Why Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is Losing Popularity 

"Why is the game dying" -Shows 90% STEVE clips

For me personally, I lost interest because the game just never felt like it had an end goal to keep me playing, the community got annoying, the terrible online, and the game just felt very binary in solutions to problems without much room for creativity and expression compared to some previous games.

I’m gonna say it. The death of the circuits was one of the biggest losses in the scene. Can’t believe we had two and both of them went down…

"Why is Smash dying ?" > Online doesn't work > Nintendo isn't friendly with competition > No Content, no patch, no new meta > Salty community > Steve

I think COVID, the scandals, and lack of support by Nintendo is what ultimately (no pun intended) caused the decline of Ultimate’s competitive scene.

I'd add that the netcode and online play experience is pretty bad. Usually less community actively playing means less viewers, interest and popularity

I think the reason why ultimate is dying is because of how the meta is right now where it’s camp or be camped. Either the most optimal way to play your character would be to camp (Steve, Sonic, Min Min) or to have to camp the opponent due to how volatile approaching them would be (Rob, Kazuya). So in recent smash ultimate game times are much MUCH longer simply because of how favorable camping is rn.

I saw Coney's recent video, where he talked about how the competitive ruleset affects viewership and gameplay. I will attempt to both summarise his points and expand on them in my own words here: - The stage list is too similar, most legal stages are the same stage with small practical changes between them. - Our stages help promote keep away playstyles by giving characters a lot of space, making it more difficult to close the gap - Best of five sets make games longer and as a result promote viewer exhaustion. Therefore, we change the cut-off point for best of 5. - Our Ruleset is outdated, most of ultimate rules were created in the first year of the game's lifecycle. We are now in year 5. I thought this was interesting video, mostly because of how it suggests that we might need to take more "radical" action to create renewed interest.

So in summary: ● the game is getting old ●there isn't much new casually ouside of fighting new people online ●The competitive meta is getting kinda boring ●balance patches are over ●only new content that is confirmed is patching in sora's amiibo data and more spirits (not alot of people care about spirits nor amiibos)

Steve and Sonic, no wants to see a block man build a house and place down more blocks and a blue hedgehog spin dash canceling for 7 minutes every game...

1. The game is unfinished. Why do you think people say we need a new fighter pass, or a new update, or even a new game? It's because they know or they feel that the game just isn't complete. It isn't a complete experience, something needs to be remedied. You don't really see this with melee(I'm going to being drawing comparisons to melee since it's the other popular smash game). The melee community has seen a host of mods that do balance changes, or add characters and stages. All of these mods get some fanfare and then the community gets back to the base game. Melee players love their game, that's why they grind it out like psychos, how they keep discovering and perfecting new techniques 20 years after its release. 2. I think ultimate fundamentally was designed with an awareness of the competitive scene and a desire against allowing what melee evolved into. Melee was designed with competitive play as an afterthought, and somewhat by accident became an amazingly deep game. The devs were simply ignorant to what the future would be if they left in wavedashing, or shield dropping, or allowing jump out of shine, or jump canceling, etc. To them they were just little quirks that players might encounter from time to time. Ever since then Nintendo has been trying to constrain what you can do in smash. Ultimate saw some new tech added, but also some removed, and some long lost tech still left out. The bottom line is that this kind of game design limits player expression, it also limits the community's ability to self balance the game. The reason the tier list in melee keeps on changing is that as methods of player expression change, are refined, or new ones are discovered, new characters become viable. Melee saw young link go from a joke character to a serious secondary used to counter one of the best characters in the game(puff) to now being a joke characters again but with some fun stuff in his bag post optimization. All of that without any balance updates. And it's only possible because in melee there are way fewer guard rails on the way you can play the game. Idk why Nintendo is so scared of giving players the freedom to play how they want to play. I love ultimate in some many ways, but goddammit I wish there was just a bit more hit stun. Not even melee levels, but enough to allow more player expression through combos. I wish there was ledge hogging. I wish the game was a bit more weighty. Fuck, if Nintendo won't make the balance changes themselves then allow us to make custom modes where we can change all these parameters, gravity, character weight, knockback, hitstun, launch angle. But no, they're so arrogant, the game as they have made it is the way it has to be, even if it is in a state of wasted potential. I think that's the most frustrating thing. Everyone can see how much potential there is, how close we were to the universal smash. I mean when it first came out it really did unite the communities, we had top players from melee and smash 4 competing at majors and placing in the top 8. It was probably the best time for smash since it returned to Evo. But the games potential was never fully realized, the melee players returned home to their game that they love, and the former smash 4 players were stuck playing the latest entry as the quality and excitement of gameplay slowly deteriorated. I'm tired of melee yall, I mean I love it but its not a perfect game, I wish ultimate could have been the game that picked up where melee left off and really showed how good a smash game could be. But we'll probably never get that, at least not from nintendo.

