Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in competitive play

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's competitive scene is still rather young.

2018: Rapid Growth

Series creator Masahiro Sakurai congratulating ZeRo on his victory at the Super Smash Bros. Invitational 2018.

Similar to Super Smash Bros. 4, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's competitive scene started before the game was released with the Super Smash Bros. Invitational 2018, an invitational tournament hosted by Nintendo at E3 2018 on June 12th, 2018. Similar to the last invitational, professional Smashers were invited to compete against each other; however, only eight players were invited this time, four of them being top SSB4 players while the other four were top Melee players. The only invitee who participated in the previous tournament was ZeRo, who managed to defend his previous title and defeated MkLeo, winning his first Ultimate tournament.

When Ultimate was released on December 7th, 2018, many tournaments started hosting the game, with a lot of them having over 100 attendees. By the end of the year, Ultimate's largest tournament, Umebura SP, had hosted 746 players, over 7 times more entrants than Smash 4's largest tournament in the same period of time.

New mechanics

The introduction of the Final Smash Meter and the general standardization of Final Smashes and their strength brought up the topic of legalizing them. However, including them in tournament play quickly fell out of favor due to many of the same problems that led to their ban in the past still being present. The most prominent of these is the disparity in effectiveness, with attacks like Triforce of Wisdom being considerably more effective than attacks like Puff Up, while several characteristics of Final Smashes themselves, such as the fact that they cannot be blocked, mean that they continue to supplant many mechanics in the game.

Despite the term "Echo Fighter" being heavily marketed as a new method of branding clone characters, players quickly noticed that the term was somewhat inconsistent. While the term was used on all clones with little to no differences, a few other Echo Fighters had noticeable differences. Ken, Chrom and Lucina have all been seen as different enough from Ryu, Roy and Marth respectively to warrant being ranked separately from each other. Conversely, Daisy, Richter, and Dark Samus are commonly merged with their base fighters when ranking them, as they have minimal gameplay differences from their parent characters. Dark Pit has been argued to fit in both categories, since while his only differences lie in his side special, neutral special, and Final Smash (the latter of which is not used in competitive play), his differences in those moves are fairly notable.

2019: A Growing Metagame

2019 started off with a bang, with over 2,000 players participating in GENESIS 6, the first tournament since EVO 2016 to surpass the milestone. This tournament saw the first international appearance of Zackray, a 15-year-old from Japan who was a top player in SSB4. Despite being his first time in a tournament outside of Japan, Zackray made an impressive run by placing 5th and defeating top players such as K9sbruce and Light. MkLeo, a young Smash 4 prodigy, was also able to prove that he was still a top player by winning the whole tournament and double eliminating VoiD.

Nintendo also began hosting their own Ultimate tournaments, starting with the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate North American Open 2019. Their ruleset, however, was criticized by many competitive players for being too casual, as items were allowed and certain stages banned in competitive play were used. Nintendo would slowly fix this problem, first by getting rid of Smash Balls and Assist Trophies at the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Online Open June 2019, and later adopting the competitive ruleset for the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Online Open August 2019.

The Panda Global Rankings Ultimate, or PGRU, made a return for Ultimate, starting its first season with GENESIS 6 and Sumabato SP 2 on February 1st, 2019, and ending with Albion 4, The Pinnacle 2019, and BigWinChampionship 2 on July 7th, 2019. Although the PGRU has almost the same mechanics as the previous iteration, there were some notable changes. The biggest change was the international multiplier, which counts entrants from tournaments outside of the continental US as 1.25 entrants, allowing more international tournaments to have representation on the PGR.

The first iteration of the PGRU was met with some controversy. Many players were confused on how players who have only attended a few PGRU tournaments, such as Frozen and LeoN, were present on the list while more consistent players, such as ZD and Gen, were relegated to PGRU's "Area 51" or were not present on the list at all. On PGStat's SmashCenter podcast, Panda Global director suar stated that, since there were no PGRU players for reference, outplacements were also counted for the list. This meant that large tournaments where top 10 players were upset early, such as Tweek at Smash 'N' Splash 5, allowed players who have ranked higher to have a better chance to make it onto the list.

