Olimar RNG Discussion

[steelguttey]

i'd like to funnel all discussion on olimar's rng into one place so ideas arent scattered and we can have a formal discussion about it. this initial post wont have any opinions from me, just straight facts and rules. i'll do a write up later tho

just some basic discussion things before we start:

1. RNG stands for Random Number Generator, meaning any random value in a videogame. in olimar's case, the way olimar's pikmin are plucked is rng, so the pikmin type is random every time.
2. there is a 20% chance of plucking each kind of pikmin.

and some ground rules:

1. no off topic discussion, try to stay on the topic of olimar's rng.
2. please don't say something along the lines of "it isn't possible to code" or "that would be really hard to code" unless you have solid evidence of it not being possible to code. all this does is pointlessly halt discussion.

anybody can join, but i specifically invite @Dotcom, @zygo, @Shokio, @ Ningildo , and @robosteven to discuss this. and ss but i cant remember his smashboards account.

 

[Ningildo]

RNG is unreliable, Olimar (for the most part) is RNG based, so he's inconsistent as a character.

I have no clue how to change the pikmin pluck system for the better, but one idea I had is to somehow let Olimar have a better chance of plucking pikmin that help in an MU (think more purples when facing Mario, making fireballs far less irritating). One flaw of this is that a lot (I really mean a LOT) of Oli's MU spread is based off theory, so the optimal line up against a majority of characters is unknown. There's also the issue that all pikmin have at least SOME use in each MU (a flowered white being on the opponent mid combo for example), which means that allowing only certain pikmin colors to be plucked seems iffy, to me at least.

All I have for now, got things to do in a bit.

Pretty sure @SiLeNtDo0m has some cents to give as well.

 

[Ridel]

Honestly I would be just fine if they went for a Smash 4 style pluck order system rather then the current RNG system. I can't tell you how many times I pull out more Whites then I need. Most of the time I play Olimar I get a bit frustrated when I just can't pluck the Pikmin type I want at that moment and have to keeping wasting my time sacrificing Pikmin to get that one blue Pikmin to net a kill. I just feel this system would be less strenuous and allow Olimar mains to use his kit much more efficiently.

(Also happy birthday @ steelguttey .)

 

[steelguttey]

ight lets get it.

RNG AND WHY ITS A BIGGER PROBLEM FOR OLIMAR THAN IT LOOKS:

1. we're in a fast paced fighting game, not brawl. a common misconception about olimar is that he doesnt work in a fast paced smash game like pm because hes "campy" but thats not necessarily the case. olimar's playstyle in pm isnt exactly campy, its simply defensive. i would define olimar camping as him throwing and plucking pikmin until he has a lineup that is best for him, and THAT playstyle doesnt work in pm. you simply do not have enough time to farm for a lineup that is good for your matchup.

2. pikmin are well balanced around each other and that means that rng is even worse for olimar. since pikmin have so much extreme properties like whites doing a ton of damage on side b but with extremely low health and knockback, or purples having so much knockback and health but low range on fsmash, grab and side b, olimar is ****ed more than he is in smash 4 or brawl when he doesnt get the pikmin he wants for the matchup. because pikmin are designed to be good against specific characters and bad against others, and thats a great thing. if you wanted rng to not be a problem, you would have to normalize the pikmin so much that the differences between them are almost unnoticable.

3. purples are very very important and you can get no purples or two purples and become a tiny ganon with a projectile that converts into everything. if you get no purples, you are essentially pivot fsmashing instead of side b-ing and killing only through gimps or high% kill throws with blue. there is always a chance you will never ever pluck a purple, i've had matches where i pluck at least 25 times and get 0 purples, and it does effect your matchups, which brings up my next point.

4. matchups get much better and much worse depending on your lineup. this is my biggest grope with rng. it makes olimar so damn hard to place on a tier list because his mu spread is so based around getting a good enough lineup. for example, most rushdown characters have trouble against the lineup of yellows and purples, because you can throw the yellows and stop them from dash dancing and when they approach you can stuff their options with a pivot fsmash or a purple side b. this makes olimar super unreliable and can help or hurt him in unfair ways. if olimar gets perfect rng every match, which is never going to happen, he would have one of the best matchup spreads in the game and lose to maybe 2 characters TOPS, but if he gets the worst possible rng he becomes the worst character in the game. this gives him a metric **** ton of even matchups that can go either way due to rng.

now that i've explained why rng is a bad idea, let me explain how i think we should fix it.

