Meta SSBU Competitive Ruleset Discussion

[Thinkaman]

I think the best rule solution to ban stalling is simply to say stalling is banned--and think that such a vague rule is actually quite enforceable and reasonable. I would bet a large sum of money that a sufficiently serious and judicially-adjudicated "no stalling" rule would result in 0 major competitive matches going to time, thus in practice requiring zero actual judgments to be made. I may make a dedicated post to this idea later.

This happened.

 

[M4NIAC]

My thoughts on Miis,

Since we are allowing nametags and custom controls, there is no reason to restrict Mii movesets, since it takes less than a minute to make a Mii set.

Placing hard restrictions on appearance (Guest Mii, standard costume) and naming (ie naming a Mii set to XYZA to represent moveset, like 1111 or 3121 or gun2232) is fine.

Limiting a player to one, and only one, moveset per Mii type is fine, even across the tournament. Ie: if a Gunner wants to use 2222, he is not allowed to switch to 1111 for the entire tournament. He is allowed to switch to Brawler or Sword, or a different non-Mii character (other rules permitting).

Additionally, now that Miis are legal in online random matchmaking, we can collect significantly more data on the characters than we ever could for Wii U.

Time/Stock

I think 3 stock and 7-8 minutes is ideal. Online random matchmaking allows us to set to 7 minutes (though there is sudden death on online), and it rarely goes to time. Of course, online play is not tournament play, so it is fair to criticize this point.

From a spectator perspective, 3 stock is much more fun to watch than 2 stock. Of course this is subjective.

I have to agree here. I also believe that some stages with hazards can be legalized:

• Town and City
• Smashville

I think that a lot of people have expressed this, and it would be possible if we made a ruleset that included only these stages with hazards on.

I understand if you disagree. Please tell me what you think.

 

[Kiligar]

I have an idea for a competitive ruleset. Super Sudden Death 1v1, screen shrink off, bob-omb drop off. 5 stock, best of 5. This competitive ruleset favors certain things, namely frame data and projectiles. After the projectile nerf, projectiles won’t be as dominant though. Recovery is a non-issue due to one hit sending you into the blastzone. Combos, strong advantage, and weak disadvantage states are not important. What is important is an as strong neutral as possible. Example S tiers in this ruleset include Sheik, Little Mac, Richter, Mega Man,Dark Pit and Dr.Mario. Weight is of little but not no importance, for example anyone lighter than Cloud will die to Dark Pit’s arrow, anyone heavier can take one arrow but will be in a bad position. What do you think of this ruleset?

 

[Munomario777]

best idea i've seen in here all month!

 

[Terotrous]

So it's basically the Smash version of Divekick?

All buttons do 1 billion damage!

 

[Kiligar]

So it's basically the Smash version of Divekick?

All buttons do 1 billion damage!

Would be interesting to see what strategies dominate the meta. Also, Super Sudden Death doubles would be quite different. It would be so interesting to watch I think, with team synergy being extremely important.

 

[Thinkaman]

Smash N Splash leading the way (nothing new) with a bold combination of the best two tournament formats.

Not one person at SNS is going home 0-2, much less a full quarter of the entire registration list. And no top player will be enjoying 10-15x the playtime and critical tourney XP as the plebians funding the event.

We've handwaved this mistreatment of the community for far too long in the name of growth and logistics, but SnS--again--shows us there is no valid excuse shy of being literally EVO.

 

[Munomario777]

Sounds really neat! :O

 

[Terotrous]

Smash N Splash leading the way (nothing new) with a bold combination of the best two tournament formats.

Honestly, I don't think I like this format all that much. If you watch the video, in the first bracket, there are 11 players who finish the round robin with a 3-2 record, of which 5 are eliminated. The video doesn't explain how this happens, but if you read the rules it's actually based on a series of tiebreakers, which to me feels lame. Tiebreakers might occasionally be tolerable in extreme situations, but here quite a lot of players will be eliminated this way. Also, statistically, it doesn't seem possible that you could qualify with a 2-3 record? (someone else can do the math but it would at least be super unlikely). So the moment you lose your third match, you might as well go home (though this would actually be extremely bad because this skews the tiebreaker values for the 3-2 players!). It honestly seems like a ton of work just to give you one more meaningful match before you're out, players who get eliminated can just play friendlies or spectate the tournament anyway.

 

[Thinkaman]

All tournament formats are sorting algorithms. All sorting algorithms use tiebreakers.

Elimination brackets simply use the worst tiebreakers possible: Implicit tiebreakers based on seeding. And for most players, this means "random".


Let's give an example. Consider 3 equally skilled middle-tier players, Rocky, Paperika, and Scizzy. They are the same skill, but beat each other consistently in a RPS triangle.

Now, a correct sorting algorithm (aka tourrney format) should find that these players are equal. Because, they are--we literally just defined them as equal.

Let's say Rocky plays Paperika first. Paperika wins, and then loses to Scizzy.

• In swiss or round robin, Scizzy still has to play Rocky, and we correctly find that the three players are equal. We use a tiebreaker based on their performance against opponents.
• In bracket, Scizzy just never has to play Rocky. We skip to operating on the implicit tiebreaker of the initial seeding position. (It is just as likely that Rocky or Scizzy got the lucky bracket and came out on top.)

tl;dr - All formats operate on tiebreakers. The tiebreaker logic in brackets is so awful that you don't even recognize it as tiebreakers.

