By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - You can bet it'll be this way until Banjo comes out.
The fact is that I didn't do as well as I thought I'd do in the Nintendo-sponsored, Battlefy-hosted Super Smash Bros. Ultimate North American Online Open August 2019. Sure, I barely got into the top 10% of people who actually played in my region (see the comments section of that article for my journey), but that's still far from the Top 32 required to get into the Bracket Round. My bracket picture in that article was thus considered FAKE NEWS because it included a picture of Ludwig in the Bracket Round, but I wasn't in it and neither was any other Ludwig player.
It was an intense experience all around, and playing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate with tournament-stakes for four hours straight (controversially extended to five at the end of the fourth hour) is far more grueling than playing Splatoon 2 Splatfest Turf Wars for the same amount of time.
In the end, the four North American players that will be flown to Japan for the Nintendo Live tournament are Epic Gabriel (Region 6, Florida, R.O.B.), Wrath (Region 6, Georgia, Sonic), YoseFu (Region 5, ??? somewhere near Mississippi, Simon Belmont), and Heeew (Region 3, ??? somewhere near Texas, Richter Belmont).
To make this article more interesting for you, the reader, I've went to the stats sections for all of the eight regions, aggregated all of the data, and determined who the most-used characters are. This is based on 6,743 North American players who played at least one match (out of 12,322 who registered), and a total of 89,136 games played (multiply that by 2 to know the total number of characters used) in the Ladder Round. Here are the results, which you can use for yourself to prioritise which match-ups you should learn:
Or, to just put the whole thing in text, this is a most-used to least-used list by name, games played, and percent of total games played:
- Joker 12128 6.80%
- Hero 7502 4.21%
- Link 6930 3.89%
- Bowser 6382 3.58%
- Ganondorf 6188 3.47%
- Ness 5513 3.09%
- Inkling 4597 2.58%
- Cloud 4463 2.50%
- Yoshi 4279 2.40%
- Pokémon Trainer 4269 2.39%
- Mario 4047 2.27%
- King K. Rool 4008 2.25%
- Little Mac 4006 2.25%
- Donkey Kong 3990 2.24%
- Samus 3609 2.02%
- Kirby 3331 1.87%
- Lucina 3312 1.86%
- Lucas 3281 1.84%
- Captain Falcon 3191 1.79%
- Zelda 3152 1.77%
- Young Link 3104 1.74%
- Piranha Plant 3080 1.73%
- Wolf 3050 1.71%
- King Dedede 2962 1.66%
- Palutena 2639 1.48%
- Pikachu 2623 1.47%
- R.O.B. 2582 1.45%
- Ridley 2534 1.42%
- Ike 2531 1.42%
- Snake 2508 1.41%
- Sonic 2209 1.24%
- Luigi 2207 1.24%
- Roy 2197 1.23%
- Toon Link 1923 1.08%
- Mega Man 1787 1.00%
- Chrom 1741 0.98%
- Greninja 1730 0.97%
- Mr. Game & Watch 1697 0.95%
- Jigglypuff 1644 0.92%
- Falco 1593 0.89%
- Bayonetta 1571 0.88%
- Dark Pit 1469 0.82%
- Incineroar 1417 0.79%
- Dark Samus 1403 0.79%
- Zero Suit Samus 1402 0.79%
- Isabelle 1390 0.78%
- Fox 1386 0.78%
- Marth 1236 0.69%
- Corrin 1226 0.69%
- Mewtwo 1202 0.67%
- Wii Fit Trainer 1176 0.66%
- PAC-MAN 1136 0.64%
- Shulk 1115 0.63%
- Bowser Jr. 1094 0.61%
- Peach 1042 0.58%
- Richter 1009 0.57%
- Ken 980 0.55%
- Mii Swordfighter 941 0.53%
- Pichu 930 0.52%
- Robin 907 0.51%
- Villager 881 0.49%
- Dr. Mario 766 0.43%
- Simon 744 0.42%
- Lucario 724 0.41%
- Mii Brawler 681 0.38%
- Mii Gunner 634 0.36%
- Daisy 599 0.34%
- Meta Knight 584 0.33%
- Diddy Kong 576 0.32%
- Pit 560 0.31%
- Duck Hunt 556 0.31%
- Wario 544 0.31%
- Rosalina & Luma 505 0.28%
- Sheik 460 0.26%
- Ice Climbers 348 0.20%
- Ryu 288 0.16%
- Olimar 271 0.15%
Joker was played in more games than the bottom 19 put together. Captain Olimar was the only character on the cast to not see any usage in a region (Olimar was used 0 times used in Region 3, out of 20,014 games). The biggest difference between a character and their Echo Fighter in usage is Samus vs. Dark Samus (3609 games vs. 1403 games). Curiously, Dark Pit was used far more often than Pit (1469 games vs. 560 games). There doesn't appear to be a consistency with people's edginess.
The border between above-average usage and below-average usage is between Snake and Sonic. With 77 characters, there should be an average of 1.3% usage per character.
In every region, Joker was the most-used character. Pichu apparently collapsed after his big nerf in Version 3.1.0. He was a lot more common before.
Region 1 (think Washington state and western Canada) had the highest participation rate (61.82% between registrants and players, 15.03 games per person) of any region. Region 5 (the South in-between Georgia and Texas) had the lowest participation rate (41.57% between registrants and players, 12.81 games per person). You needed a minimum of 16 games in order to possibly qualify for the Bracket Round, since you needed to play 8 sets and each set requires 2 to 3 games. I wonder if it's a regional laziness thing.
In the actual Bracket Round, the most commonly-used characters were R.O.B., Yoshi, Ness, Duck Hunt, Sonic, Pokémon Trainer, Snake, Palutena, PAC-MAN, and Richter. That happens to be heavily influenced by the people who got the furthest in bracket, but the point is that none of those names are Joker, Hero, or Link. (Or Bowser or Ganondorf.)
You should expect a lot of low-to-mid-level players to want to do their best to imitate MkLeo and his Joker, and are just picking the shiniest new DLC character. That's why I said these statistics should hold until Banjo releases, and they're likely a good estimate of the characters you'll find playing random online matches. Train yourself in the match-ups against the most-used characters.
At least there's a very large percentage of the player base that HAS bought DLC for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and is actively using it. That's more than I can say for myself. Hm, that sale on the Fighters Pass is still going on...
Ludwig avoided bashing people for their popular character picks because Lord Bowser was the fourth most-used character, and Bowser was Ludwig's most-used character in the tournament. Unfortunately, some of the other Bowser players like to always Down-B when they're in the air above the opponent. Please don't do that if you're trying to win. You can see the spreadsheet of data in Google Sheets here.
Banjo has released, just in time for the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate North American Online Open September 2019!
Interested in how the usage stats evolved in September vs. August? We got that covered!
When Ludwig wrote “will be flown to Japan” he didn't know there'd be a plane-blocking typhoon.
You can compare August vs. November here, too.
Glad Pokémon Trainer stayed in the top ten even after the nerf unlike Pichu.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how much casuals even want to use Ivysaur. Maybe they're just in it for Charizard.
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