Official Next Smash - Speculation & Discussion Thread

[Kirbeh]

I hope the background for the next game's Battlefield is just like Smash 64's Duel Zone and Melee's Battlefield.

Battlefield's background has basically been sky, clouds and unseen field ever since Brawl, and as nice as that is, it's also kind of boring. Bring back the dark sci-fi void for the Battlefield.

I think the sky/ruins look makes it feel distinct from FD so I can understand why it's stuck around but I do think we're due for a background change or maybe a new Smash original stage for the sake of variety.

Maybe standard BF keeps the theme going but they design Big and Small BF around different environments?

 

[BritishGuy54]

What if a new Battlefield stage is a patchwork between different series stages?

 

[fogbadge]

What if a new Battlefield stage is a patchwork between different series stages?

interesting idea

 

[The Stoopid Unikorn]

I didn't say Smash can't have more than 40 characters.

You didn't outright say it but the implication was there.

they'll be lucky to get to 40

With that said, the post below very much sums up my thoughts

Did the 70+ come from that discussion about potentially getting 100 fighters? If so, both me and The Stoopid Unikorn were pretty firmly in the camp of "ain't no way that's happening. We just also thought that below 40 is a bit far in the opposite direction.

Just to give an idea of how insane 40 for a full base roster is, that would require over 60 cuts from Ultimate's roster since you need to also factor in newcomers, which we've never had more than 15 of historically for a launch roster. That's even more nuclear than the usual "what if only half the cast made it back?" discussions.

 

[Gengar84]

I totally understand what everyone is saying about the next game potentially having a much smaller than Ultimate and I agree that’s a good possibility. However, I’m choosing to stay optimistic in thinking we’ll get more than people are expecting. Maybe not hitting that hundred character goal but somewhere around Ultimate’s 89 characters by the time all the DLC is done. Otherwise, there’s not really much hope in speculating characters.

I’d say a 50ish character roster completely kills the chances of characters like Chun-Li, Zero, Alucard, Eggman and other additional characters from games that already have a character since that would also require us to keep the one we have on top of that. I don’t see a reality where we get Chun-Li and cut Ryu. Same goes for almost any hope of smaller third party franchise representation. With a 50ish character roster, we’d likely only have space for maybe 5 or so third party characters and we’d only see the very most iconic ones.

 

[SMAASH! Puppy]

I think some of the concept art we got for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's battlefield was super cool:

• Page 1
• Page 2

Some of the designs I can see why they didn't go with because they'd alter the stage's geometry/make it less readable. Any of the designs that have a thinner base with the edges of the main platform jutting out from it are probably best not used unless you want players getting pineappled on Battlefield of all stages. Same with the one with the really thin base platform. The one that's in the water is also kind of a nonstarter due to Smash's water mechanics, and the one with the chains is really cool, but has foreground elements, which is a big no-no.

I think my favorite has to be either the glass bowl surrounded by fire, or the one with the Fountain of Dreams style base platform. Both are kind of bulky for a Battlefield design, but they're really cool looking, and probably wouldn't outright break anything.

EDIT: I also really like the design with the tower surrounded by magic, and the one set in front of waterfalls.

 

[Garteam]

60 is the lowest the roster can go before people turn on the game for being too small relative to Ultimate. Let's try making a roster with 50 characters to demonstrate why that is:

• Let's assume there are 35 veterans and 15 newcomers.
• Obviously, you have to have the original 8, so that's almost a quarter of your veterans right there (8/35).
• Any ongoing Nintendo franchise will have at least one rep, so let's add , , , , , and (14/35).
• , , and , while the stars of inactive franchises, come from very fondly remembered games and are popular Smash staples, so they'll almost certainly be in the game (17/35).
• There're going to be some third parties in this game for sure. Everyone seems to agree , , , , and are safe regardless of what happens (22/35).
• , , and make money (25/35).
• , , , , , , and are pretty universally agreed to be guaranteed additions (32/35).
• It's very unlikely that none of the retro characters will return or that Pokemon will have one veteran, so let's add and (34/35).

Regardless of who the final veteran is and whoever the 15 newcomers are, I don't think this roster is salvageable. Even if you got rid of Game & Watch, Ganondorf, Ness, or other crazy **** like that, there's not enough room to tilt the arrow. Most franchises' representation has been gutted back to somewhere between Melee and Brawl (probably closer to 64 for Pokemon). About 80% of the developments that Smash's roster has seen in the past decade are gone.

