Friend Has Trouble Finishing His Meals

[Planet Piss]

I started practicing Melee seriously about a year ago. My first smash bro was unaware of Melee's 'bottom of the iceberg', and thusly never L-cancelled, comboed, wavedashed, or worked hard on recovering (much like how modern-day Brawl is played) until I brought him into the World of competitive Smash. Needless to say, I could easily impress him with wd's and the occasional cg, but I couldn't apply all of the advanced techs early on. This is because he has always had a slight practicality edge on me; he's extremely good at using unflashy and pragmatic approaches to make up for his lack of technical skill. He definitely has potential; he can compete with more experienced and skilled opponents by knowing when to throw out a random fsmash or meteor for a stock, but there's one major problem. While he's just recently learning that one cannot simply full jump off of the ledge and dair a recovering Shiek(among other silly, easily exploitable mistakes), he has a complete moral disdain for edgehogging. He's gotten good at persistence and can use edgegaurding attacks properly, but even after a year of competitive play, he still looks at me like I sodomized his dog every time I dangle from the ledge, neutralizing his upb. He won't even grab the ledge to kick me in the face. He stays on the stage or jumps out into the void to hope for a kill, and will only edgehog when he literally has no choice. He won't go out of his way to let his opponent back on the stage if he's already hanging, but I see apprehension in his eyes every time he has to resort to using "**** move"s to kill his opponent. He'll watch patiently as Ganon does that down b bull**** to well over 200%. After tens of thousands of frames worth of hard work, he'll stomp Peach to a sweetspot's length away from having to respawn, and run back to the center of the stage and start dash dancing. I cringe mightily as I watch him allow Sheik the pleasure of returning to her home on the ledge. He's a Falcon player for God's sake. He'll cape the **** out of anything that moves when he plays as Doc, but finds ledgehogging to be on a whole 'nother level of *******ry, and will vocalize his distaste for it when it's done to him.

I want to know moreover everything else if I should respect his decision as a Smasher, however impractical it may be. The thing is, though, that he has a lot of potential, and this aspect of his cognition is killing his game. A vast majority of edgegaurding properly is knowing when and what to do while on the ledge, and he just won't do it. The Smash scene in my area is dying and we really need all the skill we can get, and he can't get much better if he doesn't get over this hurdle of his. Any tips?

TL;DR: Friend has potential, but refuses to edgehog/hang from the ledge. Advice?
You're probably wondering why this post is so damn long. No reason really, other than the fact that it's three in the morning, I'm bored, and I enjoy writing.

 

[Van.]

You can't convince people to be good if they don't have the passion for it.

 

[Planet Piss]

You can't convince people to be good if they don't have the passion for it.

I suppose I neglected to mention that he has gotten a lot better over the course of a year, and still aspires to improve. He's just making an obstacle course out of video game ethics.

 

[Destiny Warrior]

If he refuses to abandon it, there isn't much you can do. People can be surprisingly pigheaded when it comes to "ethics".

 

[Jonas]

Bring him to a tourney and show him that EVERYONE does it.

 

[Mr.Jackpot]

Show him this: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/intermediates-guide.html

If that doesn't work show him that there's actually a game achievement for edge hogging you can see a t the end of the round.

 

[Massive]

Show him this: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/intermediates-guide.html

If that doesn't work show him that there's actually a game achievement for edge hogging you can see a t the end of the round.

I recommend against showing sirlin's theories to pretty much any aspiring player. The whole "playing to win" mindset is counterproductive on someone who still plays the game for fun or refuses to use certain strategies based on cheapness or disapproval. Some random guy he's never heard of with an article telling him to play like a cheap ******* won't be very convincing at all.

If you want to convince him to start ledge-hogging, you need to consistently beat him by employing it. As long as his regular strategy works and he doesn't have to metaphorically "dirty his hands" by ledge-hogging he will refrain from doing it.

If he still doesn't do it and you're reliably beating him he's a lost cause.

 

[GhllieShdeKnife]

sounds like my brother, word of warning just enjoy the games you get to play and let him back onto the ledge because you probably dont need to edgehog to win from the sounds of it.

 

[Mokumo]

I think the best solution for both of you is to go to a tournament. You'll both learn a lot

 

[Jonas]

Stop shielding at all and voice your disapproval every time he does it.

 

[40secondz]

He should probably get that checked out. Not finishing meals could be bad for your overall health. Is he anorexic?

 

[kevo]

You can't change people's mindsets and how they approach the game. I have a friend that used to be about "honor" and when he played the game as a kid with his friends they had a rule against edgeguarding. Do it to him 500 times, 1,000 times, 10,000 times and they will get sick of losing. As they should.

