Does practice even matter? Are some just naturally gifted?

[FreedomFighter]

If you look at major tournament results you'll notice it's usually the same people coming out on top. And often after winning major tournys they'll say things like "lol I didn't even practice".

Whereas on the other hand you have people claiming to have been practicing hard for years, watching every latest video, actively discussing tactics........and yet they never seem to improve and are stuck in the same placings of mediocrity.

This suggests that practice might not have much to do with who comes out on top. Perhaps the best players are just naturally gifted, naturally smarter, naturally can react/adapt faster and don't get pressured, naturally more techincal etc.

Of course this means the opposite must also be true. Some no matter how badly the might want to improve, simply don't have much potential as players. Sure everyone can improve to some degree but once these players reach their very limited potential it appears they can do not much else.

When you have some players improving rapidly at alarming rates and others remain stagnant for years, I think this suggests we give practice way too much credit.

Some people, no matter how much they practice realistically have no chance of being good at the game. It's depressing but it seems like the truth.

 

[Flayl]

It's true to a degree, skill isn't fairly distributed. But what you're noticing are just a few cases in an ocean of players.

I think only people from North America brag about not practicing, anywhere else the players would be lamenting the state of their metagame if they can place well without putting in any effort. It seems like a very american thing to do.

 

[Ussi]

But there is a difference in performance when that said player practices though. Player makes much better plays, wins even harder or even stylish

 

[teluoborg]

Well you just forgot to take efficiency into account.

Just like school or sports, if you practice for 3 hours a day but don't know what to focus on or what your needs are, quantity won't matter.


Now about talent, aside from physical traits like reaction time I don't think people are naturally gifted but rather are much more efficient at learning, and can accumulate experience faster.

So in the end it's just that : before starting to learn you have to learn how to learn.

 

[AeroLink_the_SoulMaster]

http://api.ning.com/files/oWLe2mGTr...Lee_Streetball_Quote.png?width=478&height=600

 

[FreedomFighter]

http://api.ning.com/files/oWLe2mGTr...Lee_Streetball_Quote.png?width=478&height=600

Did you know Lee was a massive bully and jerk in school and always used to get into fights? In other words he was just naturally a fighter and good at what he did, that just proves my point further. This topic isn't about fluff and sentimental crap. It's about being real.

If you truly believe that nonsense, then let me ask you, how many major tournaments have you won? You've been here for at least 4 years. What have you accomplished?

If the answer is next to nothing, then you must ask yourself why. Surely you must have worked hard? Surely people that didn't work hard at all got more results than you?

 

[Life]

Pretty sure we're being trolled. I know I'm insulted.

 

[Flayl]

That might be because you're a bit insecure. It's natural that not everybody who puts effort into the game gets the same results.

 

[Life]

Are you talking to me or the OP?

 

[Luigi player]

You just don't know how much initial practice the good players have put into the game. Once you're good you don't just get (much) worse, even if you don't practice. Might make a few technical errors, but for Brawl there isn't that much techskill involved.

Good players had to get good too.

 

[infiniteV115]

Practice matters a lot.

 

[fox67890]

?
Of course practice matters. Any person that is "naturally good" at this game, is normally only "naturally good" at the casual level. To get better than that, you have to practice and play others.

Did you know Lee was a massive bully and jerk in school and always used to get into fights? In other words he was just naturally a fighter and good at what he did, that just proves my point further. This topic isn't about fluff and sentimental crap. It's about being real.

Being a bully in school doesn't mean your naturally good at fighting. If he fought a lot in school, than that's practice, period. Now, if he took that same skill level that he had at school and went competitive while never practicing again, he would have got wrecked. So instead, he continued to practice and got better.

Surely people that didn't work hard at all got more results than you?

The only way this is even possible is if they use a better character. And even then, if you practice enough, you can still beat them.
Any person who gets "results" has practiced. Heck, anyone that plays this game competitively generally practices. They might not play as much as others, but that doesn't mean they're naturally great.

 

[EthereaL]

"Talent doesn't beat Hard Work,
Unless Talent works hard."

That is applicable to any game, sport, or life situation.

 

[Kink-Link5]

Blaming your physical limitations for being bad at a game just sounds like Johning to me.

"I only lost because I am incapable of getting better at this game."

It's right up there with controller johns and character johns. Being ignorant isn't an excuse to do poorly. Thinking it is only results in a stagnant and unimproving nature when playing.

 

[Illuvial]

How can someone be so naive??? Practice DOES matter, you can't learn match-ups, master combos, advance the meta-game, or even master basic things like short-shopping without some degree of practice. You can't naturally know every characters moveset and meta-game without practice.

