Official Newcomer/DLC Speculation Discussion

[Deleted member]

Exponential dread hits if CP7 is yet another 1st Party character and people start theorizing Vol 2 is an all 1st Party Pass. At least if CP7 happens to be a 3rd Party Character we can theorize how evened out both parties might be for the rest of DLC.

You say that like it’s a bad thing.

 

[7NATOR]

So this is an interesting thread in Resetera: https://www.resetera.com/threads/hi...ed-by-at-least-5-months.281531/#post-44529692

tl;dr the Mario announcements were delayed by at least 5 months. If Mario is getting screwed this badly, I have to imagine Smash is even worse. I imagine Min Min was probably slated to release in March, and FP7 on June.

I believe that there was a theory that Min-Min was actually supposed to come out in April. It involved 3 First Party Amiibo re-releasing around Hypothetical same time Min-Min was supposed to release. The theory was by Fatmanonice

I didn’t say two in one trailer. I just said two reveals. Probably separate trailers like with Hero and Banjo

Oh. Well then it would probably be in a Smash direct at this point

Also because FP7 and FP8 are closer to the beginning of the pass, and probably the characters to expect to get in 2020, I expect these characters to be the most Hype. If both of the characters revealed are more Darkhorse 3rd parties, or 1st Party characters, I don't expect characters like Chief, Crash, Scorpion, Sora, Dante anymore. If any of those characters are in, I'd expect them to be either FP7 or FP8

If none of the FP Characters are Mario Characters, I don't expect to get another Mario character in FP2, considering the Tournament and stuff

If One of them is an Assist, I think there's a chance of another Assist Trophy being promoted later on.

If one of the characters is from an Already Represented Franchise, then that's also something to consider

 

[DarthEnderX]

Anyway, here's a topic, who is everyone's unlikely favourite? Mine's Miriam from Bloodstained

KUNIO!!

What I hope for a Super Mario RPG remake is that they make the whole thing in an artstyle that matches the original's spritework, like making it look claymation or like all characters are toys.

Ugh. That's the one thing I DON'T want them to do. I love SMRPG, but that game looks like rotoscoped CGI garbage, just like DKC.

I would LOVE it if a remake gave it the Paper Mario aesthetic and brought it in line with the other Mario RPGs.

You say that like it’s a bad thing.

Nightmare scenario.

 

[Shroob]

You say that like it’s a bad thing.

It'll be a bad thing in the sense that just like FP1, discussion will veer in one direction and any other options will be tossed out as unlikely.


"What? A first party character for FP1? It's all going to be 3rd party. There's no way they'd have a 1st party when everything else has been 3rd party."

 

[osby]

You say that like it’s a bad thing.

You say that like gatekeeping isn't objectively unhealthy for speculation.

 

[Rie Sonomura]

I believe that there was a theory that Min-Min was actually supposed to come out in April. It involved 3 First Party Amiibo re-releasing around Hypothetical same time Min-Min was supposed to release. The theory was by Fatmanonice



Oh. Well then it would probably be in a Smash direct at this point

Also because FP7 and FP8 are closer to the beginning of the pass, and probably the characters to expect to get in 2020, I expect these characters to be the most Hype. If both of the characters revealed are more Darkhorse 3rd parties, or 1st Party characters, I don't expect characters like Chief, Crash, Scorpion, Sora, Dante anymore. If any of those characters are in, I'd expect them to be either FP7 or FP8

If none of the FP Characters are Mario Characters, I don't expect to get another Mario character in FP2, considering the Tournament and stuff

If One of them is an Assist, I think there's a chance of another Assist Trophy being promoted later on.

If one of the characters is from an Already Represented Franchise, then that's also something to consider

could still be in a general direct. Hero and Banjo were in a general E3 direct with other games featured as well

 

[True Blue Warrior]

You say that like it’s a bad thing.

The reception of a hypothetical first-party dominated Fighter Pass depends more on the individual characters in question than their first-party status. If these are characters like Skull Kid, Waluigi, Isaac and Bandana Dee, the vast majority of the general Smash fanbase will embrace the pass. Otherwise, who knows. Even got a good reception, despite being a character that “nobody asked for”, especially compared to every other first party DLC character that previously existed.