 

[Ecks]

My brother is a lot like your friend. He's really good at predicting and doing unexpected stuff, but no ATs for him. Contrary to your friend though, he's just not interested. Anyway, your needs to learn there's nothing wrong with that, and that it's necessary to win/get better.

 

[ShroudedOne]

When I was scrolling through the boards, and saw this, all that showed up was, "Friend Has Trouble Finishing..."

And I was very, very frightened.

 

[Landry]

Edgehogging can be scary for someone learning to do it. I had to work really hard to teach a friend of mine the the risk/reward of jumping of the stage can be very high. It just doesn't seem natural to most smash players to play around on the ledge because (from a casual point of view) being on the ledge is bad positioning. It makes sense that your friend is much more comfortable on the stage. Is it possible that this could be a factor playing into it, because "I don't want to" seems a little to simplistic to really be true.

 

[KirbyKaze]

If he plays basketball, tell him that dunking is cheap and he shouldn't do it. For the same reasons he gave for edgehogging.

edit:

But, yeah. I've encountered this sort of thing before. I eventually came to the realization that, ultimately, you can't actually do anything about this (sometimes). Some people have really stupid honor codes. You can produce a variety of reasonable arguments as to why he should add it to his repertoire. I'll give you a few 'gimmes':

- The game rewards you for edgehogging someone (with the whole 'it kills them' thing and a point score at the end of the round [check your bonuses]). So, without trying to delve too deeply into the "Creator's Intent" spiel, the game does encourage it in a variety of ways.

- It's absolutely essential to punish certain recoveries. You cannot edgeguard Sheik and several other characters without it.

- He's hurting himself in the long run by not trying to acquire a good understanding of all aspects of the edge game. The edge, and what you do around, on, and against it are very important to being successful at this game.

- Practice with him is less valuable to others as a result of the obvious hole in his gameplay. A lot of recoveries become massively buffed when you remove invincible bair edgeguards and edgehogging. Doc's, Sheik's, Mario's, Samus's, etc.

But the sad thing about this, is that despite all these arguments, if he's decided it's "cheap" or "lame" and has absolute faith in that, then there's nothing you can do about it aside from use it yourself and remind him of the reasons he should use it whenever he shoots you death-glares or whatnot.

He's going to have to accept that edgehogging is a fine thing to do, it's an important part of the game, and it's just another avenue of gameplay to explore.

 

[BairJew]

Is this what happens when you ledgehog your friend? Cause its happened to me and my friend when we play this kid we know: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IBaG9ernnk (Audio up) (He plays mario)

 

[Planet Piss]

To clear some confusion, let me analogize his hatred for edgehogging. He's like a stubborn anime character that refuses to finish off even his most troublesome of enemies. It's like Fullmetal Alchemist or some ****.

But I'm almost certain that he's aware that you can't reliably finish off characters like Marth or Shiek without edgehogging, and that the only way it's truly possible to fair well (pun very much intended) against said characters, especially as Falcon, is to hang off of the ledge and force either death or landing lag.

I'm probably going to take the advice telling me to desensitize him to it. He might take a while to give in, though; he knows too well what it feels like to get shinespiked/edgehogged at under ten percent. I think only time will tell, and I'll have to just keep being a **** until he gives in. I think I've even told him that, since I want to improve as well, he should edgehog me, because realistically speaking, the better your opponents are at edgegaurding, the better you are at DI'ing, recovering, and simply avoiding flying off the stage in general.

Also, thanks to everyone who chipped in on the advice, and I lol'd at the Mario career ragequit video.

 

[BairJew]

lol solid win for Van

 

[MTKO]

Interesting, this can be very frustrating. I know a player who acts just like this. I played him for the first time about two weeks ago when I went to visit some friends who just moved down to San Diego and only live a couple hours from me now. They're staying with a guy who they claimed was extremely good at the game and wanted me to play him. After he told me all about how good he was when i showed up I just wanted to have fun and play. I didn't care about winning or losing and all that, I was just looking forward to playing some melee as usual. So we played... and he was bad, very bad. He just narrowly won 3 out of 30 to 35 matches in which we had to play by his rules.

Anyway, the second i started winning he would cry "cheap". Specifically in the case of edgehogging. He felt it was dishonorable. And when I first tried to say I was just paying by the rules, asked me if I was inclined to cheat in other games because I obviously have no sense of "honor". Now I can see how someone would think it's a cheap and easy thing to do on the surface, edgehogging. But on a deeper level it's a very harsh punishment for the person who ends up off the stage and losing a stock, which makes that person have to think a lot more and forces them to understand more about the game in order for them to avoid that punish more. Of course, I tried to explain how this element of the game may seem like it's just an easy trick to get a quick kill, yet what it actually does is expand on the "edge" part of the game and opens up and creates a deeper level of game play in the long run the more you learn about it and experience it. I think a deeper, more entertaining game is much more fun to play than one were you stand in the center and hit each other back and forth only worrying about a few different aspects of what melee is (which is the way he likes to play) until one person explodes off the side of the screen. That requires little thinking, it doesn't make the other person think or move the game forward at all and it loses it's entertainment value.

