was how I 'get good'. When I hit college I got bopped hard. Shoutouts to the UT Austin scene; although I was *fast*, I was certainly very dumb. The aggression I had built up throughout my career was full of cracks and void of thought or respect. My mindset up until then was so focused on just getting faster and more technical, because I won harder against my peers. I never thought about the *counterplay*, or the *correct* situations to leverage my skills. It didn't help that I had to focus really hard to hit the technical stuff, so I had no mental breathing room. So, I lost and lost and lost. I lost my faith in any of my skills, because my technical prowess had no substance to back it up. I was stuck in this mindset that I just had to keep grinding my tech to improve because thats how I used to win harder, but the results just never came. In retrospect, I had been stuck in this dumb feedback loop, which resulted in me just getting utterly blasted, haha. I took a break from the game, and when I came back because of Slippi I decided to play Marth; my hands and controller weren't appreciating Falco, so I thought 'why not?'. Oh boy, I sucked. Overswinging, terrible spacing, awful edgeguarding, garbage shield pressure, horrid defense (shine is so strong man!), weaaak punish game. At least I was comfortable with movement! There were so many times were I would go "man this guy is sooo slow!! If I just whipped out the Falco I'd bash his head in!" But fast forward a few months, and man even though my grab is giga busted I feel like I've gotten 10x more understanding of the game. I still play Falco from time to time, and I'm confident that my current Falco would blow up my old self, even while not as top technical form. BUT! None of this was actually *forced* by my character. Not all Falco players are dumb like me. Many learn how to truly leverage their character's kit, and have real saucy pressure and punish game. The problem all came down to my mindset and my situation, and while switching to Marth might have broken me out of that cycle, that does NOT mean it was Falco's fault at all. It was me who was getting sucked into the potential of Falco's frame data and speed which led to everything.
Not melee but In ultimate Ive mained Peach since release. She is EXTREMELY different to every other char in the game, so much so that there is a meme of "Peach players can't play other chars". But it's funny cuz it's a little true. Been trying to pick up a new more fundamental based main for over a year now and only now am I starting to see a bit of the same success that my peach had at tourneys. It's basically relearning smash entirely it's crazy
I once played a wolf on PM netplay that had the CLEANEST neutral but absolutely no punish game and I asked him about it and he said "yeah I used to play samus" and I was like "oh yeah that makes sense" 16:30 I agree with the low tier main thing but I think it's more specific to how bad melee low tiers are and how some of them are just missing entire aspects of the game because they don't have the tools to interact there. AKA "Local Bowser main picks up a high tier and has to learn to approach for the first time in his life"
I used to main ganon is serious competitive play from 2014-2016, thereafter not playing seriously. Recently I've started playing sheik and I've noticed a few things that are tied to my old main, but also things that I've improved on outside the relm of characters (for context I would rarely play sheik ever in my 8 years). I think the key component over the years is learning how to learn. While playing this "new" character I've been more attentive to fundamentals, habits, etc, however a huge struggle for me has been extended punishes. I think this struggle comes from most of ganon's combos being 3 or 4 hits. I wouldn't say this debilitates me as a player, it's something that comes more difficult to me yet something I can work hard to overcome. It was never the fact that I mained ganon that my friends told me I was shit. It was because it took me a long time to learn how to learn, which I believe was more of a detriment to me than my character.
I think one thought is that, whenever you play a fighting game, you get into many different situations. "Cheesy" characters like ICs DO get into situations that others get into, but they get into a certain subset of situations far more than other characters, and the skills you need to learn (and the skills you may do fine without) are not representative of the skills you need to learn/can avoid in other characters. I think that success with one kind of character kind of proves that you are able to progress in skill, at least within those character-specific skills, but I think maybe in a Hugs scenario, the skills he needs to learn for other characters is just not worth it to him, or maybe he would have had trouble learning those in the first place, but it's amplified now that he has not developed them for a while.
I played marth for 4 years in college, then switched to falcon after graduating. I never realized that I had bad fundamentals until switching characters. Starting back at square one
@@michaelvandevusse3728 falcon is easy to learn but not easy to win with if you're playing against someone at an equal level to you, but his raw speed and killing potential can easily demolish unprepared players. like
I think playing a certain character doesn't make you a worse player overall, but depending on their mechanics you're going to be more proficient at certain things and less developed in others, at the very least you're going to utilize certain techniques less or more. If you solo Fox for example, with deliberate practice you're going to likely be good at ledge dashing as his timing is tight to do it. Overall he's a twitchy character and a fast faller that can be hard to control at first so playing him will develop better dexterity with practice (not that other characters don't require good timing, but Fox requires more effort to learn to be precise with). Ganondorf requires good timing to not fail ledgedashing as well and proficient mains will likely be consistent at this, plus you have to work on wavelanding timing to be good as someone like n0ne is at doing it. If you solo Jigglypuff, you're probably going to very developed in air control and drifting but ledgedashing you're probably not going to be as developed in as his timing isn't so tight to do it, so if you suddenly switched to like Fox you're going to have a harder time. Also as Jigglypuff you're not going to rely on dash dancing much as Captain Falcon mains or Marth mains do. That being said, I do think that a character like Marth, for example, can become an outlet for people to develop bad habits and tendencies, such as abusing forward smash or throwing it out out of frustration and being punished for it, instead of developing their skill set more and learning to use forward smash more wisely instead of as a low effort crutch to gimp people for easy stocks. Even Fox could potentially be a way for someone to under develop aspects of their play, such as relying on his speed too much to get away out of fear instead of learning to be more patient and look at more situations less as scary and needing to get away from it and more an opportunity to stay in the fight and get control. Also, I do think that certain characters are a better fit for certain people. I think in some ways we're predisposed to being better with certain characters. Even if aMSa picked up Fox, Yoshi might just be the better overall fit for him and how he approaches the game. Plus I think if you enjoy the character more you're more likely to be motivated to learn to be better with them. We're not machines after all, so we must always consider the human element.
ult and melee aher here. for ult, playing a low tier doesn't hinder you in the same way because most (if not all) are very viable. when it come to gimmicks, some play neutral very differently and i normally don't recommend people to play them as their first character. with some more obscure characters, i think it *can* hinder performance
I feel like wacky characters like Luigi and ices actually have a lot of potential to do well with other characters because if they've really committed to learning those different aspects of the game and looking for specific habits to punish, it can transfer over to other/better characters that can punish those habits even harder
As a low teir main, I don't think it's that we don't have a grindset. I just think if you are someone with a grindset, you aren't picking a low teir. I play game and watch just cus I resonate with him on a spiritual level.
As another G&W main, same. If I came in to melee with the mindset "I am going to become a top 10 level player" I absolutely would have picked another character. I'm just here to bleep bloop and have a good time.
As someone who plays Samus in Melee, but plays Chipp in GGST, Slayer(Links only, no gatlings) in Xrd, Fox as a melee secondary, Fuerte (try runstop H chaining in SFIV and tell me about execution,) and Makoto in 3rd:Strike. I think it's a matter of willingness to practice those skills in terms of execution. Anyone CAN do it, but people looking for an easy out via an easy character are exactly what that Honda player's detractors are saying about him. It's like comparing top-level high-tier players to their secondaries, even though their secondaries are sick.
Yeah I think the mid/low tier mindset you described is true. I used to main Mario when I was starting out, and I really got comfortable losing, because it happened so often and my friends were playing top tiers. I learned a lot from playing him, but ultimately after switching to Falcon, I started winning more and learning faster, because I enjoyed the game more.
Ok not super far in but I wanted to write out some thoughts I think are relevant. In Tetris there’s been lots development of opener strategy. Openers basically just being a certain chain of set ups that you can memorize and execute the the same couple ways every single in the first section of a game. With this has come a lot of newer players that put lots and lots of time into just learning openers .This can be interesting as it’s one of the few places where you can actually lab stuff in Tetris but it runs into a similar issue of not teaching fundamentals. I don’t think necessarily a bad way to approach the game as it can be interesting but it’s undeniable that many people who do this are not really good at the game and get flak for it.
Ok finished the video and found a lot of what you had to say good. The bit about the low tier stuff is not quite applicable because versus Tetris doesn’t have characters yet but stuff relating to mentality holds up.
Incineroar is probably the biggest character with this type of situation in Ult. HIs B-buttons are insane and although there a lot of good Incin players out here it feels like on average you're losing stocks to well-timed Side - B, Neutral B's and spams with those buttons
I agree, I play league of legends a lot, and one thing of note is how often the Specialist class is shit on... Teemo, Graves, Hiemerdinger, Singed, etc. Are all bashed for being cheesy and not good for learning how to play the fundamentals of league on a macro and micro level because they are too different in how they interact with others... but those differences really lend well to one's ability to access a situation and figure out how to use your tools to gain the best advantage for your team... Other Champs you may get good at kiteing or even macro plays, but Specialist have to learn that alongside either heightened resource management, and learning to use their special tools appropriately which can even help with active abilities and using them effectively. In the end a player is going to succeed if they put in the work to understand how to win with any given character.
