Gotta Keep 'em separated! Should they have stayed?

[YT123]

Now, now. The separation was more likely to technical reasons for the 3DS than anything else, rather than a developer choice. I doubt Sakurai's Brawl team would have made transformations work on the 3DS either.

You should have heard the speculation when the community started talking about transformation characters on the 3DS. We made several sensible, reasonable claims that ended up being true. Zelda/Sheik, Samus/ZSS, Pokemon Trainer, Olimar only having 3 Pikmin, a lot of us were actually expecting this.

Yeah I think that's true. About a year ago, Sakurai said that they had some issues with characters like the Ice Climbers, so it's pretty clear that the 3DS isn't able to handle everything like the Wii and Gamecube could.

 

[Xigger]

Yeah I think that's true. About a year ago, Sakurai said that they had some issues with characters like the Ice Climbers, so it's pretty clear that the 3DS isn't able to handle everything like the Wii and Gamecube could.

We had a thread about this months ago in the general discussion. We took from that interview, and predicted every character-specific change:

• Transformations would face changes
• Pokemon Trainer not returning was almost a unanimous guarantee
• 3 Pikmin we also guessed was for technical limitations, but so did everyone else

Though Ice Climbers are harder to guess. It all comes down to the programming. We may see a 30 fps Ice Climber, a drastic change, or removal altogether.

 

[Capybara Gaming]

Another choice I hate. I liked Zelda/Sheik swapping out - they were unique.

 

[Floor]

Not all obvious choices are gone yet; Ganondorf, Falco, Wario, Ness, Cpt. Falcon, etc. are yet to be confirmed.

I don't know. Brawl had 35 characters. Sakurai said there would be a limitaion due to the 3DS operation, so I'd bet 40 is reasonable. 29 are taken. You could probaly fit some of those on there but think Sakurai hinted at something when he said "No everyone is making it"(or something similar enough).Cpt. Falcon and ness are likly safe, and maybe Jigglypuff will follow mario in maxing out the rep size at 5 per franchise.
I'm trying not to derail too much here, but Wolf or Falco have a chance, I'm not sure both do. Falco has senority, but Wolf represents villans and a lot of people use him as their main (3 out of my 5 friend I play with use him. I make 4, he is my favorite).Not sure about ganondorf and Wario. We also have to consider the percent of the roster for newcomers. ANYTHING can happened, as proved by Wii Fit Trainer, Greninja, and Wii Fit Trainer. Not all the obvious picks seem to be that obvious, is all I'm saying.

 

[Takehiko]

Players are easily able to change into Zamus during a fight - up down up in quick succession is easy to pull off, particularly when someone is star ko'd.

They were just interesting mechanics to each player, and I mean, when you went into a fight, at least competitively, if you were going against Zelda, you knew you had the possibility of fighting Sheik. Same with Samus. Except you knew if she changed to Zamus, you would fight her for the rest of the fight.

I think its complete bogus that final smashes still have transformations. Maybe Zelda's Final smash will allow her to have access to Sheik for a small amount of time.

Probably a 0.00019% change of that happening.

I'm still really hurt by the change. But it doesn't matter; I have to get used to it.

Oh. I didn't know that She could transform without using her ult

 

[Katy Parry]

Oh. I didn't know that She could transform without using her ult

Yeah, you mean her FS? You got League on the brain.

And yeah she can, she just can't change back.

 

[Erimir]

There are now 29 spots taken up. The obvious choices are gone, like mario and llink. On top of that, only 6 or 7 are newcomers. (Depending if you want to count Charizard as new, though officaly he is not). The remaining spots are probaly newcomers(if we want a neat ratio of newcomers and veterans). (assuming a respectable 40 character roster, due to the 3DS's limitations).
Just take a moment to think about the size of the roster, and think about the cuts. Do we NEED these spots for the separations? If all goes accoridngly, no one's "wants" will even come close to making it. Let's just hope the roster will exceed 40

Why do you think the 3DS has a limitation on the size of the roster? The roster size is a matter of storage space, it only needs to load the characters currently fighting into RAM. And since it's not disc-based, load times are very fast, which decreases the need for that even more. To be honest, I'm not even sure this change was made due to hardware limitations.

Pokemon X/Y has hundreds of Pokemon, hundreds of attacks, bunches of trainers and locations, etc. Why do you think Smash would be limited to 40 playable characters? And why would this change affect it anyway? They'd have the same problem if transformations were still in, it only affects the character select screen.

