People saying that 70% of Smash is natural ability and I’m here wondering why I died to Ganon at 30%

“70% of Smash is natural talent” *Dies to Hero at 0% from a lucky thwack, 20% from a critical hit at ledge, loses to Game and Watch from lucky 9 twice in the same match, Jab jab power dunk, Pk fire, fire arrow, misfire green missle, and double critical hits*

You could be the most talented person OR put in a ton of effort. People will still say you're carried.

If this is what BestNess meant, I can agree with him to an extent.

I don’t think bestness was talking about a “super smash bros ultimate gene” being born into some players. He seems to be talking about how people’s brains are set up differently and can be beneficial to some people. Some people will naturally start out better due to uncontrollable factors like fast reaction times, memorization of matchups/moves, muscle memory and decision making, and more controllable ones like familiarity with video games/fighting games and practice habits. Some players will learn faster if they are good at adapting overall or generally learn faster, not to mention practice habits, motivation and time. Top players aren’t necessarily born with smash bros brains but rather have brains with slight advantages that allow them to learn faster. This doesn’t mean that all top players are and can only be built in this way, but some will naturally have to work harder for it. One way to think of it is like physical sports. Many top players seemed to have been born naturally muscular in addition to other abilities like eye hand coordination that could help them in a game. Other top players didn’t need these traits but it was helpful to have them so they could focus on improving their overall game rather than building the basic skills and then their game.

I think the saying “hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard” describes everything about hard work vs talent

I’m glad you made this clear because BN got too much backlash.

6:43 my mans studying cow aerodynamcis

I'm the this weird limbo that I'm not really good at something, just ok on everything. It explains more why I main Mario.

Terry Mozart is my new favorite thing The most inspirational thing to me is HBox's whole arc. That said, I have nearly 200 hours in ultimate and no characters over 1mil, yet alone in elite. It hurts my soul.

As my dad used to say when I was getting competitive: practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect

I've been playing smash on and off since melee. I haven't started truly making consistent improvement until ultimate. It wasn't until ultimate that I really became a student of the game, just trying to learn everything I can about my character and everything about the game in general (drag downs, jab locks, tech, etc) Back when Brawl had been out for a bit, I owned it and my friend used to come over and play. I would beat him most of the time but he started beating me too. He was getting better. Then smash 4 comes around. I didn't own it and I barely played it. Now ultimate is out. That same friend won a local tournament in our area using Ganon only. And he basically pockets half the roster. He's gotten so much better, it's inspiring. And I think it shows how hard work will always beat talent if the talented one doesn't work hard.

BananaBoySSB: You can’t just play a lot and get better. DDee: I just got good by playing the game lol

While I was hearing you, many concepts of psychology, like creativity, motivation, improvement, and positivity, came to mind and I realized that you actually care and dedicate to this in another whole level. Haha i was even thinking of studying you for my master degree. Really great video! (Sorry if bad english, not my first language)

great vid, I've been losing my passion for smash recently. I don't think I wanna go Top tier pro buy I definitely ant to improve. This may have been the food of thought I needed. *_Thanks_*

yeah I dropped practice because life got in the way. There's a job, friends and other games.

2:26 "motivation is dead" I LOVE THAT SONG!

Me: Gets pumped up to lab a game to death and be the best Also me: *Sees a literal fetus win EVO* Me: *ExcUsE mE wHAt ThE fRIcK*

“It feels like nairo was never not a top player” welp, there goes that streak 😔

It's about reaction time. That can't be learned. The top pros in almost all esports can react in .1 seconds, where the average is .25 seconds. If someone can react over twice as fast as the next person, it is obviously conducive to higher-level play.

As a chicken bone collector that one example really helped

In a ton of these videos, you've always mentioned mindsets, but I don't recall you making a video on your mindset for smash. I think it'd be a really cool idea! I know that it's different on everyone, but this is something that many people struggle with, and it definitely serves as a huge roadblock in the path to improve greatly, which is a major theme for these videos. It'd be amazing if there were a video on the best mindset to approach things with. In fact, your mindset determines whether you can do these things that you demonstrate in your videos. Personally, this is my own greatest roadblock, so it'd be amazing if you could cover this. (Yes, this is copy and pasted from the last video. To be fair, I posted it yesterday, and I really want this to be seen. Also, this might not fit the context of this video specifically as I haven’t watched it yet, so sorry.) Edit: Oops, I didn’t know about that other video you made. Also, this kind of covered what I was thinking of. Thank you!

