Which Smash game has the best roster in your opinion?

[SmashChu]

1) Bowser Jr was a major villain in some of the most popular Mario titles, including NSMB DS. I feel he's more recognizable than Wolf, Ridley and Palutena. Maybe even Dedede. You'll have a better chance to ask a random person on the street who Bowser Jr is than those other 4. He's pretty relevant, and I'm not even a fan of the character.

3) True this game had a longer dev time, but not by a lot. Although, game development is very complicated and has several factors. They didn't just complete the roster as is and sat on it. Sakurai had admitted that the veterans were recreated from scratch (dunno how MUCH of it was done from scratch, but it sounded like a lot), so that adds a factor into a lot of development time. Recall that he also said that the game development gets more complex the more characters added, the team would have to balance the characters, and with a roster with 49 characters? That's A LOT. And you are right that the 3DS version likely factored into this. Having to make sure all characters works as intended on both systems can be a lot of work. He hired Namco, which are much more experienced with fighting games than Game Arts (which never made fighting games before). There is a ton of factor that greatly affects the development of the game.

4) I agree that the clones could've been more than what they ended up being. But development for SSB4 is different than of Melee and even Brawl. They likely didn't have enough time to implement them to their full potential. Honestly, we don't know what has happened here. It's hard to chalk it up as "laziness" when we, ourselves, have not seen what exactly went on.

5) See: 3

6) I'm going to agree to just disagree here. I feel Pac Man strongly fitted in this game, much more than Snake.

1)The point is that within Bowser Jr. own games, he's less important than Dedede, Wolf and Palutena are in their games. People recognize Bowser Jr, but they will also recognize Waluigi, Daisy and Shy Guy. Does that mean they should be characters? If recognizability was the main factor, the roster would be Mario and Pokemon. Again, the point I'm trying to bring up is better roster diversity which Smash 4 did poorly and Brawl did very well. Bowser Jr is just another character in a series with a ton of characters already (Mario had 7 characters in total in this game. Zelda is the next closest with 5. This doesn't include the spin off series either)

3)Again, I fail to see where these "several factor" come from because it's not like the 3DS has a ton of content in it. Outside of Smash Run, it's VERY bare bones. Heck, there are only 25 new stages and the rest are ported from Brawl. Custom moves don't take that long since they are just changing properties but use the same assets/animations. Again, with such a large staff and more time, how was it such a problem to bring some of these characters back.I see your point as I wasn't there, but I'd argue there was a lot of misdirection in this game.

4) I disagree seeing as Melee added 6 clones in a 13 month development cycle. I'm sure Sakurai could have sat down during lunch and though "Hmm, how am I going to make Dark Pit not exactly the same as Pit."

6)That;s fine. I do think Pac-Man does fit in because of his look and Sakurai did a good job overall, but I feel he was added in for all the wrong reasons. Snake was designed to be different and he was added to do something different. Pac-Man was just added to please Namco for making the game, which I think is the wrong reason to add him. I feel that if we were to have a third third party character, there were far better choices.

@ SmashChu @ Naoshi

Sakurai stated that the clones weren't altered so much from the originals because they didn't want to spend much time and manpower on them. He also stated they didn't want to alter them so much to avoid balancing issues, something that gets increasingly difficult the more characters are added.

He went on to say they were just freebies that would have been alt costumes otherwise, doing that free dessert analogy.

As it stands, they're more like glorified alts with their own personal twists. Since said twists alter the gameplay (even if slightly), they were given their own slots, as not to mess with fighter records, which makes sense as it would have caused statistical flukes otherwise.

As I said, Melee had no problem making the characters different and it was an important point in designing the characters. I understand why they added the clones, but it doesn't make it not feel like a lazy cop out.

 

[Luggy]

You know, there's one clone that I dislike/found dumb to put in : Dr.Mario .
I like Dr.Mario, don't get me wrong, but does he really fits the place of "unique alternate costume" ? I've heard that Sakurai put him for the Melee fans (wrong choice for some) but I think he could have put someone else as the doctor one. You know, the little brother of the same game and character, Dr.Luigi ? Think about it : it would have been a unique choice, doesn't need that much work to put it in the game and could have given Luigi an alt. Maybe he wouldn't have the biggest success, but at least he wouldn't be represented as the "Human Middle Finger of Sakurai to Mewtwo fans".

For Bowser Jr, he technically is important in the Mario series with the Koopalings. He's more memorable for the younger audience that for example started playing video games with the New Super Mario Bros games or even for the Mario Sunshine fans. If I show Ridley or Mewtwo to a young kid like my younger sister (who played a lot of Nintendo Games), they won't really know them, but if I show them Bowser Jr, they will say "Oh, it's the baby with the Bowser guy". Remember, it's not only for fans, it's also for kiiiiiiiiids.