3DS cartridges have plenty enough space. And even if they're running up on size limitations, they probably cut back on the music for the 3DS to make more room for stages and characters.

Sakurai himself said he thinks of the roster in terms of move sets, not select screen slots. This change makes me think we'll see a slightly larger roster screen, that's all.

And if you're just thinking of displaying the whole roster on the screen, well... I wouldn't be surprised if the roster select screen scrolled or used both screens or something like that to keep the character boxes large enough. Plenty of fighting games have handled select screens in such ways.

Though Ice Climbers are harder to guess. It all comes down to the programming. We may see a 30 fps Ice Climber, a drastic change, or removal altogether.

Rosalina and Luma are on there just fine. It doesn't seem like Nana should be much harder (maybe not harder at all) to handle as far as AI, but graphically yeah she's more complicated.

 

[Ryu Myuutsu]

Wii discs hold 4.7 gigs while dual layered ones have 8.54.
A 3DS cartridge can hold 8 gigs. Brawl had around 7 gigs with the subspace emissary and the cut-scenes taking a considerable chunk of space.

Since we won't have something like that this time, I'm not even worried about storage issues. They can perfectly fit a roster of 40 something even on the 3DS version. I've always assumed that this game's roster will end up slightly bigger than Brawl's.

 

[pupNapoleon]

Once again, the transformations prove more of a difficulty to the characters than the ice climbers or roster size ever could.

@ Floor

If we are going by storage, which you are as you say a cap for roster size in terms of storage, then Brawl had 39 characters.

 

[Capybara Gaming]

I'm sticking to my prediction. 50 characters FTW.

 

[Floor]

I was going off of the character select page, not the actual storgae size, like charizard ivysaur and squirtle are three and not one like Pkmn trainer. Regardless of which way you want to look at it, sakurai is discontinuing these kind of multi-character characters, so the two figures will the the same this time around.
Now I'm not an expert here on hardware, but from a programming standpoint, adding an additional character to your existing character (like adding sheik off zelda) isn't That time consuming and shouldn't take up as much storage as you'd think. Although I'm not the expert, I have to take about hardware for a moment.
http://bgr.com/2012/09/13/nintendo-wii-u-hardware-specs-revealed/ says that a wii U disc can hold 25 gigs, while a 3ds cartidge can hold up to 8 gigs. It should matter as much if we are looking at possible operations on the 3ds's system vs the wii u's, or if we are comparing storage capacity, the 3ds sets a cap somewhere for characters. Perhaps wherever I heard this from was stretching it. I didn't know until my research and @Ryu Myuuysu that the 3ds could hold so much.
That 8GBs is going to have to stretch. We probaly have a subspace, a larger roster, and this "Kirby-AirRide esq" deal Sakurai mention during Direct. It's doable, but has to be monitered.

 

[pupNapoleon]

@ Floor
It has been confirmed we will not get subspace, but something between Adventure mode form Melee and SE.
Also, I'm not sure what you meant

Now I'm not an expert here on hardware, but from a programming standpoint, adding an additional character to your existing character (like adding sheik off zelda) isn't That time consuming and shouldn't take up as much storage as you'd think.

Is the statement her that its much more time consuming to have sheik to zelda (but them separately take more time to program), or that they dont take long in transformation?

 

[Erimir]

It's also possible that Smash Run is there partly to make up for a reduced Adventure Mode compared to the Wii U version.

I'm pretty confident the 3DS won't limit the size of the roster. The roster is the most important part, so if he needs to make cuts for space, he'll find other things to cut or reduce (cinematics, music, adventure mode, stages).

 

[pupNapoleon]

I

I'm pretty confident the 3DS won't limit the size of the roster. The roster is the most important part, so if he needs to make cuts for space, he'll find other things to cut or reduce (cinematics, music, adventure mode, stages).

I agree, and maybe sakurai does now given his acknowledgement in the direct of characters being the part people were waiting for...
but in brawl he certainly did not think it was the most important, I'm sure he even said so

 

[roymustang1990-]

Put lore aside, and realize the two characters had absolutely zero synergy. The concept they had with designing Sheik in Melee never came to fruition.

Sheik doesn't need Zelda to get kills.
Zelda, balance aside, doesn't need Sheik to rack up damage.

And for the VAST MINORITY who would EVER transform, it is certainly not fair to take away one of my potential specials.

Yes,this,so much this. All transformation characters had no good synergy to begin with,people have to remember that smash bros isn't a tag team game like(marvel vs capcom,tatsunoko vs capcom)it just makes more sense to separate them for the better.