 

[Terotrous]

I think what you mean to say is that all tournament formats involve some degree of luck, which I would agree with, but in the default double elimination format, there are no tiebreakers. Every player is eliminated from the tournament upon their second loss, and we keep playing until there is only one player left who has not lost twice. In Swiss, you may or may not be eliminated from the tournament upon your second loss in pools, based on factors that are unknowable to you at the time (since it depends on the match performance of the other players, which you don't see, presumably the TOs do the math and tell everyone at the end who remains in).

To use your example, let's make another slight tweak to make it more obvious and say that these players also will never lose to anyone else except each other. Then, whomever takes longer to face one of the other two is guaranteed to win the championship, because when the other two play, the person that beats them will be put into losers, they will then put the other one into losers, who will then eliminate the first player in a double jeopardy situation before ultimately losing to the third player in grand finals. In this case, the victory is complete luck depending on the initial seeding position. Of course, this is an extremely simplified example and no one consistently beats anyone all the time or is exactly equally skilled, everyone has good and bad days, but the concept of having an "easy bracket" where you face few losing matchups or strong players early on or whatever else definitely exists. Still, I would much rather face bracket luck than have to deal with the situation of potentially being eliminated even though I just won my most recent match, which just feels wrong to me.

 

[Thinkaman]

I think what you mean to say is that all tournament formats involve some degree of luck, which I would agree with, but in the default double elimination format, there are no tiebreakers.

Did you read my post? It was a step-by-step walkthrough of how brackets absolutely operate on tiebreakers.

They are just implicit and entirely based on seed. It's identical to resolving all "ties" in favor of whoever happened to win first.

 

[Terotrous]

Did you read my post? It was a step-by-step walkthrough of how brackets absolutely operate on tiebreakers.

They are just implicit and entirely based on seed. It's identical to resolving all "ties" in favor of whoever happened to win first.

I did, but I wouldn't consider the situation you've described to be a tiebreaker. For me, a tiebreaker is "a method of deciding a winner between two players who have the same standing other than having them play against each other". In standard double elimination, there are no tiebreakers, everything is decided through matches. Some players who are eliminated do have tied standings but since they're in a position where they can no longer win they don't bother breaking those ties.

I think what you're referring to is having the concept of a "skill tie". The players you describe are tied in skill but not in standings, and you seem to be describing the entire tournament as a method of breaking the tie between their skill levels, but I think this is stretching the definition pretty far.

I think the concept you're really trying to get at is the notion that a tournament should produce final results that somewhat resembles a total ordering by skill of the players involved. It is obvious that in many cases, the results of a double elimination tournament do not accurately reflect the skill of some of the players. Good players can be eliminated early in upsets, earning placements that are very inconsistent with their skill level, or a lesser player can have an unusually good run and place inordinately high. It is possible that the Swiss format may do this slightly better, but since you can still be eliminated in 2 matches the potential for upsets is definitely still there, it's maybe just a little less volatile. It's clear in any case that the most consistent results will be obtained through league play (compare Topanga's format for example), where every player plays each other a significant number of times, but this is obviously infeasible to run with a large number of players. That being said, though, Double Elimination seems to be a pretty good compromise between producing generally consistent results, being fairly easy to understand and to run, and giving a good spectator experience. It hasn't been the standard for ~10 years for nothing.

It'll be interesting to see what the player feedback is on the Swiss system but I'm pretty positive any player who was eliminated by tiebreaker will think it was bs.

 

[Lacrimosa]

Judging the Twitter of some top-players they don't seem to like that. Which is kinda sad but I fear a major wasn't really the right place to figure things and how the Swiss Format is received. They should've introduced it for example at Combo Breaker which was a much smaller tournament. I think a tournament as big as SnS should've went with thne traditional rulesets of regular double-elimination. Not saying the Swiss Format is bad (hell, no), but I think many players don't like a complete new format at such a stacked tournament. Feels like they blurt things out here...

 

[Gunla]

Hey, I suppose I can weigh in on this, actually, seeing how I just got back from SNS5 earlier today! I was involved with running doubles pools for Ultimate and competed in singles, full disclosure. I had a lot of fun at the event outside of competition, but I'll be honest in saying that I think a lot of the frustration is warranted about how things went, primarily with respect to Swiss pools. Much of the issues, in my opinion, came from human error, but also came to show how difficult running a format like this ultimately is at this large of a scope.

There were a myriad of general scheduling issues that came forward outside of your typical Smash schedule delays (streams, tight spacing, players in 2 doubles events, 3-4 setups per doubles pool, streams creating delays, etc). The three streams on day 1 and the requirement of needing every match to be finished to properly progress rounds caused things to stagger. With how much things were getting delayed, this wore down everyone involved and things didn't conclude until past 1 AM CDT on Saturday for pools.

I'd say the most immediate thing is that it's extremely difficult to properly run Swiss with this many entrants as is (1700 or so by the time registration closed). There's a lot of things that can individually go wrong and on my own experience the whole thing was a "death of 1000 cuts" sort of deal for reasons I stated above and some others.

I think there's a bit of understandable distaste towards the tiebreakers that got priority (predominantly the opponent based ones). The volume of DQs meant that many players were starting off at a disadvantage due to how they were counted (Play! Pokemon's procedures have a clause that adjusts edge cause win/loss percentages to be 25% minimum and 75% maximum, for instance, to mitigate this sort of issue) and if they got 4-2, were likely "Swiss'd" as some have put it. The shifts in the tiebreakers used and players getting moved from one division to another after hearing an initial result is frustrating.

