Official DLC Speculation Discussion Volume II

[Lyncario]

I do NOT recall Bayonetta being hype.
I remember, "This character absolutely did not win the ballot, stop trying to gaslight me, Nintendo."

Personally, I recall Bayo's inclusion being hype for people who weren't just deadset on K.Rool and nothing else.

 

[Mamboo07]

Would Dante be broken if he was a fighter?

The whole weapon swapping, the Devil Trigger thing and being overpowered in MVC3.

 

[Guybrush20X6]

Would Dante be broken if he was a fighter?

The whole weapon swapping, the Devil Trigger thing and being overpowered in MVC3.

It would depend on a lot of factors.

Would his pistol firing keep people in place to extend combos like his home game?
Would players need to remember to pause to pull off some of this moves? (God, I hate those attacks)
Would his game plan focus on ladder combos, setting foes up for a meteor smash or be focussed on punishes?

 

[Shroob]

Honestly a lot of the new DLC from FP2 has been considered top tier, particularly / who is consideration for top 3 by a lot of people atm and is making a ruckus in Japan.

Min Min's annoying online, but I'm unconvinced that'll carry over to actual in-person tournament results tbh. Maybe it has and I'm unaware, but I don't see Min Min as overpowered just "Annoying".

And I don't think characters being top tier is inherently a bad thing to be honest. It's when they're blatantly overpowered. Joker is top tier, but he's a character that takes someone really good to pilot him, meaning you can't just mash face and win.


Steve and Kazuya are currently around mid-tier last I checked.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Would Dante be broken if he was a fighter?

The whole weapon swapping, the Devil Trigger thing and being overpowered in MVC3.

He wasn't even overpowered in MVC3. That was Vergil.

 

[SKX31]

If he succeeds at what he's supposed to do, that makes me wonder if his primary issue is the lack of powerful hits combined with an extremely high skill floor. His Special Moveset and overall design might give players the impression that he's way easier than he is as well.

EDIT: Not issue. What I meant to say is that this may be why he feels bad to most people.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if that's the case. He doesn't have a lot of attacks that are intuitive, and not many outside of his specials give instant reward (maybe F-Smash could be one since it's surprisingly strong, but only active for 1 frame). In addition to those his learning curve is pretty damn steep (like and others who don't have a lot of strong individual hits, but excel when those are chained).

I had a rather nasty thought.

Bayonetta as a character was hype but thanks to poor balancing, she ended up killing Smash 4's comp scene or at least left it radioactive. What if the final DLC character, with the team wanting things to be done with after three years of post release production, snaps the game in two.

You'd need a character that's wildly overtuned. The closest any FP2 character has gotten is / - whom quite a lot of people in the scene are calling Top 3 or even #1 (this is not an unanimous opinion, but still). And even then there are some weaknesses that prevent them from being considered as blatantly overpowered as Smash 4's top tiers* (yeah, I'd argue that they're not as overtuned as , who initially had loads of KO confirms and the ability to camp with needles).

One thing to note is that Ultimate doesn't have Smash 4's problem re: specific attacks / moves being very good no matter the situation. Shroob mentioned 's Counter which is one of the best examples of this since it scaled absurdly well with enemy attacks initially (before that got nerfed. Twice.) Not only did and have a few such moves, but quite a few characters ( , ) were arguably carried by singular moves / tactics. The Rage mechanic being so strong did not help since it turned many of those into KO moves suddenly.

But in Ultimate some of those moves were intentionally made slower, reduced the window to cancel the moves or had their utility otherwise reduced. Rage was also weakened (thank god), which helps.

*(The Aegis have a shared problem with recovery, Pyra has trouble dealing with shield pressure and Mythra doesn't have many "get off me!" options in the air outside of Foresight. For the latter two problems switching deals with that, but still.)

Would Dante be broken if he was a fighter?

The whole weapon swapping, the Devil Trigger thing and being overpowered in MVC3.