 

[EthereaL]

I realize that was a rather flippant answer, and since I haven't posted outside of PMs to random MBR staff for a while...

Well, perhaps I should spend a bit more time answering.

Ninety-five...no, ninety-nine percent of players don't understand how to practice. Hell, for all intents and purposes, 99.99% of players don't understand how to practice.


Take a player...let's call him Ethereal (hey, that's me!). He practices and perfects IC chaingrabs. He can, through his hours of meticulous practice, 0-death any character without ever dropping a grab.

He enters a tournament, and loses to a more "gifted" player. He drops 3-4 grabs in the first game, and can't net any grabs the rest of them. This makes him frustrated, and he loses the rest of the matches in his pool.

Now, most players at this point would focus on the chaingrabbing element of his gameplay, or some technical aspect. "Clearly he needs to work on chaingrabbing, etc. etc." or "clearly he needs to work on his grab setups".

Others, perhaps, would pick out particular habits and say "He needs to stop rolling so much, he needs to not Desync blizzard every time his opponent approaches, etc. etc"

However, the majority of the game was lost not to any one habit. No simple mis-configured technical mistake can cause someone to lose a match. The match would be lost to the mental aspect, the inability or ability of players to adapt. Yes, "tech skill" (though, as a Melee buff, that thought makes me giggle in connotation to Brawl) is the easiest to practice, and is the most often practiced.

Yet, what about those more "innate" aspects? The ability to shake off pressure, the ability to "see" into your opponents mind, and to read them? The tendencies to make the right move not just for one situation, but for the situation. These are what separates the good players from the great, more than any simple technical ability. So, how do those tendencies, the seemingly psychic ability of some players to not react but to know, how can an average player who has tried for years develop these?

It's simple. Watch yourself, and ask two simple questions. If something does not work, ask yourself, Why?, and then change it.

If something does work, mercilessly do it again until it doesn't.

Attempt to do this at all times. Not simply by studying your gameplay after the fact, but by analyzing your gameplay in the current situation. Ask yourself what you are doing that is, or is not, working. As the situation unfolds, be willing to constantly try new things, to constantly adapt your gameplay, your tactics, your strategy, and your mindset.

An inability to adapt is a death warrant.

There is no amount of practice in technical skill or amount of analyzing specific "mistakes" from game footage that is worth the time spent. Don't look for those; they teach you nothing. Recognize when you're adapting, and when you're not.

That's the end of my rant.

Ciao.

 

[Illuvial]

^^^And then I see a Lisa Mitchell song quote and I start to laugh ridiculously hard!

But yes, that is an extremely good way of putting it.

 

[Vkrm]

This is probably a troll post but I do think he's on to something. I've always felt practice doesn't matter like it ought to in brawl.

 

[FreedomFighter]

I'm glad to see nearly everyone missed my point. I never declared top players never practiced at all.

My point is these players seemingly practiced very, very little possibly only in the early days of brawl and got tremendous results as they improved so fast while other players practice night and day and are what some would call "try-hards" and never seem to get any better and have no great results to boot.


For example, I was watching some videos and this guy called ADHD who the commentators said came back from a hiatus of several months won a tournament in what people call the most stacked region in America taking out a lot of top players. Then after the tournament he said he didn't practice at all literally for the tournament.

I heard similar things after Apex. Players that placed really well bragged about how they didn't practice at all.

So clearly practice isn't everything. If it was by principle, the people who've been the most active, gone to the most tournys, have put the most amount of hours into comp. brawl should always come out on top. But this is clearly not the case par a few individuals. Otherwise people that have been gone for months with zero practice shouldn't be able to come back and dominate.

I personally know more than a few people who've practiced this game WAY more than me, and yet I just seem to be naturally better at it than them. They never seem to get any better no matter how much practice they put in.

This all suggests the harsh truth no one seems to want to admit that maybe Brawl doesn't actually reward practice as much as you think. Maybe it's something else. And my guess is natural talent and different levels of potential. Some can be top players, some can't simply because their potential doesn't go that high.

 

[FreedomFighter]

I realize that was a rather flippant answer, and since I haven't posted outside of PMs to random MBR staff for a while...

Well, perhaps I should spend a bit more time answering.

Ninety-five...no, ninety-nine percent of players don't understand how to practice. Hell, for all intents and purposes, 99.99% of players don't understand how to practice.


