A lot of people dont really know what improvement looks like. I've seen people improve and not even know that they've done so because the results dont reflect it. Improvement does not lend itself to immediate results all the time. If you start tech rolling more when you didnt know how to do so prior and you're still losing, you've still improved.
That means most people are probably untalented and the internet cant handle that because it means most of them ARE NOT anime protagonists and thats rough
Best thing to come out of this talent vs hard work drama? All these top players encouraging others to inprove instead of convincing them they suck and will never improve to secure their throne at the top. Thank you armada for encouraging others to better themselves!
For real. This happens with other skills too. "I have major mental health issues stopping me from improving at my skill what do I do???" Handle your real-world problems first! How can you focus on a game or an art if you are suffering?
@@heinis4856 I mean... I get the point but still, you should have priorities lol. Imagine: "Hey so, that advice doesn't work for me, because I work 18 hours a day because I must be able to feed my newborn. Anyways, how do I L-Cancel better?" lmao
@@DSHC224 people say that type of stuff because smash could be the thing they enjoy to help them cope with mental health issues like depression (such as myself if I'm being honest) they just focus too much on the competitive aspect of it though so idk entirely about most mental health issues but depression is a very common one so in that situation you can tell those people to deal with that problem first and hope it gets better and they can get through it and if smash is their method of coping with the problem then to just focus on having fun and competitive later
@@heinis4856 but they need to take care of everything they need to do besides there hobbies so they can do there hobbies and not be 10k in debt and living without food some nights and the real world should be in priority then smash so they can play smash and be eating good food living in a ok place making good money and have there personal life good and be mentally stable before any hobbies
Improvisational music parallelisms 1.consistent practice 2.with musicians, not just backing tracks/metronome 3. with backing tracks, drones, drum machine app and metronome or solo without anything else but own instrument 4. Labbing.-- learning new tunes. new ideas. taking individual chords, sequences of chords, rhythms, or melodies out of time and spending time trying "new" things. not just playing same things over same familiar tunes. consciously and carefully trying new things in general. - In different keys! 5. time management. do you actually have time? do you need to "make" the time? time within practice time has some structure and few distractions. Set Reviews (recordings of yourself and others) 1. Recording yourself and listening. recording live performances as well as practice. being honest with what you are hearing.what happened? was your playing in time you want? in tuning you want? tone you want? 2. listening to other musicians. what went well? what about those things made it good to you. maybe transcribe that idea for closer analysis of what happened in that moment. ---also what went wrong. 3. when something goes wrong, what happened? why? 4. what could you have done differently? how can you work on that? isolate and slowdown? perhaps. 5. see 4. above Financial priority (can be somewhat controversial like he said) 1. saving money to see favorite living musicians concert. buy adequate equipment (for example- improving instrument from borderline broken to playable with even tuning/sound...). . . taking gigs for chance to play with people - at whichever price comfortable (this is where arguments against taking low paying gigs **even for a chance to get better** can be made for lowering the value of musicians). taking a fulltime music gig that would be musically fulfilling but perhaps pay less than qualify-able non musically fulfilling job. Even the other way around with risking/selling everything and taking non musical job to move to new york in hopes of one day getting enough gigs to quit non musical job. Saving money to move to more musical place. life is a balance. 2. Get lessons/set reviews from great players.
I totally agree. I play cello and had a lesson with a cellist who is really successful and is in a well known quartet. I set up a lesson with him since he was nearby for a concert. He taught me that music is all about experimentation: How do you get good sound? What works and what doesn't? How do you interpret the music and send it to an audience? etc.
bestness seriously made like 3 tweets and blew this convo up the amount of influence these people have is crazy cuz they can say completely ridiculous or stupid things (like bestness did) and a large number of people will be genuinely affected by it
NIKIFOROS PAPADOPOULOS I think it’s more 40% natural talent and 60% hard work. It’s not like natural talent is this thing that magically brings to the top and you only have to play like an hour a day and that’s it. BN is probably very talented and never really had to work to get to his level and that’s why he has that opinion. It’s all good though. I think it’s wrong for him to think that, I also think that it weren’t for his natural understanding of the game, he probably would have quit.
highlightman It feels like this is burnout mentality: a player who made it to top 50 status but doesn’t want to go any further. Auto-piloting with a zoner on elite smash does nothing to close the gap between bn and the players better than him. It’s like an professional athlete walking into a school practice and just destroying everyone
ight I seem to have started a convo in the replies to this comment but natural talent truly can be about 0% naturally being talented just means you have to spend less time grinding the thing your getting better at if one person struggles with ledge trapping and one person is naturally good at it the one struggling can grind it out and think what they can do better eventually they will over take the other one if they arent getting better at the same rate this can be applied to every aspect of the game. Unless the person your trying to get better than is practicing 20 hours a day and is already naturally better than you you can over take them by playing more and thinking what you can do better. regardless of "natural talent" talent is just a booster time and grinding the game will put you at the top
Great video, I think you pointed out a lot of stuff that can help players improving if they want to. I mean, your summary is honest and shows that becoming better is at first the responsibility of the player. I'm not really playing smash these days, and I don't think I'll play "seriously" again. However your video is really interesting for other areas as well. Thank you for your time.
Gotta love the growth mindset, Armada! I like that you can see the nuance in the things that are in our control vs the factors that aren´t. It´s easy to get swept into one extreme orthe other. Very inspiring video
I hope so! I wanna help people out. I honestly hope this one gets pretty good reach cause I genuinely feel like it could be super helpful for people that actually wanna improve.
