Official DLC Speculation Discussion Volume II

[Sigran101]

That's not true. Even just looking at power ups, it's introduced the Koopa Troopa Car, Bullet Bill Mask, Red POW Box, and the Super Hammer (which, Builder Mario is in the game, though it's probably because of the first game).

There are also new builder outfits for other characters.

None of these are characters. I guess they could have added a builder Luigi spirit, but that's about it.

 

[SMAASH! Puppy]

None of these are characters. I guess they could have added a builder Luigi spirit, but that's about it.

Super Mario Party got a Spirit Event right? If so then new character's aren't needed, as the new Spirits were a Dice Block, and a minigame.

 

[Laniv]

None of these are characters. I guess they could have added a builder Luigi spirit, but that's about it.

I mean, there's plenty of spirits in base game that aren't characters, and there was a Tetris spirit event a while back.

 

[YeppersPeppers]

Mario Maker 2 also has the weird Story Mode characters, like Undo Dog, Mr. Eraser, Sound Frog, Course Bot and even Yamamura (who appeared in the first game). They definitely could've done a Mario Maker 2 Spirit Event, but just didn't.

 

[SMAASH! Puppy]

As far as the Famicom Detective club remakes goes, Ayumi is the only spirit from the series IIRC, so it could have gotten a Spirit Event as well using the rest of the cast, and if they wanted more people to pay attention to it, it would have been wise to do so.

EDIT: The Advance Wars...remake? is in a similar position, as it has a bunch of characters and stuff that isn't a Spirit, so you could just add more if you wanted to give the game a Spirit event.

 

[Sigran101]

Super Mario Party got a Spirit Event right? If so then new character's aren't needed, as the new Spirits were a Dice Block, and a minigame.

No, it got a promotion where mario party spirits were more likely to appear. We did get some object spirits in base, but we've yet to see any as post launch content even after 2+ years.

Edit: nevermind Laniv I wasn't aware of the tetris one.

 

[N3ON]

I think there's a lot of danger in creating subcategories of exception just because you think that's how it works, because that not only conjecturally supposes the same mindset of the devs, but quickly mutates into thinking of things in terms of rules.

For all we know about some categorical method is the last category of games that don't receive spirits could be "miscellaneous" and includes every game without a spirit event that doesn't fit into a prior category, thereby rendering the whole classification system useless for speculative purposes.

 

[Sigran101]

I think there's a lot of danger in creating subcategories of exception just because you think that's how it works, because that not only conjecturally supposes the same mindset of the devs, but quickly mutates into thinking of things in terms of rules.

For all we know about some categorical method is the last category of games that don't receive spirits could be "miscellaneous" and includes every game without a spirit event that doesn't fit into a prior category, thereby rendering the whole classification system useless for speculative purposes.

I guess that's true. The no new content one is definitely true though considering the plethora of ports with no spirit events, but Bowser's Fury getting one. I guess you could say then that there's three exceptions, MM2, Yoshi, and LM3. But LM3 is the only one without a reasonable explanation. And we have precedence for it meaning something with Byleth.

 

[N3ON]

I guess that's true. The no new content one is definitely true though considering the plethora of ports with no spirit events, but Bowser's Fury getting one. I guess you could say then that there's three exceptions, MM2, Yoshi, and LM3. But LM3 is the only one without a reasonable explanation. And we have precedence for it meaning something with Byleth.

You also have to factor in how much more plausible it is that Nintendo would choose the protagonist of a new Fire Emblem to be DLC than King Boo, who owes this attention more to an absence of something over the character himself. A similar thing has happened with Porky.

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

I guess that's true. The no new content one is definitely true though considering the plethora of ports with no spirit events, but Bowser's Fury getting one. I guess you could say then that there's three exceptions, MM2, Yoshi, and LM3. But LM3 is the only one without a reasonable explanation. And we have precedence for it meaning something with Byleth.

LM3 did get something with Luigi using the latest Poltergust. It's not a great thing, and I certainly think it should get more than that, but that may be the entire reason. Since it did get some kind of promotion. Thus, no need for a unique Spirit Event because "something was already done".

That said, there's more than enough unique spirits so it's not like a Spirit Event or a full Spirit Board is hard to put together either. And I don't think a simple weapon change would prevent them from giving a Spirit Event or giving King Boo a spot either. It's nothing like BOTW, which actually got a lot of promotion in-game overall.

