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Hey maybe that was part of why we didn't see a Rhythm Heaven character this time around, despite possibly being considered for Smash 4.
Well, rhythm-based gameplay has not translated well at all so far, as we saw with DK's Final Smash. It might be a balance issue that's preventing them from getting in. But I imagine it still is hard enough to program, so them being DLC or base in a game where they have a significantly higher amount of time to do so is possible.Hey maybe that was part of why we didn't see a Rhythm Heaven character this time around, despite possibly being considered for Smash 4.
That explanation would at least help numb the pain a bit
I mean, just as every character has its fans, every character has its haters. A single GameFAQs thread is far from proof that the reception to Duck Hunt was primarily negative. Plus I've learned from the Isaac thread that GameFAQs is full of haters.
Roy is kind of an odd duck in that most of his popularity stems from his Smash appearances. It's hard to tell how popular he'd be on his own merits because he didn't have any time out in the world before he was in Smash. Corrin is moderately popular at best among FE fans from what I've seen, and a lot of that has to do with the generally mixed reception of Fates among FE fans and poor writing turning people off to Corrin as a character. Smash hasn't really boosted Corrin's popularity like it did for Roy; now, a lot of that has to do with the backlash of "too many FE chars" and "anime swordsman bleh," but you'd think that some of this hate would wear off after a while, especially with the "Everyone is Here" theme. I feel that, in Ultimate, Corrin kinda gets lost and forgotten by a lot of people; it very much seems like he just came along with the "all vets" theme and so people aren't so vocal about him. I guess I don't have much of a point here, but I guess it'll be interesting to see what happens to Corrin's popularity as we go through Ultimate's life cycle. I'd say that if he/she really was as likeable as Roy, you'd expect the popularity to go up as people get to know what the character can actually bring to the table. If it doesn't go up too much, though, then it's probably time to cut that rope and make room for someone else.
Ehh I'd say Corrin will always be at least a little tainted just from the massive backlash they got when they got in. But I've heard Roy isn't considered very likable in his own game either so I really think Corrin could have really been well liked under different circumstances.
Yet we are on Smash boards
Pretty much this. The game wasn't even out outside of Japan, so a lot of people had no way to know much of who he/she was.
It was also a shill pick announced at the worst possible time, when anticipation was high for a ballot result from actual fan-requests.
Which is funny, since we never guaranteed or told we'd get a Ballot pick(and we didn't, since realistically Bayonetta got into the game itself well before the ballot). So yeah, miscommunication creates even more turmoil.
I mean, if they couldn't do it within Smash 4's development time and perhaps higher priority newcomers, maybe they had even less of a chance with Ultimate's more limited selection of newcomers, those being fan, ballot or generally popular choices and/or echoes. Like I voted for Karate Joe in the ballot, but I don't remember RH ranking any sort of high on there.
Well, it's easy to conclude a RH character was worked on to some degree. We found a series icon for RH. And Gematsu noted Chorus Kids(and every character he talked about was scrapped/considered or in the game itself). It doesn't mean for sure it was CK, but I do believe they(the series) had some consideration. Sneaky Spirit could've been related to that.
Since it's a hypothetical it's kinda hard to tell how popular he could've been. But yeah, under different circumstances he'd probably have at least modest popularity. I will, however, point out that Roy is a clone, which takes some of the burden off of him.
Yeah this is where things get really tricky with the ballot. They never guaranteed us anything and it's their game to make, but at the same time they explicitly asked for feedback so it doesn't make much sense not to deliver.
Except it does make perfect sense. They said it would also be used for future Smash games. Which it did. It was miscommunication. They only said they're "consider a character for Smash DLC", which is very very clear, even with the English version. People just didn't read what was actually there. Sakurai's statement on Bayonetta was done as a white lie to curb this, but dataminers already came out in public, showing she was extremely unlikely to be a ballot pick(well, moreso she wasn't chosen cause of the ballot, though she did legit score high).
I mean, if you're gonna call it the "Smash Ballot" and tell people to vote on their favorite fighter, people are bound to expect that they use it (and use it seriously). Yes, it was probably intended as a massive suggestion box and yes, they never gave a guarantee. But you can't expect people to read between the lines. Most of those things like "no guarantees, guys" and "give us your suggestions" are naturally deemphasized because of the marketing stuff they have to do to get people to vote, but that's not the fans' problem. When very few ballot characters have gotten into the game as PCs (which we all know was the true grand prize; anything else is consolation), it's natural for people to be confused when they know that Nintendo knows what they want. Perhaps the blame lies on both sides in terms of miscommunicating the ballot's purpose.
