Character Popularity and Growth potential

Using Ankoku's data, this is the number of player associated with each character. Some have duplicate names, of this none was fixed as it all has to be done manually. There are definite errors in the following information, but the actual amount of errors should be slight.

This is the number of characters you see in the top 8 of tournaments. It does not weigh them by their success, this is merely by number. I apologize in advance for the stretched page.

The first picture is a simple bar graph showing how many players are there per character. In the "code" box you should find Character Name/Number of Players for the character/percentage of the whole.

These numbers include people using them as secondaries, so popular secondary characters (MK in particular) should have higher than average numbers from that alone.




Using only the most commonly used characters listed here, from MK to ICs:





Seeing into the future

Here's the two lists side by side. On the left is the list of how many people used the character to make top 8, on the right is ankoku's points. Ankoku's points is weighted based off of placement, attendance, etc., etc.,; the users on the left is not. Just sheer number.

The number in the middle is one of the things that helps us see the future. Because it's the future, it's not an exact science. This just gives us a pretty good idea.

If a character has a "0", it simply means their popularity lines up with their ranking. Nothing more. If a character has a positive number, that means their popularity exceeds their ranking; that means this character is setting themselves up to fall, because these guys aren't winning big tournaments and aren't making the top placements. The higher the positive number is, the more of a bottom feeder that character is. If you see a negative number, that means their ranking exceeds their popularity; that means this character is played only by a select few and these guys do well, which means this character has potential for growth. The larger the gap, the more likely it is that this character is awesome but just underused.

To reiterate:
"0" = popularity and ranking are the same
"+#" = this character is more popular than he is good. The higher the number, the more likely he'll fall in ranking soon.
"-#" = this character is better than he is popular. The higher the negative number, the more likely he'll rise in ranking soon.


Pretty cool, huh?



^that's the ranking from ankoku's chart over time. I don't have data for popularity over time, but I should be able to get that each month now with Crow!'s help because he's amazing. I'll buy you lunch again, Crow.

From that list we can see pretty clearly that Metaknight, Diddy, and Marth are the only consistently rising characters. The dips in their rankings are slight in comparison to their increases.

Other characters, like Snake, Dedede, etc., are falling.

Others still are having very slight changes; these are the close numbers above in the popularity/rankings chart, and they are more than likely going to remain stagnant.

Falco is doing the funky chicken (thanks Ankoku!), and you can't tell much from this chart alone. Given his popularity, you can expect him to go down a bit, but I wouldn't imagine it'd be by much.



I have other stuff that accounts for long term growth and, using past data, has been insanely accurate.... but my head hurts at the moment from too many numbers, so I'm going to take a short break and leave you with my interpretation of the above:

Characters that should grow slightly or maintain status quo (at least):




Characters that CAN grow, but don't have the current popularity to grow (untapped potential):



(this is borderline)


Characters that should fall slightly or maintain the status quo (at least):




Characters that will fall a LOT:


:shiek:

Where is Ganon supposed to fall off to? His fanbase (at least for Brawl) is already small.

UberMario said:

Where is Ganon supposed to fall off to? His fanbase (at least for Brawl) is already small.

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Ganon has a ways to fall... but not much. His results actually are slightly inflated though. I'd imagnie it's more because of people going ganon once or twice in a tournament as a secondary and giving him points for it.

This data makes a LOT of assumptions.

For instance, that any player of character x plays as often as any player of character y; and that mains and secondaries are of equal use and value.

That those two players are of the same level.

That they attend tournaments of the same difficulty level...

As a matter of fact, all of Ankoku's assumptions are added in to the comparison, on top of any additional assumptions you have to make about "popularity".

You assert that characters that are played more but do more poorly reflects on the character. It is possible it reflects on the region, or the community, or both.

I don't see any reason to assume causality in this situation. Interesting data, but they don't seem dependent. And I would doubt you'll see movements based on those numbers.

Move this to tactical..

theCook said:

This data makes a LOT of assumptions.

For instance, that any player of character x plays as often as any player of character y; and that mains and secondaries are of equal use and value.

That those two players are of the same level.

That they attend tournaments of the same difficulty level...

As a matter of fact, all of Ankoku's assumptions are added in to the comparison, on top of any additional assumptions you have to make about "popularity".

You assert that characters that are played more but do more poorly reflects on the character. It is possible it reflects on the region, or the community, or both.

I don't see any reason to assume causality in this situation. Interesting data, but they don't seem dependent. And I would doubt you'll see movements based on those numbers.