 

[Sigran101]

You also have to factor in how much more plausible it is that Nintendo would choose the protagonist of a new Fire Emblem to be DLC than King Boo, who owes this attention more to an absence of something over the character himself. A similar thing has happened with Porky.

This is some serious hindsight bias. When I warned people that Byleth was coming, I was told over and over that there was absolutely no way Sakurai was going to add yet another fire emblem character, especially as paid dlc for a blind pass. Not one person outside of the Edelgard thread gave my arguments a second thought because they couldn't imagine nintendo making such a ridiculous choice. The fire around byleth was 100% because of the missing spirits. And Porky had an obvious explanation, people just didn't want to hear it.

 

[Munchi]

Mario Maker 2 also has the weird Story Mode characters, like Undo Dog, Mr. Eraser, Sound Frog, Course Bot and even Yamamura (who appeared in the first game). They definitely could've done a Mario Maker 2 Spirit Event, but just didn't.

Ah yes, Mr. Eraser the philosopher

 

[N3ON]

This is some serious hindsight bias. When I warned people that Byleth was coming, I was told over and over that there was absolutely no way Sakurai was going to add yet another fire emblem character, especially as paid dlc for a blind pass. Not one person outside of the Edelgard threat gave my arguments a second thought because they couldn't imagine nintendo making such a ridiculous choice. The fire around byleth was 100% because of the missing spirits. And Porky had an obvious explanation, people just didn't want to hear it.

People were entertaining the idea of another Fire Emblem character the moment we learned the names of the leads. The character was just not widely believed to among those present in FP1 after they were all turning out to be third-parties, so the placement of Byleth blindsided a lot of people, but the character itself, or at least one from Three Houses, was something a lot of people were predicting when it came time to get those promotional characters that hadn't been completely forgotten about.

If you want to talk hindsight bias, go look at who people thought we'd be getting during that one month between when DLC was announced and Joker was revealed, when people were reading very heavily into Sakurai's "Nintendo chose the DLC". When people think of Nintendo choosing the DLC, which series do they think of?

 

[Sucumbio]

I'm having...

It's got several releases... Ace Harding for smash!

 

[DarthEnderX]

No one claimed that every series that gets a mii costume will get an event

It SHOULD though.

Everything that appears in Smash should have a Spirit. Whether it's an AT, a Mii, or a Stage cameo.

 

[epicmartin7]

NOTE: I'm dumb. Please ignore this post. Apparently, the amiibo product id is universal. Meaning other series amiibo actually fill that spot. Which also means... this is now bunk @_@. Sorry guys :*(.

Well, something I didn't expect, but we do have some new Smash news. Nothing pertaining to Pack 11, but towards Amiibo.

It's likely that we will be getting more Smash amiibo for "alt" amiibo (such as Alph and BOTW Link.)

Evidence for this was found with unused Amiibo Product IDs. Using this nifty resource, it turns out, there's are 19 unused IDs between Plant and Joker.

Spoiler: Amiibo Product IDs

038C0002 - Plant
038E0002
038F0002
03900002
03910002
03920002
03930002
03940002
03950002
03960002
03970002
03980002
03990002
039A0002
039B0002
039C0002
039D0002
039E0002
039F0002
03A00002
03A10002 - Joker

If you count every "significant alt" in the game (Alts that may get equal or preferential treatment such as Young Ike or Female Alts) and characters who have redesigns in Ultimate, you get 19. The same number of unused IDs.

Spoiler: "Significant" Alts and Redesigns

Total=19

7=Koopalings
1=OOT Ganon
1=Young Ike
1=Male Inkling
1=BOTW Link
1=Alph
1=Female Trainer
1=Female Robin
1=Female Villager
1=Normal Wario
1=Male WFT
1=LTTP Zelda
1=BOTW Sheik

Even more interesting (as I did post about earlier), Link got a new amiibo entry in v12.0.0.

Spoiler: Picture of New Link Entry

Also, for those worried that this means only base characters might get alt amiibo, there is evidence of Hero possibly getting 3 more amiibo.

While digging through more of ui_amiibo_db.prc, DLC characters have this weird pattern with their ui_amiibo_id entries (the second number shown in the link entry above.)

Most have either one or two entries in-between them, except for Hero. Hero has three missing entries in-between him and Banjo. And he's the only one with this anomaly.

