Does Smash Ultimate's Meta Need To Change?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 มิ.ย. 2024
- Lets explore Smash Ultimate's competitive scene at the top level. I watched every top 8 set in 2023 to determine if there is a current problem with the meta, and where those problems might stem from. Join me on this case study to answer the question, does the meta need to change?
Follow me on Twitter: / eazyfreezie
Music Used:
- ANOTHER HIM - Deltarune OST
- talk is cheap - Going Under OST
- Termite Kingdom - Bug Fables OST
- he who falls upward - Going Under OST
- Theme of Phoenix Wright - Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 OST
- Trial - Ace Attorney OST
- Detective Pennington - Paper Mario & The Thousand Year Door OST
- Apparel Store Theme - Street Fighter 6 OST
- Pigstep - Minecraft OST
- Your Sunset - Tekken Tag Tournament 2 OST
- Sunset Bridge - Persona 5 OST
VIDEO CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro
01:22 The Meta
03:45 The Problem
05:47 Case Study: Sonic
06:35 Case Study: Steve
07:40 Case Study: Mr.G&W
09:32 Stagelist
13:39 Ruleset
16:38 Attempt to Change - เกม
Hey, it has been awhile! To those who have stuck around waiting for the next video, thank you for doing so. Competitive Smash 2023 video will be coming soon (well, in like a month or 2), so stay tuned!
Can't wait, keep it up kiing
THE GOAT IS BACK. It was worth the wait
Nobody ever thought melee was dying. Nice cope though.
Here's the thing.
Melee never died. It has enough skill expression and health to where Puff even leads into that.
Brawl died. It was incredibly unhealthy and over centralized.
Sm4sh died. It was incredibly unhealthy and over centralized.
I feel like the other issue is just how often any attempt at change is pushed back against by top players and immediately reverted because TOs are afraid people are gonna dodge their events in the future.
Absolutely
hate when this happens lmfaoo,, its why Regen is unbanning steve bc they want to try and get acola to come (even tho the majority of us were way happier with steve banned at last years regen)
all because they wanna try and get top players to boost the events lumirank points
I like that this video wasn't crying over DLC characters or top tiers but actually just suggesting realistic ideas for change in the competitive scene. Great video.
camping has got to go, it is so boring to watch. this is the one fighting game where camping is even a strategy.
I am still super bummed out that Mewtwo was nigh abandoned in this game. I know his tail is a weakness, but man he is fun to play as.
Then you can go a show people how good he is the pro’s became pro’s because they practice so show them
I think its pretty obv that the common problem with the 3 analyzed characters is, that they have absolutely broken defensive options (good disengage/camping tools and super save approach-tools). That alone makes it so, that most of the time they can decide about the pacing of the match and the enemy can do nothing but w8 and play there game or get destroyed for playing offensively against these strong defensive-tools. And this situations often sucks for both the people playing against these chars and the viewers.
G&W not so much: the only two things he has that are actually obnoxious are the grounded up-B and u-smash having full invincibility. Without these, while retaining his strong options, he'd need to be way more careful as he couldn't afford anymore to be as inconsiderate.
Sonic's huge problem is being a "melee zoner": fast and high mobility, relatively strong or wide hits, a couple moves are even safe on parry. Toning him down (aside from reworking his moveset to make it more appealing and less of a runny runny spinny spinny loop) in my opinion is fairly easy: less air speed and more gravity to make it more vunerable in the air, reverting back neutral special to the Smash 4 iteration so that people can actually have a proper window to react to it but improving its accuracy (why does it target opponents so high that can go over them?), fixing the safe on parry stuff and adding some more vulnerability for being too reckless by relying solely on his speed and fast frame data on a couple moves.
Steve needs a major review because he plays a game on its own: there are too many things you can say about him that need to be addressed.
@@Dr_Nig personally i am of the belief that no move should ever be safe on parry no matter how well spaced or landed
@@hexhiaa The issue is that only Sonic is able to do this in Ultimate: he literally moves BEFORE the player who parried even if that player should have advantage frames! And it's so wrong!
it seems the smash community thinks every character is trash, and if any actually are good they’re just called “broken”
@@skeleton819 Well there's a difference between a good character and a broken character.
G&W is "just" a good character that would need only a couple tweaks to make it more approachable, but beside that it's fine.
