I will not buy the next Smash game unless it makes these simple changes

[Princess Rescuer]

So, Smash Ultimate. It's fine I guess. Despite the name "Ultimate" it's more of a greatest hits than it is an upgrade. It feels endemic of the Switch, being more a collection of curated, ported content than an attempt at anything substantially new. Sure is priced like a new game though. Just makes me wonder what they'll do for the next console.

It's a "good" game. It's polished. It's pretty. It's stuffed with content (although the more "content" it has, the less you seem to get out of it). It's just missing something...

Oh yeah. Chances are, one player will be ridiculously skilled compared to everything else and everyone is bored.

Let's face it- Smash is old. It's existed for a solid two decades now. And while the games still remain what they were when they first came out, the playerbase hasn't. The skill gap is much greater. The good old days of bringing the game to get togethers and slumming it with casual friends are over. Few players will be interested in getting good by consistently getting thrown around by experts who hardly play any games other than Smash. Fortunately, I have a solution- a solution for the next Smash game (or maybe it can even be patched into this one) that will, for large sections of the playerbase, give newer Smash games the edge- and it's something the series has implemented since the beginning.

Individual player customization.

We already have those options menus that let you put Time in a Stock match, or give characters 2.0x the knockback. What if we added that in- but for every single PLAYER? You could adjust it so better players could give themselves fewer lives and receive more knockback. You'd be as easily defeated as a member of the Yoshi Team. Oh, and maybe even restrictions on which Items you could pick up. Or making it so a tie results in the worst player winning automatically. Even starting with a certain amount of Percentage. There are even "Special Smash Matches" where you can be normal while battling opponents who are Metal or Huge by default. And why limit Training Mode AI to just Training Mode? What I'm saying is, this type of Smash game would make for an amazing make-your-own-fun DIY spin-off.

Everything I'm asking for isn't "too complicated" or "too much work"- many of these things are in the Classic Mode of the first game or in the Events since Melee. The Events go even further- some of them featured six characters in one match (when you could only play with four and 5-8 players wouldn't be a reality for another two installments), items that were activated all the time, unique win conditions, starting you with enough % for Lucario to be at full power while the enemy is at 0%, music that can't usually appear in the stage, unplayable characters, and even stage transitions not possible in any other mode. And those things are often developed and used in just a couple of Events per game. What a waste! The future of Smash shouldn't be "more characters" or "more stages" it should be "more customization". The entire premise of the series is that you're playing with Nintendo action figures only limited by your imagination. That, more than any "proper adventure mode" is what I want for the next Smash- a game where I can have more control over the innards of the game to generate an effectively unlimited amount of "event" style matches. This will benefit new players who just want to have fun and it will benefit veteran players with deep knowledge of the game, eager to let it run wild. At the very least, such a feature set will be better than just letting you combine Stages together to create Moving Stages. Seriously, who uses that feature?

 

[Lenidem]

You're right. I'm significantly better at Smash than my best friend, who used to play Melee with me and has a Switch but doesn't own Ultimate. If I could play with two lives while he has three, it would be way more fun.

 

[Princess Rescuer]

This would especially work if you have the console/game and they don't. Most skill disparities come from one player owning the game and having that regular access to it. So many friendships would be kept together with these features. And it would make the games way deeper and more varied too.

A lot of Smash has to do with bedazzling you with hush-hush-wow character choices, elaborate "content" to chew through, and slick animations. These games plummet in popularity in favor of the next Smash game usually, including Melee and Brawl. Not only would customization increase the amount of things you can do and reduce the budget, your experiences would be more special to you do to how you personalized them, something no amount of production values and cutesy songs can achieve. One sacrifice with "more stuff" is that it becomes more disposable and matters less. The "toy box" approach I'm suggesting that lets you have things like individual lives, permanent metal bodies, and Training AI would make the content more numerous AND more special. The best of both worlds!

 

[Shroob]

You're right. I'm significantly better at Smash than my best friend, who used to play Melee with me and has a Switch but doesn't own Ultimate. If I could play with two lives while he has three, it would be way more fun.

I mean, it's not the cleanest solution but you literally could just suicide at the start.

This would especially work if you have the console/game and they don't. Most skill disparities come from one player owning the game and having that regular access to it. So many friendships would be kept together with these features. And it would make the games way deeper and more varied too.

