Episode 2-2: Facing the Community ft. CONEY

In this episode AV and Peon are joined by community mainstay CONEY! They explore the historical development of the Smash scene, what it takes to succeed in any iteration of Smash, and how the community can change the future face of events.

Questions
==== '''Discord member SmolFry: Do you guys play listening to your own music or game audio? Do you feel it can be distracting having to hear a crowd chatter while playing? And if you do listen to your own music, what are you listening to?''' ====

AV:
"I listen to nothing. I love getting into this meditative state. I used to listen to a lot of music but now I don’t because I get into this state that people talk about called flow. You can look it up. You can get into flow a lot easier if you’re brain is empty." "Obviously, it doesn’t work if there’s a crowd cheering or if there’s people screaming. Then you probably need noise cancelling headphones or something like that. For me, most of the time I am listening to nothing."

Peon:
"I’ve previously documented a phenomenon that is called the optimal window of stress." "There’s a midpoint between apathy and a panic attack. That midpoint is exactly where you want to be. Usually if I don’t have headphones in and I am playing well, that is probably because I’m in that flow state AV referenced.""If I’m kind of dragging or tired or sluggish and feeling more apathetic than I should be, I’ll put on some tunes. Something with a beat to hype me up, and that could be anything. The song or genre varies depending on the day but I’ll go with something more upbeat.""If I’m closer towards that panic attack side of the spectrum, my heart’s beating too fast or I’m nervous and my hands are shaking, I’ll put on something super meditative and slow. I’ll often put on the Undertale song. It’s just this trancy sort of song and helps bring me down in terms of my stress level to get towards that midpoint."

AV:
"That’s super cool. I like that you’re kind of moderating your own energy levels. I personally love staying in the same state and getting used to the same state over and over again. I think that I might actually give that a try."

Peon:
"I would like to play, and this is selfish, a player that is, assuming we are talking about Smash 4 and Ultimate in terms of playing them, I think I’d rather play the players that are most high ranked but also character specialists." "What I’m most afraid of when it comes to playing a player that’s really better than me, let’s say top 20 on PGR, are the guys who can play thirty different characters and have proven they have crazy good fundamentals. The Zeros and the Nairos. I know I’ll never beat them and they have proven themselves in so many different situations across time.""The players, like Elegant, who I did luckily take a set off of, the players like Dark Shad or Locust, the kind of character specialist people. Those guys played Ryu, those guys are theoretically easier for me to beat if I do know the matchup.""If I’m a Luigi expert or something, then I’d want to play an Elegant. If I’m a Ryu expert I’d want to play a Dark Shad or Locust, but since Ultimate, it’s a new game and I don’t really know those kinds of circumstances yet. I don’t know man. You go first and let me think about it."

AV:
"I don’t really have an answer but I like Tweeks DK a lot, so I just want to play Tweeks DK and kind of absorb it, so there you go."

Peon:
"You see, most of the PGR players I really wanted to play, I’ve played them. I’ve played Tweek, Kaleo, Komo. Dabuz was really fun. I’ve never played Larry Lurr. I would love to play against Larry Lurr just because I really appreciate his game style. I think he’s really fun to watch, so it’d be kind of fun to be on the other end of that."

AV:
"Hmm, so I think it’s evolved over the years for me." "I played a ton of League of Legends before. I played that for six or seven years. I followed the competitive scene. I was very dedicated to the competitive scene there. It seemed I never got into it myself, although I was fairly high ranked.""I think that, right now, it’s actually a game called Osu. It’s kind of a rhythm game where you click circles. That is pretty much what I play outside of Smash because I think it helps my hand-eye coordination a lot. It’s super fun. You can see progress really easily. I love games that you can immediately see progress and you can watch yourself grow as a player. How about you Peon?"

Peon:
"So, the game that means the most to me is Donkey Kong Country and it’s actually the intro music, which is Stickerbrush Symphony, which is from Donkey Kong Country too." "It was the game that my dad and brother were playing in my first childhood memories, you know. It was that kind of nostalgic factor. I can’t really look at it objectively, but it just makes me happy. It’s my comfort game.""It’s like my mom’s grilled cheese sandwich, you know. It’s that kind of experience for me. So, I could never say it’s not my favorite game, but I also love World of Warcraft and Halo 3, both of which I’ve put my entire life into when I was younger. Shout out to those games."

AV:
"I will interject here just to say Super Mario Sunshine holds a very, very special place in my heart and I love watching. I’ll always tune in for speedruns of Super Mario Sunshine."

Peon:
"I do want to say that we have touched on this, but I want to talk about this specifically in Ultimate. AV, what you have been doing to practice and what do you think other people should be doing?"

AV:
"I have not jumped into training mode yet."

Peon:
"What!? Really!?"

AV:
"There is one time where I checked if Ding Dong worked at the very beginning of the game. You know, I had to." "I don’t actually have time to jump into training mode and do stuff. So, when I am playing, I’m playing online, so that’s kind of like when I talked about the tree types of players.""I said one will have the time to lab, and basically have infinite time and time is not your limiting resource.""You have that second type of person who has a decent amount of time, but you still want to allocate your time efficiently.""Then there is the third type of player, where you can only do one thing. More often then not, I fall into that third group. So, I don’t spend a lot of time in training mode. However, I do want to hear Peon’s answer to this."

Peon:
"Yeah, I completely disagree with most of that, honestly." "What I think you should do is pick up a couple of characters you like and join the Discords for those characters and take a look at their resources. I guarantee every character, even the obscure ones, have a dedicated group of people that are figuring out what’s important about that character. Ask them, what things you should know to understand the character, even at a rudimentary level. Find out about those resources and go into training mode. Put a little time in.""Each time you boot up the game, spend five or ten minutes in training mode. Incrementally get down your bread and butter combos. Get down all of your movements and your bread and butter combos with your characters. So, that means both research what they are and perfect them.""I’m saying only a few minutes every day.  You don’t need to do it for very long, but you do need to do it often and consistently. That’s already been making my fluency in the game better. It skyrockets every time I play and I’m getting better and better, and that’s what I attribute it to."

AV:
"I will say that I missed the question a little. You just asked me what settings I used in training mode and I just kind of answered that. So, from your perspective on it, I will disagree with my own answer." "In terms of how I would recommend a new player to train and practice. I’m not a new player so I feel like I have some things I can lean on from the previous games to just go in. I’m just going to echo what Peon said. For new players, especially when you’re trying to pick up new characters."

Peon:
"Simply, no. It’s not necessary. Look, the Smash Online in this game, like what Coney said earlier in the show, it’s okay. It gets the job done but it’s laggy." "If you have a couple of friends nearby that you can play with, you know, real people, that’s all you need. That’s all you really need, if you’re smart about it. But, if you don’t have people that you can play with very often in real life and you do want to get good at competitive Smash, I would say it is necessary.""Fighting against real people and getting exposed to lots of different matchups, is really helpful. If you are going to multiple tournaments a week, or even a tournament every couple of weeks, and you do have exposure to new play styles and people and you do have a community like that, then it’s not necessary at all. I know a lot of people that don’t play Online Smash and are still very good at the game. AV, you got anything?"

AV:
"Nope, that was a good answer."

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