Official DLC Speculation Discussion Volume II

[WahHahaha]

"No assist trophy promotions within the same game" falls into the territory of not being a hard rule... but realistically many people are going to think of it as such until it's broken; a bit like the "must have an appearance in a game on a Nintendo console" which will be in the back of people's heads until we get someone like a 2B to outright break it.

This is the thing that bothers me. As long as a rule isn't technically "disproven" people will continue to push it as fact instead of acknowledging it as a coincidence. We've had assist trophies promoted multiple times and Sakurai never said that an AT couldn't happen in the same game. The hard evidence here is that it hasn't ever been said that it couldn't happen, and until it does, you can't act like it's true.

 

[WeirdChillFever]

Cloud broke it, though.

I’m pretty sure Cloud could very technically skirt it with something like Theatrhythm.

 

[GilTheGreat19]

I mean, if the difficult transition doesn’t hurt her chances, then the ActiBlizz drama this year just might.

Ah, right, that.

I PERSONALLY don't think that situation hurts the odds of any ActiBlizz character. FP2 was decided long before such events, and I don't think Nintendo would stop working on a character that they're probably DEEP into development with. If they did..

I actually think they'd announce it publicly, and announce that they may have to extend their deadline for which FP2's content needs to be released. e.g from December 2021 to February 2022.

 

[Cosmic77]

There was a point in time when Ridley was "too big" and Isabelle was "too cute".

Some of the logic used for why certain characters aren't possible makes more sense than these examples, but overall, I wouldn't trust the fanbase. Heck, we've already had two characters (if we count Kazuya) added in Ultimate that Sakurai previously thought would be too difficult to add.

 

[LiveStudioAudience]

Cloud broke it, though.

Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories and Theatrhythm Final Fantasy are flimsy technicalities that people will point to though; same thing with Joker in Persona Q2. I'm not saying either case is necessarily relevant, but they are there.

 

[SMAASH! Puppy]

Difficult
But not impossible

I would say the issue with Tracer is less that she heals (that can be taken out if it's too powerful) and more that her power requires the ability to make characters do things in reverse, which strikes me as something that would be dealt with on an engine level, which means that it might be difficult to add to an existing engine.

 

[WahHahaha]

Welcome to the Smash fandom. The only place where people talk about rules that they created in the first place being "broken"

This is why I hope it ends soon and Smash Ultimate is the last game in the series. It gets annoying to listen to this.

 

[ZelDan]

Sakurai himself said it in the previous game.

Let me guess, the Smash 4 Waluigi Miiverse post?

From what I recall, the only thing Sakurai said was "Waluigi is an assist trophy, and therefor is not a playable character" or something like that. This line to me just sounds like Sakurai is explaining that ATs are not the same thing as a playable character, not that a character that becomes an AT can never become playable at any point within a specific smash game's lifespan.

He also went on to say " just because you try hard does not mean you will win" or something to that effect. I think this was just Sakurai continuing to poke fun at the character really.

Really the point of that Smash 4 miiverse post I believe was just to reveal Waluigi's assist trophy and poke fun at the character (in a non-malicious way), and not to attempt to explain any sort of game design/assist trophy philosophy.

I should also add that this was over half a decade ago during a much different Smash game, a Smash game that didn't have a second set of DLC, so even if, hypothetically, Sakurai was saying putting down ATs becoming playable in Smash 4, maybe it's just because there was never going to be a second set of DLC and therefor no opportunity for promotions of any kind?

 

[N3ON]

"No assist trophy promotions within the same game" falls into the territory of not being a hard rule... but realistically many people are going to think of it as such until it's broken; a bit like the "must have an appearance in a game on a Nintendo console" which will be in the back of people's heads until we get someone like a 2B to outright disconfirm it.

2B has a skin in Phantasy Star Online 2, which is on the Switch. She also has a skin in Fall Guys, which will be on Switch.

Pre-Fortnite appearance people saw skins as enough for Master Chief, so I guess it counts for 2B as well.

Cloud broke it, though, unless you mean "appearance" as in any game in general, which on its own sounds pretty wack to assume.

I think it was seen as any appearance. That's also how Sakurai qualified it when talking about Cloud.

 

[Jondolio]

I suspect you've not seem them when their support was in full swing. If you've only come to things after they got AT'd, that's not a very good picture of a character's potential performance. The thing is, a lot of them were deconfirmed pretty early during Ultimate's rollout.

There was a minute characters like Ashley and Skull Kid had quite a lot of demand this time around.

