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I'm not here to argue that "smash is the best fighting game ever", but you mist be kind of blind if you don't see consistency in smash games. Melee first with Ken, then with the "gods" that dominated the scene uncontested for a long time, Smash4 with ZeRo whom has achieved the longest winning streaks in fighting game history, Ultimate with Leo who, if he does not win, gets second at worst. I'm not that well versed in 64 and Brawl but I believe even 64 had had long periods of dominance by Isai, and iirc early Brawl was dominated by m2k.
i see im building a rep on here for better or worse.アプデ前に 左右差無し テリーは未知数なのでまた次回 pic.twitter.com/qPOzU0w7Hg
— Raito/ライト🐶🐻🐸 (@raito_ssb) November 14, 2019
Raito's tier list. It is not ordered.
blackghost I know your opinion on Bayo but this seems overkill
IDK, giving K. Rool a landing option in n-air is a huge change. Not that he's good, but I think he's safely out of worst in the game range now.
First issue here, for some reason you equate a game’s competitiveness with the consistency of the players and not the actual mechanics and meta itself, which is odd, to say the least. The players’ ability to play the game at a consistently high level really doesn’t have jack squat to do with the competitiveness of the game. If anything, a turbulent history of player consistency would imply a more competitive game as it suggests that the sphere of high level players is larger, meaning more competition. If one guy stays dominant for a long time it shows there's really no competition, right?
Sigh. UNIST Evo 2019: 2 Mika’s (2nd worst character in the game) in top 8 and an Enkidu places 3rd (worst character). Tekken 7 Evo 2016, Panda player wins it all against a Devil Jin (one of the worst characters vs undeniably the best at that time). GGXX ACR: The best NA player at the moment is a Bridgett main (one of the worst characters in the game). GGXRD Rev 2: The worst character in that game (Potemkin) is B- tier and arguably the 3rd worst character (Axl Low) won the summer jam super major. A Kum player (contends for one of the worst in the game) wins a supermajor with a steering wheel controller. Now, wanna find me some records of who generally won the smash events and with what character? I’m not hating on Smash, but this game is an unbalanced mess compared to the iron forged fighting games that have been perfected over a period of time that dwarfs the age of the average smash player.
I am not underselling the games, if anything you guys are overselling this series when pretty much every good aspect about it is the result of an accident or community based action. There are fighting games out there that have been figuring out a working formula for game design before smash 64 was even thought of. Nintendo (and you all as well) would do well to take a few pointers from the companies and people who have been doing this a lot longer.
You're not doing a very good job selling your point if you think "winning with a steering wheel controller" shows a game's more balanced than smash. But in general your issue is comparing apples to oranges. Smash is much more of a mobile platform fighter than most other fighting games. You have a whole other dimension of mobility, recovery and things associated with that. Ultimate's balance and formula for a fighting game is fine. It just isn't the traditional game you want.
I see we have quite differing opinions, so instead of trying to discuss every point you made I'll try explaining my point of view first.
Initial T, the player who used a steering wheel controller and who beat Dogura among others with it, more or less said he uses it like a regular DualShock controller.
I mean sure, I can concede on the steering wheel controller bit but that feels a little nitpcicky to me when you have no rebuttal to my other evidence, namely everything I said before that sentence. My point still stands that Smash Ultimate is not as balanced as other games. This isn’t a terrible thing, but it can be a deal breaker for some.
Ultimate’s balance is not “fine” (or at least, not as fine as I assume you think it is). If it was, the tierlist wouldn’t look like it does. Though I must stress, I think what Smash Ultimate has going for it so far is really awesome and I love this game. In my criticism (which in hindsight does look more like naysaying than constructive criticism) all I meant to say is that Smash Ultimate could be an even better game if Nintendo took some pointers from other companies who have more experience in that field.
