How to ask a good question

Recently I opened up a coaching thread, in which I asked my readers to reply with an obstacle they’re facing, so that I could help them out. While many have asked me good questions that I could answer, I have noticed that many seem to struggle with formulating a good question. Asking good questions is an essential skill in order to gain good answers, and as such, solutions to possible obstacles you’re facing in-game. After all, a quality answer can only be given to a quality question. After a lovely mutual asked me for an explanation on how to ask good question, I have decided to write this Twitlonger.

The main thing you want to get out of a question is to gain new insights. The ideal question outlines where your insight falls short and how it falls short, most easily done by explaining your thought process and goals. I'll explain by first going through the two essential steps on asking a good question (discovering what the problem is and why it is a problem). Afterwards, I will explain how to ask such a question (by applying concepts) and illustrate how asking a good question leads to good answers. Lastly, I will discuss some pitfalls you might encounter.



So how do you ask a good question?

The first step of asking a good question is understanding your problem. You can discover your problem by specifying. Consider this example of a poor question. Someone asked me 'How do I deal with Inkling bair?'. A question like this is too generic: I can't accurately answer this question because it lacks many relevant variables (it also won't provide you with new insights, it'll just tell you some answers to Inkling's bair - I'll get back to this later.) Does he mean ‘How to deal with Inkling bair’... when cornered? Or does he mean in a juggle situation? Rising Bair? Falling Bair? Walling? Aggressively? What this shows me is that the person asking the question doesn't truly understand what their problem is. They just get hit by Inkling Bair a lot and want to know how to fix that.

Clearly, the question lacks relevant variables.*If you ever doubt whether you have included enough variables, the best way to ensure that you have is to think of a concrete example in your mind and use that as a basis for your question.* So for example, the issue could be Inkling repeatedly short hop Bairing to wall their opponent out.



Once you have done this, it’s time for step two: asking yourself “Why is this a problem?” After step one, the question is 'How do I deal with Inkling's short hop landing bair walling?' - which is a decent question, but still one that is generic. After all, the person asking the question hasn't told me why Inkling Bair is a problem - what exactly is Inkling bair preventing them from doing? They present a problem, but I can't give them new insights if I don't know about their current insights.



Perhaps in this case the problem is: because of Inkling’s Bair walling, I get hit when I move forward. This further specifies the question to 'When I move forward, I get hit by Inkling Bair. How do I deal with this?'. You now understand your problem more clearly. It is important to note what goal of yours is failing. The more specific you are in describing your goal, the better. Going from ‘when I move forward’ to ‘when I move forward to pressure’ to ‘when I move forward to pressure with aerials’ are all significant steps up in clarity.



Asking a good question only consists of these two simple steps, but finding out your specific problem is more difficult than it seems. In order to find your problem, it is important to think in broad concepts, rather than individual situations. You'll never fully understand a situation, even with advice. There are simply too many variables for anyone to truly understand a specific situation. This is what I meant with too specific - whether it's Inkling Bair or Rob Nair, answers will either be too generic to make you a better player, or too specific to make you a better player. This is because *situations* are a poor way to think about problems. You'll find more robust solutions in concepts. NASA could calculate a spacecraft's exact flight path for the upcoming 200 years and then have it be disintegrated by a gamma ray burst. Life, like Smash, simply has too many variables to truly understand a situation. However, we can understand concepts completely.



When asking a question and specifying a specific situation, try to replace as many variables as possible with concepts.* This is where a lot of players go wrong - they can't make this abstract translation, but it's the same as asking 'how do I hold my pen when writing the letter W?' vs 'how do I hold my pen when writing?' - the answer will be the same. A concept can be applied to similar situations and used as a basis of dealing with these similar situations.

If you're not sure whether these variables can be replaced by concepts, you can include that thought. You can say - 'How do I deal with Inkling's short hop landing bair walling? I've tried outranging it but it doesn't work' - this shows that you've tried to apply an answer on a concept basis (all moves have range, so nearly moves can be outranged!) but because of a certain factor, it deviates from the concept (as the asker understands it). This is what *most* people do naturally, they explain why their solution didn't work.



I'd rephrase the original question to 'How do I deal with my opponent using safe landing aerials (such as Inkling Bair)?', which is a conceptual rephrase of 'How do I deal with Inkling's short hop landing bair walling?'. Now we're working with the concept of moves - all moves are basically an animation the character is forced to go through, with hitboxes spawning/moving over a certain duration. A problem like this can be tackled by utilizing knowledge about the concept ‘how to beat moves’ - for example; beat the start-up, outrange the hitbox vertically/horizontally, punish the end-lag, or parry the move.



In order to find an answer, the answerer of your question can then approach this from a conceptual level - why are you attempting to run forward when trying to deal with Inkling bair? As outlined above, the ways to deal with it are usually beat the start-up, outrange the hitbox vertically/horizontally, punish the end-lag, or parry the move. With this answer, you can then either tell the answerer that you didn’t know, or, if you did know, why these solutions didn't work. This lets the answerer specifically dive into the problem and change the way you think about the problem in order to find a solution.



(Side-rant: this is why coaching requires you to talk with someone and ask about their thoughts - people don't understand why what they're doing is not good. This is because the way they think about the game is too limited to come up with a solution, and the way to get past that is to gain new insight by learning about new concepts.)



Some pitfalls:

- While it is good to be specific, avoid asking a question that's too specific. A question like 'How do I deal with Inkling bair when I just started my ZSS ftilt and it's on frame 3 and Inkling bair will hit the fifth pixel from the top of my head's hurtbox in 1 frame' won't help much - it teaches you how to deal with a specific scenario but that won't help you improve as a player, lest you learn all those situations (impossible, obv). This goes back to analyzing the situation and trying to translate as many of these variables into concepts rather than the specific situation. The SAFEST way to balance conceptual/specific information is by, as mentioned before, taking a practical example and asking why.

Example: I keep using short hop aerials, but they all get shielded. (-> Why is this a problem?) I need an answer because short hop aerials are my main neutral tools.

This already shows a lot more in terms of concepts for the answerer to discuss with you, like how short hopping effectively adds to start-up of moves, the importance of ground game, the fact that an aerial getting shielded is not a bad thing per se, the lack of mention of spacing, etc.



- Not knowing what exactly is going wrong. This usually ties in to a lack of knowledge, and should largely be something you figure out yourself. It's usually a matter of not knowing what you are doing. For example, if your issue is simply 'I keep getting hit', then you're already lacking a gameplan. You need to specify what part of your plan is not working. If you do not have a plan, you will have nothing to build on. You haven't thought about it yet, so there's no thought process that can be changed. Insight doesn’t come from nothing, it’s a constantly morphing thing (and it needs a base).

Example: “Fast characters keep rushing me down, I don't know what to do” is a poorer question than “I try to keep fast characters out with ZSS Nair, but it doesn't work”.

Even a plan as basic as this can be talked about.



In closing, in order to ask a good question:

You have an issue

You specify this issue with a concrete example

You explain your thought process and goals (read: you explain why this is a problem)

You (try to) make an abstract translation from the concrete example to concepts



Even admitting ‘I don’t know what to do when my opponent keeps playing defensively’ is good - it shows your insight, which is basically nothing. But at least it lets the answerer ask questions like ‘What are you trying to do then?’

Other good questions approach concepts directly:

https://twitter.com/SUGOI_Smooth/status/1133345436373344256 or this tweet https://twitter.com/Patrino_Smash/status/1133364152859275264

Like I mentioned, what you ideally want from asking a good question, is to gain insight.



Thanks @MeruSensei for proofreading



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