Sonic is simply boring and annoying: he needs a revamp to make it actually fun and interesting to fight. As of now he's just a loose cannon that forces the player to play in a certain way without even granting a stable counterplay. Also to have SAFE ON PARRY moves is unfair., as the parry mechanic revolves around being able to attack the offender if you parried the incoming attack.
Steve is just wrong as he literally plays a game on his own, with his own rules and tricks including game breaking ones, and a stupidly overpowered kit (just think that the WOODEN pickaxe f-air spike is almost on par with Mario's f-air spike. That's nuts!!). He would need a heavy rework.
WarioWare my beloved, truly the peak of smash stage design along with Yoshi's Island (Melee) i will never get bored of either stage
you’re lying
@@CakeKid57What’s to lie about? The competitive scene is all about fighting with 2% of the stages and those range from 1 to 4 lines and zero items.
That’s fun for you?
@@axaturdoor7553 in the 3 months since i wrote that reply, absolutely not, competitive is so fucking boring especially ultimates.
I've been saying since day 1 that we should mix Hazard and No-Hazard stages. Switching ingame rulesets takes literally 5 seconds and allow more stages to shine with T&C, Smashville and even FoD having the moving platforms.
Stage variety? With a toggle that only takes a few seconds to change and can easily be reset within half a minute if the players somehow forget to switch the toggle? You're crazy
I think a rotating stage list (with potential limits from 8 to 6 total stages) would be super fun to see on top of hazards on/off. Ultimate is fortunate enough to have plenty of stage options that are not utilized due to alternatives and for the sake of simplicity. The biggest issue with a rotating stage list is that the underutilized stages can only be relegated to counterpicks which already make up a minority of the 8 in play (3/8 to be specific), and out of the stages not in that big 8, none really have a great argument for being swapped in as a starter should a rotating stage list be picked up. Still, anything to shake up the meta would be neat, it is up to the players & tournament holders to actually make any changes primarily.
I just don't watch top 8. The games pretty sick when the mid tiers are still in.
I'm not a competitive Smash player, but as a viewer, it always struck Me as odd that the Ultimate comp scene *doesn't* use the Omega/Battlefield stage settings, but the only legal stages are ones that closely resemble that layout? And then not even all the stages that do? Make it make sense. Meanwhile there are plenty of good stages that don't fit this normalized layout structure, even some asymmetrical stages too. I can understand hazards off, and no walk-offs, but like, there are so many good stages in Smash Ultimate it's crazy to Me that the tournament legal list is so tiny, even omitting stages that have been perfectly legal in scenes for previous Smash games.
Yeah I'm baffled why Wily Castle isn't legal
@@EmperorPenguin1217 the reason they give is completely arbitrary and stupid too, like "oh it would just fill the same role as Final Destination" or something, when the lack of an underpass option is more than enough of a change imo
@@thejedisonic67 Not only that, but it would buff wall jump users and indirectly nerf Steve because it forces him to mine slower and waste more iron
Astoundingly well-researched. This feels like a PGStats video. Well done!
I think Eazy used to be from the PGStats team, so it makes sense.
It could change if there were still balance patches, but Nintendo is more interested in adding more spirits, since it gives free advertising.
I'm not a competitive player, but I'll give my two cents.
In addition to providing some cheap advertising with all their new stuff in "the only game where you can make Snake and Pikachu fight", Spirits are probably much easier to add as well. It likely involves adding a PNG and editing a JSON. Boom, new Spirit. Meanwhile, balance patching requires testing and they would probably rather have all hands on deck for their upcoming releases.
I'm honestly surprised they're even adding sprits because I was certain that they had moved on from Smash Ultimate by now
Stage diversity would be huge. If you look at a game like rivals, a larger stage list is not only able to keep matches fresh, but it also makes counterpicks more powerful
I'm a ranked Rivals player. It's not like there is a huge stage choice but feels great to fight in each one of them and the stage variations are great! I praise to wolf Jesus we can keep Rivals 1 alive after 2 is deployed.
@@katzhunter3627this does not quite apply to competitive but I have a feeling the mods will keep rivals alive for years to come
I think the way Ult changed Yoshi's Story to make it so much larger was a very bad move. It could have been a really interesting counterpick if they kept it the same size it was in Melee
Great video, love to see more positive discussion on how to improve the meta
How do you improve a meta that is so far gone that the game died?. Remove every DLC character from tournaments.
@@prawngravy182 of the most complained about characters are sonic and gnw
We should just do what Smogon does for Competitive pokemon singles... Send these 3 clowns to Ubers and have the standard metagame be A tier through low S.