4:20 Did I just see Evangelion casually placed in a SSB video?

I think there is a big difference between "Play more" and "play efficiently" Ofc dont just play lvl 9 cpus every day and expect to out play everyone.its about how you spend that time thats important not the amount of it

Banana Boy is applying the principle of deliberate practice in this video. The book Peak describes expertise research, basically how experts become expert in their field (it isn’t just 10,000 hours). Keys include: having a mental model of what the goal is, having a guide to help guide your efforts, and deliberately practicing areas of weakness in a scientific manner. Recommended reading and great job with the topic Banana Boy.

Banana Boy, I've always loved your videos but the fact that you put a MegaloBox clip in the video just made me love your videos even more

3:34 i would recommend you to read 'the will to keep winning' by daigo umehara (street fighter legend) which is about that exact issue.

*Actually struggle to do DJCZ with Lucas* *See video* Oh...

3:45 omg .... I feel that one ... but then I go online and fight people who exploit my weaknesses. And they leave and I never get to learn the matchup properly . There are so many matchups and I have zero matchup knowledge cuz I don’t play people out of my community often .

This was a very helpful video for me. BananaBoy was my roommate at college for two semesters and I can vouch for everything he said here. He pushed himself so he could go to the tournaments he wanted to go to. He made sacrifices so he could get out these videos as much as humanly possible on his own. He did what he needed to do, and thought more about the long term gain than the short term cost. His work ethic and passion were an inspiration to me then and they still are now. He would spar with me from time to time and give me tips to improve my Pac-Man (which I really appreciated!). This video helped me see that I often would just rest on my laurels when I was doing well and over time that held me back a lot from improving. Let's Go BananaBoy! Thanks for sharing your experiences and advice with us man.

It's like the 10,000 hour rule. It (supposedly) takes 10,000 hours to be a master at something, but it only takes 100 hours to be 80% of that. When it comes to "being good" at something, everyone who is good at a skill is pretty much at the same level, but it's that extra 20% that separates people who are good at it from people who have broken through that skill ceiling and broken through that mindset of comfortability that most people have once they've gotten good at something.

Me: *has neither*

I’m fine with bestness making that tweet because now I can just say my family lineage has a long line of shitty gamers as an excuse XD

What sucks for me is that I struggle to find my weak points because all my friends who play the game aren't at my skill level at all. There's only one friend I have that pose's some kind of challenge, but not enough to help me improve. The only habit I tried hard to stop and suddenly picked up on again is jumping immediately after I DI away from the blast zone, resulting in me getting edge guarded. That's another problem though because my friends never pick up on my habits and never counter it so my instinct would be to keep on doing it. I think it's just my job to work more towards my improvement with quarantine giving me that time.

learning from your losses is one million times more valuable than trying to replicate your wins.

I'm just a guy who's a smasher for fun.

My man, I would like to say, this video is something I couldn’t agree with back then, but now, I feel like you’re correct. Hard work is something no one can understand. I played smash for along time, this game is hard to do, when you play, you lose all focus, when I play, I feel like I like have the match, but then lose the match. I didn’t think I’d be able to be in my smash crews. I can’t say I’m good at smash, I just adapt through remembering what others do when I do play my character. I am going to be the best Min Min Player in Michigan, and hopefully the rest of the world. I hope you get better and better at this game, I do as well. Thanks for all you do.

Everyone be talking Talent vs. Effort But nobody talking about how I'm a hero main and kill people at 0%. Neither talent nor effort required.

These videos really strike the problem as at its core, instead of glossing over it with the same generalized quotes. Kudos for really teaching people what it takes to get better, myself included.

Something I feel needs to be addressed is, if you want to be the best or one of the best, you have to have talent. Doesn't matter how hard or smart you work. You need talent to be the best

For me, I see 2 "just keep playing" and what some pros might think when they say it. Just keep playing NUMBER 1. learn from it. (i see this as training) with the mentality of wanting to get better, making schedules, and doing different exercises for long periods of time (Yes I do see this as the typical cliche of "just keep playing" because...it is and pros might mean this one when they say it because doing so is how they got their place as Pro smash players and it wasn't talent alone). The just keep playing NUMBER 2. hitting friends up to play friendlies or going online to just play the game, what Bestness might have thought.

