Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[Lacrimosa]

https://twitter.com/TheBigHouseSSB/status/1329521081577857036

Whelp.

 

[SwagGuy99]

https://twitter.com/TheBigHouseSSB/status/1329521081577857036

Whelp.

Ah yes, 2013 Nintendo has time travelled here from the past to do what they failed to do then. The Melee community has been doing really well, this is going to probably impact a lot of stuff that was planned for the near future.

Edit: This might impact the Ultimate community, but I really don't think it would affect it to the same degree as the Melee community.

 

[TennisBall]

Ah yes, 2013 Nintendo has time travelled here from the past to do what they failed to do then. The Melee community has been doing really well, this is going to probably impact a lot of stuff that was planned for the near future.

Edit: This might impact the Ultimate community, but I really don't think it would affect it to the same degree as the Melee community.

Considering how long Ult tournaments have been running online, there's a very slim chance of it actually impacting online tournaments from running.

That being said I have heard that an emulator has made online considerably less taxing on input delay and it was being considered for brackets, this will most likely shut that idea down aside from maybe some small smash.gg tourneys.

 

[KirbySquad101]

The more I look into it, the more and more muddled the issue becomes from a legality standpoint (especially after Nintendo's statement regarding their decision was released), and unless someone here is really knowledgeable on regulations involving emulators and ROMs, it would be really tough to have a conversation about it without some form of inaccuracy creeping up.

My biggest takeaway from the whole thing is that unless the uproar raised on Twitter makes a splash, Online Melee is taking the full brunt of this cancellation, doubly so if Nintendo's willing to go after other Slippi-related content.

 

[Arthur97]

The more I look into it, the more and more muddled the issue becomes from a legality standpoint (especially after Nintendo's statement regarding their decision was released), and unless someone here is really knowledgeable on regulations involving emulators and ROMs, it would be really tough to have a conversation about it without some form of inaccuracy creeping up.

My biggest takeaway from the whole thing is that unless the uproar raised on Twitter makes a splash, Online Melee is taking the full brunt of this cancellation.

Well, if they ignored their request to remove Melee and if what I read is true and they were sponsoring it then Big House really shouldn't be surprised legal or not, nor really should anyone in the Melee community. Of course something like this would happen if it got big enough. And, really, you expect me to beleive the majority of Slippi players play with ripped ROMs rather than pirated ones?

 

[Thinkaman]

Watching the reaction/outrage to this entire escapade is fatiguing.

Organization partnered with Nintendo hosts an event that requires participants to pirate a Nintendo game. And Nintendo says... no?

The only shocking thing is that TBH even floated such a terrible idea. It's 100% the meme of the guy shooting; "How could Nintendo do this to us???"

"but but but COVID!"

 

[The_Bookworm]

Watching the reaction/outrage to this entire escapade is fatiguing.

Organization partnered with Nintendo hosts an event that requires participants to pirate a Nintendo game. And Nintendo says... no?

The only shocking thing is that TBH even floated such a terrible idea. It's 100% the meme of the guy shooting; "How could Nintendo do this to us???"

"but but but COVID!"

It would appear that no one learned their lesson from Project M's development cancelation (under the original team), or why no PM tournaments appeared under Nintendo sponsored events.

The main thing everyone is arguing is that Slippi counts as "emulation" and not hacking/pirating. They are arguing that since Slippi "does not modify the code of the base game", it counts as emulation and is therefore allowed.

However there are two major flaws of this argument: for starters, integrating online in a game that doesn't have online normally does lean heavily towards the direction of it being hacking/pirating. However, even if it is "emulation", why would you allow a non-official emulator to be ran in a Nintendo-sponsored event?

Considering all that what happened in the past whenever we use emulation/hacking in a Nintendo-sponsored event, the fact that we are acting so surprised about this is honestly so baffling. It is like the "how many times do we have to teach this lesson old man?" meme, except we are the old man this time.

