Evo 2kXV Competitive Impressions

[J0A0B]

Sorry that the best player won the tournament, but this post is insanely embarrassing. If you're the kind of person who gets discouraged when one dominant player wins most of the tournaments in the first year of the game (which is not unusual for fighting games, see Melee or Brawl or MVC3), then you were never going to be a great player.

Go ahead. I'm embarrassed enough as it is to think I could be on par with any competitive players of this game.

Btw, MOST of the tournaments? Don't you mean ALL?

 

[Ulevo]

Ito lost to Tyrant twice, once in a 1-2 set, then in an 0-2 set. Both were Meta Knight dittos. Tyrant then failed to show up to his match against Salem, but Salem failed to show also. This pushed Tyrant ahead to face Dapuffster, who he also did not show for.

The reason Ito was entered twice was because he entered once under his sponsor name, then when his sponsor fell through, he entered himself. Imp | Ito is not the real Ito in the bracket. The reason it was left there is because the EVO staff did a terrible job updating the bracket throughout the tournament.

That's it.

 

[Purin a.k.a. José]

ZeRo is retiring from Smash 4? Or he will come in less often?

 

[NotLiquid]

ZeRo is retiring from Smash 4? Or he will come in less often?

He's just going to focus less on it and shift his main gears to Melee.

 

[Phenomiracle]

It is frustrating to see one professional player take every major tournament.

ZeRo didn't just win EVO. He steamrolled right over ****ing everyone. What the hell does that say about the competition? I've got tremendous amount of respect for him, but this is quite embarrassing for Smash 4, as fantastic as this tourney has been outside of the Finals sets.

ZeRo's promise to commit to Melee is the ultimate kicker. "You're not good enough for me, I'm out for something better." That's his message, essentially. Whether you guys see it that way or not. And I don't blame him, clearly no one's good enough for him. Had the competition been more intense for him, he probably wouldn't even think about switching over to Melee, he'd be having to much of a blast in Smash 4 tourneys.

 

[Sarki Soliloquy]

Now that the grandfinals are over, I thought of an interesting question after the playstyles demonstrated. Does anyone think that offensive playstyles and characters are starting to be more viable over defensive ones?

The last player to take a defensively-inclined approach was Abandango in 4th place. Mr. R, ZeRo, & Nairo really showed some fast, in-your-face play with ZSS, Diddy, and especially Sheik.

 

[dansal]

Sorry that the best player won the tournament, but this post is insanely embarrassing. If you're the kind of person who gets discouraged when one dominant player wins most of the tournaments in the first year of the game (which is not unusual for fighting games, see Melee or Brawl or MVC3), then you were never going to be a great player.

Probably better to just ignore posts like that, man.

I for one am super, SUPER impressed with abodango's pacman right now. I don't even care about the time-outs, its just refreshing to see high-level play from relatively unplayed characters. Same goes for number's wiifit trainer, very interesting to watch. It broke my heart that they had to fight Zero so early, though.

 

[Sinister Slush]

You kiddies complaining about not even one year of domination from Zero obviously would've busted veins if you were around Ken's time.

 

[Ffamran]

From what I can see Salem used Sheik at least yesterday, may also have used ZSS. Ito's real tag was just Ito, he's in QF pool 39 from memory.

I used the player search and there's two Ito's which is incredibly stupid.

He's just going to focus less on it and shift his main gears to Melee.

ZeRo should dominate Melee and continue dominating Smash 4. After people cry about ZeRo dominating Melee, he should say he'll focus in PM more, dominate that, dominate 64, and continue dominating Melee and Smash 4. Why? Because it will be freaking hilarious! LAUGH WITH ME!

 

[Sarki Soliloquy]

ZeRo's promise to commit to Melee is the ultimate kicker. "You're not good enough for me, I'm out for something better." That's his message, essentially. And I can't blame him.

Well, ya kinda have a mixed bag there. On one hand, ZeRo focusing less on SSB4 means that the other top echeleon players will have a chance to shine. But on the other, ZeRo needing to move on after he's basically mastered SSB4 onto Melee could be misconstrued as going to "the better game."

If I were in ZeRo's position, I think I'd want to shift my gears to an unproven game because my success shows I'm more than competent to take it up and I'm growing bored of the metagame. I'd definitely still uphold my mantle and play SSB4 at majors though (maybe not nationals).

 

[Sorichuudo]

Say all you want about the diversity, but it didn't seem that way in the top 8. Any characters we didn't expect much of such as Wario, Marth, and even Olimar were clearly outplayed by the obviously stronger characters. Abadango's Wario did pretty awesome, but the results against Sheik still hold against him.