COMMON IDEAS TO FIX RNG THAT I THINK WOULD HURT THE CHARACTER:

1. set order. this is a big one that i have argued endless times for hours and hours on end and i cant stress how poor of an idea it is. this will hurt olimar more than help him, and i would rather have rng than this. it essentially means you are going to have to stall and play the waiting game to get the lineup you want, and stocks go so fast in this game that it can all just blow away any second, all it really does is distract you from playing the game. pikmin farming is a technique that should be kicked out from olimar's gameplay. we should not have to limit ourselves from playing the actual game because we want to win the matchup. ivysaur gets solarbeam by attacking people, why cant we have something similar so we dont have to farm? all pikmin farming does is kill olimar's gameplay by forcing him to sit at one side of the stage and hope the opponent doesnt rush him down. and set order will promote farming in the most tedious way. lets say that the order of plucking is something like red, yellow, blue, white, purple. you start off the game with no purple, and you throw the pikmin you dont want and pluck a purple. guess what, any character in the game is fast enough to punish you doing that. olimar is offstage and youre probably dead. not only that, it makes it nearly impossible to get duplicate pikmin, one of the most important things in some matchups. double reds give you comebacks, double purples let you beat rushdown characters (or jigglypuff) and double yellows with a purple help you a ton against characters with disjoint. if you want two of the same pikmin, you will have to pick a stage with a low bottom blastzone- wait did i mention that yet? the speed of farming is also based off of HOW LOW THE BOTTOM BLASTZONE IS ON THE STAGE meaning that if we want to have a set order or any type of plucking that promotes farming we have to not go to dreamland or delfino's because that essentially doubles the time farming takes. really really bad idea. anyway, if you want two of the same pikmin, you have to pick a stage with a low bottom blast zone, pray your opponent's controller isnt working or that you get a lucky sky ko and then MAYBE if youre lucky you will get a duplicate. farming is unintuitive and not fun for either players during a match. it makes olimar unnecessarily campy and it doesn't add anything special to his gameplay. farming is not an essential part of olimar and it really needs to go, all it is doing is hindering him.

2. olimar chooses what pikmin he gets with either taunts or by pressing the neutral b with a different direction after it. choosing what pikmin you get for essentially doing nothing is an AWFUL idea, and even if you add limitations to it like you cant have duplicate pikmin (bad idea) it still makes him a ridiculous character to play against. you should be rewarded with a pikmin by doing something healthy for the game, not just pressing a button and a direction on the dpad.

3. olimar has every kind of pikmin and pikmin are immortal. completely ignoring the laws of coding that this violates, this is a bad idea. this means that olimar can get no duplicates, has to have the same combos in a certain order and is stuck with the same lineup. it also removes the cool counterplay olimar's pikmin have and honestly would just be boring and not interesting at all. bad idea

MY IDEA TO FIX RNG AND WHY I THINK IT WORKS FOR OLIMAR:

i made a reddit post with the same idea way back in late 3.0 or early 3.5 but i'll reiterate it here.

olimar starts out the game with the lineup of red, yellow, red, yellow. when you use pluck, olimar only plucks reds and yellows in that order. the way you can pluck other pikmin is by using the ability theyre the best at. if you hit a smash attack 3 times, your antennae briefly flashes purple and your next pluck is a purple pikmin. if you grab twice, your antennae flashes blue and you get a blue pikmin on your next pluck. if you throw a pikmin at somebody and it latches onto them, your antennae flashes white and your next pluck is a white pikmin. if you do not pluck in the next 10 seconds after doing one of these things, the pikmin goes away and youre back to plucking yellows or reds. some other things i would change to olimar that would balance this idea is to not let olimar have more than two purples, and rework the flowering system so pikmin dont flower over time, they flower when you hit the opponent a certain amount of times with that pikmin. that idea isn't thought out to much by me and i dont think it would be essential to this character, so im fine with it if someone tells me its a bad idea. i probably agree.