Thank you for this video and in particular for mentioning lessons. I've been considering getting lessons because they seem for helpful for learning other skills, but I've been on the fence because nobody ever seems to recommend or mention them. Basically hearing you recommend lessons/set reviews let me know I was right about them being helpful.
It is always great to see an awesome player talking about how to improve. I stopped trying hard on Smash because of having absolutely no time, and wanting to play other games too in my little free time. I had a huge improvement in the first months but I'm far from even being decent lol. For those who have the time and the will to improve, I believe in you guys, the hard work will pay off
Thank you for this list. It is very helpful having this in one place and with some authority behind it. IMO one crucial thing that's missing from the list is "mindfulness" (or "meta-cognition"). Honestly, I think this is most people's biggest issue. As you point out, the vast majority of people fail to improve because they don't practice. For some it's an issue of priority, but for most it's psychological. There is a combination of inertia, anxiety, and general paralysis of the unknown that prevent a lot of people from taking these steps. Mindfulness is the best tool I've seen for spotting these psychological hangups in real time and overcoming them. Also, mindfulness is important for putting ego aside and honestly assessing skill and gameplay. It's helpful for managing nerves in tournament and on stream. It's helpful for not getting tilted. And a lot of the time, for me at least, when I'm playing poorly I notice it's because I'm not focused on the play; instead I'm focused on some narrative mental distraction---usually either about how terrible I am at melee or how I'm a God (both delusional and neither helpful). Mindfulness gives you the tools to spot that in real time and gently redirect your focus on your gameplay. Personally I think this is the skillset that is most important for improvement (and it translates into essentially all domains) and also the most overlooked. If anyone reading this agrees and wants to learn how to cultivate "mindfulness" then I recommend checking out Sam Harris content (especially his meditation app). Additionally, check out Insight Meditation Society. These are accessible resources to learn more about mindfulness training.
Something I would say that helps me not stay down on myself is to be able to abstract the game as much as possible. Instead of thinking about the whole game as a win or a loss, think of a whole game as a series of interactions that take place in neutral advantage or disadvantage. If you feel you’ve won neutral, sweet, if not meh, but at the least you are still in the game.
Thank you Armada for this video I know that I've probably missed some things while trying to improve like analyzing sets or other things Thanks for the advices!
I think that his tips are very good. Even if you implement this thought process in other areas, adjusting to whatever you would like to do, it'll bring results. "Everyone wants to be, but nobody wants to become a specialist" is a very powerfull guide in becoming successful in whatever you want.
imo nobody has a true ceiling it's always possible to improve even if you have done everything in this list theres always more smash to be played more practice to be done
I like to practice until I can consistently do something 10 times in a row and once I've done it 10 times in a row I try and see if I can do it 10 more times, only then do i feel consistent. If you know any melee tech just try doing it 10 times in a row and see if you can do it. Start with the basics too even stuff as simple as doing up tilt turn around up tilt can be inconsistent if you're trying to do it too quickly, heck even SHing consistently is difficult until you get it down, and stuff like JC grabs/up smashes and wavelands and shield dropping are SO hard to get consistent and SO important so they definitely need practice. Every character has a BIG list of things that are important to practice so, say if you have a spare half hour, practice 6 things for about 5 minutes each or give some more time to what you have fun doing/think's more important to work on. Then when something becomes second nature to you increase the difficulty of the tech you're practicing til you're practicing NILs til you're consistent like Zain. Melee is actually really fun to practice solo and it helps a lot! I got my first 7th place at a local with Peach after practicing seriously like this the last tournament I entered. Thanks for the video Armada!
Only a handful of games motivate me to get better despite getting absolutely bodied. Melee has that special effect on me. That is why I put time into it and probably will for years to come.
"People would want the final product". 26:50 I'd say that "People know what they want to be, but don't know what they want to do" is a simple way of saying it.
If I a dollar every time Armada said "let's get started, let's get started" at the beginning of a stream of video I'd probably have like $50 I dunno but I swear he says it a lot
To anyone who says that they don't have enough time, to quote a certain famous bodybuilder, "There are 24 hours in a day. Are you telling me you can't spare a single hour? You sleep 6 hours a night. If you need more than that, sleep faster"
While i agree that hard work beats talent in majority of cases (with some very rare exceptions), probably the most annoying part about the talent era is the fact that is that someone without talent will be so frustrated seeing someone with talent rapidly improve at the game doing the same things. In general i do think that you have worked your ass of to achieve the status you have in the melee community, i still think that you had talent. The reason is that if you and someone else would go through the exact same training schedule , there are genetic factors like reaction time, muscle memory or just that X-factor that probably will divide you and that other player for being the one who wins. Not a great example but for my personal expierience i like league of legends alot but i'm very bad at it. I have been in like gold division for the past 5 years playing that game and never achived platinum division ( a tier higher). While i never have been super consistent at the game which means i often play alot for about a month and then drop it for a week or month, i have friends that play with a similiar schedule like me and outranks me by a large margin. I sometimes ask why but in alot of scenarios they have understand the game in a way that i can't still grasp, which i probably should have due to the fact all these hours i have spent on the game. It's the same in school, sports and like every other area in life. Shaquille O'neal in basketball was blessed with an insane physique which made his chanses at reaching the top peak of basketball unparalleled compared to most basketball players in the world. The same goes for LeBron James with his physique rivaling greek gods but additional to that he has court vision that many commentators describe as "unteachable, something just extrodinary players are born with". Albert Einstein also had a way of seeing things and an understanding of physics that me as a person who is not so very good at physics never can dream of, even if i choose to put all my time into learning physics. I have no idea if what i'm saying is true or complete nonsense but not long ago i thought why i might fail in something always lied in the fact that i probably didn't work hard enough. That might be true but at the same time when i started thinking about the perspective of talent more i became increasingly more negative towards my future because to be honest, there is VERY little in life i could proudly say im good at. Fine i have a pretty bad self esteem but in the end, nothing i have done has given me very good results which i think is indicator of me not having that much of a talent in those specific areas. To me talent is recognisible by how much a person grows in specif area relative to the time they invest. I hope the fact lies somewhere in that everybody has the chance to do something it's just take some people a longer time to develope but by that i kinda goes against my own words so it's more of a hope than me actually believing in it. Sorry if my english grammar isn't very good and i just wanted to share my view on this, so this isn't factual proof at all and i still encourages you who reads this working towards somthing to still do it because in the end i might be completely wrong!