I think one of the big reasons in my opinion is that some players get too infuriated by the online play to want to continue playing. They're sick of having to lose because what they cant control heavily outweighs what they can control.

Doesn’t “Everyone has a chance of beating everyone” contradict “invalidating most of the roster from doing what they want to do”? I haven’t been keeping a close eye on the meta, but I got the impression that most characters can’t be solo mains anymore because they CAN’T beat everyone no matter how hard you try.

Between lack of updates, anti-support from Nintendo and frustrating gameplay patterns (Steve and Sonic come to mind), It's no wonder why it's losing popularity... Wait, did you talked about the same? I guess it's really a resounding feeling. Then again, the own community can easily shut down the scene due to being way too impulsive (Do you remember Panda?), so maybe it was doomed from the beginning. That's factor 4: *The community doesn't want to mature and grow.*

The Lack of Updates is the biggest reason. Even without the Smash World Tour, we would be stuck with this meta and with a game that lacks any good casual content and generally has a lot of issues (Terrible Online, Buffering System, Input Delay, Sticky Platforms, Everything being too safe and mashy, etc)

Getting rid of trophies was a blow to the franchise, it was a great goal for players after they unlocked all the characters. As you unlocked more trophies, the more you learned about Nintendo’s history.

Ive read quite a few comments but no one has talked bout this But i think the biggest reason for its fall is the garbage online, its soo bad that i just dont feel like playing...ever, sm4sh had better online, I feel people underestimate the impact of casual fans trying to improve and get into competitive, but due to lack of a local community they have use online and that just starts a cycle of hating the game into eventually quitting

Melee: Small roster of deep characters. Ultimate: Large roster of shallow characters

Meta is absolutely cooked Sonic and Steve are overturned

Crazy amount of characters sure, but I think there's a few engine/game level issues holding Ult back. Unacceptable input lag and online net code, no ranked competitive ruleset matchmaking, hold input buffer way too long, no ability to toggle short hop macro, wave dashing and other movement techniques purposefully taken out, and no balance patches anymore to fix broken stuff like Steve tech makes the game feel a bit too sterile and probably unfair/frustrating competitively. If those things were changed and Nintendo wasn't seemingly trying to kill competitive play it would probably last a very long time.

Two main reasons. Over 5 years old and lack of updates/supports. Many players have had their fill of ultimate and have moved on to different games, likely newer games with new content on the way, if not a new installment altogether. Yes, there are multiplayer games older than ultimate that are still played by some, but that isn't what is being asked. The question is why ultimate is less popular now than when it was newer getting patches and new characters and stages continally. Not why no one at all is playing it.

Ultimate answers the question: "What happens when you balance a game by giving 90 characters a single ridiculous gimmick and have them mash it?"

its been dead to me since realizing the game isnt meant to be competitive. it has depth and is fairly balanced, but the game even without items doesnt feel like both players are actually having a test of skill. there are too many wrong actions that work, or ways to win by accident

Ultimate's meta is pretty frustrating rn and people aren't having enough fun with it to endure nintendo blocking out tournaments. Like the best characters in the game are steve and sonic, players don't wanna see that for years to come rip

Old, No more updates, No new DLC, Broken Meta and characters.

Sakurai may have pulled many cool, lame and impossible characters out of his ass But he forgot he had a game that needed gameplay as its focal point instead of characters and stages Its insane that Ultimate both feels like it has a lot but its still incomplete. Story mode is still bad, no trophies that felt earned, online is garbage, stage creator being limited, no new or old minigames and finally, it really needed another fighter's pass.