Honestly I have to agree with you here. There are some specifics I disagree with but for the most part you are absolutely right that Smash Ultimate is a competitive game. The competitiveness of the game is (or should’ve been) outside the scope of my original argument. All I really meant to get at with my constant referral back to other fighting games is that Smash Ultimate could be improved if they took some inspiration from other games.
You know, I wonder if Marth might be able to take more advantage of this than anyone. If mastered, he could be better than Lucina with this.
Eh, doubt it. Helps him space better but the actual concern of actually managing to get kills consistently in this game is still gonna be the main issue.
What "evidence"? You haven't proved anything. Cherry picking examples of bad characters winning various other games says nothing about Ultimate's balance being worse. I could say MKLeo used Ike to win a super major and he's now 48th on Orion stats. Or Brood's performance with Plant.
Um
Smash Ultimate's balance team is mostly made up of industry veterans who work at Bamco. Some of them have helped to balance all those other modern fighting games you keep sucking off. Nintendo literally is taking pointers from other companies with more experience, and have been since Smash 4.
Not sure on attack canceling as a whole, but with instant b-air (the most practical application of it for most characters) I think that this is somewhat character dependent. Some characters have kill confirms off of Instant-back air or their back-airs are just good approach options, or they combo into themselves so with most characters, it's a good thing to try to learn.
although most characters will benefit from being able to do this, not just the ones I listed.
Das Koopa
's weighted results data is one such measure. General VOD/stream observation or counting is itself a hybrid measure, since tournament structures have an implicit survivorship bias towards the winner.
()()()()()()(?)()()()() + whatever your heart desires()()
I'm actually not though. I speak separately from tournament results and tier placements. A buffed character who was previously considered weak not only stands a better chance against the rest of the cast but most of the time becomes much more satisfying to use. While fun is always subjective, someone like Brawl or even Smash 4 Ganondorf wasn't always fun to use because he literally had some helpless matchups, while Ultimate Ganondorf is much more enjoyable to play as due to being a better incarnation of the character despite still being perceived as a low tier. In Smash 4, post patch Mewtwo became much more rewarding to play as when compared to release Mewtwo. After Patch 6.0.0, Ultimate Kirby is also much more fun than he was on release because his Inhale comes out at frame 10 instead of 14 and he loses his Copy Ability way less often than before, meaning that players can now make better use of his unique perk of having every Neutral B in the game. This is also why I advocate buffs rather than nerfs at first.
I'm sorry for wasting a post to say this; give me a warning if it must be done, but you have to be the best poster in this thread. Your messages are always extremely well thought out and insightful. I feel like I always learn something new and have something to think about from your posts. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Please do it more often.Someone said balance in a mirror three times. You fools! FROM THE TOP:
What is balance?
Balance is a subtractive design element--the absence of something that would hinder the (positive) elements. Balance is specifically the absence of certain factors that hinder content variety.
What are the components of balance?
Balance is the absence of:
A dominant option is something that is just the best, or statistically superior in some way to other options. It is merely enough to be best most of the time in most situations. It would hinder the content variety of StarCraft if Terran won all of the time. (Or even 55% of the time.)
- Dominant options
- Polarized options
- Homogonized "options"
A polarized option is something that wins/loses to specific other strategies in an inappropriate way, normally in some sort of triangular relationship. It is simply bad to reduce an entire game to Rock-Paper-Scissors. It would hinder the content variety of StarCraft if Terran always beat Zerg, Zerg always beat Protoss, and Protoss always beat Terran. (Or even just 55% of the time.)
A homogonized option is something that is just the same as existing options. This is usually the result of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater"--accidentally throwing out the unique reasons you had diverse content or choices in the first place. And obviously, it would hinder the content variety of Starcraft if all 3 races were actually just resinks, like Supreme Commander 1. (Or even if just half the unit differences were erased.)
Amateur armchair discussions of balance tends to fixate exclusively on domiant options (whether things are overall too weak or too strong), to the point of skepticism that the other factors are part of balance at all. But this reduction is exactly why their explicit inclusion is important.