 

[Deleted member]

Even if FP7 is first party or not, I highly doubt this pass will be all first party.

Look at Smash 4 and Ultimate DLC, we got a mixture of first and third parties.

And the DLC sold well. And there is a ton of evidence for other third party characters, and I'm sure Nintendo can strike a deal with them.

I am not saying it is impossible, but I am saying this second Fighter Pass will have at least one third party.

 

[7NATOR]

could still be in a general direct. Hero and Banjo were in a general E3 direct with other games featured as well

General Directs are in retirement for the time being though. Until then, I think a Smash direct will come out of retirement and take it's place if we were to get 2 Reveals...

 

[True Blue Warrior]

Even if FP7 is first party or not, I highly doubt this pass will be all first party.

Look at Smash 4 and Ultimate DLC, we got a mixture of first and third parties.

And the DLC sold well. And there is a ton of evidence for other third party characters, and I'm sure Nintendo can strike a deal with them.

I am not saying it is impossible, but I am saying this second Fighter Pass will have at least one third party.

I also don’t believe this pass will be exclusively first party, though I wouldn’t be surprised if we only got like two for this pass.

 

[Rie Sonomura]

The reception of a hypothetical first-party dominated Fighter Pass depends more on the individual characters in question than their first-party status. If these are characters like Skull Kid, Waluigi, Isaac and Bandana Dee, the vast majority of the general Smash fanbase will embrace the pass. Otherwise, who knows. Even got a good reception, despite being a character that “nobody asked for”, especially compared to every other first party DLC character that previously existed.

i wanted Min Min either her or Twintelle since base, and admittedly i was worried when Spring Man became an AT cause while I didn't care for him in particular, i was worried about either of my girls. then i got the former and all is well

 

[Shroob]

I'm still 50/50 on this week.


We had the Directory update, which has actually only occurred around the time of Directs in recent memory, the fact it happened right before the Mario Direct came out, and a day later is definitely eyebrow raising

....but on the flipside, mother nature's a ***** and putting Japan in a tight spot right now.

On the other hand(Am I an octopus?), there's maintenance scheduled for the 14th, and I doubt that of all things will get delayed.

But... on my imaginary 4th hand, is the Directory updating big enough evidence?



Frankly, we'd need someone to check the dates it updated in the past and see how often it updating guaranteed an incoming Direct.

 

[Deleted member]

It'll be a bad thing in the sense that just like FP1, discussion will veer in one direction and any other options will be tossed out as unlikely.


"What? A first party character for FP1? It's all going to be 3rd party. There's no way they'd have a 1st party when everything else has been 3rd party."

You say that like gatekeeping isn't objectively unhealthy for speculation.

...........yeah, good points.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to come off as supporting gatekeeping, I'm just a little burnt out on third parties dominating DLC and speculation and that the only viable first parties have to be 100% promotional in nature.....

 

[MooMew64]

I'm still 50/50 on this week.


We had the Directory update, which has actually only occurred around the time of Directs, the fact it happened right before the Mario Direct came out, and a day later is definitely eyebrow raising

....but on the flipside, mother nature's a ***** and putting Japan in a tight spot right now.

On the other hand(Am I an octopus?), there's maintenance scheduled for the 14th, and I doubt that of all things will get delayed.

But... on my imaginary 4th hand, is the Directory updating big enough evidence?



Frankly, we'd need someone to check the dates it updated in the past and see how often it updating guaranteed an incoming Direct.

My thoughts on it are this: If the directory updating was only noticed with just the Mario Direct and has had no history with updating with previous Directs, it could very likely be a coincidence and be nothing more. A single instance of something isn't a pattern, after all.

However, if there is hard proof that this is something that's happened before (even better if it was consecutively with each Direct), then we'll have something here IMO.

 

[cosmicB]

I want Challenger Pack 7 as much as the next person, but do we actually think conversation is gonna change drastically after reveal?

I gotta be honest and say, I doubt it.

At the very least, CP7 will likely remove toxic characters like Geno from the equation due to the Mario tournament being a make or break for him and others like Waluigi. Both outcomes, in or not, will cause a huge flare up for a few days, then people will calm down and move onto speculating the next character. With time, we'll hopefully have an even spread of discussion with potential picks rather than going back to the same ones, but that may be a more difficult ask of this fanbase.