But all my explaining and giving examples and trying to relate it to other things, and making a very solid argument was all for nothing because he is a scrub... and scrubs make up their own rules to eliminate things from the game that beat them and also make it appear that they are somehow on, near, or even above your level of play and even logic. So I decided to play how he was playing and did big combos on him and then made him blow up off the edge, the so called "honorable" way of killing someone in this game, but yet again he said my combos and tech skill stuff were all dishonorable and basically everything in the game I do was cheap and pure trickery.

edit: Didn't realize KirbyKaze said some of what I said in a much better way a few posts back :D If i remember right, Sirlin wrote a whole thing about scrubs and the mentality of most people who are considered scrubs or noobs in his book, which fits the exact description of these people.

Also he made me play brawl since he was so upset about losing in melee and claimed I'd never beat him in brawl. First match we played I slaughtered him and I've played less than 100 matches of brawl. The last time I played it was about 8 months ago and I played 2 rounds. So he then decided we have to play stages with no edge and he picked projectile character and just ran, camped and projectile spammed (most of what he did fits Cactaurs description of how he thought brawl would be played eventually) for 3 more matches. And someone that was not dishonorable even though it went against all the things he had previously argued with me about while playing melee. :D

 

[Planet Piss]

@:MTKO:
Your post actually helped me a lot with what I was thinking was the solution. The game becomes incredibly more complex just by discovering the versatility of the ledge, and you can't improve or help others improve if you can't be open minded. I've also thought of telling him that his decision to avoid edgehogging is based on a preconception that he has about what is "cheap" and what is not; that the Melee he knew- the one with pokeballs and c-sticking- isn't even a noticeable fraction of what can actually be found in the metagame. It does little good for anyone to hide from the vast complexity of the game and pretend that it will disappear.

 

[Mr.Jackpot]

I said it once but I think it's worth repeating, if you kill using an edgehog in a match, it'll show up in that little "achievement" list in the results screen. That's as solid proof as you can get that edgehogging was meant to be in the game.

 

[Planet Piss]

I said it once but I think it's worth repeating, if you kill using an edgehog in a match, it'll show up in that little "achievement" list in the results screen. That's as solid proof as you can get that edgehogging was meant to be in the game.

The use of items and the 75% or so of the stages that were intended to be in the game aren't tournament legal because of their cheapness. Just because it was meant to be in the game doesn't mean it isn't cheap, which, when seen from a scrub's perspective, edgehogging is. Thanks for the input, though.

 

[Jonas]

Lol we don't ban stuff because it's "cheap". Who even knows what that word means. We ban stuff because it emphasizes luck (items) or overcentralizes certain characters or tactics to the point that they are unbeatable (some of the stages).

It's besides the point anyway. When you play under a ruleset agreed upon by both players in the match, anything goes, including edgehogging, chaingrabbing, camping, projectile spamming and all other sorts of moves frequently employed by any reasonable competitive player, as long as it's legal within said ruleset.

 

[Jolteon]

The use of items and the 75% or so of the stages that were intended to be in the game aren't tournament legal because of their cheapness. Just because it was meant to be in the game doesn't mean it isn't cheap, which, when seen from a scrub's perspective, edgehogging is. Thanks for the input, though.

This is the exact mindset that you are complaining about. Things are not banned for being "cheap".

:king:

 

[Wake]

When I was scrolling through the boards, and saw this, all that showed up was, "Friend Has Trouble Finishing..."

And I was very, very frightened.

haha that is exactly what I was thinking .......

Spoiler

Except I wasn't frightened

 

[Skeletom]

**** yeah planet piss. love that ****.

 

[Planet Piss]

Lol we don't ban stuff because it's "cheap". Who even knows what that word means. We ban stuff because it emphasizes luck (items) or overcentralizes certain characters or tactics to the point that they are unbeatable (some of the stages).

It's besides the point anyway. When you play under a ruleset agreed upon by both players in the match, anything goes, including edgehogging, chaingrabbing, camping, projectile spamming and all other sorts of moves frequently employed by any reasonable competitive player, as long as it's legal within said ruleset.

Regardless of the fact that "cheap" is mostly a meaningless word, there's more to the point that just because it was meant to be in the game does not mean it should be played. If my opponent ran across the stage with Falcon versus my Ganon and grabbed a Maxim Tomato before my slow *** could reach it, then I would call that cheap. I'm just saying that the whole "maker's intentions" deal isn't necessarily a good argument.