I feel like there’s a book out there that’s already broken down this topic of hard work vs talent. There’s so many skill-based things, there no way some big philosopher hasn’t given their insight on this topic. It’s gotta be out there somewhere.
Just a little vent: I will never become a top player. I only want to have perfect inputs and help my friends that do want to be top players. I feel like I'll never be able to do that either. At least I'm able to give some friends a good nudge in the right direction though. Some people I've given tips to benefited greatly and improved fast when previously they played for a long time and didn't know how to improve. Now they are going to tournaments and kicking my butt. I just want to help them even more..... Being better with Lucario and/or Meta Knight would be a big plus. Consistent practice + Time Management - I have a hard enough time just getting a consistent schedule. I can't even get a consistent amount of sleep and exercise. Every time I try to make a schedule, no matter how much time I try to set aside for "free time" there's always a too many things that pop up. Whether something breaking down, some mandatory meeting that people waiting until the last minute to tell me about, or just randomly being too tired to even concentrate for anything I do in the practice session to even matter. Of course, there are other games that I would like to play, but most games take almost no time to play and enjoy when compared to smash. Against Players - I can play other players as much as I want because my focus is online play and not offline play. Since anxiety makes it unfun to play smash with people IRL (but I'm working on that currently which does take time away from smash) but Smash 7 will probably be out before I can fully enjoy playing people IRL in a crowded place with lots of people screaming everywhere. Only problem right now is that it's hard to get a recurring practice partner because I'm struggling with keeping a consistent schedule. Solo Practice - I'm still trying to practice short hops. I've been told to not bother with anything else until you can short hop consistently. Spent 2 months, 30 minutes every day and there was just a slight improvement but still can't short hop consistently, and when I try to bring that into a match it's not reliable at all. With such a slow pace of trying to improve when all you're doing is pressing a button for 30 minutes everyday, it feels like I'll never get to the part where I actually get to doing combos, much less perfect them. I've looked around many times trying to find any tips I could find on short hopping, but it's really discouraging not being able to do it. Sometimes I feel like maybe my fingers are just too slow to play smash competitively. My fingers did get a bit faster after practicing, but will they ever be fast enough to play smash? Getting enough sleep to keep my fingers fast enough is also a huge struggle as well. Labbing - I actually find Labbing to be incredibly fun. Finding new things about characters is fun, even if you're seeing some super niche things. Labbing is the least problematic thing on this list. Watching my own sets + other players sets - I've rewatched a lot of my replays and watched a lot of tournament sets. Problem is, it's kinda pointless when you know what to do, and the options that you should be taking, but your just can't perform the inputs. Like I said earlier, I've been struggling to master inputs, but I feel the progress is too slow for it to matter in the end. Spending money to improve at a game - I will definitely hire someone to give me some pointers on getting better at inputs. Though until I feel safe financially, I'm not going to be spending money on entertainment until I know I have the money to spend. Working full time minimum wage sucks. Need a new job because being in front of a grill for 8 hours a day dehydrates you and really messes with your mind a lot. My days off and when I'm eating food is the only times where I get time to do anything.
I have stared to write notes on what to do should I immediately try to learn everything I've written about or learn it more slowly over time ( I have two pages of notes and ive been written notes on my character for 2 days now)
Hey Armada- what's the best way to buy a new controller? The c-sticks on every used controller I test are worn out and I can't seem to find a good place to buy a new one online. Would be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.
I think this whole talent vs hard work thing isn't valuable simply because there are a lot of confounding in between. For example, it does not take into account things like experience, wisdom, etc. that all affect your skill ceiling in addition to just straight talent. Also hard work has a physical cap (24h/day) as well and that isn't usually factored in, the ability to improve is obviously a talent in itself. I think it's a good mindset to think hard work will carry you, because at the end of the day it will carry you near the top, where players will have approximately equal amounts of hard work, where other factors become more magnified. Natural talent is only 1 of a myriad of variables that affect who stays at the very top, and that is static.
I would say I tried super hard at the very least. I even payed for the best Puff in Norway (similar level to Tekk) to come over and grind the MU hella hard with me (payed his travel fee/gave dinners etc). So I did not even really have resources but even outside of events I did tons of stuff to improve at the MU. Thing here is though, if you wanna be the best in the world it's also important to not get to stubborn with MUs if they are not worth it. Me having a very clear winning record with Fox more than proved I did the right call.
So pro smashers put in the hard hours of work. It’s inspiring to see how they got where they are with lots of hard work, but I think a question of burnout might be raised. I’m sure top players are vulnerable to burnout, and I wonder how they overcome it to still keep competing.