SNS is known for pushing major bracket shifts away from double elimination to make sure everyone gets more sets, but I think it may be better in the future to try to focus upon pushing side events in a stronger form/amateur brackets to maximize player experience and instead shift towards a slightly more traditional bracket structure to minimize delays like these (it certainly could have happened with DE, but I think the structure of Swiss made it more potent). It's likely getting infeasible with this many players to run RR -> DE as well unfortunately like they've done for past years. I think it was extremely respectable that Swiss -> 3 Division DE Waterfall was attempted, but there were many potential areas for risk and just a few things snowballed, and that's an honest shame; I would have loved to see this work out, even knowing that I'm generally not a fan of Swiss. I'm sure the core staff team will take all of the feedback that's been going around to heart and make SNS6 a great experience all the same.

 

[Thinkaman]

TBQH this is the most devestating news the Smash scene has had in some time. I'm heartbroken.

 

[Ben Holt]

Quick question. I watch competitive players on YouTube mention "rage"?
Does that mean that Underdog Boost is set to on? Or is it something different?

 

[Frihetsanka]

Quick question. I watch competitive players on YouTube mention "rage"?
Does that mean that Underdog Boost is set to on? Or is it something different?

Characters deal more knockback if they're at higher %: https://www.ssbwiki.com/rage

 

[Ben Holt]

Characters deal more knockback if they're at higher %: https://www.ssbwiki.com/rage

I understand what rage is, but is Underdog Boost what turns it on?

 

[Frihetsanka]

I understand what rage is, but is Underdog Boost what turns it on?

No, Rage is always on, Underdog Boost is usually turned off in tournaments.

 

[Ben Holt]

No, Rage is always on, Underdog Boost is usually turned off in tournaments.

Thank you.

 

[Vulgun]

I think we need to take a good, long look as to how we deal with stalling going forward. The fiasco regarding that doubles match with double Mr. Game & Watch, especially in relation to what happened to Larry, in Kongo Saga, is showing the faults of the system we currently have in place. Let me put this as bluntly as I can; no matter what you think the rules currently are, what happened to Larry for that near-40 seconds of gameplay was stalling, all because the rules dictate that it has to go up to 300% damage from the initiating hit.

The reason I find a problem with this is that it took 40 seconds for the match to finally finish from start to end, and there was little that Larry could have done to circumvent this stalling aside from maybe taking those last hits of the sausages and getting up to 300% damage at least before he got hit by that dash attack. But then that would have also upset a lot of people considering that was not only 40 seconds of nothing, but it was always in favor of Maister and Zackray.

So what I'm saying is, and for lack of better and more descriptive wording, we cannot have a damage-based system for stalling in regards to these situations. This just will not work going forward. It takes too long for someone to even get up to 300% damage (it took nearly 40 seconds for Larry to go from 103 to 280) and leads into what is basically a degenerative and boring match that could have caused a different sort of uproar had Larry gone to go above 300%. So in essence, the current ruling is lose-lose for any event, especially in regards to doubles.

While I may not have the perfect answer right away, I think a solid solution to this is to make rulings based on the amount of time spent stalling and the amount of inputs (or lack thereof) that were used during that set period of time. If 25 seconds pass and there are less than three inputs being used, then it should be considered stalling. And as for anyone trying to circumvent this ruling, I'd impose a 30 second wait time (even between stocks) before you can use the stalling tactic again, which would in turn improve the overall integrity of matches and significantly lower the viability of said tactics, especially in doubles.

That's what I think would work best, at least.

 

[Neil2TheKing]

Hi ya’ll,

I have played Smash Ultimate for about 300 hours. I do not play competitively. I spectate. I would like to propose some rule changes for competitive Smash Bros to make it more fun to watch. Right now Smash Esports seems designed with the competitor in mind rather than the spectator. Smash Ultimate has sold nearly 20 Million Units and at least 50 Million people have played Smash Bros at some point in their lives. Despite this, the Smash Esports scene is small. The most viewed Smash Ultiimate Tournament maxed out at only 250k concurrent viewers. This is disappointing, and leads me to believe Smash Bros eSports isn’t reaching its full potential.

Right now, a Smash Ultimate tournament is mainly fun to watch if you are a competitive or semi competitive Smash player. Casual players play a very different version of the game from competitive players. In a casual environment picking the same character over and over is considered rude, and if you play on the same stage for too long you and your friends get bored and start doing something else. As I mentioned earlier, I would like to propose some rule changes for Smash Ultimate eSports to broaden its appeal. My goal is to introduce changes that make tournament sets more engaging for casual Smash fans while still maintaining the competitive integrity of the game.

Rule Change 1: Best of 5 Sets should Implement a “Win With Three” Rule

In best of 5 sets, players must win each game with a different character. This means that if you win a game with Mario, you must switch and win with 2 other characters to win the set. Right now, a typical Best of 5 set looks something like this:

Esam vs MKLeo
Pikachu vs Joker
Pikachu vs Joker
Pikachu vs Joker
Pikachu vs Joker
Pikachu vs Joker

With the Win With Three rule implemented, Best of 5’s would look something like this:

Esam vs MkLeo
Pikachu vs Joker
Shulk vs Joker
Shulk vs Lucina
Samus vs Lucina
Samus vs Cloud

I like this rule change for two reasons. First, As a general rule, watching competitive Smash Bros is the most fun when you get to watch your favorite character. By asking players to win with a different character each game, you make it much more likely a spectator gets to see one of their favorite characters in action! The Win With Three rule also opens up the possibility of players developing theme teams such as “All Three Links” or “Pokemon Master”. These sort of storylines naturally drive viewer engagement and could help new viewers get invested in the scene.

