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How many is enough?; A discussion about secondaries
Topic Started: Jun 20 2007, 11:27 AM (569 Views)
Ulti
High Tier
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So I was looking around the boards this morning, when I spotted a rather interesting post by Sparrow:

"I think ironman matches should be banned from MN. It encourages us to spread our skill to a number of characters rather than focus it into one. I had a long talk about that phenomenon with Tapion today, and he scolded me for playing so many (4ish) characters on a regular basis. I think it's bad for our progression as a state."

Those who have been around the boards for a while know that debates regarding the number of one's mains is nothing new to MN. :rolleyes: Generally speaking, such debates were relatively small issues between individuals. Since this post is rather sweeping, and includes banning an tournament type. This having been said, I think it deserves it's own topic.

Personally, I'm not big on ironmans. Until recently, I've had only one tourney-viable character to use, some high tier "secondaries" that I never really used. I have a new main now, and a "new" secondary as a result (Ganon), but I'm still at a disadvantage as compared to people who do play (competantly play, that is) three or four characters.

Before you say "that's your problem, learn2play more chars", I have unsuccessfully tried picking up other characters, and until recently I've had little success. I'm also against the idea of picking up secondaries - much less mulitple secondaries - for a somewhat (for lack of a better word) philosophical reason: I think the idea that "many characters for many situations" is flawed.

The main reasoning behind "many characters for many situations" is that one gains more experience by seeing matc-ups from another angle, and if someone should pull out a tricky Young Link you can use somene besides your Peach.

I have to disagree with this line of thought. Yes, playing another character does give you another angle to look at a match-up, but at the same time it's only a single angle - additionally it doesn't help you play the match-up nearly as well as actually practicing and playing the match-up.

Let's take an example: Let's say I play Ganon against a Sheik player. Sheik can CG ganon until around 90%, whether or not I can cg Ganon if I played Sheik does not change this.
Or if I decided to pick up Falco, being able to do BS like combos won't necessarily make me play any better against a Falco.

You might argue that I have a better idea of Falco's options. But is this the only way to get that idea of his options. As opposed to playing Falco, I could watch vids, see which DI does/n't work, or even go to SWF and post a topic that says "How do I DI shine combos?" and I could eventually count on a reasonable answer.

You might also say playing another character gives you an idea of priority and range. By playing Falco against Ganon I now know when his u-air can get around Falco's D-air. You might argue I know more about Ganon's u-air. However, I only know more about the u-air in relation to a single match-up. Had I played ganon instead of Falco, I probably could've learned the same information anyway, but I also would have learned about Ganon's u-air in relation to other characters as well. I've become a better ganon not only in regards to Falco, but in regards to other characters as well.

Playing a bunch of characters regularly is also much more difficulat than playing fewer or even a single character. You have to learn when which move is usable, who does well against who and when should you switch chars, what stages are good and which should be banned. But there's also the flow of a character to consider. Play Ganon one round than pick up Fox the next - it's alot different and can be hard to adjust to the change in the middle of a tournament.

Finally, I have to wonder why those secondaries are needed in the first place. I hope no one finds his offensive, but certainly you aren't so bad that you need 8 different secondaries to cover for main's "even" and only "slightly favorable" matches. If you do, then you probably need to reconsider your main.

This brings me to my final point in regards to multiple characters. If you want to say you are good with your main, then you should be able to win ~90% of your match-ups with him/her. This means the unfavorable ones too (this is why I was so reluctant to pick up Sheik as a main, I wanted to be a "good Ganon" by this definition). If you main Ganon for only 60% percent of your matches then Ganon isn't much of a main (doesn't make you a bad player however, don't hear what I'm not saying).

Anyway, I'm running out of time. I'll explain why banning ironman tournaments will be unnecessary later.
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sparrow
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God Tier
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Props for putting this all into words. I wanted to make it its own thread but I didn't have time last night when I posted that. This is exactly what I'm talking about. I'm guilty, so don't think I'm being hypocritical.

