Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in competitive play: Difference between revisions

The start of 2020 featured two supermajors that took place on the same weekend: {{Trn|GENESIS 7}} and {{Trn|EVO Japan 2020}}. The latter caused controversy in the community as the top prize was only a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller while other events had an actual prize pool. Many players questioned [[Nintendo]]'s support for the competitive scene, however despite the wishes of many players, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa stated that Nintendo would not fund tournaments. This led many to question whether competitive ''Smash'' was financially viable if there was little support from Nintendo.

Unfortunately, the year marked the start of a global outbreak of COVID-19, which by the time of CEO Dreamland 2020 had been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. Due to warnings from officials to avoid contact with others and traveling abroad, many tournaments that were upcoming in the next few months were cancelled or postponed, while the Spring 2020 {GRI and the Smash World Tour were frozen to dissuade players from attending tournaments. A few tournaments continued to run the first week of the pandemic, however they all suffered from dropouts. Most notably, CEO Dreamland 2020 saw top players such as {{Sm|Light|p=Connecticut}}, {{Sm|Dabuz}}, and {{Sm|Maister}} drop out, and tournament organizer {{Sm|Alex Jebailey}} was forced to ask for donations in order to keep the tournament afloat. As the outbreak continued it became clear that offline competitive play wouldn't return for the rest of the year, leading to the cancellation or postponement of other major events for the rest of the year.  

However with more attention came more criticism for ''Ultimate''{{'}}s online mode. Players complained about the online mode's unstable connections, which led to frequent drops in framerate and increased input lag. The environment also promoted campy play, allowing characters that benefit from it, such as {{SSBU|Sonic}}, to have more matches time out. On the contrary, characters such as {{SSBU|Peach}} and {{SSBU|Joker}} were often considered weaker online, as the input lag made it harder to perform their combos. Numerous complaints over the issue soon caused the hashtag "#FixUltimateOnline" to trend on Twitter in late April. In an effort to combat the terrible connections, Ethernet cables became mandatory for most online tournaments and region locks that limited online tournaments to certain regions started to gain traction. To combat the effects of the region locks on the rankings, the Wi-Fi Warrior rank introduced multipliers that increased the value of international region-locked tournaments but decreased the value of American region-locked tournaments.

While the United States's online metagame saw a sudden rise followed by a slow decline, the Japanese online metagame continued to grow throughout the online metagame, likely due to better online connections in Japan as well as [[Smashmate]], a website dedicated to online play in Japan and features an ELO [[ladder]] and frequent online tournaments thanks to the {{Trn|Tamisuma|series}} and {{Trn|Maesuma|series}} series. Specifically, more players began playing on the online ladder, and by its [[Smashmate Rankings/Smashmate SP Season 11|eleventh season]], it had surpassed 10,000 entrants, with attendance numbers remaining well above this threshold even after the return of offline competitive play. Initially, the latter was often topped by veteran players {{Sm|Ron}} and {{Sm|YB}}, however eventually a new player, {{Sm|acola}}, began dominating the ladder, becoming the first player to ever surpass a 2,500 rating on the latter.

The slow return of offline competitive play was halted by a spike in COVID-19 cases in January 2021, which once again halted offline competitive play, especially in Japan where a surge of cases cancelled several notable events. However, by March offline events once again began crawling back, and by the end of the month Japan had successfully ran {{Trn|Kagaribi 3}}, the first major tournament since the start of the pandemic.

==Post-online metagame (2021-present)==

With hopes that the pandemic would be over by the summer, VGBootCamp announced the {{Trn|Smash World Tour 2021}}, which would feature region-locked online tournaments for the first half of the year before moving offline for the second half. However, unlike last year, the reaction was more mixed; several top players such as MkLeo and Tweek noted how players were required to play in online tournaments just to qualify for the brackets with prize pools and questioned whether it would be safe enough to host offline tournaments by summertime.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://twitter.com/Mkleosb/status/1363264527878430722|title=MkLeo's opinion on SWT 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://twitter.com/TweekSsb/status/1363258144621740034|title=Tweek's opinion on SWT 2021}}</ref> Indeed, a variety of issues came up during the qualifiers, largely due to the game's poor online netcode. In addition, although all the regional final events were held offline, the {{Trn|SWT: South America Ultimate Regional Finals}} was held online due to the COVID-19's effects in South America, leading many South Americans to accuse VGBootCamp for sidelining a community often overlooked by the global scene.