 

[Knight Dude]

Well, at first, it seemed a little weird to split them up. But I do like the idea of it though. At least now people who mostly use one(like how I use Sheik a fair bit)don't need to be dragged down by the other.

 

[Exia 00]

No. Just, no.

This game clearly is focused much more heavily on competition, half the direct proved that (for glory, ranking system, final destinations of all stages)
Transformations just werent being balanced well... at all. At all at all.

Are you disagreeing with me? I dont see how your post has anything to do with mine.

 

[Critzilean]

(For you guys discussing disc/cartridge space) The WiiU version will have more stages, music, etc. The game seems to being built around the roster this time around with stages and whatnot being lower priority, so the character count most likely will not suffer at all

Also, if need be couldn't they just have free DLC on release that would be anything that didn't fit on the 3DS version?

 

[Oniric Spriter]

If separating them means Sheik looks more fun to play as it's perfectly fine for me.
Seriously, look at her, he looks even more enjoyable than in Melee.

 

[pupNapoleon]

Are you disagreeing with me? I dont see how your post has anything to do with mine.

You mean other than you saying 'this was done entirely for technical constraints' and my saying 'it is done for the competitive factor?' You don't see the disagreement?

 

[Exia 00]

You mean other than you saying 'this was done entirely for technical constraints' and my saying 'it is done for the competitive factor?' You don't see the disagreement?

I see.

So the game is built with competition in mind, and that is why transformations are gone. I dunno bud.. lol

 

[pupNapoleon]

I see.

So the game is built with competition in mind, and that is why transformations are gone. I dunno bud.. lol

....yes.

Did you see the emphasis on for glory mode? The accommodations for Battlefield*? His statements on this game being as fun for newbies as brawl, but also as competitive as melee?

Do you see the necessity of this game to succeed for Nintendo, as its highest selling console franchise consistently, to be recognized in this genre again, to people who have lost hope in Nintendo as a company for hardcore gamers?



*or er, final destination, whichever

 

[Exia 00]

....yes.

Did you see the emphasis on for glory mode? The accommodations for Battlefield*? His statements on this game being as fun for newbies as brawl, but also as competitive as melee?

Do you see the necessity of this game to succeed for Nintendo, as its highest selling console franchise consistently, to be recognized in this genre again, to people who have lost hope in Nintendo as a company for hardcore gamers?



*or er, final destination, whichever

What does any of that have to do with the transformations?

competitive =/= hardcore

Don't be naive, Nintendo doesn't need us. Technical issues are probably more influential to the development of the game than we are.

 

[Ryu Myuutsu]

Technical issues and hopefully for balancing factors of course, Sakurai already stated before that he is aiming for balance.

....yes.

Did you see the emphasis on for glory mode? The accommodations for Battlefield*? His statements on this game being as fun for newbies as brawl, but also as competitive as melee?

Do you see the necessity of this game to succeed for Nintendo, as its highest selling console franchise consistently, to be recognized in this genre again, to people who have lost hope in Nintendo as a company for hardcore gamers?



*or er, final destination, whichever

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but what?
Nintendo is not trying to be recognized by the hardcore "crowd" or be "back in the genre" again. They are looking to keep doing what they do the best: make fun games. This smash iteration is aspiring to strike a balance between people who like to play just for fun and for the ones who like competition.
Besides, the notion of being under the label of a "hardcore" gamer is laughable and juvenile. You stop caring about stuff like after high school, where your other classmates will tell you "What, you play Mario? What a kiddy game. I play grown-up stuff like Grand Theft Auto". As you grow up, your tastes broaden but I still play Nintendo games because they are fun, not because I need to think of myself as a "true" gamer. Why do you think a lot of gamers in their mid 20s play stuff like Pokemon and Kingdom Hearts while 13 and 15 year olds exclusively play military shooters?
Smash Bros. will sell but not on the silly notion of Nintendo thinking "Hey, look at me! I'm hardcore again!"

 

[pupNapoleon]

What does any of that have to do with the transformations?

competitive =/= hardcore

Don't be naive, Nintendo doesn't need us. Technical issues are probably more influential to the development of the game than we are.

Um... do some homework on where they are at.
Competitive, in a fighting game, means real gamers play.
Like for money.
Is anything more hardcore than earning money playing a video game?
What are you even saying at this point, buddy?