The smash scene ruined itself and will never be a professional industry. The toxicity and childish bs alone is enough to scare away any sponsor

One thing that made 2018-2020 special was that Nintendo actually made an effort to buff/nerf characters competitively. People complaining about pichu/Olimar? They got nerfed. Prepatch Corrin was terrible? Buffed in 8.0! However I think 2021 was an underrated year for the game. We formed some concrete opinions during the online era only for them to be shattered as random characters were exploding into the meta. The game needs some more patches yeah, but I honestly think we need to look into random mid tiers. Seeing sky jay’s rising success as been exciting and honestly the sets leading up to top 8 of majors….are amazing. We just need support.

Another point I wanna bring up is that many Smash players are also just playing other games nowadays. Mainstream games is one thing but I've been noticing a large trend of Smash players moving onto trying other fighting games like SF6, KOFXV, and Guilty Gear Strive. With all of these new fighting games coming out soon, fighting games are experiencing a new renaissance.

Maybe because the community hates its own game and there is literally only negativity and doomer-ism left

Being the most "successful" in sales has a lot more to do with console adoption than actual general gamer interest as indicated by the chart. The three highest selling games coincidentally are on Nintendo's most popular selling consoles, even though two of those three titles are now completely irrelevant.

If ultimate ever gets a switch 2 port with tweaks to performance, buffer, and maybe even balance i feel like that'd be huge for the game

Nobody is forcing the game’s competitive rules on us aside from ourselves… game is dying already so before it’s completely dead, change it up Try to stagelists, add the final smash meter on or something… but spice it up for players and viewers

It’s probably because the community was so toxic Tbagging Taunting A bunch of Tryhards and Lots of people took this game seriously

It lost the ONE thing that made it so special in my eyes and that is the roster. Yeah it is truly awesome that we have a roster bordering on MUGEN, but in truth I really don't see how that is good for any competitive game. It is awesome we got characters that were former never-evers like Ridley, extremely unexpected returns like with Pichu, but ultimately it is undermined by the fact that a lot of characters in the game are similar/outdone and thus never going to be picked, and despite being the 5th game, it still has a LOT of problems that were present in older games. -Projectiles and zoners feel too powerful or not well incorporated into the game -Balance patches were often not substantial or could've been a whole lot better -The Wifi is dreadful, with Ultimate having the absolute worst of the franchise. You at least you didn't have to pay for the Wii and Wii-U's -The input delay -Many characters feel poorly done, Daisy and Richter are just reskins, Ganondorf is still terrible for the 3rd time in a row, Sonic is still largely just reused moves from other characters, etc. And when you take away that special roster, you're left with a fairly standard smash game. Not terrible but certainly not if you think "The ULTIMATE Smash". I don't think Ultimate is a bad game, but I certainly think the community moving onto the next game will not be very difficult.

Steve and sonic are only strong because the game controls like dogwater. No amount of buffering is going to fix the heavy 7 frame gimp on top of the average human reaction time of 10-12 frames making whatever they do that's under 17-19 frames completely unreactable. Which is absolute sacrilege to anyone who plays games that rely on a half decent reaction time.

This was never the pinnacle of smash. It was the best of a bad bunch of sequels to Melee. And as expected Melee will outlive it. The one true cockroach of FGC/e-sports.

hot take but i think videos like these and tweets that constantly talk about the downfall of ult only rapidly makes it faster. i don’t think ult is dying atm. WTT had 73k viewers and it peaked whenever acola was playing.

One thing that doesnt get brough up much but definately killed it for me is the lack of singleplayer option variety. Ultimate went all-in on the fighting part of the platform fighter to the detriment of additional modes and incentives for solo play. In previous games you had stuff like Classic Mode, Multi-Man Smash, All-Star, Home Run Contest and Event Matches to test your combat abilities but then you also had stuff like Break The Targets, Adventure Mode and Smash Run that demanded more out of your mobility and environmental awareness. It made for a refreshing break from the non stop fighting and gave players more meat to chew on and an additional entry point into the fighting. In Ultimate the only things left are Classic, Multi-Man, All-Star(in a reduced Multi-Man Smash format) and Event Matches. All combat all the time, which would be fine in paper because there's World Of Light, a new Adventure mode but then in execution its just a bunch of pre-determined Event Matches on a map screen with no platforming to be had there either. And then the only extra mode to return ended up being Home Run Contest, another combat mode. And thats without the removal of trophies, which added an extra bit of consistent incentive and reward for playing. Its understandable why thet stopped doing it, but it leaves a gap thst Spirits just cant fill. All of these cuts and omissions result in a game that's almost entirely focused on the competitive and that needs an excessive amount of self-motivation and/or interest in purely the fighting to keep with it.

