Congratulations, Min Min! ARMS character(s) for Smash discussion

[fogbadge]

The sheer size of Ultimate and how it wouldn't have happened the way it did if they couldn't recycle Smash Wii U assets for it?

but that would equal severe cuts rather than reboot surely

The fact that every character he added to the game has something going for them other than "I think they're neat". I know this fandom likes to characterize Sakurai as some sort of irresponsible troll who does whatever he wants without thinking but that's really not how characters are decided in reality. It's mostly just fans refusing to accept characters they don't like can have logic behind their addition.

Not to mention Nintendo has nothing to gain from letting Sakurai pick the character randomly when they can insist on a more marketable character.

who said anything about criticising sakurai? i said you were all over thinking it. sakurai is a man who do things thatll please the fans but he will also do things just for him and he well within his rights to do so.

 

[Guybrush20X6]

but that would equal severe cuts rather than reboot surely

who said anything about criticising sakurai? i said you were all over thinking it. sakurai is a man who do things thatll please the fans but he will also do things just for him and he well within his rights to do so.

People frame it as a reboot because they can't convince that the next game will simply be Ultimate with a smaller roster. Nintendo is known for taking things in unexpected directions so Smash 7 (WiiU is 5) could very well end up as a 3D fighter or a Turn-Based Strategy game. Then again, Nintendo is also known for stubbornly staying the course when common sense dictates they should try something new so we very well could end up with a release day Street Fighter V situation.

 

[fogbadge]

People frame it as a reboot because they can't convince that the next game will simply be Ultimate with a smaller roster. Nintendo is known for taking things in unexpected directions so Smash 7 (WiiU is 5) could very well end up as a 3D fighter or a Turn-Based Strategy game. Then again, Nintendo is also known for stubbornly staying the course when common sense dictates they should try something new so we very well could end up with a release day Street Fighter V situation.

i dont think we should really expect one or the other at this stage, besides with ultimate being the most successful fight game it would probably make sense to them to just stick to what theyre doing as it seems to work

 

[RebelMaren]

Personally I just don't think it's Springman because the decision to make him an assist trophy was made alongside the decision to withhold ARMS music from the Other Music catagory. Would have been very easy to add a couple of tracks then and there, but they didn't, so I suspect they knew what they wanted in the long run. Project plans don't end with the games release, they end with the completion of the project. Things don't NEED to be set in stone, but alot of post launch stuff will be accounted for during the initial development.

Not saying I don't think it COULD be Springman, but I don't really think theres any value in forcing all picks to be 'mascot' characters. He'd be the easiest to develop anyway if you assume they'd just remove the Trophy whilst he's in play, or even permanently. Replacing it is a nice idea but I wouldn't count on it.

 

[GoodGrief741]

Personally I just don't think it's Springman because the decision to make him an assist trophy was made alongside the decision to withhold ARMS music from the Other Music catagory. Would have been very easy to add a couple of tracks then and there, but they didn't, so I suspect they knew what they wanted in the long run. Project plans don't end with the games release, they end with the completion of the project. Things don't NEED to be set in stone, but alot of post launch stuff will be accounted for during the initial development.

Not saying I don't think it COULD be Springman, but I don't really think theres any value in forcing all picks to be 'mascot' characters. He'd be the easiest to develop anyway if you assume they'd just remove the Trophy whilst he's in play, or even permanently. Replacing it is a nice idea but I wouldn't count on it.

Tons of games are missing music, I wouldn't take that as a hint any more than missing Spirits mean that Sylux and Porky will be playable. It's pretty farfetched to assume that they were making plans for a second season of DLC all the way back in base game development.

