Overswarm
is laughing at you
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- May 4, 2005
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Many predictions have been made about the possibility of Metaknight falling from his throne, but as of yet all have been incorrect.
To give you a bit of history, Ankoku's chart has had two total characters taking the #1 spot:
Snake
Metaknight
It was originally held by Snake, then quickly taken over by Metaknight. Since then, Metaknight hasn't dropped from that spot, and has had a point total that is generally around the combined points total of the 2nd and 3rd ranked characters. Even while Snake was in first, MK was in 2nd. The third place spot has been taken by Diddy, Dedede, Falco, and Wario (Wario tied with D3 at that point, technically).
Other characters have risen and fallen dramatically, but for all intents and purposes there have been a grand total of two characters that could be considered "blue chip stocks": Snake and MK.
Some people have said that Metaknight is really easy to use and popular; that's why he's done so well. This could be true; it certainly had a bit of truth to Snake and Dedede's early performance.
So I took it upon myself to collect data on every single tournament that has 150 players or more.
Code:
MK 96.6 36%
Snake 50.3 19%
Dedede 24.3 9%
Wario 21.3 8%
Falco 19.8 7%
Diddy 14 5%
Ice C 9.1 3%
Lucario 5.5 2%
ZSS 5.5 2%
G&W 4 1.50%
Marth 3.3 1.20%
ROB 3 1.10%
Fox 2 0.70%
Pikachu 1 0.30%
Kirby 1 0.30%
Olimar 1 0.30%You'll find this, more or less, goes with Ankoku's chart.
Ankoku's chart has toon link, My 150+ player chart has Fox. Other than that, no difference in character choice. Just a few changes in placement here and there.Ankoku's chart said:
From this we can also see that one of two things are happening:
A) Metaknight has dictated which characters are viable at both high level of play (tournaments with 150+ players) and all levels of play combined (ankoku's chart)
or
B) It's merely coincidental that the characters that do better against Metaknight have higher rankings and those that do poorly have lower rankings.
Looking at the list, you can see several characters that could otherwise be viable that aren't nearly as high as others and it appears to be solely due to MK's influence. While it may be a coincidence, it is highly unlikely. Do we really think King Dedede is 8th best, or has Metaknight taken the wind out of his sails?
To put it in perspective how much better MK has done at large scale tournaments than other characters:
That is a very, very large gap.
For those of you that like pie:
And one last way to explain how much better Metaknight has done is to show the combined point rankings of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th ranked characters from 150+ player tournaments since the beginning of Brawl:
They almost beat Metaknight.
But one could say that things have changed since the beginning of Brawl, and that things are much better now. Adding tournaments from so long doesn't make sense, since obviously MK could have destroyed everyone when no one knew waht they were doing, and since then he has fallen since the harder to learn characters have come up.
And you'd be right, if you were talking about Dedede.
Snake is the only character that has had a showing in every tournament with 150+ players. Metaknight is actually at a numerical disadvantage here, since he didn't show up at all at the first "big" tournament.
Since Metaknight started though, he's only had one bad tournament (http://allisbrawl.com/event.aspx?id=3834, Winter Games Fest), which shows itself as a clear outlier. Snake, his #2, has beaten MK's score in only one of the 8 events with more than 150 players. If you take that one moment and then compare it to all of Metaknight's placements, Metaknight is still a clear winner. Metaknight's point placements beat Snake's best all-time point placement 5/8 times.
The funny thing is, as time goes on, you first see Metaknight and Snake rising together followed by a steep drop off of every character BUT Metaknight. In fact, the last tournament on the graph doesn't even show any other character that was in the top 5 of my list.
Everyone's excited about Diddy, but Diddy's results are incredibly poor across the board at large tournaments. Diddy has one spike in point placement, and even then it is still overshadowed by MK.
Claiming that Diddy is the new MK counter is just as silly as it was when people said it about Snake or Ice Climbers. The data just isn't there. Diddy's massive point spike was due to one player and even that player claims it is even.