Oh, I remember Ashley for sure. I kinda hopped on that bandwagon for a bit and after taking a step back, I don't really get it.
But then again, the main reason I support Isaac is because I latched onto him and still think he's cool as ****. Geno is a bit more complicated than that since I used to view him the same way as I did the other characters you listed, until the box theory happened and vergeben said Incineroar so my mind latched onto Geno as the only alternative since I really didn't want Incineroar, and since then have gotten kind of attached to him.
So if any of the others you mentioned weren't assists in Sm4sh and Ultimate, there's a good chance I would've gotten attached to them as well, but since that's all I know them for, I don't see them as anything else. It just makes sense.

 

[SMAASH! Puppy]

Fighting game combos are frame data and hitstun based. you dont always do the same combo in rhythm. even games with auto combos such as dbfz require you to adjust yourt timing for combos to work. Rhythmic timing mechanics is something entirely different. when an entire character has to function based on timing or to be optimized it usually doesnt work well in fighting games.

I could be wrong, but I think what you're referring to is stagger pressure, not combos. The combos themselves have a rhythm to them that if gotten too incorrectly, will just drop.

 

[Dinoman96]

See, by "appearance on Nintendo", I think they really mean "have a game published on Nintendo".

Like yes, Cloud only had a few minor cameos on Nintendo systems prior to Smash and the Switch, but Final Fantasy as a whole had tons and tons of history on Nintendo consoles. On the flipside, Xbox/PS characters like Kratos, Aloy and Master Chief technically HAVE appeared on Nintendo systems through multi-platform games with crossplay like Minecraft and Fortnite, but obviously no Halo, God of War or Horizon game have been published on a Nintendo system.

I honestly do think it's kinda worth pointing out that Smash at this point has over 200 gaming IPs represented in some form (characters, spirits, stages, Mii outfits, etc) and literally every single one of them has had a game released for a Nintendo platform. Literally, every single one. Even if it's just a minor spinoff like with Persona.

 

[WahHahaha]

Has anyone actually acknowledged that the Assist Rule is the last standing fan rule? It can't be a good sign when every rule before it got disproven in some way.

 

[LiveStudioAudience]

2B has a skin in Phantasy Star Online 2, which is on the Switch. She also has a skin in Fall Guys, which will be on Switch.

Pre-Fortnite appearance people saw skins as enough for Master Chief, so I guess it counts for 2B as well.


I think it was seen as any appearance. That's also how Sakurai qualified it when talking about Cloud.

Completely forgot about PSO2, so that's one me. Well to use another example, Spike from Ape Escape (or really most Sony characters I suppose) getting in would very much break any lingering beliefs about the lack of Nintendo appearance preventing fighters from getting in.

 

[Willbuysmash4mw]

Not only have I not gotten my most wanteds in this DLC, it almost feels like all the characters added have gone out of their way to deconfirm characters I do want.

Joker kills any chance of SMT representation.
Hero and Sephiroth murdered 2B.
Banjo and Steve... well they doesn't overlap with anything so they're fine.
Terry and Kazuya got rid of any chance of Sol Badguy.
Byleth took the "obligatory FE spot" from someone like Lyn or even considering FE3H, Edelgard or Dimitri.
Min Min made it in as the Switch darling over Astral Chain's Officer Howards
Pyra and Mythra took Elma's spot
And that's not to mention the Mii costumes killing Dante, X and Zero, Monster Hunter, and Travis Touchdown.

Obviously this isn't how the decision process works, but still it's difficult to not feel that way when things have come so close to what I wanted, locking their chances away for another 5+ years.

That said, most of them are relatively fun to play, so I don't really regret buying all this DLC.

Joker did not kill anything.

Morgana did steal Jack Frost’s spot in Super Monkey Ball though.

 

[GilTheGreat19]

I would say the issue with Tracer is less that she heals (that can be taken out if it's too powerful) and more that her power requires the ability to make characters do things in reverse, which strikes me as something that would be dealt with on an engine level, which means that it might be difficult to add to an existing engine.

Hmm, interesting points.

I could SEE how MAYBE her ability to move in reverse could install potential problems during hypothetical development, but here's the thing:

We don't know what Ultimate's engine is capable and not capable of handling. So it's possible that Tracer's reverse could hypothetically only present a challenge insofar that it would be a completely new Smash mechanic and animating/coding it would be the challenge. Animating the blue blur behind her, pinpointing her previous location in-game from about 1.5 seconds ago and bring her back there, etc.

 

[SMAASH! Puppy]

Has anyone actually acknowledged that the Assist Rule is the last standing fan rule? It can't be a good sign when every rule before it got disproven in some way.

Well if/when it does I'll be happy with who we get, but until then they ain't happening in my book.