Spoiler: Hero-Banjo Gap

Now... the gaps... I can't quite figure out why they're there. I originally though they might've lined up with the 19 unused entries... but, there are only a few of them.

However, the fact that Hero has the largest gap does give me red flags for me, so that's why I think it's a good thing to note imo.


So... yeah. While stuff like this isn't always 100%, I do feel confident enough to say this is something Nintendo has certainly been thinking about for awhile.

 

[Idon]

Well, something I didn't expect, but we do have some new Smash news. Nothing pertaining to Pack 11, but towards Amiibo.

It's likely that we will be getting more Smash amiibo for "alt" amiibo (such as Alph and BOTW Link.)

Evidence for this was found with unused Amiibo Product IDs. Using this nifty resource, it turns out, there's are 19 unused IDs between Plant and Joker.

Spoiler: Amiibo Product IDs

038C0002 - Plant
038E0002
038F0002
03900002
03910002
03920002
03930002
03940002
03950002
03960002
03970002
03980002
03990002
039A0002
039B0002
039C0002
039D0002
039E0002
039F0002
03A00002
03A10002 - Joker

If you count every "significant alt" in the game (Alts that may get equal or preferential treatment such as Young Ike or Female Alts) and characters who have redesigns in Ultimate, you get 19. The same number of unused IDs.

Spoiler: "Significant" Alts and Redesigns

Total=19

7=Koopalings
1=OOT Ganon
1=Young Ike
1=Male Inkling
1=BOTW Link
1=Alph
1=Female Trainer
1=Female Robin
1=Female Villager
1=Normal Wario
1=Male WFT
1=LTTP Zelda
1=BOTW Sheik

Even more interesting (as I did post about earlier), Link got a new amiibo entry in v12.0.0.

Spoiler: Picture of New Link Entry

View attachment 329961

Also, for those worried that this means only base characters might get alt amiibo, there is evidence of Hero possibly getting 3 more amiibo.

While digging through more of ui_amiibo_db.prc, DLC characters have this weird pattern with their ui_amiibo_id entries (the second number shown in the link entry above.)

Most have either one or two entries in-between them, except for Hero. Hero has three missing entries in-between him and Banjo. And he's the only one with this anomaly.

Spoiler: Hero-Banjo Gap

View attachment 329962

Now... the gaps... I can't quite figure out why they're there. I originally though they might've lined up with the 19 unused entries... but, there are only a few of them.

However, the fact that Hero has the largest gap does give me red flags for me imo, so that's why I think it's a good thing to note imo.


So... yeah. While stuff like this isn't always 100%, I do feel confident enough to say this is something Nintendo has certainly been thinking about for awhile.

There's no way Nintendo is wasting resources on any of the 7 Koopa Kids.

That said, I hope something does come from this.

 

[Mushufasa]

The Mii Fighter costume we're all secretly looking forward to.

Spoiler: What could possibly go wrong?

 

[DarthEnderX]

It's too bad there isn't a Mii Mascot Platformer. With just a generic Scrimblo moveset.

 

[FreeFox]

The Mii Fighter costume we're all secretly looking forward to.

Spoiler: What could possibly go wrong?

Well, I have a slightly different suggestion that I would find funny even if I would also be a bit sad.

Spoiler

 

[Shroob]

Well


Next week for sure


And if not


We'll wait for the next day

And the next day

And the next day

 

[Jondolio]

I think people are putting way too much stock into spirits as evidence for confirmation and/or disconfirmation.. For a pretty long time we thought spirits flat out disconfirmed, now it's only spirit events that disconfirm, and lack thereof is evidence of them being in the game. Feels like moving the goalposts to me

 

[pupNapoleon]

I don’t know, Nintendo is weird.

Like Undertale, for example: Cuphead got a mii costume and spirits, but Undertale just got the Sans mii, prompting some people (including me tbh though not taking it seriously like 100% fact) to think “Frisk/Papyrus/whoever coming later?!”, but it could just be because they didn’t want to add spirits for whatever reason.

This is one of those things that confuses me...

The two cultural significant (meaning, known outside of gaming culture) parts of Undertale are 1- Sans, 2- Megalomania
If Nintendo planned to sell any other Undertale content later, they really shot their load early; it doesn't make sense to me that we will get an Undertale character.

Unrelated: What Bomberman spirits exist in Smash?