These aren't "people are being unreasonable and expecting Everyone is Here Again + Knuckles"-tier problems, these are "Wait, they cut ****ing Meta Knight!?"-tier problems. Echo fighters can ameliorate that to an extent, but nothing will win Smash's good will back beyond, bluntly, prioritizing substance over novelty. Cool new additions will collapse without a solid foundation, even if that foundation comes at the cost of those new additions.

 

[Diddy Kong]

60 is the lowest the roster can go before people turn on the game for being too small relative to Ultimate. Let's try making a roster with 50 characters to demonstrate why that is:

• Let's assume there are 35 veterans and 15 newcomers.
• Obviously, you have to have the original 8, so that's almost a quarter of your veterans right there (8/35).
• Any ongoing Nintendo franchise will have at least one rep, so let's add , , , , , and (14/35).
• , , and , while the stars of inactive franchises, come from very fondly remembered games and are popular Smash staples, so they'll almost certainly be in the game (17/35).
• There're going to be some third parties in this game for sure. Everyone seems to agree , , , , and are safe regardless of what happens (22/35).
• , , and make money (25/35).
• , , , , , , and are pretty universally agreed to be guaranteed additions (32/35).
• It's very unlikely that none of the retro characters will return or that Pokemon will have one veteran, so let's add and (34/35).

Regardless of who the final veteran is and whoever the 15 newcomers are, I don't think this roster is salvageable. Even if you got rid of Game & Watch, Ganondorf, Ness, or other crazy **** like that, there's not enough room to tilt the arrow. Most franchises' representation has been gutted back to somewhere between Melee and Brawl (probably closer to 64 for Pokemon). About 80% of the developments that Smash's roster has seen in the past decade are gone.

These aren't "people are being unreasonable and expecting Everyone is Here Again + Knuckles"-tier problems, these are "Wait, they cut ****ing Meta Knight!?"-tier problems. Echo fighters can ameliorate that to an extent, but nothing will win Smash's good will back beyond, bluntly, prioritizing substance over novelty. Cool new additions will collapse without a solid foundation, even if that foundation comes at the cost of those new additions.

I agree.

Except for the fact they cut ****ing Meta Knight.

 

[ninjahmos]

I still have my doubts about the next game's roster being almost as big as Ultimate.

Part of me wants the roster to hit 100 characters, but another part of me feels like, even if we did reach 100 or more, it still wouldn't satisfy Smash fans enough to move on from Ultimate and play the next Smash game.

I dunno if it's just me or if a majority of the Smash fanbase is fickle…

 

[BritishGuy54]

The next Smash game is certainly going to be at a crossroads on what to do and where to go.

You can’t really satisfy everyone, and it becomes harder to do as time moves on, and more first parties and third parties get involved or fall off.

Everyone has different ideas on what the future of Smash will be.

We’re just at a point where Smash will have its ‘Dexit’ moment sooner rather than later.

 

[SMAASH! Puppy]

60 is the lowest the roster can go before people turn on the game for being too small relative to Ultimate. Let's try making a roster with 50 characters to demonstrate why that is:

• Let's assume there are 35 veterans and 15 newcomers.
• Obviously, you have to have the original 8, so that's almost a quarter of your veterans right there (8/35).
• Any ongoing Nintendo franchise will have at least one rep, so let's add , , , , , and (14/35).
• , , and , while the stars of inactive franchises, come from very fondly remembered games and are popular Smash staples, so they'll almost certainly be in the game (17/35).
• There're going to be some third parties in this game for sure. Everyone seems to agree , , , , and are safe regardless of what happens (22/35).
• , , and make money (25/35).
• , , , , , , and are pretty universally agreed to be guaranteed additions (32/35).
• It's very unlikely that none of the retro characters will return or that Pokemon will have one veteran, so let's add and (34/35).

Regardless of who the final veteran is and whoever the 15 newcomers are, I don't think this roster is salvageable. Even if you got rid of Game & Watch, Ganondorf, Ness, or other crazy **** like that, there's not enough room to tilt the arrow. Most franchises' representation has been gutted back to somewhere between Melee and Brawl (probably closer to 64 for Pokemon). About 80% of the developments that Smash's roster has seen in the past decade are gone.

