Geno's Bizarre Adventure part 2: Stardust Crusaders (Geno Support Thread #2)

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

It's also worth noting tons of characters did well. Not each one did well specifically for Ultimate-related stuff. Bayonetta doing well just... means she did well. Maybe the reason they did little with her is Sega said no. Remember when Shadow as an obvious echo? Exactly. We lack details. It's not necessarily on Nintendo or Sakurai here.

Oh, and to point out; the other stages weren't ports. They were made from scratch(that's our official statement). For... some reason. Though honestly, I could see that being an actual lie to justify the few new Ultimate stages. Due to a tiny amount of development time. It's a better excuse to give for why not everything was done in time than simply the fact that development time was fairly small overall.

Something also to note; they began the character options in 2015. It was ended early 2016, and the entire base roster was figured out from the start, and specified "Nobody was added or removed from the roster."(Brawl is similar, except they couldn't complete all the characters on time, whereas Ultimate all the base newcomers were there as intended. Keep in mind I do not believe Plant was base, either, though what that also means is that if Plant was always DLC, then it wouldn't have come out in base anyway but pushed to the first DLC and released then and there. We would've gotten at best maybe Homerun Contest, the only thing that would've made sense as base to begin with among the various updates. And that's even assuming they had it in their plans to return as base, which may not have been the case.

To clarify a bit, July 2017 is the time Nintendo said "DLC is going to happen". That means it's easy to start getting characters for a Pass or deciding on any DLC ideas. Plant would be the first DLC to begin with, so likely was decided upon then and there. In addition, the reason the Guidance thing doesn't actually prove anything is that the chance they kept rehiring the actors over and over to do extra voicework, instead of doing it all in one big go. Since DLC stuff is already part of it, that means that the Guidances would've been happening around July 2017 or after it. Now that they know more characters are coming, they can actually feasibly create a proper set. Some weren't even redone, so it's not like it was that long of a session either. All the more reason to get it done and over with. Being it includes DLC characters too as is(I don't mean Plant, just the generic one), it means those specific recordings were after Nintendo said "DLC characters are coming". This is the reason it doesn't actually point towards anything for Plant. It's because Plant's Guidance was being done around the same time or later than when DLC was officially declared. It mostly strengths it being intended only as DLC, but we can't say when the Guidances started work, just a very small timeframe. They would've started in July 2017(possibly a bit before Nintendo announced DLC to Sakurai) at the earliest, and ended in October 2018 at the latest. There's no other possible timeframe to make any real sense. When you think about how much the game was rushed, they really wouldn't have the budget or time to "constantly bring back voice actors over and over" either. Getting it all done within about a week or month makes sense. As much as they can get each voice artist, really.

 

[Shroob]

Oh, and don't mind me or the reaction to me in the Newcomer thread: I simply made a clickbait-esq post there about how I've come to realize that Ultimate isn't even that amazing when you separate bias, and apparently that caused them to go at me.

Well, at least you admit it's clickbait.

 

[Firox]

I blame everything you just said about game issues on a rushed product, other than the Byleth stuff. I think you don't know how much say a company can have over someone's creation, for better or worse, but let me lay this out for you.

Ultimate had about as much time as Melee did to be in the oven. Smash 64 was Jan 1999, Melee Nov 2001. Smash 4 DLC ended in Feb 2016, Ultimate dropped in Dec 2018.

Ultimate borrows a ton of assets from Smash 4 because it had to so it could make it in time. Ultimate only had four brand new stages, the rest being updates or ports of previous stages. Most of the music is ported over. All the rest of the veterans were ported over with no drastic changes to them. Between Daisy, Richter, Chrom, Dark Samus, Ken and the six returning veterans, we have eleven characters added to the roster that we have played as in some way or form, something other Smash games are much less guilty of other than...you guessed it, Melee. That gives us only seven brand new characters, which is incredibly lacking in comparison to previous Smash titles, and one of them didn't even make it in time and had to be downloaded later. Only one of these is from a new 1st party IP, which is very lacking in comparison to previous Smash titles.

There are other things I could bring up too, like how we got Home Run Contest in a PATCH rather than in the base game, or how K. Rool only loads half his model at any given time, or how WoL is nothing but a glorified event mode. It's just clear that many of the things wrong with this game is because Sakurai wasn't allowed to delay it to make it more polished and he tried to do the most with what he had. Now, could SOME of the decisions just been mistakes and bad decisions by Sakurai? Yes, it very well could have, but he's very dedicated and been at this for a long time. It stands to reason that corners had to be cut, so perhaps a less efficient system for online had to be made due to lack of time to make an improved version of the previous one work. Or maybe Nintendo told them to make changes that turned out to be negative.

Also, another fun fact: building a new engine is never easy, and Ultimate did that. Rumor is that Melee used Mario Sunshine's engine and Brawl and Smash 4 used Brawl's engine. So, having roughly the same dev time as Melee, but having to make a brand-new engine? That's wild bruh. It's almost like this game was incredibly rushed, but since Sakurai is dedicated and has worked with a team to make something good out of very little with basically every Smash title to date it came out pretty good, but honestly Ultimate should be nothing more than a 6/10 because it doesn't offer enough. Hell, even Melee had Classic, even modes and an adventure mode that felt like more effort went into them and actually had multiple game modes in the base game, where as Ultiamte is missing many. Like I said, we were all just blinded by the returning vets and the hype base game picks that we didn't see the clear signs that this game needed more time even when they were right in our faces.

Also, showing the results of the poll would be difficult. Imagine if they just broadcast all of that. First off, I'm sure there is a level of red tape involved as to why they couldn't show it, but also if they showed off the raw data you would have seen a lot of stupid meme picks from stupid people not taking it seriously. I always figured when Bayonetta was called '#1" and 'in the top 5" for "realizable characters", I knew that weeded out all the meme picks and that placed her higher, but it's also possible that they weeded out other characters like K. Rool because it wasn't possible to do them at the time or they wanted to save them for Ultimate which started happening before Cloud even got in our hands. Thus, Bayo was picked earlier on in the ballot so that they could actually make at least one character from it, which could easily affect the result when you use early data among only characters you can actually make.

Oh, and don't mind me or the reaction to me in the Newcomer thread: I simply made a clickbait-esq post there about how I've come to realize that Ultimate isn't even that amazing when you separate bias, and apparently that caused them to go at me.

Sure, you could make the argument that the game was rushed, but none of us have intimate knowledge as to how much of that played into some the sub-par development decisions that ended up in the game. For example, if the game was so rushed, why did WoL end up so incredibly long, but tedious? If the decision for the format was based on a rushed development, wouldn't it have ended up short and sweet instead? You know, more like a firework exploding in the sky instead of one of those snakes slowly burning out until you lose interest? And the online implementation could have taken several elements from Sm4sh that actually worked but instead they scrapped them for the crappy arena system. Bottom line is, I don't think we should simply write off dumb decisions as "we didn't have enough time to make it good". That sort of mentality on the part of Nintendo/devs is damning all by itself. Granted, some things probably did suffer, but we shouldn't make so many assumptions to apologize for what simply didn't land well. To your credit, the whole "push out the game and fix it later" attitude is becoming a plague in the gaming industry and we really need to be better about not rewarding it.

 

[Adrianette Bromide]

Well, at least you admit it's clickbait.

And then you gotta wonder why people would apparently "go after me."

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

And then you gotta wonder why people would apparently "go after me."

Because of a trollish statement(which they, well, admitted). The reality is the site can vastly dogpile on anyone. It happens in any thread. No more, no less. There's a serious bullying problem to begin with, and it has nothing to do with what thread it's in. People think it's okay. It's not, and not properly reported a lot of the time so it's easily looked over.

Of course I am saying both were wrong things to do. Nonetheless, they do happen, unfortunately.

 

[ZelDan]

TBH Part of me thought Forsaken's post wasn't clickbait/trollish just because, well, the post in question was similarish to past ones he's made in the past.

Whether that says more about me or him I'll leave up to interpretation.

 

[Shroob]

Because of a trollish statement(which they, well, admitted). The reality is the site can vastly dogpile on anyone. It happens in any thread. No more, no less. There's a serious bullying problem to begin with, and it has nothing to do with what thread it's in. People think it's okay. It's not, and not properly reported a lot of the time so it's easily looked over.

Of course I am saying both were wrong things to do. Nonetheless, they do happen, unfortunately.

I'm like, 99.9% certain that Bromide's post was to be read in a sarcastic tone, Phoenix. Sorta like a "Gee, I wonder why?"

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

I'm like, 99.9% certain that Bromide's post was to be read in a sarcastic tone, Phoenix. Sorta like a "Gee, I wonder why?"

Oh, I'm aware.

Doesn't change a thing I said.

You can still call me Irene, if it helps.

 

[Shroob]

You can still call me Irene, if it helps.

Truth be told, with this site not having a function to show prior alias' people have used in the past, I'm constantly tripped up whenever someone uses their Premium to change their name.

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

Truth be told, with this site not having a function to show prior alias' people have used in the past, I'm constantly tripped up whenever someone uses their Premium to change their name.

That's fair. You can also disable "visible old names". ...I also can't remember all my name changes, and even don't have a complete list.

Anyway, you'll probably figure it out on my next name change.

Back on target, I hope we get that next presentation soon. Or at least maybe some kind of Mario-related spirit event. Luigi's Mansion 3, mayhaps? (Well, that's a poor attempt to get it back on topic)

 

[ForsakenM]

Well, at least you admit it's clickbait.

My current thoughts are not clickbait, but the post itself was purposefully hyperbolic, which is why I offered clarity for those who care to know.

Did I do it knowing I would get a rise out of people? Yes, I did. Do I truly believe that Ultimate is a shell of what it could have been if it had been delayed even a year, with many things to back that up? Yes. However, Ultimate is not trash by any means, as the team did more in that time than many devs have done with more. It just could have been much better.

 

[Dan]

Good thing they didn't lie. What actually happened is people misread their point, and actually thought it was a real ballot)instead of the suggestion box as intended).

Oh no; forgive me for thinking the "Smash Bros. Fighter Ballot" was a ballot.

The whole thing just reeks to me. I have to assume Ridley beat her, but since they had already pre-determined her he was deemed "unrealizable"... the whole thing just seems beyond fishy.