Not neccessarily: has a similar mechanic but isn't considered overwhelming really - even if he's considered a really potent character. Yes, Dante would have access to different weapons + DT which is a bit different than Shulk. However, he'd not only have a steep learning curve like Shulk, but also would probably have a couple weaknesses to counteract his versatility (presumably a relative lack of KO moves for example, linear recovery being another potential pitfall).

And if he winds up top tier... well, and proves, it's possible to be a top tier / really bloody good character without being blatantly overtuned. I'd argue even counts, but that's a different topic pretty much.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Min Min's annoying online, but I'm unconvinced that'll carry over to actual in-person tournament results tbh. Maybe it has and I'm unaware, but I don't see Min Min as overpowered just "Annoying".

And I don't think characters being top tier is inherently a bad thing to be honest. It's when they're blatantly overpowered. Joker is top tier, but he's a character that takes someone really good to pilot him, meaning you can't just mash face and win.


Steve and Kazuya are currently around mid-tier last I checked.

Min Min is certainly top tier offline too, trust me. A top player called ProtoBanham has been a menace in Japan with the character, and won a Japanese major tournament.

 

[Guynamednelson]

He wasn't even overpowered in MVC3. That was Vergil.

Vergil was more infamous, but "Zero May Cry" involves Dante alongside him.

 

[Guybrush20X6]

Min Min is certainly top tier offline too, trust me. A top player called ProtoBanham has been a menace in Japan with the character, and won a Japanese major tournament.

Japanese videos featuring pro tournament footage of Min Min need the Like/Dislike bar turned off, she's become so notorious over there.

 

[GilTheGreat19]

Well, that's not what matters in selection. What matters is how they play. That's always been the constant.

I mean
For some people it does matter even if they’re not necessarily having the right mindset

 

[ROBnWatch]

Personally, I recall Bayo's inclusion being hype for people who weren't just deadset on K.Rool and nothing else.

When you weren’t even rooting for any character in particular and were still let down with Bayo simply because the only reasoning they gave behind it was “top 5 in Europe”

Though I suppose, looking at it now, the ballot was probably more for Ultimate’s newcomers rather than the final Smash 4 DLC. Still, at the time, it was a bit underwhelming for me. In fact, I actually liked Corrin’s “I’m gonna turn part dragon for half my moveset” schtick more than what Bayo offered.

And I’ll end this off by saying I don’t have any real gripes with Bayo as a character/being in the game, just so I’m not bombarded by people. Was just underwhelming for me at the time. But she fits in well with the rest of the cast and there are some pretty nifty things you can pull off with her.

Also I haven’t even really been lurking here as much as usual, has anything been said/confirmed on a potential September Direct?

 

[Guybrush20X6]

When you weren’t even rooting for any character in particular and were still let down with Bayo simply because the only reasoning they gave behind it was “top 5 in Europe”

Though I suppose, looking at it now, the ballot was probably more for Ultimate’s newcomers rather than the final Smash 4 DLC. Still, at the time, it was a bit underwhelming for me. In fact, I actually liked Corrin’s “I’m gonna turn part dragon for half my moveset” schtick more than what Bayo offered.

And I’ll end this off by saying I don’t have any real gripes with Bayo as a character/being in the game, just so I’m not bombarded by people. Was just underwhelming for me at the time. But she fits in well with the rest of the cast and there are some pretty nifty things you can pull off with her.

Also I haven’t even really been lurking here as much as usual, has anything been said/confirmed on a potential September Direct?

Outside of the usual schtick of a leaker I've never heard of but everyone and their dog is saying that they're super duper trustful, nothing yet as far as I know. If it's true, it'll be some time this week so at least there's not a long wait to find out if it's real or a load of hoopla.

 

[Professor Pumpkaboo]

I do NOT recall Bayonetta being hype.
I remember, "This character absolutely did not win the ballot, stop trying to gaslight me, Nintendo."

