As this article is in some way directed toward me, I have decided to answer each of the discussion questions to the best of my ability. Hopefully, I don't bore anyone to death lol.
WALL OF TEXT INCOMING. I'll try to do a TL;DR, but I do highly recommend reading everything.
First off, my history with Smash. Prepare yourself charges fsmash. I originally started playing Smash 4 at the weeklies our smash club hosts in the underground area of the student center, which are free to enter. I played in two tournaments, and I only took one stock in both of those tournaments. *Total.** This was to be a bit expected, given I basically only knew the basic controls at the time. I had no Smash experience, let alone fighting game experience, prior to entering tournaments. Backing up a bit, I originally found the Smash club when I was hanging out and I saw a bunch of people playing Smash, and I became interested in getting involved and picking up Smash. I asked about playing in tournaments and the TO said that since entering was completely free, that I should just go for it, with somewhat of a premise that tournament exposure would cause the most rapid improvement.
Alright, so after the second tournament, with getting double 2 stocked twice, a friend of mine, u/SnoopKitties, introduced me to Project M. Lucario looked pretty cool, and he told me about his on-hit cancel mechanic. I grasp the whole magic series immediately. It felt intuitive, it clicked with me, and everyone else felt laggy, weird, and/or jank by comparison. At my first PM weekly (free to enter, same stuff as the smash 4 ones I had previously entered), I still busted out, BUT I forced a Game 3 in my first set, AND I 0 to deathed my opponent in the game I won. Needless to say, I gave up on Sm4sh because PM Lucario's on-hit cancelling mechanic works like animation cancels on Riven in League of Legends, so I already had a foot in the door, so to speak. I didn't get a tournament setup for quite a while, and I never really went out to play people, so I spent my time on Dolphin labbing out techskill. I went from wavedashes and SHFFL to being able to OHC all of Lucario's moves, and overall Lucario things. I had the mentality that I could win by pressing buttons faster than my opponent (I sometimes think this way today, which is a bit of a crying shame), so my practice time was spent solely in lab along with watching IPK's sets to look for combos. However, I would proceed to go double 0-2 at any and all tournaments for the rest of the semester, including two Texas regionals. At my first regional, I ran into Fearless, who is considered top Lucario in Texas (Rai did allegedly best Fearless off-stream at a Bowser's Revenge tournament, so some dispute lol). Here, I finally was able to grasp ASC (I had a conceptual idea of how it worked, but I never knew how to practice it) due to speaking with Fearless, and playing friendlies with him a bunch (shout-out to Fearless for being awesome, shame we couldn't play each other on Saturday :) ).
Also, during this time, I frequently tuned into IPK's stream to learn from the master, so to speak. He did help me quite a bit in terms of how to think about the game, but I still continued to bust out at tournaments for the rest of the semester. When the semester ended for Christmas break, I tried playing netplay up at home in Seattle, however the frame buffers turned out to be a pain in the ass to deal with, so I resolved to lab out pretty much all the remaining Lucario tech, along with B tech. Just before this point, I had also picked up Wolf as a secondary and to keep the game fun after I had nearly quit after a particularly frustrating set and overall feeling hopeless. I still do feel this way sometimes as well, and I am fortunate to have u/orangegluon and the MoM team take a stab at helping me here (wish I could give gold, but alas, I'm poor :( ).
When I came back for spring semester, I came armed with a bunch of new tech and movement options, and hopefully, some fundamentals and a semblance of a neutral game. While the former showed in my tournament sets at the weeklies (moonwalks in neutral FTW lol). One of my opponents at the first weekly did note this improvement, and the set went closer than before. However, I still busted. What was different, was that I finally followed through on recording the weeklies (I bought a capture card back in around October with the hope of getting footage to review), so at least I could reach out to the Lucario skype/discord groups for help. This did culminate in me finally taking a set 2-0 last week (yay). I also started streaming friendlies with u/SnoopKitties and some other friends of mine. To sum up the rest of my Smash history, I do think some things have improved, but I still autopilot like a mofo in tournaments quite often.