It's really silly to keep trying to put forth the "one winner" premise when we know it's false anyway.

It literally said "1st Worldwide".

Fun fact: did you know that delaying Ultimate until Dec 2019 could have had the same effect? If Sakurai had been allowed to have more time and creative freedom, we could have actually seen Min Min, Byleth and P/M + R in the base game which leaves three open spots in the DLC. More over, who knows how much better WoL could have been, among a number of other additions and improvements.

They could've just as well included three less DLC characters then.

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

Oh no; forgive me for thinking the "Smash Bros. Fighter Ballot" was a ballot.

The whole thing just reeks to me. I have to assume Ridley beat her, but since they had already pre-determined her he was deemed "unrealizable"... the whole thing just seems beyond fishy.

I fail to find anything fishy whatsoever here. Multiple characters got in due to the ballot. Maybe Ridley beat her in the US. Sure. Just not in the UK. King K. Rool is treated as the one number one in US as well, despite definitely not knowing of it. And besides, this is why they won't release the entire set of results. Clearly people aren't willing to play nice and just accept some got votes higher than others, which isn't the entire reason characters got in anyway. Just having lots of votes doesn't make for a good moveset, for instance. That's why it asked for "ideas" to begin with.

When 4 characters got into Smash due to the ballot outside of Bayonetta(if not more), which are Ridley, King K. Rool, and both Belmonts(and a possibility that he was referring to it with Dark Samus and Chrom being in for popularity, but this could have any kind of thing he looked into), they are all "winners". That's exactly what you voted for, to get them in. Well, suggested, more accurately. Yes, ballot is a crap word and misleading since that's not what it really is. There can't be one winner, when, if you even count Bayonetta was influenced by it(which they didn't actually say either way, but imply at best), four others also did that. So either's there's 5 winners of the Ballot officially(arguably 7 otherwise), or maybe it wasn't really an actual ballot to win and more of, as hard explained multiple times, a suggestion box to help future games and Smash 4 get new content, the actual plan behind it.

Tell me, did you think people would've used it if it was called a "Suggestion Box"? No. Because it's a weak word. They used Ballot, a professional word where people write in names in order for them to get used. The term is wrong to begin with, but that's still an easy misunderstanding. One cannot claim "misunderstanding" when they're given straight evidence of multiple winners, though. That's just being stubborn for the sake of it. Besides, where was it implied that Ballot means "only one can win"? That looks more like a personal belief than a single thing ever advertised. What they did say is the character you write-in you could be in Smash 4's DLC and/or Future Games. So again, even if you ignore Bayonetta, we clearly got multiple characters in due to the Ballot.

Besides, the definition for it does not say "only one can win", so that's completely on others for believing something never said. It's just one way people can take it, but it's clearly not the case. It's just a popular way to take it, which, well, was clearly not their intention. Did you think Nintendo magically is perfect at explaining things or using purely accurate words? We know their PR is less than impressive. Tons of misunderstandings happen due to odd translations. They're only human.

verb (used without object), bal·lot·ed, bal·lot·ing.
-to vote by ballot:to ballot against a candidate.
-to draw lots: to ballot for places.

Look at the last one. It says "places". That's already a part of the definition that even says multiple places can exist. That's a lot more clearly what Nintendo intended.

noun
-a slip or sheet of paper, cardboard, or the like, on which a voter marks his or her vote.
-the method of secret voting by means of printed or written ballots or by means of voting machines.
- the whole number of votes cast or recorded.

There's even more on here, but these three alone pretty clearly make a lot more sense with what happened. So yeah, sorry. Not the best word, but we know what they actually meant. It's time to really stop claiming a single winner at this point when you have 4 or more.

It literally said "1st Worldwide".

Well, no. It said she was 1st in Europe and top 5 in US. Nobody was told us 1st worldwide. Unless you thought it was another character who was that, like King K. Rool?

 

[ForsakenM]

I fail to find anything fishy whatsoever here. Multiple characters got in due to the ballot. Maybe Ridley beat her in the US. Sure. Just not in the UK. King K. Rool is treated as the one number one in US as well, despite definitely not knowing of it. And besides, this is why they won't release the entire set of results. Clearly people aren't willing to play nice and just accept some got votes higher than others, which isn't the entire reason characters got in anyway. Just having lots of votes doesn't make for a good moveset, for instance. That's why it asked for "ideas" to begin with.

When 4 characters got into Smash due to the ballot outside of Bayonetta(if not more), which are Ridley, King K. Rool, and both Belmonts(and a possibility that he was referring to it with Dark Samus and Chrom being in for popularity, but this could have any kind of thing he looked into), they are all "winners". That's exactly what you voted for, to get them in. Well, suggested, more accurately. Yes, ballot is a crap word and misleading since that's not what it really is. There can't be one winner, when, if you even count Bayonetta was influenced by it(which they didn't actually say either way, but imply at best), four others also did that. So either's there's 5 winners of the Ballot officially(arguably 7 otherwise), or maybe it wasn't really an actual ballot to win and more of, as hard explained multiple times, a suggestion box to help future games and Smash 4 get new content, the actual plan behind it.

Tell me, did you think people would've used it if it was called a "Suggestion Box"? No. Because it's a weak word. They used Ballot, a professional word where people write in names in order for them to get used. The term is wrong to begin with, but that's still an easy misunderstanding. One cannot claim "misunderstanding" when they're given straight evidence of multiple winners, though. That's just being stubborn for the sake of it. Besides, where was it implied that Ballot means "only one can win"? That looks more like a personal belief than a single thing ever advertised. What they did say is the character you write-in you could be in Smash 4's DLC and/or Future Games. So again, even if you ignore Bayonetta, we clearly got multiple characters in due to the Ballot.

Besides, the definition for it does not say "only one can win", so that's completely on others for believing something never said. It's just one way people can take it, but it's clearly not the case. It's just a popular way to take it, which, well, was clearly not their intention. Did you think Nintendo magically is perfect at explaining things or using purely accurate words? We know their PR is less than impressive. Tons of misunderstandings happen due to odd translations. They're only human.

verb (used without object), bal·lot·ed, bal·lot·ing.
-to vote by ballot:to ballot against a candidate.
-to draw lots: to ballot for places.

Look at the last one. It says "places". That's already a part of the definition that even says multiple places can exist. That's a lot more clearly what Nintendo intended.

noun
-a slip or sheet of paper, cardboard, or the like, on which a voter marks his or her vote.
-the method of secret voting by means of printed or written ballots or by means of voting machines.
- the whole number of votes cast or recorded.

There's even more on here, but these three alone pretty clearly make a lot more sense with what happened. So yeah, sorry. Not the best word, but we know what they actually meant. It's time to really stop claiming a single winner at this point when you have 4 or more.


Well, no. It said she was 1st in Europe and top 5 in US. Nobody was told us 1st worldwide. Unless you thought it was another character who was that, like King K. Rool?

Facts are that they didn't have time to wait for the ballot to end before they picked a character for Smash 4, so they had to pick one early enough to make it happen, thus they likely picked one before the votes settled and Bayo could very easily have been higher up at the time.

Also, lest ye forget, there was a ton of stupid meme voting. Those would be 'unrealizable' and thus get pulled out no matter how many votes they got. The same could have been done for characters that weren't memes, but that they couldn't make work in time for Smash 4, lest ye also forget that Smash Ultimate started conceptual stages at least late 2015/early 2016, which leaves little time for anything else.

Btw I'm 100% with Verde Coeden Scalesworth here, we just don't know and it's not Nintendo's job to tell us, more likely it's their job to never let those results leak. But assuming malicious intent by default is dishonest and filled with bias.

 

[AinsOoalGown]

My current thoughts are not clickbait, but the post itself was purposefully hyperbolic, which is why I offered clarity for those who care to know.

Did I do it knowing I would get a rise out of people? Yes, I did. Do I truly believe that Ultimate is a shell of what it could have been if it had been delayed even a year, with many things to back that up? Yes. However, Ultimate is not trash by any means, as the team did more in that time than many devs have done with more. It just could have been much better.

Lying that the game was rushed or incomplete is not a hyperbole, its just a lie to justify petty, unfair hate over something not being some idillic headcanon game that would never be possible since it never would be doable outside of said petty person's imagination. Insisting on the bait that the game is incomplete when thats a known bait by trolls who never played it use (despite being one of the most full of content games in the series by very far), besides being an insult to the devs and fans, also implies malice and nothing else, after all no one would be insisting on a lie due ignorance after a certain amount of time. (like how your last post here implies a 3 years dev cycle is "little time for anything else" despite this being a natural time frame, you know its a lie yet tries to gaslight users here which proves a malicious intent). Its ok to not be happy that the imaginary game you wanted was never going to happen, but at some point we need to grow a bit and see the world for what it is, that includes not lashing out at things for not fitting something they were never going to be.

 

[Deleted member]

Am I seriously reading in 2021 someone saying that Ultimate's engine was built from scratch?

This thread has gotten way too silly.

 

[EricTheGamerman]

My current thoughts are not clickbait, but the post itself was purposefully hyperbolic, which is why I offered clarity for those who care to know.

Did I do it knowing I would get a rise out of people? Yes, I did. Do I truly believe that Ultimate is a shell of what it could have been if it had been delayed even a year, with many things to back that up? Yes. However, Ultimate is not trash by any means, as the team did more in that time than many devs have done with more. It just could have been much better.

To directly confront your actual point here, I don't agree Ultimate would have been much more different had there been an extra year of development time. Ultimate's main goal from the start was "Everyone is Here!" and I think everything else largely secondary to that goal and built around that concept. I think you really just see a lot of tweaks to existing content, the Shared Content and Home Run Contest being in the game at launch, maybe a couple more stages that just missed the cut like a Rainbow Road or Poke Floats that relied previously on asset flips and would have necessitated being rebuilt from the ground up, maybe a couple more stages, maybe a couple more Echoes, and maybe another unique playable character in addition to Piranha Plant at launch. I just don't think it opens that many doors because the core design philosophy was built around the veterans returning first and foremost. Yeah, you might have gotten Pythra and maybe Min Min in base game, but that hardly guarantees much from a DLC standpoint.