I try and at least get 1-2 hours of practice a day for smash. And where I'm at there is 2 tournaments a year so I practice go attend and sometimes get slapped other times do alright and go back to the grind. Its cliche but practice does make perfect
I do set reviews on my stream. Currently not looking to expand past this. I have had plenty of players improving after getting this help. Thing is I do work on a lot of stuff atm so I don't feel like a more serious coaching thing is something I'm currently looking for
@@UGSArmada Fair enough. You just have so much knowledge and seem super knowledgeable about it. I'm hoping Coach Zeke is able to point out what I need to work on, however this video definitely enlightened me a bit.
@@LoneWolf10641 Thanks! But as my first comment said, I do set reviews and people do improve from them. So for people that wanna "hire me" for this that's possible for sure =)
I think it’s more 40% natural talent and 60% hard work. It’s not like natural talent is this thing that magically brings to the top and you only have to play like an hour a day and that’s it. BN is probably very talented and never really had to work to get to his level and that’s why he has that opinion. It’s all good though. I think it’s wrong for him to think that, I also think that it weren’t for his natural understanding of the game, he probably would have quit.
My piano teacher had a really good approach for this kind of thing. He is now a very skilled piano player, but he wasn't a natural talent. He struggled. He was a C student often in his early years. But, every time he encountered a problem, he would just grind it out. A chord that he can't play? Practice over and over until it's natural. Can't nail this rhythm? Grinded it out. Over and over until it was harder to make a mistake than it was to do it right. He has his master's now despite early struggles and is easily the best teacher I've ever had in any topic. Talent makes for an easier initial path, but his struggles made him great not just as a musician but also as an educator because he had to learn, intimately, how to overcome every hurdle that came with trying to learn something that he was not naturally attuned. When you encountered a problem, he had a strategy to overcome that problem because, often, he also hit that wall when he was younger.
Hey armada, excellent video right there tbh, hopefully I could apply them but although I want to be someone in smash I don't have the support of anyone (I'm a minor) nor my mom neither anyone in my family, so they kinda reject me for trying playing competitively, and the Country I live in although has a good amount of tournaments sometimes I think that not living in the US will probably affect my improvement
Is it even possible to have consistent practice when there are no locals near you and all you have is CPUs to play against? I want to improve but I've been stuck on your step 1 for years.
Netplay is always a great option. It's possible to get great without consistent local competition. Look at PPMD, he came from an area with no players and got insanely good despite that.
The proof was always there. Armada and leffen living in a country where the high level players is low. ZeRo having the community against him. Mew2king playing and being good at many smash games. Leo practicing the most out of ANY ult player. Thus, why he does crazy losers run and has a strong mentality. I don't know who will read this, but SOME of you can waste the rest of your life hating on these hard working/talented players for chasing and accomplishing their dreams.
Leffen was absolutely right People in ultimate don't train nearly ass much as people used to do in brawl or melee They don't practice in training mode and just play quickplay and expect results
A lot of people dont really know what improvement looks like. I've seen people improve and not even know that they've done so because the results dont reflect it. Improvement does not lend itself to immediate results all the time. If you start tech rolling more when you didnt know how to do so prior and you're still losing, you've still improved.
This!! And sometimes improving even means losing more/harder for a while when you're trying to change your ways to achieve a greater level.
That means most people are probably untalented and the internet cant handle that because it means most of them ARE NOT anime protagonists and thats rough
Best thing to come out of this talent vs hard work drama? All these top players encouraging others to inprove instead of convincing them they suck and will never improve to secure their throne at the top.
Thank you armada for encouraging others to better themselves!
I second this.
"I can't improve in Smash because I have a million dollars debt, there are no resources in my country..."
Bro, you have WAY bigger problems than Smash
For real. This happens with other skills too. "I have major mental health issues stopping me from improving at my skill what do I do???"
Handle your real-world problems first! How can you focus on a game or an art if you are suffering?
@@DSHC224 It's called dedication. For many people their game, art or sport are their meaning in life.
@@heinis4856 I mean... I get the point but still, you should have priorities lol.
Imagine:
"Hey so, that advice doesn't work for me, because I work 18 hours a day because I must be able to feed my newborn. Anyways, how do I L-Cancel better?"
lmao
@@DSHC224 people say that type of stuff because smash could be the thing they enjoy to help them cope with mental health issues like depression (such as myself if I'm being honest)
they just focus too much on the competitive aspect of it though so idk entirely about most mental health issues but depression is a very common one so in that situation you can tell those people to deal with that problem first and hope it gets better and they can get through it and if smash is their method of coping with the problem then to just focus on having fun and competitive later
@@heinis4856 but they need to take care of everything they need to do besides there hobbies so they can do there hobbies and not be 10k in debt and living without food some nights and the real world should be in priority then smash so they can play smash and be eating good food living in a ok place making good money and have there personal life good and be mentally stable before any hobbies
Thank you Armada very cool i know plenty of smashers who need to hear this (myself included)
This is clearly the work of a man who has had a long career of hearing other people’s excuses.
Improvisational music parallelisms
1.consistent practice
2.with musicians, not just backing tracks/metronome
3. with backing tracks, drones, drum machine app and metronome or solo without anything else but own instrument
4. Labbing.-- learning new tunes. new ideas. taking individual chords, sequences of chords, rhythms, or melodies out of time and spending time trying "new" things. not just playing same things over same familiar tunes. consciously and carefully trying new things in general. - In different keys!
5. time management. do you actually have time? do you need to "make" the time? time within practice time has some structure and few distractions.
Set Reviews (recordings of yourself and others)
1. Recording yourself and listening. recording live performances as well as practice. being honest with what you are hearing.what happened? was your playing in time you want? in tuning you want? tone you want?
