So… Why the hiatus Khakis?

My one or two concerned readers may be asking me this question upon seeing this post. So I’m gonna tell you about it.

And if you’re not that concerned with my life just scroll down till you see big bold letters again. I won’t even be mad. But like its pretty damn interesting I think.

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Let’s get to it.





My blogging in the past on this very blog led to something truly amazing. Through my short lived smash-blog (this one right here) I was given the opportunity to become a writer for the new VICE video game website/platform thingy Waypoint. (go check it out!)

And what an opportunity. E-sports became my job out of nowhere and it all happened so fast. I wanted nothing more than to represent the fighting game scene. Kotaku only covers us when there’s a violent/sexual scandal. Other websites that are capable of representing our scene are too small-potatoes to be relevant and exciting. They’re nice to have but growth potential is low.

But writing for VICE, that was gonna be a BFD for smash kids. I had the perfect story to start writing, I had a foot in a very hard to find door. To be frank I was rather pleased with myself. I’d be able to travel to more events now too on company dime! Life got a bit more… exciting.

But as right as all of this felt it was not meant to be. The divide was obvious between VICE and Khakis. VICE is a major media platform that gets hundreds of thousands of views from people who don’t know a thing about competitive smash.

And Khakis… well Khakis is an insane person. Khakis writes textbooks about fighting games and then loses them. Khakis’ most visited website is doujins.com a calculator that lets you download smash knocback data.

Khakis has an insatiable desire to be the best in the world at super smash brothers and Khakis really doesn’t give a shit about you if you don’t (but I’m kind of into you if you do ;0 ).

So I gave it a try and I didn’t fail per se.. But long story short I’ve given up hope of ever getting an article published for VICE. It was a blow to the ego for sure. So I channeled a lot of my energy into getting really f****** good at smash 4. Nothing like an IRL L to the face to make you feel motivated about video games.





And I did get really Good! I felt truly in my heart like I wouldn’t be surprised if I beat anyone in the world. And that’s a feeling that can only be achieved by grueling levels of hard work and its a feeling I’m proud to have achieved.

But I was doing it with a shit character, a problem that inevitably needs to be addressed. Low tier life is looking up and seeing your ceiling a couple of feet above your head and pushing It upwards a couple of inches with your hands and feeling really satisfied.

So I switched to a high tier main, the long term correct decision. And let me tell you, it’s like looking up and you see nothing but deep space, clouds swirling and eagles circling. The very notion of a ceiling and the act of pushing are all gone.

Cool as that feeling is the truth of the matter is that I’m losing many many games because I just don’t even know what I’m doing. And when you’re not feeling yourself at any level… *spoiler* losing is no fun.

With my e-sports career opportunity squandered and all my hard effort put into a low tier rendered effectively meaningless it’s safe to say I’m feeling a little bit humbled.

And what’s a humble man to do? A humble man can’t do much more than teach i guess.

So I’m presenting to you all a dense ass meme-filled grammatically questionable piece about improving at smash brothers.

If you’re one of the people who follow this blog and find this blog interesting I want you to know that I could be writing for anyone in the world right now, but I choose to be here writing for you because we both very deeply love the same game.

~Khakis





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Now lets get to that good ish.











The power of knowing.





There are levels of understanding and understanding how to understand may be the most important thing you’ll ever learn. (I just wrote out that whole long thing about myself so i thought I’d just get to the point here no funny intro).





In the heat of a friendly match, when you’re playing jank stages with casuals and in tournament sets your ability to analyze situations and process information is key to winning games.

When you play smash you are actually doing nothing more than processing information you see and hear.

And it comes in various forms. In its most basic form everything is data. You heard sheik perform a bouncing fish. You saw fox shield drop bair.





But data can be refined into information. This is a natural involuntary process. We have to constantly take data and form it into information, information has a purpose and can tell us something.

And here are some hawt steamy truths about the information you gather during a smash game.





The information you process needs to be understood and it needs to be classified.

Gaining a higher level of understanding is key but regardless of how deeply you understand anything its crucial to classify the information you gather.

There’s no perfect way to classify in-game data but I think I have a handle on a very Basic and very Effective way to classify In-game information.





That’s for laters though.