I don't believe in the Diddy/Sheik matchup either. Personal opinion, but it seemed like ZeRo wanted to fool everyone into thinking Sheik needs no nerfs by using his other best character, Diddy, to exploit his knowledge of Sheik's playstyle to his advantage by reading all the signs he's familiar with. This doesn't excuse the fact the Sheik conquered the majority of characters and has placed two of herself in the top 8.

At this point, competitive Sm4sh is dead to me. It was fun while it lasted, but now that's its confirmed IMPOSSIBLE to beat ZeRo in any tournament, even with cheap customs on, I can no longer believe there is hope for anything in this game.

I vowed that if ZeRo won Evo, I'd quit online, knowing it'll now be even more flooded with top tier characters like Sheik, Diddy, or any other characters that are generally high in mobility. If no one can take a round against that guy, then I know I clearly have no chance of ever getting good at this game no matter how I try. Sure I can beat plenty of those Falcons and Sheiks on my own, but it gets annoying real fast when that's all there is to face and there isn't much chance of improvement against them with all their multiple tools. It's not like anyone's gonna find another former low-tier turned top like Luigi anytime soon. It's gonna be a disastrous mess and I want no part of it.

Sorry for the negative hissy fit, but it's really discouraging when you see one player win so one-sidedly against nearly all the great competitors worldwide.

So what i'm getting from this is that since no one is able to beat ZeRo, this game has no competitive future?

How does that even work?

 

[Kurri ★]

Go ahead. I'm embarrassed enough as it is to think I could be on par with any competitive players of this game.

Btw, MOST of the tournaments? Don't you mean ALL?

Giving up is why you're not on par with competitive players.

 

[hypersonicJD]

He will come in less often. Now he will start playing Melee in a competitive way. He's going to be amazing. And this tourney was pretty awesome. I enjoyed it a lot.

 

[SuaveChaser]

Evo turned out pretty well minus the lame timeouts. Not really that hype tho. Congrats to Zero winning hopefully someone beats him soon it is getting old seeing one dude just win everything.

 

[Phenomiracle]

You kiddies complaining about not even one year of domination from Zero obviously would've busted veins if you were around Ken's time.

Difference between the situations are more stark than you let on.

 

[ARGHETH]

Difference between the situations are more stark than you let on.

How so?

 

[Sinister Slush]

Difference between the situations are more stark than you let on.

Hrm....
mmm.....
Nnnnnnnn......
Nah it's the same.
Ken domination for almost a decade > Zero for 10ish months.

 

[Yoh1]

Anyone know if the Toon Link match was uploaded anywhere?

 

[ItsRainingGravy]

Now that the grandfinals are over, I thought of an interesting question after the playstyles demonstrated. Does anyone think that offensive playstyles and characters are starting to be more viable over defensive ones?

The last player to take a defensively-inclined approach was Abandango in 4th place. Mr. R, ZeRo, & Nairo really showed some fast, in-your-face play with ZSS, Diddy, and especially Sheik.

It's an excellent mixture of offense and defense that is winning, honestly.

Sheik has her amazing mobility specs, frame data, low landing lag, and needles which all allow her to be amazing in advantage, neutral, and disadvantage. The same goes for Diddy, whom might be missing out on frames and mobility by comparison, but has one of the best projectiles in the game in his banana peels.

Not only do these projectile options help them tremendously in advantage, but they also allow these characters to play it extremely safe in neutral when they need to. And that is the key to their success. They aren't just strong in offense playstyles or defensive playstyles. They are essentially dominant in all styles of play.


Rosalina's Luma can sponge hits as well as it can dish them out, Abadango's Pac-Man is much more defensive but his projectiles cover a wide array of punishing options (Bell/Key/Galaga/Hydrant especially), Olimar's Pikmin being able to safely rack up damage while also giving him excellent range and offensive power for being such a small character, and etc.

 

[NotLiquid]

Now that the grandfinals are over, I thought of an interesting question after the playstyles demonstrated. Does anyone think that offensive playstyles and characters are starting to be more viable over defensive ones?

The last player to take a defensively-inclined approach was Abandango in 4th place. Mr. R, ZeRo, & Nairo really showed some fast, in-your-face play with ZSS, Diddy, and especially Sheik.

Hard to say with customs. I mean, we got three villagers in Top 32. One of them made it all the way up there just because of his defensive play style. Dabuz and StaticManny made it up to those rankings thanks to that kind of approach as well.

I definitely think aggressive play has exposed many of the cracks of certain players thus far. Abadango owes Wario to where he got. Dabuz so far seems to be the more consistent outlier but indeed, aggressive play seems more encouraged the higher up you get.

