Introduction

Hello, I am Barnard’s Loop. You may recognize my name for previous articles I have done in relation to Smash 4, or for my involvement in OrionRank. Today, this report will examine and discuss Smash 4’s status in 2018 by looking at:

Character stats

Power Ranking data

Attendance & Viewership numbers

Sponsorship statuses

Bayonetta (less extensively this time)

I tend to do small reports every 4 months, as each 4 months represents a Phase in my data collection. As of the end of April, Phase 7 ended, which led me to begin to produce this report.

I hope this report/article will divulge some important information about the current state of the metagame.

Table of Contents

Section 1 – Character Data

1.0: General Information

1.1: Character Results – The Numbers

1.10: The Top 20 – All Data

1.11: The Top 20 – Regional Data

1.12: The Top 20 – National Data

1.2: Breakdown of Results

1.20: All Data (Chart)

1.21: Regional Data (Chart)

1.22: National Data (Chart)

1.23: Sonic – National Decline, Regional Renaissance

1.24: The Legacy of Diddy Kong

1.25: Cloud’s Decline

1.26: Sheik’s Return

1.27: Fox’s Case for 5th or Higher

1.3: Outliers

1.30: Duck Hunt

1.31: Lucario

1.32: Ness

1.33: Villager

1.34: Wario

1.35: Other Notes

1.4: Bayonetta – A Reexamination

1.40: Power Ranking Re-contextualization

1.41: Progression Rates

1.42: Total Data Progression

1.43: Regional Data Progression

1.44: National Data Progression

1.5: Interpretations of Bayonetta’s 2018 Data

1.50: Representation Limit

1.6: Bayonetta Reexamination – Conclusion

1.7: Conclusion of Section 1

Section 2 – Power Ranking Data

2.0: The Eighteen

2.00: Link to the Power Ranking Database

2.1: Spreadsheet of Power Ranking Information

2.10: Details of Spreadsheet

2.2: Breaking Down PR Data

2.20: Playerbase Data

2.21: Power Ranking Presence Breakdown

2.3: Conclusion of Section 2

Section 3 – Sponsorship Examination

3.0: Players & Dropped Spo nsorships

3.1: Top Players and their Sponsors

3.2: Unsponsored Players

3.3: Departing Sponsors

3.30: Phoenix 1

3.31: EarthRoot Gaming

3.32: Luminosity & Denial

3.33: Renegades

3.34: EMP

3.35: SetToDestroyX

3.36: Cloud9 & Evil Geniuses

3.4: Is There an Exodus?

3.5: Conclusion of Section 3

Section 4 – Attendance and Viewership

4.0: Attendance in Smash 4

4.00: Major + Regional

4.01: Major Only

4.1: Nuances in Attendance Data

4.2: Viewership in Smash 4

4.20: Viewership Chart

4.3: Detailing the Decline

4.4: Cause of Viewership Decline

4.5: Conclusion of Section 4

Section 5 – Conclusion

Section 1: Character Data

1.0: General Information

We’ve gone over character data quite a bit, but today we’ll specifically be taking a long look at characters across the metagame using data from 2018 with some earlier comparison points depending on what characters we discuss.

This will cover numerous characters, and will conclude with a re-examination of the controversial character Bayonetta.

This covers Phase 7, a period that encompasses January 1st to April 30th.

1.1: Character Results – The Numbers

As always, I have a methodology as to how I score character at events. This was most recently updated during Phase 6, but it applies to Phase 7 and will likely apply for the rest of Smash 4’s lifetime.

Methodology for Scoring – https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Jks0EtmeNemKsm2rXzYf8RB3D43-Ru23ypx_DOnQPDY/edit?usp=sharing

1.10: The Top 20 – All Data

Bayonetta: 739.75 Sheik: 463.25 Diddy Kong: 434.75 Cloud: 429 Fox: 376 Sonic: 330.5 Zero Suit Samus: 287 Mario: 281.5 Rosalina & Luma: 262.5 Ryu: 260.5 Mewtwo: 196.25 Corrin: 154.25 Marth: 152.5 Meta Knight: 150 Pikachu: 123 Peach: 117.25 Captain Falcon: 109.5 Luigi: 104 Ness: 100.25 Toon Link: 90

Full – https://docs.google.com/document/d/169O7qaXcHkSRUx67ntG3TIUnWetPG_JL_gBl_a0VDLc/edit?usp=sharing

1.11: The Top 20 – Regional Data

Bayonetta: 486.25 Sheik: 318.25 Diddy Kong: 299.75 Cloud: 266.25 Sonic: 264 Fox: 263 Mario: 210.5 Zero Suit Samus: 207.5 Ryu: 205.5 Rosalina & Luma: 181.25 Mewtwo: 122.25 Corrin: 118.25 Marth: 107.5 Meta Knight: 95 Peach: 86.25 Luigi: 85 Ness: 82.25 Captain Falcon: 76.5 Toon Link: 75 Pikachu: 70

Full – https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mYc9JU7Xi48YWCH9hFwfjsj-0jaHosHAnc2kQuPhzEo/edit?usp=sharing

1.12: The Top 20 – National Data

Bayonetta: 253.5 Cloud: 162.75 Sheik: 145 Diddy Kong: 135 Fox: 113 Rosalina & Luma: 81.25 Zero Suit Samus: 79.5 Mewtwo: 74 Mario: 71 Sonic: 66.5 Ryu: 55 Meta Knight: 55 Pikachu: 53 Marth: 45 Duck Hunt: 40 Corrin: 36 Captain Falcon: 33 Peach: 31 Luigi: 19 Mega Man: 19

Full – https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dPpqC-IfDOIB4ygdSmyN8vBo5U942fYlQAYbeqNVhBw/edit?usp=sharing

1.2: Breakdown of Results

You’re going to probably notice that the top 20 is fairly consistent across all three methods. There are eighteen common characters between these lists, with few deviations that appear to pretty strongly depend on where the results are.

Here, we can see how this pans out on a bar chart:

1.20: All Data (Chart)

1.21: Regional Data (Chart)

1.22: National Data (Chart)

Some things will be discussed in greater detail, but we can see a few notable things transpire in 2018 compared to 2017.

1.23: Sonic – National Decline, Regional Renaissance

Sonic has notably declined to tenth per national data, representing a career low for the character as far as I understand it. This could be due to players like KEN being absent from national events – after all, he’s absent from all but 1 major-level event in Phase 7 that was used for the scoring table. Manny is similarly not present, making the 2 best Sonic mains most relegated to regional events.

There, at regionals, we see Sonic is actually quite strong in terms of results – which carries into the Total number, where he is at 6th. Manny has notably won all 4 on-record events he attended in Phase 7, with KEN winning 2 and placing top 8 at all events he attended.

