So, I jumped back in this week, refreshed. I think I had gotten too focused on improving my skills and forgot why I started this series. The main goal wasn’t too improve. The main goal was to exhaustively explore a series that I enjoy. I just assumed that I would also get better while I did that.
So, refreshed after the break, I’m now ready to refocus. I’m going to try to get better about taking more breaks, stretching before and after, warming up in training, and taking each online match as a learning experience. I think this will help me enjoy the game more again and avoid physical and mental burnout. And hopefully, avoid getting “tilted”.
One Nights One and Two I started with basic warmups in training mode. Then I played 3v3 Squad Strike vs the Computer using the Nintendo Championships ruleset. Obviously, this isn’t really going to prepare me well for SmashCon, but I was inspired by watching the World Championship. It just looked like fun. On Night One I was able to beat Level 6 CPUs. On Night Two I eked out a win about Level 7 CPUs. Each night I played different characters. Ness is going to be my main, but I wanted to see what other characters I can play reliably.
Then I went into the World of Light on both nights. At this point, I’m only playing no items if there are no conditions and the difficulty is Two Stars or less. No point in making myself frustrated for some bizarre gamer pride.
I’m moving through this slowly. I only have about 17 characters unlocked. Seems like this is going to take quite a long time and I’m only beating the spaces I need to advance.
On Night 3, I didn’t have much time to play, so I decided not to force myself to play for a few minutes.
On Night 4, I played some more 3v3 Squad Strike with another round of characters. I was able to beat Level 8 CPUs. Then I played some more World of Light.
On Night Five and Night Seven I didn’t have time to play Smash, so I wrapped up the week with Night Six. This time I played 5v5 Squad Strike using the Nintendo World Tournament Rules using what I thought was my strongest characters. I barely lost this time and surprisingly I did the worst with Ness.
I’ve pretty much narrowed down my pocket characters to Pikachu, Marth, Inkling, Dr. Mario, and Kirby. I’ve got Cloud, Palutena, Duck Hunt, and Zero Suit Samus as characters I need to spend some more time with to see if they could be pocket characters. But I wonder if maybe after all this I should be considering one of these as my mains? I always come back to Kirby when I get stuck, and even those he’s not top-tier I’ve really got his movement down. And the other characters I do better against higher level CPUs with than Ness. Maybe Ness is will be my secondary in the long run?
Back in World of Light, it is getting hard. I’m needing to use spirits on nearly every challenge now, regardless of what the ranking is. And some spaces just seem nearly impossible, I just have to move on from those spaces and hope I can complete the adventure without beating them.
So, I’m back into Smash. I’m not going as hard as I used to, but I’m having fun with it again.