There's a bit of an up, down, then up again flow in Smash 4 tourneys from my experience. The opening pools have some of the more interesting games where anything goes depending on the player, while things start screeching to a halt during late Quarters/early Semis when people start playing safe. They then pick back up again for late Semis and Finals.

 

[Sorichuudo]

Also i am going to go ahead and say that customs didn't brought much variety here. Wich character not named WFT, Villager, or wario did we saw? EDIT: characters that we saw that are not usually seen, that is.

Heck, there wasn't a single Ganon, Ike, Shulk etc.

To me, the only hype it brought was to see someone beat a VillEDGEr, a HSB Pikachu or a custom Sanic.
Still not feeling customs are a necessity to this game.

 

[PUK]

Evo turned out pretty well minus the lame timeouts. Not really that hype tho. Congrats to Zero winning hopefully someone beats him soon it is getting old seeing one dude just win everything.

I think the time out showed to a lot ( i expect) of people that a pure defensive playstyle is as dangerous as a pure agressive, because it purely rely on a bad decision from the opponent.

 

[J0A0B]

So what i'm getting from this is that since no one is able to beat ZeRo, this game has no competitive future?

How does that even work?

I don't know. The idea that no one (when training to be competitively viable against ZeRo) has gotten good within the past eight months? That and Nintendo not wanting to treat this game as a competitive game alongside making poor balancing decisions (aside from fixing broken tactics) without notes.

 

[Ryu_Ken]

Exploding Villagers and Airbending Dongs taking over EVO 2K15? Not what I'm seeing at all!

Seriously, this tournament basically proves that customs aren't broken at all. Everyone getting scared that EVO would be boring due to customs are proven wrong since this was, imo, the hypest tournament Smash4 ever had so far.

This. 100000000x this.
ESAM had some pretty hype sets with custom Pikachu. A lot of the matches were pretty hype and some amazing stuff happened. I can't wait for the scene to advance.

Well, now that Smash 4 has finished its biggest tournament for at least another year, all that's left is to see whether or not it has enough staying power to last for another one.

From this tournament alone, there's enough hype to keep it going for a VERY long time. There's still a crapton of stuff we still haven't explored or even put into action yet, so as long as there are people who pull out "low-tier" characters out of the blue, there will be fire for this game.

Guys, lets be real:

Results with Characters
1st. ZeRo /
2nd. Mr R
3rd. Nairo
4th. Abadango //
5th. Dabuz /
5th. Ally /
7th. ESAM
7th. FOW
9th. Larry Lurr /
9th. Rain
9th. SS
9th. Static Manny
13th. False (maybe )
13th. DaPuffster
13th. Regi
13th. Mocha
17th. 8bitman
17th. John Numbers
17th. Salem/Tyrant (lol double DQ)
17th. MJG
17th. Angel Cortez
17th. Bloodcross
17th. CaptAwesum
25th. Trevonte /
25th. Shaky
25th. Salem/Tyrant (both DQ'd)
25th. Mr. Con Con
25th. Falln
25th. Vinnie
25th. Christian Rendon (i think?)
25th. Tweek

[a lot of] Sheiks, 2 Rosalinas, Diddies, Nesses, WFTs, Villagers, ZSSes.

This is a really impressive top list. So what if ZeRo won for the 41st time in a row? If a WFT, G&W, Charizard, or even a Pacman player could make it THAT far in a tournament, what's to say other characters can't do the same? This just goes to show that this game is far, FAR from being done.
Just fyi.

 

[Phenomiracle]

Hrm....
mmm.....
Nnnnnnnn......
Nah it's the same.
Ken domination for almost a decade > Zero for 10ish months.

Two separate games that the community holds in high regard.

Ken's dominance came at a time when Smash's competitive community was entirely grassroots, tiny compared to what it is today. Melee (and Brawl) was the only game to go towards. ZeRo drawing away from Smash 4 to move onto what a good amount of the community should just take over all of Smash is just punch in the gut. Deserved or not, who knows, that's irrelevant. But they are definitely different times.

This topic isn't the place to discuss this, I'm ending it here. Feel free to get your snarky final word in if you'd like, we're moving on.

 

[Nu~]

I wonder if people will finally start taking Pac-Man seriously now. Made it to 4th using Pac-Man 80% of the time, and only switching when he got to 40:60 matchups (sonic, Rosa) or Shiek (a 45:65 when using only default pacman)

Definitely should be taken note of.

 

[Gawain]

You know what I'm mad about though? Those Golden TE2s going to people who will probably never use them, or will just sell them. Grrr lol.

 

[warionumbah2]

So Tyrant is the better MetaKnight or Ito sucks at Dittos?