(I am mostly joking but it would be neat to have tournaments built for different power levels of characters. Imagine the standard meta being Cloud, Fox, Palu, Mario etc. But then have tournaments built for low tier characters like K rool, Piranha Plant and Dk and so forth.)
The effort put into the editing is unreal, great video!
To be fair Brawl and Smash4 DID actually die
But Brawl sort of came back. Like Jesus.
Smash 4 is completely dead.
Legalize warioware
Unova Pokémon League and Northern Cave as well
NC could be an issue due to the background similar to FD so there should be a rule about that
This was a great video! I don't even play Ultimate, I play Melee, but it's sad to see Ultimate stagnating right now. I really hope people start experimenting with the ruleset.
I always feel bad playing g&w tbh. I’ve played him since melee and I love him so much and i get called a tier hog for playing him sometimes. I usually don’t play him anymore because of it but he’s still by far my favorite and best character.
I appreciate your chosen background soundtracks. Hopefully most will know where they’re all from. Good video analysis!
Incredible video, hard stats on the meta are so much better than half-baked takes
Super interesting video, i TO'd a hazard on tournament in 2022, it went well, people arent that scared of change (it was a 60 slots tournament). I think removing stages like the two yoshis led to this metagame, PS2 is the most picked stage but not the most neutral, it's awfully large :s
Incredible video. So well researched and presented!! Excited to see where your channel goes
mfs will see the stats that steve, g&w, and sonic are the most represented characters at a top level and then say that people overreact on how common they are 😂
I still think a Hazards On stage list would be healthier for the game! Say what you will about Brawl and Smash 4, but that Smashville platform was responsible for some seriously hype moments. Ultimate has more than enough stages to accommodate a shift to Hazards On, and it would be more fun as both a player and spectator.
Asides, the thing people wanted hazards off for the most was Stadium, and that's a lot less relevant with Small Battlefield around now.
Hollup, did he say Sans? 1:57
Steve is Sans
"stands as" vs "sans is"
@@user-ix6cd9ek8v Oh my god, I hear the contrary now. This is some Yanny or Laurel type shii
I think he actually ended up saying “stanzas”, which is really easy to hear as “stands as”, “stands is”, “sans as”, or “sans is”.
I think an expanded, hazards on stage list would be great.
You can't counterpick to a stage you've already won on, and, I think for something a bit more wild and experimental, make it so that a stage can't be played on more than twice for each set (no matter what).
Somehwere, coney is smiling
So what im getting at here, is "warioware legal"?
This is really well made! Looking forward to more!
Great video ! The stage idea is very interesting, never thought of that.
I have an idea for competitive items, the items don't spawn completely randomly on stage （they only spawn in certain areas) and it shows you where an item is going to spawn about 5 seconds before it actually spawns (it could also first it shows you possible spawn points, then it gets narrowed down). You know which pokemon are in each ball, the worst items like super-bombs and maximum M tomatoes are nerfed a bit. You know which item it is will spawn before it spawns as well.
This editing is friggin’ crazy! SPECTACULAR
I am genuinely shocked how you have made a video this excellent and yet are a relatively small creator. Fantastic editing, script, pacing, audio quality etc. Keep up the phenomenal work, you’ll blow up in no time.
When are people gonna learn to stop getting hit by and punish gnw fair and dash attack 🗿
It's actually embarrassing lol.
It was a relief to see Gluto punish Miya's unsafe dash attack with an upsmash during their first set at Umebura lol. Why are so few doing this?
@@legrandliseurtri7495 Its kind of hard to react to and has a bigger burst range than you'd expect. It's still predictable though
The community needs to change more than the actual meta and I will die on this hill.
sadly thats as possible as bringing back dinosaurs is
fr but I still want more stages on the stagelist, not cuz interactivity stuff I just think itd be cool
I've noticed the community needs to change BECAUSE the meta needs to change. A lot of players have a love-hate relationship with this game. You can't force them into blind love.
SSBU is close to being perfect, but it's held back by the current state of the game. It's very frustrating and disappointing for the people who can see its potential.
Amazing video. I don't comment much on TH-cam but your effort deserves it
Fantastic video really high quality! I like what you have to say as well
I would love seasonal changes to rulesets. It would definitely keep things fresh. It would keep me coming back to try out new stuff.
Nice video! I'm curious if the stats you released are public, it would be really interesting to analyze the variance in how long each character lives/kills.
