Two Stocks vs Three Stocks: Global Poll Results!

SmashEurope just released a follow-up article to last week’s global poll about the stock count for Sm4sh. The questionnaire ended up getting close to 5000 responses and the results shed light on various questions and assumptions regarding the preferences of players and viewership. Taken together, roughly 58% of the voters actively prefers 3 stocks against roughly 25% in favor of 2 stocks, with the remaining voters being fine with both.

Last week, a collective of European TOs launched a global poll to gather data on stock count preferences in Smash 4. The poll was spread through SmashBoards, SmashEurope, SmashAsia, Reddit and various local communities in order to poll a diverse sample of people. We ended up with 4806 votes from 59 different countries, after removing roughly 50 duplicates and clearly bogus answers. In this article we present the results and some of our conclusions.

These are the results across the entire group polled, regardless of location or role in the community:

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The full article, written by SmashBoards admin @Marc, provides tools to look through the data yourself, before it goes on to examine the opinion of Sm4sh players specifically, the common assumption about viewership and how enthusiasts of other Smash games factor into the debate. It also includes full breakdowns by region (US states and European countries) and recommendations for the future. This is the most thorough analysis of the subject to date and well worth the read for anyone invested in the competitive future of Sm4sh.

What do you think? Has this new data changed your opinion? Let us know in the comments below!

 

And why do you imply that 3 stocks is the wish of every player?

I didn't. You made that jump. But now that you mention it, most of the players (not entitled spectators) I've spoken at the locals think 3-stock would be better.

 

Look, as someone who actually attended plenty of 3 stock 8 minute Brawl tournaments where timeouts were not even close to rare, I never once saw a tournament run late because of the ruleset. Smash 4 on average is a much faster game than Brawl, but it doesn't matter because 3 stock 8 minute doesn't make tournaments run late. Allegedly "slow" games don't make tournaments run late. Customs certainly don't make tournaments run late. Bad TOing is the sole and exclusive reason any tournament has ever run late; it's always that guy who isn't there and for whatever reason isn't DQ'd right away or the guy who is allowed to wait forever to play his loser's round 1 match and destroys the entire bracket (often this comes in the form of bias in which he's permitted to play really far ahead in another game at a multi-game event when he should always be pushed to whatever game he's holding up the most). For tournaments not run very sloppily, most of the time losses are still things like finding people or waiting for multi-game conflicts or dealing with the fact that, once again, the PM community brought ridiculously few set-ups; the actual gameplay is just not that big of a deal to the time compared to the factors that really matter as long as you keep things sane (smash 64 with no timer definitely will kill you; I've seen it a few times). If anyone has any actual evidence that tournament rules have a significant effect on tournament time compared to TOing efficiency, I'd be fascinated to see it.

3 stock is generally a better format as it makes single mistakes not instant game losses (your odds of coming back from a full stock mistake in 2 stock are nearly zero, very realistic in 3 stock), it makes long term reads more of a thing, it has less variance, and it actually encourages more diverse pacing of matches as it's just a basic fact of how people play that everyone plays way more slowly and carefully on last stock so making that half the game instead of a third of it has a pretty big effect on the pace of play. It's also just a better value for players; this thing we do these days where you have bracket pools means that the worst player at your tournament will only play two sets before elimination, and that player is likely 2-0d in both which means he only has eight stocks for his time and money. Giving him 12 is giving that worst player a 50% better value for attending your tournament while certainly not making the tournament take anywhere near 50% longer. That increases the odds he'll come back next time, and that makes your scene better. I don't think 2 stock ruins the game or anything and most of the time it produces similar outcomes to 3 stock, but it sure seems to have almost no real advantages so I'm continually mystified at why it sees so much support.

 

Fantastically put, friend.

It's also just a better value for players; this thing we do these days where you have bracket pools means that the worst player at your tournament will only play two sets before elimination, and that player is likely 2-0d in both which means he only has eight stocks for his time and money. Giving him 12 is giving that worst player a 50% better value for attending your tournament while certainly not making the tournament take anywhere near 50% longer. That increases the odds he'll come back next time, and that makes your scene better. I don't think 2 stock ruins the game or anything and most of the time it produces similar outcomes to 3 stock, but it sure seems to have almost no real advantages so I'm continually mystified at why it sees so much support.

This is exactly why I still opt to run round robin pools at our London tournaments. While they're still our high level events, there's not much space for friendlies until a fair bit later. so providing extra competitive sets for newer and/or lower level players is a high priority for me, personally!

 

I think tournaments the size of EVO or Apex should be 2 stock, but most of the smaller tournaments shoud be 3 stock. This is because some characters can dominate if they take the first stock, for example: Little Mac because of KO punch being a free stock in some cases, ZSS because of rage making her up b RIDICULOUS and Ryu-ish characters that have early killing killconfirms killing even earlier. I think the meta is much more balanced, and allows for more closer sets and more upsets in my opinion. 2 stock has it's perks that have been listed many times so I won't start with that, I would honestly be fine with either.

 

And 100% of TO's prefer tourneys that run on time. Don't ask for 3 stock at super nationals with 4+ games to run, or smaller tourneys with time concerns

"Look at me guys, I'm just going to speak on behalf of everyone else because I thought of something in my head and it sounded alright!"

 

"Look at me guys, I'm just going to speak on behalf of everyone else because I thought of something in my head and it sounded alright!"

Well, he isn't WRONG per say, we do all like having our events run on time.
The point is that the extra stock makes very little difference to if an event runs on time or not

 

I don't really play sm4sh that often to be honest but, I never got the whole 2 stocks thing. 64 has five stock because zero to deaths are very present in that game, 4 stock in melee because combos weren't as quick to end in death and felt like a good balance, Brawl was reduced down to 3 stock obviously because of how long stocks took to end in that game, but with sm4sh stocks don't take nearly as long and the game in general is quicker. I can understand not wanting sm4sh not to be 4 stock but why reduce to two? Why not keep it at 3? I am used to 2 stock and will enjoy the shortness of a 2 stock match at times but I just never got why the change was made.