A lot of Smash has to do with bedazzling you with hush-hush-wow character choices, elaborate "content" to chew through, and slick animations. These games plummet in popularity in favor of the next Smash game usually, including Melee and Brawl. Not only would customization increase the amount of things you can do and reduce the budget, your experiences would be more special to you do to how you personalized them, something no amount of production values and cutesy songs can achieve. One sacrifice with "more stuff" is that it becomes more disposable and matters less. The "toy box" approach I'm suggesting that lets you have things like individual lives, permanent metal bodies, and Training AI would make the content more numerous AND more special. The best of both worlds!

Pretty sure this game'll divide the community in the future, if anything.

Melee may have the competitive gameplay, but Ultimate will have the star studded roster that no game going forward will ever be able to topple, something that Sakurai has admitted himself. I 100% expect the community to split hard if the future games don't live up to the roster of this game, because let's face it, the characters make Smash what it is. If the next game doesn't have stuff like Ridley, K.Rool, Minecraft Steve, people will just play this game, regardless of all the flashy new stuff added. It's gonna be hard to justify a new game when the last game had a roster of nearly 90, 110+ stages and over 1k music tracks.

And as for Brawl.... it's got Subspace.... about all I can really say about it unless you mod PM into it.

 

[Princess Rescuer]

Having to create an honor system where all of your opponents wait around while the better players self-destruct before the match can get going isn't the same. It's a clunky workaround at best and eats away at the Time in a Stock Time match.

A Programmable Sandbox Smash would have five benefits: 1. More variety and content. 2. More content becomes more special instead of more disposable. 3. You could make this game cheaper or at least open up pre-existing feature sets adding little cost. 4. Players will balance the game for you and have fun doing so willingly. 5. All previous games, with a one-size-fits-all approach to Stock and Knockback would all become vastly less appealing. Any smart company would take this opportunity, especially the company that made bank on Mario Maker which is nothing but customizability.

I wasn't saying anything about "just making Melee and Brawl again" in fact I was making a suggestion that would most likely be positively received by everyone. Best of all, you wouldn't have to sacrifice ANYTHING- you want big rosters, you can have them. This feature set I am suggesting takes nothing away.

My problem with the "content" is how authored and creator-controlled it is- and it's to Nintendo's own detriment too. Nintendo probably spends lots of extra money on unique programming tricks and situations that end up being under-utilized. Cool ideas that I would love to see made into their own modes practically, not just in a few World of Light battles or Events. A fully customizable approach would let me do that- and it would rocket Ultimate to being my favorite Smash game if they patched those things in. Really, it would make previous games that much harder to go back to. Is Nintendo really afraid of doing less work, or are they afraid players would create more interesting challenges than they can?

Oh, and as a side, I don't care about anything Sakurai says. His job is to make games, not have opinions about them. His "opinions" will either be biased toward his current "baby" (the game he's currently invested in or had the most fun making) or are shill statements attached to a trustworthy public figure. Very rarely will developers/companies say the most recent game is anything but "their favorite" or "the biggest and bestest one" and if they actually do think that, who cares? What matters is what paying customers think, not them.

 

[Shroob]

Having to create an honor system where all of your opponents wait around while the better players self-destruct before the match can get going isn't the same. It's a clunky workaround at best and eats away at the Time in a Stock Time match.

A Programmable Sandbox Smash would have five benefits: 1. More variety and content. 2. More content becomes more special instead of more disposable. 3. You could make this game cheaper or at least open up pre-existing feature sets adding little cost. 4. Players will balance the game for you and have fun doing so willingly. 5. All previous games, with a one-size-fits-all approach to Stock and Knockback would all become vastly less appealing. Any smart company would take this opportunity, especially the company that made bank on Mario Maker which is nothing but customizability.

I wasn't saying anything about "just making Melee and Brawl again" in fact I was making a suggestion that would most likely be positively received by everyone. Best of all, you wouldn't have to sacrifice ANYTHING- you want big rosters, you can have them. This feature set I am suggesting takes nothing away.

My problem with the "content" is how authored and creator-controlled it is- and it's to Nintendo's own detriment too. Nintendo probably spends lots of extra money on unique programming tricks and situations that end up being under-utilized. Cool ideas that I would love to see made into their own modes practically, not just in a few World of Light battles or Events. A fully customizable approach would let me do that- and it would rocket Ultimate to being my favorite Smash game if they patched those things in. Really, it would make previous games that much harder to go back to. Is Nintendo really afraid of doing less work, or are they afraid players would create more interesting challenges than they can?