Yeah, you will see that is you didnt branch out your views. There was plenty of hype reactions

 

[Nekoo]

Bayonetta being top 5 in Europe became a meme as even the European smash community looked at each others confused, since no one asked for it.

 

[True Blue Warrior]

Personally, I recall Bayo's inclusion being hype for people who weren't just deadset on K.Rool and nothing else.

People were also hoping for Wolf.

And honestly for that sentence, you can replace "Bayonetta" with insert Final Fighter Pass 2 character (whoever it ends up being) and K. Rool with any currently highly speculated character and that sentence would end up being relevant in the future. It takes a special character as the last DLC to be truly controversial. Someone like Bubsy or something.

 

[LiveStudioAudience]

My recollection was Bayonetta was largely a pleasant surprise to a lot of people. She was so out of nowhere, and Corrin was such a meh reveal, that a fairly mature character like her as the last fighter actually struck a decent portion of the fanbase as pretty cool.

There was certainly some skepticism about the claims regarding the ballot and obviously she became infamous once released, but it seemed to me that the overall impression at the time was fairly positive.

 

[Flyboy]

Bayonetta was extremely popular outside of the Smashboards-style fanbase as well, especially as she was just coming off of a Game Of The Year contender in Bayo 2. She was a big time request, just not in the usual circles.

It was only until later due to the lack of balance patches that she became infamous. At the time it made perfect sense to people not as in-tune with Smash speculation that she would be the final character and she was extremely hype for many.

 

[Michael the Spikester]

Direct announcement tomorrow BET

Hope so but a pessimistic side of me is kinda doubting it.

I just want speculation to finally end already, I'm burnt out at this point. The torture is just too much, I don't think I can take another week...

 

[Dinoman96]

Yeah Bayonetta was kind of a shocker because most Smashboards folk were just campaigning for the usual K. Rool/Rayman/Banjo/Shantae/Shovel Knight/etc and then they got blindsided by her.

Behold, a time capsule of late 2015.

I have to say, it's pretty impressive that, outside of Professor Layton, Klonoa, Bomberman and...Angry Bird, literally every character featured in this salt mine actually got included into Ultimate in some shape or form.

 

[Flyboy]

Yeah Bayonetta was kind of a shocker because most Smashboards folk were just campaigning for the usual K. Rool/Rayman/Banjo/Shantae/Shovel Knight/etc and then they got blindsided by her.

Behold, a time capsule of late 2015.

I have to say, it's pretty impressive that, outside of Professor Layton, Klonoa, Bomberman and...Angry Bird, literally every character featured in this salt mine actually got included into Ultimate in some shape or form.

Bomberman actually got in as a spirit, assist trophy, and Mii costume, so he's doing pretty well for himself.

 

[Lyncario]

Yeah Bayonetta was kind of a shocker because most Smashboards folk were just campaigning for the usual K. Rool/Rayman/Banjo/Shantae/Shovel Knight/etc and then they got blindsided by her.

Behold, a time capsule of late 2015.

I have to say, it's pretty impressive that, outside of Professor Layton, Klonoa, Bomberman and...Angry Bird, literally every character featured in this salt mine actually got included into Ultimate in some shape or form.

"How did a witch beat out a genie?"

look at the things Bayo fights in her games

I don't think you that Bayo cares about that kind of stuff.

 

[Dinoman96]

tbh I was kinda bummed at Corrin and Bayo being the last Smash 4 newcomers back in 2015, because they looked like the last Smash characters we were gonna get for a while, period. I thought that Smash would take a break for five or so years (outside of like, maybe a Smash 4 Switch port or something) while Sakurai would go work on another original game ala Kid Icarus Uprising or Meteos in the mean time.

Little did we know that we were gonna get Ultimate just a few years, and that it would include most of the big fan requests like Snake, K. Rool, Banjo, etc

 

[Lamperouge]

I thought Bayonetta was hype and I hadn't even played her games at the time of her reveal.