now why do i think this method will make olimar a better character to play and play against? well as i mentioned before, olimar shouldnt be rewarded with a pikmin he needs in the matchup by just plucking, he should do something that works in the matchup. for example, against a rushdown character like fox, i want to pivot fsmash or usmash him out of shield or straight up combo him, so i hit him with a bunch of smash attacks. sweet, i got a purple! now i can stuff his nair approaches and beat his projectile that my pikmin couldnt. what if im playing against a campy character like zelda? i cant approach her, she teleports away or just lightning kicks me every time i do, so i have to throw pikmin and make her respect them. the best way of doing this is getting a pikmin that does 40% damage on leafed side b, which is a white. so i throw a pikmin at her and get a white. she is now forced to do a laggy move which gets the pikmin off of her. this method gives olimar players an incentive to play the matchup the way it was meant to be played.

why should olimar only pluck yellows and reds? mostly because they're the most "neutral" of the pikmin. while they do have attributes that are better than others (red has the best damage and yellow is the fastest and has the most range) they dont exactly have attributes that make or break matchups. they can kill, gimp, combo, and theyre good enough in neutral to the point where its just enough to not become better than the others. they are a healthy medium that doesn't limit you too much.

ARGUMENTS PEOPLE USUALLY HAVE AGAINST THIS IDEA:

1. its too complicated: im gonna reason with you real quick. we are talking about olimar. you think anyone can just figure out all of the **** that olimar has without going on forums or just grinding him out in the lab for an extremely long time? olimar players wont exactly look at this of all things and say "this is too complicated for me to play olimar" because we are playing the most complicated character in the game. its really hard to imagine an olimar player that will quit his character because hes too complicated because of this. if this was implemented it still wouldnt be the most complicated part of olimar. plus, theres a big antennae on his head that would flash the color you would pluck. noticing basic patterns like that are things that humans have been doing forever. its really hard for me to think that this would be too complicated for olimar players.

2. it makes olimar predictable: i actually think the opposite. someone can go into a match thinking "hes probably going to do this because he wants that certain kind of pikmin" but thankfully, olimar can combo people and all of these things can combo into each other. want a white but your opponent keeps dodging side b? run up to them and hit them. end the combo with a fair and boom, you get a free side b. want a blue but your opponent is side stepping your grabs? side b them and punish them hitting the pikmin off them with a grab, then combo into a regrab. olimar's moveset beautifully flows into itself and this system adds a great level of mixups into olimar's gameplan.

3. the antennae would confuse people that look at it to see what pikmin he has: this one i can actually see being a problem sadly. i wouldnt think the flash on the antennae lasts too long but it still could be a problem. with that said, **** the antennae. i knew what pikmin i had in my lineup by dash dancing i dont need no special effects.

if theres anything else i missed just quote me on it, feel free to argue.

 

[GrizzleDrizz1ed]

ight lets get it.

RNG AND WHY ITS A BIGGER PROBLEM FOR OLIMAR THAN IT LOOKS:

1. we're in a fast paced fighting game, not brawl. a common misconception about olimar is that he doesnt work in a fast paced smash game like pm because hes "campy" but thats not necessarily the case. olimar's playstyle in pm isnt exactly campy, its simply defensive. i would define olimar camping as him throwing and plucking pikmin until he has a lineup that is best for him, and THAT playstyle doesnt work in pm. you simply do not have enough time to farm for a lineup that is good for your matchup.

2. pikmin are well balanced around each other and that means that rng is even worse for olimar. since pikmin have so much extreme properties like whites doing a ton of damage on side b but with extremely low health and knockback, or purples having so much knockback and health but low range on fsmash, grab and side b, olimar is ****ed more than he is in smash 4 or brawl when he doesnt get the pikmin he wants for the matchup. because pikmin are designed to be good against specific characters and bad against others, and thats a great thing. if you wanted rng to not be a problem, you would have to normalize the pikmin so much that the differences between them are almost unnoticable.