I never said it didn't lie on both sides. People read a clear statement poorly, but Sakurai/Iwata/Nintendo didn't give all the information to every region. Also, again, nowhere did the ballot say it would have one winner. That's a pretty clear misreading on a lot of people's parts. We all know it was a suggestion box in practice and got multiple characters in.
To be honest, this seems stretching it at this point. They were told it was not a guarantee it would get the character in. That's "they'll be considered means". People are just mad that... they only considered characters just like they said they would. It's time to honestly get over it and just accept it wasn't what they thought it was. There's kind of no excuse at this point anymore.
And Sakurai also clearly chooses some due to various circumstances. Nintendo didn't choose the base roster whatsoever. They were involved with negotiations with 3rd parties, but that's kind of it. The game was pretty much decided upon almost entirely by the actual team working on it(just with the negotiations with other stuff deciding a few things that the development team can't outright. I.E. They can't choose a character without permission. So basic "duh" kind of stuff). Also, again, we don't know why so many suggestions didn't become playable characters. We know the game had an extremely low development time, and is rushed to hell. Some were considered, and didn't make it into the project plan. For whatever reason.
How so? Maybe not the best analogy; I thought of it quickly as a way to put things in a different context. But the main point was that asking someone what they want is something that's hard to go back on and equally difficult to ignore.
I mean, personally I'm over it. It's not like missing out on a character I like is gonna kill me; I speculate on and advocate for characters for fun. I love the game, but I think it could've been much better. I'm not offended by Nintendo or Sakurai, nor am I really angry or upset, just a bit confused and of the opinion that some things should've been done differently. It does kinda stink that a lot of people felt like their suggestions weren't taken seriously, though. I don't think people are mad that their choices were only considered and not automatically granted access to the roster as much as they are mad that they feel like Sakurai only seriously considered the choices that he wanted to consider.
Well, the project plan was in late 2015 to early 2016, so they had almost three years to work on the game, which is comparable to other Smash games. It is pretty rushed in many respects, but it's not like Melee.
Oops yeah, Nintendo doesn't choose the base roster. Sakurai's choices often do kind of bend to their marketing wishes it seems, though, even if they don't have to do so.
It's been well documented that each unique takes a ton of work. And every game is gonna have characters that barely make it, since they always plan to include as many as possible.
I hope that you don't think that I'm expecting newcomers to randomly appear out of thin air. No, if they cut a handful of vets then they'd have time for a few more more big-time requests. I'm of the opinion that this would have been better overall.
Your analogy has some flaws with it. The actual context is "give us some suggestions and we will think on them." Your analogy assumes they're asking for exactly what they want. No, they're asking for ideas and straightout telling them we may not use them. Just put in the more positive version of of "we'll think on it".
It honestly couldn't have been much better. They didn't have time to do so. They didn't even have time to implement the Homerun Contest, which still isn't super hard, but it has to take into account every launch multiplier, and that's still time.
Early 2016 makes it 2 years. That's how long it was actually developed for even then. It was completed at the end of 2018. It was nowhere close to 3 years. You're doing your math wrong.
Indeed.
The point is the vets didn't take nearly as much time as any single unique character. We wouldn't have gotten anything more than easy clones/echoes/semi-clones at best. That's all there was time for. Or maybe a few modes returned. At best. The reason for 11 newcomers is they had barely 2 years, and only 5 of them are actually unique, and only 2 require an extremely high amount of playtesting at best. Isabelle should've been tested more, but she still mostly functioned enough. They couldn't delay it. Every single vet has old data. You weren't going to get much. Now, if PT didn't come back, we might've gotten one unique newcomer or two at best. But the rest had more than enough data and didn't have glaring technical issues to work through like Pokemon Switch. Thus, the rest of the returning vets don't require as much time. They're more or less lightly around the time it might take an Echo, perhaps. Or more, but not much. Though considering the fact the animations were awful for a very long time till we saw the final demo and soon release, it's clear they were pushing for time even with all the vets back. And that's ones like Wolf, who had most of his work done for him anyway. Even Chrom looked awful, and he was an easy echo. Basically? They didn't have enough time to do more, so I'd argue we got the best case scenario here. I'd rather just have the full roster than lose characters only. And I'm giving the benefit of the doubt he would've added a few more newcomers. Also, PP was started early on, so he already had one plan tucked away.