 

[RebelMaren]

I think it's farfetched to think they weren't planning ahead for a 2nd season of DLC. Plans can be written in pencil afterall, and Ultimate was most likely going to be a huge success. We're about to see new Mortal Kombat 11 content announced tomorrow and most likely it'll confirm that content datamined at the games launch is part of the new season/release. Alot of money and time is sunk into game development and you can't just fly by the seat of your pants, you NEED a project plan long in advance. ARMs got 2 Mii costumes and an assist trophy but no music, stage or character, that's notable to me as music at the very least would have been very easy to add.

 

[GoodGrief741]

I think it's farfetched to think they weren't planning ahead for a 2nd season of DLC. Plans can be written in pencil afterall, and Ultimate was most likely going to be a huge success. We're about to see new Mortal Kombat 11 content announced tomorrow and most likely it'll confirm that content datamined at the games launch is part of the new season/release. Alot of money and time is sunk into game development and you can't just fly by the seat of your pants, you NEED a project plan long in advance. ARMs got 2 Mii costumes and an assist trophy but no music, stage or character, that's notable to me as music at the very least would have been very easy to add.

There's a difference between planning ahead and literally deciding two seasons of DLC 5 years in advance. For all we know, FP Vol 2 was only greenlit after the success of the first Pass. There's no evidence for the project plan for Vol 2 happening anywhere near base game - and given some of what we know about the first Pass' development (like when Banjo was negotiated) that wasn't even finalized until at least mid-2018. With that kind of timeframe, I doubt they consciously made a decision to keep content out of the game because they were already planning to sell it later on.

Mortal Kombat is a different beast, it released just last year and it's made by a Western company - those tend to plan their DLC schedules long in advance because games as a service is a very Western thing.

And again, music being left out isn't a big deal, many Nintendo franchises are missing tunes when it would have been easy to have them. They just drew the line somewhere and ARMS was left out.

Hell, the logic doesn't even make sense. Spring Man won't be the character because in they decided to make another character from ARMS DLC in the second season? In that case, who would they have chosen? When the project plan for the base game was created, ARMS wasn't even out. You're telling me they just picked a random character that wasn't the mascot for no reason?

 

[meleebrawler]

There's a difference between planning ahead and literally deciding two seasons of DLC 5 years in advance. For all we know, FP Vol 2 was only greenlit after the success of the first Pass. There's no evidence for the project plan for Vol 2 happening anywhere near base game - and given some of what we know about the first Pass' development (like when Banjo was negotiated) that wasn't even finalized until at least mid-2018. With that kind of timeframe, I doubt they consciously made a decision to keep content out of the game because they were already planning to sell it later on.

Mortal Kombat is a different beast, it released just last year and it's made by a Western company - those tend to plan their DLC schedules long in advance because games as a service is a very Western thing.

And again, music being left out isn't a big deal, many Nintendo franchises are missing tunes when it would have been easy to have them. They just drew the line somewhere and ARMS was left out.

Don't forget Garreg Mach shows having music from a series in base game or not ain't no thing as all tunes will be available regardless.

 

[SwitchButton]

"Hey sakurai please add an ARMS character"

"Ok but the mascot is already an assist"

"So pick someone else"

"Ok I guess"

It doesn't go any further then that. There is no rabbit hole.

 

[The Stoopid Unikorn]

but that would equal severe cuts rather than reboot surely

I personally think a reboot would make more sense.

If you're gonna have massive cuts, why not just press the reset button altogether?

 

[chocolatejr9]

"Hey sakurai please add an ARMS character"

"Ok but the mascot is already an assist"

"So pick someone else"

"Ok I guess"

It doesn't go any further then that. There is no rabbit hole.

I hate to be that person, but Nintendo could've just said "I don't care. Do it anyway." They're the ones calling the shots, after all. This is coming from someone who isn't exactly onboard with Assist promotions.

 

[RebelMaren]

I'm not saying the planned 2 seasons of DLC 5 years in advance, just that they may well have planned to support the game for X years in advance, planned for a certain number of additional fighters under the circumstances that the game sold to expectations, and planned for specific franchises (most likely 1st party) to be included at some point. The further the plans are from actual development the less detailed they are, they're simply a reminder of what resources need to be saved for later and what preperations are required during development.