Not currently. I would need to do a lot of cleaning up to make the spreadsheet readable lol. But I plan to release my spreadsheets with some other character stat stuff in a few months once everything is in order.
Amazing editing and analysis. Great vid!
I did not expect deltarune music in the background caught me off guard
Maybe the meta do need to change who knows. But attacking the players defently need to stop.
When it comes to stage lists, I think that having 3 bans and 8 stages total is toxic. It essentially almost gives the winning player an advantage. Proper counter picking, such as 6 stages and no bans + DSR in best of 5 and 1 ban in best of 3 could speed up games by giving characters more advantages on selected stgaes
God I love DSR. Anything for variety
Cool video but I think a better comparison would be instead of comparing their stats to the average, compare it to the average excluding them.
Given that they account for almost 1/4th of the matches it does seem worth doing, it could potentially cause a large shift in the stats. I could easily see a change of up to 5-10 on damage and same to timer.
@@eternal0star Exactly. I watched the video a day ago and dont remember the details, but sonic only having like 30 second longer games than average is less interesting than sonic's game time in comparison to the average excluding him.
Awesome video!
youre lowkey the best ssbu content creator i love ur data analysis u better keep posting
good education + nerd = great content like this. thanks, subbed, keep it up!
such a good video with so much put into it :3 i’m glad that the current meta is something i really like ngl but i wouldn’t really be against change at all, hazards on ruleset sounds so chill !
Great video. Deserves way more views.
THIS VIDEO IS CRIMINALLY UNDERRATED. SO MUCH EFFORT AND RESEARCH WENT INTO THIS, HOW DOES THIS ONLY HAVE 36k VEIWS AS OF NOW???? GO SHARE THIS WITH YOUR FELLOW SSBU NERDS RN. GET THIS MAN TO 100k AT LEAST. I HAVE ALMOST NEVER SEEN A VIDEO WITH AS MUCH EFFORT AS THIS ONE.
Good research and video. Btw, your tone and cadence sound so much like Mark Rober
"Ever increasing threat" really downplays just how bad Bayonetta's case was.
She didn't arrive an increasing threat, she was in and immediately was broken to the point of absolute disdain within the community for anyone who played her in tournaments. Fuck, I remember the Smash Ultimate Nintendo event where someone picked Bayonetta live on stage and got the crowd disgruntled with every single kill move.
I never thought I’d say this to you, EasyFreezie, but thank you for your hard work to provide the smash community with accurate data. We really appreciate it, especially in this era of the game.
Smash players just line to whine about everything and don't want to put in the effort to do anything about it, unless it's the bare minimum like banning a character. It's no coincidence that Ultimate is the only game where multiple characters have either been talked about being banned or have actually been banned. If you have more than one character that has been banned at tourneys that's not a sign of the game being poorly balanced, just a community that would rather ban and complain over learning.
Street Fighter 6 Apparel shop music in a Smash video?? My worlds are crossing over... Just like Riddles
Excellent video !
Yooo meta knight was the knight of the meta
I like the last bit. I don't know enough to say whether Ultimate needs change but it's ostensibly going to be around for a long time so why not try some things sooner rather than later.
This is seriously amazing. Well done! You deserve to succeed.
Awesome video
I would prefer a hazards on list because it extends combo routes in more dynamic ways which is just really fun to watch imo.
A very good video that was able to look at the issues a lot of people talk about with a mostly unbiased perspective. The answer isn't always as obvious as people in the comments make it out to be
Why can’t people just play smash and not get pissed from people’s style of playing or mains?
I personally see it like, dude, If you lose, you lose. If you win, you win. Don’t get all salty because “Oh no this character requires 0 skill!1!1!!!”. That’s apart of the game. If it works and is apart of the game, it’s free reign to do whatever you want with the characters and their moveset. All that matters is having fun, not how or why you lost or won. Just having fun.
How do you have fun when your opponent doesn’t interact and just waits for you to make a mistake.
It’s boring.
@@hazyhayley7488you're telling me every single match you played went like that? It sounds to me you got wrecked by an online player in a similar fashion once or twice and now you're really salty about it and won't let it go
The thing with you NA players is you always over exaggerate everything. Even when Mkleo was in his prime you guys were still moaning how broken joker was and how "the game is dead" when he was one of the small handful of joker mains that was getting huge results. Then Leo got surpassed and you guys are repeating the same shit you said before, it's getting old
@@nathandobbs7540 Every match against steve yeah.