 

[pupNapoleon]

double post delete

 

[SMAASH! Puppy]

What Bomberman spirits exist in Smash?

Just Bomberman.

EDIT: I have a feeling that Bomberman is another case of "only classic exists" in terms of how they pick what content to add. Hard to be certain when there isn't much, but it wouldn't surprise me given how they treat PAC-Man, and to a lesser extent, Mega Man and Street Fighter.

 

[N3ON]

I just hope Bomberman can rebound popularity-wise, because were it not for base content taking him off the table literally right at the beginning, he would've gotten quite popular by the time the costume showed up. Sometimes it's hard to regain your foothold when you spend so much time not in active speculation.

 

[Cutie Gwen]

Just Bomberman.

EDIT: I have a feeling that Bomberman is another case of "only classic exists" in terms of how they pick what content to add. Hard to be certain when there isn't much, but it wouldn't surprise me given how they treat PAC-Man, and to a lesser extent, Mega Man and Street Fighter.

Genuine question: What non classic content would even be used? The most modern thing I've seen from Bomberman in the gritty 360 reboot and before that it's the 64

 

[pupNapoleon]

Just Bomberman.

EDIT: I have a feeling that Bomberman is another case of "only classic exists" in terms of how they pick what content to add. Hard to be certain when there isn't much, but it wouldn't surprise me given how they treat PAC-Man, and to a lesser extent, Mega Man and Street Fighter.

I don't understand what you mean by that, "Only classic exists."
But if one spirit from an internationally known title, known in pop culture (not just gaming culture), does not trigger the same "hmmm, that's suspicious, this character must be added," then I don't see why Frisk, or anyone else would.

Was the Bomberman spirit in base game? I assume it must have been, given that he is an Assist Trophy.

So therefore, by all this logic, he is in fact the next playable character!

Genuine question: What non classic content would even be used? The most modern thing I've seen from Bomberman in the gritty 360 reboot and before that it's the 64

That Bomberman launch title on the switch- he even had 8 different color palette alts.

 

[Ornl]

Number of spirits per third-party series
Mega Man 57 · Castlevania 28 · Street Fighter 27 · Metal Gear 26 · Sonic 24 · Bayonetta 21 · Persona 17 · Final Fantasy 16 · Dragon Quest 14 · Tekken 13 · Minecraft 12 · SNK series 12 · Banjo-Kazooie 9 · Pac-Man 5
Monster Hunter 5 · Shovel Knight 5 · Tetris 5 · Cuphead 4 · Daemon X Machina 4 · Octopath Traveler 4 · Resident Evil 4 · River City 4 · Mana 3 · No More Heroes 3 · Raving Rabbids · Sakuna 3 · Bravely Default 2 · Fatal Frame 2 · Shantae 2 · The Wonderful 101 2 · Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE 2 · Warframe 2 · Bomberman 1 · Galaga 1 · Ghosts 'n Goblins 1 · Rayman 1 · SimCity 1 · Virtua Fighter 1

Average of 3rd-party DLC: 13 spirits

 

[Lionfranky]

Master Chief has plenty of support. The reason PSO doesn't really is because Phantasy Star stayed in Japan for practically 7 and a half years for the longest time until recently and hardly anybody knew about PSO2 at the time. And considering this is a very Western-influenced board, you can't exactly speculate something that hardly anybody knew about.

I'm pretty sure at this point, the leak is nothing to those actually speculating Phantasy Star. Sure the leak did increase speculation at the time, but if anything, the reason PS has been getting attention lately is because of New Genesis and Sakurai's history with it.

Pretty much this.

Say what you will about Halo in Japan. But at least, all the main Halo titles have been released in Japan with Japanese dub. Yeah, Don Mattrick screwed up Xbox One, but during 360 era, MS did put pretty good effort on Japanese market. There is a reason why Japanese Halo fans got riled up when Master Chief voice actor was changed.

 

[The Stoopid Unikorn]

LM3 did get something with Luigi using the latest Poltergust. It's not a great thing, and I certainly think it should get more than that, but that may be the entire reason. Since it did get some kind of promotion. Thus, no need for a unique Spirit Event because "something was already done".

That said, there's more than enough unique spirits so it's not like a Spirit Event or a full Spirit Board is hard to put together either. And I don't think a simple weapon change would prevent them from giving a Spirit Event or giving King Boo a spot either. It's nothing like BOTW, which actually got a lot of promotion in-game overall.