You know you want to join us BBoy. Just do it!! -This post made by the chicken bone collecting gang

It's really about the motivation. When you play with the motivation to be better than everyone, you are more than likely to succeed over someone with a lesser motivation. I played smash 4 for 3 years and was bad because I wanted to win but I didn't know how. I was overall basic until I had one match that made me feel so helpless that in the next match I beat him in an unbelievable way. In an instant I changed the way I played or even looked at smash because I finally had enough motivation to not just get better but to be better than anyone else. Ever since that day my win rate went from 50% to 85% in smash 4. Even in ultimate I'm just as good with 400 hours of game time as anyone with 2000 to 4000 hours just because I wanted to prove I can be just as good with less. I don't believe exactly that it's natural talent but if you push just that hard to figure it out once you do, you won't look at it the same way again, and that applies to anything involving competition.

if only my self esteem was high enough to take these videos into consideration

I started playing Smash Bros when I was really little on Brawl, and my dad would always kick my butt. When Smash Ultimate was revealed, I started practicing Sm4sh a ton, and I started beating my dad about half the time. When Smash Ultimate came out, i realized that I actually still really suck, so I looked up a bunch of tips for the game, and I think that I've greatly improved since then. But in the end, I still suck, which is fine! It allows me to see my mistakes and improve based off of them. Great video, Dude! Thanks to anyone who took the time to read my short story!

Your videos are a huge reason for my improvements, so thank you. I'm an excellent problem solver, but not a great problem finder. You point out mistakes I didn't even know I had pretty much every video. A big example is punishing landing. I would always go for the same thing, and if they figured it out, I would stop doing it but let them land for free. Now I have many tools in my arsenal for adaptation. :)

BestNess was kinda right? Im glad he brought it up.. its a HUGE subjective topic. I think its alot of natural ability to reach higher ceilings and faster development, but effort can totally work. Just, yeah, natural intelligence helps ALOT.

Talent/Instinct can only give you so much, but sticking to just talent means you're not learning. Most of fighting games is about paying attention. It's a good combination of learning how to read your opponent in neutral, practicing input executions for command moves and/or combos, and actually enjoying the game itself-- especially enough to practice the first two. The only real talent necessary to any task is enjoying it to a fanatical level of dedication. While it's not exactly Smash, that level of dedication is what makes BrolyLegs competitive level Street Fighter player.

Omg this is just the video I needed. I never realized that just saying "oh I shouldn't do that" doesn't do anything, I actually thought that saying that in my head would let me know to mix it up.

Adaptation and creative thinking are important parts of the formula. So people who are naturally good at those things will have an advantage over those who don't. But as you go over in the video, if you really want to get better you HAVE to seek out challenges. That's the best way to start finding what you're not doing right. From that point, your own ability for adaptation and creativity can take you further, and if not then you may need to seek out info or guidance from people farther along than you to figure out how to correct your weaknesses.

Everything you do, always do your best at it! You'll get better!

My take on talent vs effort is that talent is like a multiplier. If someone is twice as talented as someone else (though that would be two ends of the spectrum of talent), they will see double the improvement with the same amount of effort. Essentially, talent is a big advantage, but is nothing without/compared to effort.

"go to college to get good at smash" >me literally fails college to get good at smash

Just gotta say, i love the reference to megalobox, the legend

Talent is how fast u can learn something, it does not mean u are really good at it. Someone can be really talented in anything but without the practice it doesnt matter.

Here’s a quote “hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard”

Yeah, I can feel this. My abilities, even after trying to work on them, are super damn lopsided and I think my approaches are flat wrong, so I need to figure out how to go from here. What's worse is that you see videos like "how to adapt", but no videos like "how to make bad thumbs not go too hard on the stick when you want to walk or use a tilt" or "how to remember combos because you never can even when you were just watching them" or "how to deal with people who have faster, stronger, bigger attacks when you're stuck in shield". Never mind that having Rosalina and Luma as a main means it's hard to tell when I beat someone how much if it is just the advantage of matchup familiarity and how much is genuine skill difference in my favor

Hard work is like a multiplier, it makes your skill grow a lot and can be made bigger even if it just goes up by one. Talent is like an added bonus after the multiplier has been applied, it is nice, but nowhere near as good as hard work.