I don't play smash, but I feel like this is just what's bound to happen when you try to play competitively something that wasn't intended by the devs to be played competitively. Current gen singles in Pokemon are having the same problem, the meta is completely wack with tons of mons that can run away with entire games if given one turn of setup and so much stuff is getting banned but it's not helping, it's the developers that need to fix this kind of thing but obviously they won't because singles is an unofficial metagame. Dragon ball fighterz was left in a pretty sorry state meta-wise after its content updates ended with the fusions pressing full screen buttons and doing 60% meterlessly and every team looking the same at the top level, so the devs have kept updating the game over the last year, having multiple "final" patches that didn't end up being final because there was more balancing to do, and the current meta is quite fun, basically everyone is viable at a high level and you can't just grab fusions and lc21 and call it a day because of the meter gain nerfs. I know there are cases of games not being intended to be played competitively ending up being great competitive games, like melee and mkwii, but those are outliers and not the norm, people shouldn't expect a fun and balanced metagame out of a game that didn't intend to give one just because it has happened a couple of times in the past

I think smash losing popularity is mostly the fault of its community, the community is toxic immature can’t agree on anything and outright refuses to even attempt to fix any issues that plague both the competitive scene and the community as a whole. the game isn’t really as fun to watch anymore because the meta is shit. ironically the intention of ultimate was to have more interactive and aggressive matches than any other smash game (besides melee) but we ended up with a game that has so much passive play it’s only beat out by brawl. A lot of the meta characters play styles basically boil down to waiting until you opponent fucks up once so you can nuke them with a zero to death combo and especially for characters like kazuya and Steve your basically going to be seeing the same combos over and over again seeing a 0 to death once or twice might be cool but having to watch that shit multiple times gets old

bad netplay and low skill ceiling led people to other fighting games.

I stopped caring about the game since 2022 so its weird to come back and see Sonic, Steve, and G&W be the top 3 characters Its pretty grim I pretty much only play smash with friends now which is more fun anyways

The idea that Smash Ultimate can't be topped because of it's numbers is absurd. I'm sorry, but gamers today seriously overvalue quantity. I will take Smash 64's roster if the game is better and does something that refreshes the series positively. Fuck a 9345 character roster.

"We don't need a Smash 6, how can you top ultimate?" Well, an actual story mode would be nice for starters

Shoutouts to Nintendo for making a Smash game that makes Smash players want to play other games Sakurai knew what was best for the fans

My two cents in no particular order… - Game engine Let me preface this with I have not played melee competitively or much at all really. Ultimate just feels a bit funky to me, like it’s actively working against smoother or faster movement and large advantage states (This could partly play into camping being incentivized in ultimate’s meta). Platforms and the buffer system seem to cause awkward movements a lot too. It is accessible yes, but I think you can still have accessibility with lots of depth and skillful gameplay. Look at Rivals of Aether (1 or the upcoming sequel) with things like hitfalling and whifflag. It massively rewards getting into advantage, but at the same time punishes mashing or spamming moves, while also being natural enough that players often didn’t even realize they were executing the hitfalling tech in the first place - Online Of course even more problematic with the pandemic. It’s basically two different games online and offline. Slippi alone probably showed a lot of players the difference a functional online can make - Meta Big stages and campy play styles. Everyone else already touched on this, it’s not helping a game that already has Nintendo breathing down its neck

Melee still going strong, but I did really like playing Mewtwo and Megaman in sm4sh. Ultimate came over and changed the old characters for the worse and spammed a bunch of new swordies and ridiculous DLC characters and it just lost the little charm it had leftover. Roster is way too damn big now and characters lack their former identity in past games. Mechanics of the game then exacerbate the issue by restricting players even more and well, like the others say, the horrendous online ain't helping...

I think what Smash ultimate lacks more than anything is a star with amazing personality at the top level. If somebody like HungryBox was competing for the best player in the world title, it would make a difference. I like the top players, but none of them are that interesting. It would also help if Nintendo stopped trying hurt the game every chance it gets. The game should get quarterly or bi annually updates, that could shake up the meta often. With such a large roster, it would be exciting seeing new characters rise to the top and new players with new play styles rise to the top of tournaments. 2-3 new characters a year could also keep the game spicy. Nintendo might not put much effort into this game because they don’t make money off of players who currently own the game, but that is also their fault. They could easily add skins for each character and people would gobble that up. In addition if they hosted their own weekly tournament like coin box in the game, im sure some sponsors would easily make that beneficial for both Nintendo and the players.

