Little Mac has the lowest win ratio for Smash Bros. 3DS characters online
Super Smash Bros. director Masahiro Sakurai returns in this week’s Famitsu with yet another column. A large portion of his piece delves into the usage of Little Mac.
In his column, Sakurai shares an interesting online player statistic for Super Smash Bros. 3DS. It turns out that Little Mac actually has the lowest win ratio among all of the characters.
Sakurai states:
“For Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the individual character win ratios lined up nicely in a staircase format, but [for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS] one fighter has a significantly low ratio. It’s Little Mac.”
“It appears that the biggest reason for his low win ratio is because people fall under the assumption that ‘Little Mac is strong!’ and all rush to use him only to get pummeled in return. He gives the impression of being able to win easier than other fighters which leads to more people using him, but in reality, he’s a difficult character to actually continuously win with.”
“Little Mac is a fighter with very pronounced strengths and weaknesses. While he has an enhanced dodge and megaton-level punch for aggressive play, he has very weak jump power and a simple back throw along with a follow-up attack prove to be crippling.”
There’s been an increase in the number of players using Little Mac online in Smash Bros. 3DS since some believe that Little Mac is stronger than he actually is. However, Sakurai believes that the player-perceived imbalance of the character is an ideal situation. Others will learn how to counter Little Mac, which encourages higher levels of gameplay. That’s what has led to Little Mac’s low win ratio.
Sakurai did anticipate that something like this could happen. However, since some players may not feel the same way, Little Mac may (or may not) receive a power downgrade in the next patch.
In the end, Sakurai feels that it’s better to have characters with different strengths/weaknesses than to have all characters be the same. Sakurai states, “I believe that averaging out character stats is a bad move in both play and competition.”
