What's the strongest region in Smash Ultimate? A look at the numbers

15 Jul 2019

Smash is one of the few games where the United States actually has a larger presence than Europe or Asia, so it’s no wonder that that Americans take pride in their region as the strongest in just about every Smash game. But is it really?

And within the United States, regional rivalries are just as fierce. Which coast is the really the strongest? Can central US compete with the two coastal regions?

Well, let’s find out.

Note: Data used was prior to Albion 4 and Low Tier City 7

Table of Contents #

Best Country #

First, let’s look at the best performing nations in Smash Ultimate. Let’s just see who has the most talent, where talent in this case refers to the Elo score of players in that region. Of course, new players have a base Elo of 1300 in this system. In order to prevent new players from inflating scores, I calculate

$$adj = \max(Elo - 1300, 0)$$

Additionally, Europe is not a country, but it will be listed as one. Europe is often lumped together as a region, and to be honest individually none of the countries have enough Elo to make a mark individually.

With that out of the way, let’s look at the results

There’s no surprise here. The United States far and away has the most talent; in the Top 10 by Elo only Shuton and MkLeo are not from America.

But, what about talent concentration?

Note, some countries had to be removed due to lack of data points

Now the US falls behind with its massive player base. Japan is the country with the highest per capita Elo, and Mexico second with top dog MkLeo.

One really interesting result is just how equal the US and Canada are. A priori we know that the US and Canada have similar cultures, similar infrastracture, and a similar scene; the US just has a lot more people. Once you eliminate the number of players as a feature, their metrics become very similar.

We can also see the peak of each country, to see the best of their talent.

By sheer talent, there’s no matching the US. By skill concentration, Japan and Mexico take the cake. US and Canada are mostly seperated by population.

Now let’s look at State results. Again, first we’re just going to look at aggregate Elo by state

Click on a state to see its value

Aggregate Elo Delta by State #

California is the top dog here, with Florida a close second. The Tristate region would have an effective score of 16.9k if you combined them, putting them between California and Florida.

Average Elo Delta by State #

Here, we have some dataset issues once again, and certainly some of the results, like Oklahoma who tops the list now, are not particularly meaningful. But we can see that New York and the Tristate region, of the major states, is the most densely skilled area, with Florida behind it. CA has a metric ton of players, but they are comparatively less skilled.

Max Elo Delta by State #

Here we have the peaks of each state. Florida has Samsora, Tristate has Nairo and Marss.

Best Region #

We can tone down the granularity and look at regions of the United States as well. West coast best coast?

Note: it says ‘West Country’ for some reason, it’s West, which includes the West Coast as well as Nevada, Colorodo, etc.’

Well, not quite. The strength of the Southeast is no surprise, with both a large number of players and a densely skilled area in Florida, but the Midwest is surprisingly high. While they have no particularly dense states, they do have a ton of players, and a ton of above-average players at that.

The West Coast falls, as California basically carries the region, which you can see in the choropleth plots above.

Here, we can see that the Northeast is the most densely skilled region. The Southwest also proves that their main flaw was their population, beating out the Midwest, which now fall to last. The West Coast remains right in the middle, and the Southeasts’ large population drops it to 2nd.

Country: United States

State: California

Region: Southeast

Densely Skilled #

Country: Japan

State: New York (technically Oklahoma but they have like 3 players)

Region: Northeast

While not a state, the Tristate region being 2nd in total skill and effectively 1st in skill density is likely the strongest region. When considering just states, Florida is both highly skilled and somewhat densely skilled. California is highly skilled, but comparatively less dense.

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