Like Hero was likely never going to be in base game and Square Enix tends to push their stuff for DLC, not to mention, the nightmare of Dragon Quest rights and royalties is much easier to manage in a DLC context than in a base game where the profit sharing has a more serious impact. And I think opening up one or two slots doesn't really change how Nintendo would approach the DLC and I'd fully expect stuff like a Gen 8 Pokemon and let's just say Ryu Hayabusa or someone else third party instead of a classic fan request.

The Smash you're hypothesizing is just a fundamentally different one to the one we have, and more development time isn't going to really change that.

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

Spoiler: Long stuff

]If somebody said the game was made from the ground up, it wasn't me. What I did say is that the stages were made from the ground up according to Sakurai. I don't actually believe that myself, as with how the game is, it was likely ported to get it done faster, but considering the game couldn't get every basic mode in(HRC especially), it does also fit the context.

Other than HRC and more balance, that's all I legit seeing ever happening if it had more development time. But I never found the so-called evidence to more than flimsy for Plant, anyway. That, and I already explained why the Guidances are actually an extremely bad point. You can't prove when they're done, meaning they don't provide legit evidence for base. In addition, DLC was already taken into account for when they were finished, which considering July 2017 is not long before they started negotiations for the first Pass, starts to fit. Finally, it's extremely unlikely they were recorded among tons of months between each one. Basically, it was probably recorded in a month total or less, and with that in mind, it would have to be during or right after DLC was determined. Thus, it either benefits Plant being DLC or at most doesn't change any details. If we ever find out when the Guidances were recorded, then it'll be a legit data point. Though more or less it was probably always during the DLC talk anyway, so it doesn't really prove a thing in the long run.

amiibo were not released in a straight order, and Plant's recorded data puts it after all the third party characters. If it was actually input into the game's data as base, it'd be among the first parties, before at least Daisy. That can easily mean the amiibo specifically were determined well after Plant was chosen, which overall means it's a useless data point to prove anything and shouldn't be taken seriously.

Spirits? Well, obviously if Plant was base or not, the spirit would've been removed for DLC. Meaning it does nothing to change what we know. It's yet another neutral factor. Nipper Plant turning into Petey is odd regardless of that. Though to be fair, Nipper Plants due to tend to at least jump, something Petey does a fair amount of times, so they coincidentally do relate a bit. But so does the specific Piranha Plant which holds up a spiked ball anyway. And that's not a Spirit, so. I wouldn't read really anything into the Spirit stuff. It's not always great logic.

The only outright bad point is the very bad Greninja Classic Mode thing; if Plant was removed, it just as easily would've been replaced with something fitting. It was unlikely to be changed. There was no hole to fill at that point. ...Cause no hole was there. Remember, the battles are one 1 VS 1, two 1 VS 2, and three 1 VS 3. These all check out as just as much of a pattern as three 1 VS 2 and three 1 VS 3. Neither are awkward whatsoever. Why on earth Peach, Pikmin & Olimar, and Daisy weren't along with Ivysaur is a better question. Or at least Pikmin & Olimar. Because it makes just as much sense as Plant could've been, or even on a team with Ivysaur. There's no actual easy to tell logic behind that one being a 1 VS 1. If Plant somehow was there(unlikely), Pikmin & Olimar would've been there too. So that would've made things lopsided. Maybe both were removed to try and make a more feasible way of "slowly ramping up the difficulty" instead. That's just how much is possible and why it's not really a useful argument to begin with. There's zero evidence but a flimsy theory that could have more than one thing happen.

The only actual decent data point we have is files of PP's playability during some beta builds. The issue with that? It was well after July 2017, so it obviously doesn't do anything to suggest base. It was clearly started on after every other playable character, which make sense. It's the last character. This is the only data point that actually points to DLC instead, and it's not that useful of information either.

This is why I say the data isn't honestly conclusive one bit. It's massively lacking and requires you to stretch it either way to fit a narrative. I'm saying this even with the Guidances. We can't say they weren't recorded in separate chunks either. It's most likely, sure. But what happens if it was? Albeit, they'd only have recorded the "dlc generic one" later on, which seems kind of silly to bring 'em back for a short moment instead of doing it right away. And the DLC one would not have been done before July 2017, as Sakurai outright confirmed DLC was not planned at any point beforehand. So whether Plant was base or not, it was still determined to be DLC around July 2017 or possibly a bit later.

Now one worth pointing out is "Plant couldn't be finished for base so was moved to DLC" has zero data backing it. That requires confirmation that Plant was base in order to make sense. There's zero confirmation, and thus, it's an actual bad thing to say. It's as accurate as saying that Sakurai hates Waluigi. So, you know, not the case and cannot be proven. Theories of why Plant might've been base are a very different thing, since they're based upon data within the game we've found to come to those theories(ignoring the bad Greninja claim that has no business being taken seriously. That's not based upon evidence, that's based upon some silly belief it had to be one way when nothing suggests it was ever going to be another way. The rest have actual data behind them, after all).

So only two arguments about Plant are basically bunk. The rest at least have something to go on, even if the conclusions can easily be wrong(oh, wait, that's what happened to us with Hero. Remember when the majority kept saying it was pointing at Erdrick? Exactly. We're just fans speculating. We get things wrong. Not a problem, though).

--------------

Oh, right, something else.

What I'm guessing is the way the Bayonetta thing went is that they weren't outright trying to say "she got in due to the ballot", as while it may have influenced it, as Forsaken said, it was already in the works and it sealed the deal at best. Now, her votes wouldn't have been much yet within two weeks either way. That is, the ratio was smaller than the final tally. What it looks more like is the final tally is what they told us, and the actual votes for her that happened when she was said yes to was a different but still high set. So it's not so much lying as the details are just poorly put together to make it sound different from what happened. Cause otherwise she'd have to have been number 1 in Europe and top 5 in the US literally 2 weeks in. That's not enough time to really settle things. Is it possible? Eh, sure. Maybe that's what they meant at the time. But it's pretty unlikely. And yeah, realizable does cover tons of non-possible picks(any non-game character. Any meme pick like Pepe as well. Note that when I say meme, I mean an actual character created for a meme, not fan picks like Goku who are legitimate picks, but not realizable due to not being from a game. He's probably very high to begin with anyway).

Sometimes things aren't a lie, but just so poorly worded you can can't understand their real intentions very well. The picture painted was very different from what our evidence suggests, but only to a small degree. And even then, maybe the small bits of the ballot votes is actually why she got in(just not the only reason), and she's one of many overall winners. Sometimes it's just... exactly what they said. Who knows. We won't get the data either way.

 

[ForsakenM]

Lying that the game was rushed or incomplete is not a hyperbole, its just a lie to justify petty, unfair hate over something not being some idillic headcanon game that would never be possible since it never would be doable outside of said petty person's imagination. Insisting on the bait that the game is incomplete when thats a known bait by trolls who never played it use (despite being one of the most full of content games in the series by very far), besides being an insult to the devs and fans, also implies malice and nothing else, after all no one would be insisting on a lie due ignorance after a certain amount of time. (like how your last post here implies a 3 years dev cycle is "little time for anything else" despite this being a natural time frame, you know its a lie yet tries to gaslight users here which proves a malicious intent). Its ok to not be happy that the imaginary game you wanted was never going to happen, but at some point we need to grow a bit and see the world for what it is, that includes not lashing out at things for not fitting something they were never going to be.

Oh boy, an Incineroar fan having a bad take, who woulda guessed?

Anyway, there is no hate at all. That is your assumption, which is incorrect. If you read any of my past posts, you know that I think this game is pretty damn good overall. I judge games like Sword and Shield heavily, and Ultimate really doesn't compare to anything like that, surpassing it massively.

However, research proves to me this game was rushed. How do I know this?

Most AAA games have between 3-5 years or more of straight dev time. Ultimate flat out did not get this, as it got just short of that, which is a VERY similar time frame to Melee...eerily similar actually. We also know that Melee has a heaping list of characters that didn't make it due to time constraints, which is something rumors right now are suggesting originally happened alongside Sakurai's own words stating that this happened for franchises like ARMS and XBC2.

It's obvious when you use your brain that both games were rushed because they have massive similarities. Both Melee and Ultimate have a bunch of characters that take most of their moveset from a previous character (Melee: Dr. Mario, Ganondorf, Falco, Young Link, Pichu and Roy; Ultimate: Daisy, Richter, Chrom, Dark Samus, Ken) and also featured a smaller number of newer characters that were completely unique (Melee: Bowser, Peach, Ice Climbers, Zelda, Sheik, Mewtwo, Mr. G&W, Marth; Ultimate: Inklings, Ridley, Simon, K. Rool, Isabelle, Incineroar, Plant) than other titles in the series. Even the six returning veterans are either characters you've already played as before or additionally they take most of their moveset from another character.

Meanwhile, we only got four brand new stages in Ultimate (the rest of which were mostly ports with a couple of Melee overhauls), most of the massive amount of music is ported over from previous Smash games, trophies got swapped out for shoving PNGs into the game and giving them a smidge of functionality, the fact that WoL is just a glorified event mode and has like seven or so cutscenes, the lack of effort put into existing modes like All Star and Classic Run in comparison to previous titles, the lack of non-Smash gameplay game modes (Home Run Contest was a patch, Stage Builder was a patch, no Boss Rush, no Break the Targets/Board the Platforms/Trophy Rush, Event Battles from previous games did more than the Spirit Battles that replaced them), basic features like online tournaments and video editing got patched in later. Hell, we got a Day 1 patch that not only fixed some things, but also added a Hard Mode for WoL that WASN'T THERE IN THE BASE GAME.

Now, the reason you guys don't recognize these things is because the hype behind Ridley and K. Rool and all the veterans coming back blindsided everyone until the November Smash Direct, which even then people didn't figure out the game was rushed when it was right in your face.

The evidence? This guy right here ->

So Piranha Plant is clear evidence that the game was rushed. Why? They took the time to reveal the character in the Nov Smash Direct, while making it out to be a bonus, but the fact that they had a gameplay trailer when Joker did not until his release is proof that the character was mostly done before launch. The fact that the character was free to those who purchased the game within a certain time frame is proof of compensation for content that was MEANT to be base game, and yet was not. The fact that the plant lad has a Palutena's Guidance when none of the other DLC characters do is clear evidence that the character was made during base game development when they had the voice actors for Pit, Palutena and Viridi in the studio doing voice work. Also, every other DLC character was a 'Challenger Pack' that came with music, a stage, and their own DLC Spirit Board...yet Plant had none of these things. Plant also brought a save-file-bricking glitch that would wipe your save file if it was on an SD card whenever you played All Star after downloading it, something that is a big problem and clearly would have been ironed out before their release if given proper time to test instead of having to focus on doing more DLC.