3. purples are very very important and you can get no purples or two purples and become a tiny ganon with a projectile that converts into everything. if you get no purples, you are essentially pivot fsmashing instead of side b-ing and killing only through gimps or high% kill throws with blue. there is always a chance you will never ever pluck a purple, i've had matches where i pluck at least 25 times and get 0 purples, and it does effect your matchups, which brings up my next point.

4. matchups get much better and much worse depending on your lineup. this is my biggest grope with rng. it makes olimar so damn hard to place on a tier list because his mu spread is so based around getting a good enough lineup. for example, most rushdown characters have trouble against the lineup of yellows and purples, because you can throw the yellows and stop them from dash dancing and when they approach you can stuff their options with a pivot fsmash or a purple side b. this makes olimar super unreliable and can help or hurt him in unfair ways. if olimar gets perfect rng every match, which is never going to happen, he would have one of the best matchup spreads in the game and lose to maybe 2 characters TOPS, but if he gets the worst possible rng he becomes the worst character in the game. this gives him a metric **** ton of even matchups that can go either way due to rng.

now that i've explained why rng is a bad idea, let me explain how i think we should fix it.

COMMON IDEAS TO FIX RNG THAT I THINK WOULD HURT THE CHARACTER:

1. set order. this is a big one that i have argued endless times for hours and hours on end and i cant stress how poor of an idea it is. this will hurt olimar more than help him, and i would rather have rng than this. it essentially means you are going to have to stall and play the waiting game to get the lineup you want, and stocks go so fast in this game that it can all just blow away any second, all it really does is distract you from playing the game. pikmin farming is a technique that should be kicked out from olimar's gameplay. we should not have to limit ourselves from playing the actual game because we want to win the matchup. ivysaur gets solarbeam by attacking people, why cant we have something similar so we dont have to farm? all pikmin farming does is kill olimar's gameplay by forcing him to sit at one side of the stage and hope the opponent doesnt rush him down. and set order will promote farming in the most tedious way. lets say that the order of plucking is something like red, yellow, blue, white, purple. you start off the game with no purple, and you throw the pikmin you dont want and pluck a purple. guess what, any character in the game is fast enough to punish you doing that. olimar is offstage and youre probably dead. not only that, it makes it nearly impossible to get duplicate pikmin, one of the most important things in some matchups. double reds give you comebacks, double purples let you beat rushdown characters (or jigglypuff) and double yellows with a purple help you a ton against characters with disjoint. if you want two of the same pikmin, you will have to pick a stage with a low bottom blastzone- wait did i mention that yet? the speed of farming is also based off of HOW LOW THE BOTTOM BLASTZONE IS ON THE STAGE meaning that if we want to have a set order or any type of plucking that promotes farming we have to not go to dreamland or delfino's because that essentially doubles the time farming takes. really really bad idea. anyway, if you want two of the same pikmin, you have to pick a stage with a low bottom blast zone, pray your opponent's controller isnt working or that you get a lucky sky ko and then MAYBE if youre lucky you will get a duplicate. farming is unintuitive and not fun for either players during a match. it makes olimar unnecessarily campy and it doesn't add anything special to his gameplay. farming is not an essential part of olimar and it really needs to go, all it is doing is hindering him.

2. olimar chooses what pikmin he gets with either taunts or by pressing the neutral b with a different direction after it. choosing what pikmin you get for essentially doing nothing is an AWFUL idea, and even if you add limitations to it like you cant have duplicate pikmin (bad idea) it still makes him a ridiculous character to play against. you should be rewarded with a pikmin by doing something healthy for the game, not just pressing a button and a direction on the dpad.