However, the only thing that matters to our very reactionary, very passionate Smash community (which we are still not learning our lesson on not jumping the gun) is that this is not the morally correct choice for Nintendo, therefore we are going to storm them on Twitter until they comply our wishes, even though what we will do will likely be very futile and pointless.

This entire situation is honestly so frustrating.

 

[meleebrawler]

It would appear that no one learned their lesson from Project M's development cancelation (under the original team), or why no PM tournaments appeared under Nintendo sponsored events.

The main thing everyone is arguing is that Slippi counts as "emulation" and not hacking/pirating. They are arguing that since Slippi "does not modify the code of the base game", it counts as emulation and is therefore allowed.

However there are two major flaws of this argument: for starters, integrating online in a game that doesn't have online normally does lean heavily towards the direction of it being hacking/pirating. However, even if it is "emulation", why would you allow a non-official emulator to be ran in a Nintendo-sponsored event?

Considering all that what happened in the past whenever we use emulation/hacking in a Nintendo-sponsored event, the fact that we are acting so surprised about this is honestly so baffling. It is like the "how many times do we have to teach this lesson old man?" meme, except we are the old man this time.

However, the only thing that matters to our very reactionary, very passionate Smash community (which we are still not learning our lesson on not jumping the gun) is that this is not the morally correct choice for Nintendo, therefore we are going to storm them on Twitter until they comply our wishes, even though what we will do will likely be very futile and pointless.

This entire situation is honestly so frustrating.

A part of me feels this flagrant flouting is deliberate, a desperate attempt to raise awareness through controversy.

- Melee in in the unenviable position of being owned by a company that has never needed to get involved with esports for success, so remaking or remastering a game that has little to nothing to offer to anyone but that audience compared to alternatives in the current age is extremely unlikely.

- On the off chance Nintendo could be convinced to do so, the 20-year inertia of playing game that has not been updated in all that time would result in severe backlash on any potential change made to the game, even if they would be helpful for newcomers, like making L-Cancelling automatic. Even trying to better balance that roster could cause those to players to complain that it no longer feels like "true Melee".

So, since they can't rely on anyone but fans to keep the game, they do anything they can to garner any kind of spotlight. Even if it means making an enemy out of Nintendo.

 

[The_Bookworm]

Something to note, is that the issue to begin with is that they are using non-official emulation in a Nintendo-sponsored tournament.

So if the tournament is not sponsored by Nintendo, which is not many to begin with, then you are perfectly fine to run Slippi.

Hopefully, Nintendo doesn't go overboard and shut down Slippi altogether (like what they did with PM's development), but given past and current history, I doubt this is going to happen.

tl:dr, nothing much is going to change for online Melee, and the Smash community is (as usual) overblowing the whole situation.

 

[Frihetsanka]

So, what people are basically saying is "If it's a Nintendo sponsored event, you shouldn't have Melee at all"? That... sound less than optimal. Given covid it's impossible to host big offline events, so online is all Melee has, and as soon as an event is Nintendo sponsored it cannot have Melee at all?

But what would stop Nintendo from shutting down non-Nintendo sponsored events? Would they stop, say, CEO from hosting Melee online even if it's not sponsored by Nintendo? Should hosts have to choose between sponsorship and hosting Melee? What is the Melee scene supposed to do in this situation?

 

[The_Bookworm]

So, what people are basically saying is "If it's a Nintendo sponsored event, you shouldn't have Melee at all"? That... sound less than optimal. Given covid it's impossible to host big offline events, so online is all Melee has, and as soon as an event is Nintendo sponsored it cannot have Melee at all?

But what would stop Nintendo from shutting down non-Nintendo sponsored events? Would they stop, say, CEO from hosting Melee online even if it's not sponsored by Nintendo? Should hosts have to choose between sponsorship and hosting Melee? What is the Melee scene supposed to do in this situation?

It sounds rough on paper, and for publicity's sake it is, but there aren't really that many Nintendo-sponsored events to work with in the first place, with that number being even lower now since most of those events got canceled thanks to COVID. There is a few big ones like Genesis and Frostbite, but that is it. I forgot if CEO and EVO are, but that is an entire different topic (and a year until that becomes relevant).

