The toxicity of picking the ditto on unranked

Hi. You don’t know me, but I’m a newcomer to the smash scene. While I’ve watched and played smash on and off throughout the years since it first came out, it wasn’t until slippi was released last year that I got back into the game. I’m an eager beginner looking to join the scene of a game I’ve watched from the sidelines for so long now. A new player, one of those players the community needs to keep growing.

I’ve been dutifully practicing my wave dashes, ledge dashes, L-cancels, edge cancels, power shields, etc. day in and day out. Slowly trying to get a handle on the game that has grown out of the afterschool pastime that I remember playing with my friends on a tiny CRT up in their attic. It’s not the same game anymore — I know that. I can’t get away with F-smashing my way across the stage, or expect to catch my opponent walking into a fully charged punch as DK.

I want to get good. I want to unravel the mysteries that this game, 20 years on, is shrouded in. It’s all murky in my beginners mind, but I’m starting to puzzle out the intricacies of the mythical ‘neutral’, learning what options are and aren’t safe on shield, and what to do to deal with Falco lasers, Marth’s nair, and Fox’s shine. Melee is a tough nut to crack, but by god, I’m trying.

So of course I’m doing what any new player would do when trying to find games. Since I joined at a time when offline tournaments were non-existent I don’t have any friends I can call up for games. I don’t have a group of regular practice partners to play with, alas — I’m out here all alone. So I find games the only way I know how. I boot up slippi and click on that big bright Unranked button — hoping a good set of games awaits me in the chaotic mess that is rollback netplay.

If your experience is anything like mine, then you know how netplay is. Sometimes it’s great — after quitting out on a couple of low tiers, or having them quit out on you mid game when you land more than two moves in a row, you eventually find someone just about your level. What a rare treat! You’re rewarded with a good session of close games, trading them back and forth with many last stock nail biters. You can feel yourself getting better, hitting those combos you were dropping the day before. But it’s not always so idyllic.

No.

Every now and again you will get matched against a player just above your skill range. You’ll whiff a few aerials, do an unsafe attack on shield and it’s like a switch flips. Suddenly they’re standing in place spamming uptilt, or repeatedly fishing for a hit while showing off some piece of tech skill that they know you don’t have.

Inevitably, no matter how much you try to match them — trying to will your fingers to move faster and more accurately than they ever have before — what you knew was going to happen comes to pass … you lose. Willing to play a few more since you do want to learn, and playing against someone better than you is good practice, you hit start. The screen quickly flashes black, and when it lights up again what you were afraid to see is staring right back in your face. They’ve picked the same character as you.

This gets my goat. I know that they’re not doing this because they like my character, they are not doing this because they are tired of playing whatever main they started with. No. They are making a statement. A loud and clear statement. They are saying:

“I am better than you. The reason you lost the last game? It wasn’t the match-up. It wasn’t the shy guy who caught a stray aerial and kept you in hit lag long enough for me to punish you. Ha! Don’t be foolish. It is because I am better than you at this game. Yes, if there was even a sliver of doubt in your mind about who was the better player, let me disabuse you of it. It is me by a country mile. In fact, it’s not even just that I am better than you, it’s that you can barely move, barely play even. Your tech skill? Dogshit. Your punish game? Trash. Look at me gracefully moving around the stage — perfectly L-canceling aerials that you’ve only dreamed of placing as well as I am. Watch as your predictable approaches get stuffed by me over and over again. I’m not just better than you, I can move better than you with your own character. A character I only pick up every once and a while for a laugh. Get fucked.”

That is what this is saying. Slippi may only have 16 pre-filled chat messages, but actions speak louder than words.

And frankly? I’m fed up with it.

Look. I know I’m trash, I know my movement is bad. Good lord do I know. In fact, I know better than anyone! Do you know how many humiliating losses I’ve had to endure? Flubbing some piece of myriad of tech skills required to play this game and SD-ing on my last (or first, second, and third) stock. Same as you probably did! I’m trying. I’m trying to get better, and I’m trying to not let this game grind my patience down to its last bit.

But the reward for the years of losses you’ve overcome is not the freedom to inflict them onto the game’s newcomers. If you’re bored of playing with me then just quit out! Don’t turn that boredom into the knife-edge of sadistic glee as you mercilessly pummel me with the character I’ve spent countless hours practicing. Go pick on someone your own size.

In the immortal words of bobby big ballz, “JESUS! Just let me be me!”