Second, as a general rule, watching competitive Smash Bros is the least fun when players play characters you don’t like for 30 minutes. Watching MKLeo play Joker for 30 minutes is only fun if you like Joker. If you don’t like Joker it’s easy to get bored after ten minutes. Character fatigue is a thing when watching Smash Bros, especially during Top 8’s. Sometimes a Character Specialist makes a loser bracket run, and when that happens you could be watching Wario for two hours. It’s a lot easier to stay engaged when every matchup in a set is different, and if each player is picking 3 different characters, there’s a good chance the spectator likes at least one of the six.

The Win With Three rule maintains the competitive spirit of the game. Asking top players to be good with three characters is very reasonable, and in my opinion, if you are only good with one character, you aren’t the best Smash player. A while back MKLeo won a tournament using Joker for most of Grand Finals. He used Byleth for one game. The Thumbnail for that set was Game&Watch vs Byleth. The video got an extra 200,000 views because of that decision. Your audience wants character variety, so give the people what they want!

Rule Change 2: Turn Hazards On and Diversify the Stagelist

I understand the competitive Smash community is generally against hazards and moving stages. However, that’s how most of the world plays. I agree that a lot of stages in Ultimate are unfit for 1v1 competition due to degenerate strategies. However I think a lot of stages were banned from competitive play for having dynamic parts, not because they encouraged degenerative play.

I personally don’t like the current stage list very much. It is very stagnant. The main difference between stages in the current stagelist are the colors and the platform layouts. You have to be a fairly competitive player to think different platforms = different stage, and different color schemes only go so far.

The current Smash Stagelist is the most stationary in Smash history. Melee had Pokemon Stadium and Fountain of Dreams, Brawl had Yoshi’s Island and Lylat Cruise, and Smash 4 added Town & City and Duck Hunt. The only moving stage in the current stagelist is Town & City, and it only moves for about 10 seconds per match. The current competitive stagelist is very unrelatable for many Smash Players. There are competitive moving stages. There are competitive stages with hazards. Not including these stages alienates a lot of potential fans from the community. I recommend turning hazards on and diversifies the stage list significantly. This includes including stages like Brinstar and Great Plateau Tower; these stages have unique attributes that make them fun to watch and play, and IMO if you want to claim you are the best Smash Bros player in the world, you should know how to play with Brinstar lava.

I have identified about a dozen stages that I beleive are competitively viable with Hazards On. My hope is that 9 of these stages are adopted into a competitive ruleset. As far as I can tell none of these stages promote any degenerate strategies, and they often encourage unique stage dependent combos and gameplay that’s fun to watch. I’ll list the stages below with a brief description for their inclusion. The stages are in no particular order.

1. Final Destination- A third of the stages in Smash Ultimate are basically Final Destination. This is a lot of people’s favorite stage, so it’s almost a required inclusion.
2. Battlefield- Similar to FD, a third of the stages in Smash Ultimate are basically Battlefield, so it makes sense to include it in a competitive stage list. The competitive community also really likes the layout, so that’s another perk.
3. Delfino Plaza- losing your stock at 40% may be frustrating as a player, but as a spectator it’s hilarious. Some of the hypest Smash 4 games took place on Delfino. I remember Nairo once 3 stocked someone in under a minute on this stage. Thanks to the removal of chaingrabs, walkoffs aren’t as degenerate as before. This stage was competitively legal for years. Let’s bring it back!
4. Great Plateau Tower- With hazards on, the central pillar breaks. This gives the stage a temporary ceiling which is a very interesting gameplay mechanic. The stage might be a great choice for characters with strong horizontal KO options, and watching players manipulate the central pillar to their advantage should provide deep gameplay
5. Smashville- Everyone’s favorite stage, and now with it’s moving platform! The moving platform adds a lot of identity to this stage. The platform can help extends combos and provide more recovery options, encouraging more varied gameplay
6. Town & City- Town and City is like FD, Battlefield, and Smashville combined. While it shares a lot of aesthetic similarities with Smashville, the unique platform layouts and stage transitions give it a noticeably different feel, justifying its inclusion
7. Umbra Clock Tower- Umbra Clock Tower’s base form is basically bumpy FD, which has some interesting implications for projectile users. The stage also features floating platforms that float around the stage, constantly changing the play environment. One of the platforms spawns under the stage which may promote camping temporarily, but the platform leaves fast and when it does the camping player is left in disadvantage. This stage is great for Characters like Samus and Robin who like the flat terrain and appreciate the opportunities to charge their projectiles.It promotes unique gameplay, and the stage has an awesome background
8. Dreamland (64)- The wind is nifty. It extends certain combos and creates a subtle stage hazard to play with. It’s the only legal stage in Smash 64 and one of only 5 legal stages Melee. History shows us Dreamland is fit for competitive play
9. Yoshi’s Island (Brawl)- This stage’s central platform tilts throughout the match. Slants are very underexplored in competitive smash, and giving players a chance to abuse tilted platforms sounds interesting. I also like the support ghosts because they can hep facilitate underdog comebacks
10. Mute City (SNES)- Mute City has a lava floor and a lot of moving platforms. The two platforms that hover above the stage are omnipresent while the cars drift on and off the screen over the course of the map. The smash community does not currently play with lava floors, but there is nothing inherently uncompetitive about lava floors. I would like to see how pros abuse those mechanics, so I would like to see Mute City in the stagelist
11. Prism Tower- In my opinion a Pokemon stage is mandatory in a competitive smash ruleset, and with Hazards On Prism Tower is probably the best. It is a great moving stage, with all of the transitions being competitive layouts. The only possible exception is the first stage transition which includes walkoffs, but since the walkoffs are temporary and since you have to return to center stage when the stage moves, I think they are fair.
12. Brinstar- Brinstar has a lot of potential as a competitive stage. Like Great Plateau Tower it has destructible platforms and like Mute City it has a lava floor. When the lava rises it forces players into conflict, and juggling opponents off of the lava always looks cool. I think this stage in particular would add a lot to the competitive scene. Something is always happening on Brinstar. Someone might get dunked in Lava any second. It’s the sort of stage that can build incredible spectator hype, and I think it should be seriously considered for the competitive ruleset.
13. Duck Hunt- This is a pretty cool stage from Smash 4. The layout is unique, and when players use the dog to their advantage the stage is really cool. It was competitive in Smash 4, and I daresay it would be a fun stage in Smash Ultimate as well
14. Shadow Moses Island- If wall combos aren’t degenerate, Shadow Moses Island is a great stage. The stage heavily favors characters with strong vertical KO options, and sooner or later players start ricocheting from wall to wall. Since you cannot tech forever in Smash Ultimate,cave of life isn’t an issue. The side walls are breakable leading to wakoffs, but the walls are durable and repair quickly so the walkoffs are very temporary. Walls are currently absent from competitive Smash Ultimate, and having a stage where players can show off their mad combo skills could go a long way. If wall combos aren’t degenerate, i highly recommend Shadow Moses Island
15. Lylat Cruise- Lylat Cruise’s titling may pineapple some recoveries, but the stage tilting also opens up interesting combo options and projectile play. The stage could be a good counter pick against characters with precise recoveries such as Palutena or Ness. Losing a stock because of an unfortunate tilt may not feel great, but as a casual player, I SD all of the time. When you SD, it’s usually your fault. Pick Byleth and you will never have trouble recovering on Lylat ever again.