2. listening to other musicians. what went well? what about those things made it good to you. maybe transcribe that idea for closer analysis of what happened in that moment. ---also what went wrong.
3. when something goes wrong, what happened? why?
4. what could you have done differently? how can you work on that? isolate and slowdown? perhaps.
5. see 4. above
Financial priority (can be somewhat controversial like he said)
1. saving money to see favorite living musicians concert. buy adequate equipment (for example- improving instrument from borderline broken to playable with even tuning/sound...). . . taking gigs for chance to play with people - at whichever price comfortable (this is where arguments against taking low paying gigs **even for a chance to get better** can be made for lowering the value of musicians). taking a fulltime music gig that would be musically fulfilling but perhaps pay less than qualify-able non musically fulfilling job. Even the other way around with risking/selling everything and taking non musical job to move to new york in hopes of one day getting enough gigs to quit non musical job. Saving money to move to more musical place. life is a balance.
2. Get lessons/set reviews from great players.
Ditto for screen writing, directing, editing, etc...I'm not gonna list it all out, but the resources are out there. It all translates.
I’m a jazz musician and always relate melee to jazz and improvisation
I totally agree. I play cello and had a lesson with a cellist who is really successful and is in a well known quartet. I set up a lesson with him since he was nearby for a concert. He taught me that music is all about experimentation: How do you get good sound? What works and what doesn't? How do you interpret the music and send it to an audience? etc.
bestness seriously made like 3 tweets and blew this convo up
the amount of influence these people have is crazy cuz they can say completely ridiculous or stupid things (like bestness did) and a large number of people will be genuinely affected by it
who is this guy and what did he say?
NIKIFOROS PAPADOPOULOS I think it’s more 40% natural talent and 60% hard work. It’s not like natural talent is this thing that magically brings to the top and you only have to play like an hour a day and that’s it. BN is probably very talented and never really had to work to get to his level and that’s why he has that opinion. It’s all good though. I think it’s wrong for him to think that, I also think that it weren’t for his natural understanding of the game, he probably would have quit.
highlightman It feels like this is burnout mentality: a player who made it to top 50 status but doesn’t want to go any further. Auto-piloting with a zoner on elite smash does nothing to close the gap between bn and the players better than him. It’s like an professional athlete walking into a school practice and just destroying everyone
ight I seem to have started a convo in the replies to this comment but natural talent truly can be about 0%
naturally being talented just means you have to spend less time grinding the thing your getting better at
if one person struggles with ledge trapping and one person is naturally good at it
the one struggling can grind it out and think what they can do better
eventually they will over take the other one if they arent getting better at the same rate
this can be applied to every aspect of the game.
Unless the person your trying to get better than is practicing 20 hours a day and is already naturally better than you
you can over take them by playing more and thinking what you can do better.
regardless of "natural talent"
talent is just a booster
time and grinding the game will put you at the top
Bestness is right. Otherwise the top players wouldnt be all young men.
Great video, I think you pointed out a lot of stuff that can help players improving if they want to. I mean, your summary is honest and shows that becoming better is at first the responsibility of the player. I'm not really playing smash these days, and I don't think I'll play "seriously" again. However your video is really interesting for other areas as well. Thank you for your time.
Gotta love the growth mindset, Armada! I like that you can see the nuance in the things that are in our control vs the factors that aren´t. It´s easy to get swept into one extreme orthe other. Very inspiring video
bro Armada's really calling out my whole existence with these video titles
No
I felt this
Armada this should help so many people. Work is the main force behind reaching top level play
I hope so!
I wanna help people out.
I honestly hope this one gets pretty good reach cause I genuinely feel like it could be super helpful for people that actually wanna improve.
@@UGSArmada you should change the title and thumbnail so it's more clear what the video is about so more people watch it.
"I have 73 jobs a week so I dont have a single second of free time"
How did you say this without laughing hahaha
Lmao I think the quote he was talking about towards the end was everyone wanna be a bodybuilder but nobody wanna lift no heavy ass weights
Every time I got lost in my smash journey it’s as if the Smash God Armada hears me, and says...”Here my son/daughter, let me guide you.”
I thought the title was “have you done ANYTHING to improve” and I felt called out
Thank you for this video and in particular for mentioning lessons. I've been considering getting lessons because they seem for helpful for learning other skills, but I've been on the fence because nobody ever seems to recommend or mention them. Basically hearing you recommend lessons/set reviews let me know I was right about them being helpful.
Armada's teacher side coming out.
It is always great to see an awesome player talking about how to improve. I stopped trying hard on Smash because of having absolutely no time, and wanting to play other games too in my little free time. I had a huge improvement in the first months but I'm far from even being decent lol.
For those who have the time and the will to improve, I believe in you guys, the hard work will pay off
Thank you for this list. It is very helpful having this in one place and with some authority behind it. IMO one crucial thing that's missing from the list is "mindfulness" (or "meta-cognition").
Honestly, I think this is most people's biggest issue. As you point out, the vast majority of people fail to improve because they don't practice. For some it's an issue of priority, but for most it's psychological. There is a combination of inertia, anxiety, and general paralysis of the unknown that prevent a lot of people from taking these steps. Mindfulness is the best tool I've seen for spotting these psychological hangups in real time and overcoming them.
Also, mindfulness is important for putting ego aside and honestly assessing skill and gameplay. It's helpful for managing nerves in tournament and on stream. It's helpful for not getting tilted. And a lot of the time, for me at least, when I'm playing poorly I notice it's because I'm not focused on the play; instead I'm focused on some narrative mental distraction---usually either about how terrible I am at melee or how I'm a God (both delusional and neither helpful). Mindfulness gives you the tools to spot that in real time and gently redirect your focus on your gameplay.