3. olimar has every kind of pikmin and pikmin are immortal. completely ignoring the laws of coding that this violates, this is a bad idea. this means that olimar can get no duplicates, has to have the same combos in a certain order and is stuck with the same lineup. it also removes the cool counterplay olimar's pikmin have and honestly would just be boring and not interesting at all. bad idea

MY IDEA TO FIX RNG AND WHY I THINK IT WORKS FOR OLIMAR:

i made a reddit post with the same idea way back in late 3.0 or early 3.5 but i'll reiterate it here.

olimar starts out the game with the lineup of red, yellow, red, yellow. when you use pluck, olimar only plucks reds and yellows in that order. the way you can pluck other pikmin is by using the ability theyre the best at. if you hit a smash attack 3 times, your antennae briefly flashes purple and your next pluck is a purple pikmin. if you grab twice, your antennae flashes blue and you get a blue pikmin on your next pluck. if you throw a pikmin at somebody and it latches onto them, your antennae flashes white and your next pluck is a white pikmin. if you do not pluck in the next 10 seconds after doing one of these things, the pikmin goes away and youre back to plucking yellows or reds. some other things i would change to olimar that would balance this idea is to not let olimar have more than two purples, and rework the flowering system so pikmin dont flower over time, they flower when you hit the opponent a certain amount of times with that pikmin. that idea isn't thought out to much by me and i dont think it would be essential to this character, so im fine with it if someone tells me its a bad idea. i probably agree.

now why do i think this method will make olimar a better character to play and play against? well as i mentioned before, olimar shouldnt be rewarded with a pikmin he needs in the matchup by just plucking, he should do something that works in the matchup. for example, against a rushdown character like fox, i want to pivot fsmash or usmash him out of shield or straight up combo him, so i hit him with a bunch of smash attacks. sweet, i got a purple! now i can stuff his nair approaches and beat his projectile that my pikmin couldnt. what if im playing against a campy character like zelda? i cant approach her, she teleports away or just lightning kicks me every time i do, so i have to throw pikmin and make her respect them. the best way of doing this is getting a pikmin that does 40% damage on leafed side b, which is a white. so i throw a pikmin at her and get a white. she is now forced to do a laggy move which gets the pikmin off of her. this method gives olimar players an incentive to play the matchup the way it was meant to be played.

why should olimar only pluck yellows and reds? mostly because they're the most "neutral" of the pikmin. while they do have attributes that are better than others (red has the best damage and yellow is the fastest and has the most range) they dont exactly have attributes that make or break matchups. they can kill, gimp, combo, and theyre good enough in neutral to the point where its just enough to not become better than the others. they are a healthy medium that doesn't limit you too much.

ARGUMENTS PEOPLE USUALLY HAVE AGAINST THIS IDEA:

1. its too complicated: im gonna reason with you real quick. we are talking about olimar. you think anyone can just figure out all of the **** that olimar has without going on forums or just grinding him out in the lab for an extremely long time? olimar players wont exactly look at this of all things and say "this is too complicated for me to play olimar" because we are playing the most complicated character in the game. its really hard to imagine an olimar player that will quit his character because hes too complicated because of this. if this was implemented it still wouldnt be the most complicated part of olimar. plus, theres a big antennae on his head that would flash the color you would pluck. noticing basic patterns like that are things that humans have been doing forever. its really hard for me to think that this would be too complicated for olimar players.

2. it makes olimar predictable: i actually think the opposite. someone can go into a match thinking "hes probably going to do this because he wants that certain kind of pikmin" but thankfully, olimar can combo people and all of these things can combo into each other. want a white but your opponent keeps dodging side b? run up to them and hit them. end the combo with a fair and boom, you get a free side b. want a blue but your opponent is side stepping your grabs? side b them and punish them hitting the pikmin off them with a grab, then combo into a regrab. olimar's moveset beautifully flows into itself and this system adds a great level of mixups into olimar's gameplan.

3. the antennae would confuse people that look at it to see what pikmin he has: this one i can actually see being a problem sadly. i wouldnt think the flash on the antennae lasts too long but it still could be a problem. with that said, **** the antennae. i knew what pikmin i had in my lineup by dash dancing i dont need no special effects.

if theres anything else i missed just quote me on it, feel free to argue.

Here we go again! This topic is once again dredged up. While I don't mind discussing it at length again, I would like to state that people greatly disagree with your idea on how to fix RNG. Here are the problems that I see.

It is Too Complicated. In your rebuttal of the "It's too complicated" point, you essentially just said, "So what? It's Olimar, you're going to have to research the hell out of him anyways. Deal with it." but you don't address why it's so complicated.