I agree that Nintendo's interference gave the scene a big hit, but I think one of the biggest reasons the game fell off was when a lot of top players were outed for nasty behavior. Nintendo can't afford the risk and it made the scene unsafe for underaged competitors.

It's a combination of everything you pointed out in the video, but the beginning of the downfall was undoubtedly the insane number of top players and commentators being revealed as pedos and sex offenders. That whole situation and the way nothing was really done by TOs to prevent it from happening in the future is likely what drove Nintendo to refuse to work with them. Even though it's been multiple years since then, I still haven't managed to enjoy playing the game like I used to, because that situation axed my enjoyment of trying to improve at the game or enter tournaments.

People should try playing rivals of aether, none of these issues exist in that game, the meta is ever evolving (and every character is viable), it’s old now but it gets constant updates and rivals 2 in on the way, and the developers actively engage positively with the competitive community

I stopped playing smash seriously after life caught up with me, but I’ve always been a melee guy at heart. I still keep tabs on the scene and recently wanted to play some ultimate recently but then I look at the meta and it’s just insanely unappealing

There were two main factors that killed my excitement for competitive smash. On was the pandemic, which killed the local competitive scenes (especially near me). I couldn’t play in person any more, which was made the game fun to me, so I stopped playing during the pandemic. By the time it ended, I had moved on. I’m guessing other people had similar experiences. The other reason was the rampant abuse/drama surrounding high-profile personalities in the competitive Smash community. Huge competitors and creators like Zero and Nairo being accused of sexual misconduct not only nixed two of my most-watched Smash content creators but also left a horrible taste in my mouth. Do I want to be a part of a community that fosters this type of behavior-allows it to continue for years before shedding light on it? I felt uncomfortable associating with it, so I didn’t have a strong desire to keep up with any part of Smash Ultimate’s content/tournament scene after that. Again, I think some other people probably felt the same. These two might not be as big of reasons as the ones listed in the video (or maybe they are, I have no way to tell), but they at least contributed heavily to my disengagement. Note: I don’t mean to suggest that Zero and Nairo definitively did what they were accused of or that they haven’t changed as people or anything. I use them as an example because they were the two most notable cases in the string of accusations. Whether those two did those things or not, it doesn’t change the fact that the community by and large allows stuff like that to happen. I’m glad that people were talking about it and it became a more conscious issue, but I don’t think you can blame somebody for having reservations about a space that allows for things like that to happen. (I’m not even sure what tournaments/community spaces have done to combat this type of behavior.)

"New content is vital for keeping a game alive" Consistent new content drops CAN keep a game alive, but it's not a feasible long term strategy for most games. What's actually vital for keeping a game live is making sure it's mechanically deep, well-balanced, and artistically consistent. See Melee, Third Strike, TF2, Starcraft, etc. Smash Ultimate had these at some point but lost "well-balanced" with the bunch final DLC characters, and "artistically consistent" when they added Steve.

If it only had melee adventure mode…

Smash ultimate got me into fighting games, I remember grinding the game day in and day out, I even attended tournaments and yet the hype locally died down as well, I even remember how many people moved to Street Fighter 6 at launch. I dedicate my time to Granblue and Guilty Gear now but I still play it once in a while, it's really fun but hearing the communities pessimistic views on the game can be disheartening at times.

Smash ultimate managed to stay alive (despite its decline) through the pandemic despite its age. I’d say that’s impressive. Had the pandemic never happened, Ultimate likely would be far more robust