I doubt this would cause Nintendo to shut down non-Nintendo sponsored events. The Project M scene thrived (and still thriving) by participating in non-Nintendo sponsored events ever since the original shutdown of the original team.

If in theory that they do shutdown non-Nintendo sponsored tournaments (like regionals and minor nationals), then it may become a problem, but at the very least you can still do it at home (like friendlies). I highly doubt it will come to that point though.

 

[Arthur97]

Uh, not play Melee competitively. Not like Ultimate has really been pushing the meta forward online. It's more of just something to do right now. In the end, they could likely put an end to competitive Slippi use if they wanted. Melee never should have clung to something that was so fragile for large scale use. They should have known this was a possibility if it got big enough.

Whatever your thoughts on Nintendo's actions, this should not be surprising, and it's something you have to deal with when you're dealing with stuff like this.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Uh, not play Melee competitively. Not like Ultimate has really been pushing the meta forward online. It's more of just something to do right now. In the end, they could likely put an end to competitive Slippi use if they wanted. Melee never should have clung to something that was so fragile for large scale use. They should have known this was a possibility if it got big enough.

Whatever your thoughts on Nintendo's actions, this should not be surprising, and it's something you have to deal with when you're dealing with stuff like this.

Not playing Melee competitively for a year will actually kill or significantly weaken the scene because they'd probably be viewers who didn't even know if Melee was coming back. That's not going to happen.

 

[NotLiquid]

So, what people are basically saying is "If it's a Nintendo sponsored event, you shouldn't have Melee at all"? That... sound less than optimal. Given covid it's impossible to host big offline events, so online is all Melee has, and as soon as an event is Nintendo sponsored it cannot have Melee at all?

But what would stop Nintendo from shutting down non-Nintendo sponsored events? Would they stop, say, CEO from hosting Melee online even if it's not sponsored by Nintendo? Should hosts have to choose between sponsorship and hosting Melee? What is the Melee scene supposed to do in this situation?

Nintendo sponsored events have held Melee in the past, the game itself has never been an issue beyond 2013. The problem is being able to hold an event in the current environment. Don't forget that Nintendo have been equally fickle in the past about using non-official equipment and modifications that provide more flexible options and accessibility improvements. This stuff isn't just online endemic at the end of the day, so it was hard to ever envision an environment where Nintendo would have been okay with running sponsored tourneys with Slippi.

For the record, I don't think The Big House Online itself was actually Nintendo sponsored considering the circumstances, but if The Big House organization/series ever had any Nintendo contracts in place it'd be likely that Slippi would be in conflict with that. If CEO had any contracts like that in place then they too would be liable to not run it, most of the supermajor circuits operate on publisher partnerships more than ever these days. We saw that with EVO a few years back when they didn't get the blessing they needed to run Marvel vs Capcom Infinite. The bigger you get, the more you're going to need the assistance of publisher partners to assure you're both running with enough material and equipment, but also that you're doing things without any real legal ramifications.

Personally I think Nintendo should've turned a blind eye to it, especially given it's online and considering the circumstances the community has to deal with as of present, but I can't say I'm "shocked" that it happened so it's hard to get upset for any prolonged period - at least for the time being. In terms of what's stopping Nintendo from preventing events that don't have their involvement, well, we've had several large Slippi tournaments already, some that are currently ongoing. They've never once ran out of opportunities to nip events in the bud, or anything else that promoted modifications of their games. If that were to happen, things would probably be way different, but clearly there's some stuff here we're not fully privy to - even if it's the kind of legalese business stuff that is of no real consumer benefit.

 

[teluoborg]

Watching the reaction/outrage to this entire escapade is fatiguing.

Organization partnered with Nintendo hosts an event that requires participants to pirate a Nintendo game. And Nintendo says... no?

The only shocking thing is that TBH even floated such a terrible idea. It's 100% the meme of the guy shooting; "How could Nintendo do this to us???"

"but but but COVID!"

Tbqh the opposite is also true and I could counterpick you with a meme of Nintendo saying "wait, you guys are using emulators and hacks for an online Melee tournament???"