I think that characters dont really hinder growth. I play May in Guilty Gear who is also a "scrubby" character in the sense that you can just knowledge check other new players to death much like Honda and I climbed ranked that way pretty quickly for a while. But eventually I kind of hit a plateau because I was playing better players who actually understood the frame data and their rps options. And now Ive started to try fleshing out better gameplans not only on offense but defense, neutral etc. The progress is slow but it feels like Im getting better fundamentals. I think lots of fighting games have characters like this that have strong options that low level players wont know how to deal with but as the level of play gets higher everyone is going to have to improve these skills regardless of their character which is why I agree with the sentiment that your mindset is so much more important than the character you choose.
I think in Melee the wave dashing and L-canceling and crouch canceling does a lot for making many fundamentals transferable. In Ultimate, stubby characters have a hard time getting in on swordies who can keep them at bay, so swordies might not have to learn CQC. In Melee crouch canceling is a strong additional option that makes such things way more likely. While I think Ultimate's roster is much better balanced overall (most characters are viable), most characters have some strengths or weaknesses that don't really promote certain fundies. Who needs to learn ledge trapping when you can cover so much that you can react to the remaining two options? Who needs to learn positioning when your character can start combos from long/upper mid-range and gets onto stage for free? Who needs to learn footsies when your sword/arm is half the stage length?
While obviously not the case in every instance, I feel like low/mid tier mains find a lot of success early on via match up inexperience from the opponents side. Example: The fox doesn't know up throw up air doesn't work on luigi and ends up getting killed for it. When that works out so well, it is really easy to grow reliant on those sort of things even when they stop working and never really develop stronger fundamentals. Also the low tier catch 22 mentality of: "If I win, it's because I am so great but if I lose, it's because I am using a bad character." which ultimately leads to less analysis of your own play to make improvements. Again not everyone, but seemingly more at the low/mid tier. Also I remember watching Wizzy absolutely destroy M2k in PM with Sonic and was just laughing at the state of the game that such a character would exist
i think it’s pretty simple if someone’s not trying to actively get better and are not seeking out information on how to do so by people that have good information then they never will. most of those people that don’t look to get better fall into what i feel is two categories 1. being that they just pretty much lose to everyone all the time. or 2. they rely on sort of “cheesy” options to squeak out wins. i think it’s fair to say wiz didn’t just go from being a cheesy sonic to an extremely good melee player he had to really work to get there an would obviously put in time to do it. i can definitely understand someone’s frustration with trying to work on getting good fundamentals and losing to someone that relies on cheesier tactics i think it’s common for people to be bad at playing people that are bad
I've played quite a few games, from marvel and guilty gear to melee and also like card games and stuff. I think I agree with all of what you said. Yes if your character doesn't demand a certain skill, then you won't build it, but it doesn't mean you can't, and more often than not cheesy players have learned to get better when they needed to in my experience. Sajam has also talked about something similar in the past about how maybe if you play a grappler in one game your defense will suck cause you just reversal command grab during strings, but if you play a different archetype in an other game, you might transfer skills from like bulldogging zoners, and then develop defense as you need it and so on. Also on low tier players: I usually find the reason they don't do as well on other characters is because low tiers are often still good at some things, and they have to spend so much time developing the things their character is good at, that they haven't had the time to mess around with other characters as much as like a fox player who can play super fundamentally and just casually switch to marth for friendlies.
I come from a Marvel 3 background and I feel that different characters require different prerequisite skills. Like a lot of low tier players need to be very good at throwing and throw teching that higher tier manipulate with movement instead. I feel the other side of this is what skills players develop depending on their local meta. I feel this is less common in the online era, but when someone fights a skilled player using a specific thing in weeklies it structures when they're afraid, see opportunities, etc. I feel that this is just as heavily influenced by the environment the player is in to the character(s) the player plays.
Your comment of saying that low tier players don't get the same feeling of victory and hurts them on the long run is something that I felt that. I usually play high tier characters in fgs for the most part but damn I don't get that feeling of being nice all the time usually and get mad tight about it. I hate when people say shit like "I play against this character so much that I know how to deal with them" which I'm like "cool but that doesn't help me". Recently I've picked up Garou MOTW and main B.Jenet which no doubtable is one of the best characters in the game but playing against randos and actually winning more than the other games that I play kinda enlighten my mood as a player. Think the important of winning more is good cuz at the end of the day, everyone tryna win you know. Overall, good video Toph.
I play Yink and there are certainly things that he taught me that high tier Peach didn't. I also just have more fun with the character, with what feels like the same amount of success, so that's a W in my book.
From my experience player skill is pretty agnostic from the character they choose and has far more to do with who that player surrounds themselves with. If you as a player only ever get to play with people who take the game casually you will never have someone who can teach you the fundamentals of the game and how it 'should' be played. Using the example of Wizzy from the video. Wizzy didn't become good by playing falcon. Wizzy got good because he was in a competitive space and was able to consistently be around/talk to other high level falcons who could teach him how to play. This phenomena is why you often find out the friends/siblings of high level players are often very strong themselves.
I think that every character teaches you skills, even if the skills are different. For example, I'm an ultimate player and main Pika, who isn't considered very fundamental. My friends play lucina, joker, captain falcon, and we all go about even. Even when we switch off of mains we still go even. I notice that even with random characters I barely play I can still edge guard them and take low percent stocks. Just different skills.
I've had the "fundies speedrun" theory for a while at first you pick a top tier: top tiers will allow you to get used to winning and get used to the game while holding your hand enough to where you dont get "cheesed" Next when your good on a local level start to play a low tier in early parts of bracket, this will allow you to get used to get used to winning and playing in neutral and disadvantage, preferably the low tier is similar to your main OR a all rounder this creates a challenge and knowledge feedback loop, with the only issue being that you would be more prone to being upset, but that shouldn't matter since you shouldn't do this in brackets that matter
I started playing GGST recently and I've been playing only in unranked lobbies with players who are high ranked and much more experienced than myself. My w/l ratio is abysmal, but I don't feel bad because just taking a game here or there against opponents much better than me feels satisfying and I feel like I'm learning faster than just mashing against other new players. I didn't pick a low tier (I play Giovanna), but I'm wondering if I could be developing a similar mindset to the low tier mains you described due to playing against people I don't expect to beat. edit: Well, I play with my irl friends too and I usually win, but they're also new and they don't punish my mistakes as consistently so I'm concerned about picking up bad habits that won't work against better players.
Necro comment but Strive doesn't really have this issue. Any bad habits you might pick up will be punished so quickly at higher levels that you won't be repeating them very long. I'm a celestial player for reference, not that good but good enough to get in the door. You have to play cleanish or you really wont survive at higher levels, it's such a high damage game with easy punishes for most mistakes.
Two things I disagree with: - Learning high level play through "osmosis" (for a lack of a better term) doesn't really happen, I would still argue that there is theory or knowledge of underlying concepts that you need to learn first. Proactive playstyles are definitely valid, NYCTempest does it all the time in the games he plays, however he uses high level concepts to make it actually work and will still try to play more "fundamentally" when the opponent has forced him to do so. He still plays to concepts such as risk reward, and creating a rotation of options so he can create a gameplan. When starting out as a player, there's no bigger picture for you to even see except "this worked, I should double down on it" or "This is a really powerful thing that a lot of people struggle with, I should also use this more." Ideas such as risk reward or rotating options doesn't really come to light when thinking in this way, because if the thing fails the only conclusion is "oh I should've done the same thing but better" or "oh I didn't know this one MU thing I'll do it next time" which leads into a lot of pitfalls and plateaus. In order to reach a higher level you need to be actively asking for what it is or it needs to be taught to you, you don't just absorb it from your surroudings. - Which leads me to my next point: Low Tier players are still taking advantage of something strong their character has, usually abusing knowledge checks / a lack of MU knowledge since the char is more obscure. No matter what, the matchup dynamic between two characters will always exist, and both players need to know it in order to play on an equal footing. Because there are less people who play less popular characters, the burden is on the opponent to know how to deal with them (a knowledge check). It's not as if weaker characters are just a copy paste of top tier characters but with weaker stats. Sure, it's ultimately the competitor's fault for not knowing the knowledge check, but I don't think low tier players ONLY play low tiers because of the "low tier player mindset." Ultimately like you said, it IS about mindset and how you approach the game. In order to become better you need to want to actively find out how. However, humans have a reward based mindset. If a thing works, then from the player's perspective it doesn't make sense to stop doing the thing.
peanut switched off Mac and said it's hard to play a char that can jump lol... like he's not used to having an air game at all (later smash games have some really lopsided kits)
I think as long as you are playing with an active and present mentality, you will improve regardless of context. not much of a fighting game player, but ex guitar solo main, turned random select specialist
In ultimate, I think the worst example of this is Yoshi. Even GnW will have to eventually deal with well spaced shield pressure. However, Yoshi has so many quirks in Ultimate compared to the rest of the cast that he is the only character that I vehemently warn against maining 1st. Unpokeable shield, frame 1 super armor on double jump, and insane air drift are enough to warp a newbie's understanding of the game
Yeah cheesing just makes you think you're good. You gotta get past the cheese and know when to use it. I knew a shiek who would smoke all my weed and chain grab/tech chase me literally nonstop. He isn't ranked. He doesn't do well in tourneys. If I escape the grabs he dies. Cheese isn't always the way. (commenting this before watching the video)
makes me feel like people who win with cheese are pretty likely to win without cheese if they're actually motivated. People who lose with cheese... well they usually won't accuse you of cheesing if you didn't win LOL. If they're winning it sorta makes it seem like they're good at searching out a way to win, whatever that way might be.