1.24: The Legacy of Diddy Kong

Diddy Kong retained his 3rd position in regional/total, but ultimately has fallen from 3rd to 4th in national data, finally outpaced by Sheik for the first time in quite a while. The reason here shouldn’t be a mystery.

ZeRo’s retirement, while hardly ending the character’s meta relevance (see Section 2) has put a large dent in the character’s ability to earn good bursts of points by placing highly at majors as ZeRo did. MVD helped out a bit with his 5th at GENESIS 5, and the triad of Diddy Kongs placing 13th at Frostbite was lucrative for the character’s score, but none of this prevents Diddy Kong from sliding downwards.

1.25: Cloud’s Decline

Cloud has finally suffered an actual decline. This will be seen in some data regarding progression rates later in the article, but his best figure from 2017 to 2018 is a 0.9% drop in national data. He’s lost about 2% overall, indicating both regional and national weakness compared to late 2017.

The potential cause? Well, Tweek switching to Bayonetta full time for a period clearly had some effect, as Bayonetta got points Cloud otherwise would’ve gotten had Tweek placed the same. Cloud scored in some instances (e.g. EGLX) due to his secondary status, but as the methodology notes, secondary value is half that of primary value in terms of what is awarded.

1.26: Sheik’s Return

Sheik has improved her standing in all cases – especially nationally – resulting in her clawing back to the #2 spot after a year of slippage. The fact that VoiD went on to win a major with the character at Smash N’ Splash 4 may feel like some form of destiny given this data pre-dates that achievement.

Why the rise without Phase 8 data, though? Well, she does well at the regional level where her position is highest. Javi, Nietono, Player J, and a few other select players typically place well at regional (or super-regional) events, increasing her share of points.

Nationally, the rise is also probably attributable to Nietono, as he participated at EVO Japan and placed 4th. VoiD & Mr. R also had 5th placements at major events (as well as 9th placements.)

These factors combined with both Cloud & Diddy Kong becoming less common (both suffering declines) have led the long-time 4th to hit 2nd.

1.27: Fox’s Case for 5th or Higher

When you grasp that Sonic’s results have turned towards being more regionally inclined, you’ll take notice that Fox has positioned himself quite well as a potential long-term 5th. Between PR data and progression rates as well as his frequent appearances in both majors & regional events, it could be argued that the long-established “Top 4” may have gained a 5th member.

Fox’s data is undeniably strong. Beyond him peppering larger events via players like Charlie, Eon, Xzax, ZD, Shogun, & more, he has two high level mains in Light & Larry Lurr who both regularly place highly at national events.

Effective advantage states that contain hefty sums of damage is a common theme among solid top tier characters. While the workload expected of a main is often different, I don’t consider it surprising that a character so effect at fast damage building with dangerous kill options has risen to his current position.

1.3: Outliers

1.30: Duck Hunt

4BR Tier List – 30th

All Results Column – 23rd (15th nationally, 37th regionally)

Duck Hunt’s origin as a consistently viable competitive character was in Japan during early 2016, largely pioneered by You3 and Brood, who were long considered the premier users of the character. There was a trend of both placing very respectably in a time when Duck Hunt was often considered low tier, a sentiment back up by tier lists circulating in 2016.

Reddit’s public tier lists had him ranging in the low 40s (low tier range) while even by March 2017 the 4BR list placed him at 37th, among peers best considered “Borderline”, or more commonly, “lower-mid”, what is typically considered the edge of viability in any practical sense.

However, after GENESIS 4 saw some level of success for Duck Hunt in both sets taken and in terms of results, it has become somewhat hard to deny that the character has had an increased metagame presence in both number of players and quality of results.

Raito – once generally considered the third best of the bunch – rose in 2017 to become the clear #1 Duck Hunt worldwide, resulting in three successful users of the character originating in Japan. Tamushika’s limited successes at GENESIS 5 and EVO Japan expanded this number to four.

While many characters have placed top 8 at events, Duck Hunt recently became a member of that group as of Switchfest after defeating Tweek and Cosmos.

He’s currently, by the numbers, a plausible high tiered character. His results are weakest at the regional level, a collectively lower skill pool to pick from, and it could reasonably be argued that this is due to poor representation.

As of writing this, my PR data work did not include Duck Hunt, but I do not believe having looked across the PR list 18 times for each character that Duck Hunt holds any special presence in this area. He may be at a deficit, and it is extremely rare to see him in the top 3 position in the most densely power ranked areas (such as the United States.)

1.31: Lucario

4BR Tier List – 17th

All Results Column – 33rd (30th Regionally, 36th nationally)

Past Lucario placements by end of Phase:

Phase 4 – 26th

Phase 5 – 33rd

Phase 6 – 31st

Phase 4 covered January-April of 2017, the direct period in which Tsu had a number of high profile results that would have boosted Lucario’s score. After this, he becomes very stable in the low 30s.

His regional results are the strongest, and his national results are deceptive, as he only has scored 5 points per the national method (via Tsu as EVO Japan) meaning he is tied for 36th under several other ties, making him near the bottom of the list in terms of results.

My best explanation as to why he’s low in results numbers is a combination of two factors.

Lucario is inherently inconsistent. Game mechanics force this, as he is prohibitively weak without aura. With aura, he is very strong, but a stray hit or one poor decision will put you back to step 1. Without a large playerbase, his figures basically rely on the attendance of Tsu. If only one serious representative for an inconsistent character exists to get those points rolling, it’s likely he’s going to have bad days that a lot of characters don’t suffer from.

The end result is that he is either deceptively low in terms of results numbers, or, he may not be as good as 17th as the 4BR List implies. I believe it’s more likely the former, since Tsu, while inconsistent, still has demonstrated multiple successes with the character over the course of two years at both the regional and national level.

1.32: Ness

4BR Tier List – 28th

All Results Column – 19th (17th regionally, 22nd nationally)

This is a fun one. Ness is strongest in terms of point value & position in the regional category.

Despite this, his national results aren’t actually that bad – 21st, similar to his peers, but it should probably be pointed out that his score nationally is only 18, meaning that the bulk of these results are based off of straggler results in the 49th-25th range.

Ness’ best placements nationally are BestNess’s 25th at GENESIS 5 or taranito’s 17th at EVO Japan, but his frequency at regional events give him an edge in a more diverse environment.

Regionally, however, the character benefits from a stable playerbase that frequently places well at regional events. As Utah events are covered to some extent, we can see BestNess’ wins bleed into that regional results column, as well as the efforts of Shaky via NorCal regionals and S1 through European events as well as an impressive run at Midwest Mayhem 11.

I think his insistence on remaining a regional threat is more interesting than the national discussion, unfortunately – Ness’ national results have been on the decline ever since 2015 came and went with his last really good result coming from FOW at GENESIS 3.

While FOW and Shaky’s absence may have had an adverse effect on their ability to be at their former peaks, you also have to consider that plenty of Ness mains have cropped up since then who are undeniably very talented.