Of course you can spend hours quoting tweets of stupid people but the facts are that Nintendo hasn't sold melee for more than 10 years and there is no alternative, official or not, to slippi when it comes to melee tournaments in the current era.

If anything it's just another proof of how incompetent Nintendo is at making his legacy accessible and dealing with emulation.

 

[Arthur97]

At the same time you can't expect old products to be indefinitely supported. Especially when you have something newer that more people want anyway. And, really, the bad press may not hurt them as much as some would like to think it does, because how many people actually care?

Either way, one of the big things for this for me is that they were asked to not do something, and refused. Did they not expect consequences? They could have still held the Ultimate part, but the whole thing being canceled is on the TOs.

 

[Thinkaman]

There are hundreds of Slippi tournaments that Nintendo does not interfere with. The highest profile of all time is happening right now.

People keep talking about Melee's age, COVID, or all these other random things that would be relevant if those events were being C&D'd. But they aren't. None of that matters.

Nintendo just can't have an affiliated organization endorsing piracy. That's it. This is extremely simple and it's stupid that we are talking about it.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

I was a Brawl player when the Melee "documentary" was made that completely mischaracterized the relationship between the Melee and Brawl community was made. It helped to revive one community at the expense of another using blatant lies and falsehoods about one game as fuel for the machine. It characterized Brawl players as bullies, the game as completely unplayable or uncompetitive because of its pace and tripping, and Melee players as innocent, marginalized sophisticate refugees when in fact they were largely still just forum bullies. Melee tournaments were still taking place, and Brawl players interacted very little with them and focused mostly on their own game and defending themselves and their game from a constant onslaught of online essays and name calling (the term "brawl baby" wasn't mentioned in the documentary once, but back then you'd be called it like once a day in mixed spaces like these forums or the subreddit).

Part of me experiences a very real amount of schadenfreude whenever Melee takes an L ever since, but even I agree that Nintendo is out of touch or at the very least very insular and Japan-focused to a fault. I'd go so far as to call them culturally insensitive. I also think they're wrong in this case and that shutting down an online tournament during a global pandemic is cruel, hurtful to fans, and accomplishes very little for them outside of a whole hell of a lot of bad PR.

 

[Arthur97]

Culturally insensitive...for taking a protective stance with their IPs? For not wanting to be associated with piracy?

Whatever, it's not like the PR will really hurt them much if at all. It may seem like a lot to people in those communities, but, really, how many casual players really care? Look at 3D All Stars. Looked like a lot of bad press right? Until it became a best seller. Or the fact they've had this mentality for years, yet here they are.

It is one tournament (and the TOs aren't innocent here). It isn't the end of the world. Frankly, nor would it be if they canceled all Slippi tournaments.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

Culturally insensitive...for taking a protective stance with their IPs? For not wanting to be associated with piracy?

Whatever, it's not like the PR will really hurt them much if at all. It may seem like a lot to people in those communities, but, really, how many casual players really care? Look at 3D All Stars. Looked like a lot of bad press right? Until it became a best seller. Or the fact they've had this mentality for years, yet here they are.

It is one tournament (and the TOs aren't innocent here). It isn't the end of the world. Frankly, nor would it be if they canceled all Slippi tournaments.

It's culturally insensitive because they don't understand that US physical and political geography makes online play very difficult without rollback netcode. Japanese developers continue to use netcode solutions that only work in places where the distance between two people can never be larger than the state of California.

Plus internet connectivity and online gaming are increasingly important to American consumers especially during the pandemic. Japanese players are already back to holding offline events. Every decision they make is made with the assumption that the world operates like they do.

 

[Arthur97]

It's culturally insensitive because they don't understand that US physical and political geography makes online play very difficult without rollback netcode. Japanese developers continue to use netcode solutions that only work in places where the distance between two people can never be larger than the state of California.

Plus internet connectivity and online gaming are increasingly important to American consumers especially during the pandemic. Japanese players are already back to holding offline events. Every decision they make is made with the assumption that the world operates like they do.