I like to approach and I’m tired of games devolving into them camping. Where’s the enjoyment if they’re constantly running away into overturned attacks? It gets boring playing so defensively and waiting for them to make a mistake when they have no reason to ever approach.
No one wants to watch tweek doing nothing while acola mines just like how I don’t want to waste my time watching my opponent mine in a corner all game.
This isn’t about skill, it’s about wanting this game to be competitive without it being boring to play. I’m tired of people not interacting.
Its not whether it needs to change, but can and will it change? At the very least, Steve needs to be banned.
Great video
It's absolutely insane to me how many options smash players have over other fighting games and smash games. SO many characters, so many stages. And they want to play 3 characters on the most boring stage picks....
I don't watch competitive Ultimate anymore because it becomes exhausting watching Sonic die to Steve blocks on minute 4 on Pokemon Stadium II or Town & City. Same shit over and over.
this is a flipping awesome video
I'll VERY gladly take either of your proposed stage list suggestions. Give me more spicy hazards off stages, or turn hazards on.
I would like to see Warioware, Yggdrasil, Castle Siege added to the stage list. I think those add a good amount of variety that's not present at the moment
I respect the research, but I don't think the way you're describing the problem is correct. As long as it's cool gameplay, I couldn't care less if the game takes longer than average, or if the players are losing their stocks above 130. I could watch and enjoy a whole grand finals of MkLeo vs Tweek going to game 10 with all games taking 5mn if that's what it comes down to. But I could also watch a quick game of Steve vs Sonic and still think it's boring.
With that in mind, I don't think the stagelist changes you're suggesting would really help that much. We'd just see less of the lame stuff but also less of the cool stuff... If players actually pick these stages, that is. Because yes, if ps2 and sbf are picked so often, it's just because they're the most loved ones overall, and not only by the campy players. I don't like the idea of forcing a cheesy stagelist just because it would supposedly make the game more exciting (for who?) Basically what happened with Yoshi's is that nobody liked playing on them anyways so there was no point in keeping them. The same would happen if you randomly decided to add Warioware, at best people are gonna gentleman to not picking it, at worst you'll have to waste 1 ban every time for a stage that's basically never gonna be played.
And if you do that just to try to balance the game the way you want, well MAYBE you could make a stagelist that isn't great for Sonic, not even sure for Steve that guy should just be banned, we've seen how much better the lmm tournaments were... But anyways it's a game with 89 characters, you would also end up nerfing some of the low tiers for no reason, or accidentally buff ones that absolutely didn't need it (can't wait to see ROB killing at ridiculous % by just doing raw nair into side b; and do we really want to see Game&Watch getting consistent early kills?)
I also think making decisions only based on the top 0.1% players' sets maybe isn't the best approach, considering that just 1 talented player can vastly shift how it goes, but also more importantly because these are important changes that will affect the remaining 99.9%. I don't see Sonic dominating that much in regional/local scenes or in the earlier parts of the bracket at majors...
Yes, King Dedede needs to become the best character in the game and then world peace will be achieved.
GOOD HEAVENS That's Waaaay too much research for a channel/view count this size. Absolutely amazing work man :)
Weshould bring back the money ruleset and use it for tournaments, i'm sure it will resolve the issue :kek:
Joke aside, very interesting analysis ! You might be not wrong about it, trying new things might help, why not allowing the final smash bar that you can charge ? I feel it was added in order to still have your final move (kinda ike in most fighting games) but without having the smash ball, and in a more "fair " way (if you're losing, it will charge a lot quicker and you'll lose less charge)
Holy BO2 reference
I think there's one simple thing that could possibly make the game more entertaining to watch, and it's not even that hard.
Have you SEEN competitive Marvel VS Capcom 2? There might as well be 5 characters in that game, because the top tiers are so good that they basically render every other, potentially usable character useless thanks to the fact that they have weaknesses.
The problem is that the top tiers play an entirely separate game from the cast. Banning the top 4 would practically create an entirely new game. And for some people, they like being the overpowered character.
Some people saw this in the Xbox 360 days and created a separate, new ruleset. Low tier tournaments.
Despite it's name, it mostly only bothers to ban the top tiers, and sometimes limiting the power of other characters like Captain Commando (Who gets his power from one of his assists, which is banned).
This does a lot for the game. Because the characters who cause the most damage to the meta are banned, the idea of a "good character" opens up a lot more, since there isn't one guy who is just straight up better than everyone else in every possible way, and since it's just only one ruleset, the fun of fighting the actual top tiers isn't lost at high level play. Plus, we still get to feel hyped whenever someone picks a bad character to show off, because there's nothing stopping you from expressing your freedom in a "real" tournament.