Take a player...let's call him Ethereal (hey, that's me!). He practices and perfects IC chaingrabs. He can, through his hours of meticulous practice, 0-death any character without ever dropping a grab.

He enters a tournament, and loses to a more "gifted" player. He drops 3-4 grabs in the first game, and can't net any grabs the rest of them. This makes him frustrated, and he loses the rest of the matches in his pool.

Now, most players at this point would focus on the chaingrabbing element of his gameplay, or some technical aspect. "Clearly he needs to work on chaingrabbing, etc. etc." or "clearly he needs to work on his grab setups".

Others, perhaps, would pick out particular habits and say "He needs to stop rolling so much, he needs to not Desync blizzard every time his opponent approaches, etc. etc"

However, the majority of the game was lost not to any one habit. No simple mis-configured technical mistake can cause someone to lose a match. The match would be lost to the mental aspect, the inability or ability of players to adapt. Yes, "tech skill" (though, as a Melee buff, that thought makes me giggle in connotation to Brawl) is the easiest to practice, and is the most often practiced.

Yet, what about those more "innate" aspects? The ability to shake off pressure, the ability to "see" into your opponents mind, and to read them? The tendencies to make the right move not just for one situation, but for the situation. These are what separates the good players from the great, more than any simple technical ability. So, how do those tendencies, the seemingly psychic ability of some players to not react but to know, how can an average player who has tried for years develop these?

It's simple. Watch yourself, and ask two simple questions. If something does not work, ask yourself, Why?, and then change it.

If something does work, mercilessly do it again until it doesn't.

Attempt to do this at all times. Not simply by studying your gameplay after the fact, but by analyzing your gameplay in the current situation. Ask yourself what you are doing that is, or is not, working. As the situation unfolds, be willing to constantly try new things, to constantly adapt your gameplay, your tactics, your strategy, and your mindset.

An inability to adapt is a death warrant.

There is no amount of practice in technical skill or amount of analyzing specific "mistakes" from game footage that is worth the time spent. Don't look for those; they teach you nothing. Recognize when you're adapting, and when you're not.

That's the end of my rant.

Ciao.

This ties into my point further.

Some players have a natural gift for adapting faster than others.

I'm sure you'll agree that being able to adapt super fast isn't a skill that can really be taught espececially in the heat of battle with so much on the line.

This appears to be something that comes naturally to some and never to others. Why do some players who go to like every tourny they can, suffer from nerves and others who go to signficantly less events don't? Again this is all just natural and has nothing to do with practice.

Brawl is such a read heavy game since it has very little true combos and that's exactly why being able to adjust to the player so fast is so important. Virtually every hit you get is a read. You don't hit confirm into massive combos par a few exceptions.

 

[Death Arcana]

Omg ethereal you've won the thread
That was beautiful

 

[EthereaL]

This ties into my point further.

Some players have a natural gift for adapting faster than others.

I'm sure you'll agree that being able to adapt super fast isn't a skill that can really be taught espececially in the heat of battle with so much on the line.

This appears to be something that comes naturally to some and never to others. Why do some players who go to like every tourny they can, suffer from nerves and others who go to signficantly less events don't? Again this is all just natural and has nothing to do with practice.

Brawl is such a read heavy game since it has very little true combos and that's exactly why being able to adjust to the player so fast is so important. Virtually every hit you get is a read. You don't hit confirm into massive combos par a few exceptions.

You're saying "some people are more naturally gifted than others."

I hate to use the phrase, but "Duh".

I don't care how much practice you put in; if you're 4'2 tall, you will never dunk.

Some people's reaction times max out at .24. Some people can't move their fingers as fast, or aren't as intelligent.

That's an axiomatic truth about humanity, and in no way leads to the statement "Practice isn't rewarded a lot in Brawl."

Because, while that 4'2 player might not be able to dunk, I'd rather have him than a 6'6 player who has never touched a basketball.

 

[Seagull Joe]

I got better with observations that I implemented into my gameplay and practiced accordingly.

 

[z00ted]

I'm just the ****ing best.

 

[teluoborg]

I'm sure you'll agree that being able to adapt super fast isn't a skill that can really be taught espececially in the heat of battle with so much on the line.

Wrong, now your whole argument is invalid.

 

[Kink-Link5]

Adapting isn't something that can be taught, but it is something that is learned. M2K doesn't just pick up a controller and automatically becomes able to predict his opponent's moves in a game. Coming into a game with the right mentality can help you learn it faster, and coming into it with a bad mentality will never let you improve.