Finally, just the fact that the character was revealed before launch but released after with a gameplay trailer showing they were mostly complete already coupled with Sakurai's integrity and game design beliefs for DLC is proof that there were time constraints, which is proof the game was rushed.

There are number of bugs and glitches that have happened when they make updates and additions to the game, of which I'm working on gaining the information for most if not all of them, many of them gamebreaking...things that wouldn't happen as often if the base game itself was more polished. There are likely other things that I haven't uncovered or thought of at this time that prove that Ultimate is a rushed game, but now I will defend my statement about it being better if it wasn't rushed.

Simply delaying Ultimate until December of 2019 could have done the game a world of good. First off, we likely would have had a couple more characters in the base roster, of which it's likely Byleth, Min Min and Pyra/Mythra + Rex would have been some of those choices as the window of acceptance would have been opened. In addition, WoL could have been much more fleshed out and had more to it, we could have had more game modes, more stages and music...just more. According to what you believe, Hero and Byleth may have actually been planned for the base game, as well as Chun Li and Lloyd Irving or Yuri Lowell...but they were all cut due to time constraints, and instead we got Ken to replace Chun Li. However, Dragon Quest and Fire Emblem privilege is pretty massive and thus Nintendo made sure to get them in for DLC regardless of what the fanbase wants, and Nintendo got the chance to make more self-made money off ARMS and XBC2 instead of just waiting to add them to the next game.

Also Verde Coeden Scalesworth you are flat out wrong about Plant, so try reading my paragraph here about it. Facts are facts and your points don't make sense at all: Plant was made during the development of the base game, this much is clear due to common sense about timing. Plant was not finished enough to be in the base game, this is common sense based on timing and actual events. The fact that this character was free for anyone who bought the game early on is a sign of a business making amends with releasing late content. You don't see any of the rest of the DLC being free at any point, do you? Also, if Plant was always meant to be DLC, why wasn't it part of FP1? Why didn't it have more content? It's because it was planned to be part of the base game and failed due to time constraints. It's just obvious.

 

[Staarih]

I have a hard time understanding why you're so hung up with Ultimate being "rushed" three years after release. It's common practice to have schedules and deadlines for games and things get patched with downloadable content and version updates, we see them happening all the time. That's also a whole lot of if's and maybe's, there's no guarantee more modes, stages or Rex, Byleth etc would be in base game if given more time, nor would that imply any more slots for DLC... with more time they could have prioritized something completely different. At the end of the day, this is the product we got and is that so hard to accept that even if it turns out to be, in your words, "rushed" in some areas?

I have no idea what this sudden idea of Ultimate being rushed gives unless it's to make up an excuse to be disappointed with the game. By saying delaying the game would give "just... more" on top of the crazy content already in the game, I don't know what to say.

 

[CannonStreak]

Also, about Bayonetta, Verde Coeden Scalesworth , I just realized I remembered I remembered Bayonetta, alongside Corrin, were chosen before the ballot ended, as shown here.

Dataminer confirms that Bayonetta had placeholder data as early as patch 1.0.6

So I wasn't some crazy conspiracy theorist after all. "Most realizable character" and all the numbers they threw out in the last Smash Direct really were just vague PR **** to cover a character who had been planned since April.

forums.serenesforest.net

I don’t know if this has been brought up yet, but how do you explain that?

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

Also, about Bayonetta, Verde Coeden Scalesworth , I just realized I remembered I remembered Bayonetta, alongside Corrin, were chosen before the ballot ended, as shown here.

Dataminer confirms that Bayonetta had placeholder data as early as patch 1.0.6

So I wasn't some crazy conspiracy theorist after all. "Most realizable character" and all the numbers they threw out in the last Smash Direct really were just vague PR **** to cover a character who had been planned since April.

forums.serenesforest.net

I don’t know if this has been brought up yet, but how do you explain that?

That's a big thing I was referring too earlier. So what was already said, yep.

Spoiler

ForsakenM Yeah, that was found... about 6 months before Plant's release. As a bonus character way after DLC was determined(meaning it wouldn't have started work till it was getting close to it to be released, and also that it takes at least 6 months for a bonus character). So... about August to September it was started at the latest. In time for February. That's not really evidence of anything except when it started development at best. The base groundwork was done already because they used Bowser Jr. as the base. You'll need a lot better evidence than something clearly started that links up hard with DLC Statements(being determined in July 2017, so in other words, It started development 1 year after DLC was already planned? Sorry, your evidence is flimsy at best and without actual real data. No matter what, Plant was clearly started being worked on only, again, after DLC was planned. Meaning you can't use its only known development time as anything conclusive. That means it was found and unfinished by at least that time. It is worthless data related to base game, because there's nothing in it that suggests it would've been done for base game. It makes sense to start it at the time needed so it'll be finished within 3 months of the game's release, the normal promotional period for a bonus character that is based upon "please buy our game right now and input a code to get one character free." Even if you really stretch the DLC development timing, that's, what, July 2018? Still DLC determined period, and that's also during the same year they were determining Pass 1. So... all the DLC was figured out at the same time for the Bonus and first Pass. Not... really odd when you've barely got a bit more than a year to do so anyway. So again, it 100% lines up with the bonus character's timing and only known development. The only other useful data, the Guidances, also line up directly with this too(as why would Sakurai rehire the actors for one Guidance. Maybe he did think DLC could be a thing, sure. But that's all the more reason the Guidances cannot be useful for an actual conclusive thing. It could've been done before or after July 2017 either way. The information we have make both 100% plausible. There's no way it was a split set of recordings either, unless we're suggesting Sakurai brought them back way later on for Plant and the general DLC message, ...which is the only way it'd fit. There's at least 3 years of when it could be done, which is why the evidence doesn't work because it could've been all recorded in October 2018 too. See what I'm getting at? There's too much leeway here.

It was free for anyone because it was to promote the game's release. Exactly what was told to us. You're making up stuff at this point. You're not using common sense about the timing. You're creating theories to confirm your bias, but not using actual evidence to properly confirm it. It was never going to be base game according to what we're told. "You get it free if and only if you buy the game early enough, and input a code." That's literally what promotional timing is. Then it become a cheaper DLC character after a while. That's literally the only reason PP's amiibo released before others, in order to line up directly with this promotional timing. We also saw them choosing a particular order for amiibo, so it's pretty clear they pre-planned all that stuff(that, and obviously we know some take longer than others due to licensing. Only DLC has never been in a different order from their overall announcements, though some are more grouped together than others, and Ultimate has all 12 DLC characters(well, 13, cause Pyra and Mythra, and possibly a total of 14 amiibo since Alex is probably one too. Zombie and Enderman might be ones for all we know, but considering Hero sadly got one, it's probably Steve and Alex, who are the actual listed characters) anyway. Hence why it's a pretty useless attempt to justify anything. It doesn't actually show much note at all when the amiibo release order is. Especially when the in-game amiibo data had Plant 100% after everybody else in the base game. Remember, the base game data would have Plant before the third parties at the very least, as well as grouped with stuff like release order. You'd find it closer to where King K. Rool is, but it's oddly not there. All the more reason it's not useful for anything. Why? Cause the data for it was created after it was already a DLC character. As I said before, the release date only tells us it relates to DLC at best, and it the amiibo has to be released within a promotional period if it's going to promote a promotional character. That's actual logical timing, because there's something concrete about it.

Mewtwo was actually planned for base in 4. This was told to us. Plant was not and Sakurai has been massively open about these. He would've told us it was the case if it was. Instead it's the only DLC character he chose(which was DLC from the start) and not a single statement suggests it's anything but DLC? At one point one needs to not use poor data in the worst way possible to confirm something. No kidding Plant was going to be started on during the final part of base game. How do you expect it to be released within less than 4 months after the game is released? ...By starting it a bit more than 4 months before the game is released. September, October, November, December, January, February. Yeahhhhh... checks out with 6 month development cycle(especially since it wasn't started from scratch, which we know is the norm for most characters. 6 month from scratch, less for clones, even less than what clones have for echoes, and severe cases like Lucario require at least a year), doesn't it? You can't really promote it for a game's release if it releases somewhere like next Summer. It needs to be fairly close. If anything, they should've started its development a bit earlier than September or August so it would've been ready by January, the next month after the game is fully out and selling, to get further sales. But being the game's only actual missing base content was at best Home Run Contest, and we see lots of bugs from day one(poor Chrom), they clearly didn't meet the deadline entirely as intended. The game wasn't super rushed by any means, but just slightly, simply put. Couldn't finish bugtesting. Working on the first intended DLC character would've been one part of the team, anyway, so it's not like it, well, actually made a difference. Sakurai's team is big enough(at least the base game team).

 

[CannonStreak]

That's a big thing I was referring too earlier. So what was already said, yep.

Oh, okay.

Anyway, we should probably get back on topic. This is the Geno thread, after all.

 

[WeirdAlFan101]

How would you guys react if Geno were to get a more "modernized" redesign, like this one?

 

[ivanlerma]

How would you guys react if Geno were to get a more "modernized" redesign, like this one?

I would go "Oh"

 

[Deleted member]

How would you guys react if Geno were to get a more "modernized" redesign, like this one?

6 year old me would have lost his **** for cowboy Geno and 30 year old me is really fond of the design, still. Geno's been a really weird looking... magician? Cape wearing rapper? Whatever he's supposed to be, he's been it for 25 years and it's hard to say that Geno would be back in action under any other visage.

Let's be real though, if I want cowboy themed gun black mage, I'll stick with Digimon

 

[EricTheGamerman]

Oh boy, an Incineroar fan having a bad take, who woulda guessed?

Anyway, there is no hate at all. That is your assumption, which is incorrect. If you read any of my past posts, you know that I think this game is pretty damn good overall. I judge games like Sword and Shield heavily, and Ultimate really doesn't compare to anything like that, surpassing it massively.