Alright, onto the discussion questions.
How have your fundamentals improved over time?
This has been kind of a mixed bag for me. While I can say my fundamentals have improved, it has yet to really show in tournament. I did link my set vs Pappin at Farmers Fight 3 (Texas regional near my university), and I did notice how I still have habits of heavy autopiloting. I'm not sure if this is nervousness at facing a player of his skill level (he placed 17th in singles), or a sign that I still haven't improved in any meaningful fashion because some VERY old habits that I thought I had broken did show. However, I am pretty sure it has something to do with playing in a tournament, which, unlike the weeklies we have at our student center, has fees, a stacked pool of talent (Lunchables, Shokio, Luck, Azer, Grime, Fearless, Fuzz, Phorcys, list goes on), and a large turnout (87 people for singles). This was also only my third non-local tournament.
What do you recommend doing to improve fundamentals? What have I missed?
I'm not as...well-qualified to answer this as some other people here. However, I can recommend four things.
Get VODs of your sets. Get a capture card and put it on your setup, ask to get a set on the stream, whatever. This leads into...
Video footage helps a lot because either yourself, or more knowledgeable players, can clearly identify flaws in your play. So always try to take a look at your VODs, and if you can't figure it out, reach out to more experienced players
Try to find the Skype/Discord/whatever group for your main. This means that advice can be tailored to your character, which is especially important to Lucario because he's that fellow at the party who's a bit distant from everyone. He's the odd guy, the dude sitting by the wall, outside, etc... while everyone else is enjoying the party.
Play people whenever possible. Not only can they point out stuff, but also there is no real substitute. Go to tournaments, especially those outside your local region. For me, this is particularly important because I'm the only Lucario main in my local scene.
Are there things a player can do to avoid losing grip of their fundamentals?
Get the grain of salt ready, because I'm still working on this myself. Big thing would be to avoid autopiloting IMO. Always have a reason for anything you do. Be able to recognize it and try to get out of it. When watching sets of higher-level players, try to focus more on how he plays the neutral, and why he does what he does. What habits does he look for? How does he approach X matchup?
What steps should a new player to Project M take to improve fundamentals from the start?
I'd say consider avoiding Lucario for starters *laughs. I did get absorbed a bit by all of his unique tech, which I believe did slow me down in terms of fundamentals. If you really like Lucario, or a similar techskill heavy character, by all means go ahead, but DON"T LET ALL THE TECH PREVENT YOU FROM IMPROVING YOUR FUNDAMENTALS. Sorry for the caps, but I feel it's obligatory lol.
Is there anything I have been incorrect about, or that you disagree with?
Since this article was written in a way as an answer to a question I had asked, I do not feel that I am in the right place to answer this. However, I will use this space to bring up some follow up questions/stuff I believe could have been included.
First off, I don't believe the part about threat zones takes into account platforms, vertical movement (e.g. jumping), edgeguard situations/recovering, or projectiles. Something that could be added is that anything a player does takes away control of some pace in exchange for threatening different space. I believe Wobbles brings this up in an explanation of neutral.
TL;DR: Started off playing sm4sh, moved to PM after doing a hell of a lot better than I did in sm4sh. Spent the fall semester a bit consumed by trying to do techskill/gfycat-worthy combos. Powerlabbed over winter break because netplay sucks for Lucario players, dat lag. Came back, fundamentals did improve I think a tiny bit. Won my first set last week, and played Pappin at Farmers Fight 3 (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjV7IqBznfI).
My fundamentals have...slightly improved. Any improvement usually fails to show through in tournaments. Get VODs, reach out to more experienced players, get in contact with others who play your character(s) and give them your VODs, and play people when you can. Don't let tech dominate your practice/approach to the game. MoM article could include how projectiles, platforms, offstage, and vertical movement affect threat zones.
It's 3am here, I spent an hour writing this. Hopefully, I've addressed everything I have wanted to address.