 

[Exia 00]

Um... do some homework on where they are at.
Competitive means real gamers play.
What are you even saying at this point, buddy?

There is no convincing you, I'm done

What I'm saying is, it is more likely that the transformations are gone due to technical issues on the 3DS than it is for them to be gone because of character balance (for the "hardcore" 2% of their sales)

 

[The Real Gamer]

Competitive means real gamers play.

O really?

 

[pupNapoleon]

Technical issues and hopefully for balancing factors of course, Sakurai already stated before that he is aiming for balance.



I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but what?
Nintendo is not trying to be recognized by the hardcore "crowd" or be "back in the genre" again. They are looking to keep doing what they do the best: make fun games. This smash iteration is aspiring to strike a balance between people who like to play just for fun and for the ones who like competition.
Besides, the notion of being under the label of a "hardcore" gamer is laughable and juvenile. You stop caring about stuff like after high school, where your other classmates will tell you "What, you play Mario? What a kiddy game. I play grown-up stuff like Grand Theft Auto". As you grow up, your tastes broaden but I still play Nintendo games because they are fun, not because I need to think of myself as a "true" gamer. Why do you think a lot of gamers in their mid 20s play stuff like Pokemon and Kingdom Hearts while 13 and 15 year olds exclusively play military shooters?
Smash Bros. will sell but not on the silly notion of Nintendo thinking "Hey, look at me! I'm hardcore again!"

From a corporate standpoint, it is about Money. Fun, yes of course, but for survival, money. This has nothing to do with school yard pride, at all, I'm not in the slightest talking about myself. This has nothing to do with the individuals.
Nintendo cares much about making fun games, but in terms of video games, they arent looking to be overshadowed by every other company, that is foolish. In fact, they are working on what is deemed a 'quality of life home console.' Quite possibly, like with the ds taking over the gameboy but not being marketed to do so until it proved successful, it could be used to shield and then takeover their home console market.

But this is just based on stock prices, their loss of ground, minus the Wii, since the 5th generation of gaming- yep.

Are they failing? Absolutely not. But are they declining? Yes. Would a corporation want to change that? Well, if you decide no, then I think this sentiment is pretty much over anyway.

There is no convincing you, I'm done

What I'm saying is, it is more likely that the transformations are gone due to technical issues on the 3DS than it is for them to be gone because of character balance (for the "hardcore" 2% of their sales)

I feel quite similarly. I'm sure Nintendo doesnt even care that Brawl isnt played at many fighting competitions.

Side note, factor in that transformations got far too out of hand. One.. fine. Three... what?

 

[ZombieBran]

Just my 2 cents as a Shielda (in PM and other Brawl mods only, anyway)

I like this change. Even if mostly because I'm pretty sure the 3DS would have Brawl level load times for Transform, which pretty much cripples it's use as anything but a gimmick.

Maybe now both Sheik and Zelda will be good at both racking up damage and killing.
(Especially since Brawl Zelda was not really good at either of those things)

 

[TeamFlareZakk]

Zero Suit was a good idea to separate into her own character, Metroid needs more reps even if is two different versions of Samus, but I think Sheik should of been removed altogether after being separated from Zelda.

 

[Ryu Myuutsu]

Sheik is a two (now three) times veteran. Removing her from the game even if she is separated from Zelda wouldn't have made any sense and since the character has been in the smash games over the last 14 years if would have done more damage than good. Why do people seem to act that having both of them in the roster is a herculean task? Does the idea of having them both on their own is too incomprehensible or what? I'll never understand.

 

[SmashShadow]

All I can think about when I see the title:

 

[Floor]

@ Floor
It has been confirmed we will not get subspace, but something between Adventure mode form Melee and SE.
Also, I'm not sure what you meant


Is the statement her that its much more time consuming to have sheik to zelda (but them separately take more time to program), or that they dont take long in transformation?

I was saying, in general, you can essentialy call an object constructer or a function and have the backbones of a character. This, off course, is refering to the programming shell. For instance, lets say you are going to make a roster of 1 character. Let's say it takes you 1 week to program this character. However, you can do this so adding a second character will only take 1.5 weeks, not 2 weeks as you'd think. This is becasue a smart programmer will make functions and object constructers (for OOP), which is a HUGE help.
I could go more in depth if you'd like, but if you find yourslef in an argument about the time to make a game, correct someone when they claim "This game is having 40 or 50 characters! It's going to take a while!". Frankly, You can o ape-sh!* on them with programming and tell them they are inaccurate. It's quite fun, actually, becasue not very many people know the basics of programming.
Lastly(directed towards the forum, not DkeNapoleon), the 3DS can handle transformations. Just set a few variables in the shell. The reason they are changing is becasue of Sakuria's preference, I think.