 

[Jondolio]

The fact people on this boards still do mental gymnastics to convince themselves that there's a set of rules other than "they have to be a video game character" after we got Piranha Plant, Joker, and ****ing Sephiroth will never not be funny to me.

 

[WahHahaha]

Well if/when it does I'll be happy with who we get, but until then they ain't happening in my book.

My point is that people keep making rules, they get disproven and then they move to other rules. Almost nothing this fandom has ever said ended up true. I really don't know how this keeps happening and probably won't stop happening. It's like a cycle of stupidity.

 

[Dinoman96]

Has anyone actually acknowledged that the Assist Rule is the last standing fan rule? It can't be a good sign when every rule before it got disproven in some way.

Again, there's also "no characters from series with no games on Nintendo platforms".

 

[SKX31]

One winged-Breegull

"Hey, what did you do with my other wing?!" - Kazooie

I'm surprised it was never added as an AT, frankly. But now the series seems like it's not going to continue, so I don't see the character ever really amounting to much. I mean they could still add it as an AT, but past that... the chances seems grim.

The character also never really gained enough demand behind it either to get attention on that basis.

Personally I've nothing against the character. I always like when new Nintendo series get attention in Smash. But I don't have any huge experience or affinity with the series myself.

Doesn't help that Nintendo apparently bungled the marketing etc. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if that's the case.

I guess the thing to think about with that is that nobody's really immune to poor design choices. Banjo & Kazooie is one of the unlucky ones who's moveset ended up being awkward on the surface and "lame" at higher levels of play.

I do think it's partly because the focus wound up on the Eggs when it could be argued that it should've been on the CQC. Especially since the Eggs might not be their biggest strength really - their biggest strength is the subtle mix ups they can pull off.

...Source?

He's referring to the lack of B-K players at the very top (with Brood and huto being two of the remaining flagbearers). I do think it'd be much different had a famous player like Tweek stuck around with using them (he did get Top 8 at a supermajor with them - which is a major achievement no matter what - but Tweek's also the kind of player who gets strong results with any character).

Online and at lower level tournaments it's a different story, B-K's pretty popular there, with them being the 3rd most popular DLC character at smash.gg-registered tournaments.

Now I do believe that they're a bit underrated by common consensus, but they have the problem where they're overshadowed and people have arguably looked at the wrong stuff / strategy. DougEfresh - who uses them - posted an optimistic take on them here. I'm of the opinion that the duo only needs QoL buffs to their frame data and perhaps kill power to become more effective on the whole - they did get the latter last patch, which helps them vs. rushdown-heavy characters.

 

[Guynamednelson]

assist trophy promotion
I'll believe it when I see it

big 3rd party at the end
I-IT CAN TOTALLY HAPPEN! ANYTHING CAN! AND BY ANYTHING I MEAN ANYTHING THAT'S AN FP2 SPECULATION DARLING!

 

[TheCJBrine]

Sakurai himself said it in the previous game.

I don't think he ever said anything about assist trophies not being able to become playable characters later on; the closest is maybe "not within the same game" but that was before DLC and maybe even back during Brawl's time if he said it at all. I know there was at least some misinformation people tried to use against Waluigi that Source Gaming debunked, but it may have been something else.

 

[WahHahaha]

Again, there's also "no characters from series with no games on Nintendo platforms".

That's not exactly true either. I guess if you stretch it, it could be. But Final Fantasy 7, Banjo Kazooie and Persona are all games from rival platforms. I'm pretty sure Persona, with the exception of like one spinoff game, never had anything on a Nintendo console. And I don't even know if it did when it got added to the game.

 

[Will]

Assist Trophies and same-game promotions via DLC are like semantics. They could or couldn't promote them because they either hadn't before or the fact that they hadn't meant they never will. Whatever side you're on doesn't really matter at the end of the day, because it isn't even Sakurai behind the wheel for this era of DLC, it's Nintendo. There are two main arguments of how Sakurai could veto it. If you argue for it, you'd use the quote from the Steve presentation where Sakurai displayed his only instance of rejecting a character would be through programming or technical difficulties. If you argue against it, you likely use the Pyra & Mythra presentation where Sakurai was discussing Rex being unusable as he had already been used as costume DLC, and then connecting those dots as similar to how Assist Trophies must be bound.

Personally, I like being optimistic, so I'm on the pro-promotion side.

