Since the topic on hard work vs talent is pretty hot rn, I’d like to make a thread based on my experience in super smash bros overall:

If there’s anything I’ve learned from playing smash competitively for over 3 years (I started in late 2016), it’s that there’s so much that factors into a player’s ability to learn and improve in a competitive environment.

It’s not as black and white as “you either have raw talent or you don’t”. When looking to improve in this game, it depends entirely on the player’s mentality. How passionate are they for the game? How are they perceiving it?

What flaws can they detect in their play and what ideas do they construct to improve those flaws? How capable are they of understanding the game? How capable are they of understanding their opponent? How well are they at keeping their composure? Controlling their emotions?

There’s so much more than talent itself, and for every single player that I know that isn’t excelling in this game or isn’t reaching their goals, it’s because they are flawed somewhere in one or more of these aspects.

Being passionate over the game is a huge factor in improving, because it determines how much you are willing to push to reach the top. It shows how willing you are to grind out, learn the difficult tasks, how eager you are to learn, etc…

People without real passion won’t pay nearly as much attention to the game as opposed to those that do have that fire in them. That creates a huge gap in how fast you will improve, and that’s something bigger than just talent itself.

Where the talent comes in, imo, is how people perceive the game.
When I played smash 4, I started off with Sonic and pretty much stuck to him for every tournament match I’ve played ever since. All my real practice was with Sonic and all I knew was how to play him.

When I started competing, I was getting 33rd/49th at my locals (out of usually 60-70 entrants), and I was pretty much stuck there for the first year with only slight improvements. Being stuck there was dreading and felt like getting better was a way too hard and long process

But eventually, I started to learn some things. I got a little more passionate, seeing the top sonic’s do well made me aspired to do better as well. It also made me realized how good sonic was in the game, and I started to figure the character out more

I eventually so gradual improvement in my play and over the span of a few months I went from going 2 – 2 to contending for PR, and eventually, I became top 10 in my region. I felt extremely happy with my improvement and how I evolved as a player

I’ve been told by many, top players included, that I was the fastest improving player in my region, and the results were there to show for it. That to me felt like the raw talent that I wanted, and it felt like I had it.

Fast forward to the release of ultimate, and that raw talent I once had vanished. I go from consistently winning in my region to getting 33rd AGAIN. What on earth happened? I started losing to players I used to consistently beat, and I felt like I was getting worse

You can’t imagine how confused I was, to the point where I convinced that this game wasn’t for me. Sometimes I even blamed my own character. But it took a while to realize that in the end, my perception on the game was all messed up.

In smash 4, I was abusing a broken mechanic. Sonic had such strong options in the game, that I didn’t even have to LEARN the game itself. I just constantly got better at abusing the strong options sonic had, and that was how I got the better results.

By doing so, I never really learned the game, and came to realize that the “talent” was just my ability to learn what works, and run with it. To have talent is to be able to see the bigger picture, to be able to play the game and understand how the GAME works.

It goes much further than just abusing a mechanic of your own character. It comes down to being able to abuse the mechanics of the game, exploiting your opponent’s mentality and playstyle, learning how to exploit their characters,

and how you can use your character’s tools to capitalize on all that. Having talent is being able to perceive all these things on your own, and have the capability to improve on those through practice and effort.

By narrowing my perception to abusing sonic’s broken tools in smash 4, I never looked into the other stuff, and that is what made me an overall bad player. I had to completely change my perception of the game and start working on my drawbacks.

I had to essentially learn from scratch and start thinking outside of this narrow mindset. It was time to learn how to study my opponents, their character, the mechanics of the game beyond my character, interactions, and so on

It wasn’t until I started doing that until I saw results. I was starting to completely shift the tides and I started improving dramatically and was getting closer and closer to the results I once had in smash 4. This wasn’t me suddenly reaching my superior genetics,

This was me suddenly using the talent of critical thinking and my passion to start learning and observing more. To retain what I learn, to be open minded, and to start changing my perspective so I could learn in new ways I’ve never tried learning in before.

There are no short cuts to improving, not even talent. The concept of talent is simply the concept of a player having the natural mindset for understanding the game and knowing how to improve in a competitive environment against people.

Talent isn’t something that carries the player to victory, but something that effects the way you grow as a player through hard work. You can’t succeed off of talent without hard work, but you can succeed off of hard work without talent.

I’m convinced that where people lack talent, they can substitute it for passion. Passion is what drives a player to work hard and put the effort in to improve. It makes them interested in learning, which makes people absorb information better.

It makes them more motivated and helps build the mentality to want to succeed. And all of this can be helped with guidance as well. So for this whole talent vs hard work debate, I believe that hard work can always get you the results you desire

As long as you have the proper guidance and passion for what you are aiming for. Talent is just something that allows the player to be their own proper guidance.
Anyways, that is my two cents. Hope you guys enjoyed the read