Another thing that I think is overlooked is the novelty of the competitive scene. I used to be so excited to see mkleo, spargo, and tweek take over as the undeniable big 3. Mkleo brought so much innovation to the game with a new main each year from ike, marth, joker, byleth, corrin, and many others. Many of these achacters were considered to be mid or even low tier so to them winning tournaments was a breath of fresh air and exciting to see.Then, there was spargo who single handedly brought a wave of new cloud mains; showing the characters true potential and having the majority of the community to call him top tier. Spargo eventually became simply untouchable just like Leo predicted. Then there was tweek who woukdnt stand out all the time but when he turned up, you knew it was over and it was likely he was winning grand finals... Let's not forget the many mid tier demons along the way who posed a threat as well. Players like fatality, skyjay, elegant, peanut, scend, ratio, and so many more. These players were passionate and fun to watch but many don't play as much. As they used to. Elegant has been dealing with alcoholism, fatality is ready to quit and has been taking a break. Ratio doesn't play as much as he used to nor does he play his iconic duck hunt as much. There's also the fact that I don't know who can be considered the best now, nor do I care that much. I think the new big 3 mainly consist of sonic (sonix), Steve (acola), and GaW (maister). I know many share my opinion when I say that these characters are not fun to watch and it's because we dread playing against them too. When we see then on screen, we get a sense of irritation and dread which would be fine (I've clicked on sets just to see those characters get their asses handed to them) but that doesn't work as well when you hate every character in top 8.... The story of competitive smash feels empty, predictable, and stale. New patch notes, New top players with unique mains, a deal with Nintendo, a new circuit; any one of these things can breathe life into the scene but as of now, nothings happening to get me excited for smash

I my opinion is that the older viewers / players just lost interest in Nintendo / smash as a whole and focus more on life instead.

It is an old game and unlike other old fighting games it has no official circuit

I'll save you it's steve

The community never recovered after CaptainZack

The Smash World Tour and Panda Cup drama destroyed the scene. 2 of the biggest Smash Bros tournament scenes were financially destroyed and there was immediately much less high tier content around the game. The drama also highlighted how untrustworthy the top figure-heads in the Smash community still were, even after the Me Too allegations of 2020. Which, btw, it's no wonder Nintendo doesn't support the Competitive Smash scene when its reputation is still poison after 2020.

I feel like it's a combination of the biggest upswing in tournament energy being shot in the head by Nintendo, and then the rise of what a lot of viewers and players consider cancer characters that are anti hype and kind of feel like they rob wins. I don't necessarily think that the game needs permanently ongoing updates like some have said. Melee has had no updates in ages and remains popular. But I think the top games being littered with Steve, and Sonic (and maybe G&W to a lesser extent) is not great because they really do kind of suck the energy out of the viewing experience. When Steve and Sonic are dominant, it feels less like an expression of outskilling the opponent and more an endless barrage of way overtuned options for steve or just being impossible to interact with for sonic. They really just needed maybe a little more time to identify and fix a few of the most egregious problem children and I think meta wize we'd be good. I don't even think some characters like Aegis are really panning out to be that big a problem, as you can see almost nobody maining them due to their volatility (Maybe slightly biased, but they really haven't show results that match people's whining about them).

Alriiiiight been real guys, see you in 5 years for Smash 6 to have this conversation again

I keep falling more and more in love with it. After playing nick all star 2 and multiverses, I have come to realize how polished and balanced smash ultimate it is. No platform fighter is this amazing

1. Nintendo being Nintendo 2. Input delay 3. *STEVE*

In summary: it's joever

From my personal experience, it's the community, the community is just so godawful and toxic, and it keeps getting worse with drama, like recently we had Wizzy and other players talking about hating Acola, a freaking kid dude, smash community is hopeless since Ultimate, and I didn't even bring up the allegations

Steve killed it

There's a lot of reasons I could highlight, though I doubt people will admit to some of them. - Bad Meta: The best characters invalidate a huge chunk of the cast despite being "balanced" for the top half. - Bad Balancing: Like it or not, people generally like to play characters they enjoy playing. Crazy concept, I know, but yeah. With so many characters to choose from, but half of them are (even if more balanced than previous games in reality) feel significantly worse than others. - Meta Mentality: Because of the latter, and also because of the "rise of esports", it's just genuinely unfun to play anyone now. Everybody is so ultra-sweaty and so many people play meta, people feel no joy and intrigue in playing. - Online sucks: Not only is the netcode bad, but for fun/for glory was objectively a better system, and I have no idea why they canned it. - Bad community: Let's be honest, from creeps committing sexual harassment, to weirdos, to toxic people, nobody wants to hang out with Smash players. They're incredibly toxic overall, and if you want to get halfway decent, you have to endure a lot of toxicity. - Time commitment: Since Ultimate in particular is so complex, it requires a LOT of time to get decent at, and that feels pretty bad. - Bad mechanics: I can say this for myself and several people -- Ultimate has some straight-up stupid choices and nuances in mechanics. Forced shorthopped aerials, weird buffer input shenanigans, inputs doing sometimes the exact opposite of how they worked in older games and the opposite of what's intuitive (retreating fair coming out as a bair for example). It just feels like it's trying to be smooth but failing.