Now that I have, I've really come to appreciate her inclusion.

 

[LiveStudioAudience]

It is interesting that so much of the non-veteran Smash 4 DLC really was a dry run for what'd see with Ultimate

-A new first party selection from a recent game with Corrin that would lead to Byleth, Min Min, & Pyra/Mythra
-Notable fighting game figure with unique mechanic with Ryu that paved the way for Terry, and Kazuya
-Honorary Nintendo character with Bayonetta that was a precursor to Banjo
-Gaming icon of understated or almost nonexistent history with Nintendo in Cloud that foreshadowed Joker and Sephiroth

Hero doesn't really fit in any of them and Steve only loosely in the fourth category, but one can see the genesis of Nintendo's thinking with Smash DLC to a point.

 

[Dinoman96]

It is interesting that so much of the non-veteran Smash 4 DLC really was a dry run for what'd see with Ultimate

-A new first party selection from a recent game with Corrin that would lead to Byleth, Min Min, & Pyra/Mythra
-Notable fighting game figure with unique mechanic with Ryu that paved the way for Terry, and Kazuya
-Honorary Nintendo character with Bayonetta that was a precursor to Banjo
-Gaming icon of understated or almost nonexistent history with Nintendo in Cloud that foreshadowed Joker and Sephiroth

Hero doesn't really fit in any of them and Steve only loosely in the fourth category, but one can see the genesis of Nintendo's thinking with Smash DLC to a point.

A lot of Smash 4's DLC in general felt like a test run for Ultimate, really.

-the lack of custom specials for DLC characters
-the increased emphasis of faster, cinematic Final Smashes
-the music list for certain returning/new stages like Pirate Ship and Mario Maker including basically their entire series' music tracks

 

[The Rhythm Theif]

Me who’s very confident that it will be Mega Man Zero due to Pyra having a similar color scheme to him:

But for real though: look at Pyra’s color scheme:

Now look at Zero (Z)’s:

It was REALLY easy for me to mistake Pyra for Zero when I first saw the color scheme.

 

[Jondolio]

Me who’s very confident that it will be Mega Man Zero due to Pyra having a similar color scheme to him:

But for real though: look at Pyra’s color scheme:View attachment 329362

Now look at Zero (Z)’s:
View attachment 329364

It was REALLY easy for me to mistake Pyra for Zero when I first saw the color scheme.

Okay, but what does having similar color scheme have to do with actually getting in? If anything, it'll just make things more confusing when both characters are on screen

 

[UltimateCyborgOverlord]

When Smash 64 became a thing, I was learning English.

When Melee was a thing, I was getting good grades and trying to catch them all.

When Brawl was announced, I was embodying Hot Topic and being depressed.

When Brawl was released, I was probably dying my hair, and doing some drugs.

When Smash 4 was announced, I was switching degrees like I was a thermostat, and attempting to keep a LDR afloat.

When Smash 4 was released, I was using hedonism to successfully combat my mental wellbeing.

When Ultimate was announced, I was living in New York with my boyfriend, working two jobs.

Now, I am happy if snarky dog-mom with my girlfriend, getting my master's done.


Somehow, of all things, Smash has been a constant. And yet, in (almost) all that time
I STILL HAVEN'T GOTTEN ISAAC

When Smash 64 became a thing... well, I was a very angry pre-teen kid who was just going into a psychiatric hospital/foster home for a summer for telling my mom that I knew where the knives were when she was threatening to see if I cleaned my room.

When Melee was a thing... I was a quiet high school kid who didn't really say very much. But my lord did I get into the anime scene harrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrd.

When Brawl was announced... I had gotten kicked out of my mom's house and had to finish the rest of high school out of gramma's house since Mom declared she no longer loved me and couldn't send me away to dad's house like she repeatedly threatened. Didn't say much in high school, still kinda quiet, and as such was generally ignored, save for the cute girl from Thailand who was my high school sweetheart. Everyone else ignored me but she didn't.