It isn't a matter of "natural adaptability." If you don't know how to approach a game, you can't blame your controller, your matchup, the stage, any aspect of what the opponent did, or your own technical abilities for your loss. The only thing at fault for losing is going into the entire thing poorly.

If you've never been to a tournament, it doesn't matter how long you practice a character, because you have no idea wtf you're supposed to do in a tournament. That comes with time.

ADHD did practice to win, he just did it in the bracket. The Technical Aspect is only the floor of playing a game. Real practice and learning comes from actually playing and learning from your mistakes and correcting them.

Ethereal is right about just doing what works until it doesn't. That's the entire aspect of Just Play Homo. If your opponent loses to something, ****ing do it. If they learn to get around it, you learn to get around them getting around it.

That's the entire damn point of a metagame. You don't teach it, you learn it.

 

[infiniteV115]

Yes, practice matters.
Yes, some players are just naturally gifted.

 

[Deleted member 189823]

I partially see where the OP is coming from. I myself have sometimes come to just say, "oh its ok to lose to that guy hes just better than me", when in reality, it really had to do with my own lack of practice and dedication my opponent has put to the game.

 

[Luigi player]

There is also a lot of knowledge some players might not even have which helps tremendously.
Knowing the options of every situation and knowing which one is probably the best for your opponent / which options you have yourself will help you so much in knowing what you should probably go for. Or just execution in genernal seems to hurt a lot of people too. Buffering, or just normally doing stuff too.. There are a lot of things people still have trouble with (but I have those problems myself too lol).

 

[P.I.E.]

Did you know Lee was a massive bully and jerk in school and always used to get into fights? In other words he was just naturally a fighter and good at what he did, that just proves my point further. This topic isn't about fluff and sentimental crap. It's about being real.

If you truly believe that nonsense, then let me ask you, how many major tournaments have you won? You've been here for at least 4 years. What have you accomplished?

If the answer is next to nothing, then you must ask yourself why. Surely you must have worked hard? Surely people that didn't work hard at all got more results than you?

Lee had to start somewhere. Bullying and fighting back then can count as practice as well. Im sure he was put through loss as well. You're obviously a bit butthurt from not seeing improvement.


Have you ever personally talked to these people? Asked them how much they lost in their career? It depends on how you practice. And they may play a lot and not even consider it practice, however every match is practice if you treat it as such. Look at the asians playing each other on wifi so much and whippin ARSE cuz they can all play their top players. Depending on who you practice with and how you practice, you will get different rates of improvement. gdfo



MOST IMPORTANTLY: Ask whether they've been playing ince before brawl came out lol.

 

[moomoomamoo]

If you see something you like in any video, and you can't execute with ease, you need to hit the lab or practice.

 

[kismet2]

the difference is the mindsets lol practice still matters

 

[Vkrm]

Isn't one of the main appeals of brawl is that practice isn't a big deal. I kind of like how I don't have to make time to clean up my inputs. I literally only play brawl at fests, I don't even own my own copy. It's nesscessary to play by your self to master setups and spacing but brawl is getting old now and everones already so good. I think in a couple years all of brawls tech will be spread through word of mouth with nobody really trying to reach the next level of Physical skill.

 

[infiniteV115]

Practice affects more than tech skill.

 

[etecoon]

practice allows you to be more consistent and eliminate some of the lower range of your play, but your best play is mostly dependent on innate skill. practice can help you make less tech errors and play more disciplined but it won't make you react faster, think faster, have better memory, see more acutely, make better reads etc

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

Practice, if it still doesn't work, practice more.

practice allows you to be more consistent and eliminate some of the lower range of your play, but your best play is mostly dependent on innate skill. practice can help you make less tech errors and play more disciplined but it won't make you react faster, think faster, have better memory, see more acutely, make better reads etc

You can fine tune them at the very least to get better at them, even if there is a physical cap on them.

 

[infiniteV115]

Practice helps develop character knowledge and understanding and allows you to react and think faster because situations are now more familiar to you.

And when situations become familiar to you, you can more easily think of creative mixups.

 

[Vkrm]

Practice affects more than tech skill.

Depends on what you're talking about when you say practice. Traditional practice only helps techskill. I consider frendlies and MM's practice for tourney matches and I'm wondering if that's what you mean.

 

[infiniteV115]

Well yes that's a way to practice for tourney matches, and it comes with the benefits mentioned in my last post.

If instead you're doing something like going into training mode on your own and practicing CGs/platform cancels/some other ATs, then yeah that type of practice only really affects your tech skill.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

The only thing that needed to be said in response to the OP is "quality of practice > quantity of practice".