I've played all games mentioned here, sf4, 5, melee, ultimate, etc honda is most certainly playing a different game than others fundamentals are still needed, but sometimes he can get around them with his gameplay, since I've always felt that the gap between players in a smash brothers game means more than a gap between players in street fighter, ie, if i guess correctly on wake up, i can get guaranteed damage, i don't think smash gives this opportunity as often character aside, i don't think you need to play 'perfectly' to outplay your opponent in smash bros, but street fighter says otherwise
I play ROB in ultimate and I hear this ALL THE TIME. People complaining about getting "cheesed" instead of focusing on how to improve their own gameplay. It's a terrible mindset and something I personally have zero patience for. If you win, that's all that matters.
To use chess as analogy there is very little significance in what opening you play as long as you stick with it (excluding some truly unsound gambits) -- tactics, endgame theory, etc are far more significant.
Sorta relevant, but all I know, is that when I pick Roy or Ganon, the fundamentals like spacing and conditioning flow through my brain so clearly. It’s like everything in my body focuses to win, compared to when I play my Falco or Marth who just have so many faster, better tools
as someone who plays a low tier in Melee & a high tier in PM, I don't think the low tier thing has to do with not developing a sense to win, it's more-so that if you're playing a low tier you have both very set in stone counterplay to what your opponent is doing in addition to them not knowing what that counterplay is. Whereas if you play a character like Fox, you now need to be 6 mixups deep in the counterplay because the opponent knows those levels that you don't. It's like going from having all the matchup knowledge when your opponent has none to your opponent having all the knowledge when you have none & it's really jarring to keep playing & not going back to the low tier.
No copy pasta, I started as Zelda basically got “bullied” into playing Sheik, and stopped playing for quite a while, picked up the game again later and wanted to play GW, not because I want a john when I lose but because I enjoy them(not always their traits but the character in Zelda) like I would play toon Link if he was available regardless of how good he was. Many players won’t play online and when you search for games you sometimes have to search for 30 minutes to find someone who even plays 2 games. And people always ask why you won’t pick a better character and it’s quite sad honestly. If they see a low tier making their way into a tournament that’s hype but when they see a local low tier it’s just cringe, and bad. That’s how most low tiers started one day.
Im the kind of player who most people think I can play all characters. But I never play 3, the fast fallers. Melee is such a deep game that even a well rounded player will have trouble with some specifics
Idk how relevant this is but in SC2 it’s important to play all the races because you might think like “oh this character is so OP” but then you play as them and figure out their weaknesses. And realize the things that make your main hard to play against.
Ult player here. I've always been on the "pick a good character or you won't learn fundies" train. While I do think that's mostly true, my friend has sort of changed my opinion on that. He only picks random, and has been doing so since we started playing in 2019. Meanwhile, I've changed characters a lot but I've only played high or top tier characters. My "fundies" are definitely better than his, but it's not like I wash him every time. I've seen the development in his fundies over time, it just took a little longer than me. I think there's two reasons for this. A) Good characters do teach you fundies earlier because, especially in Ult, the cheese is kind of locked behind a certain skill barrier. For example, I play Sheik now and I'm consistently killing people for regular getup with nair->bouncing fish. I think that's cheesy bc they die at like 100%, but i had to learn how to react to people's normal get up first. On the flip side, a bowser could just walk up to ledge and grounded upb to cover like 3 options. That literally does not take any skill, like a toddler could do that. B) I fall under a brain player so I put conscious effort into improving whereas he takes everything by feel, which I think is a faster process. That being said, for a long time, he was better at winning games than I was. I think playing low tiers helps you spot win conditions based on your opponent's habits, whereas top tiers help you learn how to reactively pick an option bc you have answers to everything, but you have to learn what they are and when to use them. Both are important skills to have, but where your character is on the tier list will determine which one you learn first imo. I'm not sure if I fully answered Toph's question so if anyone needs clarification just lmk! I love talking about smash lol
I think that fundamentals itself might be a flawed concept. The real fundament of the game might just be being effective at killing your opponent as efficiently as possible. Wizzrobe did that with sonic but that is also the approach he has to Captain Falcon.
How're fundamentals a flawed concept? At the end of the day you can break melee down into 3 main aspects of the game: neutral, punish, and edguarding. For most high teir characters the "way" in which you do those three things is relatively consistent. Fundamentals are the pieces that make up each of these different aspects. Dashdancing for neutral and tech chasing for pushing for example.
@@octiviana Im more or less saying that punish game itself may be the most important fundamental skill. Focussing improvement on effectively killing you opponents rather than movement drills as more fundamental to winning sets. Im not denying the importance of movement tech. You obviously need to be able to wavedash and the like to even execute a punish. Its more of a change in perspective on what is truly fundamental to winning games. How that ties into this video is that the way wizzy got good in PM, is by working on the "fundamental" skill of killing your opponents effectively.
LONG POST WARNING: I switched to Melee after Slippi rollback dropped, but I used to be a high level Ult player (PR'd high in region, #1 in sub-region, usually placed 25th-49th at majors)... I think there are for sure SEVERAL characters that dont truly teach you the game, and just teach you how to abuse character specific gimmicks and cheese that bypass genuine fundamentals. The one I want to focus on is Game and Watch as I think he is the most drastic case throughout the games history. In my region there were 2 PR'd GnW players who placed extremely well with him, but they could not play other characters to save their lives. Squad Strike side brackets always exposed them both as one-tricks as the other characters they chose were always TERRIBLE, even easy characters like Lucina and Mario you would not think these guys are even remotely competitive at this game until the GnW came out. The fact is when you look at things from local PR, to top level like Maister, people who main that character are ALWAYS solo mains with no notable secondaries, and if they try other characters (even easy ones) they never do anything and are always significantly worse. This genuinely tells me they are more dependent on character gimmicks and cheese than actual fundamentals to win. Similarly in college my roommate (low PR in a bad region) mained GnW, but he tried picking up other characters cuz he felt no one respected him for playing GnW, and his other characters constantly proved his lack of fundamental skill. He would constantly SD offstage cuz he couldnt reverse Up B consistently, everytime he was offstage he would pick the most obvious recovery route and be gimped effortlessly cuz he wasnt used to having a recovery that could actually be contested and exploited, he could not deal with shield pressure without his GnW Up B, was awful at landing cuz he didnt have GnW Dair, and would throw out unsafe smash attacks in neutral not being used to a character that doesnt get to do that, etc, etc. At a major I once had a decently long friendly sesh with Dabuz who mains characters I would say are kinda quirky and "different", and his mains were really tough to beat, but he was playing a lot of secondaries and they were like no better than playing a 1-2er who mains those same characters if Im being honest, they were REALLY bad. Not tryna take a shot at him, I think hes very skilled, but I think its true to say his skill is in something that is not universal to the game as a whole and theres many characters/players I believe thats true for. I have more examples of this, but I have in general definitely found a correlation between maining certain characters and lacking fundamental skills that allow you to be more rounded and universally good at the game. I cant speak for other games, but it wouldnt surprise me if this were true for most/all fighting games as well.
I play ggxx+r and that game has some malarky. Theres a characters that never need to play defense/are always winning on defense (think a character that, to edgeguard or combo, the risk reward would always be in their favor), characters that consistently can win off one interaction and I don't even wanna talk about zappa. The arguable best player online plays essentially mario and the person who won frosty, basically our only supermajor, plays a mid tier that got nerfed this version. Complaining about "gimmicks" is just johns. If its really that bad prove it. A wins a win. If you lose you adapt on both ends. Bring back wobbling Cowards
Getting good I way more about being able to solve problems, than being able to do X thing(s). Why you see foxes with nutty tech skill get beat by dashback grab. They were focused on doing X thing(s) because “they are good” as apples to figureing out a problem.
man this is me right now i started with luigi and really wanted to learn marth and i am struggling you go from a brawler/wave dash heavy character then to marth who spaces dash dances etc really struggling atm but the few times i hit a good combo is just so rewarding
This isn't even a problem specific to fighting games. MMO's have classes with unique mechanics that allow them to ignore certain aspects of gameplay. Same for MOBAs. I think at the end of the day, if you want to improve with a gimmick character or character that breaks certain rules, you still need to understand many fundamentals of what your opponent is trying to accomplish, at the very least. You still need to understand macro ideas about the game on an intricate level, even if you don't understand specific micro movements or mechanics that apply to the rest of the cast.