Gackt (Kanto)

taranito (Kanto)

S1 (Netherlands)

BestNess (Utah)

The Great Gonzales (Tristate)

The common problem is that, outside of Gonzales’ hail mary at Royal Flush, nothing has really transpired comparable to FOW, Shaky, or even NAKAT’s runs that were seen in 2015. I can only assume that match-up knowledge gained in this long period of time has served to severely limit the potential threat of Ness as a character on the national scale.

Poor match-ups should also be considered. Sheik and Rosalina were already prohibitively difficult to fight. Since 2016, both Cloud and Bayonetta were added, but also characters with range and ways to counteract Ness’ recovery more directly. We see this with Corrin, but also the pair of Marth/Lucina, who effectively became relevant at the same time the last of the DLC popped up.

A less diverse character pool at regionals probably decreases the likelihood of running into Ness’ worst match-ups or allows players to focus down on one or two particular match-ups. Perhaps they’ll run into one of the worst match-ups, but then they can exhaustively practice it.

National brackets, conversely, are very diverse in character pool, increase the minefield of what Ness can run into, and decay your ability to specialize if you run into a bad match-up you have not been able to extensively prepare for the same way you can prepare at your own regional event.

1.33: Villager

4BR Tier List: 25th

All Results Column – 32nd (36th regionally, 28th nationally)

I’m not sure if this exactly qualifies as a huge outlier. He’s not far off nationally, for example, which is what I assume a lot of people are thinking about when they vote on lists (I consider it greatly when I submit my votes to the 4BR) but it’s a bit depressing to see this character decline.

4BR Tier List Positioning

V1 (Feb 2016) – 11th

V2 (Aug 2016) – 14th

V3 (Mar 2017) – 17th

V4 (Dec 2017) – 25th

Phase Positioning (All)

Phase 1 (Mar-May 2016) – 34th

Phase 2 (May-Aug 2016) – 20th

Phase 3 (Sep-Dec 2016) – 24th

Phase 4 (Jan-Apr 2017) – 17th

Phase 5 (May-Aug 2017) – 24th

Phase 6 (Sep-Dec 2017) – 28th

While he started on an odd note (from a 2 month Phase that covered only 1.1.5) his data since then had been fairly stable until recently. Within the last 8 months, he has seen a decline, with this reflected by a gradual confidence loss in tiering.

This may be attributable to no Ranai. While Villager is seen at the regional level, Villager’s decline in Phase 6 and Phase 7 were also the same Phases that Ranai had no documented participation in.

This is probably a good case study in how one player can dictate a character’s results, as Villager’s strongest numbers correlate with Ranai’s greatest achievements, followed by a gradual decline as Ranai becomes a less frequent fixture in top 8 events.

Ranai’s sample size in 2016 wasn’t huge to begin with. 3rd at GENESIS 3, 9th at Shots Fired 2, 5th at EVO, 13th at S.A.T. – all solid results, but a period of early strengths and a long-term decline with a mid-tier may simply tell the story by itself.

DLC may also play something of a part, but not the DLC you’d expect – his biggest bracket weakness was actually Mewtwo. In a reddit thread some time ago, I penned down his loss record by character in 2017 –

Mewtwo: 5

Diddy Kong: 4

Zero Suit Samus: 4

Cloud: 3

Bayonetta: 3

Pit: 3

Sheik: 2

Sonic: 2

Olimar: 2

Marth: 2

Mario: 2

Duck Hunt: 1

Meta Knight: 1

Bowser: 1

Lucas: 1

Rosalina & Luma: 1

Palutena: 1

Charizard: 1

His record versus the traditionally cited unbalanced DLC isn’t actually that bad, and this is the period where he showed the most weakness.

Why am I examining this mostly through Ranai? He’s the guy who made this character the character we know and love, more or less. Villager was best remembered for his timeout-based Customs variant (which saw very limited success) until Ranai came around and rewrote the book on the character.

Beyond him being patient zero for this character’s meta development, nobody else has really stepped up to the plate since in a way that Ranai has. As mentioned before, that’s likely one of the main reasons the character has declined to such a mediocre spot.

1.34: Wario

4BR Tier List: 41st

All Results Column – 28th (26th regionally, 39th nationally)

Wario’s had a surprisingly good year at the regional level, and hasn’t even been fully demonstrated by the numbers since the period I used doesn’t include Glutonny’s record (as far as the post-patch era is concerned) 13th placement for the character at GOML.

So even though his national results tie closely to his real placement on the 4BR list, that too may be underestimating the character’s position in the metagame. While you do get straggler placements like 3rds or 4th at small regional events, Wario has gone a bit beyond that.

Glutonny consistently performs very well, winning 3 Category 2 events as a Wario primary, as well as a 9th at Midwest Mayhem 11.

Waymas, a player best known for his appearance in the G3 Regional Crew Battles, has actually turned up this year with 2 5th placements at super regional events in Mexico.

C4 heavily overperformed at GENESIS 5 and placed 33rd.

His results have improved outside of this data compilation as noted earlier, with Glutonny performing well at GOML and Nasubi seeming to make a return in Japan with a successful 5th placement at the most recent Sumabato.

Wario, a forgotten relic of 2015 that suffered a slow death between being dropped by former mains and a decline in performance from his still existing mains, appears to be returning as a viable meta threat in Smash 4. We had seen shades of this in 2016, but it seems to really be showing up in terms of results.

1.35: Other Notes

A lot of characters are often off-pace by 5-7 placements, but these are usually not grand falls or rises worth discussing.

Pit is undervalued, but his near-nonexistent representation is clearly the root cause and has been well established for over a year.

Olimar is undervalued, but also has some representation issues, and is only off by 6 (which isn’t very consequential when you get into the 20s.)

Low tiers are mismatched and all over the lower portion of the list, but none score very well and most of this is a matter of whatever few players who use those characters actually turning out or garnering good results. That’s unpredictable, and we’re probably better off judging the whole of characters that can’t break a point barrier (give or take 25-30 in 4 months) rather than each individual spot.

1.4: Bayonetta – A Reexamination

In February, I took a long and hard look at the game’s most controversial character. I had stated my intention to re-examine the character in the future, and I believe now is probably the best time to do this as focus will largely be shifting towards Smash 5 in the coming weeks

1.40: Power Ranking Re-contextualization

When I posted my article discussing Bayonetta, one of the comments I made reflected that a 19-20% rate in the top 3 seemed high. Probably the most prevalent criticism of the article was that I could only ballpark this and had no real comparison point because Bayonetta was the only character I had dissected in the Power Ranking section.

In the months since, I decided a full PR breakdown was warranted. Now – when I say full, I stuck with 18 different characters. That section (Section 2) will be going into a good bit of detail, but a brief spoiler is that Bayonetta’s numbers are not any more exceptional than her peers in terms of PR presence.