I suspect it's more a case of "We want to do a Three Houses character, we want to do an ARMS character, we want preperations made for X number of other characters." rather than a solid list of exactly what the want to do, afterall both Greninja and Incineroar were not finalised at the start of their projects.

I appreciate that MK11 is a western game, but regardless, Video Games are tremendously difficult to make, and planning far in advance is extremely important. Maybe the ARMS character wasn't decided pre-launch, maybe they didn't even know they'd do a 2nd pass, but I don't think it's farfetched at all to consider the possibility that some long term plans were made for the game's post launch content after it's release. To do so otherwise comes across as reckless to me.

 

[The Stoopid Unikorn]

I'm not saying the planned 2 seasons of DLC 5 years in advance, just that they may well have planned to support the game for X years in advance, planned for a certain number of additional fighters under the circumstances that the game sold to expectations, and planned for specific franchises (most likely 1st party) to be included at some point. The further the plans are from actual development the less detailed they are, they're simply a reminder of what resources need to be saved for later and what preperations are required during development.

I suspect it's more a case of "We want to do a Three Houses character, we want to do an ARMS character, we want preperations made for X number of other characters." rather than a solid list of exactly what the want to do, afterall both Greninja and Incineroar were not finalised at the start of their projects.

I appreciate that MK11 is a western game, but regardless, Video Games are tremendously difficult to make, and planning far in advance is extremely important. Maybe the ARMS character wasn't decided pre-launch, maybe they didn't even know they'd do a 2nd pass, but I don't think it's farfetched at all to consider the possibility that some long term plans were made for the game's post launch content after it's release. To do so otherwise comes across as reckless to me.

Didn't someone from Rare reveal that Banjo was actually decided months before the base game even launched?

This might back up your argument, but I can't find the article lol

 

[RebelMaren]

Didn't someone from Rare reveal that Banjo was actually decided months before the base game even launched?

This might back up your argument, but I can't find the article lol

Perhaps, certainly datamines from the games launch showed that Joker and Hero were already underway, and Banjo was also among the myriad of names going around from leakers for what that's worth. Nothing on Terry or Byleth though from what I can remember, 'leaks' or otherwise. Sadly it's just hard to say how games are developed becuase the industry isn't transparent at the best of times (understandable) and Nintendo aren't the best for releasing development info... Can we all come back here in 15 years and revisit this when theres another server leak?

 

[fogbadge]

I personally think a reboot would make more sense.

If you're gonna have massive cuts, why not just press the reset button altogether?

a complete reboot would be more risky and would upset more people

 

[The Stoopid Unikorn]

a complete reboot would be more risky and would upset more people

We've reached a point where people are gonna be upset no matter what happens with the next Smash, imo.

 

[fogbadge]

We've reached a point where people are gonna be upset no matter what happens with the next Smash, imo.

yes but different scenarios will have different levels of upset

 

[RebelMaren]

It does seem odd to me that Sakurai's concerns that getting all the characters back for a new Smash game would be difficult so the solution to this is to completely reboot Smash from scratch instead of doing what the franchise has since at least Brawl and build it based on previous versions. I actually think Ultimate is designed to be expanded on rather than replaced.

 

[fogbadge]

It does seem odd to me that Sakurai's concerns that getting all the characters back for a new Smash game would be difficult so the solution to this is to completely reboot Smash from scratch instead of doing what the franchise has since at least Brawl and build it based on previous versions. I actually think Ultimate is designed to be expanded on rather than replaced.

sakurai did say a roster this size was unlikely to happen again

 

[The Stoopid Unikorn]

It does seem odd to me that Sakurai's concerns that getting all the characters back for a new Smash game would be difficult so the solution to this is to completely reboot Smash from scratch instead of doing what the franchise has since at least Brawl and build it based on previous versions. I actually think Ultimate is designed to be expanded on rather than replaced.