Let’s talk first about information quality. A good example of this is when you’re in training mode. Let’s say you labbin’ and come to the conclusion:





“With cloud I can combo landing up-air to finishing touch on Fox”





If you say “cool! I’ve improved so much i’m gonna go outside and puff my vape and brag on twitter about my new thing I learned” and move on then you'resuper happy with some Low-Ass quality data.





Though this information is true it’s very general. If this is all you knew it would not help you win very many games.

Let’s say you explored it further and came to this conclusion:

“Cloud can true combo landing strong up air into SH aerial finishing touch on Fox at about 50% with no rage regardless of fox’s DI. However this combo into finishing touch will not kill fox from the base of any legal stage. It would still kill however on the top platform of battlefield and dream land and also on certain town and city platforms and in the duck hunt tree”





Knowing that it’s a combo doesn’t tell you too much but outlining the practical uses of when its a combo, that’s very good information to have. This combo though interesting is pretty sub-optimal in many many situations and understanding that makes this a higher quality piece of information





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The lab is an easy place to think about the quality of your information because it’s all controlled and simple.

But you don’t just collect data about the game you also collect data about your opponent!

“They like to roll from the ledge”

Is a pretty good thing to know.

“They like to roll from the ledge in this match-up, when I stand in this position and they’re at pretty high percents”

That’s a Better thing to know.

The quality of the data you collect is of utmost importance. That needs to be clear in your mind in order for you to improve.





But equally as important is how you classify this information. As teased earlier here’s a pretty good way to classify the information you collect.









Here’s one way to classify information

System/engine data Player data

And here’s another way

Useful data Useless data









Using these two classifications in tandem you can really start making gathering good information (and making good decisions using your information).





Let’s get to defining those terms:





System/engine data is a truth about the game. Information you learn about the engine that is never gonna change. Player data is knowing stuff that your opponent does.

Knowing when your combo “combos” is system/engine data.

Knowing that your opponent likes to roll is player data.





Yay!

…

Okay but what’s useful data?





Useful data is data that once gathered can be used to win a match. A very simple definition for sure and its open to interpretation to a large extent. But when analyzing things honestly people tend to agree on matters concerning what is useful or not.

The cloud combo from earlier is system data and it’s very very specific, but still can be kind of useful.

Another piece of information for example knowing when your throw kills is much more useful data, the situation will probably occur more often and knowing the percents can mean the difference between winning and losing games.





However,





Knowing how to do break the targets real fast or knowing how to make a black-hole glitch is useless system data. Even though it requires intimate knowledge of the game system it will never help you win a match. The chance of it doing so is zero %.

The usefulness of system data is very easy to define. Time spent playing can make it very clear what things you need to know about the game to win at it.

And it’s easy to see when system data is useless (or useful).





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Player data usefulness is similarly defined. Its useful when it helps you win matches. But player data isn’t just a static set of truths like system data.

Players can learn! They grow and change!

They evolve and they devolve. Some days they play amazing and some days they are on full tilt and mashing like a scrub.

Knowing what a player is going to do is not like knowing a combo range or knowing a setup. It’s a different type of information.





I implore you to classify player data differently in your mind than system/game data.





Treat the information you learn about people differently. It may become completely useless information and you need to realize that fact and let It go. JimboNeutron69 might roll from the ledge every time when you played him 6 months ago but you can’t rely on that information to be true as of right now.





So then… how do you gauge the usefulness of player data?

How do I know when I learned something valuable about my opponent?





Well yung reader, that is the dark art of fighting games.

The indescribable feelings that the best players in the world have enable them to make the most spectacular reads. These Feelings, These Psychic Premonitions. They all stem from the ability to evaluate the usefulness of the player-data you learn.





The best players can even understand what you are learning about them and throw out false information. Getting you to act on this false information is how they open you up so effortlessly.





So to wrap this baby-up:





There’s a lot to know, but knowing how to understand game information is a crucial skill we are all developing all the time.





And the human mind is an eternal chasm that never stops innovating when challenged. So as long as you keep holding that controller you’ll keep learning about your opponent and keep learning about yourself.





And I gotta say that one of the true joys of competing at Smash Bros is that you get to learn a whole lot about yourself.





With much love,

~Khakis





Give me a follow on twitter @Nd_KakaKhakis if you like what you read or want to provide any feedback. Gonna be back at it this winter and I’d love to hear your opinions.