As someone who plays heavy zoning in a lot of games and who has played Brawl for years, I'll say this. People find it very frustrating to lose to defensive playstyles. It's a slow loss, and trying to "play hard" just makes them lose harder. I mean, in an aggressive match, if you start losing you turn up the heat and try to get back in it. Against a strong defensive player, turning up the heat probably means making more unsafe attacks and getting punished more and harder and just losing faster. That means that when they lose to you they either got punished for "trying hard" or they kept their cool and tried to play patiently and you just played the slow game better, both of which are fairly soul crushing ways to lose. A lot of people respond to that with anger, and people love to blame everything but themselves for their losses.



You're best off wearing it with a badge of pride. If you just get the win and they politely accept defeat, you've won a game which is good. If they are filled with anger, cry out in discontent, and express with gusto how you have no skill and how your character is cheap with your lame camping, you've defeated them in earnest which is glorious. At that point, you've proven both in play and in mind that you are superior to them as you have robbed them of both the game and their dignity. Once you understand what it is, it's truly the most wonderful of moments, and I wish earnestly that every aspiring defensive player should experience this joy at least once.



As per the scene, you have to look at it as a filter. People who complain about how awful camping is are telling you so much useful information about how they actually are really bad at the game, about how little they understand about the game's basic design or metagame (even Melee's metagame; there's WAY more defense there than some people like to pretend), and about how their analysis on whatever else they are about to talk about is probably not going to contain valid or useful information. Most actually good and/or smart players understand defensive play for what it is, and even the strong hyper-offensive players recognize and respect a good defensive threat since part of why they are good offensive players is that they understand how to mount their offense in the face of a legitimate defense.



I mean, I suppose I can't just be totally degrading to these people; only those who pretend to be competitive players and take that attitude are really bad. A lot of them are just casuals, and there's nothing wrong with that and you see it in every game. Casual players know nothing about what it takes to win a game in most circumstances and just imagine it as fighting hard, and the defensive players work against that with their play that is pretty much working against direct action. It actually builds a healthy narrative; the rushdown players are the heroes, and the defensive players are the villains. Both are more exciting for the existence of the other, both will be present in large quantities in a healthy game, and those of us in the know about how these games really work just have to play along and enjoy our roles. The strength of the impression you make is measured best in notoriety, and negative feelings are no worse to generate than positive ones. Again, just let their salty tears give you strength if you're typecast as a bad guy; it's all good, and if you listen carefully, you'll probably find that there are quite a few people in the crowd cheering for you and the other "bad guys" anyway.