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How many is enough?; A discussion about secondaries
Topic Started: Jun 20 2007, 11:27 AM (570 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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mastr0fmyd0main3
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Mid Tier
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Ulti
Jun 20 2007, 11:54 PM
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.

Yeah, that was me. I left because it was promised to be a lower rate and that's how much money I had brought.
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Ulti
High 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."


Eh, that's why the topic started really. Someone else brought up the banning of ironmans. I posted why I generally agreed with the notion but felt that banning them would be unnecessary - if you want to do them as serious friendlies, than that's your perogotive. =/

Edit: Got in after Master did, clarified post.
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sparrow
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God Tier
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I guess it depends on your priorities. My priority is to win, and get better. That's how I have fun. Other people have fun by experimenting with and playing with lots of characters (I have fun doing this too which is where my multiple characters come from). When I said ironmans should be banned it was speaking from a point of view that would have interest in MN being better at smash overall.
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Vulpine_Shine
n00b
I think you should be able to play enough characters well to cover all of your bad matchups. For example, I'm lucky. I can play Fox moderately well. If I'm up against a Falco, I can pick Jigglypuff. That's it. All my matchups are now at least even for me. I don't need to learn any more characters.

Of course, this is assuming your primary motive is to win tournies, and not to have fun. I'm in it for the fun, so I play everybody except DK, Kirby, Yoshi, and apparantly Captain Falcon.
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illboyzeus
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High Tier
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I play characters to have fun, and to broaden my scope. But I do like to win, that's why I stopped maining Doc from long ago to main Falco. I think I'm pretty close to mastering falco's technical game completely, so I don't see the point in practice with him for hours a day. What am I gonna learn then, how to triple shine? I can't practice mindgames against a computer so I practice with different characters to improve my overall game. I think playing Fox or Falco, and then going to play marth makes marth game easier because you should theorectically be faster from the spacies. I can vouch for that because it happened for me, and I improve my overall tech chasing just from dabbling in Falcon. BTW, I usually only play Falco/Marth in tournies. In closing I don't think playing multiple characters is bad, as long as you have a focus on a few characters to ultimately improve them beyond the others.

P.S whoever said about ironmans for money, that would be pretty darn stupid. :D
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Seanson
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High Tier
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Depends how you define secondary.

Secondaries aren't always for tournies. People like me that only have 1 person to play for extended periods of time, we would starve. Sure, I'd get really good at the matchup of Yoshi vs Peach, but there's so many more than that. Me and SDM play a slight variety of characters to keep us more well rounded, and not just 1 char vs 1 char.
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Uno
n00b
To zeus: I did the same exact thing a year ago as your doing right now, DONT DO IT!!!!!! Honestly I focused on technical skill on fox and it really doesnt mean much of anything, my advice is only play when its worth playing, or for fun.

To the topic, I've got nothing against using all the chars you want, but these iron-man tourneys sound like time better used doing normal friendlies.
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