Her best position among the 4 methods of representation used was presence in top 3s, where she came in third – behind Diddy Kong and Fox.

This doesn’t really represent top level play, of course. This includes is a list of roughly 3100 players ranked across the entire world. That’s going to generally represent the following quality of play –

Examples of early-mid pools drowning (e.g. 129th-385th)

Examples of late pools drowning (e.g. 65th-129th)

Examples of early bracket elimination (e.g. 33rd-65th)

These numbers depend heavily on the attendance. Sometimes drowning at 65th would be the equivalent of drowning at 385th in terms of your actual set count (i.e. comparing going 1-2 at EVO to going 1-2 at, say, ARMS Saga.)

This would be the level of play most prone to exploitation that still exists at a documentable level. This is where hypothetically, Bayonetta should be dominant. However, as I will affirm in detail later, she is not. She is clearly a top tier, but so are Diddy Kong, Cloud, and (as most data points have started to sharply indicate) Fox. These are characters that surpass or relate to her statistically in Power Ranking data.

1.41: Progression Rates

Character Results Share Tiering Key

0.1% or less – Nonviable

0.2% to 0.5% – Low Tier

0.6 to 1% – Lower Mid Tier

1.1% to 1.5% – Mid Tier

1.6% to 2.7% – Upper Tier

2.8% to 5.9% – High Tier

6.0% to 10% – Top Tier

10.1% to 13% – Suspect Test Zone (Recommended investigation)

(Recommended investigation) 13.1% to 15% – Onset Dominance

15.1%+ – Meta Knight (Brawl) Equivalent, SS Tier

As much as I like this little thing, it unfortunately will become defunct as Smash 5 is released since these values are based on observations & roster sizes.

For a long-form example of this, I refer you to this, made during the production of the Cloud article:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1D1aGtpuzMx1x5B20l64LzGPoVrZpdhKcZJMV5p7XoJc/edit?usp=sharing

1.42: Total Data Progression

All Character Data – Phase 7

Bayonetta: 11.5%

Sheik: 7.2%

Diddy Kong: 6.7%

Cloud: 6.6%

Fox: 5.8%

Sonic: 5.1%

Zero Suit Samus: 4.4%

Mario: 4.4%

Rosalina & Luma: 4.1%

Mewtwo: 3%

Other: 37%

Changes – Phase 4 to 6 – Phase 7

Bayonetta: +2.2%

Sheik: +0.7%

Rosalina & Luma: +0.6%

Zero Suit Samus: +0.5%

Fox: +0.3%

Mewtwo = %

Sonic: -0.1%

Mario: -0.4%

Cloud: -2%

Diddy Kong: -2%

Other: -3.9%

Bayonetta Progression increase – 2.2% (Estimated 1.9% circa early 2018, 0.3% over estimate – remains in Suspect Test Zone at 11.5%, predicted to achieve 13.7% or greater by September 1st, 2018)

1.43: Regional Data Progression

Regional Character Data – Phase 7

Bayonetta: 10.5%

Sheik: 6.8%

Diddy Kong: 6.5%

Cloud: 5.7%

Sonic: 5.7%

Fox: 5.7%

Mario: 4.5%

Zero Suit Samus: 4.5%

Rosalina & Luma: 3.9%

Mewtwo: 2.6%

Other: 43.6%

Changes – Phase 4 to 6 – Phase 7

Bayonetta: +1.4%

Zero Suit Samus: +1.3%

Rosalina & Luma: +0.9%

Fox: +0.6%

Sonic: +0.6%

Other: +0.3%

Sheik: +0.2%

Mewtwo: -0.4%

Mario: -0.5%

Cloud: -2.2%

Diddy Kong: -2.2%

Bayonetta Progression Increase – 1.4% (Estimated 1.3% circa early 2018, 0.1% over estimate – remains in Suspect Test Zone at 10.5%, predicted to achieve 11.9% or greater by September 1st, 2018.)

1.44: National Data Progression

National Character Data – Phase 7

Bayonetta: 14%

Cloud: 9%

Sheik: 8%

Diddy Kong: 7.4%

Fox: 6.2%

Rosalina & Luma: 4.5%

Zero Suit Samus: 4.4%

Mewtwo: 4.1%

Mario: 3.9%

Sonic: 3.7%

Other: 34.8%

Changes – Phase 4 to 6 – Phase 7

Bayonetta: +4.1%

Sheik: +1.5%

Mewtwo: +0.8%

Fox: +0.6%

Rosalina & Luma: +0.1%

Mario: -0.7%

Cloud: -0.9%

Zero Suit Samus: -1.1%

Diddy Kong: -1.3%

Other: -1.5%

Sonic: -1.8%

Bayonetta Progression Increase – 4.1% (Estimated 2.9% circa early 2018, 1.2% over estimate – upgraded to Onset Dominance at 14%, predicted to achieve 18.1% or greater by September 1st, 2018)

1.5: Interpretations of Bayonetta’s 2018 Data

I don’t think that the Total or Regional numbers say a whole lot. Both are very narrowly overestimate and don’t really change her standing a lot, though they still indicate a trend upwards for her this year.

The big story is that her national data has reached a critical stage. Going by her progression rate now, she would be expected to very easily break the 15% barrier long before September. However, is this – or a second 4.1% rise – plausible?

1.50: Representation Limit

Bayonetta’s exceptional national figures have been achieved due to a very productive year for the character, seeing multiple successful top 8 appearances.

By the standards of my system (although not the PG Team’s) EGLX is defined as a Category 4- event, indicating it is a “minor major” or “secondary major” event similar to some of the smaller 2GGC events in 2017.

In that case, Bayonetta has won 1/11 major events from January-April, with her total from May bringing the number up to 2/11 with the addendum that Tweek co-mained at MomoCon 2018.

Majors as defined by the OrionRank system;

GENESIS 5 (Category 5-)

EVO Japan (Category 4+)

NicoNico Tokaigi (Category 4-)

Frostbite 2018 (Category 5-)

EGLX 2018 (Category 4-)

Smash Masters League: Battle for Vegas (Category 4-)

Switchfest (Category 4-)

Umebura 32 (Category 4-)

Get On My Level 2018 (Category 4/5, not yet rated)

MomoCon 2018 (Category 4+ or -, not yet rated)

Smash N’ Splash 4 (Category 4/5, not yet rated)

Bayonetta via Tweek won EGLX 2018 and via co-main won MomoCon 2018, with all other listed events going to non-Bayonetta mains, although there were frequent runner-up spots.