Here's the problems with your idea listed out.
Base Concept: By successfully executing certain attacks, certain Pikmin will become available to pluck. Each achieved Pikmin color can only be plucked once per criteria met. (I'm assuming this was your intention, since otherwise you could execute 3 Smash attacks and then pull 3-4 purples, which is... well... broken.)

1. Start out with Red's and Yellow's. This directly brought me to your point against Set Order where you said "you start off the game with no purple, and you throw the pikmin you dont want and pluck a purple. guess what, any character in the game is fast enough to punish you doing that. olimar is offstage and youre probably dead." Only in your idea, you would have to successfully execute 3 smash attacks in order to gain access to the Purple Pikmin. I believe you have refuted your own complaint.

2. Having the Pikmin availability be based strictly on how you perform will lead to players having to potentially break a combo so that they don't overwrite the Pikmin they wish to pluck. Players may not toss a Pikmin as a follow up combo breaker in order to preserve the Pikmin they just earned. Same thing if they were working on getting a Blue, and they refrained from hitting the 3rd smash in order to get it due to the Purple Pikmin overwriting it. This would greatly limit a players potential.

3. You would be playing most of the match with 2-3 Pikmin, due to not being able to pluck a new Pikmin if you met the criteria and had a full line of 4. This would greatly hinder players.

4. Pikmin Toss would be completely broken in an OP way, and in a really bad way. The OP way is if the criteria is 1 Pikmin toss latch = 1 white, you could tag them with a Pikmin and Pluck a white. Then tag them with the white, and Pluck another white, and so on. If you're good at avoiding fights, then you can harass them quite a bit. The other way that's bad is that it prevents players from using the move if they have a Pikmin ready to be plucked, because it would overwrite it.

5. Attack counting is not fun. No one wants to try and keep track of how many grabs they got or how many smashes, all while making sure you have a healthy amount of Pikmin, and making sure you have enough space to safely Pluck the pikmin you want.

6. Players have to earn the right to kill a certain way. (*In an infomercial voice) Want to be able to Kill with a throw? Better get your grabs on so you can be ready. Want to be able to hit hard and net some lower percent kills? Use those Smashes. Also be sure to have enough room in your line up so you can Pluck them when the time comes. Also, hold back on that Pikmin Toss! You wouldn't want to overwrite all that hard work you did trying for that Blue or Purple!

I think it's generally fine as it is. Sure, RNG isn't the best thing ever for Olimar but it's fairly well balanced. I think you're taking the Issue of RNG too far and creating something that is far worse than RNG.

 

[GrizzleDrizz1ed]

I had an idea awhile ago that minimized the impact of RNG on Olimar. I will start by saying that Olimar does not need this, though it is a plausible solution to the issue of RNG with Olimar, should PMDT decide to change it.

Essentially it's where Olimar repeatedly uses the same Pikmin at the front of the line until certain moves are used that would send it to the back of the line.

Here's how it would work:
The moves that use a Pikmin which keep the same Pikmin at the front of the line are - Fair, Dair, Bair, Uair, Usmash, Grab.
The moves that would rotate the Pikmin to the back of the line are -Fsmash, Dsmash, Side B, Down B.

I think that this is fairly balanced, though it would probably push Olimar into having some better MU's. The Positives are that it lets you focus on getting what you need. Blue suddenly becomes even more dangerous because it is able to kill through a hit, but more so with a grab. Yellow would allow you chain a few Fairs together, (nothing too extreme, no more than 2-3 red Fairs), and you could pile on damage with Red, or be a melee threat with Purples. Either way it tells the opponent something but still keeps them guessing. White is about the only one you wouldn't keep in front.

The downside (which would be needed) is that they will take more hits, more often, causing them to die sooner. It's not all bad, since it would give the others more time to grow safely.

Using Pikmin Toss is also a good way to usefully cycle through your Pikmin and keep pace. You're less likely to be punished for hitting with the weakest link in your line up, (since it wouldn't happen as often) but rewarded for using the best Pikmin for the situation.