However, research proves to me this game was rushed. How do I know this?

Most AAA games have between 3-5 years or more of straight dev time. Ultimate flat out did not get this, as it got just short of that, which is a VERY similar time frame to Melee...eerily similar actually. We also know that Melee has a heaping list of characters that didn't make it due to time constraints, which is something rumors right now are suggesting originally happened alongside Sakurai's own words stating that this happened for franchises like ARMS and XBC2.

It's obvious when you use your brain that both games were rushed because they have massive similarities. Both Melee and Ultimate have a bunch of characters that take most of their moveset from a previous character (Melee: Dr. Mario, Ganondorf, Falco, Young Link, Pichu and Roy; Ultimate: Daisy, Richter, Chrom, Dark Samus, Ken) and also featured a smaller number of newer characters that were completely unique (Melee: Bowser, Peach, Ice Climbers, Zelda, Sheik, Mewtwo, Mr. G&W, Marth; Ultimate: Inklings, Ridley, Simon, K. Rool, Isabelle, Incineroar, Plant) than other titles in the series. Even the six returning veterans are either characters you've already played as before or additionally they take most of their moveset from another character.

Meanwhile, we only got four brand new stages in Ultimate (the rest of which were mostly ports with a couple of Melee overhauls), most of the massive amount of music is ported over from previous Smash games, trophies got swapped out for shoving PNGs into the game and giving them a smidge of functionality, the fact that WoL is just a glorified event mode and has like seven or so cutscenes, the lack of effort put into existing modes like All Star and Classic Run in comparison to previous titles, the lack of non-Smash gameplay game modes (Home Run Contest was a patch, Stage Builder was a patch, no Boss Rush, no Break the Targets/Board the Platforms/Trophy Rush, Event Battles from previous games did more than the Spirit Battles that replaced them), basic features like online tournaments and video editing got patched in later. Hell, we got a Day 1 patch that not only fixed some things, but also added a Hard Mode for WoL that WASN'T THERE IN THE BASE GAME.

Now, the reason you guys don't recognize these things is because the hype behind Ridley and K. Rool and all the veterans coming back blindsided everyone until the November Smash Direct, which even then people didn't figure out the game was rushed when it was right in your face.

The evidence? This guy right here ->

So Piranha Plant is clear evidence that the game was rushed. Why? They took the time to reveal the character in the Nov Smash Direct, while making it out to be a bonus, but the fact that they had a gameplay trailer when Joker did not until his release is proof that the character was mostly done before launch. The fact that the character was free to those who purchased the game within a certain time frame is proof of compensation for content that was MEANT to be base game, and yet was not. The fact that the plant lad has a Palutena's Guidance when none of the other DLC characters do is clear evidence that the character was made during base game development when they had the voice actors for Pit, Palutena and Viridi in the studio doing voice work. Also, every other DLC character was a 'Challenger Pack' that came with music, a stage, and their own DLC Spirit Board...yet Plant had none of these things. Plant also brought a save-file-bricking glitch that would wipe your save file if it was on an SD card whenever you played All Star after downloading it, something that is a big problem and clearly would have been ironed out before their release if given proper time to test instead of having to focus on doing more DLC.

Finally, just the fact that the character was revealed before launch but released after with a gameplay trailer showing they were mostly complete already coupled with Sakurai's integrity and game design beliefs for DLC is proof that there were time constraints, which is proof the game was rushed.

There are number of bugs and glitches that have happened when they make updates and additions to the game, of which I'm working on gaining the information for most if not all of them, many of them gamebreaking...things that wouldn't happen as often if the base game itself was more polished. There are likely other things that I haven't uncovered or thought of at this time that prove that Ultimate is a rushed game, but now I will defend my statement about it being better if it wasn't rushed.

Simply delaying Ultimate until December of 2019 could have done the game a world of good. First off, we likely would have had a couple more characters in the base roster, of which it's likely Byleth, Min Min and Pyra/Mythra + Rex would have been some of those choices as the window of acceptance would have been opened. In addition, WoL could have been much more fleshed out and had more to it, we could have had more game modes, more stages and music...just more. According to what you believe, Hero and Byleth may have actually been planned for the base game, as well as Chun Li and Lloyd Irving or Yuri Lowell...but they were all cut due to time constraints, and instead we got Ken to replace Chun Li. However, Dragon Quest and Fire Emblem privilege is pretty massive and thus Nintendo made sure to get them in for DLC regardless of what the fanbase wants, and Nintendo got the chance to make more self-made money off ARMS and XBC2 instead of just waiting to add them to the next game.

Also Verde Coeden Scalesworth you are flat out wrong about Plant, so try reading my paragraph here about it. Facts are facts and your points don't make sense at all: Plant was made during the development of the base game, this much is clear due to common sense about timing. Plant was not finished enough to be in the base game, this is common sense based on timing and actual events. The fact that this character was free for anyone who bought the game early on is a sign of a business making amends with releasing late content. You don't see any of the rest of the DLC being free at any point, do you? Also, if Plant was always meant to be DLC, why wasn't it part of FP1? Why didn't it have more content? It's because it was planned to be part of the base game and failed due to time constraints. It's just obvious.

This really feels like you're working back from a conclusion rather than following evidence to a substantiated conclusion and playing some head canon along the way. We know Smash Ultimate had a 2.5 year development cycle, the exact same as Smash 4 and just slightly less than Brawl (but that game had the nightmare of Subspace to deal with). Most AAA games having 3-5 years of development time isn't exactly some standard either. It varies wildly depending on the game and the company involved, and with the exception of BOTW, Nintendo actually has a very quick turnaround on their own in house AAA games (the pandemic of course threw a massive wrench in literally everything, so they're current Switch games took a bit longer). Monolith Soft was able to crank out XC2 in just 2 years after XCX as just one example. If you wanna go third party, Assassin's Creed games regularly have just a couple years under their belt, etc. It's not a set in stone thing and many AAA games take so long in large part because they are often extremely reliant on massive amounts of motion capture, rendering cut scenes, etc. It's also worth pointing out that the way in which Sakurai and Nintendo used the same development team ensured that they could more or less work without stopping from Smash 4 to Smash Ultimate, so that would have optimized a ton of things and had a team of veterans on the project, something that absolutely would speed up development. 3.5 years would have been the longest a Smash game had been worked on literally ever.

I think the biggest mistake you make is in recognizing how gargantuan the plan was before newcomers were even on the table and how much work bringing back 65 veterans and 100 stages were. For reference, Smash 4 only had 37 veterans to deal with and while those games did have more BRAND NEW stages, the returning stages had massive cut corners compared to Ultimate remaking every single one but the N64 stages. And again, I think Everyone is Here was the primary focus on the game and its been directly confirmed by Sakurai in multiple interviews and Directs at this point. Ultimate/Special was always, always about bringing in all the veterans first and foremost and celebrating Smash's history through a massive amount of content. The additions were then the expansion upon that concept, but I think it's more than reasonable to look at Smash Ultimate's number one priority as legacy content that saw substantial reworks.

With that in mind, I think far too much of your evidence seems built on the idea of a personal head canon of opening up more DLC slots by having the base game contain more stuff. Smash has always had clones and they found a way to rebrand them into a more likeable way to extend the game's roster with the limited resources they had after focusing on Everyone is Here. That's not indicative of a rushed product, that's indicative of new characters being less of a priority for Ultimate and them finding ways to optimize their time to provide more content. Almost every single game does this sort of thing. Similarly, Plant as DLC isn't nearly the smoking gun for a rushed game as it is they ran out of time in their development schedule as Sakurai and basically every other developer on the planet does. You can point to almost any game, especially one that has stages, characters, etc. and find some degree of cut content simply because developers are more ambitious than a project plan allows for. There can always be more content, but from a publisher perspective, they can't just let the developer make content forever. And now we live in an era of post launch updates and DLC where you can just keep working on stuff and then move it to DLC as need be when you run out of time on the base game. Again, not indicative of a rushed game, just content that didn't get done in the allotted project time (Which is a fundamentally different thing). And I also wouldn't totally discount Nintendo and Sakurai pushing a bonus character and deciding to hold back on Plant given how completed he was in November. Similarities to Melee is a kind of disingenuous comparison when obviously Melee did not have to work with so much content as baseline like Ultimate did.

The focus on the game was Everyone is Here and legacy content, and they built everything around that and made the project plan with that. Things like the little side modes were low priority or not considered very clearly. I mean, why do things like Shared Content and Home Run need to be there at launch when you can add them in later for free and it doesn't matter? It's not like that was ever going to hurt the game in a really tangible way and I think as developers, Sora Ltd. and Nintendo as a whole realized that was a perfectly acceptable way to utilize resources. Again, not a smoking gun in this day and age when this is common practice and has been Nintendo's MO for a while in regards to their Switch games. And cut scenes should be an obvious, the amount of resources just wasn't budgeted in the project plan and Sakurai even went out of his way to say a Subspace like thing wasn't possible with how much work they had to do.

It's easy to forget because people see it drenched in nostalgia, but Subspace was a clunky mode that utterly destroyed Brawl's own content ambitions and was how we got the Forbidden Seven and a variety of other things didn't come to pass. Not only that, but Brawl was absolutely the most broken Smash game balance wise ever. Meanwhile, Ultimate, actually has probably the best balance in the entire series and that foundation was almost entirely laid at launch by comparison. The balance doesn't really showed a rushed product if we're being honest.

Also, I'm not sure you've ever played a truly rushed game if you think the extremely few and far between glitches (many of which game breaking I have literally no clue where you're getting that from) in Ultimate are indicative of a lack of polish. Like, there's so many combinations and permutations within this game that yeah, you're gonna have an occasional weird glitch that one or two people come across. That's the nature of having this many interactions between elements and they really aren't common at all. As an anecdote, I've literally never encountered one across 200+ hours of play.

And then we come back to where your head canon I think is driving you, the "If Smash Ultimate had more development time these things would have happened". Which, yeah, if a game had another year of development it would have had some more stuff doesn't exactly warrant an essay on. But then you're theory crafting in a way that makes assumptions about what happens if DLC characters get moved to base game that also assumes similar characters don't take their space. Like, OK, let me follow through with the idea of Byleth, Pyra/Mythra, and Min Min making it to base game now... Who is to say those don't just get replaced by a Gen 8 Pokemon, Ring Fit Adventurer, and Akira Howard from Astral Chain? Would you then be once again advocating for Smash Ultimate to have been delayed yet another year to get those three in to open up more slots? Because I don't think Nintendo's DLC ideology fundamentally changes with a year delay.