 

[Shroob]

My thoughts on it are this: If the directory updating was only noticed with just the Mario Direct and has had no history with updating with previous Directs, it could very likely be a coincidence and be nothing more. A single instance of something isn't a pattern, after all.

However, if there is hard proof that this is something that's happened before (even better if it was consecutively with each Direct), then we'll have something here IMO.

And that's what we need to find out, though I'm not exactly sure how to, nor how someone even noticed it in the first place. I believe a dude on the SourceGaming team first pointed it out, but I'd have no idea how to go back and check.

 

[SirCamp]

I doubt Min Min was ever slated for March.

Actually, by the time COVID was declared to be a national pandemic and restrictions began to take effect, Min Min would've already been close to completion. Given the deadline of December 2021 that was set long before the pandemic, I'd say they're not that far behind their intended schedule. Five more characters across a year and four months.

I don’t think that this logic actually follows to be honest. I agree that Min Min’s development was likely unaffected by COVID, but it doesn’t follow from that that her release would be unaffected. By the time it would have come to release Min Min the writing would have been on the wall and the decision could very well have been made to delay her release simply for pacing reasons. Remember just because a game is ready doesn’t mean that it is immediately released. Otherwise we would have had Pikmin in May. It could simply be that they knew the next fight would be delayed to such an extent that releasing Min Min so early relative to when the next fighter would final release would have proven problematic from Nintendo’s marketing perspective.

Edit - holy run on sentence Batman. Lol

 

[Deleted member]

I was very excited it was going to be Smash Bros, but now that the natural disaster is happening, I am starting to have some doubts.

I hope everyone in Japan ends up being safe.

 

[Karen6969]

At the very least, CP7 will likely remove toxic characters like Geno from the equation due to the Mario tournament being a make or break for him and others like Waluigi. Both outcomes, in or not, will cause a huge flare up for a few days, then people will calm down and move onto speculating the next character. With time, we'll hopefully have an even spread of discussion with potential picks rather than going back to the same ones, but that may be a more difficult ask of this fanbase.

I think me and the other Waluigi fans will give up on him being in the pass, but maybe pray for a miracle in him being a bonus fighter or something. I think Geno fans will find a way to spin him not being FP7 into some other speculation. “Okay, okay, they wouldn’t have released him for Mario’s anniversary alongside a Mario tournament anyways, he’s 3rd party! But look this insider is replaying super Mario RPG, geno confirmed!!!!”

They won’t stop until he’s either in, or Ultimate stops getting updates (and then it’s on to the next game!), and honestly I kind of respect that lol

 

[Cosmic77]

I don’t think that this logic actually follows to be honest. I agree that Min Min’s development was likely unaffected by COVID, but it doesn’t follow from that that her release would be unaffected. By the time it would have come to release Min Min the writing would have been on the wall and the decision could very well have been made to delay her release simply for pacing reasons. Remember just because a game is ready doesn’t mean that it is immediately released. Otherwise we would have had Pikmin in May. It could simply be that they knew the next fight would be delayed to such an extent that releasing Min Min so early relative to when the next fighter would final release would have proven problematic from Nintendo’s marketing perspective.

Edit - holy run on sentence Batman. Lol

Yes, but given how long in advance Directs are made, I feel like they had already figured out they would tease an ARMS character in March.

Plus, Sakurai himself did say the first character of the season pass would probably take a while. That doesn't sound like something I'd say if the next character was coming out roughly two months after Byleth, especially since every character starting with Hero had a similar small gap of time between them.

 

[Shroob]

Tried using the Wayback Machine to check to see if the page had been updated in the past.


Considering it doesn't even have the change for the last 2 Directs archived, seems like the Wayback Machine will be no help.

 

[dream1ng]

So this is an interesting thread in Resetera: https://www.resetera.com/threads/hi...ed-by-at-least-5-months.281531/#post-44529692

tl;dr the Mario announcements were delayed by at least 5 months. If Mario is getting screwed this badly, I have to imagine Smash is even worse. I imagine Min Min was probably slated to release in March, and FP7 on June.