Oh, and as a side, I don't care about anything Sakurai says. His job is to make games, not have opinions about them. His "opinions" will either be biased toward his current "baby" (the game he's currently invested in or had the most fun making) or are shill statements attached to a trustworthy public figure. Very rarely will developers/companies say the most recent game is anything but "their favorite" or "the biggest and bestest one" and if they actually do think that, who cares? What matters is what paying customers think, not them.

Who was even talking about stuff like "Shill statements"? It was moreso to do with the fact that no, the next Smash game probably isn't going to be Ultimate 2 with 100+ characters, we're going to have a lot of cuts in regards to the next game. That's literally inevitable. Yeah, I kinda believe him when I look at all the legal red tape we'd need to cross to get every character back that we currently have for potential future games, Square Enix is hard enough as is, and didn't even want to play ball with Cloud coming back according to several insiders.


And like, that's great and all, but don't count on it. Nintendo isn't a VALVe or any other PC Developer who likes people to mod their games, they're pretty old school. It'd be neat and all, but a Sandbox Smash isn't happening probably. Ultimate's sold over 20million copies by this point, that kinda tells 'em "If it isn't broke, don't fix it."



Also, no offense, but the dramatic title of the thread isn't doing you much good, ya know? This isn't an official Nintendo forum, so it's not like the Smash team would even see it, and I don't mean to be rude, but I don't think anyone... really cares if you buy the next game, ya know?

 

[Princess Rescuer]

"Nintendo likes to keep it old school" Who cares what Nintendo wants? It's like Nintendo is giving me this huge bin full of Nintendo paraphernalia and when I try to explore it, they go "Oh no, you'll enjoy it only in ways we approve of!" and we only get the experiences Nintendo crafts for us.

Also about Nintendo "not liking mods because they're not a PC developer" Why should mods be limited to PC, especially when we've had this little series called MARIO MAKER for 5 years? And we've had Stage Builder mode since Brawl, which could be shared online since the beginning or at least since Smash 4. So why not allow per-player custom lives at least?

Oh, and Mario Maker primarily exists because Rom Hacks of Mario games have existed for decades and Nintendo wanted to claim them by putting them on their console. People have been making mods of Nintendo games on the PC long ago and they did so because they were passionate Nintendo fans utilizing tools Nintendo wasn't providing. Now they've become a lot more widespread (in a somewhat stripped down package) in Mario Maker. I expect there to be a 3D Mario Maker as well and I expect gobs of Super Mario 64 slides, Super Mario Sunshine Fluddless Block Levels, and Super Mario Galaxy Starball courses. something there were only 3 of in the original game (there already is in 3D Mario rom hacks).

If you really think about it, custom matches and custom events share a similarity to romhacks in that they are like fanfiction. And plenty of fanfiction is allowed to exist all over the place. The original products/franchises can still exist. Nintendo's 2D Mario levels remain far more popular than any Mario Maker level. Those haven't ruined Nintendo's creativity at all.

Seriously, these are suggestions that would further popularize and improve a franchise you already like, and I don't know why you're saying no.

 

[Shroob]

"Nintendo likes to keep it old school" Who cares what Nintendo wants? It's like Nintendo is giving me this huge bin full of Nintendo paraphernalia and when I try to explore it, they go "Oh no, you'll enjoy it only in ways we approve of!" and we only get the experiences Nintendo crafts for us.

Also about Nintendo "not liking mods because they're not a PC developer" Why should mods be limited to PC, especially when we've had this little series called MARIO MAKER for 5 years? And we've had Stage Builder mode since Brawl, which could be shared online since the beginning or at least since Smash 4. So why not allow per-player custom lives at least?

Oh, and Mario Maker primarily exists because Rom Hacks of Mario games have existed for decades and Nintendo wanted to claim them by putting them on their console. People have been making mods of Nintendo games on the PC long ago and they did so because they were passionate Nintendo fans utilizing tools Nintendo wasn't providing. Now they've become a lot more widespread (in a somewhat stripped down package) in Mario Maker. I expect there to be a 3D Mario Maker as well and I expect gobs of Super Mario 64 slides, Super Mario Sunshine Fluddless Block Levels, and Super Mario Galaxy Starball courses. something there were only 3 of in the original game (there already is in 3D Mario rom hacks).

If you really think about it, custom matches and custom events share a similarity to romhacks in that they are like fanfiction. And plenty of fanfiction is allowed to exist all over the place. The original products/franchises can still exist. Nintendo's 2D Mario levels remain far more popular than any Mario Maker level. Those haven't ruined Nintendo's creativity at all.