Like I mentioned above, I hope 9 of these stages are adopted into a competitive ruleset. Some of ya’ll may be concerned that Ganondorf isn’t good on all of the above stages. As I mentioned in rule 1, I think top players should be good with multiple characters, so if you are about to play on Mute City, pick Jigglpuff. Save Ganondorf for Smashville. Right now, Little Mac isn’t good on many tournament legal stages. Different characters have different strengths, so it stands to reason different characters would excel on different stages. The fact a certain character is bad on a particular stage is completely fine and expected.

Also, please note that when the stagelist changes, gameplay slows down temporarily. It takes players time to learn a new stage, and until they do their punish games are suboptimal. At launch, Smash Ultimate was a lot slower compared to today. If the stagelist is revised this would likely be true again for a couple of months as the community learns. I think changing the stagelist is worth the effort, but it’s something to remember.

Rule Change 3: A stage can only be used once per set

This is a relatively small change. Competitive players love to play on Pokemon Stadium 2 over and over. There have been entire sets played exclusively on Pokemon Stadium 2. That’s not very fun to watch. I understand competitive players want consistency, but can you also provide entertainment? #shotsFired . There are a lot of stages in Smash Ultimate. Only using a stage once per set would be a nice change for the competitive scene, and with an expanded stagelist things could get very exciting!

Conclusion

I love competitive Smash Bros. It’s my favorite sport to watch, but I know why I doze off, and I think I know why others don’t want to watch with me. Smash Ultimate has been driving its eSports scene in a Street Fighter/ Tekken direction. I think ya’ll could benefit by going in more of a Fortnite/ League of Legends direction. Smash Bros already has a huge install base. If leveraged properly Smash eSports could be huge.

I am a man of science. Right now we are in quarantine. If there was a time to experiment with the ruleset, it’s now. Viewership for online Smash Tournaments is very low. There really isn’t much to lose by experimenting with the ruleset. I would like to ask the TO’s in the Smash community to try these rule changes for two months. If they increase viewership, keep them. If not, feel free to go back to the old ways, but please experiment to help this scene grow! Thank you.

 

[Neil2TheKing]

Last time I came with nothing. This time I brought data.

The Smash community likes data. Ya’ll have data on stage sizes, platform heights, character frame data, etc. However, there is surprisingly little data on Smash Viewership. There is no repository of information to help the community understand why people watch their tournaments. This sort of information could prove very useful when designing a ruleset. To that end I gathered youtube video data from the 11 largest Smash Ultimate Tournaments. After analyzing the data I noticed some interesting trends which I will outline in this post. For reference here is the data in csv format: https://github.com/Neil2TheKing/Smash_Bros/blob/master/smash_supermajor_set_info.csv
And here is the full analysis with all accompanying code: https://github.com/Neil2TheKing/Smash_Bros/blob/master/Smash_Ultimate_Viewership_Analysis.ipynb.

I will summarize most of the key findings in this post, but if you want a deeper look definitely check out the analysis.

Insight 1: Tournaments Aren’t Attracting New Viewers

tournament
published_date
total_video_views

GENESIS 6
2019-02-01T18:30:19Z
6572319

Frostbite 2019
2019-02-23T15:38:05Z
4453771

Umebura Japan Major 2019
2019-05-01T06:11:02Z
743211

Smash 'N' Splash 5
2019-06-01T15:41:50Z
2541248

CEO 2019
2019-06-28T18:30:34Z
3099149

EVO 2019
2019-08-03T18:25:20Z
4873077

Super Smash Con 2019
2019-08-09T15:46:36Z
5798881

The Big House 9
2019-10-04T23:43:41Z
1390655

EVO Japan 2020
2020-01-24T08:39:05Z
329867

GENESIS 7
2020-01-24T20:08:21Z
2726444

Frostbite 2020
2020-02-22T15:42:57Z
6975594

The most viewed Smash Ultimate Tournament of 2019 was the very first tournament, Genesis 6. To a certain degree this is expected. Genesis 6 was the first large Smash Ultimate Tournament so naturally it drew a large crowd. However, no other Smash Ultimate Tournament that year came close to matching its audience size. Genesis 6 had 6.5 million total views. Frostbite 2019, the next tournament, was down to 4.5 million total views, a drop of 2 million. SNS5 had 2.5 Million total views, CEO had 3 million. EVO was hype, and raised the bar up to 5 million. SSC got 5.7 million total views, but then you’re back down to 3 million views per tournament for the rest of the year. Overall, 2019 was not an upward trajectory for the competitive scene.