People here didn't believe me and gave me a little flack when I said the Mario presentation was slated for Spring (tbf, I had heard May instead of April), and that Pikmin wasn't originally scheduled for October.

Turns out a pandemic shifts a few things, hey.

To that end, it definitely isn't impossible that Smash has been adversely impacted as well, though given how they work on multiple characters concurrently, FP7 is probably less affected, development-wise, than those which are to follow.

I doubt Min Min was ever slated for March, though. The brunt of her development was conducted before WFH even became a thing. If anything, maybe she was scheduled for a month earlier, but I suspect she was always planned for E3. But I also think FP7 was probably to be revealed there as well.

 

[MarioRaccoon]

If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense what were original Nintendo plans for 2020:

• Pikmin 3 originally was meant to be released on late April. Probably going to be announced via twitter during February or so
• Super Mario 3D World DX was slated for the second half of the year, probably august, by this way, Nintendo’s idea was to release 1 Mario title per month (july: Paper Mario, august: SM3DW DX, september, Mario 3D AS, october: MK Home Circuit)
• Those Mario announcements + other stuff like game&watch and that NSO game + merchandise and super nintendo world talk was planned for a direct on april.
• E3 could have been a huge blowout of BOTW2, likely planned to be released this holidays or early 2021.
• Some other projects like a new metroid 2D or splatoon spin off (among other ?? games) were E3 reveals and planned to be released fall 2020 and/or winter 2021
• We know that some games showed last partnes showcase were E3 announcements. I think that SMTIII/V and Kingdom Hearts MoM (and maybe something lowkey like Bakugan or Puyo Puyo 2) could have been part of Nintendo E3.
• Min Min was likely planned to be released 1 week before E3, and then at E3, revealed who FP7 is.

 

[MooMew64]

Min Min was 100% always slated for June IMO. Only thing that happened differently was she was probably intended for an E3 reveal rather than a Sakurai Presents.

 

[Shroob]

Considering we haven't gone an E3 since..... well, ever, without at the very least 2 characters, I was pretty set on Min being one of the characters that they'd have shown off at E3 if we had gotten one this year.


The minute they asked for more time and didn't even show us the model, I figured it would take more time than Joker's "We need more time" plea, and at that point, a June release seemed kinda obvious.

 

[SirCamp]

Yes, but given how long in advance Directs are made, I feel like they had already figured out they would tease an ARMS character in March.

Plus, Sakurai himself did say the first character of the season pass would probably take a while. That doesn't sound like something I'd say if the next character was coming out roughly two months after Byleth, especially since every character starting with Hero had a similar small gap of time between them.

Well tbh I think regardless of when Min Min was meant to be released, I suspect the initial announcements ARMs coming to Smash was less likely to be affected by any changes. Because even though a large time gap between that announcement and Min Min’s actual release is awkward, it could very well have been deemed necessary in order to secure more initial sales on the FP. So I guess I’m not sure I’m how much in the way of conclusions we can really draw from this.

 

[Shroob]

I guess we can say that E3 probably wasn't gonna have the bare Min-imum at least


......



I'm not sorry

 

[MooMew64]

Considering we haven't gone an E3 since..... well, ever, without at the very least 2 characters, I was pretty set on Min being one of the characters that they'd have shown off at E3 if we had gotten one this year.


The minute they asked for more time and didn't even show us the model, I figured it would take more time than Joker's "We need more time" plea, and at that point, a June release seemed kinda obvious.

It wouldn't surprise me if the dev team for FP2 is considerably smaller as well, as turnover on projects is very common in the video game industry. Obviously the pandemic has played a huge part into why things have gone the way they have, but I also think part of the wait stems from extra dev time needed for the possibly much smaller team still working on the project.

 

[SharkLord]

At the very least, CP7 will likely remove toxic characters like Geno from the equation due to the Mario tournament being a make or break for him and others like Waluigi. Both outcomes, in or not, will cause a huge flare up for a few days, then people will calm down and move onto speculating the next character. With time, we'll hopefully have an even spread of discussion with potential picks rather than going back to the same ones, but that may be a more difficult ask of this fanbase.

