ApeX 2015 Top 8 aftermath

[Dope_Dizzle]

So with Apex ending we have our final results n top players. From a competitive point of view I find it really awesome that there was a good variety of characters in the top 8. Not 8 diddy mains.

finished in the top 8 !! HYPE !!

That is something to be very excited about for the competitive scene, it is quite a variety of chars and we are still developing the metagame! Sm4sh continues to impress me and its hard to argue it's not a well balanced game with results like this. Yes... I understand its still early, but this really was good to see. Congratz to ZeRo on the big W and everyone else that did well. Do you think we will see this variety stick around? Do you think it will change, and how? Lets hear what the community thinks about these Apex Results !!

 

[lijero13ss]

I also loved the variety the top 8 had, shoot, even the top 16 had fantastic variety despite the 4 diddy kongs and 3 sheiks. I am surprised at no Yoshi or Luigi mains (false's luigi is his secondary), being in the top 16 at all. Very surprised.

Anyway, i think this showed how great the game is balanced. Diddy kong is very strong, but the fact that there was only one diddy in top 8, one rosalina in top 8, and one sheik in top 8 made it fantastic to see the balance the game has, despite Mr. Hoo Ha.

The variety will most likely change depending on if Sakurai decides to do anymore balance patches. But no matter what happens, the tourney top 8s will definitely shorten to about 4-6 chars i'd say after this game develops more.

 

[Raijinken]

I enjoyed it the most of the top-8s I watched. It was entertaining, the finals wasn't a diddy ditto, etc.

That said, I'm still in favor of more balance tweaks. A proper tweak some time after Mewtwo's release (since he should be included) should be the final push the game needs to hit an extremely nice point of character balance. Still, very impressed by the strong showings from all players.

 

[ShadyWolfe]

A lot of characters still show promise I just hope how the melee community treated the smash 4 contestants at apex didn't scare off anyone from wanting to keep playing the game. A big shoutout to Zero for winning even if apex didn't allow him to enjoy his victory and his diddy actually was not that boring and that Captain Falcon was great glad to hear he will be maining him and shulk later on.

 

[thehard]

I am surprised at no Yoshi or Luigi mains (false's luigi is his secondary), being in the top 16 at all. Very surprised.

Read this: http://smashboards.com/threads/character-competitive-impressions.367669/page-351#post-18497943

 

[lijero13ss]

A lot of characters still show promise I just hope how the melee community treated the smash 4 contestants at apex didn't scare off anyone from wanting to keep playing the game. A big shoutout to Zero for winning even if apex didn't allow him to enjoy his victory and his diddy actually was not that boring and that Captain Falcon was great glad to hear he will be maining him and shulk later on.

I dont think so. Smash 4 is perfectly fine, and i even think its in better shape now. Really the only reasons it got so much negativity was the following:
1. Unfortunate venue problems and delays making it a 2day event
2. Making all of top 8 best 3 out of 5
3. Constant coaching taking forever
4. Yes, i admit, Rosalina time stalling

Melee fans weren't hating on the game, they were really hating on the fact that Melee was starting late. Had melee had its own stage/stream/etc. no hate from the melee community would have happened.

Despite all of the stuff i listed above, it was still a hype tournament which i and thousands of other loved to watch. I do think Sakurai needs to put in one more balance patch when mewtwo comes out in order to help perfect the game. If the right patches are made, this game will easily be one of the most popular competitive games out there

 

[ShadyWolfe]

I dont think so. Smash 4 is perfectly fine, and i even think its in better shape now. Really the only reasons it got so much negativity was the following:
1. Unfortunate venue problems and delays making it a 2day event
2. Making all of top 8 best 3 out of 5
3. Constant coaching taking forever
4. Yes, i admit, Rosalina time stalling

Melee fans weren't hating on the game, they were really hating on the fact that Melee was starting late. Had melee had its own stage/stream/etc. no hate from the melee community would have happened.

Despite all of the stuff i listed above, it was still a hype tournament which i and thousands of other loved to watch. I do think Sakurai needs to put in one more balance patch when mewtwo comes out in order to help perfect the game. If the right patches are made, this game will easily be one of the most popular competitive games out there

They hated on it before top 8 and there were melee chants during brackets not to mention how the sound system for melee setups really messed people up and coaching shouldn't be allowed.

 

[ShadyWolfe]

Read this: http://smashboards.com/threads/character-competitive-impressions.367669/page-351#post-18497943

Yoshi has a high skill cap for a smash character meaning less players playing it and most of the luigis got knocked out unfortunately

 

[lijero13ss]

Read this: http://smashboards.com/threads/character-competitive-impressions.367669/page-351#post-18497943

False's Luigi isn't his main, and i dont recall seeing it win any games in top 16 actually. Unless im mistaken

 

[lijero13ss]

They hated on it before top 8 and there were melee chants during brackets not to mention how the sound system for melee setups really messed people up and coaching shouldn't be allowed.

Somehow melee fans need to chill out. I never understand why they like to bash on smash 4. Like, can't they just leave us alone? What are they afraid of? Smash 4 will never surpass Melee. So idk why they hate so much.

This is one of the moments where i wish EVO didnt put Melee in their tournament, just to stick it to them lol. But its nice to have it there, i would like to see Smash 4 and Melee become great together, rather than melee fans trying to kill smash 4.

 

[◥θ┴θ◤ | JJ]

I enjoyed most matches in the Top 8, but Rosaluma vs. Sanic was a borefest (as always). I also disagree with the choice to go with best 3/5 for the entirety instead of the usual Finals only.