Also, as I've said before, I seriously doubt that Hero was ever seriously in the running for base game with the way the royalties would have needed to be handled and that he would be shifted to DLC no matter how you approached Ultimate's release. I also blatantly have no idea where you're just inserting Chun-Li and a Tales character from. That's just wishful thinking based on the slimmest of like ideas that were floating around the internet and to my knowledge, Chun-Li was never substantiated in any meaningful way and with Ken's complex differences to Ryu, I think he probably had to be decided on very early on even compared to the other Echoes. That's essentially just inserting names into the "more development time = more content" idea.

I just don't think you've done a good job substantiating your claim here. You point to certain realities and claim them to be evidence of a rushed product, but then you don't really provide evidence as to why that they have to point to your specific conclusion and not other possibilities. Like, I can come to the conclusion that Nintendo wanted to hold back content with the exact same "evidence" you use. And I think pointing to realities like Ultimate having the same development cycle as past Smash games, that cut content is normal, and that the balance was pretty solid at launch actually work against your conclusion for Ultimate. And you also don't acknowledge the focus of Everyone is Here and even seem to be actively downplaying it like all that content didn't require a substantial amount of work. And to even further expand upon that, there's no consideration given to the fact that maybe Ultimate was the most healthily made game in terms of work load compared to past games and there was less a need for Sakurai and the dev team to kill themselves making every dream come true at launch when they could work past the launch.

 

[Firox]

Geno Thread 2: Essay Wars...

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

Geno Thread 2: Essay Wars...

Fair point. Let me throw some of it in spoilers. Those are pretty long, agreed. D:

 

[Shroob]

Oh boy, an Incineroar fan having a bad take, who woulda guessed?

Are we really at the point where we're stooping to petty insults over someone's favorite character... really?

Simply delaying Ultimate until December of 2019 could have done the game a world of good. First off, we likely would have had a couple more characters in the base roster, of which it's likely Byleth, Min Min and Pyra/Mythra + Rex would have been some of those choices as the window of acceptance would have been opened. In addition, WoL could have been much more fleshed out and had more to it, we could have had more game modes, more stages and music...just more. According to what you believe, Hero and Byleth may have actually been planned for the base game, as well as Chun Li and Lloyd Irving or Yuri Lowell...but they were all cut due to time constraints, and instead we got Ken to replace Chun Li. However, Dragon Quest and Fire Emblem privilege is pretty massive and thus Nintendo made sure to get them in for DLC regardless of what the fanbase wants, and Nintendo got the chance to make more self-made money off ARMS and XBC2 instead of just waiting to add them to the next game.

The.... Tales of Chun leak?


The same one which said Square Enix shot down Geno's chances because they had no idea why his fanbase actually liked him and just saw it as a ploy to get him in Smash and nothing else?



I really, really severely doubt that leak was legit. Sure, it was posted the literal day of release, but, so what?

 

[Deleted member]

Geno Thread 2: Essay Wars...

These lads are definitely giving my long winded replies a run for their money. Shame none of it's about Geno, Forsaken normally has entertaining reads about him.

Are we really at the point where we're stooping to petty insults over someone's favorite character... really?

Hi, welcome to the Smash fanbase. Were we ever not at that point?

 

[Shroob]

These lads are definitely giving my long winded replies a run for their money. Shame none of it's about Geno, Forsaken normally has entertaining reads about him.


Hi, welcome to the Smash fanbase. Were we ever not at that point?

I'm more shocked he'd pick the Tales of Chun leak to claim could have been real, when that leak is entirely antithetical not to just this thread, but Geno's fanbase as a whole, since it straight up says that Square was the one to reject Geno, since they saw no merit to the character and showed confusion towards his fanbase.

 

[ForsakenM]

I have a hard time understanding why you're so hung up with Ultimate being "rushed" three years after release. It's common practice to have schedules and deadlines for games and things get patched with downloadable content and version updates, we see them happening all the time. That's also a whole lot of if's and maybe's, there's no guarantee more modes, stages or Rex, Byleth etc would be in base game if given more time, nor would that imply any more slots for DLC... with more time they could have prioritized something completely different. At the end of the day, this is the product we got and is that so hard to accept that even if it turns out to be, in your words, "rushed" in some areas?

I have no idea what this sudden idea of Ultimate being rushed gives unless it's to make up an excuse to be disappointed with the game. By saying delaying the game would give "just... more" on top of the crazy content already in the game, I don't know what to say.

I'm hung up about it because Nintendo had poor planning and business sense, and all the older fans of Smash (which is the core audience btw) suffers because of it as well as the game's potential.

I'm not sure how people who do realize that the game is rushed and that multiple DLC choices have been to fix those mistakes instead of putting in requested characters could NOT be upset about their decisions. There are literally denying choices from a list 20+ years in the making because of THEIR decision to push this game out so fast when it could have just waited until 2019.

Let me try explaining this one more time, for those in the back: Ultimate's base game was rushed to come out quickly to sell the Switch, just like what happened with Melee and the Gamecube. Ultimate shares many of the same traits with Melee, which is a rushed game itself, such as padding the roster with clone characters and having a number of characters cut. The Switch had major titles in both it's launch year and in 2018 that would have carried even if both Tres Casas and Ultimate got delayed to 2019: BotW, Splatoon 2, MK8 Deluxe, and Odyssey in 2017 and Octopath Traveler, Aces, Let's Go, and Star Allies in 2018. This of course doesn't include all the indie games and big third party ports that would have carried both of these years, which means Sakurai should have been allowed to delay Ultimate into 2019, if not into 2020 since 2019 had bangers like LM3, Astral Chain, Link's Awakening, Ring Fit and SMM2.

But, since Nintendo was being greedy and not caring about the end result of the product and focused more on release dates, EVEN THOUGH THEY DELAYED BOTH FIRE EMBLEM AND ANIMAL CROSSING, Ultimate HAD to release when it did and got no special treatment despite being a massive system seller no matter when it would have released. So, because of the WiiU and despite Smash always selling well, it was thought best to rush this game out as fast as possible.

Rushing this game means cutting characters and reusing lots of assets. All the veterans are reusing assets. All the echoes are reusing assets. Most of the stages are reused assets. Most of the music is reused assets. Melee has a VERY long list of characters cut both in concept and later stages: both Sakurai's statements and the rumor mill suggest that Ultimate is sharing the same fate. The biggest ones to talk about are Byleth, Min Min and Pyra/Mythra because had they delayed the game, it's incredibly likely they would have been in the base game. That opens up three DLC slots thought could have been bigger character requests, but instead now they are simply making Nintendo even more money while disappointing fans. Hero is also up for debate, which would mean four potential slots for bigger requests.

Delaying would have also given the time to fix many of the problems of the game and the complaints, like WoL being incredibly lackluster, or the lack of game modes, the lack of new stages...basically, delaying the game for a single year makes the game better in quality by a significant amount.

Also, just because companies do practices that vary on the scale between proper additions and pure corporate greed doesn't mean we need to excuse a company we expect more of for doing the same thing. Also, you can claim "if's and maybe", but the fact is that Sakurai specifically stated that ARMS and XBC2 couldn't get in due to development timing. This suggests that they WOULD have made the base game if the timing was better, something that WOULD be if the game was delayed to 2019. It's also very clear that Nintendo wanted to shill Byleth for Ultimate to promote Tres Casas, something they could have been planned for the base game originally, but didn't happen because it got delayed. Delaying Ultimate to Dec 2019 allows you to do exactly what they did with Byleth anyway, but without it being a DLC character, which would have been much more well received (this is because instead of both being Nintendo shilling, pushing more FE, AND being DLC the character would at least be base game so people wouldn't feel like a DLC slot got wasted).

Also, implying they would do less DLC because more characters made the base roster is ridiculous: we know any and all DLC plans happened sometime in 2018 because that was when the game was announced, which caused enough hype for Nintendo to push Sakurai into making DLC. This means that DLC was decided upon after the roster was already ironed out, meaning that having more characters in the base game would have had little to no impact on this decision other than clearing the way for other character choices. Implying that they would have done a three or four character pass for that reason is silly when they could just simply do the same amount of characters in each pass and make more money that way.

My biggest reason for talking about this is that nobody else is really talking about it. Even with the lackluster DLC choices that are fixing mistakes THEY made by rushing the launch of the game, no one is pointing out the core problem of why these character decisions are being made for DLC and people are acting as if Ultimate is perfect as a game when it's actually done less than games like Brawl, Smash 4, or even Melee. It's for the same reason I am hard on people who think Sword and Shield was an acceptable game for the first $60 mainline Pokemon game, or about people who still defended No Man's Sky or Fallout 76 during their initial launch periods: we have a problem with gamers accepting unfinished and unpolished games, and companies are taking advantage of being able to put in less time and effort and charge the same price, and yet somehow gamers are defending the AAA companies from criticism instead of demanding quality games worth their money.

Ultimate is a GOOD game, a solid 6 or 7 out of 10. However, it could have been a GREAT or FANTASTIC game, but corporate greed stifled that and continues to do so. This is why I hope it gets regular updates during the Switch's lifecycle, even if we get no more characters, to at least try to bring it closer to what it could and SHOULD have been. The biggest issues is that everyone was so blinded by the hype of a small couple of requests that nobody talked about it when it mattered, so it may be too late to make a difference to improve this game.

I'm more shocked he'd pick the Tales of Chun leak to claim could have been real, when that leak is entirely antithetical not to just this thread, but Geno's fanbase as a whole, since it straight up says that Square was the one to reject Geno, since they saw no merit to the character and showed confusion towards his fanbase.

So...I referenced something that suggesst more character cuts than just the rumored Hero and Byleth and the essentially confirmed Min Min and Pyra/Mythra, and this shocks you because it has something against Geno's inclusion...when the argument I'm making has nothing to do with Geno and is all about proof of the base game being rushed?