So why don't people do this for Ultimate?
Think about it. I see most people complain that Steve plays a different game from the rest of the cast, so he should be banned. But if we banned him, we lose players because we don't get the same game. No other Smash character can build, and we lose out on all of the tech that people practiced and put effort into learning.
This is exactly why Meta Knight was never banned in Brawl. Even though he is WAY more extreme than Steve, he still was never banned because top level players refused to play without him.
Or banning Sonic? I used to see a Ult player who played a rushdown-type Sonic, and people thought he was cool. I want to see someone go to a tournament like this.
Kazuya? That character demands execution at a top level (I know I just uploaded a video implying that you can do a very easy "infinite" by spamming D-smash, but that would never work in a tournament). You remove the skill expression of picking a "hard character" if you ban him.
By creating low tier tournaments, top level players won't complain while spectators can rejoice that they get to see more than two characters in the game.
This isn't a perfect solution, but it's braindead easy, and yet nobody has even bothered trying???????????????????
you have shulk on ness's picture in the graphic
now here's the hard part: convince the ultimate community this late into the game to commit to these changes in any way at a widespread level.
If Nintendo would add this to the next smash game we wouldn’t have to deal with timeouts:
**The way the game functions now is that when timer runs out**
1. The screen fades and players are spawned again
2. They’re instantly at 300%
3. The blast zone gradually shrinks to a minimum over a time span of ca 15 seconds.
**Here are the changes they could (should) make**
1. The game doesn’t end when timer runs out but a new “sudden death countdown” timer starts and the game continues seamlessly without fading the screen and respawning the players. This timer indicates how long it takes before the percents have reached 300 and blast zone is minimal.
(NOTE: this happens regardless of how many stocks each player has left.)
2. The players’ percent doesn’t go to 300 directly but increases exponentially during the “sudden death countdown” timer until it reaches a maximum of 300.
If one player has been moving away *slightly* more from their opponent during the game that player’s percent increases *slightly* faster.
If they moved away *a lot* more form their opponent their percent increases *a lot* faster and in addition this the opponent’s percent is increased slower.
3. The blast zone shrinks gradually during the “zero death countdown” timer until
it reaches a minimum. (Much like it does now although there’s no timer).
4. **The most important thing**: the amount of time on the “sudden death countdown” timer is customizable.
**How to implement it**
If we set the “sudden death countdown” timer to 15, casual games can remain more or less the same as they are today.
In tournament, however, we could now start actually using sudden death, thanks to the percent increasing/blast zone shrinking exponentially and the possibility to make it happen over a longer time.
Let’s say we keep the main timer on 7 minutes and set the “sudden death countdown” timer to 3 minutes.
**Scenario A**
A normal smash game where Tweek and Dabuz have been fighting patiently but neither of them was really camping. When the main timer runs out both are at last stock, Tweek is at 1% and Dabuz is at 99%.
In this scenario we would probably not even notice the effects of the increasing percents or shrinking blast zone before Tweek manages to finish the game.
**Scenario B**
Light vs Sonix. Sonix has been omega camping the whole game. He has 2 stocks at 80% and Light is at 1 stock, 10% as the main timer runs out.
Sonix now knows that he’s been running away from Light a lot and that his percents will go up a lot faster. He will not be incentivized to camp any further but to finish Light off before this happens.
Light on the other hand could play normally and rest assured that the pressure is now on Sonix to actually engage. If Light plays patiently he will have a decent chance to catch up to Sonix and clutch the W.
**Conclusion**
We can never get rid of defensive play or down right camping. But with these new mechanics in play we would still have entertaining games since the timing out strat would often bite the camper in the ass in the end.
Regarding games potentially getting three minutes longer and delaying tournaments I don’t think that would be a big concern because:
1. Not many games go to time anyway.
2. There will be less incentive to time out.
3. Even if the “sudden death countdown” timer is set to 3 minutes the exponentially increasing percents and shrinking blast zone would mean a lot of games would end within 1-2 minutes.
Something like that does sound pretty fun
@@John0Phillipsya but according to this guy it penalizes people for having a lead.
Frigate Orpheon (no hazard) would be a good stage honestly. It's small and the asymetrical aspect of it (platform on the left, not on the right) is counter balanced by the right half moving up and down. One issue with the stage list is that they're all too similar. For example, PS2 and SBF are almost identical... it's boring.