Seriously, these are suggestions that would further popularize and improve a franchise you already like, and I don't know why you're saying no.

I'm not saying no.


I'm saying "Don't count on it." There's nowhere near the fan demand for stuff like this when Nintendo knows that they can make fans happy by throwing them new characters and stages. Ultimate's sold the best in the series at 20 million copies, they'll be more than happy to keep the status quo like Pokemon does at this point I feel.


And again, I don't mean to be mean, but having a title like "I WON'T BUY UNLESS".... I mean, I'm gonna be straight with ya, but... I don't think people care if you do or don't buy the next game, it's your money. I don't like Sword or Shield or the Mario 35th Collection so I didn't buy them, I don't expect people to care that I didn't.

 

[Princess Rescuer]

Yeah, this thread probably doesn't matter much. It did get one positive response though. Just let me choose how many lives each player has.

I feel like the "It sold 20 million copies!" is a deflection though. SSBU is in the phase where it's the most recent game and only when the next one has been made will most fans feel comfortable coming out against it and saying it "had some problems". I don't understand what defending a game at all costs gets you- it doesn't affect sales, it doesn't make you more likely to be hired by Nintendo or whatever, and it doesn't make the game better. We have to be more comfortable with thinking about if we'll still play this game or not when it's two installments old. I doubt it.

 

[Shroob]

Yeah, this thread probably doesn't matter much. It did get one positive response though. Just let me choose how many lives each player has.

I feel like the "It sold 20 million copies!" is a deflection though. SSBU is in the phase where it's the most recent game and only when the next one has been made will most fans feel comfortable coming out against it and saying it "had some problems". I don't understand what defending a game at all costs gets you- it doesn't affect sales, it doesn't make you more likely to be hired by Nintendo or whatever, and it doesn't make the game better. We have to be more comfortable with thinking about if we'll still play this game or not when it's two installments old. I doubt it.

I mean, maybe I defend the game because I.... like it? And it's not even like I'm defending the game, just pointing out how rash you're being. I've talked at length about the game's flaws in the past, like a bad All Star Mode, World of Light being boring, the terrible online, the lack of side modes, etc. The fact you think I want to be "Hired by Nintendo" is... quaint, if nothing else. It's almost like people can like things, but still realize they're flawed. I'm all for 'more options' in the future, I just don't 'expect' them.


And as for the bolded part? People are still playing Melee 19 years later. People still go back to Brawl 13 years later. Ultimate's going to have the biggest roster and stage count for the foreseeable future.

People will absolutely still play Ultimate 2 or 3 more installments later as long as the future games aren't just "Ultimate, but more." This could be the only game in the series where you can have dream matches of "Ridley vs Banjo" or "Simon Belmont vs Pichu". To a lot of people, that will hold a special place in their heart, just like Subspace does for Brawl, or the competitiveness of Melee. Smash is the characters, and it really doesn't matter what you do, if the next game cuts the roster down to like, 50? People gonna be unhappy. Giving long-time fan requests like Ridley and K.Rool only to cut them next game would 100% get people to stick to Ultimate.


I'd love more options, anyone would, but they're not here, so... what can I do. Could the next game have them? Sure, but I'm not personally betting on it when frankly, I've never heard much of a demand for stuff like this is all I'm saying. If you want change, why not bring awareness? Start Reddit threads or Change.org crap. It doesn't actually do anything in the end, but it gets people to think, but please, for the love of god.

If you had started the thread with a less clickbait-y title akin to something like "This is what I'd like to see in the next Smash game!", you'd get more eyes on you, but you went with "I WON'T BUY UNLESS" which.... okay, your money... why should anyone care aside from you? If you just come across as upset to begin with, that's going to paint an unpleasant picture of yourself. First impressions are very important.

One opens up a discussion, one just makes you seem angry, see the difference?


Granted, you think I'm trying to be "Hired by Nintendo" so my guess is you think I'm a corporate shill, despite like, half the **** I post here anymore being hyper-critical of Nintendo as a company soooo.....

 

[Champion of Hyrule]

These customization options really aren’t even that big of a change, and you can basically already do them in Smash. This would barely change anything in Smash, so I don’t think it’s worth changing

Plus, I don’t understand your point that the game isn’t becoming as casual anymore because people are playing it competitively. That just isn’t true, I play Smash casually with my friends all the time and so do millions of people. Maybe you don’t anymore, but that’s just a personal thing for you, and it dosent represent the majority