Frostbite 2020 broke the Genesis 6 view record and has nearly 7 million views to its name. This is promising, but also misleading. Frostbite 2020 was the last major tournament before quarantine, so a lot of people are watching reruns of it because it’s the most recent tournament. The Smash World Tour announcement did increase hype for Frostbite 2020 and probably led to a lot of extra views, but if tournaments were still happening Frostbite 2020 would be smaller than Genesis 6.

Declining viewership is not good. Yesterday ZeRo posted a video saying that Smash Ultimate’s competitive scene is dying because of bad online. I’d argue that the Smash Ultimate competitive scene has been dying for the past year, not the past three months. And the reason the scene is dying is because the competitive scene doesn’t appeal to casual players at all.

Why didn’t Smash Esports get bigger after Genesis 6? Here’s my theory. When Smash Ultimate launched, a lot of people went online looking for Smash Ultimate content because that’s what people do nowadays. When Genesis 6 began, a lot of new / returning Smash players watched competitive Smash Bros for the first time… and they never watched again. Casual players were not impressed by competitive Smash Bros. Casual players opened the video hoping to see trains, lava, and pokeballs flying everywhere and instead they got 20 minutes of Tweek jumping up and down very intelligently. Genesis 6 got a lot of views because casual smash fans decided to give the competitive scene a chance, and they learned their lesson. Competitive Smash Bros wasn’t for them, and they didn’t return for future tournaments.

You see it in the numbers. The very next tournament went down 2 million views. EVO brought some Tekken and Street Fighter fans into the community, but Mario Kart players moved on. Ya’ll need to get the Mario Kart people back. If you cater Smash Esports to a highly competitive audience, The scene will never be taken seriously on a national scale. Smash needs to become bigger than EVO. In order to do this you need to tap into the 14 Million Smash Bros fans you are currently ignoring. Find out what the casual community wants from Smash Bros Esports and give it to them. They are your biggest potential fans.

Imagine if Football only appealed to professional athletes. That’s Smash Bros Esports right now. Currently Smash Bros Esports is a lot like Chess. Have you considered moving towards Poker? Poker players make way more money, and Poker is way more fun to watch.

Insight 2: Video Titles Affect Views

When you post a tournament set to your youtube channel, use the following format for the video title:

player1 (character1, character2, character3) vs player2 (character1, character2, character3)-Round-Format-Tournament

This format conveys the most important information up front, and clearly identifies the characters in the set for a potential viewer. Putting the characters in parentheses is very convenient, both from a lexicon perspective and a data science perspective. It also seems as though putting character names in parentheses significantly increases viewership. The data isn’t conclusive, but check this out:

#_of_characters_in_() --- average_views --- median_views --- number_of_videos
0 --- 17036.969811 --- 3086.000000 --- 265
2 --- 37636.862162 --- 9176.500000 --- 740
3 --- 43543.644068 --- 7265.500000 --- 118
4 --- 124999.4375 --- 21957.0000 --- 16

The first column represents the number of characters identified in parentheses. The other columns should be self explanatory. It turns out if you don’t put the character names inside parentheses, that video gets 20,000 fewer views on average and 5000 fewer on median. This means that a title like this: EVO 2019 SSBU - PG | Marss (ZSS) Vs. NVR | Elegant (Luigi) Smash Ultimate Tournament Top 256 will probably get more views than a video titled like this: Larry Lurr vs Zinoto - Ultimate Singles: Pools R2 Winners Semifinal - Genesis 7 | Wolf vs Peach. I cannot say this definitively for statistics reasons, but putting character names in parentheses should net more video views. Also, consistent formatting makes me happy

Insight 3: Viral Videos Drive View Totals

Most Smash Bros Tournament videos get between 5k-20k views. That’s not a lot for an esport. However, every tournament produces a handful of videos that go viral and get well over 100k views. These videos often account for over 50% of a tournament's total view count. After looking over all of these high performing videos, I identified four reasons tournament videos go viral.

1. Grand Finals Set: Grand Finals almost always get over 100k views.
2. Underdog Victory: Whenever a top player loses unexpectedly to an underdog, the video goes viral. If MKLeo loses a set in pools, that set is getting 100k views easy.
3. Star Power: Certain players are popular. Whenever Hungrybox plays a set, that set gets a solid 100k views. Same goes for Leffen. Top 8 sets with MKLeo usually get 100k views because MKleo is a fan favorite player
4. Unexpected Character Picks: When a top player picks an unexpected character, that video goes viral. Examples include Cosmos picking Corrin, MKLeo picking Byleth, and Riddles Picking Terry. The Smash audience likes seeing a large variety of characters at a high level. If you make that happen more often, your audience will watch more.

To see all of the sets with over 100k views yourself check out cell [25] in the analysis. The first 3 factors are outside of a TO’s control; you only get one Grand Finals per tournament, you can’t manufacture upsets (legally), and Hungrybox isn’t getting to Top 8 in Ultimate probably. However, factor #4 is leverageable. TO’s can encourage more character diversity by implementing the “Win With Three” rule. Your audience likes it when MKLeo plays Byleth. Make it happen more often!