I wrote this as a response to someone who got killed for holding ledge and thought it might be helpful to anyone having the same problem. " Well that would be why my mans gotta choose your ledge option a bit quicker. This can be applied to a lot of match ups especially ones where the character requires a time to make a set up happen (ex. pac man). Choosing a fast ledge option can help avoid a lot of things and can also bait people into choosing something to cover your quick option. This allowing you to hold ledge longer as a mix up and whiff punish their option"

I don’t have enough time to go to tournaments or friendliest even really. But I’m content with how decent I am in terms of more casual players. Still haven’t even been able pick a main really.

I love how you showed motivation is dead when saying they lose motivation

There's probably someone out there that could be tournament level after playing the game for 1 week. There's probably also someone out there that can devote their entire life to the game and still suck. (yes, anti-talent is a thing.) Everyone has something they're born to be a master of, but most of us will die before ever finding that thing. Your weird talent could be painting intricate designs on mountains by throwing paint filled darts against rocky cliffsides with your feet. Chances are you will never try it to find out. On the other hand, maybe something as simple as walking is your anti-talent and you start sweating whenever you even think out stairs.

After playing smash since childhood, you tend to see which the difference between a casual, a competitive player and a pro player. Id say the most important is adapting on the fly. Changing up your playstyle by a little could litarally win you the match. Smash is a game where you want to get in your opponents head, make them question if the option there about to pick a good option limiting them on there responses. What i like to do to get them pissed at me is run straight at them ( and if they spotdodge ) crouch once and run away with banjo. (If not b reverse a downb and continue nuetral) its a small thing but those small interactions can make or break the set.

I learned how to get better by raising my CPU lvl.

As one of my artist youtuber said, practice does not make perfect, but there is perfect practice

4:30 finally glad to see megaloblox getting the spotlight

Great video. Someone mentioned Gladwell's "Outliers" so I thought I'd mention "Peak: Secrets from the new science of expertise". They key thing that this book mentions is that you have to do "deliberate practice" which I think he described pretty well in the video. You may not have the same opportunities or drive as someone else but you can always get better through good practice. That's just how our brains work and it's crazy. Like, we can adapt to skills that have no use for our survival whatsoever because our brains evolved to adapt to adapting itself.

Thanks for the video and thank you for the ending. I nearly teared up when I saw that. As someone who is affected by it I really appreciate it.

Bn is 100% right on this and this isn't only with smash or video games in general. Let's take sports, more specific football (or soccer whatever), the best player in the world is Lionel Messi and the second best is Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi is known as the "talented guy" while Ronaldo is known as the "hardworking guy". Obviously Ronaldo is still talented and Messi is still hardworking but in general, Ronaldo has a lot of traits that you can only have if you train a lot (strength, stamina, shot power, jumping) while Messi has traits that you still have to train all the time but are basically things he's born with (precision, knowing the game, reading the opponents, knowing exactly what your teammates are going to do) and he is widely considered to be better than Ronaldo. But these are obviously extreme cases, but I have less extreme ones (still only with football as that's the sport I know most about). For example every few years we have a "new Messi" from somewhere in the world what basically just means another talented, young player. And although most of these don't even come near to the level Messi is, we still see someone like this playing for top teams. But we rarely hear about a "new Ronaldo". You know why? Because there are nearly no young players that are being considered as more hardworking than they are talented. Because talent is way more important. Again, you obviously need both to get world-class but we saw a lot of players playing for top teams that are just talented, the problem with them is they're not working hard enough. But a player that doesn't have an outstanding talent but is working hard every day (maybe harder than Ronaldo) won't make it anywhere in today's football world. Not only are the traits that talented players have way more important but when you're not exceptionally talented, there's not much you can work on that is going to make you great at something. And I know all of the people that made it are going to say that they made it because they worked so hard because they want to get their credit which is fine but it's really refreshing seeing someone that made it say that he's basically "lucky" he made it, he's talented.

