Hmm I wonder (smash esports stuff)

(tl;dr - Ya know, Smash4 has the chance to have an evolving meta for who-knows-how-long. Makes me wonder if the "common-wealth" (I'm saying that literally, not by definition) will shift away from Melee towards Smash4)

So I've been trying to ignore the Smash4 DLC leaks for various reasons (don't have a Wiiu, don't care for the game, didn't care to bite on possible fake stuff before release), and apparently Nintendo Direct happened and people lost their friggin' minds. Well, I started to think more about Smash in Esports. Things are -really- starting to pan out like I've said months ago.

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I started with these 2 tweets, then realized I was about to blow up twitter. So I na-dawg'd that idea ('cause I mean, I'm honestly trying not to destroy timelines without just cause) and audible'd here.

When I compare smash4 and melee to other esports, it makes me wonder how long it'll take for everything to tip towards smash4. (1)

Because, say what you want about smash4, nintendo's giving it the chance to do what the other major esport games do; have evolving meta. (2)

Here's my take on this; if you look at what's big in esports now, MobAs, FPS, CCGs, etc, they all have one thing in common. Their meta shifts. Heroes fall into and out of favor in mobas, various map rotations/strats for fps, ccgs ... release new cards, so on and so forth.

Well now look at Smash4. In spite of what Nintendo's said in the past (and that's a whole 'nother monster that I don't care to rant about, because I'm not an avid Nintendo fan), they're showing that they're perfectly willing to produce new content. It doesn't matter if it's fan demand or not, it something to add to the concoction of what's happening at weeklies, monthlies, majors, and all that other jazz. If you want to talk about "Nintendo's word", you have to take what they say for a grain of salt because they've doubled back on a lot of things already. That means you honestly can't rule out the possibility of them making more balance tweeks here and there.


Now take a hard look at melee. An honest, hard look at melee. Not the fan goggles 90% of the melee tourneygoers have. What do you have on the grand scale? You have a game that's been ironed out for years. A game that's etched it's place in history. But, in the grand scheme of things, a game that's not going to change a whole lot to the common man. 

 

Now, I'm not gunna sit here and try to convince anybody that the game isn't changed; that'd be a level of BSing that even I would lose sleep over. But be real about something; do you honestly think melee could possibly change to the point of where the dumb slogan of "Fox only, FD, No Items" would seriously die out? (You have to literally not know who I am if you think I don't realize that's never been the prominent portion of melee meta).

Yes, you have people desperately trying to climb to the top with subpar characters, but that's literally the only thing that could possibly change. You might see the top end of players eventually pick up a "solid" uncommon character to counter a specific scenario (HINT HINT, although not with uncommon), but is there an actual chance in the future of melee of core meta shifting away from Fox/Falco/Sheik/Marth/(I'll let you put in a handful of other chars that really don't belong here because (another rant))? It hasn't happened in who knows how many years, in spite of the rules of the game changing (in fact, I'll argue all day that the rules've made it dissolve down to this.)

Why does the meta change matter so much? ... Well, I'm pretty sure people like change today. Whenever a new game comes out, people flock to it at the start. Anytime there's a new change to said game, people look at it heavily again. People generally get tired of seeing the same things for ages. Smash players first got tired of melee when brawl came out 'cause they were like "I'm tired of looking at Puff all the time (I'm pretty sure I have the timing right, I could be wrong)", so pretty much everybody flocked to the new game. Same thing happened when Smash4 came out, but the divide wasn't as pronounced since the community was already split into 2 (actually 4). There really aren't that many people who whole-heartedly like sitting in one spot for forever.

"So what's your point in all of this?" Well, beyond an excuse to put something in the rantbox, there really isn't one that any real advocate of their game should care about. (The only ones who'd be alarmed at this point would be a melee advocate, but if they're -real- melee people, this shouldn't be anything to make them flinch). The tl;dr is that I'm really starting to see the esports potential of smash4 that I think the average stream-viewer likes to latch onto today. I've noted - a lot - of things that allude to this, but I know they've been ignored (like many things I've said about smash over the years that've come true, rofl. That evo argument was hilarious to me). On the other end, I still don't entirely understand where melee is where it is today in the grand scope of esports.