- a players move / action & how they perform it
The current state of a match, determined by:
- position
- frame advantage
- percent
- stock count
a set/list of options use in a list of gamestates
Please also read Llod's guide to improvement as aslot of terminology is used from it
Neutral is the Phase of the game where players are trying to find a hit.
The goal of neutral is getting a hit. However, the goal of playing neutral is trying to find a gameplan that counters your opponents game plan.
When beginning a match, the player my have a gameplan that will beat some common options of their opponets. However, as the match progresses, the opponent will adapt, meaning that the initial gameplan layed out will change over the course of the match.
By taking into account what game states occur more often, the player can change their own gameplan to beat what is being shown.
The goal to achieve this way to play neutral is: 1: put your self in a more Advantageous game state. 2: be looking at your opponent and keep track of common options / gamestates 3: adapt to what your opponents gameplan is
This may seam fairly simple on the surface, but can get much more complex, sometimes, the difference of advantage vs disadvantage my only differ by a frame.
In general, you want to put your opponent in a position where they have less “viable” options than you do
For example, in the corner, your opponent cannot back up more without falling off the stage, putting them into a even more disadvantaged gamestate, where they cannot choose any options that do not alow them to recover.
This however, becomes more complex when in true neutral. In this example, let’s say marth and Fox are on etheir side of FD. They are dash dancing in the same pace and rhythm. This is probably the closest to “true neutral as it gets”. However, now lets say the Marth dashes fowards to a range where the fox still can hit him, but the Marth can now grab the Fox if he fully jumps in. We can now say that Marth is in a very slightly more advantageous position than Fox. However small this advantage is, its still significant, and can be the diffrence between you the Marth haveing enough frame advantage to grab the Fox, or getting spotdodged shined.
This is an example of what I like to call a “micro situation” where a small change could have a massive outcome in the game.
To improve your mental neutral you should always be aware of your own micro adjustments, as they often are the diffrance between lower level players and the top players.
High level opponents will be also adapting, so what should you be looking out for to catch them?
There are 2 main things to be looking for in neutral:
By keeping track of what gamestates your opponent favors, you can then catch them out when they try to set them up. This could include a pressure sequence, a burst option, or a jump pattern. Any of these can be analysed and exploted to win neutral.
The second thing to keep tack of is when and what you are hit by. This indicates that your opponent has a gameplan that can beat one of your options. This is your que to start mixing it up, by keeping track of what you were hit by, you can change your own gameplan to beat your opponents option.
A common trap with this step that I fell down is thinking an option will beat another option when I missed the minor details.
For example, a Marth’s instant fair will beat Foxes nair. However, if the Fox delays his nair, it will beat Instant fair, but loose to delayed fair. This still means that Marth fair will beat Fox nair, however if the Marth just instant fairs expecting it to beat all nairs, he will loose. It is important to understand that your option will be another opponents option, not the opponents move. The main difference between an option and a move is that an option also takes into account how your opponent does a move. This is refranced in Llod’s guide in “learning character interactions”. If you do not keep track of this, you cannot adapt to your opponent.
This step is ever changing. If you do not alow your self to understand that what you will be doing in a match will be forever changing, you will be stuck using the same few options over and over.
Adapting is simply changing your gameplan to beat a new option that was not covered.
This is really simple in theory but painful in pratice.
As humans, we often tend to develop habits and performed options. This is in direct opposition to adaptation, as we often want to find the easiest and lest resistant option, which may not be the most optimal option.
This step will come out of dedicated pratice, and rezilance. You will need to have patience and focus when playing the game to be able to identify the opponets option, and then make a meaningful change to how you are playing the game.
To send off, a explination to why I wrote this,
I have a terrible mental game when playing melee, I will rage at every possible moment I do not understand, this limits my learning and understanding of the game. I noticed I need to some how change how I think when playing. My most common problem when playing was that I would get mad when my option was beaten out, even if the reason for the option being beaten was the wrong one, because I belived that was the correct option to choose in my gameplan, I rigorously belived it should win. The beauty of melee is that there is always counterplay to any option that you do, or any option that your opponent does. The best players of this game have so much knowledge on each micro interation and are able to translate that knolage into meaningful actions on a controler.
It’s emaculate that top level melee can even be played in the first place, and I hope I can learn it one day too