Just because they don't cater to yours or mine internet needs doesn't make them terrible. Of course their primary focus is Japan. They are a Japanese company.

Besides, they said it just wasn't really viable to have rollback netcode.

Not that any of that really matters for the Slippi thing. They didn't want their name on something with large implications of piracy. One. They can manage with one less tourney.

 

[meleebrawler]

There are hundreds of Slippi tournaments that Nintendo does not interfere with. The highest profile of all time is happening right now.

People keep talking about Melee's age, COVID, or all these other random things that would be relevant if those events were being C&D'd. But they aren't. None of that matters.

Nintendo just can't have an affiliated organization endorsing piracy. That's it. This is extremely simple and it's stupid that we are talking about it.

Yeah, but you know what's a good way to encourage piracy when that's the best way to increase your playerbase? Get people mad at the game's owner so you get spite-fueled publicity and downloads.

Spoiler

 

[Nah]

I'm not really bothered by this happening, but the two things I don't get about this situation are:

1) Why does Nintendo care, what do they lose by letting TBH run a Slippi event?

2) Why did the TOs not take Nintendo's initial offer to just not have the Melee part of the tournament?

 

[Gleam]

Look, this may not be my place to say but I feel this whole topic, if desired, can be pushed somewhere else. This has all but nothing to do with "Competitive Character Discussion" or Ultimate in general. Whatever you feel, legal, moral, whatever, that's really for another place.

ESAM just made another video reaction, this time on Shulk. I'd much rather be discussing that than the "Legal Ramifications of Melee Emulation via Slippi on the Community 2020"

 

[NotLiquid]

Just gonna slide in real quickly on this one before we go back to Shulk (or anyone else) since I too have no real interest in talking about the dichotomy of legal/moral ethics...

2) Why did the TOs not take Nintendo's initial offer to just not have the Melee part of the tournament?

My best guess; The Big House has and always will be considered the Melee community's tournament stronghold. It used to only be a Melee + Project M exclusive series until it turned out Smash 4's community became a little too big to ignore, and while other Smash centric events like Apex, Genesis, Super Smash Con etc. had been running legacy entries for longer, Big House didn't start doing it themselves until 2018. When Smash 4 at its prime was breaking records left and right at various events, The Big House is the one place where Melee reigned over it in every viewership/entrant metric, and it only ever got dethroned by a hair in 2019 to Ultimate.

To the community, deciding to not run The Big House without Melee would basically be tantamount to sacrilege, so I suspect the TOs would rather cost the event than having it just be Ultimate. I can sort of respect that, even if it's just for image reasons. Plus it's not as if Ultimate events have stopped or will stop (anytime soon at least) because of all of this, even when everyone is forced to put up with bad netcode.

Anyway, in today's opinion that's totally unrelated to anything recent, the idea of an optimized offline Banjo is scary to me.

 

[DougEfresh]

I recently shared my thoughts on so I won't get too deep on him again, but I'll reiterate that I think he's very good (top 10-15 in Ultimate) and the case to be made for that will likely only get stronger as time goes on and people get more comfortable using him.

I know the game's meta is still young, but ever since immersing myself in the smash community from playing Ultimate more seriously, I've noticed a trend of blatant negativity and entitlement in a variety of character playerbases, especially when said character has a higher learning curve compared to most of the cast (I tend to notice this behavioral pattern most within the American smash scene) and I wish people would gain patience and perspective to develop and grow their characters over a period of time instead of wishlisting for buffs to their mains through patches to do the hard work for them (regardless of their current perception of tier placement and tournament viability). But instead, it's more fashionable to complain and/or sell out for top tiers thinking that will suddenly improve competitive results.

People will need to keep an open mind about underrepresented characters if there's going to be genuine discussion and evaluation of their merits, but regional smash communities looking at the game only through their specific meta and experiences and largely discounting any ideas or theorizing that challenges those subjective ideas and experiences leads to distorted analyses and misinformation that tends to disincentivize players from exploring characters outside the established "sphere" of widely accepted high and top tier characters and thus leads to stagnation in diversity of the overall meta of Ultimate even though it has a roster of 80+ characters. I find this genuinely tragic, and I hope this toxic mentality in the community at least somewhat improves so we can eventually see most of the roster have opportunities to flourish and compete among the rest of the cast.