MKLeo after his victory at EVO 2019.

Unlike Smash 4, where ZeRo dominated competitive play, during the first few months of the first season, many people were unsure about who would take the top spot; MkLeo was commonly viewed as the best player after his victory at GENESIS 6 until Tweek defeated him twice at Frostbite 2019 and took the tournament. This renewed the debate for the best player, which saw some new contenders as well, such as Zackray, Marss, and Shuton. Most potential candidates have several top placements but a few mediocre ones as well; for example, MkLeo had won GENESIS 6 but also placed 33rd at the Umebura Japan Major 2019, and Zackray has had weaker performances abroad. However, as the metagame progressed, MkLeo - after switching mains from Ike, Lucina, and Wolf to the DLC character Joker - started to gain more wins than the other contenders; since MomoCon 2019, he has not placed outside of top 2 at all the tournaments he attended. While some complaints arose of Joker being potentially broken, few outside of MkLeo have achieved as much success with the character, in contrast to characters such as Bayonetta and Diddy Kong in previous installments. As it stands, MkLeo is currently widely viewed as the best player in the world, though nowhere near as dominant as ZeRo's presence in Smash 4.

The record for the largest Smash tournament in history, previously held by Smash 4 at EVO 2016, was shattered at EVO 2019, when Ultimate became the first game to surpass 3,000 entrants, totaling at 3,534. A week later, Super Smash Con 2019 would also surpass EVO 2016's record with 2,708 entrants. With these numbers, Ultimate is currently the only Smash title where more than one tournament has surpassed 2,000 entrants.

In the second half of the year, the presence of international players in the competitive scene started to increase. Japan started hosting more Umebura and Sumabato tournaments, allowing players such as Kuro and Choco to gain more recognition. Furthermore, Europe - previously seen as a weaker region in Smash 4 - started to gain more recognition thanks to Glutonny's outstanding placements at majors and several of Europe's best players defeating other top players, including Space defeating kameme at Ultimate Fighting Arena 2019, quiK defeating KEN at 2GG: Kongo Saga, and Leffen defeating both Maister and Tweek at Super Smash Con 2019 and Smash Ultimate Summit 2, respectively. Finally, several players from Mexico and Central America also had incredible performances at national tournaments, including brothers Meme and Joker defeating Light and ESAM, respectively, at Low Tier City 7 and Yei defeating Mr. E at Smash Factor 8. Most notably, Maister placed in the top 8 at every PGR tournament he attended except EVO 2019 and Mainstage.

2020: COVID-19 Outbreak and the Rise of Online Play

The second iteration of the PGRU was released prior to GENESIS 7 and EVO Japan 2020, and for the first time in PGR history, the number of international players outnumbered American players. The list caused controversy over the placements of certain players and the increase in Japanese representation, although several complaints were due to misconceptions about the rankings. As a result, the PGRU received an overhaul for the third season, expanding the rankings to top 100 and getting rid of the algorithm in favor of a panel-based system. The international multiplier was also split; while Japan maintained the previous multiplier, all other international tournaments received an even greater boost at x1.67. This allowed smaller regions such as the United Kingdom, Chile, and El Salvador to gain more recognition. MkLeo ended up taking the number 1 spot on the second PGRU as well.

Nintendo's support for the competitive scene was called into question when the EVO Japan 2020 prize pool was announced, revealing that Ultimate's top prize was only a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller, in contrast to other games which had large prize pools. Despite the wishes of players such as Hungrybox to have Nintendo provide a prize pool for Smash, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa stated that Nintendo would not fund tournaments. In response, the team behind VGBootCamp and Super Smash Con announced the Smash World Tour, a circuit that would provide over $250,000 in prize money. This announcement was received with praise from players, and the circuit was set to start at CEO Dreamland 2020.