Nevertheless, there were some pretty hype matches, especially M2K vs. ZeRo -- the crowd shouting "HOO HAH" was priceless -- and the Grand Finals was a great set.

I will say that we need to learn to get better and play this game more like Smash 4 and less like Brawl, though. There were quite a few moments of overly-defensive play in a game that's relatively fast and has true combos, and I don't see the reasoning for it. I guess it's kind of natural at this stage, given that a lot of Smash 4 players were Brawl players, but still.

 

[Zork]

That's pretty misleading if you put it that way. First of all two of the characters you mentioned were secondaries. In reality there were 2 Diddies and 2 Sheiks in top 8 out of a cast of around 50 characters. Also Zero didn't win any game with Falcon so that hardly counts. First, second and third place were taken by what are widely considered among the top 5 characters in the game (Diddy, Rosalina and Sheik).

I mean by your logic Melee only had 1 Fox in top 8 as technically Mango and Armada used Falco and Peach as well. But in reality, it would be much more accurate to say 3 different players in top 8 used Fox since they did get significant wins with them.

Also it's worth noting double Diddy Kong also won doubles for Smash 4. Once again, when the widely considered best or second best character (even though I do think Diddy will drop over time) wins both events in a dominant fashion, how on earth does that show Smash 4 is extremely balanced?

 

[KurashiDragon]

I love the Zero vs M2K match. M2K has the best reaction to everything which makes it so fun to troll him as the crowd was basically doing throughout the entire match. I really wanted Dabuz to win grand finals. I like that he brought a mid tier to GF knowing Rosalina was a very bad choice against diddy and he wrecked M2Ks Diddy with said character. (I'm talking about Olimar btw). I figured he'd have a tough time though because I knew that Zero's Diddy is much better than M2Ks. I wish Dabuz didn't get bodied so hard though. Zero didn't even give him a chance with rushdown as hard as that.

 

[◥θ┴θ◤ | JJ]

Also it's worth noting double Diddy Kong also won doubles for Smash 4. Once again, when the widely considered best or second best character (even though I do think Diddy will drop over time) wins both events in a dominant fashion, how on earth does that show Smash 4 is extremely balanced?

I don't think it can be reasonably argued that Smash 4 isn't the most balanced game in the series. There's not a single garbage-tier character in the game, and while top characters still dominate the charts (something that will always happen in any competitive scene), there are more viable tournament characters than ever before. This is only strengthened by the fact that Smash 4 has one of the largest amounts of variety in its roster out of any fighting game (if not the largest).

None of this is to say that Smash 4 is objectively the best game in the series, or anything, of course. I'm just providing evidence as to why it's easily the most balanced.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

That's pretty misleading if you put it that way. First of all two of the characters you mentioned were secondaries. In reality there were 2 Diddies and 2 Sheiks in top 8 out of a cast of around 50 characters. Also Zero didn't win any game with Falcon so that hardly counts. First, second and third place were taken by what are widely considered among the top 5 characters in the game (Diddy, Rosalina and Sheik).

I mean by your logic Melee only had 1 Fox in top 8 as technically Mango and Armada used Falco and Peach as well. But in reality, it would be much more accurate to say 3 different players in top 8 used Fox since they did get significant wins with them.

Also it's worth noting double Diddy Kong also won doubles for Smash 4. Once again, when the widely considered best or second best character (even though I do think Diddy will drop over time) wins both events in a dominant fashion, how on earth does that show Smash 4 is extremely balanced?

To be fair, doubles could easily have gone to Ness/Villager if not for the star KO happening.

 

[Zork]

I don't think it can be reasonably argued that Smash 4 isn't the most balanced game in the series. There's not a single garbage-tier character in the game, and while top characters still dominate the charts (something that will always happen in any competitive scene), there are more viable tournament characters than ever before. This is only strengthened by the fact that Smash 4 has one of the largest amounts of variety in its roster out of any fighting game (if not the largest).

None of this is to say that Smash 4 is objectively the best game in the series, or anything, of course. I'm just providing evidence as to why it's easily the most balanced.

Even though I agree it's probably the most balanced official Smash game (since Project M is a strong contender otherwise) that remains to be seen and proven. There's no garbage tier characters? I doubt we're ever going to see a Ganon make top 8 or even top 16 at a major. People thought Brawl was pretty balanced early on too.

Top tiers characters don't dominate every fighting game, the Smash community just has low standards do to how atrociously balanced the games tend to be. Take Street Fighter for instance, Evil Ryu, Yun and Fei Long are widely considered to be among the best characters and yet you see mid tier characters taking majors all the time even when the best players of these characters are in attendance. People can't even really decide on who the top 10 really are.

Long story short, even if Smash 4 is slightly more balanced for the low-mid tiers than previous iterations, that's hardly something worth bragging about when the results that matter (who ends up winning or placing high) still goes to the high/top tiers.

Case in point, people thought Diddy was going to dominate Apex. Sure there were only two in top 8 (which is hardly amazing considering the game has around 50 characters) but he still ended up winning in both singles and doubles. So I wouldn't say the results were surprising at all. I'm not taking away anything form Zero but I find it a bit hypocritical when people say 'it's not Diddy, it's Zero' when back in Brawl these same people would often say 'it's all MK, Zero sucks'. Zero deserved to win but there's no doubt he could not perform nearly as well if he played a lesser character.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

Take this to the character impression thread.