So what matters are the amount of practise, practicing strategy and natural talent. I'd say *The curve of improvement and practise* (y=skill, x=amount of practise) is logarithmic. How high one's logarithmic curve reaches is determined by certain natural abilities. How steep one's curve is (how fast one improves) is also controlloed by certain abilities and also the practicing strategy. But hey, that's just a _hypothesis._

It’s the same crap with Naruto. I know it’s unrelated but hear me out. During his fight with Neji, Neji says his dream of being hokage is silly and that he needs to be realistic and Naruto responds that hard work does beat talent to which he disagrees. Neji says that if everyone really wanted it and worked hard then everyone is qualified to be hokage which isn’t true because that’s a position that you’re born for not made for. Naruto after hearing that is speechless by how right Neji is. The first-fourth hokage (at the time of the fight) weren’t nobodies, no they were all prodigies that were blessed with this so called talent he spoke of.

lol fighting games are my hobby to help me improve my dedication

Look up the Dunning-Kruger effect, and look at the graph that shows up. Young BananaBoy who thinks he can beat ZeRo is on top of the peak of Mount Stupid (high confidence, low skill), and average players who know they aren’t the best but have some skill are in the Valley of Despair (low confidence, average skill). But if anyone stuck in that valley has any drive and passion for the game to improve their game, they will continue to build more and more confidence as they improve. And one day with enough hard work they can reach a point of high confidence and high skill to match. This process isn’t exclusive to Smash, it is a mindset that plays out for all walks of life.

I'm not lammer tier, but I'm as far from actual competitive playing as my main char is from the top rank. I play having fun, and in actual competition I get heavily destroyed (I actually lost against someone who had left hand broken once). When I try to think "what am I doing wrong" or "I can win this", is when I can't win a competitive match at all. Only when I think "Okay, I may not be able to win the match, but I can wreck the match for them", and begin thinking of what my opponent will do next instead of what should I do, is when I have a chance to win these.

I love watching the video on the aerodynamics of a cow

intelligence and learning speed are directly connected to IQ which studies have shown is primarily genetic, so problem solving skills and learning quick is "magic talent genes" what's more is how much time someone spends on a game is mostly determined by interest and how much time the individual has, so for any hardcore fan, it comes down to how much time can they afford (which basically means how much money do you have/is going pro viable for you) and how good their "magic talent genes" are. the fact is everyone who makes it big tries hard and so do most of the people who don't, the difference is some try hard and were born with talent in the field they're passionate about and others aren't, some try hard and have all the time and money they need to invest in what they strive for and some don't. I think what people forget about skill vs talent is that someone can have talent and still work hard it doesn't have to be one or the other.

BananaBoy Can you make a video of how to beat an aggressive player? Keep up the good work

I wont lie that chicken bone collecting part made me laugh harder than care to admit

I do think that innate skills, or lack of them, can hinder the skill ceiling that someone is able to achieve. For example, I have seriously slow fingers and can't consistently shorthop or wavedash even if my life depended on it. Grinding shorthops has given me no results whatsoever, so I gave up on that and began researching ways to play around my inability to perform any advanced tech and focus on the basics. Yes, it limits my options and yes, opponents able to perform tech consistently will have an easier time beating me, but it's all I can work with and I have to play with whatever resources I do have access to (mind games, neutral, positioning)

Hard work can replace talent but talent can't replace hard work.

I have neither

It was incredibly obvious for me with CS when I started. I played in a small town among my friends and was nowhere near the best player. A close friend and I moved to the city for college and played daily at the Cybercafe where players from a few colleges gathered to play along. After just about 4-5 months when we returned to play with our friends back in our hometown (Who have also constantly been playing), we absolutely destroyed then with 42/2 K/D ratios. Even we could not understand, from our perspective, it felt like friends in our home town became worse.

You don't need talent. You just need BananaBoy.

My biggest issue in smash is going for stylish plays. I play snake, but the way I play him isnt optimal because I dont camp. So I go for risky stuff a ton.

Last time I was this early, Ridley wasn't in Smash Ultimate.

