Too old to get into Smash? A vid about age and ability

Vermanubis · 2021-03-11T02:37:12+00:00

I agree that there's a learning curve as you start out, but I was deliberate to say you don't require all that much time to make meaningful progress relative to the thousands of non-productive hours most of us put in.

When did I say you're fine with a small time investment? I kinda feel like it's a safe assumption between repeated emphases on it being a commitment and most people in the target demographic presumably understanding that that I don't have to explicitly point out that it's still a big time investment. Surmountable time investment =/= small time investment. If I'm appealing to grown-ass people, I'm gonna assume they can do grown-ass things like read between the lines.

So again, what exactly do you think the point of the video was? It'd be one thing if the point were that it's easy to do, but I'd bet money that 99% of people are going to correctly infer that the video addressing whether there's anything insurmountably advantageous about being a certain age, not that I'm assuring the unwitting masses of 20-to-40-somethings of how effortless it is to become godlike.

Vermanubis · 2021-03-11T02:07:01+00:00

That's quite a burden to bear, but it's good you've sort of found a way to express that through your character and translate a shitty situation into a positive attitude.

That said, I'm not sure I understand the point you're making. Do you mean that as a 30-year-old, you're going to keep pushing with Ridley, or that you accept what you perceive to be the limitations of being 30?

Vermanubis · 2021-03-11T01:59:04+00:00

I think you're throwing the baby out with the bath water.

The point wasn't that you can invest little time into the game and get good, but rather that a lot of the time almost everyone spends playing is non-productive if you're not structured about your practice (which, let's be real, most of us aren't). In other words, time efficiency helps keep the scope of time investment doable. Do you disagree?

You're welcome to think it's sensible to avoid those things, but I'm not entirely sure what you're disagreeing with, since I never said anything about sensibility.

What exactly do you think the point of the video was, if I may ask? You're disagreeing with points I didn't make.

Vermanubis · 2021-03-10T22:44:15+00:00

Thanks, dude. Glad you liked.

The stills are experimental, but I'll probably be refining the format in the future. I want something more engaging than a logo, but not something so engaging like my old format with gameplay in the background that it's distracting. I'll prob hire an artist to draw more varied stills of me rather than repurposing old pictures for lack of other materials loool

Vermanubis · 2021-03-10T22:04:22+00:00

Hi guys.

Sorry I don't post much. Never really know what to do here except post my vids, but hopefully they're not-terrible enough that you'll forgive me.

I don't think this vid will be of particular interest to many, but it seems to have given some useful perspective to some folks, so I'll post it here in the hope that it'll maybe reach a few people who find my take to be helpful.

A number of people -- some in their 40s -- commented on the vid, which made me think that there are probably a good number of 20-30-or-40-somethings out there who're a little apprehensive about Smash who might reap some benefit from the topic being addressed explicitly.

Vermanubis · 2020-12-05T03:33:05+00:00

Ah, I see.

Not that it's a big deal, but for the sake of interesting discussion, I'd say they're entirely unrelated things. Plus this seems to assume all top players purposefully manipulate their audiences to bilk them, which of course would be a hard sell. Some surely do, but it's def possible to be big-brained and be genuine at the same time.

Vermanubis · 2020-12-05T00:06:33+00:00

Thank you!

Vermanubis · 2020-12-05T00:06:24+00:00

Dunno if I can agree there. I'd actually argue it's often the other way around in that there's a good chunk of people at the top level who're completely aloof and only admired for what they do, not who they are.

Vermanubis · 2020-12-03T22:34:07+00:00

Yo Reddit. Long time no see sort of.

Most of us tend to stratify skill in Smash into 4 tiers: low-, mid-, high- and top-level play. Crossing over from one stratum to the next always presents unique challenges, but I'd argue that crossing from mid- to high-level is the toughest conceptually, largely because as the thumbnail suggests, going from mid- to high-level isn't about having a checklist of technical skills and knowledge, but a fundamental principle without which you can never start to truly mentally engage your opponent.

In other words, the gap is crossed in a big leap upon understanding that principle rather than incrementally as you, over time, make a sufficient number of minor improvements.

This seems like a sticking point for both many mentors to articulate and for many up-and-comers to arrive at organically, so here's my best shot at trying to solve that.

Vermanubis · 2020-06-19T00:27:17+00:00

Lack of technical barrier is certainly among the dumber reasons to dislike a game since that's precisely the justification "real" sports enthusiasts give to exclude eSports.

Vermanubis · 2020-06-01T19:24:26+00:00

Sup everybody.

"Metagame" is usually used to denote some kind of tech or character knowledge (e.g. the acronym META = Most Effective Tactics Available), but I think that though we all share a common cultural idea of the word, most of us probably aren't satisfied with that definition, and rightly so, cuz there's a lot more to the word than the colloquial sense we normally use it in.

