EVO 2018 Thread (Aug 3rd-Aug 5th)

[TheWPCTraveler]

mZuzek said:

...because there's a thing called metagame and there's a thing called viewership. Both are extremely important to any competitive game, and both are extremely tarnished by centralizing over a single character.

[...]

In fact, if you take away Bayonetta (and Cloud in doubles), Smash 4 is actually a very well balanced game, as shown by Raito today getting top 8 with Duck Hunt. She is detrimental to both the metagame and the viewership, because she overcentralizes everything. I'm sure that should be easy enough to understand.

Statement 1: I can back this up, presenting the Twitch viewership of Sm4sh at Evo 2018: https://twinge.tv/channels/evo/streams/#/29772470928, against its viewership in 2017: https://twinge.tv/channels/evo/streams/#/25767950816 and 2016: (https://twinge.tv/channels/evo/streams/#/22368798848 and https://twinge.tv/channels/evo/streams/#/22373010288)
Given the plateau-like nature of the graph, I'd assume that people tuned out as more and more of the non-Bayo players lost, counteracting the people who tune in for the later parts of the Top 8. I personally tuned out after Raito got eliminated, a Duck Hunt making great use of the can and with immaculate DI results in a lot of extremely tense last-stock last-hit situations with one or both characters at max Rage, and it makes the game a lot more entertaining than the pace indicates. Makes me wish Raito participated in more tournaments, to be honest.

Statement 2: True. Bayo and Cloud straight-up rendered a large part of the cast obsolete.