 

[Erimir]

3DS is more powerful than GameCube, so it's doubtful that it can't handle them at least as well as that. It doesn't even have to load from disc.

Technical limitations could come in if they wanted them to happen at a certain speed and they couldn't get both systems to be equally fast (assuming there won't be any minor differences in how characters play on the two systems).

 

[pupNapoleon]

I was saying, in general, you can essentialy call an object constructer or a function and have the backbones of a character. This, off course, is refering to the programming shell. For instance, lets say you are going to make a roster of 1 character. Let's say it takes you 1 week to program this character. However, you can do this so adding a second character will only take 1.5 weeks, not 2 weeks as you'd think. This is becasue a smart programmer will make functions and object constructers (for OOP), which is a HUGE help.
I could go more in depth if you'd like, but if you find yourslef in an argument about the time to make a game, correct someone when they claim "This game is having 40 or 50 characters! It's going to take a while!". Frankly, You can o ape-sh!* on them with programming and tell them they are inaccurate. It's quite fun, actually, becasue not very many people know the basics of programming.
Lastly(directed towards the forum, not DkeNapoleon), the 3DS can handle transformations. Just set a few variables in the shell. The reason they are changing is becasue of Sakuria's preference, I think.

Yes... functions are how any department of math propel.
But is this actually accurate considering all characters are now, allegedly, running on their own individualized mechanics?

 

[Floor]

Yes... functions are how any department of math propel.
But is this actually accurate considering all characters are now, allegedly, running on their own individualized mechanics?

SSB can still make some use of functions. Are you a programmer? The game could call more basic functions when creating characters. Some simple things are universal for all characters. There could be one parent function that assigns property values to all the characters. Simple properties, like having them be playable, having a selectable picture. We'd just need a bunch of "this." methods.
Some, like size in px, can be called be the object creator using methods. The function could also allow input for the moveset. It could make it so the moveset is actually aviable, for starters. Basically, anything you'd overlook would be in a parent function used for all characters. There is a LOT going on in the console that we overlook. The characters are all vastly different, but they have more in common than you'd think, when it comes to programming the game.
Sorry about ranting, but functions in programming are similar to math functions, but they differ a bit in ways that I can't explain.

@ SmashShadow All I can think about when I see the title:

You got the reference!!! The Offspring is my favorite punk band I've know. Heard of "Gone Away"?

Why do you think the 3DS has a limitation on the size of the roster? The roster size is a matter of storage space, it only needs to load the characters currently fighting into RAM. And since it's not disc-based, load times are very fast, which decreases the need for that even more. To be honest, I'm not even sure this change was made due to hardware limitations.

Not sure I heard it from somewhere and never thought about it, but I guess I never shot it down because of it being a smaller console with SOME limitations. (It's got to have some, right? Though I'm sure it can HANDLE a character transformation, Sakurai just doesn't want them) Yes, a scrollable roster is probable.

 

[Hero of the Winds]

I liked being able to rack up damage as Sheik then BAM! KO as Zelda. But oh well we get what we get and I'm pretty excited for the new moves.

 

[Dunk Master]

Personally, I would have liked it if they put transformation on a taunt. It makes more sense since they are actually the same person. However, I have no complaints about having 2 different characters. I'm just glad they both have a real down special now

 

[Mushguy]

Yes, everyone can go back to thinking Sheik is a boy.

Or wishing that Sheik was never Zelda at all, because it appears that this is also pleasing the wrong type of people. Trust me, I've been there.

Well sheik looked feminine in brawl but masculine here. Maybe they've made sheik a man now? Like magical trans.

Which proves that the programmers don't know what kind of character they're dealing with, character-wise. Yet another turn-off for me (see those expressions they've given to Sheik? My goodness, she's supposed to be an alter ego of Zelda, programmers!).

 

[Mushguy]

Another choice I hate. I liked Zelda/Sheik swapping out - they were unique.

I agree with you. The worst part: We're being outnumbered. Guess we will have to wait until the next installment to see if they find out a way to please both styles of gameplay, because, let's face it, there will ALWAYS be someone who will enjoy swapping forms with this once unique character (my vote is turning the solo versions into new Zelda representatives and bringing back classic Sheik/Zelda).