COVID-19 outbreak

2020, however, also marked the start of a global outbreak of COVID-19, later declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. Due to warnings by them and several health professionals to avoid contact with others and travelling abroad, many players stopped attending tournaments altogether and dropped out of the ones they were registered for. The PGRU and Smash World Tour were also frozen in an effort to dissuade players from attending tournaments, many of which were either postponed or cancelled. Notably, CEO Dreamland 2020 saw players such as Light, Dabuz, Salem, and Maister opt out, and tournament organizer Alex Jebailey was forced to ask for donations in order to keep the tournament afloat. As the outbreak continues, many majors, including CEO 2020 and EVO 2020, were either delayed towards the end of the year or outright canceled, and it is unknown when or if tournaments will be safe to continue this year.

Though offline tournaments were halted worldwide, the online tournament scene has drawn significant attention as both tournament organizers and players look for alternative options. Most notably, Cr1tikal and Alpharad launched The Quarantine Series in response to the sudden drop in offline play. In its first three tournaments, the series attracted over 8,000 unique players, including 26 PGRU-ranked smashers. Other major tournaments such as Pound 2020 and 2GG: Final Saga have run equivalent online tournaments, Pound Online and 2GG Crisis Core: Final Saga, respectively. While the online scene was prominent for years, the pandemic has turned the attentions of players who otherwise would not have competed online.

With more entrants, however, came more criticism for Ultimate's online mode. More matches were plagued by unstable connections, leading to frequent framedrops and input lag from matches that could even maintain it. The environment also promotes campy play, allowing characters, especially Sonic, to become notorious for often having matches go to time. On the other hand, a few top tiers such as Peach and Joker performed worse online, causing a dip in results for players such as Samsora and MkLeo. Numerous complaints over the issue soon caused the hashtag "#FixUltimateOnline" to trend on Twitter in late April.

Effects on other competitive scenes

Similarly to Brawl's competitive community when SSB4 was released, most SSB4 players transitioned to Ultimate when the game was released, causing the SSB4 scene to completely disappeared .

Unlike SSB4, Melee players have mostly praised Ultimate's engine, liking how some Melee techniques such as directional airdodges have made a return, as well as an increase in speed compared to the previous game. However, a few players noted that Ultimate's wavedashing is far less useful than it was in Melee, and the speed was still below that of Melee. Although Melee tournaments still exist, many top Melee players such as Leffen, Plup, Armada, and Wizzrobe have all achieved notable success in Ultimate.

Ultimate was the only Smash Bros. game in EVO's lineup at EVO 2019, while Melee was relegated to a side event. Some players were worried that this, combined with the absence of Armada, PPMD, and Mew2King, signaled the decline of Melee. However, Melee has continued strong regardless of this absence and has been notably less dominated by the Five Gods; players such as Wizzrobe and Axe would go on to majors with unconventional characters. The decline of the Five Gods and rise of new players and characters to fill the void has kept interest in Melee growing, or at worst, steady.

Criticisms of competitive Ultimate

Despite the extremely positive reception of Ultimate competitively, some players have criticized some of the aspects and mechanics of the gameplay which were either altered or removed from past Smash titles; some of these aspects include:

• Removal of microspacing options such as perfect pivoting and shield dropping through platforms such as the ones in Battlefield, with the former having a major effect on characters such as Little Mac and Marth.
• Platforms notably are much harder to drop through in Ultimate, causing costly misinputs [1].
• Whiff punishing being much more difficult due to the reduced lag on the majority of the moves and the severe weakening of grabs, which has led to some players jokingly labeling moves as "unpunishable".

See also

• Tournament rulesets (SSBU)
• Super Smash Bros. 64 in competitive play
• Super Smash Bros. Melee in competitive play
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl in competitive play
• Super Smash Bros. 4 in competitive play