Repetition gets old. Lack of change is boring. Smash Ultimate is 5 years old now. It's done with updating. No new anything. It's just the case of getting bored of repetitive not very varied gameplay

I'll tell ya why, because the meta has devolved into running away, and i dont just mean sonic. a bunch of swordies running away spamming their huge hitboxes, rob and diddy looking for their one item combo starter, nobody approaches anymore. Its to the point where I'm cheering for characters like wario, puff and luigi, and i hate those guys.

Whaaaaat a 5 year old game is slowly dropping off? Damm what a shock

The reasons that you listed are sadly true. There is one more reason and it's pretty obvious: The community. They just don't feel welcoming towards players who main top tier characters (Steve, Sonic, Aegis, etc.) And they would just harass them and point out that maining a obnoxious character is a justifiable reason to do so. So like what character can the player even play? And yet they still find a reason to hate you because why tf not? I'm not really a big fan of how they antagonize players just because the player plays a character that most of them dislike because that's just gonna give them a bad image.

Technicals was right.

The year is 20xx. Everyone is playing Steve and sonic. Interactions are so limited that TOs have had to institute new rules that limit camping. Crowds are so small that tournaments are held in houses or hotel rooms.

1:15 I feel so bad for Tweek. I couldnt imagine having to play against that and maintaining composure

I think it can be chalked up to Nintendo. Having an end-life to your game is fair enough, Smash was never going to be a perpetually updated live service game and I'm glad for that. However, the game ended on such a bad note. I think it should've been in the plans to take a 6~ month break after the "final patch" to observe community sentiment to make sure the game isn't left in a dire state and adjust it as necessary and that frankly, Smash 4 should've taught them this. That when you leave the game, if there's an unfun but super strong character, it harms the game. Sonic, Steve and Kazuya alone are the three horseman of super polarising matchups. You can't contest sonic's horizontal and vertical mobility; he is the fastest on the ground and can get huge bursts of momentum up and down. Steve can wall you out and for every second you're not fighting him he's only getting stronger. Kazuya needs ONE good hit to take a stock, a competent Kazuya can take a game in under a minute.

Imo, Ultimate has the overall lamest meta in smash history. Even outside of the top tiers, yes theres a LOT of characters being played, but why does quantity matter when that quantity consists of Olimar, Samus, Sora, Steve, GnW, Rob, Snake, Bowser, Sonic, the list goes on. Even characters that are comparatively hype like Mario are just bland and frustrating to play against. Up air to up air to up air to fair, or to super jump punch. Theres so few characters that feel like they deserve to beat you, rather they just have better individual tools.

Break the targets was missing and board the platforms.

This game is so awesome at locals where people play mid tiers. It is great.

If we get a new Smash game, it will probably cut characters to the ones that make sense (of course), not be directed by Sakurai, and over all be vastly different to previous games. Ultimate was Sakurai’s big last hurrah where he tried to make the best version of his game, and it’s unfortunate that it’s held back by a couple of flaws.

The lack of updates, boring meta, mashy feel, and rise in pessimism definitely is killing the game. But I still have hope in this game, even on days where I start going on a losing streak or I'm watching a tournament with lame characters, as long as I see improvement or have that 1 character I like in the top 8, I'll always think for the better. The community might not be the best, but I'll keep my faith in them since we've been through worse and still keep going. Wheter the spirit/Sora amiibo update brings new characters or solo content next year, I think Ultimate and the Smash community will survive.

I truly think it’s Nintendo’s view on every game they make. It’s almost like every game they create has a timer for how long they are considered a game acceptable by them before they decide they want it to not be relevant. Like, instead of trying to cultivate more life into a game, they want you to completely forget about it as soon as they’re done working on it, so you play the next game or something. Ya know, for a company that doesn’t do live service very often, it’s extremely weird how disposable they see their games at the end of the day.