I feel this way about puff. Been playing a lot of slippi since the mmr update. Roughly 50% of my games are either fox, falco, or captain falcoln. And against those players they could be significantly better than me but if they don't know how to deal with upthrow rest I can win. I typically use the rest combos more just in hype moments or to breeze through matches otherwise but when I get into a game with someone who can actually DI or punish my grab attempts I get fucked and have to rely on my less than stellar neutral game. You still kind of get the practice but the existance of rest makes it easy to focus on the wrong things
So in League of Legends, I get really annoyed with people who play characters who can't take on responsibilities in the game. Like if you are a jungle and you can only play farming junglers, I think you are bad because their is this whole set of map responsibilities you are refusing to take on. And people you play with are going to be forced to take on that responsibility for you. Also in champion select you are a poor person to have near the bottom because you can't adapt to what the game needs from you and that is going to cause a lot of losses. Also in a competitive setting when people can prepare for you, you are predictable. I'll first pick an invading jungler and never let you farm while sacrificing nothing in champion select to get the matchup I want. All this to say. I think do you are limiting yourself when you don't play the whole game. But at the same time I also think you gotta first get to a level where the ceiling even matters. And really there is nothing wrong with mastering one aspect at a time as long as you are self aware and have an eye towards a long term goal of mastering the game as a whole. I'm actually infinitely more frustrated with players who are losing to someone with a limited ceiling and think it is their job to tell the other person about that ceiling. Like how about instead you show them by getting your own play above what they can do? That's the best communication. Just show them through your own play. If you can't do that you have no business talking smack.
aka unless you get good quickly, you don't get good. Which i don't think i agree with. Especially for people that aren't good because they just chill and don't practice. But i also notoriously don't understand how improvement works, aka the thing that works for everyone else doesn't work for me and idk how to get around it. So might be me having a skewed view.
what if you're a bad low-tier player? I'm in that same boat actually, no idea how improvement works lol. I care more about just playing period though, kinda hard when you get quit out on and taunt spammed though.
Charge characters are way harder to play than motion characters imo. Idk why Daigo says that the fact that Honda is charge won't help with fundamentals. Isn't charging a fundamental skill?
I wouldn't say learning a charge motion is fundamental. Imo it's more comparable to jump squat lengths. I can see why you'd mistake it for a fundamental skill, but I wouldn't equate motion inputs/Charge to something like spacing.
Oh well? What do you care about in fighting games, the W no matter what, or the gratification of self improvement? Different people, different answers.
Playing these cheese chars will give you skills, just different ones than other players. once you plateau with them, switching will teach you different skills than you are used to. eventually you will have learned all the relevant skills of the game, you just learned them in a different order than the order ryu or fox might teach you them in.
If you play only one character you can become the best player at that character (with enough time and effort). If you want to become the best Marth it doesn't make sense to play fox to improve. If you want to become good with every character you should try and play every character.
I genuinely think this isn't as big in Melee as the traditionals. You will have to learn spacing and solid punishes, and you will hit the wall earlier (because singleplayer is not an option).
Using the homing attack to cover all the opponent's defensive options is So Wizzy, in retrospect.
Yeah wizzy making sonic look like a braindead character is more the design as opposed to wizzy being dumb. Sonic was a WERID character to play against back then and there's a reason only wizzrobe did well with him
So what I'm hearing is, once my Zelda starts winning locals I'll be on the express train to schmoove city B)
Zelda underrated no cap
@@painter5391 facts bro, I think she could get pushed way further. Obviously not like, Mario or Link level, but with enough top player investment I could see her being comparable to like Mewtwo. She's super fun and I'm glad she's been getting more love recently :-)
We can believe…
@@n0lain this is a copypasta right
@Reno Daza Go be boring somewhere else
I used to play Melee (Marth). I was PR'd at #10 once, in an admittedly weak region. Now I only play Ult and PM.
I picked G&W as my main in Ult for a few reasons, and one of those is his simple (and effective) OoS game. If someone attacks my shield, I can up-b. If they're misspaced, I get a combo. If they space well, I'm in slight disadvantage but am mostly safe. I don't have to play the crossup mixup game that most other characters do and I also don't have to learn technical OoS punishes like footstools.
This led to some confusion when I watched Void's video on "playing ultimate", because I had never experienced what he described (someone hits your shield, you jump OoS, then land on their shield with an aerial).
It's just now dawning on me that the reason his video was confusing was because I never have to jump OoS, and unlike say Fox, I also don't have a compelling reason to land on someone's shield with an aerial. G&W has two moves he can do safely on shield: fair (bomb) which is very plus, but hard to make someone shield, and cross-up nair, which is terrible in the situation Void describes because the fish (hitboxes) start above G&W and it takes a long time before the fish get to his sides. Basically it's easy to anti-air.
I think, generally, having tools that let you bypass a "fundamental skill" means that you won't learn that skill. Melee Samuses can't learn to dashdance while playing Samus. I am only now (like three years into Ult) learning to do things like jab OoS when people space well around up-b.
I had a similar problem with Marth in Melee - it took me a long time to learn to approach, because most of the time I could just dashdance in the corner and grab the people approaching me.
I think if a character's tools mean you can't or don't have to learn enough fundamental skills naturally, playing that character will leave you with blind spots that you will have to think carefully about to overcome.
Void: Understanding the Flow of Smash Ultimate ua-cam.com/video/EopMQkhhZ3s/v-deo.html
Hello Toph I just wanted to leave a comment in the perspective of a league player relatively new to melee:
League is similar to melee in the sense that there are two distinct “mechanics” to learn and master in the game, your champions’ skills, and the macro roles for your position. For example, top laners typical role in the game is to either split push for pressure, tank and absorb damage (and attention off the carries) or roam.
There was a video I watched on how certain champions counter champions that in theory should technically destroy said champion (example being lucian should beat seraphine mid, but seraphine has the winrate advantage). That is because seraphine compared to lucian is a mechanically simplistic champion. Her role is to mindlessly clear minion waves and spend her off time supporting teammates. Lucian (in the mid lane) acts as a fighter who deals out hella damage when using the correct sequence of abilities.
Because mechanically harder champions require more attention to tech skill, their mind is thinking less about the macro (looking out for ganks, warding, minimap awareness) and just trying to output dmg while less mechanical champions are free to think with ample amounts of time.
In that sense, I think this reason could relate to why low/mid tier characters (or floaties in general) trump the average spacies player. Only the pros who have mastered their character can pull off tech skill without a lot of effort which leaves their brain space to focus on footsies and neutral control. But someone like me (falco main trying to execute tech skill) would ultimately lose or be at a disadvantage for neutral because my brain energy is focused on execution. So many times I start a pillar combo going only to get stopped by an aerial that I could have anticipated if I wasn’t just focusing on executing the pillar combo pattern.
ua-cam.com/video/GEyeAedn1f8/v-deo.html
this is the video referenced; if you want what I talk about is explained much better in this video (around 5:00 mark) but I highly recommend the whole video as it is a great and informative watch.
I started as a puff... felt like she simplified character interactions and I wouldn't grow as a player.
I switched to Falco... felt like the player interactions were too one sided and I wouldnt grow.
I switched to doc... felt like 90% of unranked players quitting out on me wouldn't help me grow.
I switched to ganon... now I'm happy pissing off everyone reading their full hops with fair. I've grown.
Jab.
Down throw into jab actually triggers me. It’s not even crazy or that punishing. Just something in my brain hates it
@Grack I switch to Doc from falco about a week ago, I don’t understand why everyone backs out when playing him, been loving the Lebron play style
People be quitting on Doc like he's trash, but play against ganon. 😂??
When I decide to stay and play a couple matches against a doc instead of leaving immediately but they end up being toxic from the get go? Like shouldn’t you just be happy I stayed to play??? Probably tilted cause everyone else left.
@@kingmeers5340 Doc players rage when you don't play how they want you to
Hey Toph! I mainly compete in ultimate nowadays, but have played melee competitively in the past. In my opinion, I think that learning fundamentals and learning your character don’t necessarily go hand in hand. In my experience, learning the character necessarily proceeds learning the game (although I acknowledge this may just be my personal process for learning). As such, I think characters with more simple, “applicable-out-of-the-box” tools allow one to learn the game faster due to less complicated game plans/flowcharts. Character specific strengths that allow the player to skip portions of the learning process (i.e. Flip Jump/ Quick Attack for disadvantage, Charge Shot/Steve’s Mining for neutral etc) may slow down a player’s personal growth, but are necessary in understand and abuse in order to win. In ultimate specifically I’m not sure that picking a low tier hinders player growth, but the built in option-select of “I lost because I play a bad character” can foster a poor competitive mindset. Overall, I’m not sure any particular character is better to learn the game with, but I think picking simpler characters can help beginners! Picking good characters is also probably a good idea for competition, moreso in Melee/other FGC games.
I'm solely a melee player but I have some experience with playing low-tiers and I wanted to throw in my two cents. I used to be a Peach player in 2015/16 but quit after that and only picked up the game again when rollback slippi came out. When I started playing again, I started out with Peach, dabbled in a couple other characters until I eventually started maining Link. I feel that playing a mid-tier/low-tier has improved my reasoning/thought patterns in the game a lot, since you actively need to try to make your limited toolkit work against top-tiers. When I went to a tournament recently, I played Peach again during the entire bracket, and I noticed a genuine improvement in these aspects of the game which I don't feel they would've improved in the same way that they did I had stayed with Peach or another high-tier. If this is advocating low-tier usage or just me exposing myself for the lazy ass that I am, I'm not sure, but I felt that it was worth sharing none-the-less :).
I think the thing with wizzy/ICs players is they are able to dodge one of the biggest mid level traps in melee which is not developing a strong enough punish game. So many players don't seem to understand that the first step to playing real neutral is putting the fear of god in your opponent. They waste time spinning in circles getting on hot and cold streaks based on which neutral mixups they're favoring which makes it hard to develop consistent fundamentals. Zain talks about it a bit here ua-cam.com/video/UjNYPBe3hYw/v-deo.html once you've seen how you can condition people who are fearing your grab because you can 0-death off it, its a lot easier to understand what is happening and why in high level matches and develop a strong gameplan yourself.