I just have to wonder, if I didn't spend so much time getting my Fox, Falcon, DK, Luigi, Samus decent enough to use in tournaments, imagine how much more I could have put into my Falco's game. It's kinda depressing at this point because I feel like I wasted all that time... but it's also inspiring and makes me driven to begin using him 95% of the time. In friendlies and everything.
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Uno
n00b
Sounds good to me, good excuse to use fox in every match :P
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illboyzeus
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High Tier
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Nice post, I disagree with it for me though. Maybe its all the practice I do for my tech skill or whatever, but I can pick up and play like 6-8 different characters pretty good. Hell, I've used Marth, Falco, Fox, Sheik, C.Falcon in tourney matches and won them. Playing a lot of characters isn't really bad IMO, it does give you a broader scope of the game. I practice with Falco like at least 45 minutes to an hour a day, but that doesn't stop from improving my Marth game. I can kinda see where your coming from though, as of late I've focus fully on Falco and Marth, and both have really improved. Not to say I won't play Fox or Falcon though. :D
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Kyle
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FluxWolf
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And Zeus, think of if you would have put ALL of that time from your other characters to Falco... He would be many times better without a doubt.

This topic is really making me think hard about how I'm going to play from now on.
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illboyzeus
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High Tier
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lawl, what the hell was I thinking, I'm full Falco and Marth from now on. Falcon will be for fun.

actually, I don't know what I'm gonna do, There's not any thing to do in cottage grove, so I practice smash like a fiend. Anybody I play can be a potential main.
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Endless Nightmares
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Top Tier
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Like eci4 said, G&W can only get you so far...

I had reached my limit with G&W, which is why I looked on to more characters...but I've played so many chars that I don't have a definite main anymore. But I don't really mind. I just wish I hadn't started out with G&W but with a better character.

Meh, one of these days I'll go all-one character. Probably Ganon, most people don't know how good my Ganon is. >_>

I think that it's actually better to have several secondaries. Zeus already posted, but I would've used him as an example. He has a very solid Falcon, Marth, Falco, Sheik, and Fox and he performs well in tourneys with all of them. And Sparrow does well with Falco, Fox, Falcon, and DK. I (Usually) play Samus, Ganon, IC, and G&W in tournaments, but the difference is that I don't do well. I rarely win a single set at tourneys.

Or take ChuDat for example. He obviously mains IC, but he doesn't have a solid secondary. When his ICs aren't faring well, he has to either stick with IC or he picks Pika/Ylink/Jigglypuff (or if he doesn't care about winning, G&W). And he's not nearly as good with any of them as he is with IC.
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mastr0fmyd0main3
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Mid Tier
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I usually either practice with who I feel I will have the most fun with or usually pick a character and beef them up, but I only rotate between 4 or 5.
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eci4
Mid Tier
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If I play one character I get bored (unless it's forty fox dittos against chexr)

When I'm always winning with fox (and I do pretty much always win against the people I usually play with) they get bored, and so do I. No one wants to constantly play against one character, especially one that always beats them. That was my first reason for learning more characters.

I have also found that if I spend time away from a character, when i come back to them I will often be better at doing stuff I had had trouble with. For example, at OMGigglez2 I played pretty much only my fox, and I could not waveshine at all.

I didn't really get to practice with my fox though until going to Flux's, and there I was waveshining. It's not that I just instantly learned how to do it, but getting away from it for a bit helped me to look at it from a new perspective, and I got to relearn the motion I wnt through to do it.

Playing Fox also made me faster with my peach. I always saw her as a slow character, but once I learned reactionary stuff with fox (which I needed to be much faster with than her) I went back to peach and my game had sped up a lot without having practiced her at all.

While I only have two characters I deem tournament worthy, I'll still play my other characters...
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D.Disciple
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High Tier
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56K
Jun 20 2007, 01:19 PM
(or if he doesn't care about winning, G&W).

Wrong, he used G&W in a MLG tourney against Ken, forcing Ken to switch from Marth to Ganondorf (who was his first main.)

When I practice I mainly focus on my pika, my fox and everyone else just comes from what I've learn and think in my head. I practice with Pika 2 hours once or twice in a week, everyone else around at least 30 min. during that time, but as of recently I start to focus on improving Pika's game with his least favorite match ups, and working on new techniques with him.

The topic i agree with, because it does make you think if you did focus all of your time and effort on one character, and instead of 5 different characters just imagine how good you would be by the next tournament event in the next month.

Like say you practice with every character an hour a day, you have 5 characters, so that's 5 hours worth of practicing with 5 different characters. Now put that 5 hours into one character each day in a 30 day month before the next tourney. How far would you think you would progress in that one character after putting 150 hours of practice, over putting 30 hours of practice on 5 different characters?
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Endless Nightmares
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Top Tier
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D.Disciple
Jun 20 2007, 05:48 PM
Wrong, he used G&W in a MLG tourney against Ken, forcing Ken to switch from Marth to Ganondorf (who was his first main.)