 

[Frostwraith]

As I said, Melee had no problem making the characters different and it was an important point in designing the characters. I understand why they added the clones, but it doesn't make it not feel like a lazy cop out.

Well, Melee's clones and Smash 4 clones are result of different circumstances.

Melee's had more work put into them because the roster was deemed too small and the six clones were meant to add more characters and diversity.

This time, they already had a big roster, so the clones could have remained as alts. However, they had some spare time and:
- Dr. Mario was changed to be more like his Melee self, adding the Tornado special move and old down aerial. Fireballs were replaced by Megavitamins.
- Dark Pit was given a different Final Smash from Pit, as well as two slightly changed special moves and forward tilt.
- Lucina was given different sword proprieties in all of her moves. She lacks Marth's tipper mechanic, having the damage spread out through the blade.

I fail to see this as laziness, when they could have done nothing about them and leave them as alts. They had spare time, they used it to add a little extra content and please a few more players. I don't see anything wrong with that.

If anything, I see it as dedication, adding however little content they could at the last minute. These alt-to-clone changes weren't necessary at all, yet they did it instead of sitting around and doing nothing. That, for me, is commendable.

 

[Naoshi]

1)The point is that within Bowser Jr. own games, he's less important than Dedede, Wolf and Palutena are in their games. People recognize Bowser Jr, but they will also recognize Waluigi, Daisy and Shy Guy. Does that mean they should be characters? If recognizability was the main factor, the roster would be Mario and Pokemon. Again, the point I'm trying to bring up is better roster diversity which Smash 4 did poorly and Brawl did very well. Bowser Jr is just another character in a series with a ton of characters already (Mario had 7 characters in total in this game. Zelda is the next closest with 5. This doesn't include the spin off series either)

3)Again, I fail to see where these "several factor" come from because it's not like the 3DS has a ton of content in it. Outside of Smash Run, it's VERY bare bones. Heck, there are only 25 new stages and the rest are ported from Brawl. Custom moves don't take that long since they are just changing properties but use the same assets/animations. Again, with such a large staff and more time, how was it such a problem to bring some of these characters back.I see your point as I wasn't there, but I'd argue there was a lot of misdirection in this game.

4) I disagree seeing as Melee added 6 clones in a 13 month development cycle. I'm sure Sakurai could have sat down during lunch and though "Hmm, how am I going to make Dark Pit not exactly the same as Pit."

6)That;s fine. I do think Pac-Man does fit in because of his look and Sakurai did a good job overall, but I feel he was added in for all the wrong reasons. Snake was designed to be different and he was added to do something different. Pac-Man was just added to please Namco for making the game, which I think is the wrong reason to add him. I feel that if we were to have a third third party character, there were far better choices.

As I said, Melee had no problem making the characters different and it was an important point in designing the characters. I understand why they added the clones, but it doesn't make it not feel like a lazy cop out.

1) Well, one could argue that riding a vehicle as your entire moveset is pretty diverse. But I think I understand your point about importance now. So I see where you're coming from.

3) I won't argue that there was any misdirection, that's subjective so its upto you. I wasn't even saying 3DS version wasn't barebones in content. What I'm trying to say is that developing two versions isn't as simple as it sounds. There's a lot of time dedicated to just developing two games at once, and making sure each character function and balance the way they should intend to do on both systems. That alone is A LOT of work. On a side note, Smash Run has a lot of work put into it with all of the enemies and whatnot. Not to mention the various equipable powers and stats (the latter having so many variations that they would make sure they're balanced enough to not be too broken). Smash Run itself was full of content, while the rest of the game was kind of barebones. In the end, there was still a lot of work put into this game. You also have to take into factor that they tried their hardest to make the game run well on a very limiting system, which I'd imagine taking A LOT of work. (I should know, I've been developing games and optimizing them is seriously time consuming)

4) Wha? Can we stop comparing older games since they're a lot smaller in overall content? Melee has significantly a lot less characters, stages and various content. Meanwhile Smash Bros 4 is 2 games in one project. Not a hard concept to grasp. Of course a game like Melee would take 13 months to develop than a MUCH larger project that's literally 2 games. (although I'm pretty sure I've heard that was a misunderstand and Sakurai said "the last 13 months" implying there was more than just those months total)

6) Namco deserved a rep in my opinion. They've done a fantastic job helping Sakurai with the game. If there were to be any Namco character, it had to be Pac-Man. And what proof do you have that Namco wanted to be "pleased"? You're acting like Namco begged them to add in a rep.