It should also be pointed out that pretty much all recurring LM characters are already Spirits, so there's less of a need to make a LM3 Spirit Event.

Sure, they had enough for one (Gooigi, Polterkitty, Hellen Gravely, etc.), but skipping out on it didn't matter much because you got your E. Gadds andyour King Boos and your Poltergusts already. It's even got ghost enemies and Polterpup, iirc. So the amount of LM representation seems fine enough.

This is unlike games like New Horizons (who replaced and removed a lot of legacy NPCs), Origami King (series with a rotating cast, with the only constant being Mario Bros., Peach, Bowser and Toads) or Pokemon Gen 8 (#Dexit) who needed to be represented for the series to feel properly represented.

 

[Iko MattOrr]

There are 16 "next week"s from now until the end of the year, and:

-one week is just starting this monday, we're already in the weekend, so I won't count it as "next"
-they're not announcing the character the last week of the year

so there are about 14 actual valid "next week"s left, I'm sure we can survive.

 

[3BitSaurus]

On paper, it's the perfect series to support right? PSO2 is so big in Japan it's one of the only series Nintendo has ever let have cross-platform cosmetics. You can cosplay as Link, complete with Master Sword, even on PlayStation. It's just hugely successful, millions of players, has been going since 1987, had released PS1 and 2 before America even saw FF1 or DQ1, and Sakurai's first semi-official interaction with the gaming industry was by submitting ideas for II. That should be HUGE, but...

1. As some other folks have mentioned, even if the series was popular before PSO2, a big part is probably that the game was JP-locked for so long even if there was a pretty big international community that played anyway. Like, if you played on Ship 2 at all it was safe to assume anyone there spoke English. So even if there was a large hardcore community that has been playing since 2012 just fine, the average western PSO fan has still been left out in the cold. Which leads me to...​

2. A lot of SEGA fans have been kinda bummed about how SEGA's treated them for like, the last decade or so? Longer? Simply put, if you weren't Sonic, you were baaaarely hanging in there. A lot of folks might have short-term memory for stuff like this, but y'know how everyone treats Yakuza like the greatest SEGA series ever that's super beloved now? In 2015 it was an outright MIRACLE that Yakuza 5 got localized. Like, dancing in the streets/collective sigh of relief type reactions from the then super niche Yakuza fan-crowds. They didn't even care it was digital only and "couldn't support" a physical release. Let's not even get into how SEGA treated Shining Force fans... It's a RECENT phenomenon that a lot of SEGA series are being treated well at all by SEGA themselves. Some fans, naturally, still feel pretty burned.​

3. Smash speculation ain't that an inviting community, if I'm completely honest. Thems the breaks. In spite of Phantasy Star and Smash being my absolute most played series by a huge margin and any of my PS fan friends also playing Smash and viceversa... none of us come to places like this. Polls? Forget about 'em. This is my fifth post here and some jerk already played down the idea I liked a thing and would like to see it in Smash as not important in spite of that being the entire reason Smash speculation is a thing. Screw that noise. If it ain't in the Smash Bubble already, it takes a huge amount of effort and, let's be honest, luck to get it in there. Average Smash speculators only even care about PS now because Matoi was in a fake leak and only a few good eggs are even bothering to learn anything about her or that there's at least two other important characters that are still verifiably beloved by fans after 3 decades.​

God, the localization part is spot-on. I didn't touch that in the other post because we were talking about series getting new games themselves.

But basically, remember how I said only 5 series got new releases periodically in that timeframe? Sonic, Monkey Ball, Yakuza, Puyo Puyo and technically Phantasy Star?

Well, out of these 5, 3 could take years to come to the west - if they came at all. I learned of PSO's situation yesterday, but I was aware of Yakuza's, and about half the Puyo Puyo series is Japan-exclusive to this day. Before Puyo Puyo Tetris, the last localized game was Fever, in 2003. All of the anniversary editions, Fever 2, PP7, all are region-locked, in spite of the fact that it was at the very least in Sega's top 5 best selling IPs, which is just insane to me.

 

[The Stoopid Unikorn]

There's 16 "next week"s from now until the end of the year, and:

-one week is just starting this monday, we're already in the weekend, so I won't count it as "next"
-they're not announcing the character the last week of the year

so there are about 14 actual valid "next week"s left, I'm sure we can survive.