These aren't "people are being unreasonable and expecting Everyone is Here Again + Knuckles"-tier problems, these are "Wait, they cut ****ing Meta Knight!?"-tier problems. Echo fighters can ameliorate that to an extent, but nothing will win Smash's good will back beyond, bluntly, prioritizing substance over novelty. Cool new additions will collapse without a solid foundation, even if that foundation comes at the cost of those new additions.

Funny enough, my first attempt at a Smash 4 sized roster did cut Meta Knight.


The main problem is that Super Smash Bros.'s scope has been so huge for so long that we have way too many ultra-important mainstays, so some of them are going to have to get the boot at some point. I really don't know how they'll deal with this moving forward.

 

[Guynamednelson]

people are being unreasonable and expecting Everyone is Here Again + Knuckles

IDK, expecting a repeat of EIH to have only one newcomer seems perfectly reasonable.

 

[Kirbeh]

IDK, expecting a repeat of EIH to have only one newcomer seems perfectly reasonable.

What's unreasonable is that they didn't feature Dante from the Devil May Cry series.

 

[Guynamednelson]

What's unreasonable is that they didn't feature Dante from the Devil May Cry series.

Yeah but it's not gonna be Dante from the Devil May Cry Series.

It'll be Dante from DANTE

 

[Pupp135]

60 is the lowest the roster can go before people turn on the game for being too small relative to Ultimate. Let's try making a roster with 50 characters to demonstrate why that is:

• Let's assume there are 35 veterans and 15 newcomers.
• Obviously, you have to have the original 8, so that's almost a quarter of your veterans right there (8/35).
• Any ongoing Nintendo franchise will have at least one rep, so let's add , , , , , and (14/35).
• , , and , while the stars of inactive franchises, come from very fondly remembered games and are popular Smash staples, so they'll almost certainly be in the game (17/35).
• There're going to be some third parties in this game for sure. Everyone seems to agree , , , , and are safe regardless of what happens (22/35).
• , , and make money (25/35).
• , , , , , , and are pretty universally agreed to be guaranteed additions (32/35).
• It's very unlikely that none of the retro characters will return or that Pokemon will have one veteran, so let's add and (34/35).

Regardless of who the final veteran is and whoever the 15 newcomers are, I don't think this roster is salvageable. Even if you got rid of Game & Watch, Ganondorf, Ness, or other crazy **** like that, there's not enough room to tilt the arrow. Most franchises' representation has been gutted back to somewhere between Melee and Brawl (probably closer to 64 for Pokemon). About 80% of the developments that Smash's roster has seen in the past decade are gone.

These aren't "people are being unreasonable and expecting Everyone is Here Again + Knuckles"-tier problems, these are "Wait, they cut ****ing Meta Knight!?"-tier problems. Echo fighters can ameliorate that to an extent, but nothing will win Smash's good will back beyond, bluntly, prioritizing substance over novelty. Cool new additions will collapse without a solid foundation, even if that foundation comes at the cost of those new additions.

These thought exercises of reducing the roster to a certain size really do highlight that many hard cuts would have to be made if we were to go down to a much smaller roster (the SSBFor sized roster proposed above cut Isabelle, Ridley, and Meta Knight for starters). Currently, I’m thinking somewhere along the lines of 60-70 fighters base game as it provides a compromise between For and Ultimate’s size.

 

[Swamp Sensei]

So I just finished playing through Donkey Kong Jungle Beat for the first time...



Why is the Smash version of Rumble Falls almost nothing like the DK level? It's like three or four levels smashed together.

Rumble Falls could have been a super cool stage with the bouncy vines.

 

[MBRedboy31]

I have to admit that there’s a chaotic part of my brain that kinda wants to see them do a SFIII-esque roster with like 5-10 veterans and the rest newcomers. There’s no way they’d do it because it’d be terrible marketing, but still.

 

[Among Waddle Dees]

So I just finished playing through Donkey Kong Jungle Beat for the first time...



Why is the Smash version of Rumble Falls almost nothing like the DK level? It's like three or four levels smashed together.

Rumble Falls could have been a super cool stage with the bouncy vines.

I'd say it's not even capturing the stage's essence in any way beyond waterfall climb. The music is not supposed to be fast paced at all, and there's no autoscrolling or random airplane in the original. The level isn't even slightly difficult!