Insight 4: The Fan Favorite Characters Are...

I grouped Smash Ultimate videos based on the characters used and I determined the median views per video for every character. I used the median instead of the mean because the median is more resilient to outliers. A complete list of characters with their median view count can be found in the analysis in cell [23]. It's really interesting and I highly recommend looking at this table in particular. Below I will summarize the major results.

Some characters have high median view numbers because the characters are rare and a top player decided to use them unexpectedly. Characters like Byleth, Terry, and Corrin fall into this category. Of the characters used in at least 10 sets, the most popular Characters from a viewer perspective are Ganondorf, Luigi, Joker, Captain Falcon, and Wario. The five least popular by the same metric are Daisy, Yoshi, Falco, Roy, and ROB. Notice that a character’s position on the tier list has nothing to do with the character’s popularity. OHKO’s are popular with Smash Ultimate’s audience; Characters like Wario, Luigi, and Jigglypuff are very popular among viewers.

In my opinion, the table highly suggests adjusting Smash Ultimate's ruleset to increase character diversity. Unexpected character picks get tons of views, and certain characters are way more popular than others; if your grand finals involves a Palutena main it's not going to do very well. If somehow you can encourage the Palutena main to play Ganondorf, that video=hype.


I would give closing thoughts here but I’m not done. Stay tuned for more.

 

[Neil2TheKing]

A lot of sexual assault allegations have come to light in recent weeks. In this post I want to propose some ideas to make tournaments safer for children. My focus is on logistics of tournaments rather than community behavior. Both are important, but in general I understand systems better than people.

Before I begin, I would like to recommend this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JymM5VrmnDI. It’s a GDC talk by EVO cofounder Tom Cannon. He discusses how game rules influence community culture and behavior. It’s an interesting watch, especially in light of recent events.

Here are my suggestions.


1. Turn Items On for Doubles

No one takes doubles seriously anyways, and turning Items On makes doubles much more accessible to a casual audience. With Friendly Fire On, doubles is basically the same thing as Free For All, and that’s how most of the world plays Smash Bros. I think parents would like it a lot. If we want more parents at Smash Tournaments, we need to give them something to do. A 35 year old dad probably can’t compete in a 1v1 against a pro, but he might win once in a while if he gets to throw a Pokeball. Many adults play smash casually for fun, and changing doubles into an Items On format should encourage more casual play at tournaments. It also could encourage family teams; with Items On a parent-child team could make it pretty far into the bracket with good coordination. With Items Off the parent will get picked apart because he/she can’t space as well as the pros.

2. Host Arcadian Tournaments for those under 18

Supermajors last three days. That’s a long time to ask a parent to babysit their kid, and it’s also three days of driving. From what I understand the smash community is broke, so providing extra security for all three days of a tournament might prove expensive. In that case, I recommend spending the first two days of a Supermajor completing all pools matches for 18+ players. Then on the last day (usually Sunday) host the Arcadian Tournament for those younger than 18. Close out the night with Top 8. The way I look at it, the first two days of a Supermajor can focus on competition, while the last day can be a celebration of Smash Bros, where families and casuals come to watch, play, and have a good time together.

To ensure child prodigies like MKLeo have a chance to win Grand Finals, I recommend inviting the top two players from the Arcadian Tournament to compete in Top 8. Reduce standard pools down to a Top 6 instead of Top 8 (complete the Loser’s Eighths matches), and then give the last two spots to the Arcadian Winners. Reset the bracket so the kids don’t have to start in losers, and then begin Top 8. This way kids still have an opportunity to compete against adults for the grand prize, and the top 2 finishers of the Arcadian tournament are guaranteed prize money without having to set up a separate Arcadian prize pot.

It’s easier to protect children if you only have to do it for one day. You can concentrate resources, and I think parents are more likely to accompany their kids if its not a three day commitment.

3. Use Single Elimination for Sunday Tournaments

I suggested hosting the entire Arcadian Tournament on Sunday. I would also recommend hosting the doubles tournament on Sunday since that’s when the parents/kids are there. That’s a lot of tournament sets for one day, and brackets could get very messy. To mitigate this I recommend single elimination brackets for these tournaments. Doubles is not the focus, so using single elimination to speed it up makes sense. I recommend single elimination for the Arcadian Tournament mainly due to time constraints. Double elimination takes twice as long to run compared to single elimination,and I think it’s important that the Arcadian Tournament finishes on time so Top 8 can start and everyone can go home. The loss in consistency is regrettable, but I don’t think most kids would notice/ care, and the ones who wish they had a second chance are probably looking forward to becoming competitors when they turn 18.

I also recommend Single Elimination for Top 8. The easiest way to incorporate the Arcadian Players into Top 8 is to reset the bracket; it doesn’t seem fair to start the Arcadian Players in Losers, and It’s counterintuitive to put the Arcadian Players in Winners since they had the easier bracket. A bracket reset would put everyone on an even playing field, but does create some logistical considerations. Normally Top 8 lasts 10 sets because half of the players start in Losers Bracket. With a Bracket Reset all players would start in Winners, so with Double Elimination you end up with 14 sets total. That’s a lot. Assuming 20 minutes per set, that’s a 4.5 hour long Top 8. Most people can’t watch Smash Bros for that long. If ya’ll decide to reset the bracket to incorporate Arcadians I recommend using Single Elimination for Top 8. Single Elimination gives you 7 sets, which takes about 2 hours to complete. That’s much more watchable for a parent and falls in line with other sporting events.


