Episode 2-1: First Steps

This is the first episode of the new season of Beyond The Metagame. In this episode AV and Peon dive into their experiences with the game so far. They go over their impressions of characters and the mechanics of the game and characters, as well as Ultimate-ly what the best practices are in the new game.

Questions
==== '''Discord member ajonietz: What are your approaches to quick growth in early Ultimate? My scene has about a month of off season until Ultimate tournaments begin, how best can I spend that time for quick improvement at the new game (coming from Smash 4)?''' ====

AV:
"We have talked about this in the learning to learn episode. We talked about this in no tech zone. I will summarize these things and add a little on to that." "I think that quick growth in Ultimate is being disciplined. Go into training mode and lab out your options. Understand what you can do with your character. Pick one or two characters, that is huge. Pick what you need as a second character coming into this game because there’s going to be so many matchups. So pick one or two. Don’t pick too many more than that unless you’re trying to really have fun with the game. That is up to you if you want to grow.""Stick to a few of those characters and really understand their options. Once you have the character’s tools and the game’s tools understood, the canvas opens up for you to paint.""Colorful analogies aside, when you play a character and the more that you have to think about what you are doing, the less space you have to actually play the mind games and the more interesting parts of the game.""So, understand your character and play a simple character. Play Chrom. That’s how you should grow. What are you think Peon?"

Peon:
"Yeah, I’m into that. Start simple. Like I said, do some drills and really build a strong foundation. Understand all of the mechanics in the game and I don’t think it’s AV’s or my place to really go into the depth of that but all the different changes. How teching works, how to move, what combos you have against which characters. Really getting into the nitty-gritty and flesh all that out at first before you build on it. I think that approach is very underrated."

AV:
"My new years resolution is to basically feel like every matchup is doable. I did this with DK. There were no matchups in the game that I felt were not doable." "I think a lot of people in my scene and in NorCal, the scene that I’m currently in, whenever they asked me:""“How do you feel about a certain matchup”""or they’d play me and ask if I hate this matchup. It’s like, no, it’s doable and I like it. They would just give me this weird look and say I was crazy.""I like getting to a point where I feel that I have full control over the destiny of my gameplay and that’s probably my new years resolution. What about you Peon?"

Peon:
"Mine is more Beyond the Metagame related." "I would love to meet one of our listeners at a tournament that listens to the show. I would love to go to Genesis and I want someone to walk up to me and be like:""“Hey are you Peon from Beyond the Metagame? I like the podcast.”""I don’t know, I just feel like sometimes we’re a bit removed, you know. It’s a radio show we send it one way and we do get a lot of feedback in our community. It has been lovely to us and the reception has been great in general, but it would be cool to meet some of you guys."

AV:
"In terms of the community, I want it to continue to grow and to nurture all of the things that we preach about beyond the metagame and to create a really loving community is something I would love to have for the following year."

AV:
"This is actually a question that I would like to hear an answer from you. I only use the control stick but I’ve heard that mashing buttons can sometimes be faster. What do you do?"

Peon:
"Okay, so I want to revisit this next week because I heard a rumor today that there was a new optimal mash found where you change your D-pad to not be any of taunts and you put different inputs on the D-pad. You swirl the D-pad around and apparently, it’s the optimal way to mash." "In the past what I would do is actually roll my thumb. I actually have a really funny mash. I would roll my entire hand over all four of the buttons and I would sweep across all four of the buttons while also spinning my left stick as quickly as I possibly can 360 degrees around.""I’m gonna lab this for you, Kouta. I will find out the optimal way to do this and I will let you know next week on the show."

AV:
"So, I’m actually going to break two things and blow your mind twice." "The first is that D-pad mashing was in Smash 4. It was actually used by, I believe, a SoCal player taught it to me who learned it from Earth, the Japanese Pit main. The D-pad mashing was actually in Smash 4.""The second thing is that in Smash 4 it was actually optimal to use only one of the two. Either only use like either spam control stick inputs or spam button inputs because they get overridden if you try to do both."

Peon:
"Not if you have impeccable timing, [laughing] but we will get back to you on this. I don’t want to BS this answer. I’ll find the perfect way to do it and I’ll tell you."

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