In the end though? Who ****ing cares? Let people believe what they want might happen if it's hurting virtually nobody in the process. Is it truly going to haunt you if people think Waluigi has a shot for DLC? If he gets in, then he gets in. If he doesn't, then he doesn't. If you argue technicalities all day, you're not getting anywhere. Sakurai himself has retconned his own words time and time again. If he wants to do it again, he'll do it. Is it worth biting yourself in the ass just for the pride of being right? i mean sometimes tbh it do be giving me dopamine

 

[N3ON]

Oh, I remember Ashley for sure. I kinda hopped on that bandwagon for a bit and after taking a step back, I don't really get it.
But then again, the main reason I support Isaac is because I latched onto him and still think he's cool as ****. Geno is a bit more complicated than that since I used to view him the same way as I did the other characters you listed, until the box theory happened and vergeben said Incineroar so my mind latched onto Geno as the only alternative since I really didn't want Incineroar, and since then have gotten kind of attached to him.
So if any of the others you mentioned weren't assists in Sm4sh and Ultimate, there's a good chance I would've gotten attached to them as well, but since that's all I know them for, I don't see them as anything else. It just makes sense.

You can qualify your support however you want. You don't really need to defend it though. Support who you want. Conversely, people are going to support those AT characters for reasons not unlike yours. Because they find them cool and they like them.

The thing is, if people are gonna be getting behind Geno, there's not a lot of leeway to be calling those other characters bottom of the barrel choices. Geno has a lot of popularity, but he doesn't have any kind of impressive standing within his series, which most of those other characters actually do.

 

[Jondolio]

Again, there's also "no characters from series with no games on Nintendo platforms".

That's not a real rule. Do you really think Joker was added because of Persona Q on the 3DS?

 

[WahHahaha]

That's not a real rule. Do you really think Joker was added because of Persona Q on the 3DS?

This is a good point. Persona was only Sony with the exception of one irrelevant spinoff game. They didn't just look at that and say "hey, now we have a free pass to add persona" that's just such a stupid thing to think.

 

[Dinoman96]

That's not a real rule. Do you really think Joker was added because of Persona Q on the 3DS?

For all we know, Nintendo/Sakurai view Persona as an extension of the greater SMT franchise, which also does have lots of history with Nintendo. Sakurai acknowledged Persona being an SMT spinoff on Twitter some weeks ago.

 

[GilTheGreat19]

Like yes, Cloud only had a few minor cameos on Nintendo systems prior to Smash and the Switch, but Final Fantasy as a whole had tons and tons of history on Nintendo consoles. On the flipside, Xbox/PS characters like Kratos, Alloy and Master Chief technically HAVE appeared on Nintendo systems through multi-platform games with crossplay like Minecraft and Fortnite, but obviously no Halo, God of War or Horizon game have been published on a Nintendo system.

Gonna add a very small point to support your claim but Aloy's gonna be in Genshin on all platforms including the Switch too. Second time a PS character will make an appearance on the Switch. Unfortunately, we've yet to see vice versa i.e. Nintendo characters on other platforms (I think it's happened before but with PC and arcade-related consoles)

But yea, I agree that it's worth noting that it MAY be of bigger help if the series the character is from has Nintendo games, rather than the character itself making a cameo or skin of some kind.
While it's UNLIKELY, I still think it's ever so slightly possible we could get someone with either very little (like, less than Cloud tier, or only 1 tie or none at all) ties to Nintendo at the time he/she/it could be revealed.
Why?
Anything is possible, my friend.

 

[WahHahaha]

For all we know, Nintendo/Sakurai view Persona as an extension of the greater SMT franchise, which also does have lots of history with Nintendo. Sakurai acknowledged Persona being an SMT spinoff on Twitter some weeks ago.

You're stretching. You want to change your point as much as possible to make it appear that you're right.

Just admit that you are wrong, please.

 

[Shroob]

assist trophy promotion
I'll believe it when I see it

big 3rd party at the end
I-IT CAN TOTALLY HAPPEN! ANYTHING CAN! AND BY ANYTHING I MEAN ANYTHING THAT'S AN FP2 SPECULATION DARLING!

On the flipside, putting all your eggs into a basket that cp11 will be an Assist promotion is folly.

 

[Jondolio]

You can qualify your support however you want. You don't really need to defend it though. Support who you want. Conversely, people are going to support those AT characters for reasons not unlike yours. Because they find them cool and they like them.

The thing is, if people are gonna be getting behind Geno, there's not a lot of leeway to be calling those other characters bottom of the barrel choices. Geno has a lot of popularity, but he doesn't have any kind of impressive standing within his series, which most of those other characters actually do.

Yeah, my post was basically a long way of saying "Hmm, I guess they really aren't as bottom of the barrel as I thought they were". I just don't really care for them personally.