Peak Bayonetta Placements at 2018 Majors

GENESIS 5 – 2nd (Mistake)

EVO Japan – 2nd (Abadango)

NicoNico Tokaigi – 13th (Shu)

Frostbite 2018 – 2nd (Tweek)

EGLX 2018 – 1st (Tweek)

Smash Masters League: Battle for Vegas – 3rd (Mistake)

Switchfest – 9th (Tweek/Abadango)

Umebura 32 – 2nd (Abadango)

Get On My Level 2018 – 3rd (Mistake)

MomoCon 2018 – 1st (Tweek)

Smash N’ Splash 4 – 2nd (Salem)

Switchfest & Tokaigi (which, in fairness, had 16 entrants and only 1 Bayonetta player) are the only top 8s this season lacking in Bayonetta. In fact, every Top 4 this season has featured at least one, sometimes multiple, Bayonetta players.

I do believe that at a certain point a sheer limit to her point value will begin to emerge. Her inability to win the vast majority of events as a solo main (something not achieved since Fire Emblem Saga, as Tweek used both Cloud & Bayo at EGLX and MomoCon) is a limiting factor for her ceiling.

Furthermore, brackets and seeding begin to play a larger role, as Bayonetta players are often staged versus one another in the lead-up to top 8, with seeding incidentally pitting players like Tweek and Mistake against one another by Winners Quarters.

This inherently limits the number as Bayonetta mains are not regularly making enough upsets to achieve a Winners-Side heavy Bayonetta top 8. The most Bayonetta heavy Winners-Side top 8 this year was Frostbite 2018, where both Tweek and Mistake achieved Winners Semis.

The number of Bayonetta mains combined with bracket encounters prior to top 8 act as inhibitors and things that increase the likelihood of a Bayonetta not achieving a top 8 or being stuck low inside that top 8, lowering her point scoring. We’ve seen this at both Switchfest and Smash N’ Splash. While the latter did see Salem place top 2, the top 8 was otherwise barren of Bayonetta players.

The other avenue in which Bayonetta’s results could drive things up on the Total scale is if we saw a huge spike in her regional results, but she only went over estimate in regional data by 0.1%.

1.6: Bayonetta Reexamination – Conclusion

Bayonetta’s regional data continues to be indicative of a top tier, but does not appear to be inherently threatening. She is among peers within Power Ranking data and while she is a clear #1 in regional representation, her growth remains slow.

The bigger story here is how her national rates far exceeded expectations. While brackets, # of actual relevant Bayonetta players, and top-heavy nature of the character set her apart from Meta Knight in terms of her ability to soak top 8s, she has either found or is in the processing of finding a home.

I would guess that 14%-16% is her final plausible range unless we see more Bayonetta turnovers, a sharp increase in secondaries, or more Bayonetta players come onto the scene. For reasons discussed in my prior Bayonetta article, I do not believe the latter-most is likely.

Power Ranking data also seems to pretty heavily imply that. Her status (which will be dissected in Section 2) is high, but everything exceptional with this character becomes increasingly apparent the more you strip away the regional side of Smash 4 and only look at the absolute top level.

Bayonetta is a character that appears to have a high skill ceiling in order to succeed in the meta-game on the national scale. She has multiple good mains, but her mains are prone to consistency issues and rarely seem to collectively perform exceptionally at one event.

Frostbite is probably the best example of a collectively good run from her mains, but it still featured notable early eliminations, like Lima & Zack, as well as Salem having to contend from the losers bracket. This event also lacked a lot of top level players, which may further call into question if a scenario like this can be replicated at larger national events.

I do not have any recommendations towards her status of legality at this time as I cannot feasibly predict what her numbers will be during Phase 8, and her regional & national numbers notably conflict greatly, and she has won few national events this year (none via solo-maining.)

Potential consistency issues from event to event also increase skepticism of the necessity of a ban, as unlike Cloud in doubles who was the overwhelming favorite to be on a winning team, Bayonetta is not anywhere near as successful at actually winning events and her best mains often lose to multiple non-Bayonetta players.

I think, had Smash 5 not been announced as soon as it had, that whatever status on her legality would have been made apparent by September. My long-term goal at the time of publishing my article in February was to observe and see what her trends were after 2 full phases, seeing the rate, and where the rise occurred.

As such, I think a serious debate should’ve been primed to take place at the end of the 2018 Summer of Smash. This has obviously changed, as Smash 5 will likely release not long after the Summer of Smash concludes, making a ban discussion fairly pointless.

1.7: Conclusion of Section 1

Meta shifts as of late appear to favor Bayonetta as many predicted, with ZeRo’s retirement resulting in national fallout for Diddy Kong’s positioning. Sheik taking advantage of a vacuum (as well as a slide downwards by Cloud) all paint a narrative of the “Big 4” re-positioning themselves as a result of recent metagame shake-ups.

Bayonetta herself continues to rise. Rises were predicted in February, and she slightly outpaces that at the regional level, but her big gains were explosive and located mostly at the national level.

Other meta shifts – like declines, or forgotten characters rising – are interesting developments that aren’t really unique to any era in Smash 4 history. It’s interesting to see Wario take a stronger metagame position than Villager, but similarly odd things have happened before as a result of retirements & meta innovations.

Section 2 – Power Ranking Data

2.0: The Eighteen

While the rest of this article took maybe 10 hours to put together, most of which (as I type this) happened in the last 2-3 days, the power ranking data I committed to took somewhere in the range of 40 hours to compile.

It consists of the 18 consistent characters seen in the results list of Section 1:

Bayonetta

Cloud

Diddy Kong

Sheik

Fox

Sonic

Mario

Zero Suit Samus

Rosalina & Luma

Mewtwo

Ryu

Marth/Lucina

Corrin

Pikachu

Luigi

Meta Knight

Peach

Captain Falcon

I combed through 241 Power Rankings that had mostly been updated within the last 6 months. These are from pretty much every region there is to offer, featuring 3114 players (give or take due to potentially missed duplicate players.)

Note: Technically the character count is 19, but I merged Marth/Lucina due to consistent examples of crossover usage.

2.00: Link to Power Ranking Database

https://smashboards.com/threads/smash-4-power-rankings-directory-project-2-0.445794/

Some of this is not completely updated, but most of it was recent enough for the purposes of my research. I will continue to update PRs, and the 2016 PRs (the few that exist) will likely be removed.

Smash.gg also has a good list of Power Rankings, but a few exist here that don’t exist there, and the page I collected them onto was faster to work with for the very specialized tasks I was doing compared to smash.gg.

For the purposes of accuracy, only the assumed primary/mains were used. Secondaries listed were not considered mains unless I had reason to believe otherwise, such as via twitter bios or special cases like Tweek where his dual main status is already established.

2.1: Spreadsheet of Power Ranking Information

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oSQH5-qarfwY6IL7d3jFZmVnqcu5O5SyRhvZpV45-J4/edit?usp=sharing

2.10: Details of Spreadsheet

Playerbase Percentage – % of 3114 players that used a specified character.

% of 3114 players that used a specified character. Power Ranking Presence – % of 241 Power Rankings that had a specified character.