The fact that it was built off of Smash 4 is the only reason Ultimate's roster is even a thing.

I think it was even stated that the roster would only be a third of what it is now if they started from scratch.

With that said, I doubt they'd just keep adding more and more and more.... Imagine the timeline where an official Smash game has 200 characters. Wouldn't that be messy?

 

[Rie Sonomura]

The fact that it was built off of Smash 4 is the only reason Ultimate's roster is even a thing.

I think it was even stated that the roster would only be a third of what it is now if they started from scratch.

With that said, I doubt they'd just keep adding more and more and more.... Imagine the timeline where an official Smash game has 200 characters. Wouldn't that be messy?

I mean, we did have a game with 200 fighters before... Tobal 2

 

[RetrogamerMax]

I think Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 had over 150 characters in it. It had the most insane roster of any DBZ game. It had almost all the DB, DBZ, DBGT, and DBZ movie characters in it.

 

[The Stoopid Unikorn]

I mean, we did have a game with 200 fighters before... Tobal 2

How was it?

 

[IsmaR]

We can theorycraft until Nintendo goes belly up, but the truth of it is that we won't know until we know. Given Ultimate still isn't over, and that this is the Arms thread, I think focusing on the immediate future would prove more productive than the long term as far as speculating about who this specific character is, and what they'll mean for the series going forward.

That and it's the Arms in Smash Ultimate thread, the conversation should probably center around that more than a hypothetical sequel in either franchise. So I kindly ask people move the other discussions to more appropriate topics.

That said also being said, I don't think anything we argue about now will have any real bearing in a month. Truthfully I don't think it's Spring Man, but I wouldn't think it changes anything as substantially as we believe it would, if it is.

 

[Guybrush20X6]

How was it?

The majority of the characters were the story mode enemies. Limited movepools.

 

[The Stoopid Unikorn]

We can theorycraft until Nintendo goes belly up, but the truth of it is that we won't know until we know. Given Ultimate still isn't over, and that this is the Arms thread, I think focusing on the immediate future would prove more productive than the long term as far as speculating about who this specific character is, and what they'll mean for the series going forward.

That and it's the Arms in Smash Ultimate thread, the conversation should probably center around that more than a hypothetical sequel in either franchise. So I kindly ask people move the other discussions to more appropriate topics.

That said, I don't think anything we argue about now will have any real bearing in a month. Truthfully I don't think it's Spring Man, but I wouldn't think it changes anything as substantially as we believe it would, if it is.

So... what you're saying is that we shouldn't extend our topics?

 

[Sari]

The RTC thread is currently on it's 2nd day of the 5 planned weekly ARMS ratings.

https://smashboards.com/threads/rat...ontra-character.453357/page-618#post-23927190

Make sure to follow all the rules/guidelines and rate Min Min, Master Mummy, and Mechanica!

 

[Guynamednelson]

The majority of the characters were the story mode enemies. Limited movepools.

And those story mode enemies include palette swaps.

 

[The Stoopid Unikorn]

The majority of the characters were the story mode enemies. Limited movepools.

How many were actually playable?

 

[GoodGrief741]

I'm not saying the planned 2 seasons of DLC 5 years in advance, just that they may well have planned to support the game for X years in advance, planned for a certain number of additional fighters under the circumstances that the game sold to expectations, and planned for specific franchises (most likely 1st party) to be included at some point.

"I'm not saying they planned 2 seasons of DLC 5 years in advance, I'm just saying they did exactly that"

"We want to do a Three Houses character, we want to do an ARMS character, we want preperations made for X number of other characters."

So Sakurai, knowing he would make an ARMS fighter down the line, and not knowing who it would be, decided to disconfirm the main character in an Assist Trophy role? Why would he do that?