For all we know, Nintendo/Sakurai view Persona as an extension of the greater SMT franchise, which also does have lots of history with Nintendo. Sakurai acknowledged Persona being an SMT spinoff on Twitter some weeks ago.

"For all we know"
And that's where your argument falls apart. It's all pure speculation. There's no hard rule that says no characters that weren't on Nintendo platforms can't be in the game. Sakurai never said anything like that as far as I'm aware.

 

[Gengar84]

It still makes no sense to me how Geno became so popular with the Smash community. I loved Super Mario RPG but I would have never even considered him for Smash. I barely even used Geno since my party was usually Mario, Peach, and Bowser. I’m a big supporter of side characters but Geno is the only one that really got much attention. Where’s the love for Magus or Xemnas? I’m not saying there is really anything wrong with wanting Geno it’s just that I always found his huge support confusing.

 

[Will]

Sakurai acknowledged Persona being an SMT spinoff on Twitter some weeks ago.

Because it is? Do you not know what Persona comes from?

 

[WahHahaha]

"For all we know"
And that's where your argument falls apart. It's all pure speculation. There's no hard rule that says no characters that weren't on Nintendo platforms can't be in the game. Sakurai never said anything like that as far as I'm aware.

I mean he actually is just wrong. Completely. I'm pretty sure Sakurai classified SMT and Persona as 2 separate franchises in either an atlus interview or the Sakurai presents.

 

[Dinoman96]

I mean he actually is just wrong. Completely. I'm pretty sure Sakurai classified SMT and Persona as 2 separate franchises in either an atlus interview or the Sakurai presents.

I don't think Sakurai ever even said anything about SMT prior to the Persona 4 anniversary pic on Twitter.

 

[SMAASH! Puppy]

Hmm, interesting points.

I could SEE how MAYBE her ability to move in reverse could install potential problems during hypothetical development, but here's the thing:

We don't know what Ultimate's engine is capable and not capable of handling. So it's possible that Tracer's reverse could hypothetically only present a challenge insofar that it would be a completely new Smash mechanic and animating/coding it would be the challenge. Animating the blue blur behind her, pinpointing her previous location in-game from about 1.5 seconds ago and bring her back there, etc.

Well...here's my thinking:

In order for Tracer's time reversal mechanic to work, the game would have to be able to record all actions taken right? Technically, it does since it records all button presses (not sure what it does for CPUs) and then just recreates the fight for replays. But is this method able to calculate where Tracer would go if everything that happened to her happened in reverse? I don't know.

EDIT: And if it isn't, would it be feasible for the devs to modify it to work, or create a new system to do this? If they need a new system, would it bog down the game if implemented?

 

[N3ON]

Assist trophy promotion and getting characters without any Nintendo appearances are both things that are unproven - it's possible it can happen, it's possible it "can't" - so as there is no definitive answer, debating over it isn't going to resolve much. People are going to believe what they already believe.

The answer to both, as best as we can determine it with the information available, is maybe.

Completely forgot about PSO2, so that's one me. Well to use another example, Spike from Ape Escape (or really most Sony characters I suppose) getting in would very much break any lingering beliefs about the lack of Nintendo appearance preventing fighters from getting in.

Yes, agreed. Though frankly I don't see that happening any time soon. A Sony character, that is.

 

[3BitSaurus]

He's referring to the lack of B-K players at the very top (with Brood and huto being two of the flagbearers). I do think it'd be much different had a famous player like Tweek stuck around with using them (he did get Top 8 at a supermajor with them - which is a major achievement no matter what - but Tweek's also the kind of player who gets strong results with any character).

Online and at lower level tournaments it's a different story, B-K's pretty popular there, with them being the 3rd most popular DLC character at smash.gg-registered tournaments.

Now I do believe that they're a bit underrated by common consensus, but they have the problem where they're overshadowed and people have arguably looked at the wrong stuff / strategy. @DougEfresh - who uses them - posted an optimistic take on them here. I'm of the opinion that the duo only needs QoL buffs to their frame data and perhaps kill power to become more effective on the whole - they did get the latter last patch, which helps them vs. rushdown-heavy characters.

I mean, it makes sense, and everything you said is true, but my point is more that using tournaments to verify overall general popularity of a character is... not how it works. How popular and how good a character is aren't mutually inclusive or exclusive in competitive games.

Otherwise the MCU would look... very different, if we were to take MvC2 and UMvC3 tier lists to heart as a popularity gauge.

...Since you're the Dota 2 guy around here, this talk got me curious: are the most popular characters for that game generally high in competitive play? Asking because I know very little about that game's characters and meta.