It is trivial to achieve any one or even two of these goals for a given option set if the third is dismissed. It is trivial to have unique options without circular counter relationships if you never cared about dominant options in the first place. It is trivial to have options that are both unique and diverse if you allowed a ham-fisted RPS network of counters that supercedes all other gameplay. And it is trivial to have all options be perfectly viable against every other option if you make them all the same.
These goals are not diametrically opposed. Achieving all 3 is just very non-trivial.
The complete absense of these 3 factors is impossible. Balance can never be perfect, it can always be better. Anyone who thinks this means it is a waste of time is silly. But we have to acknowledge the diminishing returns.
What do we balance?
We typically apply the above design goals only to things that players are expected to identify with and invest in.
If Ryu is "your" character, YOU will naturally feel bad--personally attacked, even--if Ryu sucks. The game made a promise to you (that there was this fun part of the game's content, for YOU), and then it partially broke that promise. It's not that anyone said you are entitled to Ryu being at least X good or the game being at least Y balanced, just that adding idealy rich and robust matchup gameplay was the original design goal of adding the content, and balance issues detract from that.
We do not balance "local" choices, like the damage of Ryu's individual attacks, except in pursuit of balancing Ryu himself. We might tune them to achieve other goals (like aesthetics), but if we call that "balance" then at that point we're just using a completely seperate definition of the term.
In a somewhat similar way, we might apply the criteria differently in composition-based environments, such as when we talk about balancing Pokemon or MOBA characters. In these cases, we often do intend for players to identify-with/get-invested-in psuedo-components of an overall strategy, where we do seek non-zero targets for polarization. But this is sort of a different matter.
For whom do we balance?
Timmy says Charizard is too strong. Tommy says Raichu is too strong. Everyone in Seattle says Mewtwo is too strong, and everyone in Kyoto says Dragonite is too strong. Who is right?
On some metaphysical level, they are all right, in that they are describing their own experiences with the content variety, and ideally we do care about everyone's experience. But that's not a very helpful answer.
David Sirlin compares these diverse perspectives to a bullseye--people's opinions are like darts, scattered all over the place, but you can observe them clustered around an average. And far more often than not, the most centrist perspectives tend to be the top players. It makes sense that they would cluster in the "bullseye" and have the most accurate view of reality, because they understand the game the best and have both the broadest and deepest experience playing it.
We want to balance FOR the bottom 99% of players 99 times as much as the top 1%. But we tend to do this by listening to data almost exclusively from that top 1%. Every competitive game I know of has a clear history of strategies trickling down over time--today's top strategies are likely to one day become the meta for the entire community, especially in this Twitch day and age.
Often there emerge tactics that only excel at a particular band skill level, such as a character who is "broken" at a specific mid-level of play. These are tricky situations, since they go against the aforementioned "trickle-down" approach: Addressing the situation at one level of play is likely to damage others. Solving this is solving multiple problems at once, which compounds the difficulty and unpredictability. In most cases, developers opt for the least risky solution: Wait it out, give the trickle-down more time, and hope the abnormal data sorts itself out.
Smash complicates things in that we also have Teams and FFA formats. Most of the time, these are best-served in the same "trickle-down" way by continuing to focus on top-level 1v1. But it's an important consideration that can never be overlooked.
How should we balance?
Balance is a straightforward, mostly iterative design problem. But it's also a huge, n-dimensional problem, in which the consequences of changes are very unpredictable. Balance needs to be done efficiently due to the scope of the problem.
In early design (especially pre-public), balance tuning should be done via aggressive binary search over a generous range. This part is not very controversial.
In post-public "fine tuning", the objective becomes more conservative. The price of introducing chaos into the system increases. We want to achieve our goals with the minimum number of changes.
Suppose there's a 100-story skyscraper. I say, "Go find out what the highest floor is where you can still read this sign I'm holding up."
You'd be smart to do a binary search: First try floor 50, then if that didn't work 25, then if that did work 37, and then when that worked 43, and so forth. No matter what the right answer is, you are gauranteed to figure it out in only 7 tests.