On the other hand, the [[Tournament:Smash World Tour 2021 Championships|circuit finale]], held from December 17th-19th, 2021, marked the first time in the post-online metagame with many players from ''Ultimate''{{'}}s three superregions in attendance. As a result, it became one of the largest events of the year despite having only 40 entrants. Ultimately, MkLeo took the tournament, making him the first champion of the Smash World Tour.

The second change in the new metagame was that the center of the community began shifting from being primarily American-based to being primarily Japanese-based. Thanks to Smashmate and the rise of new major tournament series {{Trn|Kagaribi|series}} and {{Trn|Maesuma|series}}, Japan's ''Ultimate'' community began thriving like never before, with established top players being upset by players who were considered new to the top level or even competitive play as a whole. One of these players who rose meteorically to the top level was {{Sm|acola}}, who made his first notable offline appearance in late-February at {{Trn|Maesuma Offline}}, defeating several established Japanese players to place 2nd. By the end of the season, acola was dominating Japan's competitive landscape, having won their two Golden Week supermajors back-to-back, signalling a new era for Japanese ''Smash''. Further expanding on acola's dominance was his first overseas performance at {{Trn|The Gimvitational}}, which he not only won, but did so defeating some of the United States's best players along the way. This event established acola as one of the best players in the world. Outside of acola, the year also saw the sudden rise of {{Sm|Miya|p=Honshu}} in the summer, where he saw a similar path to acola, going from a notable Smashmate player to becoming one of Japan's best offline players following his surprising victory at {{Trn|Kagaribi 8}}.

Coinciding with acola's meteoric rise was the meteoric rise of his main, {{SSBU|Steve}}. Although a relatively popular character prior to 2022, Steve's representation in the metagame exploded in the first half of 2022, with many Steve players placing at or near top 8 at major events. Outside of acola, the most notable among these Steve players was {{Sm|Onin}}, a player who began the year with decent results but by the end of July was in consideration for one of the best players in North America, dominating the [[Midwest]] with Steve and even winning the major tournament {{Trn|Get On My Level 2022}}. However, the character's sudden rise led to discussion on whether the character should be banned, with many citing how Steve's best players were all previously-unknown players to the top level just a year prior. Although a ban never came to fruition that year, Steve's position in the metagame only became more polarizing as acola and Onin continued to find great amounts of success in competitive play, culminating in the summer with acola's win at the Gimvitational in June and Onin's victory at {{Trn|Super Smash Con 2022}} in August where he dominantly defeated MkLeo 3-0 along the way. As such, Steve became near-unanimously considered the best character in the game.

Converse to all this success was MkLeo's slow decline: although he was ranked 1st on [[PGRU v3 NA|North America's PGRU v3]], only 0.7 points separated him and Sparg0, the first time a player was this close to dethroning him. Further underperformances in the summer, especially his poor performance at Smash Ultimate Summit 5, led many to question whether it was time to crown a new #1. Several candidates were brought up, however all of them had their flaws: acola and Sparg0 were often considered the frontrunners, however the former had only became a top player recently and had a few questionable losses while the latter went on a 3-month hiatus following {{Trn|The Gimvitational}}. Another player brought up was {{Sm|Light|p=Connecticut}} due to his sheer consistency across all majors he attended, however despite regularly placing top 3 he had only one major/supermajor title under his belt. All four players were present at {{Trn|Ludwig Smash Invitational}}, the second-largest tournament of the year in terms of number of talent, leading many to believe the player who won the event would be the frontrunner. Ultimately, MkLeo swept through the entire tournament in what many considered to be one of the most dominant tournament performances of his career, as he only losing a single game against {{Sm|Kurama}} and notably double-eliminated acola 3-0 twice.  