I'd say 13 because they've been pretty consistent with taking two weeks between reveal and release, Min Min being the only exception for Pass 2.

Even Sephiroth got a public release two weeks after his reveal in case you couldn't get him early because you sucked at the Sephiroth Challenge.

 

[True Blue Warrior]

Feel free to critique this.

Spoiler: Samosas Changes

Samus Changes

• Walking Speed: 1.115 -> 1.125
• Running Speed: 1.654 -> 1.7
• Her jab is her doing a single short-ranged ice blast that has a decent vertical hitbox
• If A is held whilst executing her dash attack, she delays her shoulder tackle for a fairly brief moment to power up, before resuming her shoulder tackle. This version of her dash attack, whilst it has greater start-up, does 11% throughout, covers slightly more distance, has faster attack speed and leaves afterimages
• Up Smash is now an uppercut based off the Melee Counter
• Her forward Smash is now similar to Mii Gunner with the difference being it has a somewhat slower startup, bigger range and she fires ice
• Back aerial is now her quickly firing a blast of ice behind her
• She can now angle the Grapple Beam whilst in the air akin to tilt attacks (honestly, I think it would be neat if all characters with tethers had this ability as well)
• Charge Shot maximum size and damage halved. In exchange, you can walk, run and jump around whilst holding the charge by pressing B. You cannot attack whilst holding the charge. If standing or crouching whilst holding the B button, you can more easily aim the Neutral B in several different directions. You can no longer store Charge Shot
• Super Missile damage: 12 -> 20. Also there is a screenshake if it connects
• Pressing Down B allows you to crawl around the stage using the Morph Ball. You can also turn into a ball by pressing down quickly twice and this method is faster and doesn't involve a short hop, but no bombs are produced this way. whilst in this mode, you can press A to do a boost attack with quick start up and significant endlag.
• Aerial bombs no longer fall, allowing Samus to bomb jump up to 3 times.

Dark Samus Changes

• Air Speed: 1.103 -> 1.117
• Fall Speed: 1.33 -> 1.3
• She has the same back aerial change as Samus but with electricity
• Down tilt is changed to a quicker but weaker version of Samus' down smash
• Down Smash is her raising a Phazon shield around her.
• Neutral aerial is now similar to Mewtwo's neutral aerial. Her jab is ow more like a grounded version of her neutral aerial
• Her forward Smash is her using the Shrapnel Beam with her animation based off her Assist Trophy
• If Up Smash is charged for long enough, she fires three Phazon orbs for extra damage and range
• She no longer has a grab aerial as it is replaced by the ability to float in one place for a few seconds. Can be cancelled immediately after doing any attacks or by dodging. Can only use it once in the air at a time.

Anyways, to stay relevant, whilst I predict the last character is going to be a third-party character, I'm very sure they will be much less iconic than Kazuya.

 

[LiveStudioAudience]

To be perfectly frank, Nintendo just being weird and inconsistent about which spirits get added to Smash would likely answer hell of a lot of questions.

 

[GilTheGreat19]

I’m just saying
You could easily do a King Boo trailer as a sequel to the Belmonts’ trailer.
Also a potential reason that Cuphead probably got spirits is because they could’ve been much cheaper compared to, say, Fallout spirits following the Vault Boy costume

 

[Sigran101]

People were entertaining the idea of another Fire Emblem character the moment we learned the names of the leads. The character was just not widely believed to among those present in FP1 after they were all turning out to be third-parties, so the placement of Byleth blindsided a lot of people, but the character itself, or at least one from Three Houses, was something a lot of people were predicting when it came time to get those promotional characters that hadn't been completely forgotten about.

If you want to talk hindsight bias, go look at who people thought we'd be getting during that one month between when DLC was announced and Joker was revealed, when people were reading very heavily into Sakurai's "Nintendo chose the DLC". When people think of Nintendo choosing the DLC, which series do they think of?

You and I had very different experiences with this my friend.

It SHOULD though.

Everything that appears in Smash should have a Spirit. Whether it's an AT, a Mii, or a Stage cameo.

Maybe, but that has no bearing on my argument.

It should also be pointed out that pretty much all recurring LM characters are already Spirits, so there's less of a need to make a LM3 Spirit Event.