But now suppose I gave you a few eggs and said "Go find out what the highest floor is you can drop an egg onto this giant pillow and have it not break."
A pure binary search is inefficient now. Partly because I didn't give you 7 eggs, and partly because you don't want to have to clean up a bunch of mess. Your tests are now not equal in cost: "Too high" is much more damaging than "not too high." You are now going to bias your tests on the low end--it'll be similar to a binary search, but weighted. And you can imagine a similar scenario involving balloons, where "too low" is expensive and "not too low" is cheap.
This might seem abstract, but it's a very real scenario that comes up in low-level computer science, such as doing a search when part of your search space is cached and cheaper to access. And it happens in game balance iteration, where higher-magnitude changes have dramatically steeper consequences to everything else.
You consistently have some people, usually the (how do I put this nicely) younger voices (sorry) in the public discourse, advocating for some policy of "buffs, not nerfs!" You can even occasionally find this presented in a more elevated way, sometimes with insightful-sounding allusions to loss aversion or other psychology buzzwords. To be blunt, this is dangerous thinking. Balance work is above all else a mathematical and engineering problem, seeking to maximize long-term stability and not short-term feelings. (That's the Community Manager's job.)
It's (obviously) easier, safer, and more accurate to give a small nerf to the best character than buff 50 other characters up to their level--not only is that way more characters, but most of them would presumibly need way more and way bigger changes. Who knows where the game would end up!
A lot gets said about "power creep": Usually referring to new (powerful) content being added that inflates the average without lowering the deviation. It could be each new character is a little stronger than the last, or a more subtle long-term increase. The bottom line is, the old bottom is now even worse.
But is it "power creep" when we buff weak things then? If "power creep" refers to literally any (positive) change in the "average power" of a set of elements, I think it becomes sort of a useless definition. We ought to be just a bit more specific.
If you introduced DLC to Melee that was even better than Fox, or 3 new DLC who were all just as good or nearly as good as Fox, that would certainly be power creep. But if you removed Pichu from Melee, or marginally buffed Pichu (even to the point that rare people actually play him to a relevant extent), I don't think it communicates anything to call that increasing-of-the-average "power creep."
The difference is that if you repeated the first examples, they would diverge, go to infinity. But in the latter example, if you would converge to some target level.
You can also think of it in direct numerical terms. Let's just say that Kirby's buff's are so big that Kirby is now 10% better, whatever that means. So Kirby is is "10% better" in 100% of matchups, aka just plain 10% better overall. And now Ganon, like every other character, is relatively "10% worse" in the 0.5% matches against Kirby players. So Kirby goes up 10%, and Ganon goes down 0.05%. Even if this happens multiple times, it doesn't add up to a meaningful change for Ganon. You'd have to buff literally every other character (including the top tiers!) for Ganon to experience an implicit nerf actually equal in magnitude to said buffs.
The bottom line is, appropriate buffs are not an infinite, unbounded endeavour. When a pilot is endlessly making tiny and tinier corrections to a plane's travel path, it doesn't mean he will eventually crash into the ocean.
When should we balance?
Once we've decide how fast to iterate, when do we actually do it? One tiny change a day? The whole batch once a year?
Current approaches are all over the place on this. MOBAs patch every two weeks, DBZ patches once a year. Smash is doing every 2-4 months, some projects build nightly.
The armchair crowd tends to have lots of opinions on this specific matter, but honestly, I am not sure it even matters all that much...? Overall rate of change seems infinitely more important, especially if you are making smaller changes. Minor inconviences for tournaments and replays seem irrelevant in comparison to the long-term health of the game, but that's just my opinion.
How should we compare balance between games?
Uh, don't. That's my advice.
Community perceptions of balance are almost exclusively social phenomenon. There is (broad strokes) rarely any coorelation to any sort of numerical basis you could construct. You could interpret what I'm saying as "Many games people regard as 'balanced' are actually less balanced than many regarded as not", but the real message it "Objective comparison is sort of impossible, or at least not worth it."