Personally I think this is the skillset that is most important for improvement (and it translates into essentially all domains) and also the most overlooked.
If anyone reading this agrees and wants to learn how to cultivate "mindfulness" then I recommend checking out Sam Harris content (especially his meditation app). Additionally, check out Insight Meditation Society. These are accessible resources to learn more about mindfulness training.
Something I would say that helps me not stay down on myself is to be able to abstract the game as much as possible. Instead of thinking about the whole game as a win or a loss, think of a whole game as a series of interactions that take place in neutral advantage or disadvantage. If you feel you’ve won neutral, sweet, if not meh, but at the least you are still in the game.
Bye Bye "Quarantine"
Hello "Corona Time" - Armada 2020
Thank you Armada for this video I know that I've probably missed some things while trying to improve like analyzing sets or other things
Thanks for the advices!
I think that his tips are very good. Even if you implement this thought process in other areas, adjusting to whatever you would like to do, it'll bring results.
"Everyone wants to be, but nobody wants to become a specialist" is a very powerfull guide in becoming successful in whatever you want.
You never know if you reached your ceiling so the argument on nature v. nurture is worthless anyways if you haven't maximized the nurture part.
imo nobody has a true ceiling
it's always possible to improve
even if you have done everything in this list
theres always more smash to be played
more practice to be done
The amount of people that have completely misused the tern nature vs nurture in all this drama
Traplover our nature isnt to play video games
I don't play Smash, but this video was general enough to help me improve in DBFZ. Thanks for sharing, please do more of these!
That title alone deserves a sub. Respect
a huge gate stops players from improving is their own arrogant & ego - maekawa先生
btw love this kind of content so much in your channel
I like to practice until I can consistently do something 10 times in a row and once I've done it 10 times in a row I try and see if I can do it 10 more times, only then do i feel consistent. If you know any melee tech just try doing it 10 times in a row and see if you can do it. Start with the basics too even stuff as simple as doing up tilt turn around up tilt can be inconsistent if you're trying to do it too quickly, heck even SHing consistently is difficult until you get it down, and stuff like JC grabs/up smashes and wavelands and shield dropping are SO hard to get consistent and SO important so they definitely need practice. Every character has a BIG list of things that are important to practice so, say if you have a spare half hour, practice 6 things for about 5 minutes each or give some more time to what you have fun doing/think's more important to work on. Then when something becomes second nature to you increase the difficulty of the tech you're practicing til you're practicing NILs til you're consistent like Zain. Melee is actually really fun to practice solo and it helps a lot! I got my first 7th place at a local with Peach after practicing seriously like this the last tournament I entered.
Thanks for the video Armada!
Only a handful of games motivate me to get better despite getting absolutely bodied. Melee has that special effect on me. That is why I put time into it and probably will for years to come.
You still playing?
@@DKStorms64 Damn right
Dude, your melee "set-up" [shrine] in the background is legend
14:00 If the answer to this question is because you KO'd your opponent, then good.
"People would want the final product". 26:50
I'd say that "People know what they want to be, but don't know what they want to do" is a simple way of saying it.
Needed to hear this, thanks legend
Thanks for the help armada. Make more videos on lessons and tips
Been loving your videos lately and this one is so awesome i really needed the pointers and they dont just help in smash either so thank you Armada!
If I a dollar every time Armada said "let's get started, let's get started" at the beginning of a stream of video I'd probably have like $50 I dunno but I swear he says it a lot
one of my favorite Armada-isms
To anyone who says that they don't have enough time, to quote a certain famous bodybuilder, "There are 24 hours in a day. Are you telling me you can't spare a single hour? You sleep 6 hours a night. If you need more than that, sleep faster"
While i agree that hard work beats talent in majority of cases (with some very rare exceptions), probably the most annoying part about the talent era is the fact that is that someone without talent will be so frustrated seeing someone with talent rapidly improve at the game doing the same things. In general i do think that you have worked your ass of to achieve the status you have in the melee community, i still think that you had talent. The reason is that if you and someone else would go through the exact same training schedule , there are genetic factors like reaction time, muscle memory or just that X-factor that probably will divide you and that other player for being the one who wins.
Not a great example but for my personal expierience i like league of legends alot but i'm very bad at it. I have been in like gold division for the past 5 years playing that game and never achived platinum division ( a tier higher). While i never have been super consistent at the game which means i often play alot for about a month and then drop it for a week or month, i have friends that play with a similiar schedule like me and outranks me by a large margin. I sometimes ask why but in alot of scenarios they have understand the game in a way that i can't still grasp, which i probably should have due to the fact all these hours i have spent on the game.
It's the same in school, sports and like every other area in life. Shaquille O'neal in basketball was blessed with an insane physique which made his chanses at reaching the top peak of basketball unparalleled compared to most basketball players in the world. The same goes for LeBron James with his physique rivaling greek gods but additional to that he has court vision that many commentators describe as "unteachable, something just extrodinary players are born with". Albert Einstein also had a way of seeing things and an understanding of physics that me as a person who is not so very good at physics never can dream of, even if i choose to put all my time into learning physics.
I have no idea if what i'm saying is true or complete nonsense but not long ago i thought why i might fail in something always lied in the fact that i probably didn't work hard enough. That might be true but at the same time when i started thinking about the perspective of talent more i became increasingly more negative towards my future because to be honest, there is VERY little in life i could proudly say im good at. Fine i have a pretty bad self esteem but in the end, nothing i have done has given me very good results which i think is indicator of me not having that much of a talent in those specific areas.