I'm gonna call bull on anything that brings up quote-unquote "toxic characters." That's just gonna keep the cycle going on. The only characters that are toxic are the ones that actually use poison in their moveset; Any toxic discourse comes from the people discussing them.

Considering we haven't gone an E3 since..... well, ever, without at the very least 2 characters, I was pretty set on Min being one of the characters that they'd have shown off at E3 if we had gotten one this year.


The minute they asked for more time and didn't even show us the model, I figured it would take more time than Joker's "We need more time" plea, and at that point, a June release seemed kinda obvious.

Yeah, I think the ARMS guessing game would've been used to drum up hype for ARMS while they had the chance, then have it pay off at E3 alongside the real heavy-hitter of the pass. As cool as Min Min is, she isn't really pass starter material. CP8 might also be a heavy-hitter if the ARMS guessing game wasn't the original intent, but we don't know if it was the original intent or not, so it's hard to say.

 

[Shroob]

It wouldn't surprise me if the dev team for FP2 is considerably smaller as well, as turnover on projects is very common in the video game industry. Obviously the pandemic has played a huge part into why things have gone the way they have, but I also think part of the wait stems from extra dev time needed for the possibly much smaller team still working on the project.

I mean, it's my belief that 2020 was always going to be the dead year regardless of Covid to be blunt.


Min Min's development honestly seems on schedule if you take into consideration that if we get a character this or next month, we'll still very easily hit the December 2021 deadline assuming the characters are spaced roughly 3 months apart from one another


It's the question if they will be or not.

 

[Calamitas]

Frankly, we'd need someone to check the dates it updated in the past and see how often it updating guaranteed an incoming Direct.

I am a bit doubtful as to how helpful that actually is, though. The only past instances that could really be helpful would be the ones from this year only, considering that shadow drops are probably all that we're gonna get for the foreseeable future.

 

[SMAASH! Puppy]

I don’t think that this logic actually follows to be honest. I agree that Min Min’s development was likely unaffected by COVID, but it doesn’t follow from that that her release would be unaffected. By the time it would have come to release Min Min the writing would have been on the wall and the decision could very well have been made to delay her release simply for pacing reasons. Remember just because a game is ready doesn’t mean that it is immediately released. Otherwise we would have had Pikmin in May. It could simply be that they knew the next fight would be delayed to such an extent that releasing Min Min so early relative to when the next fighter would final release would have proven problematic from Nintendo’s marketing perspective.

Well the guessing game reveal did state that they would have to "exteeeeeeend" development time specifically, so going by that Min Min was actually running behind schedule (even without COVID-19's help) rather than them just sitting on her for a stupidly long amount of time.

I'm gonna call bull on anything that brings up quote-unquote "toxic characters." That's just gonna keep the cycle going on. The only characters that are toxic are the ones that actually use poison in their moveset

You heard the man, get that Toxtricity outta here!

 

[Shroob]

I am a bit doubtful as to how helpful that actually is, though. The only past instances that could really be helpful would be the ones from this year only, considering that shadow drops are probably all that we're gonna get for the foreseeable future.

Well, that's where we'd start. Even a small bit of evidence is still evidence, and hey, maybe looking back and researching this will bring up lots of false positives proving this was a massive coincidence, won't know until you look.

 

[SKX31]

SKX31 may find this interesting:

The Chinese-exclusive NVIDIA Shield release of Super Mario Galaxy is running in an emulator, and it has frame rate issues at times. The problem might be worse on the Switch because it is underclocked vs the Shield.https://t.co/pyRUd7RcXI

— OatmealDome (@OatmealDome) September 4, 2020

Oh yeaah, I've mentioned that port in the past. It has an apparently strange history behind it. Nintendo did release 4 games on the Nvidia Shield's Wii emulator exclusive for China... but they ran into a similar problem as the one plagueing the Chinese Switch right now. Just 4 games (Galaxy, Punch-Out, Twilight Princess, NSMBWii) on the Shield due to approval issues. While the Chinese Switch only has 11 (soon 12 I think) games officially ATM, it can play international cartridges too (just with no online support).