And speaking of boring, most players have had no need to develop a certain aspect of the game: items. Even though items spawn randomly, they can in fact be played competitively... some of them, at least. We could have one type of item spawn each match, like the drill, the beast ball or the killing edge. The first 2, WhyDo has made a video playing them (Item Breakers) and honestly, they're so sick and take so much skill to use! And unlike pokeballs, you can play around them too. The beast ball can be caught with a well-timed airdodge or attack, for instance.
I can understand shying away from change. Why risk breaking what isn't broken? But with interest in the game waning, there needs to be some sort of change to make games more entertaining. Give spectators a spectacle while, of course, remaining skill-based and not junky or cheesy.
I would love smaller stages and they're so much fun too
2:04 sheik has the name Ken.
personally i would like it to change
another good video id recommend is coney's "is smash ultimate dying"
2:14 Im glad Greninja's sister made it higher than he did. Ken looks extra angsty, and Ness looks taller and........ has a sword??
Good research and suggestions.
The most important thing is not actually the numbers--it's whether players and fans ENJOY watching/playing the game. Therefore, whatever rule changes are made they should support THAT purpose (i.e. it's less about whether something is "fair" or "broken" and more about what people enjoy. Great example is Fox in Melee. Is he broken? Yes. But is he banned? No, because people enjoy playing against him even though he's broken).
Experimenting with rulesets is a great idea.
However, even if we came up with amazing new rules, some characters' movesets are too broken to fix with rules (e.g. Steve, Sonic), and should simply be outright banned. That being said, maybe we could introduce the concept of *character* counterpicks. That is, a list of characters you are ONLY allowed to select if you lost the previous match.
Also, Fox isn't THAT FAR OFF the rest. A better example is Brawl Meta Knight, who is not banned because it's considered the only fun character to play in Brawl for many.
@@N12015 Yes, but at that point I think we conclude Brawl is just a broken GAME 😛
Yes. The answer is yes.
Im not far into the video, but its interesting to me that Ultimate has its own "5 gods" era (in this case 4)
Also i think melee has avoided this problem of non-interactivity by the way that all the top characters have ways of 0 to death'ing eachother or at least forcing action by way of threats of a 0 to death.
It also helps that steve isnt in melee and even the best character, fox, gets blown out if you can start a good combo on him. Oh and recoveries are not nearly as good across the board (minus jigglypuff)
1:56 but WHO?
"SANS?"
Finally after 500 years he uploaded, see you after GTA 6 comes out.
I think one thing to point out, is that mid-level play is far more commonplace. I'm not going to tell you that all of your research was for naught, gmw and steve function entirely differently at a mid level though. My training buddy is a gmw (now cyling in joker, and commonly cycles in random), and all he does is crouch near ledge as his form of neutral. I don't play him often enough to adapt, (though I do go to tournaments now and again), so being in my situation, fighting against him is hell. Even though I can completely beat any other gmw I've come across in or outside of tournament, the fact that a playstyle like his is incentivized, isn't fun and almost discredits the game, in my eyes. I'm not saying gmw should be banned because I suck, but I'm sure plenty of other players have bracket demons or friend demons who suck shit to fight against. If you want to find out where the quantity screaming against steve and gmw is coming from, it's probably coming from people around my position, people who love the game, but hate how the systems in place suck to get better at smash (elite smash for learning mus). I don't bitch an incredible amount, since I don't have twitter or anything, but plenty of others do in my place.
I haven't watched competitive Smash Ultimate since the early days when MKLeo and Tweek were at the top. How are they faring nowadays?
You shouldve talked about squadstrike
Ban camping. If someone doesn’t interact for a full 1:30 minuet then they should be punished. By loss of stock Camping is one of the best ways to play the game especially for characters that have very good oos options. Or endless projectile usage.
Sometimes camping can be hard to define especially when both players aren’t interacting. If both players don’t interact it can be kinda hard to decide what to do. It also sucks to have your tourney run depend on TOs decision making
If you are winning, it is not your responsibility to go in, it is your opponent's. You can't ban camping any more than you can ban edgeguarding.
This video should be seen by everyone in the scene, thx a ton 4 your work. The stats were very surprising to me and informative & I really liked comparing potential legal stages in ult that are banned to their legalized counterparts in other smash games.