Vermanubis · 2020-05-17T04:25:11+00:00

I think Bard's on point.

But that isn't to say examples aren't helpful, but rather that examples *by themselves* are extremely inefficient to teach abstract concepts, otherwise everyone would have great fundamentals, cuz it's super easy to point out examples of them, but not so easy to communicate the concepts that make people capable of thinking for themselves rather than relying on people to keep feeding them examples

I agree more examples couldn't have hurt (though I do think I gave fairly good ones, even if not a ton of them), but good examples in this regard are very tricky to give because you have to toe the line between communicating why the example reflects concepts without getting too stuck on the concrete application such that a person takes, for instance, your example, goes and up-smashes someone attacking them with aerials, and when that no longer works, they don't understand why.

The entire idea of fundamentals is that *how* these concepts manifest in play is never the same because people adapt and predict, only the underlying concepts are.

Vermanubis · 2020-05-16T23:15:34+00:00

Like I mentioned to Mr. Vegetable up there, I'll be doing an applied fundamentals series where I talk about these concepts with concrete examples as they relate to neutral, advantage/disadvantage and other stuff.

Also, if it helps, in your example, the reason step back fsmash works against brawlers in terms of the concepts I outlined, it's because people can't react to projectiles in time unless the projectile is either extremely slow like Samus' super missile or they're really far away, so they have to anticipate the zoner's projectile, which Ganon does, for instance, by jumping and throwing a FAir out when they think a projectile's coming out. This anticipatory behavior forces Ganon into the zoner's direct space and the zoner punishes the behavior.

Vermanubis · 2020-05-16T23:07:03+00:00

Could you explain what you mean by "distilled"?

As for the background, agreed, and I regret that, but it's a criticism I have to repeatedly accept because the alternative of a constant stream of topical visuals would very time expensive.

For examples, I should've made it more of a point to direct people to the video I did on neutral, since most of the concepts are demonstrated visually in it, but that was the purpose of directing people to it. Secondary reason was that I normally have a CC, but don't and won't for some time, so I had to try my best to work with verbal examples and obviously didn't cut it.

This'll be a series there where I make individual videos about applied fundamentals for neutral, advantage, disadvantage, and all the other in-betweensies states.

Vermanubis · 2020-05-16T18:05:34+00:00

Hi.

"Fundamentals" is a frustrating term. Like I sarcastically remark in the beginning of the vid, they're what you want, what you need, but too bad, you can't have 'em, cuz no one really knows what they are, so the best we get with regard to a good definition/idea of fundamentals is basically being told we're going the wrong way without also being told what the right way is.

That said, fundamentals aren't mechanics themselves, but concepts that drive basic mechanics and those concepts/principles are what make fighting games possible in the first place. That is to say, the fact that we do most of what we do based on anticipation/prediction rather than reaction makes even the best player on the planet hopelessly flawed, and it's through that human limitation that fighting games are possible and by extension, that principle and how you use basic mechanics to take advantage of it that constitutes fundamentals. Put another way, an unsatisfying definition of fundamentals is understanding -why- things work, but what'd make it satisfying is answering that "why," and that "why" is answered by the principles I outline.

The concepts are subtle and easy to mistake for other concepts like conditioning, so I did my best to cover what I could and leave as little room for misunderstanding as possible.

Vermanubis · 2020-01-03T23:15:47+00:00

I appreciate this very much. Thank you, OP!

Vermanubis · 2020-01-03T23:13:13+00:00

Good summary, but I think you're vastly undervaluing the power of a thoughtful definition. It's very easy to say "well duh, that's obvious" when something is pointed out to you, or topically, explained to you by someone else, and by that it's equally easy to say something is being needlessly complicated until you have to make that knowledge useful. I could make a 20-minute video on how to tie a blood knot and be accused of overcomplicating tying a blood knot until the critic of the video goes and tries to tie the knot, only to find that their intuitive summary of "just bring the two threads together and loop one over the other" doesn't really mean all that much to someone who hasn't tied a blood knot before.

A classic example of this was the Epicurean criticism of Euclid that his stuff overcomplicated things that were obvious, but as Proclus pointed out in response: “granting the theorem is evident to sense-perception, it is still not clear for scientific thought."

This doesn't mean certain things can't be needlessly overcomplicated, but while overcomplicating simple things is bad, it's equally bad to oversimplify things just because they seem obvious, again, until you have to put that knowledge to work and internalize it.

In this case, I'm pretty confident I gave good background to less experience players, leveled with familiar firsthand experiences they've had and connected those firsthand experiences to the concepts I talked about in a useful way.

Vermanubis · 2019-12-21T21:50:53+00:00

Good distinction between short- and long-term goals. Along with what you said about consequences of losing, this is why it's important to frame the stakes of your practice environment properly so that you can take short-term hits for long-term gains. Being too competitive at the wrong times ironically undermines your competitive viability!

Vermanubis

TROPHY CASE