Anyway, somewhat more optimistically, I agree with NotLiquid 's sentiment about . Back in June during a drought on this thread, I had shared a pair of videos that explained and showcased a then-new Banjo & Kazooie tech called "Kazooie Fast Canceling," or KFC (it also goes by several other names such as Landing Turnaround Cancel/LTC and Standing Turnaround Cancel/STC since those are its variations, or the "Gluck Gluck Combo" as Hackoru has coined the tech). It was largely ignored and the one response I got from the post was dismissed as "situational," but a tech that allows Banjo to true combo into an fsmash or wonderwing from Breegull Blaster to kill as early as 60% is something that's been in the works since it was discovered by the Japanese scene over the summer. Many Banjos from mid level and higher have been developing the tech slowly but surely and if they can execute the very difficult inputs for this tech online, then that will only get better when offline events can return.

While America and Japan has abandoned the bear and bird because of being "underwhelming," Europe actually appears to be the current best hope for representation of and development of his meta: There's Ente in Germany, who's taken sets off of names like RobbieAK47 and his Shulk, as well as Moke and Owlbbs in the UK; the latter of which has been on a 60+ win streak against European top players in FT10s with his Banjo. Most recently, he beat Tarik's 10-9 and Tru4's 10-8, and online or not, friendlies or not, those are very impressive player wins and against high/top tiers that are generally considered difficult MUs for a character that's recently been considered a low mid tier. And, if you watch any of the twitch streams of Owlbbs against these top players, you'll see that he makes good use of the KFC tech as well if any skeptics still think it's impractical.

I don't want to make this post too long, but I definitely stand by my past opinions that Banjo is a character with far more depth and technicality than people give him credit for and has plenty of room for development and growth, but people gotta be willing to reevaluate their preconceived notions and look outside their respective corner of the globe to see that for themselves instead of using meme-like buzzwords dismissively to more or less say that he's bad without any legitimate reasoning to support that conclusion (this clearly applies for other underrepresented characters as well, and people could always, y'know, try playing a character themselves for a period of time to arrive at a more informed opinion about them).

 

[SwagGuy99]

https://twitter.com/TheBigHouseSSB/status/1329521081577857036

Whelp.

https://twitter.com/anonymoussmash2/status/1331031597647355905

Whelp. Again.

Edit: Imagine PM players finding out now that their game died because of lies and empty promises. That must suck, I feel bad for them.

 

[Gearkeeper-8a]

https://twitter.com/anonymoussmash2/status/1331031597647355905

Whelp. Again.

Nintendo doesnt like esports very normal stuff

 

[Nobie]

It's long been known that Nintendo doesn't really want to go all in on supporting Smash esports, and there could be any number of reasons. My suspicion, even before that anonymous Twitter account or the Big House stuff, is that they don't want the image of Smash esports to supercede the image of Nintendo, or get to a point where it'd be beyond their ability to control that image. This is a double-edged sword, as it does restrict the scene and hurts players who'd love to make a living out of their passion for Smash, but what happens when it turns out that a ton of Smash personalities are actually predators, like the events in July? There's a risk/reward component, and when it comes to branding, Nintendo errs on the side of caution because their family friendliness is the core of their marketing. I'm not saying Nintendo is right, as I would love to see Smash succeed as an esport more than it has already, but you have to look at it from the perspective of a giant corporation.

However, I've also seen people argue that the lack of support for competitive Smash is from top to bottom, and that's simply not true when it comes to Ultimate. Putting aside the esports aspect with the prize pools and what-not, so many of the changes in Ultimate are conducive to both a better competitive and a better esports visual presentation.