And then as you said, having access to high level players and playing them in close games allows you to learn about other characters through osmosis. I haven't practiced falco in years, but mine has gotten a lot better in just the last month or so since the new matchmaking came out cuz Im regularly seeing what combo routes all the good falcos take. Great vid, love when you talk about other fgs cuz I only know melee.
Also my falco once lost 7 stocks to Sonic in PM doubles in like 90 seconds 😂 dont think ive ever tilted harder
bro you sound like you still live in the early 2000s when high level players were actually saying stuff like " you gotta work on your mindgames" to improve or win. that doesnt exist. your first goal isnt to scare your opponent 😂🤣😂🤣
@@ForrestBreeze you should work on your mindgames
@@ForrestBreeze I don’t think OP’s post is similarly oversimplified tbf
@@ForrestBreeze I feel that in recent times some players like feeling superior to those from the past as if somehow players now are so sophisticated and that past players are some kind of Neanderthals. I guess there's some satisfaction in saying things like "lol mind games? that's made up shit old players said because they didn't really know the game or know what they were talking about". That somehow players now are above this fairy tale "mind games" and aren't going to be so gullible to this silly thing.
The thing is mind games are real. If you make someone fear something like grab, you can in a way force them into doing or not doing something to avoid the grab. Right there you just made them more predictable because now they're limiting their options, or at the very least using less safe options and using more punishable ones. It narrows down what they're likely to do. Ask any player who's played Chu Dat or Hungrybox. Many have said in the back of their mind they were thinking about how losing meant a "Yayuhz" or a popoff and the idea of that happening to them was unsettling. It made them more desperate to win. Call it mind games or fear conditioning. It's the same thing.
Hell, look at all the comments in Twitch streams when Aklo taunts during a tournament game; many people get so heated by it, and they're not even playing him. Being able to get under someone's skin is a mind game. Look at how tilted people get on Slippi when they get cheesed one stock and just give up because "i'm not having it!", or when someone runs around taunting or spamming moves. People are still susceptible to mind games, and sometimes the mind games are caused by our own ego or emotions.
I think pretty much every character has draw backs to overall learning potential. For example, Falco players may learn good tech-skill but may not learn good edge-guarding because Down-Air is so powerful. Or a Falcon may learn good edgeguarding, but not great neutral because Falcon can over-rely on stray hits.
A lot of it depends also on attitude. If you are a Peach player that must win every match, you'll probably spam Down-Smash, but not improve your overall game. You have to force yourself to improve.
I rejected playing May in Strive (who is quite similar to Honda) for this reason for quite some time. I pretty much agree with daigo, if you make the effort to play with fighting game fundamentals, you'll improve with most characters
The idea that playing just one character won't help you grow is (as you said) pretty ridiculous. Even those characters that you mentioned that are "better" starting characters still have specific aspects of their gameplay that they don't really have to worry about and hold you back if you want to switch. For example spacies which you mentioned as a good fundamental character get away with SO much stupid crap that no other characters really get away with because of shine and it will build up bad habits if you're gonna switch to other characters. At the end of the day maining any one character will force you to specialize in character specific stuff that won't really be applicable to other gameplay.
In my opinion what is most important in your starting character is not how transferable to skillset is but whether you have fun because if you don't have fun your not going to play as much and if you don't play as much you won't improve. It's a video game so don't overthink it do what you enjoy.
while i agree, as a samus main i think that playing other characters casually to have an understanding of what they think is so important to general improvement
When I first played another character besides Falco I spammed down b when I was getting combod (I was paying shiek)
I also think its a mindset sort of thing, but one thing I think that is worth bringing up is that playing different characters can give new perspectives and freshen you up.
When I first started, my first real main that I put a lot of effort into was Falco. I played into the balls to the walls aggression, and because no one in my friend circle could actually handle the execution tests I had practiced, I felt like I was 'getting good'. However, in retrospect what was actually happening was that I was abusing Falco's bread and butter kit against people who couldn't deal with it. I never had to learn how to actually deal with shield because I could just blast them if they ever decided to hold it. I never had to learn mixups or neutral, they just lost to the B button. Even edge guarding was just spamming dair. If I play faster, if I press more buttons, I win harder. So, I thought that was how I 'get good'.
When I hit college I got bopped hard. Shoutouts to the UT Austin scene; although I was *fast*, I was certainly very dumb. The aggression I had built up throughout my career was full of cracks and void of thought or respect. My mindset up until then was so focused on just getting faster and more technical, because I won harder against my peers. I never thought about the *counterplay*, or the *correct* situations to leverage my skills. It didn't help that I had to focus really hard to hit the technical stuff, so I had no mental breathing room. So, I lost and lost and lost. I lost my faith in any of my skills, because my technical prowess had no substance to back it up. I was stuck in this mindset that I just had to keep grinding my tech to improve because thats how I used to win harder, but the results just never came. In retrospect, I had been stuck in this dumb feedback loop, which resulted in me just getting utterly blasted, haha.
I took a break from the game, and when I came back because of Slippi I decided to play Marth; my hands and controller weren't appreciating Falco, so I thought 'why not?'. Oh boy, I sucked. Overswinging, terrible spacing, awful edgeguarding, garbage shield pressure, horrid defense (shine is so strong man!), weaaak punish game. At least I was comfortable with movement! There were so many times were I would go "man this guy is sooo slow!! If I just whipped out the Falco I'd bash his head in!" But fast forward a few months, and man even though my grab is giga busted I feel like I've gotten 10x more understanding of the game. I still play Falco from time to time, and I'm confident that my current Falco would blow up my old self, even while not as top technical form.
BUT! None of this was actually *forced* by my character. Not all Falco players are dumb like me. Many learn how to truly leverage their character's kit, and have real saucy pressure and punish game. The problem all came down to my mindset and my situation, and while switching to Marth might have broken me out of that cycle, that does NOT mean it was Falco's fault at all. It was me who was getting sucked into the potential of Falco's frame data and speed which led to everything.
Not melee but In ultimate Ive mained Peach since release. She is EXTREMELY different to every other char in the game, so much so that there is a meme of "Peach players can't play other chars". But it's funny cuz it's a little true.
Been trying to pick up a new more fundamental based main for over a year now and only now am I starting to see a bit of the same success that my peach had at tourneys.
It's basically relearning smash entirely it's crazy
I main Peach and Marth in Melee and Peach / Daisy and Lucina in Ult lmao
Daigo played Melee once. It would be awesome if Daigo could be a guest on Toph's channel and talked about his experience.
I once played a wolf on PM netplay that had the CLEANEST neutral but absolutely no punish game and I asked him about it and he said "yeah I used to play samus" and I was like "oh yeah that makes sense"
16:30 I agree with the low tier main thing but I think it's more specific to how bad melee low tiers are and how some of them are just missing entire aspects of the game because they don't have the tools to interact there.
AKA "Local Bowser main picks up a high tier and has to learn to approach for the first time in his life"
I used to main ganon is serious competitive play from 2014-2016, thereafter not playing seriously. Recently I've started playing sheik and I've noticed a few things that are tied to my old main, but also things that I've improved on outside the relm of characters (for context I would rarely play sheik ever in my 8 years). I think the key component over the years is learning how to learn. While playing this "new" character I've been more attentive to fundamentals, habits, etc, however a huge struggle for me has been extended punishes. I think this struggle comes from most of ganon's combos being 3 or 4 hits.
I wouldn't say this debilitates me as a player, it's something that comes more difficult to me yet something I can work hard to overcome. It was never the fact that I mained ganon that my friends told me I was shit. It was because it took me a long time to learn how to learn, which I believe was more of a detriment to me than my character.
I think one thought is that, whenever you play a fighting game, you get into many different situations. "Cheesy" characters like ICs DO get into situations that others get into, but they get into a certain subset of situations far more than other characters, and the skills you need to learn (and the skills you may do fine without) are not representative of the skills you need to learn/can avoid in other characters. I think that success with one kind of character kind of proves that you are able to progress in skill, at least within those character-specific skills, but I think maybe in a Hugs scenario, the skills he needs to learn for other characters is just not worth it to him, or maybe he would have had trouble learning those in the first place, but it's amplified now that he has not developed them for a while.
I played marth for 4 years in college, then switched to falcon after graduating. I never realized that I had bad fundamentals until switching characters. Starting back at square one
I think falcon is a really hard to play character tbh.
@@michaelvandevusse3728 falcon is easy to learn but not easy to win with if you're playing against someone at an equal level to you, but his raw speed and killing potential can easily demolish unprepared players. like
I think playing a certain character doesn't make you a worse player overall, but depending on their mechanics you're going to be more proficient at certain things and less developed in others, at the very least you're going to utilize certain techniques less or more. If you solo Fox for example, with deliberate practice you're going to likely be good at ledge dashing as his timing is tight to do it. Overall he's a twitchy character and a fast faller that can be hard to control at first so playing him will develop better dexterity with practice (not that other characters don't require good timing, but Fox requires more effort to learn to be precise with). Ganondorf requires good timing to not fail ledgedashing as well and proficient mains will likely be consistent at this, plus you have to work on wavelanding timing to be good as someone like n0ne is at doing it. If you solo Jigglypuff, you're probably going to very developed in air control and drifting but ledgedashing you're probably not going to be as developed in as his timing isn't so tight to do it, so if you suddenly switched to like Fox you're going to have a harder time. Also as Jigglypuff you're not going to rely on dash dancing much as Captain Falcon mains or Marth mains do.