Sure, they had enough for one (Gooigi, Polterkitty, Hellen Gravely, etc.), but skipping out on it didn't matter much because you got your E. Gadds andyour King Boos and your Poltergusts already. It's even got ghost enemies and Polterpup, iirc. So the amount of LM representation seems fine enough.

This is unlike games like New Horizons (who replaced and removed a lot of legacy NPCs), Origami King (series with a rotating cast, with the only constant being Mario Bros., Peach, Bowser and Toads) or Pokemon Gen 8 (#Dexit) who needed to be represented for the series to feel properly represented.

No, origami King also has Mario, Peach, Luigi, Bowser, Toad etc who are already represented. Animal Crossing still has the Nook family and Isabel. We even got a Bowser's fury event with literally Mario and Bowser spirits just because they were in new forms. Having recurring characters already in the game doesn't mean Nintendo won't do a spirit event for them. Luigi's Mansion 3 added a crap ton of new characters, not just the 3 you mentioned, and there's much more reason to add spirits for it than half the events we actually got.

I think people are putting way too much stock into spirits as evidence for confirmation and/or disconfirmation.. For a pretty long time we thought spirits flat out disconfirmed, now it's only spirit events that disconfirm, and lack thereof is evidence of them being in the game. Feels like moving the goalposts to me

No goalposts have been moved here. I never said that spirits deconfirmed, but if a game gets a spirit event when it comes out, then they have no content for a spirit board for the actual character, so since nearly every nintendo game that comes out gets one, it raises some eyebrows when one doesn't. When 3 houses came out there was no spirit event, and I said "The only explanation I can think of is that they're holding it off for a spirit board with the actual character". And that's exactly what was happening. There is 100% precedence for what I'm arguing. That doesn't "confirm it", but it's definitely a reasonable argument.

To be perfectly frank, Nintendo just being weird and inconsistent about which spirits get added to Smash would likely answer hell of a lot of questions.

Nintendo's not being weird or inconsistent with spirits though. Luigi's Mansion 3 is the only one that's weird.

 

[Cutie Gwen]

Nintendo's not being weird or inconsistent with spirits though. Luigi's Mansion 3 is the only one that's weird

Tbf lots of people argue that say, GAA, NTWEWY and FDC are suspiciously lacking Spirits too, it gets argued for pretty much everything that comes out on the Switch

 

[XorahnGaia]

The thing about these "missing" spirit events is that every major Switch game that didn't get one got a shoutout by the official Japanese Smash Twitter account instead.

Here are some examples:

Spoiler

Here's the most recent one celebrating the release date of SS HD

『ゼルダの伝説 スカイウォードソード HD』本日発売！
大空に浮かぶ島「スカイロフト」と、雲下に広がる大地を行き来しながら、ゼルダを探す大冒険！
Joy-Con2本持ちでは、右が剣、左が盾に対応。直感的な操作を楽しめます。#スマブラSP #スマブラ画 #SkywardSwordHDhttps://t.co/Zn8dQ5sgkZ pic.twitter.com/B7YA0rF6ty

— 大乱闘スマッシュブラザーズ【スマブラ公式】 (@SmashBrosJP) July 16, 2021

And here are the ones for Yoshi's Crafted World and LM3:

『ルイージマンション３』が本日発売！
実はスマブラSPのルイージも、投げや最後の切りふだで、本作に登場する新型オバキュームを使っています。#スマブラSP #スマブラ画 #ルイージマンション３https://t.co/tn0ymXfrpS pic.twitter.com/gFLysbcnaF

— 大乱闘スマッシュブラザーズ【スマブラ公式】 (@SmashBrosJP) October 31, 2019

『ヨッシークラフトワールド』が本日発売。スマブラSPではヨッシーの8Pカラーを選択すると、本作に登場するヨッシーと同じ姿でプレイすることができます。#スマブラSPhttps://t.co/gUsV3elmh6 pic.twitter.com/gtx4jDcDjR

— 大乱闘スマッシュブラザーズ【スマブラ公式】 (@SmashBrosJP) March 29, 2019

Worth noting that FE: Three Houses didn't even get a shoutout tweet like these games when it came out.
Then again I couldn't find the tweet for Super Mario Maker 2, so maybe this point is invalid.

Either way, LM3 wasn't ignored by the Smash team, they just likely thought that a simple tweet combined with the content in the base game was enough for that game. So the absence of a Spirit event isn't as suspicious as some of you claim it to be.