By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The weekend after Byleth releases, are they the most popular choice?
I posed a prediction to the Internet in last week's article promoting the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate North American Online Open February 2020:
“I predict that Joker will FINALLY no longer be the most-used character, after he has been so for all of the previous tournaments.”
My basis for this prediction was that the version 7.0.0 balance patch nerfed Joker, introduced Byleth, and buffed several other characters, with specific notable boosts to Samus, Dark Samus, Sheik, Zelda, Dr. Mario, Young Link, Toon Link, Ryu, Ken, and Cloud. Besides Joker, Zero Suit Samus and Palutena also got nerfed. My basic hypothesis is that the player base pays attention to patch notes and changes their behaviour accordingly. The major buff recipients from 6.0.0 back in November all got usage bumps afterwards.
Was I correct in my prediction? First of all, congratulations to King Chris (Zero Suit Samus player from west Canada), Frawg (Bayonetta player from Nevada), Pelca (Snake player from New England), and Wrath (Sonic player from Georgia) for winning the tournament and getting trips to Frostbite 2020 in Detroit later this month. But thousands of other players—including me, and you can see my very detailed journey and results in last week's article's comments section—also joined the tournament, and thousands less (but still thousands—this tournament actually had the highest players-to-registrant ratio since I've been tracking them) showed up to participate. Collectively, the following usage stats are aggregated from nearly 39,000 games, and I believe it's a representative sample of the metagame that you're likely to encounter while playing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate online as of publishing:
That pie chart is a bit difficult to maneuver through, so I've converted it into a fully searchable text list. It shows the relative placing of the character (in terms of popularity), the character's name, the number of games they've played, their usage % (1.25% is supposed to be the average with 80 characters), and their placement change since November. Highlighted list items are ones I want to talk about.
- Joker 4522 5.80% 0
- Byleth 4265 5.47% N/A
- Banjo & Kazooie 2801 3.59% 1
- Link 2331 2.99% 1
- Bowser 2242 2.87% -2
- King K. Rool 2180 2.80% 8
- Ness 2014 2.58% 0
- Terry 1984 2.54% -6
- Cloud 1977 2.53% 0
- Captain Falcon 1965 2.52% 15
- Mario 1917 2.46% -3
- Ganondorf 1847 2.37% -6
- Inkling 1789 2.29% -3
- Donkey Kong 1555 1.99% -2
- Lucina 1548 1.98% 15
- Yoshi 1519 1.95% 2
- Kirby 1481 1.90% -4
- Hero 1456 1.87% -7
- Samus 1436 1.84% 2
- Piranha Plant 1369 1.76% -1
- Young Link 1263 1.62% 8
- Lucas 1194 1.53% 4
- Palutena 1192 1.53% -3
- Wolf 1113 1.43% 3
- King Dedede 1110 1.42% 3
- Luigi 1109 1.42% 8
- Ridley 1104 1.42% -5
- Pokémon Trainer 1100 1.41% -12
- Pikachu 1069 1.37% -14
- Sonic 1053 1.35% 1
- Little Mac 1045 1.34% -14
- Roy 1036 1.33% 0
- Zelda 997 1.28% -10
- Mr. Game & Watch 961 1.23% 3
- Snake 952 1.22% -2
- Jigglypuff 914 1.17% 5
- Ike 854 1.09% -2
- Toon Link 816 1.05% -2
- Mega Man 747 0.96% 15
- R.O.B. 744 0.95% -16
- Zero Suit Samus 709 0.91% -1
- Bowser Jr. 670 0.86% 13
- Bayonetta 627 0.80% 4
- Chrom 620 0.79% -5
- Wii Fit Trainer 618 0.79% -1
- Greninja 613 0.79% 12
- PAC-MAN 607 0.78% 10
- Marth 561 0.72% -10
- Incineroar 559 0.72% -3
- Mewtwo 538 0.69% 1
- Robin 517 0.66% -2
- Dark Samus 514 0.66% -10
- Fox 512 0.66% -3
- Shulk 492 0.63% -9
- Corrin 430 0.55% -7
- Dr. Mario 415 0.53% 12
- Falco 414 0.53% -14
- Isabelle 408 0.52% 6
- Pichu 405 0.52% 7
- Dark Pit 393 0.50% -8
- Mii Gunner 389 0.50% -5
- Mii Swordfighter 343 0.44% 0
- Rosalina & Luma 319 0.41% 8
- Lucario 309 0.40% -1
- Mii Brawler 306 0.39% 0
- Villager 285 0.37% -6
- Richter 275 0.35% -8
- Sheik 274 0.35% 5
- Ken 258 0.33% -16
- Diddy Kong 251 0.32% 4
- Meta Knight 247 0.32% -1
- Ice Climbers 237 0.30% 7
- Wario 216 0.28% 2
- Peach 209 0.27% -13
- Daisy 176 0.23% -8
- Simon 172 0.22% -4
- Pit 172 0.22% -8
- Ryu 158 0.20% -2
- Duck Hunt 120 0.15% -2
- Olimar 84 0.11% -2
Quite frankly, the results are confounding. This is far from the simple buffed character→greater usage; nerfed character→reduced usage model that I was promoting. Joker is still the most used character. Yes, his lead over the second-most used character, in this case Byleth, is much less than in November. In fact, even with another character added, Joker's percentage-most-used went slightly UP. Many characters that got buffed actually dropped dramatically, such as Ken, Zelda, and Dark Samus (slightly off-set by Samus herself going up). Some characters barely budged, like Cloud. That's the opposite of common sense.
And then other characters that weren't touched fell anyway, like Little Mac (who should fall because he can't win tournaments like this) and Pokémon Trainer (and I don't know why they'd fall because they have plenty of representation at the highest levels of play). As for the likes of Hero, Terry, and Mii Gunner (despite the Cuphead outfit), their novelty appeal wore off, and so they fell. Banjo & Kazooie, much like Joker, is sticking around. Why? I don't know. Maybe that's tied to how much people actually wanted to play as them before they got in.
I'll note that in the majority of individual regions, Byleth was the most-used character—Regions 1, 5, 6, 7, and 8. Joker was the most-used character in 2, 3, and 4. The Joker-Byleth deficit is driven primarily by Region 4 (Mexico), which adores Joker and is apparently less thrilled about new DLC.
I wouldn't mind Joker getting another nerf, though I feel like the nerf to Arsene's duration makes Joker's presence significantly more healthy than before.
The next tournament is coming up (which'll be the subject of another article in February). The popular opinion for Byleth is that they aren't very competitive. My opinion is that they're nothing compared to the Koopalings, which may be why Bowser Jr. (and Koopalings)'s usage went up, too!
Lastly, Captain Olimar being in last place isn't new for him. Props to Sheik for climbing out of dead last compared to just a few months back.
If you would like to see the underlying data/spreadsheet, especially per region, then you may consult this Google Sheets over here. If you have theories on why Ludwig's theories were wrong, please feel free to comment about them. Keep in mind that, especially among the less-popular part of the usage stats, the presence (or lack thereof) of one or two dedicated character-specialists may shift that character's position dramatically. He needs to develop a new theory!
The next tournament to pull stats from is the one a month later for Spring 2020. How much will Byleth plummet? You can affect the course of history!
Find out how much Byleth fell after one month with the Spring 2020 usage stats.
What's the significance of the highlight colors? The ones that are highlighted at all are the ones you wanted to go into more detail on, sure, but what does red/yellow/green mean?
ReplyDeleteGreen = They went up since November
DeleteYellow = They stayed put since November
Red = They dropped since November