That being said, I do think that a character like Marth, for example, can become an outlet for people to develop bad habits and tendencies, such as abusing forward smash or throwing it out out of frustration and being punished for it, instead of developing their skill set more and learning to use forward smash more wisely instead of as a low effort crutch to gimp people for easy stocks. Even Fox could potentially be a way for someone to under develop aspects of their play, such as relying on his speed too much to get away out of fear instead of learning to be more patient and look at more situations less as scary and needing to get away from it and more an opportunity to stay in the fight and get control.
Also, I do think that certain characters are a better fit for certain people. I think in some ways we're predisposed to being better with certain characters. Even if aMSa picked up Fox, Yoshi might just be the better overall fit for him and how he approaches the game. Plus I think if you enjoy the character more you're more likely to be motivated to learn to be better with them. We're not machines after all, so we must always consider the human element.
ult and melee aher here. for ult, playing a low tier doesn't hinder you in the same way because most (if not all) are very viable. when it come to gimmicks, some play neutral very differently and i normally don't recommend people to play them as their first character. with some more obscure characters, i think it *can* hinder performance
I feel like wacky characters like Luigi and ices actually have a lot of potential to do well with other characters because if they've really committed to learning those different aspects of the game and looking for specific habits to punish, it can transfer over to other/better characters that can punish those habits even harder
Icys are quite a glass canon too so playing them definitely can lead to some fundamental growth
As a low teir main, I don't think it's that we don't have a grindset. I just think if you are someone with a grindset, you aren't picking a low teir.
I play game and watch just cus I resonate with him on a spiritual level.
As another G&W main, same. If I came in to melee with the mindset "I am going to become a top 10 level player" I absolutely would have picked another character. I'm just here to bleep bloop and have a good time.
As someone who plays Samus in Melee, but plays Chipp in GGST, Slayer(Links only, no gatlings) in Xrd, Fox as a melee secondary, Fuerte (try runstop H chaining in SFIV and tell me about execution,) and Makoto in 3rd:Strike. I think it's a matter of willingness to practice those skills in terms of execution. Anyone CAN do it, but people looking for an easy out via an easy character are exactly what that Honda player's detractors are saying about him. It's like comparing top-level high-tier players to their secondaries, even though their secondaries are sick.
As someone who switched mains a couple times from Luigi you're 100% right
Yeah I think the mid/low tier mindset you described is true. I used to main Mario when I was starting out, and I really got comfortable losing, because it happened so often and my friends were playing top tiers. I learned a lot from playing him, but ultimately after switching to Falcon, I started winning more and learning faster, because I enjoyed the game more.
Ok not super far in but I wanted to write out some thoughts I think are relevant. In Tetris there’s been lots development of opener strategy. Openers basically just being a certain chain of set ups that you can memorize and execute the the same couple ways every single in the first section of a game. With this has come a lot of newer players that put lots and lots of time into just learning openers .This can be interesting as it’s one of the few places where you can actually lab stuff in Tetris but it runs into a similar issue of not teaching fundamentals. I don’t think necessarily a bad way to approach the game as it can be interesting but it’s undeniable that many people who do this are not really good at the game and get flak for it.
Ok finished the video and found a lot of what you had to say good. The bit about the low tier stuff is not quite applicable because versus Tetris doesn’t have characters yet but stuff relating to mentality holds up.
you are like the Sajam of Melee, it's crazy how similar your content is and the way you talk about fighting games
this is a compliment
Incineroar is probably the biggest character with this type of situation in Ult. HIs B-buttons are insane and although there a lot of good Incin players out here it feels like on average you're losing stocks to well-timed Side - B, Neutral B's and spams with those buttons
I agree, I play league of legends a lot, and one thing of note is how often the Specialist class is shit on... Teemo, Graves, Hiemerdinger, Singed, etc. Are all bashed for being cheesy and not good for learning how to play the fundamentals of league on a macro and micro level because they are too different in how they interact with others... but those differences really lend well to one's ability to access a situation and figure out how to use your tools to gain the best advantage for your team... Other Champs you may get good at kiteing or even macro plays, but Specialist have to learn that alongside either heightened resource management, and learning to use their special tools appropriately which can even help with active abilities and using them effectively. In the end a player is going to succeed if they put in the work to understand how to win with any given character.
I think that characters dont really hinder growth. I play May in Guilty Gear who is also a "scrubby" character in the sense that you can just knowledge check other new players to death much like Honda and I climbed ranked that way pretty quickly for a while. But eventually I kind of hit a plateau because I was playing better players who actually understood the frame data and their rps options. And now Ive started to try fleshing out better gameplans not only on offense but defense, neutral etc. The progress is slow but it feels like Im getting better fundamentals. I think lots of fighting games have characters like this that have strong options that low level players wont know how to deal with but as the level of play gets higher everyone is going to have to improve these skills regardless of their character which is why I agree with the sentiment that your mindset is so much more important than the character you choose.
I think in Melee the wave dashing and L-canceling and crouch canceling does a lot for making many fundamentals transferable. In Ultimate, stubby characters have a hard time getting in on swordies who can keep them at bay, so swordies might not have to learn CQC. In Melee crouch canceling is a strong additional option that makes such things way more likely. While I think Ultimate's roster is much better balanced overall (most characters are viable), most characters have some strengths or weaknesses that don't really promote certain fundies. Who needs to learn ledge trapping when you can cover so much that you can react to the remaining two options? Who needs to learn positioning when your character can start combos from long/upper mid-range and gets onto stage for free? Who needs to learn footsies when your sword/arm is half the stage length?
I took this whole talk to heart. Thank you brother 🙏
While obviously not the case in every instance, I feel like low/mid tier mains find a lot of success early on via match up inexperience from the opponents side.
Example: The fox doesn't know up throw up air doesn't work on luigi and ends up getting killed for it.
When that works out so well, it is really easy to grow reliant on those sort of things even when they stop working and never really develop stronger fundamentals.
Also the low tier catch 22 mentality of: "If I win, it's because I am so great but if I lose, it's because I am using a bad character."
which ultimately leads to less analysis of your own play to make improvements.
Again not everyone, but seemingly more at the low/mid tier.
Also I remember watching Wizzy absolutely destroy M2k in PM with Sonic and was just laughing at the state of the game that such a character would exist
i think it’s pretty simple if someone’s not trying to actively get better and are not seeking out information on how to do so by people that have good information then they never will. most of those people that don’t look to get better fall into what i feel is two categories 1. being that they just pretty much lose to everyone all the time. or 2. they rely on sort of “cheesy” options to squeak out wins. i think it’s fair to say wiz didn’t just go from being a cheesy sonic to an extremely good melee player he had to really work to get there an would obviously put in time to do it. i can definitely understand someone’s frustration with trying to work on getting good fundamentals and losing to someone that relies on cheesier tactics i think it’s common for people to be bad at playing people that are bad
I've played quite a few games, from marvel and guilty gear to melee and also like card games and stuff. I think I agree with all of what you said. Yes if your character doesn't demand a certain skill, then you won't build it, but it doesn't mean you can't, and more often than not cheesy players have learned to get better when they needed to in my experience. Sajam has also talked about something similar in the past about how maybe if you play a grappler in one game your defense will suck cause you just reversal command grab during strings, but if you play a different archetype in an other game, you might transfer skills from like bulldogging zoners, and then develop defense as you need it and so on.
Also on low tier players: I usually find the reason they don't do as well on other characters is because low tiers are often still good at some things, and they have to spend so much time developing the things their character is good at, that they haven't had the time to mess around with other characters as much as like a fox player who can play super fundamentally and just casually switch to marth for friendlies.
I come from a Marvel 3 background and I feel that different characters require different prerequisite skills. Like a lot of low tier players need to be very good at throwing and throw teching that higher tier manipulate with movement instead. I feel the other side of this is what skills players develop depending on their local meta. I feel this is less common in the online era, but when someone fights a skilled player using a specific thing in weeklies it structures when they're afraid, see opportunities, etc. I feel that this is just as heavily influenced by the environment the player is in to the character(s) the player plays.
Your comment of saying that low tier players don't get the same feeling of victory and hurts them on the long run is something that I felt that. I usually play high tier characters in fgs for the most part but damn I don't get that feeling of being nice all the time usually and get mad tight about it. I hate when people say shit like "I play against this character so much that I know how to deal with them" which I'm like "cool but that doesn't help me". Recently I've picked up Garou MOTW and main B.Jenet which no doubtable is one of the best characters in the game but playing against randos and actually winning more than the other games that I play kinda enlighten my mood as a player. Think the important of winning more is good cuz at the end of the day, everyone tryna win you know. Overall, good video Toph.
I play Yink and there are certainly things that he taught me that high tier Peach didn't. I also just have more fun with the character, with what feels like the same amount of success, so that's a W in my book.
From my experience player skill is pretty agnostic from the character they choose and has far more to do with who that player surrounds themselves with. If you as a player only ever get to play with people who take the game casually you will never have someone who can teach you the fundamentals of the game and how it 'should' be played.
Using the example of Wizzy from the video. Wizzy didn't become good by playing falcon. Wizzy got good because he was in a competitive space and was able to consistently be around/talk to other high level falcons who could teach him how to play.
This phenomena is why you often find out the friends/siblings of high level players are often very strong themselves.