 

[Scrimblo Bimblo]

60 is the lowest the roster can go before people turn on the game for being too small relative to Ultimate. Let's try making a roster with 50 characters to demonstrate why that is:

• Let's assume there are 35 veterans and 15 newcomers.
• Obviously, you have to have the original 8, so that's almost a quarter of your veterans right there (8/35).
• Any ongoing Nintendo franchise will have at least one rep, so let's add , , , , , and (14/35).
• , , and , while the stars of inactive franchises, come from very fondly remembered games and are popular Smash staples, so they'll almost certainly be in the game (17/35).
• There're going to be some third parties in this game for sure. Everyone seems to agree , , , , and are safe regardless of what happens (22/35).
• , , and make money (25/35).
• , , , , , , and are pretty universally agreed to be guaranteed additions (32/35).
• It's very unlikely that none of the retro characters will return or that Pokemon will have one veteran, so let's add and (34/35).

Regardless of who the final veteran is and whoever the 15 newcomers are, I don't think this roster is salvageable. Even if you got rid of Game & Watch, Ganondorf, Ness, or other crazy **** like that, there's not enough room to tilt the arrow. Most franchises' representation has been gutted back to somewhere between Melee and Brawl (probably closer to 64 for Pokemon). About 80% of the developments that Smash's roster has seen in the past decade are gone.

These aren't "people are being unreasonable and expecting Everyone is Here Again + Knuckles"-tier problems, these are "Wait, they cut ****ing Meta Knight!?"-tier problems. Echo fighters can ameliorate that to an extent, but nothing will win Smash's good will back beyond, bluntly, prioritizing substance over novelty. Cool new additions will collapse without a solid foundation, even if that foundation comes at the cost of those new additions.

People here are too unambitious. You don't simply go back after something like Ultimate.

No, I'm not saying that every Smash game is going to feature every single past character forever and ever, but they'll get closer to that than to Street Fighter 3.

 

[Shinuto]

I have to admit that there’s a chaotic part of my brain that kinda wants to see them do a SFIII-esque roster with like 5-10 veterans and the rest newcomers. There’s no way they’d do it because it’d be terrible marketing, but still.

The original 12 and everyone are newcomers bringing the roster to 108.

 

[Guynamednelson]

People here are too unambitious. You don't simply go back after something like Ultimate.

It's easy to be pessimistic about Ultimate DX/2/whatever having barely any newcomers when Sakurai himself said Ultimate would barely have any base game newcomers, and he was right. Especially if you don't count echoes.

 

[Gengar84]

I still have my doubts about the next game's roster being almost as big as Ultimate.

Part of me wants the roster to hit 100 characters, but another part of me feels like, even if we did reach 100 or more, it still wouldn't satisfy Smash fans enough to move on from Ultimate and play the next Smash game.

I dunno if it's just me or if a majority of the Smash fanbase is fickle…

Speaking from a personal standpoint, I’d be much more likely to drop Ultimate for a new game i still got to keep most of my favorites. I agree that’s even with 100 characters, I’ll always want more. Even with 200 characters, I’d still want more. That’s just part of the fun of speculation and hope of seeing my favorites join. I don’t think 100 characters is impossible after all the DLC even if I agree it isn’t likely.

Truthfully, it’s more about seeing my favorites join characters than it is about the actual roster number but seeing as most of my favorites are pretty niche, a larger roster is my only real hope of seeing most of them. I’m curious if we did scale back to 60 characters, if mods would be able to bring back the ones that were cut. I remember there being a pretty impressive Mewtwo moveset for Brawl. So I guess there’s always hope for that even if my favorites get cut. I’d be fine with a 50 character roster if it was completely up to me who we got.

 

[Louie G.]

35 veterans is not enough, particularly with Mii Fighters and third parties factored in... I've got a real solid 32 or so standalone first party vets that I've determined to be the effective bare minimum, so plugging in the rest on top of that will bring us closer to 40. Absences from Garteam's lineup that I'd say are particularly safe would be Isabelle, Ridley, Meta Knight, Pyra & Mythra and hopefully Little Mac. And at least two more Pokemon.

But I could live with a pretty radically condensed number and be fairly content. I don't think we're going to be seeing a drastic thing go down like cutting half the roster altogether, but I have conditioned myself to live with the prospect of dipping under Ultimate's base numbers if necessary. At this point if I have most of my favorite characters returning, many of which are pretty firmly safe in my eyes, I'm much more concerned about the new.