I used to play to a friend that was pretty good, he taught me a lot and showed me what habits i should get, since then id say I'm pretty good, better than a casual (i don't lose to the majority of my friends) and i can have 50/50 with players that practice. Personally I'm not a gamer and definitely a slow learner but for smash id say I'm pretty good, also your vids helped a lot but yeh

Mozart was definitely hard work as well as the help of his father who corrected his compositions up to the age of 16. I am sure he also had some talent but he spent many many hours composing from a very young age.

Would love that clip where the guy cracks open a beer after rock paper scissors

I think Hungrybox put it best. Everyone can become good at the game, Natural talent translates into how quickly improvement takes. some people may have brains that learn quickly, others may have brains that require much more effort to learn a subject, smash or otherwise. but if you are willing to put in the effort to become great, regardless of how much subjectively that may be, you can become great. Same as a short Basketball player or a blind pianist.

Hey BananaBoy, Doublenickels here, I’m not actively playing smash anymore, and I don’t know if you remember me. BestNess has a point, and a very strong one when you look at the science. Of course, this doesn’t mean your genes are the only factor in play, but when we look at IQ research and big five personality research we find that our genes make up a large part of the variance between people, over 50% in the case of IQ. The best predictors of success in any field are IQ and conscientiousness (hard work), so yes, hard work makes a difference, but not everyone is naturally high in conscientiousness. Since we can’t change our genes, we have to look at environmental factors, and this is true of any area of improvement, not just Smash. As we get older we gain more control over our environment, since we’re talking Smash, things we can do include freeing up some time to practice and study, surrounding one’s self with high quality players, attending more events and subscribing to channels like yours in order to make the information more accessible and at the forefront of one’s thoughts. Of course, these measures aren’t always feasible and can’t correct for more serious deficiencies, and in those instances, it’s okay to accept that one might not be a high level player. In my case, I found other interests, a career in a different type of game and wasn’t and still am not in a position where putting hard work towards Smash is feasible. Just adding my two cents, I am a psychology guy after all, so this stuff interests me. Keep up the good content.

Who else was waiting for him to say "take personal responsibility"?

It’s seems like the main point is to always strive to improve not matter your level

I think Bestness tweets were addressing something not about the game and more about people; only some people have the inclination to play competitively consistently

I'm just gonna put this out there because I'm feeling pretty good about myself. 28, haven't played smash since melee full time bank supervisor and father of an almost 1 year old (active father spend all the time he's awake with him) and I just broke 7.4 mil GSP with my main Lucas (I don't spam freeze, so don't come at me sideways. I love spikes

Sure, natural ability does help since you don’t have to grind as much as someone with no natural ability, but it only helps to an extent. For example, maybe you’re talented at combos and edgeguarding, but you’ll still have to work hard for the rest of important things for smash like landing, ledgetrapping, etc. Once you get to top level, natural ability won’t matter as much

I think I'm like 80 % natural and 20% skill... I live in Africa and there aren't even 2 full hands of people playing smash a bit seriously. Sometimes we had meetings and chilled together, had some fun doing singles and doubles... But since the corona madness, I haven't seen them again. I used to look up to pro game play of my main and secondaries to improve and defeat them all, which happened a month before shutdown. Now I am stuck home, styling on bots with the little knowledge I have. A few months ago when I still mained Yoshi, I got asked to give some tips, but I couldn't since Yoshi felt so natural for me after playing him for 3 years. Now that I changed characters recently, even if he has special tech, I can still explain how to use it because I trained hard and understood. Talent is something reserved, whereas hard work and knowledge can be shared.

I mainly agree with your opinion. Consider most of us don't really have to be a professional players, I don't think talent matter that much in average competitive scene (i.e. online play, friendlies). Like you can work really hard to get a PhD degree at Math but probably not a Fields Medal. In contrast to the former example, Srinivasa Ramanujan is a genius in Math, however he received no formal training in academy. His discovery was considered too novel and incomprehensible at his time, due to the fact that he didn't put his work in academic disciplines. If not his academic partner realized how much those are valued then they'd probably never be bringing to the light. What I am trying to say is that if only such a genius can receive formal education then he probably would have much better accomplishment than he already was. *TL;DR Hard work is more important when talent doesn't work hard.*

thanks for gen 4 music :)

When I, a speedcuber, sees Feliks Zemdegs

In my opinion there isn't much of a discussion to do here. You can become an amazing player with some hard work but to get to the top of the top you will need the talent as well as hard work.