A few more isn't even that possible. All of those veterans have previous data that was actually put into Smash 3DS. They all didn't take that long. 3 is already pushing it for more newcomers. Especially unique ones. Echoes or clones/semi-clones are the only way you'd get 3 or more realistically.
They definitely knew and weren't taking a risk. Smash sells on characters, not modes, first. They knew they could patch stuff. They were going to rush the game no matter if they had a ton of veterans or not. It was 2 years, with still a severely huge roster more than double Melee's. There was no time for all those requests. Every echo was pretty easy or fit the narrative too. Isabelle just barely made it in(and wouldn't have if it weren't for Villager, because she needed a full moveset to be cloned from. She's very lucky to get in. There's no way they would've had time for a more proper unique one). Incineroar was started on late due to not existing yet. PP was last minute worked on for DLC(he may have been base at first, but time made that impossible), Inkling required a ton of work. Simon was actually pretty simple but unique, so didn't take nearly as much time as some, and got an Echo too. Ridley and K. Rool are both notably unique but pretty simplistic in a lot of what they do. Most of it appears to be playtesting moreso than just getting the major model animations done. This is why I mentioned mechanics. Mechanics are what make characters hard to implement in itself. And it's more than just "oh, this move does fire, and this does holy damage". Simon's mechanic is his whip, but he's a very regular Smash fighter akin to Mario, with no hard mechanic. Nothing that makes programming severely difficult like they had with Bowser Jr.(due to his mech and alts) and Shulk(as they have to account for every single stat change and how it affects him. It's a balance thing and still was difficult to program as they implied. Lucario was the same thing, taking a full year to finish. Most characters take six months).
I see that point, but they're still asking for feedback and fan involvement in the process. They also clearly did want to know exactly what people wanted, as they asked people to pick one single character that they would like to be in the game. That's pretty specific, much more so than just letting people write a bunch of character ideas into a text box. The space they gave to type was there for people to justify the single character they picked. I do think that a large amount of the disappointment surrounding ballot characters stems from the sense that many were not considered as seriously as they should have been, and the fact that almost everything they pulled from the ballot happened to be what suited them. It's fine if they liked certain ideas better than others, but choosing based on their own views of the characters is not really using the ballot as much as it is confirmation bias. They made relatively few concessions for many of these highly-voted characters.
Early 2016 to early 2018 is two full years. Then they had from there until late 2018. So it's between two and three. If you count from the first draft of the project plan in December 2015 it's three years, but I don't think they started work proper until later drafts of the project plan, so it's not quite three years; however, I think it's close enough to say "almost three years." It does depend a bit on when the project plan was fully finished, though, I'll admit. "Almost" is admittedly a bit vague, but really the dev time for this game wasn't so different from other Smash games; they also had stuff they could more easily implement due to coming off the heels of the Wii U. And besides, if they didn't give themselves enough time then that's probably on them.
They absolutely took a significant amount of time, just less than fully unique newcomers. If it was that easy, the ability to transfer stuff over from the Wii U game would've given them time for closer to a normal number of newcomers. And again, I'm not suggesting a "one vet for one unique" case; I still think it's better if we lost a fairly large handful of vets in order to get a few big-time inclusions. I already outlined what it could've looked like in this case. Pichu, Young Link, Squirtle, Ivysaur, Doctor Mario, any number of Echoes like Dark Pit, Corrin, maybe one or two of ICs/Wolf/Snake, maybe Roy, maybe a less popular Pokémon like Jigglypuff or Greninja, maybe one third party if they didn't wanna work so hard for licensing, and perhaps a few more were options to be axed. Of course, I'm not suggesting that all of these characters should be cut, and some of these I actually do like and think have earned a spot. But really, if they weren't locked into "Everyone is Here" there were plenty of characters they could have dropped in order to add newcomers. They had plenty of fine options for cuts that would've been met with limited backlash, and vets that were already cut in past games would have less backlash than they were willing to take the first go-round, as way fewer people would've expected them back. And again, it's not like the roster would be tiny in this scenario; they'd still likely be over 60 characters, which is still pretty "Ultimate" (or "Special"). They could have also been less ambitious with Spirits mode, as I don't think they were gonna measure up to SSE without the fancy cutscenes and involved story that so many people loved.
