perfect play

I’m so tired of hearing the term “perfect” when people talk about matchups. “If Marth plays perfect against icies he can never lose” “Fox wins every matchup if played perfectly” “Sheik will beat every floatie if she plays perfect.” This line of thinking needs to stop and is especially prevalent among you reddittors. There will never be “perfect” play. Sure, maybe one day there can be perfect execution. But even if the player never flubs an input, even if they never miss an L cancel, can do 30 frame perfect multishines, can do pivot tippers every time, you will still never be able to play perfect. A competent player will always be able to beat you. And why is that? Because of human reaction time. There’s some disagreement on how many frames it takes to react. There’s about 4-5 frames of input lag depending on the setup you’re on. And according to google the average human reaction time to a visual stimulus is .25 seconds, or 15 frames since Melee runs at 60 FPS. That means it takes the average human 19-20 frames before they can react to a move using visual cues. Gamers and pro players tend to have a faster reaction time than this, but it’s humanly impossible for anyone to react to a move that’s under 12 frames. Remember you have to consider input lag as a factor. And when you look at frame data, you’ll find that most moves are faster than 12 frames. Therefore you have moves that are not possible to react to . When you have unreactable moves, that means you have to read the move coming in order to block it, run away from it, or counter it with an attack of your own. This is where mixups come into play. Mixups are so crucial in the game and when you look closely almost every single move in the game is a mixup. Some characters have better mixups than others but everyone has them regardless. Mixups are prevalent not just in neutral, but also in the punish and edgeguarding game. Even things like Fox’s waveshine infinite on peach is a mixup because in order to land it you have to read your opponent’s sdi. If you’re wrong on your read you’ll get downsmashed and die. When an icies makes a read on when Marth will sh double fair that’s not the Marth messing up. That’s a hard read with a wavedash grab that ends Marth’s stock. If the icie player is wrong on his/her read nana will be gone. There’s so many other things that people don’t appreciate and instead just write off as “x player messed up” no you moron. He got read in neutral with a mixup option. That shine spike on Marth was a read and if Marth delays or does his up b early fox will miss. The point is in almost every matchup, the game ultimately boils down to mixups. It comes down to the players. Sure there’s characters with less mixups, or who get less/more from their mixups. But mixups will always be prevalent because of human reaction time. There will never ever be perfect play