What do I actually think will happen? Base Ultimate is like 69 unique fighters(?), I think the next game may be ever so slightly less than that. Somewhere 60-66 unique fighters, with close to 48-50 returning veterans and perhaps around 12-15 newcomers. Next game is going to have difficult cuts however we splice it so I feel like we need to convince ourselves to at least be prepared for that. All power to you if you want to be more optimistic about it but I think my mindset is pretty fair and still involves some really heavy losses.

My bottom line is this though, the next Smash needs to be fixated on the new. Ultimate already celebrated all the old content. The path forward is exciting new ideas, even if that comes at the expense of some beloved old ones. We're not talking reboot territory but "Ultimate, but smaller" will not really cut it. The game is gonna sell no matter what but I'm talking about keeping the series fresh for years to come.

 

[Gengar84]

The one scenario I’d be fine with a 50 character roster is if they radically shift the direction of the game. I think 50 characters is a solid amount if we do something like Nintendo vs X, where we get 25 from Nintendo vs 25 from whatever is on the other side. We’d have to lose a ton of current staples but the game would feel different enough that it wouldn’t feel as much of a strict downgrade. That way, half the roster would be completely fresh and we’d actually have a chance of seeing some less mainstream characters from the opposing side. 50 characters with the current system makes that pretty much impossible. I wouldn’t be able to have fun matchups like Sephiroth vs Joker with a “Nintendo vs” approach but neither of those characters have any chance of staying with a drastically reduced roster anyways.

 

[Diddy Kong]

Honestly a 65 to 70 character roster is already modest compared to Ultimate.

People can chill

 

[Kirbeh]

I have to admit that there’s a chaotic part of my brain that kinda wants to see them do a SFIII-esque roster with like 5-10 veterans and the rest newcomers. There’s no way they’d do it because it’d be terrible marketing, but still.

I too hunger for chaos.

While they're at it, make this the Smash with the most mechanical depth and competitive balance. If it's going to flop it may as well be the kind that people actually appreciate a decade later for just being really fun.

Honestly I'd still want this but if it at all possible, as Smash's first spin-off where they get really experimental but still have a "normal" sequel alongside it.

 

[Gengar84]

I’m personally just going to avoid thinking about roster size too much. If we end up with a smaller roster, then I’ll just have to deal with it. Worrying about that too much now would kill my interest in speculating.

 

[SPEN18]

Honestly a 65 to 70 character roster is already modest compared to Ultimate.

People can chill

Assuming you mean unique characters, actually, it's not....base Ult had 69 unique fighters by the official count. So that would be about the same as Ult had at base.

Part of the problem with the reactions to the numbers being thrown out for next game is people comparing it to Ult's final count of 82, which took years after release to realize.

 

[HyperSomari64]

I have to admit that there’s a chaotic part of my brain that kinda wants to see them do a SFIII-esque roster with like 5-10 veterans and the rest newcomers. There’s no way they’d do it because it’d be terrible marketing, but still.

The original 12 and everyone are newcomers bringing the roster to 108.

This is what i want, in an unironic way.

 

[fogbadge]

I’m personally just going to avoid thinking about roster size too much. If we end up with a smaller roster, then I’ll just have to deal with it. Worrying about that too much now would kill my interest in speculating.

very sensible

 

[Ivander]

I'm not going to think about roster size until the next game is actually announced. Mainly because talks about roster size and character cuts tend to get heated up really fast. I'm certainly not against another Nintendo crossover game, but in a different genre from Smash. Especially if it brings in characters unlikely to appear in a fighting game and adds in some characters not in Smash to differentiate itself from Smash.

 

[Louie G.]

I applaud all of you for not thinking about roster size, but that's like the number one discussion that comes up in this thread every week lol. I find it kind of just boring to just talk about arbitrary numbers but clearly that's the big thing on everyone's minds sitting on pins and needles waiting for a game announcement.

But I still do find it compelling to think about how small a roster can get before I'm unsatisfied. I find this exercise productive because it allows me to feel less burdened by the worry of what's to come but also helps me even out my priorities in what I think are the most valuable parts of the roster as it stands. The fact that I've become so ambivalent to about 2/3 of the third parties feels like a massive weight off my shoulder because whatever happens there I'll be prepared. Most of this gets worked out for me on a personal level, just kind of connecting dots when I'm bored.