When I saw the match, I thought they were both screwing around and Chu picked G&W. Marth is a strong G&W counter, I dunno why he'd switch to Ganon, who gets easily comboed and edgeguarded by G&W.

Chu has also picked G&W a few times in teams at MLG tourneys, while going up against Ken/Isai. Except Ken/Isai used their normal characters lol. Raped.
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D.Disciple
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Chu knows how to play Ken's Marth with GaW than with IC's and it was the stage choice as well.
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Tempest
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High Tier
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azen...he plays many...many kick butt characters all well...
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Ulti
High Tier
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Good to see that this has generated some discussion.

Anyway, here's why I think that banning ironman tournaments is unnecessary, despite my objections to it.

Judging by this topics largely favorable reception, it is my contention that ironman tournaments will simply be banned by default. There's two factions that I believe are naturally opposed to such tournaments. There are people like myself and JS who simply don't find them useful (or indeed, finding them detrimental); and there's the second group - if I may be very cynical for just a moment - the money makers. To a lesser extent, tournament hosts may not like it as well

Why should the this second group not like iron mans (at least in theory)? It's too long of an event. Each round of an ironman is guarenteed to at least be four rounds and can be as long as seven rounds. An entire tournament consisting of iron mans is bound to last a long time, which takes up time of more conventional tournaments (ie. low-tier, teams, low-tier teams) and MMs (practically free money in some cases >.>).

The tournament hosts encounter some of the same problems as the money makers - if money makers feel that they aren't making good money, they might be liable to just not show up; less good people pros = less other people = less money in the pot = less pros = etc - I'll admit, the entire vicious cycle is a tad exagerrated but there are some examples to illustrate this.

- Go to the Tournament Discussion section of SWF. Look at the the OC3 topic, it says "Bombsoldier is coming!" (at least it did yesterday). How many people do think said to themselves "Hmm, Bombsoldier is going to this tournament. Perhaps I should go." I'd bet at least a few.

- Sorry, no link for this one. But I do recall reading a topic in which Vidjo didn't attend a tournament due to the tournament size (less than 30 people) and the cut for first place was 40%. Clearly, Vidjo felt that the tournament wasn't worth his time. (Incidentally, the person who won the tournament was also displeased with the payout).

This brings another point for hosts. How much does a ironman cost? Put the admission too low, and the money makers don't like it; too high and not everyone can enter and the pot still ends up being smaller. Need another example of others reactions to pot size? Check the old St. Paul Bi-weeklies topic at SWF, around Sept/Oct Bluewolf I believe, posted an idea that allowed for reduced pot rates multiple times (although this isn't the best example, as the reduced rates only applied to the top players), my point is people do see the pot as important.

I do recall one more relevant example though; one of the tournaments was scheduled on Saturday as usual when a snowstorm hit that morning. That same Saturday, Bluewolf and everyone else had agreed to a lower admission price. The storm kept a lot of people from coming and this compounding the already reduced pot size - I recall at least one person being disgruntled with the payout.

Finally, ironmans are relatively new. This matters because many people see smash as a dying game - last year for instance, Manacloud called OC2 something along the lines of "smashes last hurrah" - countless people on SWF have used the phrase "well, why should I when Brawl is coming out soon?" as an excuse to not learn X technique or pick up character Y. With this mindset they are very unlikely to be willing to adopt or pay much attention too an entirely new (well, from many peoples' point of view anyway) tournament style. If MN's new goal as a state is to get wider recognition, I'd argue that we focus on the basics (singles/doubles, our mains) before touting a new tournament style that likely won't apply to be directly useful elsewhere.

When all of this is put together, it seems that iron mans will find little room in the monied tournaments. As for smashfests, those have always counted for less anyway and I don't think it's the websites responibility to determine what events hosts do and do not plan to have (this includes tournaments proper). It'll be banned by default at tournaments that matter, and beyond that I don't think it matters much too me how any one else plays.
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eci4
Mid Tier
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Ulti, it kind of seems like you are just against ironman tournaments... And while I think an ironman tournament would be cool, it is obviously unrealistic.

I see ironman matches as more serious friendlies.
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