To me talent is recognisible by how much a person grows in specif area relative to the time they invest. I hope the fact lies somewhere in that everybody has the chance to do something it's just take some people a longer time to develope but by that i kinda goes against my own words so it's more of a hope than me actually believing in it.
Sorry if my english grammar isn't very good and i just wanted to share my view on this, so this isn't factual proof at all and i still encourages you who reads this working towards somthing to still do it because in the end i might be completely wrong!
I actually never thought about the punish game in that way... that’s pretty interesting and I’ll try to change it!! Great video as always ^^
ayyyy Donkey Kong Country ost!
Aquatic Ambience
I feel like there’s a book out there that’s already broken down this topic of hard work vs talent. There’s so many skill-based things, there no way some big philosopher hasn’t given their insight on this topic. It’s gotta be out there somewhere.
The main premise of this is that you will need to make some kind of sacrifices if you want to improve and become great.
identifying your weaknesses is difficult in solo play (in any game) that should also be on the list.
Just a little vent: I will never become a top player. I only want to have perfect inputs and help my friends that do want to be top players. I feel like I'll never be able to do that either. At least I'm able to give some friends a good nudge in the right direction though. Some people I've given tips to benefited greatly and improved fast when previously they played for a long time and didn't know how to improve. Now they are going to tournaments and kicking my butt. I just want to help them even more..... Being better with Lucario and/or Meta Knight would be a big plus.
Consistent practice + Time Management - I have a hard enough time just getting a consistent schedule. I can't even get a consistent amount of sleep and exercise. Every time I try to make a schedule, no matter how much time I try to set aside for "free time" there's always a too many things that pop up. Whether something breaking down, some mandatory meeting that people waiting until the last minute to tell me about, or just randomly being too tired to even concentrate for anything I do in the practice session to even matter. Of course, there are other games that I would like to play, but most games take almost no time to play and enjoy when compared to smash.
Against Players - I can play other players as much as I want because my focus is online play and not offline play. Since anxiety makes it unfun to play smash with people IRL (but I'm working on that currently which does take time away from smash) but Smash 7 will probably be out before I can fully enjoy playing people IRL in a crowded place with lots of people screaming everywhere. Only problem right now is that it's hard to get a recurring practice partner because I'm struggling with keeping a consistent schedule.
Solo Practice - I'm still trying to practice short hops. I've been told to not bother with anything else until you can short hop consistently. Spent 2 months, 30 minutes every day and there was just a slight improvement but still can't short hop consistently, and when I try to bring that into a match it's not reliable at all. With such a slow pace of trying to improve when all you're doing is pressing a button for 30 minutes everyday, it feels like I'll never get to the part where I actually get to doing combos, much less perfect them. I've looked around many times trying to find any tips I could find on short hopping, but it's really discouraging not being able to do it. Sometimes I feel like maybe my fingers are just too slow to play smash competitively. My fingers did get a bit faster after practicing, but will they ever be fast enough to play smash? Getting enough sleep to keep my fingers fast enough is also a huge struggle as well.
Labbing - I actually find Labbing to be incredibly fun. Finding new things about characters is fun, even if you're seeing some super niche things. Labbing is the least problematic thing on this list.
Watching my own sets + other players sets - I've rewatched a lot of my replays and watched a lot of tournament sets. Problem is, it's kinda pointless when you know what to do, and the options that you should be taking, but your just can't perform the inputs. Like I said earlier, I've been struggling to master inputs, but I feel the progress is too slow for it to matter in the end.
Spending money to improve at a game - I will definitely hire someone to give me some pointers on getting better at inputs. Though until I feel safe financially, I'm not going to be spending money on entertainment until I know I have the money to spend. Working full time minimum wage sucks. Need a new job because being in front of a grill for 8 hours a day dehydrates you and really messes with your mind a lot. My days off and when I'm eating food is the only times where I get time to do anything.
Was at Genesis 1
I should’ve said hi
Well better late than never
Thxs for ur time
For the free lesson
Shout out to the DK bgm playlist in the background
This video is why you are the GOAT
I have stared to write notes on what to do should I immediately try to learn everything I've written about or learn it more slowly over time ( I have two pages of notes and ive been written notes on my character for 2 days now)
You definitely opened my eyes armada thank you
Hey Armada- what's the best way to buy a new controller? The c-sticks on every used controller I test are worn out and I can't seem to find a good place to buy a new one online. Would be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.
gotta love the aquadic ambience
Don't practice till you get it right. Practice until you can't do it wrong.
great video armada, keep it up!
Never thought of spending money in smash for lessons and set reviews, I going to consider this in my improving
Definitely something to consider. I also encourage you to try to think about the game better and do all the other steps first.
there are a bunch of top 100 players that will review a set for you for a twitch prime
I think this whole talent vs hard work thing isn't valuable simply because there are a lot of confounding in between. For example, it does not take into account things like experience, wisdom, etc. that all affect your skill ceiling in addition to just straight talent. Also hard work has a physical cap (24h/day) as well and that isn't usually factored in, the ability to improve is obviously a talent in itself.
I think it's a good mindset to think hard work will carry you, because at the end of the day it will carry you near the top, where players will have approximately equal amounts of hard work, where other factors become more magnified. Natural talent is only 1 of a myriad of variables that affect who stays at the very top, and that is static.