For those of you that don't play Diddy but still have an opinion:
MK boards said:
Public perception is on the Diddy boards is that it is in MK's favor. On the MK boards it is that it is an event matchup. A grand total of 52 votes think the matchup is in Diddy Kong's favor, and these are the people that play the character. ADHD has proclaimed it to be even on the boards, Alpha Zealot's vote is for even, and both Dekar and Gness have voted for it to be in Metaknight's favor.diddy boards said:
Diddy is not the magic pill for metaknight that some people think he is. ADHD is just really good and knows the matchup. Just like Ally didn't bring on the reign of the Snake, ADHD will not be followed by an army of monkeys.
We have no data and I mean none that implies anything will change in a way that hurts MK's dominance. In fact, results show a RISE in metaknight usage AND victory. You cannot claim that the Metaknight issue can be ignored simply because Ally's Snake won one event and ADHD's Diddy won another when no one else has come even close to emulating them. Over the course of Brawl's lifespan, Metaknight gave everyone a headstart and is still smoking the entire cast. He beats Snake and Diddy's points combined on Ankoku's chart. If you combined Snake and Diddy they'd barely be out-ranking Metaknight. If you combined Snake, Wario, and Dedede's points from 150+ player tournaments, they'd barely be losing to Metaknight's ranking, and Dedede had a free tournament since MK wasn't present in the top 8!
36% of all points at these 150+ tournaments have gone to Metaknight. Snake has been shown to be a clear underdog in all of this.
But in all this data, there is something very good about all of this:
The rest of the cast is very, very close together.
Snake's 19% of the points is a decent gap between D3's 9%, but other than that there is a very, very minor gap. This hints towards a possibility of a game where MULTIPLE characters are viable in high level play, rather than just Metaknight and whoever you think does well against him.
Knowing what we know about Snake now, it is very unlikely that Snake would dominate as Metaknight has. Snake has multiple bad stages and several even and bad matchups that can be statistically shown, and most of those bad matchups are taken out of the tournament by MK. In other words, Snake's results are inflated and will drop.
On top of all this, I bring the worst news of all. This goes beyond the Metaknight issue, and is something I believe the entire community can attack voraciously:
This graph uses all of Ankoku's recorded tournaments and shows a steady decline in attendance. Statistically, winter months have less entrants than spring and summer, but this graph shows the opposite. (Graph by hotgarbage)
Beyond this, go back and read the arguments for banning Metaknight and the arguments against it. Listen to the podcast. Ask yourself if the pro-ban argument has changed. Then ask if the anti-ban argument has changed.
Metaknight needs to be banned. The evidence people are looking for cannot physically exist. This is pure dominance, and any expectations of a magical counter have been and always will be a pipe dream.
We've seen people arguing for ledge grab limits, for gliding limits, for banning IDC, for making Metaknight lose if the time runs out, for having a certain amount of air time available, Metaknight not being able to counterpick his opponent, and all SORTS of ridiculous things.
These are clear indications that the character is a problem. Don't continue to beat around the bush; ban the character. Metaknight clears expectations set by all previous bannings. Items have been banned faster, stages have been banned faster, and even D3's infinite has been banned in multiple regions and none of these have even close to the amount of negative data that MK has given us.
From a historical perspective, MK meets and exceed our banning criteria. From a realistic perspective, you can see his dominance. From an originalist perspective you can see that Metaknight is clearly a game breaker. From a contructivist perspective you can see that without Metaknight, many of the game's characters can flourish at the top level of play and create a very diverse and wonderful metagame where people can love their main again.
There's no reason to keep MK other than personal reasons. Most MK mains out there will never want their MK banned. Most people making money off of MK, whether it be a Snake or Diddy that would rather keep their hours of MK experience rather than fight a D3 or the MK himself, would rather keep him around.
We have plenty of time to ban Metaknight now, before summer nationals and another year of Metaknight infestation. Take action now, ban him from local events, and get him banned officially by the SBR.
Edit:
All of my numbers are from Ankoku's data. He has links to each of them; my point system is described both in my thread and his said:
). So I guess we're cool here.