I know I'm such a one character-player that I'm actually terrified of even trying anyone else.
I think that every character teaches you skills, even if the skills are different. For example, I'm an ultimate player and main Pika, who isn't considered very fundamental. My friends play lucina, joker, captain falcon, and we all go about even. Even when we switch off of mains we still go even. I notice that even with random characters I barely play I can still edge guard them and take low percent stocks. Just different skills.
I've had the "fundies speedrun" theory for a while
at first you pick a top tier: top tiers will allow you to get used to winning and get used to the game while holding your hand enough to where you dont get "cheesed"
Next when your good on a local level start to play a low tier in early parts of bracket, this will allow you to get used to get used to winning and playing in neutral and disadvantage, preferably the low tier is similar to your main OR a all rounder
this creates a challenge and knowledge feedback loop, with the only issue being that you would be more prone to being upset, but that shouldn't matter since you shouldn't do this in brackets that matter
Oh I like this idea
I like where your mind is at for this, but top tier characters still get cheesed and still have to play neutral/in disadvantage
@@Coach_IBS I never said they didn't, I'm just saying they have to deal with it less
I started playing GGST recently and I've been playing only in unranked lobbies with players who are high ranked and much more experienced than myself. My w/l ratio is abysmal, but I don't feel bad because just taking a game here or there against opponents much better than me feels satisfying and I feel like I'm learning faster than just mashing against other new players. I didn't pick a low tier (I play Giovanna), but I'm wondering if I could be developing a similar mindset to the low tier mains you described due to playing against people I don't expect to beat.
edit: Well, I play with my irl friends too and I usually win, but they're also new and they don't punish my mistakes as consistently so I'm concerned about picking up bad habits that won't work against better players.
Necro comment but Strive doesn't really have this issue. Any bad habits you might pick up will be punished so quickly at higher levels that you won't be repeating them very long. I'm a celestial player for reference, not that good but good enough to get in the door. You have to play cleanish or you really wont survive at higher levels, it's such a high damage game with easy punishes for most mistakes.
Two things I disagree with:
- Learning high level play through "osmosis" (for a lack of a better term) doesn't really happen, I would still argue that there is theory or knowledge of underlying concepts that you need to learn first. Proactive playstyles are definitely valid, NYCTempest does it all the time in the games he plays, however he uses high level concepts to make it actually work and will still try to play more "fundamentally" when the opponent has forced him to do so. He still plays to concepts such as risk reward, and creating a rotation of options so he can create a gameplan. When starting out as a player, there's no bigger picture for you to even see except "this worked, I should double down on it" or "This is a really powerful thing that a lot of people struggle with, I should also use this more." Ideas such as risk reward or rotating options doesn't really come to light when thinking in this way, because if the thing fails the only conclusion is "oh I should've done the same thing but better" or "oh I didn't know this one MU thing I'll do it next time" which leads into a lot of pitfalls and plateaus. In order to reach a higher level you need to be actively asking for what it is or it needs to be taught to you, you don't just absorb it from your surroudings.
- Which leads me to my next point: Low Tier players are still taking advantage of something strong their character has, usually abusing knowledge checks / a lack of MU knowledge since the char is more obscure. No matter what, the matchup dynamic between two characters will always exist, and both players need to know it in order to play on an equal footing. Because there are less people who play less popular characters, the burden is on the opponent to know how to deal with them (a knowledge check). It's not as if weaker characters are just a copy paste of top tier characters but with weaker stats. Sure, it's ultimately the competitor's fault for not knowing the knowledge check, but I don't think low tier players ONLY play low tiers because of the "low tier player mindset."
Ultimately like you said, it IS about mindset and how you approach the game. In order to become better you need to want to actively find out how. However, humans have a reward based mindset. If a thing works, then from the player's perspective it doesn't make sense to stop doing the thing.
Former PM Bowser player, switched to Peach on Melee 2015, picked up Pikachu & Bowser again once my Melee fundamentals allowed me to win with them.
The baggage associated with the question for Daigo was tangible
peanut switched off Mac and said it's hard to play a char that can jump lol... like he's not used to having an air game at all (later smash games have some really lopsided kits)
I feel like you're calling hugs kinda bad when he's still better than most of us. I guess it's a meme to be mean to poor Hugo but I'm on board 😂
I think as long as you are playing with an active and present mentality, you will improve regardless of context. not much of a fighting game player, but ex guitar solo main, turned random select specialist
In ultimate, I think the worst example of this is Yoshi. Even GnW will have to eventually deal with well spaced shield pressure.
However, Yoshi has so many quirks in Ultimate compared to the rest of the cast that he is the only character that I vehemently warn against maining 1st.
Unpokeable shield, frame 1 super armor on double jump, and insane air drift are enough to warp a newbie's understanding of the game
Yeah cheesing just makes you think you're good. You gotta get past the cheese and know when to use it. I knew a shiek who would smoke all my weed and chain grab/tech chase me literally nonstop. He isn't ranked. He doesn't do well in tourneys. If I escape the grabs he dies. Cheese isn't always the way. (commenting this before watching the video)
makes me feel like people who win with cheese are pretty likely to win without cheese if they're actually motivated. People who lose with cheese... well they usually won't accuse you of cheesing if you didn't win LOL.
If they're winning it sorta makes it seem like they're good at searching out a way to win, whatever that way might be.
I've played all games mentioned here, sf4, 5, melee, ultimate, etc
honda is most certainly playing a different game than others
fundamentals are still needed, but sometimes he can get around them with his gameplay, since I've always felt that the gap between players in a smash brothers game means more than a gap between players in street fighter, ie, if i guess correctly on wake up, i can get guaranteed damage, i don't think smash gives this opportunity as often
character aside, i don't think you need to play 'perfectly' to outplay your opponent in smash bros, but street fighter says otherwise
Do fundamentals really matter if you can win with a perticular play style at high level?
I play ROB in ultimate and I hear this ALL THE TIME. People complaining about getting "cheesed" instead of focusing on how to improve their own gameplay. It's a terrible mindset and something I personally have zero patience for. If you win, that's all that matters.
To use chess as analogy there is very little significance in what opening you play as long as you stick with it (excluding some truly unsound gambits) -- tactics, endgame theory, etc are far more significant.
i cant believe hbox wasn't mentioned once in this video
Sorta relevant, but all I know, is that when I pick Roy or Ganon, the fundamentals like spacing and conditioning flow through my brain so clearly. It’s like everything in my body focuses to win, compared to when I play my Falco or Marth who just have so many faster, better tools
as someone who plays a low tier in Melee & a high tier in PM, I don't think the low tier thing has to do with not developing a sense to win, it's more-so that if you're playing a low tier you have both very set in stone counterplay to what your opponent is doing in addition to them not knowing what that counterplay is. Whereas if you play a character like Fox, you now need to be 6 mixups deep in the counterplay because the opponent knows those levels that you don't. It's like going from having all the matchup knowledge when your opponent has none to your opponent having all the knowledge when you have none & it's really jarring to keep playing & not going back to the low tier.
No copy pasta, I started as Zelda basically got “bullied” into playing Sheik, and stopped playing for quite a while, picked up the game again later and wanted to play GW, not because I want a john when I lose but because I enjoy them(not always their traits but the character in Zelda) like I would play toon Link if he was available regardless of how good he was. Many players won’t play online and when you search for games you sometimes have to search for 30 minutes to find someone who even plays 2 games. And people always ask why you won’t pick a better character and it’s quite sad honestly. If they see a low tier making their way into a tournament that’s hype but when they see a local low tier it’s just cringe, and bad. That’s how most low tiers started one day.
Im the kind of player who most people think I can play all characters. But I never play 3, the fast fallers. Melee is such a deep game that even a well rounded player will have trouble with some specifics
Idk how relevant this is but in SC2 it’s important to play all the races because you might think like “oh this character is so OP” but then you play as them and figure out their weaknesses. And realize the things that make your main hard to play against.
Ult player here. I've always been on the "pick a good character or you won't learn fundies" train. While I do think that's mostly true, my friend has sort of changed my opinion on that. He only picks random, and has been doing so since we started playing in 2019. Meanwhile, I've changed characters a lot but I've only played high or top tier characters. My "fundies" are definitely better than his, but it's not like I wash him every time. I've seen the development in his fundies over time, it just took a little longer than me. I think there's two reasons for this. A) Good characters do teach you fundies earlier because, especially in Ult, the cheese is kind of locked behind a certain skill barrier. For example, I play Sheik now and I'm consistently killing people for regular getup with nair->bouncing fish. I think that's cheesy bc they die at like 100%, but i had to learn how to react to people's normal get up first. On the flip side, a bowser could just walk up to ledge and grounded upb to cover like 3 options. That literally does not take any skill, like a toddler could do that. B) I fall under a brain player so I put conscious effort into improving whereas he takes everything by feel, which I think is a faster process. That being said, for a long time, he was better at winning games than I was. I think playing low tiers helps you spot win conditions based on your opponent's habits, whereas top tiers help you learn how to reactively pick an option bc you have answers to everything, but you have to learn what they are and when to use them. Both are important skills to have, but where your character is on the tier list will determine which one you learn first imo.
I'm not sure if I fully answered Toph's question so if anyone needs clarification just lmk! I love talking about smash lol
I think that fundamentals itself might be a flawed concept. The real fundament of the game might just be being effective at killing your opponent as efficiently as possible. Wizzrobe did that with sonic but that is also the approach he has to Captain Falcon.