Losing a ditto match doesn't make the victor a better main. Its how they handle other MUs which earns them the 'best X main', which we didn't get to see since Mk in general got little to no stream screen time.

Ito most likely has 0 exp against another MK, i honestly don't know what its like to get Uair combo'd since i never face another MK good enough to not flop a braindead easy combo.

Ito might still be the best MK, but can lose dittos similar to Fatality with Falcon(Thanks @ Ffamran ). Results however tips into Tyrants favor he got 13th at CEO and he probably could've gotten 15th at EVO if he had woken up but got 17th instead. 2 big tournaments and he got top 20 with nothing but MK, while Ito gets strong results at locals week after week.

Basically a top level MK got booted off early and another MK who beat the top MK got DQ for going Jigglypuff for 30mins. It was destiny.

 

[Sorichuudo]

I don't know. The idea that no one (when training to be competitively viable against ZeRo) has gotten good within the past eight months? That and Nintendo not wanting to treat this game as a competitive game alongside making poor balancing decisions (aside from fixing broken tactics) without notes.

I will give you that Nintendo needs to get their **** together and start doing patch notes AND talking to the community when balancing the game if they actually care about it.

But, no one got good within the past months? Have you considered the slight chance that everyone got good, INCLUDING ZeRo?

 

[TheReflexWonder]

We didn't even see the real kicker for Wario. >

 

[Smog Frog]

can we appreciate this top 32 for a sec? 7 , 2 , 2 , 3 , 2 , , 2 (maybe only 1), , , 2 , , , , 2 , , , , ,,
i probably missed some, but thats far more diversity than any melee top 32 i ever saw. may this be a good omen for the games future.

a grand total of 20 different characters.

 

[ARGHETH]

Heck, there wasn't a single Ganon, Ike, Shulk etc.

Question: how many of those characters were there?

 

[Phenomiracle]

Also i am going to go ahead and say that customs didn't brought much variety here. Wich character not named WFT, Villager, or wario did we saw? EDIT: characters that we saw that are not usually seen, that is.

Heck, there wasn't a single Ganon, Ike, Shulk etc.

To me, the only hype it brought was to see someone beat a VillEDGEr, a HSB Pikachu or a custom Sanic.
Still not feeling customs are a necessity to this game.

Not really a fair assessment, though. One or two moves don't cause characters to skyrocket. Taking a look at the top 32s and compare them with top 32s of past tourneys should paint a better picture for what impact customs have.

To suggest that top 8s would change just because customs legal would be to say we're playing an entirely diffferent game when customs are on.

 

[Kurri ★]

I don't know. The idea that no one (when training to be competitively viable against ZeRo) has gotten good within the past eight months? That and Nintendo not wanting to treat this game as a competitive game alongside making poor balancing decisions (aside from fixing broken tactics) without notes.

Have you ever played other competitive games. Justin Wong dominated a whole bunch of tournaments, in more games, and longer than ZeRo ever had. Ken dominated Melee for years, whereas ZeRo only did for months. This isn't new, just keep pushing. If you give up now it's solely your fault.

 

[Nintenpro]

Bloodcross played mostly Fox, not sure if he won with his Charizard.

 

[Ryu_Ken]

can we appreciate this top 32 for a sec? 7 , 2 , 2 , 3 , 2 , , 2 (maybe only 1), , , 2 , , , , 2 , , , , ,,
i probably missed some, but thats far more diversity than any melee top 32 i ever saw. may this be a good omen for the games future.

Yeah, I agree.
Surprised that not a lot of Luigis got very far.

 

[Gawain]

Yeah, I agree.
Surprised that not a lot of Luigis got very far.

The Falcon players who came also really dropped the ball too. I was disappointed to be sure.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Not really a fair assessment, though. One or two moves don't cause characters to skyrocket. Taking a look at the top 32s and compare them with top 32s of past tourneys should paint a better picture for what impact customs have.

To suggest that top 8s would change just because customs legal would be to say we're playing an entirely diffferent game when customs are on.

To be fair, "playing an entirely different game" is exactly what some anti-customs people complain about, which we've just seen doesn't really happen.

 

[FullMoon]

I don't know. The idea that no one (when training to be competitively viable against ZeRo) has gotten good within the past eight months? That and Nintendo not wanting to treat this game as a competitive game alongside making poor balancing decisions (aside from fixing broken tactics) without notes.

Uh... The competition is getting better, but the thing is, so is ZeRo. He practices a lot too, you know, probably more than anyone else.

 

[ShadyWolfe]

Bloodcross played mostly Fox, not sure if he won with his Charizard.

He won a match with his Charizard but I can't remember against who.