 

[RebelMaren]

I can't for the life of me understand why you think I'm saying they planned the DLC exactly. Theres a huge difference between planning the DLC in full detail, and planning FOR DLC. Planning for DLC in advance allows you to develop the game in such a manner that the additional content can be added with less issue.

Here's an example of what I think might have gone down. Start of project, plan to bring every character back, as close to every stage as possible, a selection of newcomers, modes, stages etc. as the project goes on some details fill out, the Pokemon rep is chosen, composers choose the songs they want to cover, movesets change or evolve. They plan to do DLC but don't decide on which characters to put. As the project moves on and they start to think about the DLC in more detail, negotiations start with other developers. During this process ARMS releases and the team decide to include it in Smash with SOME representation at launch and a character post launch when they have more development time. They don't say when, could be season 1, could be season 14 as development isn't going to start on them right away anway, it's just going to happen eventually. Content does not need to be planned in release order.

The point is plans are flexible, they're required to help organise development resources during the whole project and prevent the team wasting effort of developing content that won't be used.

As for why include Spring Man as an assist trophy, seems like the most logical pick, he's on the box afterall. Maybe they knew who they wanted as soon as they saw ARMS (long before us) or maybe they wanted to leave it to a fan vote and just hoped he wouldn't win. I don't know why. I suppose Springman's simple gameplay that focuses on the core ARMs experience means that other characters when developed for Smash would feel like Springman+ whilst the Assist Trophy simple gameplay suits him better. Like I said I don't know, I can't know, but there's a ton of possible reasons and most of them aren't that exciting.

Edit: Also just to add, Sakurai didn't disconfirm Springman, that was the communities decision to interpret Assist Trophies that way. Personally I find AT promotions very unlikely but not impossible.

 

[GoodGrief741]

I can't for the life of me understand why you think I'm saying they planned the DLC exactly. Theres a huge difference between planning the DLC in full detail, and planning FOR DLC. Planning for DLC in advance allows you to develop the game in such a manner that the additional content can be added with less issue.

Here's an example of what I think might have gone down. Start of project, plan to bring every character back, as close to every stage as possible, a selection of newcomers, modes, stages etc. as the project goes on some details fill out, the Pokemon rep is chosen, composers choose the songs they want to cover, movesets change or evolve. They plan to do DLC but don't decide on which characters to put. As the project moves on and they start to think about the DLC in more detail, negotiations start with other developers. During this process ARMS releases and the team decide to include it in Smash with SOME representation at launch and a character post launch when they have more development time. They don't say when, could be season 1, could be season 14 as development isn't going to start on them right away anway, it's just going to happen eventually. Content does not need to be planned in release order.

The point is plans are flexible, they're required to help organise development resources during the whole project and prevent the team wasting effort of developing content that won't be used.

As for why include Spring Man as an assist trophy, seems like the most logical pick, he's on the box afterall. Maybe they knew who they wanted as soon as they saw ARMS (long before us) or maybe they wanted to leave it to a fan vote and just hoped he wouldn't win. I don't know why. I suppose Springman's simple gameplay that focuses on the core ARMs experience means that other characters when developed for Smash would feel like Springman+ whilst the Assist Trophy simple gameplay suits him better. Like I said I don't know, I can't know, but there's a ton of possible reasons and most of them aren't that exciting.

Edit: Also just to add, Sakurai didn't disconfirm Springman, that was the communities decision to interpret Assist Trophies that way. Personally I find AT promotions very unlikely but not impossible.

The point I was making is that even if this whole unlikely scenario had happened, it wouldn't make Spring Man any less likely than any of the other characters. If, as you say, the character for ARMS was decided later on, then Spring Man is as valid a candidate as any other.

 

[RebelMaren]

The point I was making is that even if this whole unlikely scenario had happened, it wouldn't make Spring Man any less likely than any of the other characters. If, as you say, the character for ARMS was decided later on, then Spring Man is as valid a candidate as any other.