How're fundamentals a flawed concept? At the end of the day you can break melee down into 3 main aspects of the game: neutral, punish, and edguarding. For most high teir characters the "way" in which you do those three things is relatively consistent. Fundamentals are the pieces that make up each of these different aspects. Dashdancing for neutral and tech chasing for pushing for example.
@@octiviana Im more or less saying that punish game itself may be the most important fundamental skill. Focussing improvement on effectively killing you opponents rather than movement drills as more fundamental to winning sets. Im not denying the importance of movement tech. You obviously need to be able to wavedash and the like to even execute a punish. Its more of a change in perspective on what is truly fundamental to winning games. How that ties into this video is that the way wizzy got good in PM, is by working on the "fundamental" skill of killing your opponents effectively.
one word. jumpsquat
I felt so called out by the "you're actually booty buttcheeks" comment that I'm stunned... How dare you toph 😂
That smile @ 0:46 says it all
LONG POST WARNING:
I switched to Melee after Slippi rollback dropped, but I used to be a high level Ult player (PR'd high in region, #1 in sub-region, usually placed 25th-49th at majors)...
I think there are for sure SEVERAL characters that dont truly teach you the game, and just teach you how to abuse character specific gimmicks and cheese that bypass genuine fundamentals. The one I want to focus on is Game and Watch as I think he is the most drastic case throughout the games history.
In my region there were 2 PR'd GnW players who placed extremely well with him, but they could not play other characters to save their lives. Squad Strike side brackets always exposed them both as one-tricks as the other characters they chose were always TERRIBLE, even easy characters like Lucina and Mario you would not think these guys are even remotely competitive at this game until the GnW came out. The fact is when you look at things from local PR, to top level like Maister, people who main that character are ALWAYS solo mains with no notable secondaries, and if they try other characters (even easy ones) they never do anything and are always significantly worse. This genuinely tells me they are more dependent on character gimmicks and cheese than actual fundamentals to win.
Similarly in college my roommate (low PR in a bad region) mained GnW, but he tried picking up other characters cuz he felt no one respected him for playing GnW, and his other characters constantly proved his lack of fundamental skill. He would constantly SD offstage cuz he couldnt reverse Up B consistently, everytime he was offstage he would pick the most obvious recovery route and be gimped effortlessly cuz he wasnt used to having a recovery that could actually be contested and exploited, he could not deal with shield pressure without his GnW Up B, was awful at landing cuz he didnt have GnW Dair, and would throw out unsafe smash attacks in neutral not being used to a character that doesnt get to do that, etc, etc.
At a major I once had a decently long friendly sesh with Dabuz who mains characters I would say are kinda quirky and "different", and his mains were really tough to beat, but he was playing a lot of secondaries and they were like no better than playing a 1-2er who mains those same characters if Im being honest, they were REALLY bad. Not tryna take a shot at him, I think hes very skilled, but I think its true to say his skill is in something that is not universal to the game as a whole and theres many characters/players I believe thats true for.
I have more examples of this, but I have in general definitely found a correlation between maining certain characters and lacking fundamental skills that allow you to be more rounded and universally good at the game.
I cant speak for other games, but it wouldnt surprise me if this were true for most/all fighting games as well.
I play ggxx+r and that game has some malarky. Theres a characters that never need to play defense/are always winning on defense (think a character that, to edgeguard or combo, the risk reward would always be in their favor), characters that consistently can win off one interaction and I don't even wanna talk about zappa. The arguable best player online plays essentially mario and the person who won frosty, basically our only supermajor, plays a mid tier that got nerfed this version. Complaining about "gimmicks" is just johns. If its really that bad prove it. A wins a win. If you lose you adapt on both ends.
Bring back wobbling
Cowards
Getting good I way more about being able to solve problems, than being able to do X thing(s). Why you see foxes with nutty tech skill get beat by dashback grab. They were focused on doing X thing(s) because “they are good” as apples to figureing out a problem.
Low tier mains got the grimeset. No one knows what to fucking do against us and we can get away with stupid shit.
man this is me right now i started with luigi and really wanted to learn marth and i am struggling you go from a brawler/wave dash heavy character then to marth who spaces dash dances etc really struggling atm but the few times i hit a good combo is just so rewarding
This isn't even a problem specific to fighting games. MMO's have classes with unique mechanics that allow them to ignore certain aspects of gameplay. Same for MOBAs. I think at the end of the day, if you want to improve with a gimmick character or character that breaks certain rules, you still need to understand many fundamentals of what your opponent is trying to accomplish, at the very least. You still need to understand macro ideas about the game on an intricate level, even if you don't understand specific micro movements or mechanics that apply to the rest of the cast.
I imagine Axe asking this to Diago with Pikachu.
I love Big T and Golden Guardians, wow, his content is absolutely godlike. Please heart my comment Almighty T for the algorithm gods.
i 100% thought you were gonna pull up m2k vs wizzy when m2k got bodied
Like Broly in DBFZ. Lol
great video
I feel this way about puff. Been playing a lot of slippi since the mmr update. Roughly 50% of my games are either fox, falco, or captain falcoln. And against those players they could be significantly better than me but if they don't know how to deal with upthrow rest I can win.
I typically use the rest combos more just in hype moments or to breeze through matches otherwise but when I get into a game with someone who can actually DI or punish my grab attempts I get fucked and have to rely on my less than stellar neutral game.
You still kind of get the practice but the existance of rest makes it easy to focus on the wrong things
So in League of Legends, I get really annoyed with people who play characters who can't take on responsibilities in the game. Like if you are a jungle and you can only play farming junglers, I think you are bad because their is this whole set of map responsibilities you are refusing to take on. And people you play with are going to be forced to take on that responsibility for you. Also in champion select you are a poor person to have near the bottom because you can't adapt to what the game needs from you and that is going to cause a lot of losses. Also in a competitive setting when people can prepare for you, you are predictable. I'll first pick an invading jungler and never let you farm while sacrificing nothing in champion select to get the matchup I want.
All this to say. I think do you are limiting yourself when you don't play the whole game. But at the same time I also think you gotta first get to a level where the ceiling even matters. And really there is nothing wrong with mastering one aspect at a time as long as you are self aware and have an eye towards a long term goal of mastering the game as a whole. I'm actually infinitely more frustrated with players who are losing to someone with a limited ceiling and think it is their job to tell the other person about that ceiling. Like how about instead you show them by getting your own play above what they can do? That's the best communication. Just show them through your own play. If you can't do that you have no business talking smack.
"If you are a low-tier player, you're not used to winning"
Well this also applies if you are just a Bad player.
aka unless you get good quickly, you don't get good. Which i don't think i agree with. Especially for people that aren't good because they just chill and don't practice.
But i also notoriously don't understand how improvement works, aka the thing that works for everyone else doesn't work for me and idk how to get around it. So might be me having a skewed view.
what if you're a bad low-tier player?
I'm in that same boat actually, no idea how improvement works lol.
I care more about just playing period though, kinda hard when you get quit out on and taunt spammed though.
Charge characters are way harder to play than motion characters imo. Idk why Daigo says that the fact that Honda is charge won't help with fundamentals. Isn't charging a fundamental skill?
I don’t think it’s fundamental if it isn’t universal to the cast, but I’m not familiar with SF
@@jeremyhillson9210 Some characters have only motion specials, and others have only charge specials. Some have both.
I wouldn't say learning a charge motion is fundamental. Imo it's more comparable to jump squat lengths. I can see why you'd mistake it for a fundamental skill, but I wouldn't equate motion inputs/Charge to something like spacing.
about the low tier thing
as a Zelda player I agree
Oh well? What do you care about in fighting games, the W no matter what, or the gratification of self improvement? Different people, different answers.
Playing these cheese chars will give you skills, just different ones than other players. once you plateau with them, switching will teach you different skills than you are used to. eventually you will have learned all the relevant skills of the game, you just learned them in a different order than the order ryu or fox might teach you them in.
I think the dude laughed cuz he thought he was trolling
toph toph toph
Hugo down horrendous after this one
If you play only one character you can become the best player at that character (with enough time and effort). If you want to become the best Marth it doesn't make sense to play fox to improve. If you want to become good with every character you should try and play every character.
🤦♂️
@@sterlifyy ?
@@melo9851 every sixty seconds in africa a minutes passes…
Well they definitely make you complain more
Wizzy the sonic main
I agree with Toph but I'm still going to berate Luigi players. Bunch of clowns 😂
marth carries me
Toph going full NoFluxes at 11:16
I miss Mike Ross
12:24 “Falcon’s a hard character” lol
I genuinely think this isn't as big in Melee as the traditionals. You will have to learn spacing and solid punishes, and you will hit the wall earlier (because singleplayer is not an option).
bring back wobbing
Its pretty cheesy...especially when there are players like slug out there doing amazing things with ice climbers
@@spitefulcrow5026 a frame one invincble move that can gimp you at 0 is cheesy but hey it takes sum skill i guess
@@themonoloco8245 I take it you're referring to Fox's shine? I'd say shining takes less skill than wobbling in certain contexts
@@spitefulcrow5026 It's sort of hilarious that they could be referring to puff's rest or fox's shine and we can't know just from that comment alone
Low tier take was trash
lol