It depends on how many they cut. And the vets that weren't in 4 absolutely took significant time to develop; it shows in the lack of new content throughout the game. There's little variety in the game modes, Spirits mode is a glorified event match with a few RPG elements, Trophies needed to be cut in exchange for PNGs, and we got a low number of newcomers. I don't think 2-3 uniques in exchange for maybe 4-6 vets is that unrealistic (4-6 is kinda just throwing out numbers; I don't know exactly how many it'd take and it depends on which characters get cut, but I doubt we'd see a drastic roster downsize). Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that there's been evidence of certain vets like Pichu or Wolf having data in Smash 3DS, and even if they do, I'm not sure that it would transfer so easily onto the Switch and I doubt that they were anywhere close to completion given that Bowser Jr. and a couple others barely made it in the game. Even clones have to be properly balanced and animated. They take time.
I didn't really argue about modes; if anything, I'd be willing to cut down on Spirits mode to help with newcomers. I also won't pretend to know everything that goes into developing a character, but based on what we've seen and been told, any character, even an Echo, takes significant dev time. If you're gonna use the mechanics argument, then certain vets that they brought back have unique mechanics that could potentially take more time to balance and/or develop, such as Pichu's self-damaging gimmick (not hard to program but potentially tricky to balance, especially given how terribly they did it in Melee), Ice Climbers being a duo with two characters to control, and Pokémon Trainer needing to be balanced around the ability to switch between three characters. Even if these things were developed and balanced in past games, Ultimate is an entirely new game with plenty of new mechanics and cast members. People talk a lot about how different a lot of the vets feel compared to past games; that's indicative of the work they put in to update them. Again, I'm no expert on exactly how long these things would take, and the preceding examples were just to give an idea, but I wouldn't downplay the sheer amount of effort it took to bring everyone back. And besides, 2 unique newcomers would probably be all it would take to make a lot of people happy with minimal backlash for the stuff that it replaced.
It's not really "feedback". It's just asking for cool suggestions and maybe your idea could come to fruition. Feedback is on an actual product. They weren't asking for issues with the gameplay. That wasn't remotely the point of it.
No, it's around 2 years. They started development around close to December 2015/January 2016, and had 2 literal years to make it. They released it in 2018 years. There is no "three years" of relevance. The project plan is not development. It's nothing more than ideas only. All it could be used for at best is getting licenses. The development never starts till the project plan is finished. 2 years is all they had to work on that. They figured out who was impossible by that time, and that's why they weren't on the project plan. Isaac is one of those cases. I'm sure he was considered. But he couldn't have been on the project plan(which is the final version that determines who is in and who is not).
Actually, yes, it was easy to transfer a lot of the data over. The only data that was too old was Melee's trying to bring it to 3DS. 3DS had full out data. It wasn't nearly as long, it's just stuff that were difficult mechanics to get working that took up the workload. Despite this, they got it done in 2 years, and had no real time for other stuff.
It kind of doesn't. Every character that came back that wasn't in 4 had playable character data they could work with. They all were pretty easy to come back, they just took time. Not a lot of extra work. They're very easy to make work.
They didn't really balance Pichu's ability either. It's pretty much the same overall. It just makes him better due to Rage already existing. He was never balanced around it much. He's just a bit stronger than Pikachu in return.
They needed till 2019 to really add anything else, honestly.
Eh, we stopped discussing DLC stuff here a lot, to be fair. It had different topics here and there. Like people taking the ballot's intention wrong, or how Sakurai does not choose based upon popularity alone, etc. Those went on for a while.
I mean yeah, I don't think they should just blindly include any character that gets votes. But in this case I think that most of the big-time requests were characters that had good reasons to be in the game and very few reasons to be disregarded. Sure, plenty of people don't give useful ideas. But according to almost all of the evidence we have, a lot of people did give useful ideas, just not the ideas that fit Sakurai's fancy.
If they started in January 2016, then two years from then is January 2018. The game was released in December 2018, though it was finished a bit earlier than that. So like I said, it's not quite three years but it's in that ballpark, as January 2019 would've been three years.
They can add whichever Nintendo characters they like, and plenty of third parties. Only very unique circumstances would truly prevent them from adding a character that they really wanted to add, assuming they could get the IP rights and they had enough time. They had options besides bringing all the vets back.
Wouldn't Ultimate's different physics and changes make it harder to transfer over the vets?
That was kinda the point; if they had organized their releases better to not lean solely on Smash for late 2018, it could've been easier to stomach a delay. I can see why they would try to bank on Smash for this season, though.
...We have no actual evidence of who wrote what in the Smash Ballot. Maybe a few people posted some screenshots, but let's not pretend we know the majority of how the votes were. There's way too many "cause they're cool votes" and that's kind of obvious since it was open to everyone.
They cut almost every mode. It's safe to say they weren't going to cut down any more just to add a few stragglers that'd require even more of a delay. They couldn't afford it.
