Smashboards

My biggest worry with the character, not to the point of a ban as of yet, is that people see her as a "free win" button and everyone switches her, leading to the meta becoming Bayo + a secondary in a very widespread way on all levels. But that's not happened yet, so maybe I'm worrying over nothing.

Ally won't switch, he's too much of a read-based player. He needs familiarity with his character's options to make a splash. Larry won't switch either. Leo and ZeRo could if they don't keep winning.

It's tough though. When you play a game 8-9 hours a day and then go to a national stage and lose 2-3 last stock last hit, you're sitting there wondering. What if I had just mained a better character? Would I have won? And then you contemplate a switch.

But usually people decide against switching due to the time it takes. The effort that you need to invest isn't worth the 1 spot higher placing or whatever that might result on average. Unless you're placing 2nd or 3rd in which case 1 spot is all the difference.

Nairo switching to Bayo would make sense, since he often gets 2nd or 3rd. One spot higher would do wonders for him. ZeRo or Leo too. Others, I don't think so.

and even then, a character switch can actually harm your results short-term (See: Abadango) or possibly even long-term if you stick at it enough with a character that doesn't work for you. Funny you mention Leo and ZeRo, both of them have at least mentioned practicing Bayo before. And what Larry and Locus don't realize is she's a bad secondary.

She's nowhere near as easy as people say she is and everyone should have practice vs her even if they lack execution, and if she's your secondary your combos probably aren't going to be too polished. The hallmark of these new-wave Bayos seems to be inane combo games, which a secondary probably wouldn't have.

Yeah, that's why I don't like the Bayo players.

Say what you will about Nairo's ZSS being silly, but Nairo has a top 5 player neutral.

Then you have Mistake and Zack and as good as they are, it's just disheartening.

She's not easy to win with, no. No character gives you free wins. Bayo just enables you to win the game without caring much about your neutral play at all and that's antithetical to everything smash has ever been about since Melee.

I will add though that Salem is just a beautiful player. His neutral decisions sometimes make me pop off so hard at my screen.

I don't think anyone can dispute Nairo being insane in neutral. I also don't think anyone could dispute that Bayo just ignores disadvantage. But ignoring neutral? I don't think I've heard that one before. Capitalizing as hard as possible off of one opening in neutral to the point where it takes a stock? That seems more in line with Mistake/Zack.

it's all tied up together.
when one advantage conversion yields a stock
and when you don't have a disadvantage state

what does that mean? It means you're free to take risks in neutral and just win. You can gamble.

They don't look for openings in neutral. That would be Salem. The others just go for something when they feel comfortable, and win because Bayo lets you do that

DK/Bowser at least have bad disadvantages so taking risks is painful for them most of the time. Bayo can do whatever the heck she wants in neutral and win on advantage/disadvantage alone

That's the real problem

her risk:reward is so skewed that she doesn't need to be proficient in neutral

Interesting. While we're both in agreement that the extremely low risk/extremely high reward character in Bayo is bad from a design standpoint, what level of risk:reward do you think a character should ideally have? Equal risk to reward?

It should differ for every character.

If every character had equal risk and equal reward the game wouldn't be that interesting and matchups would be determined solely on the basis of neutral play

Neutral should be important, but not so important that it's all that matters.

Falcon and Fox are high-risk, high-reward characters with excellent neutrals. Fox is better than Falcon because his reward is also greater than his risk. That's a game imbalance and if I had to balance Falcon to be as good as Fox I'd probably make his d-tilt a better neutral tool for poking or something like that.

ZSS is a very-high reward, low risk character with a slightly above average neutral. This vs. Fox's design is pretty even. Fox is much higher-risk but also has much better neutral.

I think it's good that some characters have more reward than risk. It's just that Bayo's reward is so high and her risk is so low that she needs to have a below average neutral to put her in line with the others. But she doesn't.

It's like, Fox is a 10 in advantage, a 3 in disadvantage, and a 9 in neutral. Total 22.

Bayo's a 10 in advantage, a 10 in disadvantage, and a 7 or 8 in neutral. Total 27-28. Gap is huge.

I agree with nearly everything you've said here. Thanks for your time.

Sure, no problem. I'm leaving the site though, so if you have any other questions I recommend Shaya. He's a great theorist and understands a lot about the game.