You...you do know that people can want a character but be based in reality, right? If this shocks you, it's because you have a diluted pre-conception of either me, Geno fans as a whole, or both.

Also, evidence of Geno being denied for the base game =/= evidence against Geno after the base game. Also, regardless of the validity of it, this person's suggestion of Square's reasoning makes very little sense: this fanbase has always been about Geno coming back in some form and wanting SMRPG to get the recognition we believe it deserves as well some sort of continuation of the franchise. Whether that starts with Geno in Smash (much like Megaman) or with them just making a new SMRPG in some fashion doesn't matter, so there can be no confusion if they were truly paying attention. We want SMRPG and Geno and they characters they have held hostage for decades to make some sort of grand return. We just want more SMRPG, in ANY shape or form. This would clearly mean that they could take essentially any avenue that leads to SMRPG content in something official and it would receive mostly positive response.

Anyway, that possible leak more suggested that Sephy was simply chosen over Geno, which makes sense given how FF was shorted on content and Sakurai was miffed about that, and how Square was basically setup to make money off of anything FF7 in the coming years. However, neither Geno or Sephy made base game, which benefitted both Nintendo and Square to make more money off of Sephy in the future after the massive success of FF7R.

Finally, this is talking about base game, thus this information could be from anywhere between mid-2016 and late 2017. Even if all of it is 100% true, including Square's confusion, plenty of time has passed since then for things to change.

 

[Shroob]

So...I referenced something that suggesst more character cuts than just the rumored Hero and Byleth and the essentially confirmed Min Min and Pyra/Mythra, and this shocks you because it has something against Geno's inclusion...when the argument I'm making has nothing to do with Geno and is all about proof of the base game being rushed?

You referenced something that flat out said that Geno wasn't even considered because Square saw no merit to him. You could have picked any leak, why in the world would you pick that one? That just feels really, really odd, especially since there's no shortage of leaks that claim to have stuff that missed the boat for base.

You...you do know that people can want a character but be based in reality, right? If this shocks you, it's because you have a diluted pre-conception of either me, Geno fans as a whole, or both.

That has nothing to do with what I said. I legitimately don't care if people want Geno or not, what I'm shocked at is you picking a leak which basically says "Lul Geno was never even considered because Square thinks the character is bunk." That seems odd.

Also, evidence of Geno being denied for the base game =/= evidence against Geno after the base game. Also, regardless of the validity of it, this person's suggestion of Square's reasoning makes very little sense: this fanbase has always been about Geno coming back in some form and wanting SMRPG to get the recognition we believe it deserves as well some sort of continuation of the franchise. Whether that starts with Geno in Smash (much like Megaman) or with them just making a new SMRPG in some fashion doesn't matter, so there can be no confusion if they were truly paying attention. We want SMRPG and Geno and they characters they have held hostage for decades to make some sort of grand return. We just want more SMRPG, in ANY shape or form. This would clearly mean that they could take essentially any avenue that leads to SMRPG content in something official and it would receive mostly positive response.

I mean, I 100% agree it makes very little sense, but then why bring it up at all? You can't pick and choose in regards to leaks. You don't get to point at the part where it suggests Chun Li and Tales of were cut, but then sweep the Geno part under the rug. If you accept the part where it says that Chun Li and Tales of were cut, then you also have to accept that Geno was never on the table, and like I said before, it's a silly leak that should not be taken seriously.

Anyway, that possible leak more suggested that Sephy was simply chosen over Geno, which makes sense given how FF was shorted on content and Sakurai was miffed about that, and how Square was basically setup to make money off of anything FF7 in the coming years. However, neither Geno or Sephy made base game, which benefitted both Nintendo and Square to make more money off of Sephy in the future after the massive success of FF7R.

Fair enough.

Finally, this is talking about base game, thus this information could be from anywhere between mid-2016 and late 2017. Even if all of it is 100% true, including Square's confusion, plenty of time has passed since then for things to change.

Also fair enough.

 

[EricTheGamerman]

I'm hung up about it because Nintendo had poor planning and business sense, and all the older fans of Smash (which is the core audience btw) suffers because of it as well as the game's potential.

I'm not sure how people who do realize that the game is rushed and that multiple DLC choices have been to fix those mistakes instead of putting in requested characters could NOT be upset about their decisions. There are literally denying choices from a list 20+ years in the making because of THEIR decision to push this game out so fast when it could have just waited until 2019.

Let me try explaining this one more time, for those in the back: Ultimate's base game was rushed to come out quickly to sell the Switch, just like what happened with Melee and the Gamecube. Ultimate shares many of the same traits with Melee, which is a rushed game itself, such as padding the roster with clone characters and having a number of characters cut. The Switch had major titles in both it's launch year and in 2018 that would have carried even if both Tres Casas and Ultimate got delayed to 2019: BotW, Splatoon 2, MK8 Deluxe, and Odyssey in 2017 and Octopath Traveler, Aces, Let's Go, and Star Allies in 2018. This of course doesn't include all the indie games and big third party ports that would have carried both of these years, which means Sakurai should have been allowed to delay Ultimate into 2019, if not into 2020 since 2019 had bangers like LM3, Astral Chain, Link's Awakening, Ring Fit and SMM2.

But, since Nintendo was being greedy and not caring about the end result of the product and focused more on release dates, EVEN THOUGH THEY DELAYED BOTH FIRE EMBLEM AND ANIMAL CROSSING, Ultimate HAD to release when it did and got no special treatment despite being a massive system seller no matter when it would have released. So, because of the WiiU and despite Smash always selling well, it was thought best to rush this game out as fast as possible.

Rushing this game means cutting characters and reusing lots of assets. All the veterans are reusing assets. All the echoes are reusing assets. Most of the stages are reused assets. Most of the music is reused assets. Melee has a VERY long list of characters cut both in concept and later stages: both Sakurai's statements and the rumor mill suggest that Ultimate is sharing the same fate. The biggest ones to talk about are Byleth, Min Min and Pyra/Mythra because had they delayed the game, it's incredibly likely they would have been in the base game. That opens up three DLC slots thought could have been bigger character requests, but instead now they are simply making Nintendo even more money while disappointing fans. Hero is also up for debate, which would mean four potential slots for bigger requests.

Delaying would have also given the time to fix many of the problems of the game and the complaints, like WoL being incredibly lackluster, or the lack of game modes, the lack of new stages...basically, delaying the game for a single year makes the game better in quality by a significant amount.

Also, just because companies do practices that vary on the scale between proper additions and pure corporate greed doesn't mean we need to excuse a company we expect more of for doing the same thing. Also, you can claim "if's and maybe", but the fact is that Sakurai specifically stated that ARMS and XBC2 couldn't get in due to development timing. This suggests that they WOULD have made the base game if the timing was better, something that WOULD be if the game was delayed to 2019. It's also very clear that Nintendo wanted to shill Byleth for Ultimate to promote Tres Casas, something they could have been planned for the base game originally, but didn't happen because it got delayed. Delaying Ultimate to Dec 2019 allows you to do exactly what they did with Byleth anyway, but without it being a DLC character, which would have been much more well received (this is because instead of both being Nintendo shilling, pushing more FE, AND being DLC the character would at least be base game so people wouldn't feel like a DLC slot got wasted).

Also, implying they would do less DLC because more characters made the base roster is ridiculous: we know any and all DLC plans happened sometime in 2018 because that was when the game was announced, which caused enough hype for Nintendo to push Sakurai into making DLC. This means that DLC was decided upon after the roster was already ironed out, meaning that having more characters in the base game would have had little to no impact on this decision other than clearing the way for other character choices. Implying that they would have done a three or four character pass for that reason is silly when they could just simply do the same amount of characters in each pass and make more money that way.

My biggest reason for talking about this is that nobody else is really talking about it. Even with the lackluster DLC choices that are fixing mistakes THEY made by rushing the launch of the game, no one is pointing out the core problem of why these character decisions are being made for DLC and people are acting as if Ultimate is perfect as a game when it's actually done less than games like Brawl, Smash 4, or even Melee. It's for the same reason I am hard on people who think Sword and Shield was an acceptable game for the first $60 mainline Pokemon game, or about people who still defended No Man's Sky or Fallout 76 during their initial launch periods: we have a problem with gamers accepting unfinished and unpolished games, and companies are taking advantage of being able to put in less time and effort and charge the same price, and yet somehow gamers are defending the AAA companies from criticism instead of demanding quality games worth their money.

Ultimate is a GOOD game, a solid 6 or 7 out of 10. However, it could have been a GREAT or FANTASTIC game, but corporate greed stifled that and continues to do so. This is why I hope it gets regular updates during the Switch's lifecycle, even if we get no more characters, to at least try to bring it closer to what it could and SHOULD have been. The biggest issues is that everyone was so blinded by the hype of a small couple of requests that nobody talked about it when it mattered, so it may be too late to make a difference to improve this game.

So...I referenced something that suggesst more character cuts than just the rumored Hero and Byleth and the essentially confirmed Min Min and Pyra/Mythra, and this shocks you because it has something against Geno's inclusion...when the argument I'm making has nothing to do with Geno and is all about proof of the base game being rushed?

You...you do know that people can want a character but be based in reality, right? If this shocks you, it's because you have a diluted pre-conception of either me, Geno fans as a whole, or both.

Also, evidence of Geno being denied for the base game =/= evidence against Geno after the base game. Also, regardless of the validity of it, this person's suggestion of Square's reasoning makes very little sense: this fanbase has always been about Geno coming back in some form and wanting SMRPG to get the recognition we believe it deserves as well some sort of continuation of the franchise. Whether that starts with Geno in Smash (much like Megaman) or with them just making a new SMRPG in some fashion doesn't matter, so there can be no confusion if they were truly paying attention. We want SMRPG and Geno and they characters they have held hostage for decades to make some sort of grand return. We just want more SMRPG, in ANY shape or form. This would clearly mean that they could take essentially any avenue that leads to SMRPG content in something official and it would receive mostly positive response.

Anyway, that possible leak more suggested that Sephy was simply chosen over Geno, which makes sense given how FF was shorted on content and Sakurai was miffed about that, and how Square was basically setup to make money off of anything FF7 in the coming years. However, neither Geno or Sephy made base game, which benefitted both Nintendo and Square to make more money off of Sephy in the future after the massive success of FF7R.