At this point Alpharad's Casual Tournaments/Events might be the way to go in terms of the viewership experience. I have always been interested in seeing top players adapt to a more silly meta besides the standard competitive.

cause nintendo can’t top melee 🫡

Melee and Brawl will always be better. Ultimate and Wii U reused a lot of stuff from Brawl and there's so much recyclying it's unbearble. At the same time the new stuff it offers is underwhelming and forgettable. I can think of double digit memorable things about Brawl, Melee and even 64 since it was the first Smash Bros game but for the games after Brawl I can't. Super Smash Bros realistically should have ended with Brawl yeah we wouldn't get to play as certain characters but at least we would have Sub Space. Also I just fired shots at competitive Smash because I'm not competitive I'm casual.

Ultimate was already the "Mk8 Deluxe" version of Smash 4, it's complete copium to think it's going to get it's own ultimate version. we're cooked until the switch 2 is out bare minimum, not that big majors/circuits will come back even then

From my ideas, there are two factors contributing to the decline of the game. One being the fact that Nintendo has not added any content for years now to the game, even balance changes which is obvious, but the second I feel is just the meta. People get bored after seeing the same characters pop up in top 8 all the time and it’s reasonable.

These are reasons why competitive viewership has declined. But when it comes to competitive playership, BY FAR the biggest factor is the dogwater online. Meanwhile melee’s playerbase keeps on growing thanks to slippi

Ironically was more into Sm4sh than Ultimate myself.

It’s a combination of the character balancing, it being out for like five years now, lack of support, and the absolutely horrendous net code. When you think of most of the popular games out right now, they’re constantly being given new content, balancing updates, and the developer typically cares a lot about the competitive scene. Smash ultimate has none of that and a lot of the mechanics of the game are aimed more towards casuals who at this point are no longer playing the game. However, it still has a pretty thriving community when you compare it to the other smash games. The only one that’s even remotely comparable is melee which for the first time in a long time, no longer has a declining audience. But the vast majority of smash fans are still playing ultimate.

Improvement doesn't matter if it didn't improve enough. The meta being stale isn't a deal breaker, being boring and non impressive due to cheap mechanics IS. If it was a dealbreaker and improved to less of one but still one... It doesn't matter.

The hell... a new smash would definitely be possible. Better mechanics, fair characters, get rid of dumb characters like pirana plant and the useless copies like Dr. Mario. A new game could easily add new features like actual outfits for characters and not just color alts. There is so much that can be done for a new game. Pls get creative.

I quit playing a few months ago due to being frustrated at playing online, and recently quite SF6 due to frustration, and I've realized one thing: playing defensive/passively always wins. And I guess that's part of the problem, defensive/passive is always boring, but that's my view.

I like to think of it this way. In Smash 4, we had Bayo. In Ultimate, we have the power of Bayo split into like 6-8 characters that all stand far above the rest. It's not fun, and it's really discouraging as a competitor knowing your character just can't keep up. So the game being unbalanced, while heavily favoring lame characters and play syles, combined with the atrocious online is why I pretty much don't mess with Smash anymore. I only play friendlies with my roomates, that's it.

Second thought: I love that you brought up tournament volatility. I think that is one thing that is driving the interest in melee so high. Like obviously Zain and current number one in the world IBDW are pretty definitively the best 2, the top 10-50 are all arguably in closer striking distance than at any other time in melee's history as a global competitive game. aMSa leveling up like crazy after a break, jmook breaking out and taking full tourneys from 1-2 seed players, the scores of amazing players like plup, moky, kodorin, even aklo, or soonsay also on a rapid incline, and obviously mang0 and hbox still be dangerous threats make the current player meta so cool. So many players have brought up that normal bracket has become much more terrifying because some unknown, cracked player can disrupt brackets so easily. It has been awesome to watch

Smash ultimate is a very simple game so it was only a matter of time before people grew tired of the game. Compared to a game like melee what has alot of player expression and tech that is still being found the closest thing to that in ultimate is steve and we all know how people feel about him lol. I noticed just how little depth smash ultimate has with its characters about a year in (I think zer0 also mentioned this at one point early into the game). The dlc is much better than the base roster when it comes to this but I do hope the next smash game they focus on adding more depth to the characters kits like they did with the DLC even if it means cutting the roster by 70%. Rather have 27 characters that all are very unique from one another than 100 character where half of the roster feels the same or very "flat".