In general though as long as the conversation is character focused I enjoy it - Garteam's breakdown earlier was good because they emphasized how this would work on a character by character basis. Many times over this conversation is just "it'll be 40 characters" "it'll be 70 characters" without paying specific mind to the kind of sacrifices that would need to be made to get to each respective number. And as Garteam rightfully pointed out, you get to a point along the way where certain losses feel strange and inevitably make for an uneven roster. Most newcomers don't feel right getting added over Isabelle or Meta Knight, yknow.

 

[Scrimblo Bimblo]

It's easy to be pessimistic about Ultimate DX/2/whatever having barely any newcomers when Sakurai himself said Ultimate would barely have any base game newcomers, and he was right. Especially if you don't count echoes.

You'll get a satisfying number of newcomers AND a satisfying Number of veterans. The next Smash Bros. isn't going to be an indie production.

 

[Guynamednelson]

The next Smash Bros. isn't going to be an indie production.

Neither was Ultimate. Still had barely any unique newcomers pre-DLC.

 

[ninjahmos]

As temptingly difficult as it is, I think I'll also try to avoid thinking about the roster size for the next game until it's actually been announced.

 

[Gengar84]

Neither was Ultimate. Still had barely any unique newcomers pre-DLC.

I kind of count the veterans that didn’t make the cut for Smash 4 but made Ultimate as essentially newcomers. I’m sure a lot more work had to be done with those characters to bring them up to modern gameplay that it’s reasonable we had less newcomers. Now that they’re already in Ultimate, they shouldn’t have to do as much work. Same goes for all the past stages that got overhauls for Ultimate.

 

[Louie G.]

Neither was Ultimate. Still had barely any unique newcomers pre-DLC.

I think we often forget that most of the veterans who skipped out on Smash 4 had to be built largely from the ground up, or at least given drastic adjustments that constituted a similar workload to that of a full character. When we level out the "EIH" vets with the newcomers it looks a lot more normal. That would be 13 characters, and even if you wanna disregard clones that's gonna be 10-11 faces who were not here last time.




Obviously the addition of more veterans in general, especially if we want to see them get significant updates, is of legitimate concern for whatever workload is left to work on new characters. But I will say if the changes here would be kept to a minimum, I think the development time would allow for more than six newcomers this time around... depending on external stuff like new modes, stages and whatnot. But still.

I'm not rooting for, or expecting, Ultimate DX at all - just saying if that's what did happen, I'd be a little more optimistic about the newcomer count knowing that effort didn't need to go toward pretty much fully reimagining these characters who were not part of the previous game. Now the work is done and if it was truly some kind of port then the additional work toward them would be kept to a minimum.

 

[Guynamednelson]

I think we often forget that most of the veterans who skipped out on Smash 4 had to be built largely from the ground up, or at least given drastic adjustments that constituted a similar workload to that of a full character. When we level out the "EIH" vets with the newcomers it looks a lot more normal.




Obviously the addition of more veterans in general, especially if we want to see them get significant updates, is of legitimate concern for whatever workload is left to work on new characters. But I will say if the changes here would be kept to a minimum, I think the development time would allow for more than six newcomers this time around... depending on external stuff like new modes, stages and whatnot. But still.

I'm not rooting for, or expecting, Ultimate DX at all - just saying if that's what did happen, I'd be a little more optimistic about the newcomer count knowing that effort didn't need to go toward pretty much fully reimagining these characters who were not part of the previous game. Now the work is done and if it was truly some kind of port then the additional work toward them would be kept to a minimum.

Well that's true, and they made sure the veterans they already had made for Smash 4 didn't feel like direct copypastes of their Smash 4 selves by tweaking a whole lot of Brawl animations that Smash 4 left untouched.

But, at the same time, the Switch 2 should now have significant enough power upgrades to warrant them now throwing out the Smash 4 models they tweaked in favor of all-new ones, and as you said, significant updates to any veterans will take away resources from newcomers. Just because they finally made sure Bowser and Yoshi's upright stances apply to all of their animations doesn't mean they think character portrayals of the veteran fighters are 100% perfect.

 

[Pupp135]

As the roster size is something determined by resource constraints/licensing, and we don’t really have a good baseline on where the roster size will be next game, I like to think of the veterans in terms of priority/probability of returning.

 

[Ivander]

I applaud all of you for not thinking about roster size, but that's like the number one discussion that comes up in this thread every week lol. I find it kind of just boring to just talk about arbitrary numbers but clearly that's the big thing on everyone's minds sitting on pins and needles waiting for a game announcement.

Man, I hope we get something good from the Game Awards to talk about....oh wait, we're stuck on today.