% of 241 Power Rankings that had a specified character. Power Ranking Presence Top 3 – % of 241 Power Rankings that had a specified character in the Top 3 of its Power Ranking.

% of 241 Power Rankings that had a specified character in the Top 3 of its Power Ranking. Power Ranking Presence Top 1 – % of 241 Power Rankings that had a specified character in the 1st position of its Power Ranking.

For the purposes of accuracy, PG Ranked players absent from PRs were added in certain cases as the “0th” spot which de-facto acts as the 1st position. Tweek in Ohio and Salem in Central Florida are probably the most noteworthy example of this.

2.2: Breaking Down PR Data

There’s actually a decent bit to collect here.

2.20: Playerbase Data

These eighteen characters collectively make up over 60% of character spots, give or take a couple of percent when you account for dual mains.

As is common to every category, there are 5 characters that appear to excel. Diddy Kong, Mario, Fox, Cloud, and Bayonetta all have sizable playerbases of comparable size, with Diddy Kong unexpectedly topping the list at nearly 6%.

The positioning of Diddy as #1 surprises me, but not much else does. Mario’s results in events have stagnated at the national level this year, but his representation isn’t worse for ware likely due to his simplicity. For Cloud, it’s probably a combination of his simplicity and his status as a quality character.

There are some interesting tidbits:

Rosalina and Zero Suit Samus are positioned fairly poorly in comparison to their tournament results, with both ranging in the 10-15 area with less than 3% of representation. Rosalina gets a boost when we’re talking about the quality of representation, however.

Falcon is high, but there is a 1.6% gap between him and Fox.

Sheik is much lower than I anticipated, but tech barriers may discourage people from picking up the character. Game mechanics like rage may also be discouraging.

2.21: Power Ranking Presence Breakdown

Fox is the most common character across power rankings for reasons I’m not entirely sure of. He’s a pretty simple character and sees a good bit of representation in the Top 100 range (Larry Lurr, Light, Eon, Charlie, Xzax) so it may be the character’s potential for aggressive play and high damage output that attracts players.

Diddy Kong, in terms of numbered presence, cleanly leads his peers. Fox is still strong in this category but Diddy in particular actually manages to be #1 in more than 1 in 4 Power Rankings, which is a number that may have concerned me had I not see other numbers indicating this isn’t especially extreme since multiple characters are at or above the 20% mark.

Still, this PR data sheds light on Diddy Kong and Fox in particular being the strongest regional characters across the world. Mario is also surprisingly high, translating his good representation number to good representation at peak level play within regions.

Bayonetta predictably does well in every category, but does not excel as well as her peers do, further indicating her strength regionally is far more limited than it is nationally. Despite her character data from Section 1 sticking out in all instances, she is simply among her peers at a lower skill group.

Corrin has a pretty hard drop off similar to Falcon. Good number of players, common PR presence, but she rarely has mains that break into top 3s and barely has any individuals that rank #1 in power rankings anywhere.

Sonic and Sheik maintain their 6/7 positions in the Top 3 and Top 1 categories, demonstrating their stability in representation. Decently common, if less that expected in Sheik’s case, but there isn’t a falloff the closer you get to #1 that you see with Falcon or Corrin.

2.3: Conclusion of Section 2

Most of this wasn’t really all that shocking. You could argue that Bayonetta underperforming compared to her data from Section 1 is related to her status as a DLC character, meaning communities in most cases had players who used characters before she came along, many of them presumably high tiers.

It’s not that shocking that Diddy Kong, long considered a very good character, one that hasn’t been touched by nerfs in a very long time, is as common as he is. He’s a base character, he works well, and as a result there’s not a lot of incentive to jump from him to a DLC character if you’ve already put yourself in a high position in a region.

One thing I’d like to do but likely lack the time/resources to do is see who current Bayonetta & Cloud players used before switching over. I’ve talked to some who suspect Sheik is a common one, since Sheik was hit pretty badly by nerfs (going more than 2 years without a major win after those nerfs) but I can’t verify which character a Sheik main might’ve jumped ship to.

I implore people to look at the spreadsheet and come up with more observations, as the main purpose of this section was to show the data itself. I’ve broken some of it down, but there are likely details I missed.

Section 3 – Sponsorship Examination

Sponsorships have become a subject of discussion among the community, and I thought they were worth looking into.

3.0: Players & Dropped Sponsorships

An idea put forth towards Smash 4 is that it has lost an unusually high number of sponsors within the last several months, with debate surrounding sponsorships seeming to largely accept this premise without analyzing whether or not the premise has merit.

I’ve spoken about this as length, but short-hand information and conclusions made by only reading headlines is extremely dangerous to the integrity of communication because one of the easiest things to do is to misinterpret a headline or receive one that is not honest.

The latter does not seem to be an issue within the Smash community, but the former appears to be directly related to the discussion of sponsors. We need to examine sponsorship histories in order to get a better idea of what’s happening.

3.1: Top Players & Their Sponsors

This one is a bit tricky. PGRv4 is outdated, but the recently-released OrionRank Mid-Spring ranking has quickly become outdated as of the last 2-3 weeks as Summer of Smash kicks into high gear.

Therefor, I ran with a grab-bag of roughly top 30 players, as the top 30/20 shift greatly depending on attendance, peaks, valleys, and more.

Never sponsored

Samsora

Cosmos

KEN

Shuton

Kirihara

Choco

Manny

tsu

Had sponsor, was dropped or left

Tweek (Phoenix 1)

Dabuz (Renegades)

Abadango (Luminosity)

Ally (Cloud9)

Captain Zack (Phoenix 1)

WaDi (EMP eSports)

Lima (Earthroot Gaming)

Marss (Denial)

Zinoto (Evil Geniuses)

falln (SetToDestroyX)

Sponsored

MKLeo (Most Valuable Gaming, Echo Fox)

Nairo (NRG eSports)

Salem (Most Value Gaming, Team Liquid)

Mistake (EvenMatchupGaming)

Mr. R (beastcoast)

VoiD (Counter Logic Gaming)

komorikiri (2GG)

Larry Lurr (Misfits)

Elegant (Unseen Gaming)

Fatality (Team YP)

ANTi (Immortals)

Light (Most Valuable Gaming)

ESAM (Panda Global)

MVD (Panda Global)

Raito (Candee)

Kameme (DetonatioN Gaming)

Nietono (DetonatioN Gaming)

3.2: Unsponsored Players

It’s not a huge surprise that the bulk of unsponsored players in this section are Japanese players. For reasons beyond the scope of this article, laws that had been passed in Japan decades ago unwittingly made it harder for eSports to form when that concept began to arise in the way it did during the 2000s.

As a result, the likelihood of home-grown eSports organizations operating in Japan is less likely than it is in other nations. These laws have recently changed, meaning Smash 5 may see a far more hefty sum of sponsored Japanese players. Until then, however, they are reliant on foreign sponsors.

