People don't like Samus because they play unranked 6-9 hours a day and have no dopamine left for the game so when they run into someone they can't easily combo they rage
TL;DR: More defensive options breed more aggressive play Your last point honestly extends to most every surface level defensive mechanic. Melee has tons of defensive options, DI, SDI, Shield and Powershield, CC, Dashdance and Wavedash (not purely defensive I know) and yet it's probably the fastest and most aggressive plattform fighter out there. Take the other extreme, Brawlhalla, where your only defensive options are dodging/dashing and a one-off projectile from throwing your weapon and you find a very slow and campy game, because getting hit means losing all agency. To counteract that, the devs shortened combos, but that just made the game even campier, fishing for strays rather than going for punishes
While I don't think you're "wrong" per se, I do think framing Hbox as "the house" and that he "always wins" is a little too one-sided. It makes it sound like "approaching-Hbox-at-ledge" is the only lose-condition for spacies, and the only type of risky gamble in the matchup. You could make a very similar video, with almost the same script, talking about why Hbox would always spam pound at certain percents. Crunch would get on to him for it in his prime, and I remember a particular clip of Zain calling it out while watching a random set because he's just that predictable sometimes. And sometimes he gets destroyed for it. I think the answer in this and many other cases is quite simple: Sometimes it works, and you have to take risks in order to win - especially when you're behind. What makes Melee such a beautiful and resilient game is that there is no "perfect" strategy. When you're at the top of the meta, you *have* to take risks and be unpredictable because there's counter-play for almost everything. Even if you have the "optimal" strategy, if you do the same thing every time, the best players will catch on and find a way to punish you for it. I think gambling is a good analogy, but it applies to the whole game and every player. Some days Hbox comes out on top, some days it's Cody, some days it's Mango, and some days it's Zain. No one player is "the house".
Love the respect for ultimate even if it’s not for you personally. As an ult player trying to get into melee, it sucks to see the scenes so divided, like you have to pick a side or something lol
honestly the reason you see it happen with just hbox so often is because he's just really good at off stage interactions. dude thrives off stage. hell it looked like the two examples you showed of him trying to punish someone ON stage was him dying because he messed up an l cancel.
M2K did the same thing. Marth doesn’t have a perfect stall, but M2K didn't even use his safest stalls. But because players knew Marth isnt supposed to do that, (in fact even being in the corner is supposed to be bad for Marth because he can't dash back anymore) they tried to kill him for it and M2K won more than he lost doing it, same as Hbox. Both of them also not using it as their main strategy but as a secondary strategy means that they have already conditioned the opponent to fight them, so immediately having to change tempo to punish or wait out their holding the corner/ledge "feels bad" so people want to keep attacking even when it's risky to jump in the corner and do that.
I don't think anyone (besides M2k himself) actually thought his stall was suboptimal back in the day. There's a reason the mantra "don't approach M2k on the ledge" was such an unbreakable rule. People just saw M2k get gimp after gimp from ledgestalling, and assumed he was doing his little M2k thing of playing optimally. The narratives really pushed that M2k was an optimal player, and Hbox was (and still is) a suboptimal player.
Very apt and interesting comparison. I think you could have explained skinner box psychology a little bit better for the people unfamiliar with the aforementioned methods casinos use to part your money with you and why it's so effective and those had funny edit potential, but otherwise good shit
Variable rewards across variable time frames are shown to be the strongest type of conditioning. The psychology theory here is really cool and devious. It actually makes alot of sense that this type of thing could be going on at the ledge in favor of HB. How cool!
This viewpoint is too narrowed in on data and ignores applicability. Yes, falcon's speed is a large part of what makes him viable in the first place, but being fast by conventional game standards doesnt matter once you consider movement tech in general (wavedashing, wave-landing, aerial cancling, character-specific movement tech, etc). If you line every character up and press right on the left stick, yes he'll move fastest, but how often in melee are you running in a straight line? Second, he ignores the fact that its an aerial attack. Shine (unarguably the best move in the game), is a 1 FRAME MOVE, and can be used anywhere at any time, standing, in air, etc. Falcon has to jump and use his move with enough frames and the proper spacing to even get any value out of it at realistic %'s (not to mention u-air at 0% isnt going to help you at all, for example). Moves like shine get guaranteed value at all %'s, and you dont even need to jump for them. And lastly, he doesnt consider the move in context to the character. Even if falcon is the fastest character, and even if his u-air was somehow the best move in the game, those attributes are attached to a heavy character with an otherwise somewhat limited moveset, and notoriously terrible recovery. Game and Watch's 9 hammer, Roy's charged neutral, Gannon's neutral special... all amazing moves, but yet they are all bottom tier. This video had too much of a directed narritive to be objective.
Hey I'm getting into melee and I kinda just play luigi and yoshi, I don't know if I should play fox or something because maybe I can apply how hard he is back to my mains and get better faster or just stick to the characters I'm using
>me:"Weren't project M players complaining about crouch cancel since 2014-2015? How'd it take this long for it to start in Melee?" >sonic-main-wizzrobe clip >narrator: "The entire stock was crouching" >me:"oh"