Click to expand...

I have other numbers Im' still working on, but I did a few "future seeing calculations" using past data as if the future hadn't happened, and it was fairly accurate. I'll have to post the rest of it when I'm done, but I didn't want to post it as incomplete. You're correct in that by itself it doesn't do much, but it does a pretty good job overall. Can't fix the secondary problem though.

The "can grow rapidly" and "can drop rapidly" is completely dependent on people playing those characters; they either don't have the potential to do well or do, and their lack of population or heavy popularity are merely holding them down or pushing them up. Whether or not they grow is up to people.


Olimar/Diddy though, they will rise up. D3, G&W, and Pit will fall. Give it a month or two and you'll see it happen.

Where are these numbers from?

SmileyFace =) said:

Where are these numbers from?

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Ankoku's data. Crow! wrote a python script to get extra info out, and I was able to see how many top 8 players there were for the past 6 months for each character, and how people ranked in that listing.

Comparing their total player # to their score total (since higher placements = higher scores) allows you to see if anyone's results are inflated due to popularity or are high DESPITE poor popularity. Those that I listed as "gain" are doing better than they should be based on popularity than they should be, those to fall are more popular and are merely inflated by numbers alone.

My own personal look into it has more data, but it isn't ready to be released yet.

Very interesting. I loves me some graphs.

Future telling is a shakey business, but it's been pretty accurate so far.

i find it interesting that MK has been on a steady rise and most of the characters below, say, Toon Link have steadily been slipping at a fairly constant (albeit small) rate

diddy and marth are the only other characters that show any sign of continuous growth.

I think this is really interesting, despite the fact that this obviously isn't exact or anything.

Good stuff OS.

Future telling can't ever be exact

This is more about looking for trends. As more months go by, I'll be able to get a clearer view.

Well yeah I know.

I doubt Ike will fall like you seem to think he will, as he has another factor going in his favor: he doesn't rely on one person for the majority of his points.

It has been pointed out on the Ike boards that only he, and maybe one or two other characters in the mid tier range and lower, get their points from multiple sources. Most characters in that area rely one 1-3 people doing well for the vast majority of their tournament points, like PT, Sonic, Ness, Falcon, ect.

Look here for example: http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=267344 towards the bottom of the first page. While this is only going back to December, and San is in the top 8 three times...that's really a good portion of his tournament showings where he placed top 8. He has a few other ones spread out through the previous year, but they aren't holding up Ike's results from being much lower. There was quite a stretch (4-5 months from memory) where there was nobody really consistently placing with Ike, yet he only dropped 1-2 spots in the tournament results.

PT on the other had has had Reflex unable to place in tournaments for a while due to IRL events and frankly, PT's results have sunken quite a bit. Ness has gone through something similar, but to a lessor extent. Falcon is currently being held up by Ally. What all of this suggests is that Ike shouldn't be falling, because he's been proven to be viable or usable for multiple people all over, instead of just a few select individuals.

tl;dr: You need to add the factor of how many individuals use said characters to your data OS, and how would said characters do if their top player suddenly stopped getting results.

Infern gives Ike the most points with a grand total of 21, San gives 18, Mr. Doom gives 7, Bored gives 6, Renegade gives 5, Benaji gives 4, Inui gives 3, Vilness gives 2, Kirk gives 2, Hylian gives 1.

There are 26 total Ike players that have made top 8 in the past 6 months, and I can tell you right now that at least 2 of the top 5 have only used him as a secondary... mostly goofing off.

Ike's results are slightly inflated, and as time goes on people will use him less and less as a secondary and he will fall. For every person playing Ike, he's generally only going to get half the points he'd normally get.

If Ike had just one guy destroying everyone it is more likely he'd go up; that's kinda how it is with Toon Link. He's got 24 people using him but they're all giving significant points to him and most of them solo main TL. That's why they give so many points.

Who the hell is Infern?

A snake main that used to main Ike.

Overswarm said:

Ganon has a ways to fall... but not much. His results actually are slightly inflated though. I'd imagnie it's more because of people going ganon once or twice in a tournament as a secondary and giving him points for it.

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No, it's actually just Ganon mains kicking everyone's ***** with manliness.

Well, this definitely shows the lack of Samus support or the fact that Nintendo ruins Samus more and more every Smash Bros. and their hate of Metroid...oh well, Samus still is the greatest underrated character in gaming history

theeboredone said:

Who the hell is Infern?

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Who the hell are you? O.o