All makt åt armada vår befriare
If you’ve got time to watch this video, you’ve got time to lab
Everybody wants to be strong, but don’t nobody wanna lift heavy ass weight
did you try everything to improve in the peach vs puff MU?
I would say I tried super hard at the very least.
I even payed for the best Puff in Norway (similar level to Tekk) to come over and grind the MU hella hard with me (payed his travel fee/gave dinners etc).
So I did not even really have resources but even outside of events I did tons of stuff to improve at the MU.
Thing here is though, if you wanna be the best in the world it's also important to not get to stubborn with MUs if they are not worth it.
Me having a very clear winning record with Fox more than proved I did the right call.
no armada, i have not :(
thank you for the pointers though, Armada! i hope to be number 1 like you one day
So pro smashers put in the hard hours of work. It’s inspiring to see how they got where they are with lots of hard work, but I think a question of burnout might be raised. I’m sure top players are vulnerable to burnout, and I wonder how they overcome it to still keep competing.
Armada coming in with the life advice oh my god
the dkc music in the backround, nice
I try and at least get 1-2 hours of practice a day for smash.
And where I'm at there is 2 tournaments a year so I practice go attend and sometimes get slapped other times do alright and go back to the grind. Its cliche but practice does make perfect
My older sister has a crush on Armada
Have you considered coaching? I just scheduled some time with a coach to try to help improve my gameplay
I do set reviews on my stream.
Currently not looking to expand past this. I have had plenty of players improving after getting this help.
Thing is I do work on a lot of stuff atm so I don't feel like a more serious coaching thing is something I'm currently looking for
@@UGSArmada Fair enough. You just have so much knowledge and seem super knowledgeable about it. I'm hoping Coach Zeke is able to point out what I need to work on, however this video definitely enlightened me a bit.
@@LoneWolf10641 Thanks!
But as my first comment said, I do set reviews and people do improve from them.
So for people that wanna "hire me" for this that's possible for sure =)
@@UGSArmada Keep up the good work man! I'm trying my hardest to become a great player hopefully you will see me on stage some day :)
Teach me smash and i'll teach you to drive.
That song at the beginning has a very nice atmosphere.. what is the name?
“When you get hit what could you have done instead” what if the reason your getting hit is cause your losing some sort of 50/50 what do you do then
don't get yourself in a 50/50 situation, get yourself in a situation where its not up to luck
I think it’s more 40% natural talent and 60% hard work. It’s not like natural talent is this thing that magically brings to the top and you only have to play like an hour a day and that’s it. BN is probably very talented and never really had to work to get to his level and that’s why he has that opinion. It’s all good though. I think it’s wrong for him to think that, I also think that it weren’t for his natural understanding of the game, he probably would have quit.
how and making a parry is still my main problem. I mostly try to just forget parry and go with Smash Brawl in my mind.
My piano teacher had a really good approach for this kind of thing. He is now a very skilled piano player, but he wasn't a natural talent. He struggled. He was a C student often in his early years. But, every time he encountered a problem, he would just grind it out. A chord that he can't play? Practice over and over until it's natural. Can't nail this rhythm? Grinded it out. Over and over until it was harder to make a mistake than it was to do it right.
He has his master's now despite early struggles and is easily the best teacher I've ever had in any topic. Talent makes for an easier initial path, but his struggles made him great not just as a musician but also as an educator because he had to learn, intimately, how to overcome every hurdle that came with trying to learn something that he was not naturally attuned. When you encountered a problem, he had a strategy to overcome that problem because, often, he also hit that wall when he was younger.
Hey armada, excellent video right there tbh, hopefully I could apply them but although I want to be someone in smash I don't have the support of anyone (I'm a minor) nor my mom neither anyone in my family, so they kinda reject me for trying playing competitively, and the Country I live in although has a good amount of tournaments sometimes I think that not living in the US will probably affect my improvement
cool that you did this. actually
wholesome, thank you
Adam how did your work ethic make you the best player in the world?
Thanks a lot for the advices
0:47 lol
Everybody wants to be a body builder, but don't nobody want to lift no heavy ass weights...
ultimate players dont lab and then they ask how to get better
share your daily skin care routine Armada!!!
this was awesome! thx
Is it even possible to have consistent practice when there are no locals near you and all you have is CPUs to play against? I want to improve but I've been stuck on your step 1 for years.
Netplay is always a great option. It's possible to get great without consistent local competition. Look at PPMD, he came from an area with no players and got insanely good despite that.
netplay
Do you do coaching armada?
I'm glad I woke up to this
Dang bestness’s tweet blew up in the community
Great video
i don’t know armada, have i?
A massive problem as well is RSI, no idea how some of these people pull it off, having massively drawn out sessions I mean.
Good vid
The proof was always there. Armada and leffen living in a country where the high level players is low.
ZeRo having the community against him.
Mew2king playing and being good at many smash games.
Leo practicing the most out of ANY ult player. Thus, why he does crazy losers run and has a strong mentality.
I don't know who will read this, but SOME of you can waste the rest of your life hating on these hard working/talented players for chasing and accomplishing their dreams.
Big fan. Big fan.
Bro BN has started a big conversation up
He was so incredibly wrong that literally everyone in the community had to school him but also
Leffen was absolutely right
People in ultimate don't train nearly ass much as people used to do in brawl or melee
They don't practice in training mode and just play quickplay and expect results
When you're beautiful you don't need a driver license to impress girls
armada
You should mention hand health more. Nothing on this list matters if you cant play for more than 1 hour at a time
Armada no drivers license 🤔🤔🤔
Step 1 schmovement
Only 'everything'?
oh shid waddup
It helps if you find the game fun