Foreign sponsors might be reluctant. Flight costs are inevitably large from entry from Japan to the U.S. – this can be seen in donation prices for individual players being as high as 1200$ in compendiums – and Smash is not considered a prestigious eSport.

Melee has been through several phases, but the Smash 4 community is simply the Brawl community playing a new game (the same as most traditional Fighting Games) and both are at their core grassroots movements that might be considered more of a risk to but financial stake into rather than a corporate-led game like recent Capcom titles.

As a result, I think it is very hard for Japanese players to get sponsored by foreign eSports teams. The cost and risk may outweigh the perceived benefit, especially since there’s always the risk a player might not stay as relevant as a team picking them up would hope.

3.3: Departing Sponsors

This one is probably the more contentious subject to discuss and it’s the source of debate within the Smash 4 community. The important question I have to ask whenever a team pulls out – one left unanswered by individual headlines – is whether or not that team dropped from multiple games or just Smash 4.

Let’s take a gander.

3.30: Phoenix 1

Phoenix 1 was the sponsor for Tweek, Captain Zack, and Duck. The latter is a noted top level Samus player in Melee. All three were dropped in roughly the same time frame of 1-2 days (possibly on the same day, with announcement of departure simply delayed from player-to-player for whatever reason) meaning that this was not a Smash 4 exclusive issue since Melee was also abandoned.

From what I understand, the remnants of Phoenix 1 – which notably disbanded its League of Legends team – was merged or brought into the LA Gladiators, an Overwatch League team. They have entirely removed themselves from Smash.

3.31: EarthRoot Gaming

EarthRoot Gaming is a Toronto-based eSports Organization. While the headlines on Reddit appeared to largely discuss Lima’s departure only, ERG appears to be dissolving entirely.

Their Call of Duty team has variably dissolved over the last several months, now saddled with two players whom their home Website advertises who I can not find on twitter despite their twitters being advertised.

I initially believed their Hearthstone team was still active, but one of the active players listed on Liquidpedia said as of the 21st that their contract had ended, the same timeframe in which Ryan Ford and Lima departed.

Lima, Ryan Ford, and LordBagel – all players from different platformer fighters – left in May. Ryan Ford’s departure did not appear to receive public attention until only days ago despite having occurred weeks prior, including before Lima’s departure.

3.32: Luminosity & Denial

Both of these cases are, on paper, examples where both organizations simply exited Smash. Luminosity, having signed Abadango and Ice (German, Melee Fox player) let go of both players around a year after having signed them on. Denial dropped both Duck and Marss in early 2017.

3.33: Renegades

Renegades is an interesting case where you might initially believe that Dabuz was dropped while Swedish Delight (their Melee player) was kept. However, it appears that Dabuz left shortly after winning The Big House 7 seemingly with the intent of signing onto a larger eSports team. This has yet to come to fruition, but it also doesn’t constitute (or does not appear) to constitute as a player being dropped from an org.

3.34: EMP

I can barely find any information on this org and they are by far the biggest anomaly here. Their main website I found via google appears severely outdated (last update in October with ads for WaDi competing at the 2GG Championship), however, they have a Twitter account that links to a dead page. Despite that, they still tweet, and appear to have a CS:GO team.

They are also 324th on the 2017 chart on esportsearnings, which does not seem to acknowledge their CS:GO teams’ existence. They are nonexistent among the 261 teams listed in 2018 per the website.

Finally, their website domain listed via Twitter has either expired or been put up for sale per my brief research into the matter. I do not know how they have over 20k followers; a twitter audit turned up clean, but I do not know how reliable these are.

For the record – this is not the infamous organization Empire Arcadia, nor is it Chinese eSports team “Eastern Mysterious Power”.

3.35: SetToDestroyX

While SetToDestroyX did not dip their toes into Melee, they did try their hand at Smash 4 – as well as a large portfolio of other games. They have professional teams in Fortnite, Splatoon 2, and H1Z1 as quick examples – but they appeared to have released their CS:GO team as well as most of (if not all) their signed fighting game players. This included falln, and occurred at the end of 2017.

3.36: Cloud9, Evil Geniuses

These are the most lucrative teams with stake in Melee that only departed from Smash 4. The players – Ally (C9) and Zinoto (EG) represent the largest brand losses in the top Smash 4 player base due to the size of the teams.

The reasoning here might be obvious – high tier organizations may not renew contracts with players that underperform. Zinoto is an odd case as his results are actually pretty consistent (just not top 8-level) but Ally very clearly suffered a dip in tournament results from mid-late 2016 where he won EVO to his departure in 2018. By 2018, he was often not seeded to make top 8 at major events.

There is a potential benefit in keeping players that have a good social media presence. TSM has kept ZeRo, and Immortals (up to now) has kept ANTi despite his inconsistent results as of recently. Both are actual personalities on social media.

Ally did not appear to have this benefit, meaning he appeared neither active via social media nor a consistent name across tournament events in 2017-2018, potentially resulting in the loss of his contract.

3.4: Is There an Exodus?

So, out of 10 players to lose sponsors, we find some interesting tidbits in the mix;

Three players belonged to organizations that appear to have dissolved.

Two players belong to organizations that also departed from Melee.

Two players were solely dropped from Smash 4 while Melee players were kept.

One player left of his own accord.

One player was cycled out alongside 6 other eSports divisions within that same team.

One player left EMP, and EMP appears to be very exceptional and low profile.

While I can’t confirm the circumstances of WaDi’s departure from EMP, the theme here is that 2 players were exclusively dropped from Smash 4.

Further complicating the narrative of an exodus is that Team Liquid, a tier 1 eSports team, got back into Smash 4 in what most understood as its twilight years when they picked up Salem.

My conclusion is the following –

I do not expect serious growth from eSports teams after Smash 5 is fully unveiled, as focus will shift to that title and eSports teams interested in jumping into Smash will likely give it six months to a year before committing to signing players on so they know who’s worth signing on.

I think Liquid signed Salem at least in part because he was ZeRo’s main rival during ZeRo’s final months as a competitor and Salem was seen as the potential successor to him as a #1. His signing on was probably an exceptional case as I haven’t seen teams like G2, Tempo Storm, Splyce, etc. jump on a bandwagon to sign on players who definitely deserve sponsorships like Cosmos or Samsora.

I do not think there’s any evidence to indicate there is an exodus, but there is probably not going to be any further growth unless a team is confident in a player’s ability to transfer their skills to Smash 5.

3.5: Conclusion of Section 3

There is not sufficient evidence to suggest that sponsors are fleeing from Smash 4 in particular, with elements tied to sponsorships becoming absent in the two largest drops, while all other drops were multi-game based and directly hit Melee or other games unrelated to Smash 4.

The only exception to this appears to be EMP, but EMP is extremely unusual and hard to find information about.