The Shield also was barely advertised, and the Galaxy port apparently didn't exceed 10K. And that's another issue that plagued Nintendo's efforts in China - before Tencent came into the picture Nintendo had generally severe problems advertising their console releases. And thus they generally saw low sales.
The Shield's failure is probably a main reason why Nintendo decided to partner with Tencent: Tencent has the sheer reach (and the expertise navigating the outright byzantine Chinese approval system) Nintendo needs, Nintendo meanwhile has the console expertise (and more unique games, see Ring Fit) that the Penguin Factory lacks.

That said, this part of the article might be of interest too:

Overall, it's an impressive showing for Super Mario Galaxy, but not a flawless one as performance isn't quite where it should be. Nintendo's original Wii release ran locked at 60 frames per second and while Nvidia Lightspeed's port gets close, it's not close enough, with dropped frames and microstutter. Bearing in mind the gulf in quality we've seen generally between Switch and Shield titles - even though they use the same Tegra X1 processor - the issue here may well be the Nvidia console's reliance on Android and OpenGL, while games for Nintendo's hardware benefit from a highly refined DX12-like graphics API called NVN, ironically developed by Nvidia itself, which offers much lower level access to the GPU. It's difficult to believe that a Switch version of the same core emulator wouldn't benefit from a lot more 'direct to the metal' advantages not available to Lightspeed with its Android version.

But yes, the underclocking is a main problem that they would have to solve. The Shield emulation was designed for higher-end PCs (apparently, obviously having no first hand experience myself), and the Switch port / emulation would neccessarily have to be adjusted to compensante for the much less powerful console. I'm not a software engineer myself, but some of those issues might be allieviated with porting (although porting probably introduces some issues of its own).

I'm gonna call bull on anything that brings up quote-unquote "toxic characters." That's just gonna keep the cycle going on. The only characters that are toxic are the ones that actually use poison in their moveset; Any toxic discourse comes from the people discussing them.

(I regret nothing!)

 

[SharkLord]

You heard the man, get that Toxtricity outta here!

Reject Toxicitry
Embrace Appletun

 

[Rie Sonomura]

Oh yeaah, I've mentioned that port in the past. It has an apparently strange history behind it. Nintendo did release 4 games on the Nvidia Shield's Wii emulator exclusive for China... but they ran into a similar problem as the one plagueing the Chinese Switch right now. Just 4 games (Galaxy, Punch-Out, Twilight Princess, NSMBWii) on the Shield due to approval issues. While the Chinese Switch only has 11 (soon 12 I think) games officially ATM, it can play international cartridges too (just with no online support).

The Shield also was barely advertised, and the Galaxy port apparently didn't exceed 10K. And that's another issue that plagued Nintendo's efforts in China - before Tencent came into the picture Nintendo had generally severe problems advertising their console releases. And thus they generally saw low sales.
The Shield's failure is probably a main reason why Nintendo decided to partner with Tencent: Tencent has the sheer reach (and the expertise navigating the outright byzantine Chinese approval system) Nintendo needs, Nintendo meanwhile has the console expertise (and more unique games, see Ring Fit) that the Penguin Factory lacks.

That said, this part of the article might be of interest too:



But yes, the underclocking is a main problem that they would have to solve. The Shield emulation was designed for higher-end PCs (apparently, obviously having no first hand experience myself), and the Switch port / emulation would neccessarily have to be adjusted to compensante for the much less powerful console. I'm not a software engineer myself, but some of those issues might be allieviated with porting (although porting probably introduces some issues of its own).





(I regret nothing!)

when did we get a Teemo emote?!

 

[Hadokeyblade]

Imagine if we actually do get another Sega character and it's not any of the ones were talking about lol

 

[Shroob]

when did we get a Teemo emote?!

It's been here for like, since before Smash 4 came out.

 

[SMAASH! Puppy]

when did we get a Teemo emote?!

...

Is it bad that I thought the emoticon was of the protagonist of Psychonauts?

 

[3BitSaurus]

I'm gonna call bull on anything that brings up quote-unquote "toxic characters." That's just gonna keep the cycle going on. The only characters that are toxic are the ones that actually use poison in their moveset; Any toxic discourse comes from the people discussing them.

I have your toxic pick right here, Shark. Any chance to stan LoL.

Tbh, it's kinda telling that a lot of users whine about "the same picks/arguments", but at the same time very few people here try to actively entertain characters outside their own bubble.