Not really no. You're still making this assumption they had a giant list of characters. He narrows them down heavily with many different reasons. Let's review the reaction Nintendo appears to have had from Isaac not being in. They didn't even know he was that wanted. Now, if this is true? Yeah, he was considered(maybe) but not taken that seriously nor was a viable option.
No. They had fully functioning movesets. It just means that they require a bit more work than, say, literally making Melee II by transferring over all the Melee characters and adding a few new ones. It's not nearly that much work if they have fully playable movesets.
They're literally the easiest to make. That's why they were brought back as well. Even Wolf borrowed more than half his assets from Fox. It's why he was actually a semi-clone.
Actually, the highest content are literally pictures. The only thing they said was made from scratch was all the stages. They used assets to recreate characters faster. How do you think they were able to get over 60 characters done in 3 years? By using the previous game's data. The 3DS later had the past Brawl data scrubbed. To note, Sakurai cut Pokemon Trainer from Smash 4 during development. This means the data was still there. They took shortcuts. In addition, he's used the previous data of every game to start working on the new game. While we can't confirm he took the other 3DS data from development, there's a strong chance he did.
The delay wouldn't have worked even then. They already had a clear goal set in mind and 3 years, which is the normal amount of time, to do so. The only thing they needed to do was more playtesting and bring back modes at best. People aren't going to wait around forever when they have a solid game right in front of them. Really, the biggest complaint about the game is the lack of single player content, which even 4 did better(and that was its biggest complaint too).
Not exactly, no, but we have at least a fair idea. Proof? No. Evidence? For sure.
But the roster is all decided at the beginning. So if they thought that they'd have time for all the vets, then they'd probably think the same thing if they had planned a couple more newcomers instead. If the newcomers they planned were far enough along, maybe one or two would've been pushed to DLC, which is better than not at all.
Of course he narrows it down. But if a character is removed from consideration, it's not necessarily because they aren't possible; Sakurai might just not deem them important or unique enough. Again, maybe Isaac in particular was possible and maybe he wasn't. But it's extremely unlikely that they couldn't find a couple of top vote-getters that could work.
Again, it's not one vet for one unique. It's a few vets or a handful (depending on how clone-ish they are) for a unique. They still have to be balanced and updated. And even full uniques can borrow some assets, just not nearly as many. Sakurai puts a ton of work into each character, clone or not.
Again, if it was that easy, then the final game would have a lot more in it. Past data absolutely makes it easier, but it doesn't change the fact that significant work was put into each and every character, clone or otherwise. And still, I'd be willing to cut multiple vets for one big-time unique.
Nintendo hasn't shied away from delaying games, even big ones like Brawl.
Here's the thing though - even if they stopped counted votes after the first two weeks, it is not logistically feasible that all those votes were processed in such a short timeframe. Not only that, but there's also the issue of getting the rights to use Bayonetta, as they partially belong to a third party studio. Those talks take time and have to be made well before development can even begin on the character. Not to mention the time spent in the planning and designing stages of development prior to even making and animating a model, and that the ballot results were never actually published. Taking all this into consideration, it is highly likely that Bayonetta was not the ballot character, and was instead planned well in advance of the ballot.
I think unique mechanics wouldn't be a problem but unique skeletons might be. Depends on whether DLC development team has more time/staff/resources this time around.
So out of curiosity, who would you have hypothetically added amongst "ballot characters" in this scenario of "mostly everyone is here"?
Speak for yourself.
Honestly at this point while there are characters I would rather not see I trust the development team to make a fun character so I remain fairly optimistic about the whole thing. It helps that all my most wanteds have already been deconfirmed lol so I don't really have a horse in the race any more. Also I just started playing Persona 5 and I'm having a blast so at the very least I know I'll like Joker and Piranha Plant.
By surprise, do you mean unleaked?
I meant unexpected. Erdrick and Doomguy's games helped popularize entire genres and are pretty big, especially with Nintendo. Minecraft content has been rumored for a very long time now and Ryu Hayabusa is the flagship character of the biggest Japanese third party company without any representation in the game, Koei Tecmo (Fatal Frame even has an AT). Erdrick has also been rumored for a while. I think that there will be more characters that people did not see coming.
To be honest, all characters you listed would probably be big surprises to people who aren't big into Smash speculation, but I see your point.
All 4 of them are pretty big in their own right and I think that such characters won't take up 4 of the 5 spots of the fighter pass. I think that there will be some more smaller, lesser known characters like Joker.