 

[Beat!]

If my opponent ran across the stage with Falcon versus my Ganon and grabbed a Maxim Tomato before my slow *** could reach it, then I would call that cheap

That's not cheap. It could be argued to be unfair, or imbalanced, or detrimental to competitive play, but it wouldn't be "cheap". Calling it cheap makes you no better than your friend who complains about edge hogging.

 

[Jonas]

It's just as cheap as the fastest car getting across the finishing line first in a racing game. Fact of life.

You have a point saying that author intent shouldn't have anything to say about how we play the game (although this argument is usually used AGAINST banning stuff lol), but when two people sit down and play friendlies without first agreeing on gameplay rules (such as 'no edgehogging'), it seems childish to take offense to anyone edgehogging.

 

[stelzig]

That you can't reach something as fast as your opponent because you picked a slower character (that then hopefully has other advantages so we can have a decently balanced game) is definetly not "cheap", lol.

I also hate when people use "it was/wasn't intended" arguments, but as Jonas pointed out, that is normally a scrubby view/argument in the first place and that's why it makes sense to tell him that it indeed was also intended by the developers. If you read complaints about the l-cancelling and wavedashing, many of the people against it, decide to use the "it wasn't meant to be used this way" argument.

Edit: It's also a very popular anti-snaking argument in mkds.

 

[Beat!]

Snaking ***** wtf

How could anyone NOT like that ****

 

[Anand]

This is still just sort of an opinion, just like people think infinite stalls should be banned (and some people think wobbling should be banned). It's just one on which the majority of Smashboards users agree (and disagree with this guy's friend).

 

[Planet Piss]

Like I said, guys, I (personally, meaning me) would call that cheap. This statement underlines the subjectivity of the word "cheap", which is why it's all relative. Yeah, I shouldn't have used that word in an argument, but let's not get off subject.

I've tried equating edgegaurding with caping (and other such gay tactics) because he capes all the damn time, but he insists that edgehogging takes much less skill and coordination than [the example of] caping. It certainly does not, because edgehogging is a lot more than simply hanging off the ledge. With every matchup, there is a varying degree of danger hanging out on the ledge, and I think if I were to underline this fact, he may not be able to come up with a counter-argument.

 

[MTKO]

That you can't reach something as fast as your opponent because you picked a slower character (that then hopefully has other advantages so we can have a decently balanced game) is definetly not "cheap", lol.

I also hate when people use "it was/wasn't intended" arguments, but as Jonas pointed out, that is normally a scrubby view/argument in the first place and that's why it makes sense to tell him that it indeed was also intended by the developers. If you read complaints about the l-cancelling and wavedashing, many of the people against it, decide to use the "it wasn't meant to be used this way" argument.

Edit: It's also a very popular anti-snaking argument in mkds.

I hate when people use the "It wasn't intended to be part of the game, therefore it's not actually part of the rules and is cheating" line of thought. What's funny about it though is the person saying that usually has some type of honor code or other rules that limit the game and don't follow the rules of the game.

I think what it comes down to is scrubs just hate losing, hate knowing that they aren't as good as they once thought, hate being embarrassed by a loss, and so on. And they'll say what they can to make the person beating them look like a cheater or someone who abuses things that are "easy" to do in the game, in order to make the better player feel bad and try to convince the other people watching that they are the better, more honorable player. And then the scrub can only improve so much until they can't improve anymore, due to all the limitations they've set for themselves.

 

[Jonas]

How could anyone NOT like that ****

I don't think anybody actually knows.

 

[ShroudedOne]

haha that is exactly what I was thinking .......

Spoiler

Except I wasn't frightened

I love you for noticing, Wake.

 

[Massive]

Competitive melee wasn't intended to be part of the game either.
We're playing a 4 player version of what could have easily been a mario party minigame.
There was some Star Wars style luck involved in this game being worth anything at all.

And then, just like George Lucas, Sakurai botched the newest version in attempts to make it "live up to his creative vision".

 

[Jonas]

Damnit, I hate creative visions. They ruin everything.

Not being sarcastic this time. Film writers and game developers thinking they know better than the fans are everything that is wrong with the entertainment industry.

 

[Planet Piss]

Damnit, I hate creative visions. They ruin everything.

Not being sarcastic this time. Film writers and game developers thinking they know better than the fans are everything that is wrong with the entertainment industry.

Reminds me of Rob Zombie's Halloween remakes. Horror movie remakes are generally pretty horrible, but damn.

Also, referential friend from OP has seen this thread and I will find out within 24 hours his reaction to it.