1) Almost all the patches are geared towards high-level 1v1 play
2) While the competitive scene doesn't like them, the whole purpose of the revamped final smashes as either AoE attacks or quick one-and-done strikes is to make them closer to a traditional super move and not a 30-second minigame (like "LANDMASTAAAAA!")
3) The dash-into-anything mechanics change, which brings a degree of fast-paced mobility that players want (even if it's not wavedashing etc)
4) This is the big one: the giant score card that pops up every time someone takes a stock. It's so ideal for watching a tournament on stream because you can tune in for less than a second, see someone get a KO, instantly see "3-1" in huge numbers, and instantly know what's the deal with the current game being played.

 

[Aaron1997]

Ludwig drops bombs - Twitch

Another hit... Smash World Tour was canceled because Nintendo shut it down, not because of Covid.

 

[Arthur97]

And...why exactly is it Nintendo's responsibility to support the scene? Because some other companies do?

Now, actively interferring with other companies trying to work something out is a bit more, ahem, questionable, but given things that came out recently, perhaps a smart call to stay away. Especially now that Melee is so dependent on emulation and, likely, piracy. Can you blame them for not wanting to touch the community much? Look at it. Or, you know, letting it grow too large with their company logo plastered on it only for something else to come out. And the having Smash personalities promote their stuff, again, let's be real, casual people by and large probably had no idea who they were, so they probably weren't a very crucial part of the marketing campaign.

End of the day, it's their IP to do with as they please.

Ludwig drops bombs - Twitch

Another hit... Smash World Tour was canceled because Nintendo shut it down, not because of Covid.

Is there any actual, you know, proof?

 

[NotLiquid]

I'm all for dunking on corporations as much as the next guy but can this not be the topic that gets enfettered by unverified accounts and testimonies that are subject to extreme emotional bias? Including ones that argue the Smash competitive scene is the main impetus of the game's social engagement? I realize there's not much competitive meta stuff to "talk" about in present capacity but I'd think there's better venues to scrutinize this particular info, much of which has been open knowledge for years now.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

ESAM's new tier list

It's that time pic.twitter.com/fsjN7SCY2U

— ESAM (@imESAM) November 24, 2020

My first thoughts are that I already don't agree with Dr Mario being bottom 3.

 

[Frihetsanka]

Some of the most notable issues, in my opinion:

Too high: Snake, Min Min, Olimar, Young Link, Captain Falcon, Ryu, Ken, Steve
Too low: Inkling, Chrom, Greninja, Corrin, Diddy Kong, Sonic, Cloud, Marth, Meta Knight

I suppose it's not terrible.

 

[The_Bookworm]

ESAM's new tier list

It's that time pic.twitter.com/fsjN7SCY2U

— ESAM (@imESAM) November 24, 2020

My first thoughts are that I already don't agree with Dr Mario being bottom 3.

A few things to note about the list from my view:

1. Apparently low tier doesn't exist? There is the bottom 3 he noted, but the lowest after that is low-mid tier. Afterwards, it is mid tier, but only 11 characters has passed since then. The game is solidly balanced, but the game isn't THAT balanced.
2. ESAM thinks very highly of Puff, which is nothing unusual from him, as he always have a more positive impression on Puff than everyone else since 2018 SSB4. However, this is still way too high of a placement. Hungrybox, who mains the character himself and is probably the most popular Ultimate Puff player (especially in the online meta), believes that the character is very lacking.
3. Being ranked this low is also rather odd. Online does buff the character, but does it buff the character that much? The character still has a fundamentally powerful and balanced moveset, that I don't think it makes that much of a difference when transitioning into offline.
4. Then there is Ryu. Him being ranked this high isn't too farfetched, but being ranked higher than Ken and especially Terry? I have seen a few Shoto mains have this impression on Ryu, but the other two Shotos, especially Terry, have been performing at a much higher tandem than Ryu is. I think it is possible for Ryu to surpass Ken, but I think Terry has both beat by a considerable margin.

There is a few other placements I am a bit curious of, such as being ranked a bit too high and being ranked a bit too low, but those are the main 4 things I want to point out.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

ESAM's new tier list

It's that time pic.twitter.com/fsjN7SCY2U

— ESAM (@imESAM) November 24, 2020

Honestly pretty good IMO.