Final Thoughts

I’ve never organized a tournament and I’ve never attended a tournament so I might not know what I’m talking about. My goal was to give parents something to do while at tournaments and reduce the time kids have to spend at tournaments to compete. If these ideas are good please take them. If not that’s okay. I wish ya’ll luck as you try to make the community safer.

P.S.

IMO, the Smash Community should not allow any known sexual predators to compete at tournaments. If the competitor starts doing well children will start to look up to him/her. I don’t think we should give known predators access to that kind of power. My two cents on that issue



EDIT: Hi Smashboards, could someone respond to my posts? I was actually hoping to start a discussion with my mountains of words. I want to understand what the general community thinks of these ideas

 

[Thinkaman]

EDIT: Hi Smashboards, could someone respond to my posts? I was actually hoping to start a discussion with my mountains of words. I want to understand what the general community thinks of these ideas

You've touched on a lot of intersecting topics in your last post, and it's difficult to respond to any of them without a deep dive into all of them.

While you've put a lot of good thought into this and identified real dynamics around important problems, bad news first: most of these ideas aren't very workable. To avoid going too much into the web of topics, I'm only going to list some surface objections:

Items/Doubles:

• I think you misunderstand a lot of the attitudes people have towards both doubles and items.
• Creating a bigger seperation between an item "kiddie" league and a no-items "big **** competitive" league is the opposite direction of what we want.

Entrant Ages:

• Age restrictions on events (beyond those imposed purely by venue) is a non-starter.
• Any policy that encourages underage players to lie about their age or other factors to authority figures is automatically a failed policy.
• Most abuse cases happened with 18+ victims. What they all had in common, underage or not, was that they had a basis in community worship of top players and did not take place on the event floor itself.

Single Elimination

• Sending kids home after going 0-2 should be unacceptable. 0-1 would be even worse.
• We should be enabling new players should be player more smash, not less.
• Reducing top 8 to a single elimination bracket, while being comparable to what the big boy e-sports actually do, would never fly politically in a million years. We're talking about a community that got rid of pools and forced all of Smash 4 to play with 2 stocks primarily to reallocate time for top ~32 to be Bo5.

Arcadians

• You're playing a little fast and loose with the term "Arcadian"; traditionally this refers to an event that excludes players who have placed well in the past, aka an event for weaker players who have never gotten a time to shine. The winner(s) of an arcadian could typically not enter the next arcadian, by definition.
• By redefining it as a <18 event (that still feeds into top 8), the purpose is muddled and the implications for possible players are unclear. So a young MKLeo can enter, but a 18 year old who goes 0-2 every week can't? What happens when MKLeo wins--does he still get to enter in the future? Or does he get pushed to the 18+ event, even though he is not of that age? No matter what these details are, no option would actually have prevented the abuse cases at hand.

Your root idea that the occurance of abuse and the way we hold events is connected is 100% correct; you're just a little fuzzy on some of the details and implications, very natural for lacking first-hand experience in that aspect of the scene.

I would suggest, independent of this brainstorming, to get involved with local events in some way when the state of things permits it. As horrible as the revelations of earlier this month were as as much work as we have ahead of us as a community, my time in smash and the people I've met have been a huge part of my life and it would be impossible for me not to recommend it.

 

[teluoborg]

I have played Smash Ultimate for about 300 hours. I do not play competitively. I spectate. I would like to propose some rule changes for competitive Smash Bros to make it more fun to watch. Right now Smash Esports seems designed with the competitor in mind rather than the spectator. Smash Ultimate has sold nearly 20 Million Units and at least 50 Million people have played Smash Bros at some point in their lives. Despite this, the Smash Esports scene is small. The most viewed Smash Ultiimate Tournament maxed out at only 250k concurrent viewers. This is disappointing, and leads me to believe Smash Bros eSports isn’t reaching its full potential.

See that's the reason why nobody's engaging you in this discussion. People are fine with the money and fame that esports bring, but most are just there to play Smash.

Yes, Smash tournaments favor the competitors over the spectators, that's because they're made by Smash players for Smash players, and the main goal is to play and broadcast competitive Smash.

The competitive Smash community is a niche. It always has been and always will be. It's fine to think it could be better (because it certainly could), but trying to alienate its core values just for the sake of growth will benefit no one, and especially not the people that make it what it is right now : the players.

As said by Thinkaman above : whenever the circumstances allow it try attending a tournament. You may or may not like it, but at least you'll realize that what you see online is just the tip of the iceberg.

 

[Davis-Lightheart]

This hasn't been updated in a long time, but hey, may as well:

There was a problem fetching the tweet

I'm guessing this is the biggest ruleset shake-up yet.

 

[TheZizz]

I had a passing thought, how about a format in which winning a set prohibits the player from using the same character for the remainder of the tournament (and if multiple characters were used, the winner gets to choose who is banned from among the winning games). Echo fighters may be considered separate characters, just to give a marginal edge vs. DLC.

The idea is that players have to decide if they can afford to save their "big guns" for grand finals, or something along those lines.

 

[Kalashnikov]

I had a passing thought, how about a format in which winning a set prohibits the player from using the same character for the remainder of the tournament (and if multiple characters were used, the winner gets to choose who is banned from among the winning games). Echo fighters may be considered separate characters, just to give a marginal edge vs. DLC.

The idea is that players have to decide if they can afford to save their "big guns" for grand finals, or something along those lines.

If your region is chock-full of solo mains, that could make for a really fun side bracket idea. There are probably some kinks with it that'd have to be worked out (the clause regarding the use of multiple characters in a set comes to mind) but I like the concept. Certainly worth experimenting with!