===Rise and fall of the Four Horsemen (2023-2024)===

The earliest frontrunner was {{Sm|acola}}, who won many majors in the season's early months. Most notable among these was {{Trn|Smash Ultimate Summit 6}}, where after falling to losers early in the final bracket, he ran through the entire losers bracket to eventually win the tournament. With strong performances in both Japan and in North America, many players considered acola to be the new best player in the world within only a few months of the new season. However, later developments in the season cast doubt on these claims. Although he had a relatively weak start of the season, {{Sm|Sparg0}} quickly shot up to be a contender after his victories at {{Trn|Kagaribi 10}} and {{Trn|Battle of BC 5}}, which not only were two of the largest events of the first season, but also saw him easily defeat acola four times. This dominat record over acola led many other players, especially in North America, to argue that Sparg0 was the best player in the world. UltRank, now called [[LumiRank]] after their partnership with {{Team|Luminosity Gaming}}, ultimately ranked acola #1 on the [[LumiRank Mid-Year 2023]] due to Sparg0's weaker consistency at majors, making acola the first new #1 player in ''Ultimate''. acola eventually cemented himself in this position following his continued consistency throughout the year, placing top 8 at every event he attended and winning {{Trn|Super Smash Con 2023}}, while further underperformances from Sparg0, especially after his devastating run at Super Smash Con, knocked him out of contention.

Aside from acola and Sparg0, two other players also began dominating their respective metagames. Despite having a weak start of the season, {{Sm|Miya|p=Honshu}} ended the year with the most major wins out of anyone, winning a total of 11 majors and supermajors. His performances especially took off in the latter half of the year, where he won most of his majors, including his biggest win {{Trn|Kagaribi 11}}, and even became a bracket demon for acola. In North America, {{Sm|Sonix}} emerged as a contender for best player in North America after defeating Sparg0 at {{Trn|Get On My Level 2023}}, and regularly making it to Grand Finals at majors in second half of the year, later winning {{Trn|Port Priority 8}}. Collectively, these four players won a combined 30/37 majors (81.08%) throughout the [[LumiRank 2023]] season, including all but one major in the second half of the season with at least one of them in attendance and all but one of the year's "premier-tier" events. This dominance culminated in their performances at the final supermajor of the season, {{Trn|Watch The Throne}}, where the four of them took the top 4 places. Recognizing their dominance in the metagame, players began calling the four players the '''Four Horsemen''', with the term taking off after Watch The Throne. This is reflected on the [[LumiRank 2023]], where the four players were ranked top 4 and had a score above 95, with the next highest being {{Sm|Glutonny}} with a score of 84.78.

The Four Horsemen's dominance almost immediately dissipated in the following season. Although they still made up the majority of major victories, their did not have an outright majority. Furthermore, only Miya had more than 3 major wins that season, as acola's decreased activity, Sparg0's inconsistency, and Sonix's frequent 2nd-place finishes meant that the number of Four Horsemen major wins that season was largely carried by one player. Conversely, this season saw a variety of major winners, with no repeat major winners outside of Miya between [[Tournament:DELTA 7|DELTA 7 [FAT]]] in December 2023 and {{Trn|Sumabato SP 46}} in April 2024, and in fact saw several new majors winners, including {{Sm|SHADIC}} at {{Trn|Cirque Du CFL 3}}, {{Sm|Hurt}} at {{Trn|Battle of BC 6}}, and {{Sm|Raru}} at {{Trn|Sumabato SP 47}}. Due to all of this, many players questioned whether the community was too haste in labeling the four players, especially if their dominance did not even last for a year.

Although many players have discussed a Steve ban, no serious bans were placed until February 2023 with the discovery of Steve's [[Phantom MLG]] technique. This tech, which allowed Steve to escape out of a move and immediately counter it, prove to be a tipping scale for many tournament organizers, and many organizers around the world began banning the character, or at least banning the tech's usage.