Communities vary wildly, including in their competitiveness, their information sharing, and their willingness to complain. All of this effects the attitude one has about the advantage/disadvantages of characters (or other game elements) they prefer.
Even attempts to establish objective, numerical measures fall short. Matchup numbers and tier labels are not even consistent within a single game's community, much less two different games. Even if you do define it, no one controls for different set formats. Is your matchup data for a game, or a set? What size set? Are you comparing to a game that runs a different stock count? Or a TFG with rounds instead of stocks???
Another factor is, well, us getting spoiled in this modern day. Over the last 3 decades, there has been a gradual improvement in the balance of pretty much every genre of competitive games. (There are a variety of possible, logical reasons for this.)
A game called "broken" in 2019 would have been considered nearly flawless for its rich, stable diversity in 1999. Between massive competitive communities pushing games to their limit, YouTube accelerating development of the meta, and patches changing the way we regard bugs and exploits, we judge games in a radically different context today.
Beware: You too will get old and roll your eyes when kids complain.
At the end of the day, it's just not a productive type of comparison. I wouldn't devote much energy to it, which I say from a position of regret.
How do we measure balance?
We mentioned the unfortuante reality that balance is in some ways hard to pin down meta-physically, given that we're ultimately talking about measuring the (aggregate) experienced reality of human beings. All we can do is model it, and accept the limitations of whatever model we provide.
First, let's call out the 3 major confounders that interfere with those measures in different way:
Elasticity refers to an agent's willingness to change their behavior. Economic models are completely different for elastic consumers (who will buy a cheaper alternative) vs. inelastic consumers (who will buy a product no matter the cost). Do players switch to the best character instantly, or stay with their initial favorite forever no matter what? Almost all players are somewhat elastic.
- Choice Elasticity
- Self-Selection Bias
- Community Development/Discover/Trends
Self-Selection Bias refers to the fact that no player selections happen in a random vacuum. Wolf is played by the sort of players who would pick Wolf. That could be a specific type of personality, or a population more likely to be competitive, or biased towards a certain game type, or age, or gender, or who knows! Anything could introduce a major confounder that can't be controlled for.
Trends refers to the time it takes a community to figure out a complex game, derive optimal strategies, master the execution of those strategies, and diffuse all of this to the rest of the community. As you probably know, this can take years.
With that out of the way, there are 3 general categories of measures here:
Win Rates would perfectly model balance for a world where all players were fully inelastic. (And there is no self-selection bias.) However, as most players are somewhat elastic, raw win-rates ultimately have limited value.
- Win Rates
- Usage Rates
- Theorycraft
Usage Rates would perfectly model balance for a world where all players are fully elastic. (And there is no self-selection bias.) This is also inaccurate. However, competitive players tend to be more elastic than not, so usage rates do end up being consistently more useful than win rates.
Hybrid measures that attempt to offer a balance of both data measures can be very helpful, in some ways balancing out the opposing elasticity concerns.
Deep cut hybrid measurements are probably the best way of dealing with elasticity while staying numerically rooted in objective, measurable reality.
Theorycraft is doomed to be less objective and numeric, but can attempt to discern trends before they manifest in win or usage rates. Theory can, ideally, be superior at predicting community trends or controlling for factors that are known to confound use data, such as extraordinary execution barriers. ("We know no one is playing this character now because they are too hard to play, but we have reason to believe they will perform highly once this is overcome.") Theorycraft has a lot of weakness, but we can control for some of them by at least doing aggregate opinions that filter out some degree of individual bias.
The best way to handle development and trends is to focus more on the first derivative of any of these measures than the rates themselves. In pretty much all cases, the rate of change is the far more relevant measure to long-term game health and future player experiences.
Conclusion
idk Joker's generally fine but people keep switching to him so maybe nerf Arsene meter a bit, this isn't hard guys
Gotta agree with you there.