When Brawl was released... I had graduated high school shortly before and was months away from getting kicked out of gramma's house and into my own apartment. It was kinda rough. But I did it. Then mooched off the neighbor's Wi-Fi to play online and buy Virtual Console games (until they wised up and added a password, dirty rat.). Got a job working retail for a main street business.

When Smash 4 was announced... well not much, I was just working... but I did nearly get stabbed at a game store for not borrowing my copy of Advent Children Complete to a complete stranger. Shop owner did nothing because he also wanted my copy of Advent Children Complete. In short, I was threatened at knife point over my copy of Advent Children Complete that I casually mentioned I had. Not a lot was going on for me at that point in time.

When Smash 4 was RELEASED... well I learned that working was not for me. I got fired from my job, boss was a poopstain and a half. Flipped a table and punched a dent into his file cabinet. But I did meet a pretty cute girl from Beijing, China shortly after getting fired...

When Ultimate was announced through to released... me and cute girl from Beijing got hitched and had kids. She's the breadwinner, I'm the stay at home dad. Ended up having to put my Mom and siblings in prison. They crossed the line when they called my wife a terrible word that I won't repeat, but "fortunately" they became a hoarder house. Turns out Mom didn't like ANY of her kids and just bought a bunch of dogs, little mini yappers, to replace her kids since unlike humans, dogs stay cute forever. The floor and house began coming apart and instead of solving the problem they went to grammas house where I once lived and dumped some of the cats there too. Grandpa died and the house had to be torn down to the studs just to fix it from all the pee and poop. Mom and siblings, between the two houses, got charged HARRRRRRRRRRRRRD once I turned them in. That's what happens when you're racist against my wife.


Now as we wait for the final fighter... I couldn't be happier. I don't put up with work stuff, pandemic makes that easier still. I just stay home, take care of daughter and such. Lockdown was easy for me since staying home is generally what I do anyway. I cook, clean, love my wife and kids. Teach my daughter how to box/punch stuff so she can defend herself when she gets older and starts talking about the "Brads, Taylors and lord help us all the JOSH AND JUSTINS"... ya know... the kinds of boys that I would go "You two have fun... I'll just be in the next room cleaning my gun" before ominously turning around and slowly walking out of the room ya know? In general, I now know a peace unlike any I've felt before... an ULTIMATE peace to go with the ULTIMATE Finale.

 

[Momotsuki]

You're always going to have some characters be more viable than others in a competitive setting, there's really no avoiding that. But with that in mind, Ultimate is a very well-balanced game. It's not perfect - no game's balance could be - but for a roster this big it is very good. The best characters aren't problematic and the worst characters aren't downright unusable. They've clearly learned a lot from Smash 4 and previous entries in general. I'm not worried.

 

[SKX31]

A lot of Smash 4's DLC in general felt like a test run for Ultimate, really.

-the lack of custom specials for DLC characters

No, the lack of custom specials was probably not a "test run". was originally planned to have them, but it was scrapped and data lingered in the game until 4's patch 1.0.7 (April 23rd, 2015):

The similarities between this borked Custom Special (Side Special 3)...

and Melee's Soul Breaker glitch are... uncanny.


Nah but seriously, I wouldn't be surprised if the Custom Specials were simply dropped because it was too much work. Besides Palu (who was chosen to highlight Custom Specials) and the Miis they probably chose to go with variations to save much needed time and dev resources. That and the fact that the Custom Specials' effectiveness varied by a huge margin leads me to believe that they weren't monitored a lot (there's over 300 Custom Specials in Smash 4 IIRC). So the devs already had a situation where the Custom Specials were very difficult to effectively deal with. The Mewtwo glitches listed above were presumably the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back.

Edited to clean the text up.