HAZARDS IS EXACTLY WHAT WE NEED
There's not that much overall character variance in ultimate even tho there are so many characters, in a way melee is more diverse in play style at the top level than ultimate, that makes people willing to play these specific characters w/ great matchups hard to beat. The meta can't rotate around if there aren't enough meaningfully different options to outplay something, like armada switching to young link vs hungrybox puff, a niche character for matchup advantage
I wouldnt mind a stagnant meta if it were one that was more fun to watch
12:40-12:42 if this is what u want I gotchu fam
First of all, great video!
Secondly I think that the meta will eventually switch on it's own, the only thing that I don't think will change is steve's usage if he isn't banned/we introduce stages to counter him, however. Regardless of how the playerbase is against steve, they likely won't learn the MU even if he continues to be largely legal for the next 2-3 years. Add on the fact that acola is figuring out set ups that make the risk/reward EXTREMELY skewed into steves favor, camping behind blocks, making a ceiling, a backboard to tech off when you approach, block camping in the sky, planking off the ledge, etc etc, then it will devolve into a much less interactive game overall against steve simply because in order to win, you will need to let steve play his game and there isn't any other way, there are certain exceptions, but for the most part this still holds true. Not only do the new set ups acola is using create skewed situations, BUT he can place blocks in specific places for multiple purposes, effectively stacking the risk/reward to be in his favor for multiple situations that would be poor spots for steve otherwise. Finally, the more we continue in wth steve being legal, their playerbase will get better and bettter at optimizing movement, positioning for blocks, and, most importantly, NIL combos.
I do think that in order to lessen the affect steve, sonic, and gmw have on the meta, we would need to introduce stages that are poor for them. Overall Lylat is a decent pick to make steve (steve only mines iron on here and it takes much longer than normal, leading to steve having a very difficult time gathering materials) and sonic worse because of how small the stage+blastzones are, BUT gmw would then be extremely good at camping on this stage, mainly due to being able to stay on the slants and simply crouch, leading to straight FUCKED risk/reward in gmw's favor. Lylat would additionally be worse for prominently disliked characters like kazuya, rob, pac man, and a few others (mainly just because of the layout of the stage), BUT it would also introduce camping that would be very, VERY difficult to get around because of the slants on the stage. Characters like pika, pichu, snake, luigi, and other characters who become very small when crouching would simply crouch at the end of the slant and their gameplan would revolve around shielding->grab/using projectiles to make their risk/reward brutally good. Overall it would likely be the best option if we were to introduce a new stage, at the very LEAST steve/sonic and maybe (?) gmw would have to ban it because of the stages small blastzones.
Another great option would be yoshi's story. While the stage has a VERY low ceiling, the smaller blastzones combined with the weird layout of plats/stage length would make it harder for steve to camp so extremely well, gmw would WAY earlier (while not killing much earlier himself), sonic would be cut down to make circle camping harder, and sonic would also struggle a little more to keep up with the volatility of the stage from multiple characters being able to kill wayyyy earlier than him. Adding this stage does help with these 3, BUT it would be a massive double edged sword as so many prominent characters that already benefit HEAVILY from the stagelist would become muchhh better with this added to the rulelist. Mainly mario, zss, dk, PT, pythra, and a few others would just dominate on this stage because of how good it is for them. A sleeper character that would become a MONSTER on this stage is brawler, they would kill at 0% on the top plat, and much earlier on the side plats as well. At the very least everyone else would essentially have to waste a ban on this stage, which would open up on of the other stages we currently get to ban.
Warioware is by FAR steves worst stage in the entire game, not only does steve have little to no time to mine on that stage, but his blocks have about half the time they do on the other stages, making camping extraordinarily hard as well. The stage would likely be fine for sonic as he has multiple confirms that take the opponent off stage with him, mainly down b, but there are others. Gmw would struggle a LOT on this stage because gmw doesnt have good ways to find early kills. This stage would be unbelievably volatile though, with characters like incin, sheik, ness, bayo, falcon, falco, pacman, and much much more being able to simply either hit you once to take a stock, or be able to carry you off stage with a true string of aerials.
Overall I think the meta will shift and we are ONLY seeing this level of dominance/dislike from 3/4 of the best players in the world, because they are putting in the most work. I do personally believe that steve should be banned, not because of how insane he is (yet), but because the vast majority of players are SO extremely lazy when it comes to learning an "unconventional" MU, and it would be overall a positive for them to enjoy the game more compared to being so much louder about how boring the game is/how much they HATE steve.