I've got news for you: the SSB4 thread was no worse than this one.
a lot and have been loving his buffs. His disadvantage state is bad but greatly improved by the Nair landing lag reduction. K.Rool actually has a pretty good landing game. Fair is good for poking and when you're in advantage. It's nice you don't have to be as close for it. That's one of his issues: big sour spots (like his hands on Dsmash, Dtilt has a small bury box and previously the late hit of DA but that was buffed before). He's not only safer but more threatening with a stronger Uair and Fair. His damage has always been good with a f4 jab that deals 14% and 20% off grabs from Uthrow and later burying Dthrow. Kannon feels a lot closer to a zoning projectile now and is good at mid range due to the vacuum being buffed.
is probably the best example that comes to mind. Having a F2 jab that launches opponents at a low angle comes with anice two-fold package: It prevents him from being a helpless waif against opponents up close, and it also sets up some nice tech chases in order to get the opponent to where he wants them to be (i.e. the ledge). In contrast, a F2 jab slapped onto a character like isn't quite as crucial given how stupidly privileged the character is everywhere else frame data-wise. This isn't to say it's outright useless on characters like Mario and Sheik (I know enjoys the heck outta her F1 Jab), but I think it's more significant on characters with really strong neutrals and zoning options, that being characters who don't want their opponents in their personal bubble. In that regard, it explains why characters like and especially are currently faring better than other zoners. player guaranteed TOP 24 at an A TIER EVENT. It's unlikely you've heard of the player given his seed was 580. But he defeated both Atelier AND Suinoko to get into Top 32 on the Winner's Side for Umebura SP 7. Their name? FerretKumaaa. I just watched his set with Atelier, man, did those buffs come in clutch when they mattered most. is out at 257th place after losing to an player named Daiki. Only in Japan could something like this happen.
. main~
!" statement to rest (I used to think this too and booooyyyyy, was I dumb). 
I mean I can say on record that while I agreed with the current observation that Mkleo was the only soloUmebura SP7 Results:
1. zackray
2. KEN
3. Raito
4. T
5. Shuton
5. Lv. 1
7. Kuro
7. Nietono
9. Shogun
9. Nishiya
9. HIKARU
9. Choco
13. Tsu
13. Kameme
13. Jagaimo
13. Gackt
17. Tea
17. Kome
17. FerretKuma
17. AIR
17. Eim
17. Etsuji
17. Lunamado
17. shky
25. Lea
25. Paseriman
25. Kirihara
25. Rin
25. Umeki
25. huto
25. takera
25. Abadango
33. Yamanyon
33. Rotsuko
33. kenkenpa
33. Bokin-Chan
33. kept
33. Atelier
33. tk3
33. Mossan
33. Brood
33. karupis
33. ZAKI
33. MASA
33. Nukoeru
33. Rattsu
33. Kishiru
33. Black
I'll talk more about the tourney tomorrow, but all I'll say for now is that I really hope this puts the whole "MKLeo's carrying
Anyways, who cares about Joker, KIRBY GOT 17TH AT AN A TIER NFKSNDFLKDNVKDLNSGNDIGNODLIXNVINIGNVLINXKJFHVJFNV
consistently bringing in top level results, it was less a matter of Joker being carried and more that the other Jokers just had work to do. Many have/had the potential but a lot either play tons of other characters a lot in bracket or just weren't as skilled. But I felt it was just a matter of time before some doubled down on him and could start achieving placements not far off from Mkleo's resume and this seems to highlight that. Zackray's Joker in particular is one I've had high hopes for but usually uses a ton of his other picks in bracket like and which gives his Joker less spotlight. Maybe with this A tier win with apparently a solo Joker, Zackray will be more confident in using him for the majority of his brackets? In any case this should be a good example for the deceptively large amount of up and coming Jokers. finally make his big breakt at a Japanese tourney and an A tier no less! Going by event ranking, this is indeed Kirby's best placing at an Ultimate tourney as of yet and solo nonetheless. (Tho Albion 4 had 200 more entrants so Jesuischoq's 33rd certainly isn't far behind). Despite being nonexistent in most results graphics for massive Japan events up until now, there's actually a deceptively sized pool of Kirby players in Japan including Mukyu, Kumataka, Konokurro and more but they weren't able to make that big break. Seeing it finally happen and not 2 weeks after 6.0.0 update which addressed a litany of issues for Kirby is quite the encouraging sign. Hopefully the other Kirbies there see improvements in their success there as well. Also quite interesting to note of all the characters who hit the jackpot in 6.0, Kirby was the only one to place here in Top 32. Arika's was present but he got 97th and I am not sure of any notable or that were present. Will be interesting to see if they yield any breakouts as well in the future.