Well specifically I don't believe all Assist Trophies were decided at the start of the project, indeed ARMS surely would be quite early in development at that point and perhaps the ARMS playable fighter was decided at the same time as the decision to put Springman in. If I remember correctly Springman was among the final Assists revealed, he might have snuck in late in development alongside the Mii costumes.

I just can't get past how weird it is that they didn't also add ARMS music when they did that? I'm genuinely curious how many Nintendo IPs have a Mii costume but no music at all. Xenoblade 2 got music it came out months after ARMS.

You say it's a "Whole unlikely scenario" but all it really is is the Smash team saw ARMS during the development of Smash and said "That would be neat in Smash, lets do it for DLC when we get a chance" and as a result they withheld music tracks so the DLC could have maximum impact. That doesn't seem crazy to me, the core game was planned years in advance.

Edit: Just out of curiosity I started looking through the 1st Party Mii costumes and Assist Trophies to match them up to music in Ultimate. For costumes I only saw Springman, Chibi Robo and Ray-MK2. for Assists there was a few but what I realised is that Springman is the only post Switch character. Interesting to me anyway.

 

[Guybrush20X6]

How many were actually playable?

All of them. So it's not a lie to say it had 200 characters, just needs a big ol' asterisk next to that claim.

 

[Sari]

So I have no idea if this has ever been discussed yet, but during the weekend I came up with what I call Spirited ARMS Theory. It basically goes like this:

• ARMS rep has to come with a spirit board and spirit battles.
• Spring Man, Min Min, and Twintelle already have spirit battles in the base game while Ribbon Girl and Ninjara are support spirits.
• Since it wouldn't make sense to make more than one spirit battle of the same character when there are a ton of ARMS characters to choose from, the three base game spirit battle characters can't be spirited away. Same goes to the two support spirits to a lesser extent.

TL;DR: Base game spirits are probably the most likely ARMS characters since they can't be spirited away.

(I posted this in the RTC thread but wanted to see how people in this thread think about this)

 

[NintenRob]

Thing is though, I don't think they've actually confirmed we'll be getting more Spirit boards for this wave of DLC. We probably will, but they haven't mentioned it like they have stages and songs.

 

[GolisoPower]

Thing is though, I don't think they've actually confirmed we'll be getting more Spirit boards for this wave of DLC. We probably will, but they haven't mentioned it like they have stages and songs.

New Spirits should go without saying, though, that's the thing. We didn't expect Joker to have his own Spirit Board, and it wasn't until Hero until we realized, "this is gonna be tradition for SSBU DLC!"

 

[The Stoopid Unikorn]

So I have no idea if this has ever been discussed yet, but during the weekend I came up with what I call Spirited ARMS Theory. It basically goes like this:

• ARMS rep has to come with a spirit board and spirit battles.
• Spring Man, Min Min, and Twintelle already have spirit battles in the base game while Ribbon Girl and Ninjara are support spirits.
• Since it wouldn't make sense to make more than one spirit battle of the same character when there are a ton of ARMS characters to choose from, the three base game spirit battle characters can't be spirited away. Same goes to the two support spirits to a lesser extent.

TL;DR: Base game spirits are probably the most likely ARMS characters since they can't be spirited away.

(I posted this in the RTC thread but wanted to see how people in this thread think about this)

The one issue with this theory is that there's 10 fighters who aren't spirits, and there's always a slim chance of getting a Hedlok one too.

So they could have someone who isn't already a spirit and still have more than enough for a full board.

 

[RebelMaren]

I wouldn't rule out the spirits we already have being on the DLC spirit board too. Theories aside I'm really interested to see how it's all going to pan out, this is a weird new situation.

 

[fogbadge]

Thing is though, I don't think they've actually confirmed we'll be getting more Spirit boards for this wave of DLC. We probably will, but they haven't mentioned it like they have stages and songs.

if we dont get spirit boards i imagine we'll get spirit events