Outside of a few nitpicks, most of the characters are generally fine.

He nailed Bottom 3 for sure.

 

[NotLiquid]

I'm going by pure memory, and I don't feel like browsing through the VOD so it'll be something to double check when he puts up the video detailing things. ESAM admitted on stream that he knew Sonic and Cloud would be the most controversial placings on his list. His logic with Cloud is that the character lacks strong combos, needs to guess correctly/win neutral too often with options that are either limited or regularly punishable - at least offline (Dabuz has been pretty vocal about his dislike for Cloud online) - and being regularly gimpable. Since this tier list was also made with offline in mind, Sonic was placed in high-mid on the grounds that people don't camp Sonic enough, that people don't know how to punish homing attack, and that he has trouble in making up deficits whenever he's at stock disadvantage - an assessment which I'm personally pretty 50/50 on.

With Captain Falcon, ESAM justifies his position entirely because of recent IDJ developments, and that Fatality is already at a point of doing a myriad of wild combos, zero-to-death strings and kill confirms within its first two months of existence. There's an argument to be made that he's the character who sees the biggest improvement in performance due to its existence. Conversely, he thinks that while Diddy is strong and that banana basically turns almost every top tier into an even MU, he currently benefits from an online environment where his whiff punishing is stronger. He also thought his off-stage presence is exploitable, but thinks the character could end up in one of the upper tiers despite all that.

Ryu was ranked over Ken because he argued Ryu was a superior camper, which he felt was more valuable over Ken's strengths since Ryu already has a strong advantage state. Terry was put below Ryu because he thought Terry needs to play neutral more frequently, doesn't have as strong of a disadvantage state, doesn't have as easy of a time scoring hits in neutral or out-of-shield, and that his strings are susceptible to SDI - though ESAM in his analysis doesn't account for tech like COIL or Terry being able to use different kill moves to cover SDI routes.

 

[SwagGuy99]

Regarding ESAM's assessment of Fox...

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He's completely wrong about Fox being hard to edgeguard without disjointed spikes. He's easy to two frame iirc, you can trade hits with his recovery, you can hit him with a disjointed hitbox of some sort (doesn't have to be a spike), you can spike him from above (the spike does not have to be extremely disjointed, things like Dr. Mario d-air spike him just fine, and if you trade, you'll still make it back), or you can just wait for him to use his side-b and punish him. He is completely off on this point, Fox arguably has the most or second most exploitable recovery of the Top 20 with only Wolf potentially coming close to being nearly as exploitable. (Chrom's recovery is bad, I know, but it is hard to contest up-b itself for a lot of characters).

Edit: As a whole I think his 8.0 tier list was much more agreeable, a lot of this tier list seems very much like he's overcorrecting for a lack of offline/being stubborn about some of his weirder opinions/Pika bias.

Specifically, I'd move all up a decent amount and I'd move all down quite a bit.

 

[PURGE THEM LIKE THE]

(Chrom's recovery is bad, I know, but it is hard to contest up-b itself for a lot of characters).

Out of curiosity, what characters do you think struggle to contest Chrom's up b? You can hit him at the top of his up b before the hitbox comes out. I would think every character in the game can do that pretty easily. You can also intercept him easily since up b is pretty much his only recovery option.

 

[SwagGuy99]

Out of curiosity, what characters do you think struggle to contest Chrom's up b? You can hit him at the top of his up b before the hitbox comes out. I would think every character in the game can do that pretty easily. You can also intercept him easily since up b is pretty much his only recovery option.

Depending on where he recovers from, you're right, you can contest it. It's not always going to be hard to contest, but depending on how he chooses to recover, you're forced to play around his up-b more due to the potential it has for suicide kills and the fact that sometimes if you misjudge an option, you could get punished for it. Fox's recovery is similar in that it is contestable, but unlike Chrom's up-b if you do fail the edgeguard, you're probably not in danger of being hard punished for it.