Disregarding the differences in Zackray's and Leo's playstyles, I think the biggest reason behind this might be match up familiarity. I think Megaman is a more common pick in the Japanese scene than anywhere else.
I've got news for you too: I was there throughout all of Brawl & Smash 4's lifespan and an active participant in every single one of those threads, so I could do without the condescension.
mains proud
Well yes, but also no. I'm curious to analyze this set so if you can recall, who was this Mega Man player that MVD 3-stocked? While I don't like using individual sets to determine MUs, as of now, MVD has lost to every single Top Mega Man player (some even more than once!): Yeti x3, Scatt, Kameme, etc. Even Marss almost won back when he was first learning the character. While I feel Mega Man definitely wins vs Snake (something most top players on both sides agree with and an opinion MVD finally gave in to sharing recently), I don't think it's necessarily hard enough to where entire skill gaps can be completely overcame and MVD is a good player at the end of the day.
Rizen
, what’s the deal. Meta differences aside, what’s your take on why Toon Link generally does so well (in Japan) as opposed to YL? I know T is T, and he achieves results that most Links don’t.
2-0 Sonido (Not too big of an upset, but here it is) 3-1 Tweek (History repeats itself for Tweek) 2-0 RFang 2-1 Tachyon (Out at 65th) 2-1 Blacktwins (Out at 33rd) (Out at 33rd) (Out at 25th)
A lot of it's representation; Japan happens to be an area with a strongAlright,
But! Sigma (when he shows up) is generally a top 8 fixture, Ri-ma and (now) Lv. 1 put up strong work regularly.
Is it that TL, being a bit more ground based, necessarily commits less in a game where aerials are generally the neutral tools? Is it the difference in ease of kill-set ups?
TL flies under the radar in the States due to a lack of top player rep, but Japan more than makes up for that.
On a side note: KEN is a beast.
presence like how Mexico has a strong G&W presence. Sorry to bring up meta but the Japanese meta does favor zoning more than the west with strong zoner players like Raito's and Tea's which creates a better environment for TL who is a strong zoner. Japan also seems more favorable to lower ranked characters. vs in terms of traits, TL is the stronger zoner with floaty jumps, better air speed and longer range projectiles like boomerang. Although I personally would argue YL's landing and combo game makes him the better Link overall. They both have their strengths so one could argue either way and have a point.
, Tweek switched to against Goblin. Tweek took game 3 in convincing fashion, but then got virtually three-stocked on game 4., LeoN switched to against DWizzy. LeoN took game 3 in convincing fashion, but cannot secure the victory against him at game 4. main.
LeoN's counterpick made sense canonically, Bowser Jr/Shadow Mario has more wins than his father does thanks to Sunshine.I checked the VoDs of the streamed sets, and found two surprising picks (and identical situations lol):
After losing the first two games as
After losing the first two games as
I also found out that Toast is a
(Out at 128th) 2-1 Mystearica(?) 2-1 ScAtt 3-2 ESAM (Out at 65th) 2-1 RFang (Out at 25th) throughout the tournament. Interesting...
Very well thought out post and I appreciate it.