Finally, this is talking about base game, thus this information could be from anywhere between mid-2016 and late 2017. Even if all of it is 100% true, including Square's confusion, plenty of time has passed since then for things to change.

So you're going to write this big long essay yet again doubling down and just like not even confront the possibility that more DLC slots doesn't actually mean more "requested as by the old guard fighters" and could just have been more picks from other recent and relevant Nintendo games? Like ignore all the other work I did questioning your argument before and challenging certain things, that's a rather essential component that you have to make a compelling argument for before you can even really make the broader points. Nintendo doesn't magically change with a year of extra development and there will be a virtually never ending "If you extend the game, you're missing these new important Nintendo characters". Like I said, it'd just be Ring Fit Adventure, Astral Chain, and Pokemon Sword/Shield in place of ARMS, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and Fire Emblem Three Houses.

Also, I think it's wildly attempting to rewrite history to say that Mario Tennis Aces, Kirby Star Allies, and Pokemon Let's Go (the streamlined and somewhat mobile inspired second remake of Kanto) could have held down 2018 when people were really vocal about how lackluster and port heavy the 2018 lineup was for Switch even with Smash as the major anchor and all three of those releases did not exactly release to critical acclaim lol.

And you can quit with the holier than thou "the gamers accepting lackluster products" as well. Ultimate got damn near universal praise from everyone, from critical reviews to much of the competitive community and so on. Games like Pokemon Sword/Shield, Fallout 76, etc. didn't get that same courtesy and got called out by a lot of people.

All this comes down to is a convoluted and unnecessarily long way to say "Geno would have a better chance if their were more open DLC slots". Which, yeah, that's true for him and a lot of other characters. You wouldn't be posting it here in the Geno thread at the nth hour before the final fighter is revealed with Geno out of speculation with the end of Ultimate fast approaching if that wasn't the case. I've seen people work really hard to "prove" some convoluted point about Smash that ends up favoring their personal picks, but this is genuinely one of the more forced ones I've seen if I'm being honest. And the fact that you pulled a completely unsubstantiated claim on every level about Chun-Li and a Tales characters is just the cherry on top.

 

[WeirdChillFever]

I don’t think Aegis and Min Min would be in the base game even if they gave us a 2019 release date. They were too early for the project plan regardless of deadline of the game development itself. The DLC also wouldn’t have followed the base game formula of adding all Smash requested characters with them “out of the way” automatically.

Besides that, I don’t feel like you’re specifically the only one to notice the lack of new stages, modes etc., so I’m not sure why you’re using that tone of voice to imply like we’ve never seen the lack of All Star mode before.
Overall, you make a point that’s not new, with bravado and confidence that these things would not have just made the game better (which I’d agree with) while also suddenly catering it to your exact tastes (which I disagree with)

 

[Deleted member]

All this comes down to is a convoluted and unnecessarily long way to say "Geno would have a better chance if their were more open DLC slots". Which, yeah, that's true for him and a lot of other characters.

You hit the nail on the head here, I just have to make the argument that more slots don't necessarily improve an individual character's chances as it improves the odds for every character not already in the game... This itself already assumes that the odds of a given character getting in are equal to one another based on some kind of lottery, which I think we can safely say it is not.

I'm honestly starting to take offense to the idea that Ultimate was "rushed". It had more cook time (and needed less) than Melee, which is what an actual rushed game looks like, and it's the kind of take that really seems to stem from having very little idea how a game even gets made, and I'm talking about the boring parts too, where a director pitches the idea to a higher up, or the project is ordered by a higher up. Ultimate was either pitched as or ordered as a game to be released in December of 2018. Period. There's no "Nintendo forced it out the door to be ready for Christmas" or whatever other convenience one may be able to conjure. Assuming we know for real that development started in 2015 or 2016, that's when they nailed down when it would be done. That's the kind of thing Sakurai would have agreed to or suggested himself. That's it.

As I've stated before, Spring Man's assist trophy and the Rex Mii costume are proof enough that even with an extra year, Sakurai or some bean counter at Nintendo didn't see value in including an ARMS or XC2 fighter. Going back to the "boring parts", there probably still exists a design document for Ultimate somewhere that explicitly states how much content they had planned for that development timespan. Maybe if this were an indie game you'd have a leg to stand on with wishful thinking about an extra year's worth of dev time, but Sakurai and team weren't sitting around in September of 2018 saying "damn it all, if only we had more time, Spring Man could have been a full fledged fighter!" That's what they said with Piranha Plant, and we got him soon after the game launched because that was in their project plan and it just didn't make final cut (unless of course, it was just a marketing scheme).

Roy and Greninja, maybe Byleth and to an arguably lesser extent Pit (as presented in Brawl) are all characters that prove that any character can be added to Smash at any point in their game's development. As long as a character has a design and some information about how they fight, Sakurai can make a character out of them. If they had intended to put them in, they didn't necessarily even have to have a name in the aforementioned design document - just a place for XC2 character and ARMS character would be all, but they went with non-fighters. At the end of the day I think what we have to admit is that Fighter Pass 2 "really is extra". It wasn't in any way, shape or form planned during development of the game, and it isn't some attempt at making up for lost ground in the base game.

 

[Icewolff92]

So Nintendo killed a P+ tournament yesterday and the fandom is already silent. So much for that backlash

 

[EricTheGamerman]

I do wanna address another thing that came up with regards to the "core audience" and that does kind of fundamentally still bother me as an attempt to once again prop up certain characters and just outright deny others a place. Again, if you don't like the DLC, you don't like the DLC and I'm not here to convince you otherwise. There's always going to be personal preferences in regards to what people enjoy and want...

But I think the framing of the DLC occasionally ends up all wrong too. For one thing, writing off characters as "Nintendo profited from this choice, so we can't really count them as a fan request" blows my mind. Nobody was trying to say Charizard or Diddy Kong or Wario weren't meeting fan requests when they appeared in Brawl despite having many recent games/appearances. Nobody who wanted Little Mac gave the slightest damn it was because he had a recent game when he appeared in Smash 4, nor did people care when Mewtwo came back despite him getting a huge push in X/Y with Mega Evolutions. This was an argument I had never seen until Ultimate hit when suddenly more and more niche fan requests were up and people were looking for a reason to inflate their value. And that's such a slippery slope that can eventually devalue almost every character except for like Banjo & Kazooie. Does Ridley not count as a fan request because he recently appeared in Samus Returns and Nintendo wanted to push Metroid again going into the Switch era for example? And you can see where that gets messy real fast.

As for like the "core audience", I don't think that entirely works with something as wide and as encompassing as Smash. Smash isn't some small indie game or some niche franchise relying on a dedicated core group of players to keep it alive. It's one of the highest selling franchises that appeals to millions upon millions of people. Even as far back as Melee, you already had 7 million copies sold of that game. That's not some small singular minded audience, that's a wide audience with a diverse set of tastes and ideas about what they enjoy and what they want. You then had 13 million in Brawl and a base line 9 million in Smash 4 (people who bought the 3DS game since we can't account for how many did or did not buy the Wii U version as well). That's a huge audience that then immediately balloons to almost 25 million as of this post.

Now if I'm as charitable as I possibly can be to the definition of a core audience as those who voted on the ballot (and I'm equally charitable and assume every ballot cost was unique, which we definitely no it was not with how many people went out of their way to vote on other IPs/computers/etc. but I'm being charitable), we have a "core audience of 2 million players" worth of data Nintendo sees and that we cannot. If I'm once again charitable as possible, maybe half a million of those people are in the US and active on online forums to the point that their ideas get on to the fan conducted polls. Even from the raw ballot numbers of 2 million you're talking about less than a quarter of all Smash players, and in Ultimate's case, less than a 1/10th. The base roster meanwhile catered heavily towards that group with Ridley, King K. Rool, Dark Samus, Chrom, Simon Belmont, and Richter Belmont have ties directly to the ballot and that's even excluding the also extremely popular Inkling. That's 50% (3/6) of the fully unique fighters and 54.5% (6/11) of the base game fighters to begin with. That's a pretty disproportionate lean in favor of the "core audience" to begin with. Even if we add in just Banjo & Kazooie from the DLC and then consider every other fighter added, we get 29% (7/24 total) focused at the supposed "core audience" and that's with me actively not including characters that were actively requested like Inkling, Pyra/Mythra, Hero, and Steve (not to mention Sephiroth could be argued here as an invisible support because people didn't consider him even really possible or probable so they didn't actively support him in fan communities much). So you see how despite being such a small portion of Smash's audience, the "core audience" as I've loosely and generously defined here has still been catered to quite a bit.

Now what's the broader point of this big post? Not to say that the core audience has had enough, but more to just contextualize the whole discussion and why expecting Nintendo to suddenly have a fundamental shift in how they pick characters with a heavy emphasis towards just that audience isn't the most realistic idea. They've got a lot of voices to appeal to and are even looking to expand the number of voices behind Smash. I just don't think it's entirely fair to say Ultimate hasn't catered to the "core audience" when it just hasn't exclusively catered to them is more of the reality. Yes, the DLC has been more broadly reaching and has had less obscure and niche picks on average, but the base game really does seem to have been the main opportunity to do the "core audience" heavy lifting. And like I said, it's gets messier when picks like Pyra/Mythra and Steve definitely had growing popularity in the early days of Smash Ultimate. And I also don't think it's entirely fair to base popularity on polls, when the likes of Geno and Banjo & Kazooie were far from people's minds in Smash 4 until their circumstances changed with Mii Costume and Phil Spencer opening up the opportunity for Banjo & Kazooie. There's sort of a natural progression of character popularity that comes and goes and sometimes fairly popular options within the core audience don't get a chance to shine until people think they're more possible as we've seen through Ultimate. I mean no one benefited more from such a thing than Geno IMO, because that Mii Costume really re-ignited a fan base struggling to hang on in the Smash 4 era.

 

[Dan]

And besides, this is why they won't release the entire set of results. Clearly people aren't willing to play nice and just accept some got votes higher than others

Bruh, if they posted the results there would literally be no debate.

Well, no. It said she was 1st in Europe and top 5 in US. Nobody was told us 1st worldwide. Unless you thought it was another character who was that, like King K. Rool?

omfg dude: