I'm not sure I agree with his interpretation of his own results. By my reckoning, 4 of the top 5 characters have been continuously in the top 5 for the entire 12-year duration (with Jigglypuff the sole exception and by FAR the most interesting data point in the whole thing).<p>Sure, some of the bottom places shuffled around a bit in the intervening time, but if SSBM is anything like the other competitive games I play, that's probably only because the people making the list don't really have strong opinions about them. Every competitive player is going to pay attention to who's #1-5 in the metagame, but do you really think they devote as much attention to whether Bowser should be #25 or #26? They probably pick those on a whim based on whatever recent experience they had.<p>That explains the volatility at the bottom rankings. I don't think it's because the pros are plumbing the depths of the game to find new strategies to move a character from second-worst to third-worst.
I remember playing SSBM in a college environment before Youtube. It was interesting to see how the discovery and exploitation of certain moves and abilities on campus over time shifted who people would use.<p>One day somebody discovers the "Falcon Knee" and destroys everyone. Suddenly people are picking C.Falcon a little more often. Or the sweet spots with Marth. Suddenly Marth is picked a lot more. Same with Luigi's neutral A drop kick/foot. Or Peach's down-smash on a slope.<p>I think the relative lack of shared video footage of other people playing contributed to a lot of tier-changing within isolated groups. Moves are kinda discovered on accident, get refined, and ultimately change the dynamics of the game a little.
By the way, if anybody is interested in this article and wants to read more about competitive game design and competitive game balance, they should check out Dave Sirlin[1], a former competitive fighting game player and game designer who's written a lot on the subject. He has an article on how he rebalanced Puzzle Fighter, and an article for each character that he wrote for rebalancing Street Fighter II Super Turbo HD Remix, with some really interesting insights about what makes a character powerful or balanced or unbalanced.<p>[1]: <a href="http://www.sirlin.net/article-archive/" rel="nofollow">http://www.sirlin.net/article-archive/</a>
One thing that this graph doesn't capture is that, especially for Peach, Ice Climbers, and Mewtwo, a single player has brought each of those characters into the limelight.<p>These kinds of graphs don't translate well into MOBAs because the team size (5), character count (100+) and drafting mode (ban/pick/ban/pick) tend to create very stale metagames if the game is not rebalanced from time to time. That said, both Riot and Valve have made some pretty crazy balance decisions in the last 12 months.
Isn't shuffling in the ranks a sign of balance? Lets say the game is unbalanced such that Mario wins 100% of the time, and Luigi wins against everyone except Mario. Then I would expect the ranking to list Mario as #1 and Luigi as #2. They would never change positions because there is no question about if Luigi should rank higher than Mario or lower than some other character.
It would be wonderful if more game designers took the basic premise to heart, which is that the "balance" is antithetic to "interesting". Much of what made early World of Warcraft worlds compelling was the lack of balance on character capabilities. And while minmaxers would find a combo that was hard to beat, often alternatives could be found without large scale nerfs and buffs. Smash brothers is a lot of fun in this regard, since my daughter regularly trounces me I can try different strategies over time and discover things about the character I'm playing that improve it against massive failure. That <i>journey</i> is much more interesting than whether or not Zelda is more powerful than Sheik.
If I could comment to the author directly. Look into the Tier lists for Street Fighter, and Namely Street Fighter Turbo II. Which is also completely unpatched, but still has an actively changing tier list despite being over 20 years old.
Make sure to watch this awesome documentary about SSBM: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoUHkRwnRH-KTCH3tJ9WvsWWPEgUu-y6d" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoUHkRwnRH-KTCH3tJ9Wv...</a>
(Beware, it's 4 hours long in total, hehe)
"I'd love to play League of Legends low tier only. Can you imagine a tournament where the 40 most used champions are all off limits? It'd be so fun!"<p>Dota 2 has a similar mode[1] where you can't choose from your 40 most played heroes, although this is based on what heroes you've played previously, not the heroes that are most played globally.<p>[1] <a href="http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Game_modes#Least_Played" rel="nofollow">http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Game_modes#Least_Played</a>
I agree with the conclusion of the article, going for a fun game rather than trying to balance it perfectly is the best way to go. When games set out from the start to be competitive, balanced, and cater to the professional's feedback it takes away that element of discovery and letting the game grow organically. If something is obviously broken then A game in recent history that did this was StarCraft 2. StarCraft 1 became a huge competitive game well after the last balance patch came for it. This allowed the players and the community to grow through strategy and map making. In StarCraft 2 once something powerful (and fun) was discovered, players went the route of complaining online so the developers would change it. For myself and many others, this took away a lot of the fun and hurt the longevity of the game. Strategies/races/units falling out of favor did not happen naturally, a patch directly caused it. In StarCraft 1 you could not complain and expect a patch to save you, and you had to come up with something to deal with it.
One of the big issues that sets Smash Bros. apart from other fighting games like Street Fighter or Tekken is the attitude of the developers. Sakurai and team don't really consider their game a fighting game and cater to the casual crowd with smash bros. This is in stark contrast to Capcom who tries to make Street Fighter <i>the</i> competitive fighting game. This is changing somewhat with the Wii U invitational and actually issuing balance patches this time around for smash 4 but it will be a long time before another Smash is a competitive hit like Melee was, Sakurai has even said that melee was <i>too</i> technical and was a mistake.
What we are seeing here is a demonstration of real world fog of war and the evolution of combat, bear with me on a real world application.<p>In the beginning of a fight / battle / war where both competitors have never seen one another there will be tendencies to favor an approach (character) based on visual appeal or familiarity. This is the selection of a character familiar to the player, look at Mario, Zelda, Luigi and their degradation over time; new users select their favorites but realize as they get better that these are not the best.<p>Over time, the players / strategists come up with new strategies to handle the predominantly selected players. As new characters are chosen, because the losing character demonstrates a propensity for losing, new strategies are adopted by the new loser.<p>The rise of certain characters within the game demonstrate users experimenting with them and their adopted strategies working against entrenched strategies.<p>Things also to consider, as less new players discover the game, the residual data becomes more experienced player-centric as they are the remaining still playing the game.<p>Ness is a character that may have some secret ability that no one knows about and may be helpful in the future.
For anyone who's into low-tier heroes, here's an inspirational game & watch: <a href="http://youtu.be/-IsVX-3ZsFU" rel="nofollow">http://youtu.be/-IsVX-3ZsFU</a><p>Maybe G&W will never be high tier but it's so fun to watch people push the limits of known-to-be-bad characters out of love
A bit surprised to see the analysis was of Super Smash Bros Melee and not Brawl. Not quite as much data on it (7 years vs 12)...<p>For what it's worth, I actually wore out 3 Wiis playing smash bros for probably thousands of hours.<p>Also, great marketing effort releasing this the day before the new one releases.
I think maybe the takeaway here is that you can't always tell the difference between a slightly unbalanced and a perfectly balanced game right away. You can probably spot extreme imbalances immediately, I'd guess.<p>But if this game had been patched monthly, Jigglypuff or Ice Climbers might have been buffed drastically or had their mechanics changed early on, which would have been a shame.<p>A proposal: when a game has been thoroughly played, tested, and thought through, and the designers are nearly certain that a desirable state of balance has been reached, then restrain yourself to no more than one (maybe two) balance tune-ups in a year. Only patch imbalances so glaring that they are on the scale of bugs or exploits. Let things play out a bit.
This is a fantastic article that I'll link to the next time people complain about "balance" as a general construct to express that their discontent at losing in some context. There have been other well thought out observations similar to this about other classics, including Final Fantasy Tactics: <a href="http://kotaku.com/5973196/why-everybody-loves-final-fantasy-tactics" rel="nofollow">http://kotaku.com/5973196/why-everybody-loves-final-fantasy-...</a><p>In the case of Tactics, the game continues to be fun even after 100 hours of play in part because player is _rewarded_ for their effort by their units becoming out of balance in the late end game.
He's neglecting that SSBM is an offline-only game, so imbalances take MUCH longer to manifest. When people can easily play games against serious competitors across the globe at any time of day, new strategies spread extremely quickly.
This is an argument against regular balance patches, not against trying to balance things in the first place. I don't think it's a good idea to conflate the two.