Despite this, it could reasonably be argued that outside of Liquid (the highest earning eSports team worldwide in 2017) Smash 4 has not experienced a lot of sponsorship growth. We did recently see Candee sponsor Raito and Unseen Gaming sponsor Elegant, but these are likely upstart Orgs with unclear futures rather than well-established organizations.

Section 4 – Attendance & Viewership

4.0: Attendance in Smash 4

Attendance is one of the most important ways to gauge a community’s interest in the game. The attendee numbers have a big sway over how much those events make. That in mind, a very common contention among people from multiple communities is that Smash 4 is dying.

This would inevitably be reflected in two ways. The first is attendance. So – how are we doing in terms of attendance? Thankfully, this was easy to answer. I took attendance data I had compiled for the Cloud article and simply compiled 2018 attendance data and combined the two.

4.00: Major + Regional

4.01: Major Only

4.1: Nuances in Attendance Data

There are some factors that should be considered when looking at these. You may take note that there is a lot of disparity between the charts in 2016, which is attributable to the number of majors on that particular year and the extreme numbers EVO achieved.

Attendance in the first chart seems stable when you assume EVO 2016 as an outlier while the latter chart, had it had a comparable number of majors during the first half of 2016 to other halves, likely would have zig-zagged.

The assumption in the “true” data being a zig-zag is that a concentration of few high-entrant events will naturally keep attendance high, but that isn’t disclosing the fact that the average is brought down by the number of major events being greater in later halves. This is better reflected in the Regional + National chart, but EVO 2016’s entrant count is extreme enough that it isn’t reflected in the same chart.

In this case, the drop in major attendance is softer than it was in 2017’s first half, while combining the attendance numbers from the “national tournaments” page of ssbwiki results in a chart that demonstrate around 9% growth in overall attendance from the latter half of 2017 to the first half of 2018.

Key, in that instance, is that it includes non-major high attendance events like Collision. I also added Hyrule Saga’s attendance as 650 (which is a little lower than it stands at the moment) as we know that’ll be the ballpark of attendance and I figure I might as well get an idea of what things look like.

Either the numbers didn’t drop as much as they did in 2017 or they rose, depending on how you slice it. Both options do not support a narrative that players have lost interest in the game, although I cannot affirm whether or not regions across the U.S. have experienced long-term decline. I may look at weekly data in the future as it is fairly easy to find & access.

As it stands, though, attendance seems to be normal.

4.2: Viewership in Smash 4

4.20: Viewership Chart – 2016-2018

4.3: Detailing the Decline

The same factors that resulted in 2016’s first half being unusually high for attendance would similarly apply for viewership, as the few events happened to largely be prestigious ones. After that, viewership experienced slow but consistent growth throughout 2017.

However, the numbers took a dive in 2018.

I explained some aspects of this in the Bayonetta article. GENESIS numbers as a whole, both attendance and viewership, were down – and Frostbite 2018 was dissimilar to Frostbite 2017. However, this trend of lower viewership continued as the year went on, with 2 decent examples of viewership coming in at GOML (around 16000) and Smash N’ Splash 4 (around 22000.)

Those are very recent, and even MomoCon’s rough 10k peak is better than what Switchfest or Battle for Vegas managed, but at that point we’d be experiencing slow viewership growth after having had a sharp downturn.

4.4: Cause of Viewership Decline

I posited several months that if a decline were to be occurring, that one cause is not likely. Bayonetta is a very controversial character, for example, but it seems unlikely that even a spike in her prevalence would cause such an extreme drop, especially considering these numbers did not improve at events like Switchfest (which lacked any Bayonetta main in its Top 8.)

There are many possible factors and the answer is probably a multifaceted –

Retirement or lack of presence from certain popular players, such as ZeRo.

Bayonetta and the controversy surrounding her.

The age of the game itself.

A stagnant meta, as this article has demonstrated that not a lot has changed in 2018 outside of a few individual character movements rather than grander shifts.

Lame duck effect after Smash 5’s announcement causing attention to largely focus on the new title.

However, for whatever reason, the decreased lack of viewer engagement has not coincided with the community increasingly abandoning the game. As noted in the attendance charts, national + regional events indicate a rise in attendance, with Frostbite & Hyrule Saga in particular garnering many entrants for a solo Smash 4 event.

4.5: Conclusion of Section 4

The short of it is that attendance has not run into problems, but the game’s viewership has – and those viewership problems are large. They don’t appear to be getting worse, necessarily, as demonstrated by Smash N’ Splash garnering decent viewership overall.

Why one would decline but not the other is something I’m not totally sure of, as many of the factors I listed apply to the playerbase as well as viewers. Bayonetta is controversial both among spectators and players, but this seemingly has not driven away any large portion of players.

Similarly, the age of the game & the pains of a stagnant meta are going to apply to the playerbase just as much as they would viewers.

As a result, the reason for one declining but not the other as far as I can tell is inconclusive. Tournaments for Smash 4 will likely remain as lucrative as they’ve been in the short term due to their entrant counts, but the long-term sustainability of the game as an e-sport is poor. Thankfully, Smash 5 will render that aspect moot.

If I had to take a guess at what caused the decline in viewership, I would have to go with #1 (loss of ZeRo) and #5 (a lame duck effect) as both have the potential to quickly erode viewership while not actually damaging attendance, with Bayonetta being the tertiary factor. This is my best hypotheses.

Section 5 – Conclusion

This has been quite the experience to write, and I thank all this who took the time to read this rather large post.

Smash 4 has a dedicated playerbase that is accepting an increasingly melded meta, with a few sparks of excitement here or there to change things up as the sun sets on the game’s long and storied life.

While viewership has waned quite a bit, I have no doubt that people will be tuning in to Smash 5 major events, and that (despite the lack of conclusive evidence) the decline in viewership is likely related to people simply wanting something new.

After all, by the time Smash 5 comes out, Smash 4 will have lived for 4 years, with 2018 being the first year to notice any real sense of decline. Similar to Brawl, despite perceived faults, Smash 4 has carried itself well over the course of many years.

A Personal Note

I intend to continue making articles about this game, but besides OrionRank 2018, my last major article for this game will likely be the Kill Percent article. However, when Smash 5 arrives, I will likely be taking a hiatus from article writing for 3-6 months. I will collect data as I always have (it is very simple) and I may post on character representation, but large scale articles such as these will become less frequent.

These articles and the research required for them take a toll and after many months of doing large projects I feel the need to break while I play the new game and focus on things in real life.

People have asked me on many occasions how I can manage these, and the answer is that I have free time. Free time permits a lot of things, depending on how it is spent. However, I intend to seek higher education & employment within the next year, something I could not do until this year due to prior commitments. Those commitments allowed me to spend free time doing work for a community I have grown to care very much about as it has given me something to enjoy during a very difficult few years.

Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!