 

[SMAASH! Puppy]

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if that's the case. He doesn't have a lot of attacks that are intuitive, and not many outside of his specials give instant reward (maybe F-Smash could be one since it's surprisingly strong, but only active for 1 frame). In addition to those his learning curve is pretty damn steep (like and others who don't have a lot of strong individual hits, but excel when those are chained).

If that is the case then I'd like to see his skill floor lowered. Characters with high skill floors are fine, but the ones that have them will generally communicate that to you right away:

• Fox and Pikachu's normals look like they link up, so you can tell they're combo characters.
• Sheik's a ninja and her Special Moves are all utilities.
• Falco is related to Fox.
• Zero Suit Samus is what it says on the tin: Samus without the power of her suit. It makes sense that she takes more skill to pull things off.
• Greninja is a ninja as well.
• The traditional fighting game characters wear their influence on their sleeves.
• You pretty much immediately know what Steve's about if you know anything about Minecraft.

Meta Knight has a cool look with cool looking Special Moves that gives him the impression that he's super powerful, and also, he is; just...only in the Kirby series. Or rather, he's much easier to grasp in the Kirby series both as a boss and a playable character, and I imagine for most players, going from wrecking everything to "help! How does this character work?" is a bit jarring.

I have similar thoughts about Bowser Jr., but I don't think his skill floor is all that high at a basic level.

 

[Momotsuki]

No, the lack of custom specials was probably not a "test run". was originally planned to have them, but it was scrapped and data lingered in the game until 4's patch 1.0.7 (April 23rd, 2015):

Crazy Hand remembers and he is weeping.

 

[Jondolio]

Man, it was soooo awkward that none of the DLC characters in Sm4sh had custom moves. The general treatment of them in that game was awkward as **** compared to how they're handled in Ultimate.

 

[GilTheGreat19]

Did characters in the Sm4sh DLC crew get Palutena’s Guidance dialogue?

 

[Jondolio]

Did characters in the Sm4sh DLC crew get Palutena’s Guidance dialogue?

Nope.

 

[MarioRaccoon]

Me who’s very confident that it will be Mega Man Zero due to Pyra having a similar color scheme to him:

What is Zeke dueling Judai…

btw, Sakurai listened fan requests for Ultimate; its highly likely that Shovel Knight, Krystal, Isaac, Knuckles, Bomberman and such more did very well on the ballot but resources were thin and they could only include 3 (unique) popular requests, so Sakurai chooses Ridley, King K Rool and Simon. Well, the others got as an AT, that is something good at least.

Though, I think that one of those “popular requests” that got in Ultimate via AT will be upgraded for next game. As I said before, Smash newcomer roster need to be a balance between old/long time request fighters (Simon, Ridley, King K Rool) + modern characters (Inklings, Isabelle and Incineroar) + a wtf character (Piranha Plant).

 

[WeirdChillFever]

Did characters in the Sm4sh DLC crew get Palutena’s Guidance dialogue?

No, Palutena miraculously enough didn’t have any data on the fighter.

 

[WeirdAlFan101]

Not as DLC themselves, they didn't.

 

[SMAASH! Puppy]

Did characters in the Sm4sh DLC crew get Palutena’s Guidance dialogue?

No. I hope for the next game, they just record a bunch of dialogues for potential characters so that they can add them in retroactively.

 

[Dinoman96]

Custom specials were just a total disaster in every regard.

It's just a fundamentally flawed concept, I think. Obviously you can't make fully original moves for everyone because that's hundreds upon hundreds of extra moves you'd have to design, animate and balance, so all you're left with are just a bunch of half assed and janky variations for everyone outside of Palutena and the Miis. Like part of the fun of Smash is seeing all of these characters come together and do the stuff they do in their games, so who in their right mind wants to see stupid **** like Mario throwing fireballs that don't bounce or DK becoming an air/fire bender? Throw in the ludicrous unlock system and it's like, god damn. The whole thing was a tire fire, and I'm so glad it didn't come back in Ultimate.