I know some people might say that one Pikmin is going to always be the best, (probably Purple) but holding a Purple tells the opponent a lot, as does holding any Pikmin. They know you're not likely to grab or Fsmash with that Purple. There is a lot of value in the RNG, in that you could get lucky and hit with the golden combo lineup, or fall flat with the worst combo lineup, but you're opponent doesn't know what to expect.

 

[steelguttey]

It is Too Complicated. In your rebuttal of the "It's too complicated" point, you essentially just said, "So what? It's Olimar, you're going to have to research the hell out of him anyways. Deal with it." but you don't address why it's so complicated.

because youre playing a character that is hard and takes a whole lot of effort and research to play optimally. if you want to play fox you have to have fast fingers, if you want to play samus you have to get used to being campy some times. this is relatively simple compared to the rest of olimar's kit.

Here's the problems with your idea listed out.
Base Concept: By successfully executing certain attacks, certain Pikmin will become available to pluck. Each achieved Pikmin color can only be plucked once per criteria met. (I'm assuming this was your intention, since otherwise you could execute 3 Smash attacks and then pull 3-4 purples, which is... well... broken.)

probably shouldve mentioned that oops. yea only one pikmin is the color you earned after meeting the requirements.

1. Start out with Red's and Yellow's. This directly brought me to your point against Set Order where you said "you start off the game with no purple, and you throw the pikmin you dont want and pluck a purple. guess what, any character in the game is fast enough to punish you doing that. olimar is offstage and youre probably dead." Only in your idea, you would have to successfully execute 3 smash attacks in order to gain access to the Purple Pikmin. I believe you have refuted your own complaint.

but the thing is that an order of two different pikmin is much less of a time distance to get the pikmin you want, assuming you want a yellow or red, than a whole 5 pikmin. you arent getting hit when youre hitting smash attacks, i dont know what youre point is here. set order of 5 pikmin and set order of 2 pikmin are two vastly different things.

2. Having the Pikmin availability be based strictly on how you perform will lead to players having to potentially break a combo so that they don't overwrite the Pikmin they wish to pluck. Players may not toss a Pikmin as a follow up combo breaker in order to preserve the Pikmin they just earned. Same thing if they were working on getting a Blue, and they refrained from hitting the 3rd smash in order to get it due to the Purple Pikmin overwriting it. This would greatly limit a players potential.

like i said, the next pluck in a few seconds will be a purple. i doubt your combo will be taking more than 5 seconds after hitting 3 smash attacks, not only that, but plucking mid combo isnt that hard if youre going for a read or something. plucking is pretty damn fast. this also may be a good thing, who knows. usmash can be replaced with uair in most situations, and you arent getting 3 usmashes in one combo on anyone that isnt a fast faller, which you can chain grab if you really want a blue. i was thinking before that maybe whistling will overwrite the pikmin that you got so you can pluck yellows or reds instead of whites if youre just throwing pikmin.

3. You would be playing most of the match with 2-3 Pikmin, due to not being able to pluck a new Pikmin if you met the criteria and had a full line of 4. This would greatly hinder players.

2-3 lineup is actually optimal in most matchups due to you getting more of the pikmin you want more often. 4 pikmin lineup is only really good when you get 2 purples and you want a yellow and a blue or something. not only that but... who said you arent allowed to have 4 pikmin? you can always pluck reds and yellows.

4. Pikmin Toss would be completely broken in an OP way, and in a really bad way. The OP way is if the criteria is 1 Pikmin toss latch = 1 white, you could tag them with a Pikmin and Pluck a white. Then tag them with the white, and Pluck another white, and so on. If you're good at avoiding fights, then you can harass them quite a bit. The other way that's bad is that it prevents players from using the move if they have a Pikmin ready to be plucked, because it would overwrite it.

i agree with you on this one and this is an oversight i had, but it isnt a problem that is unfixable. if we can limit purples, we can limit whites. since whites hold such a niche of having a really good side b i dont see why having only one of them at a time would be a big deal, since its so easy to get them anyway. also, side b has a ton of counterplay and if you are plucking and throwing and plucking and throwing its very easy to rush you down.

5. Attack counting is not fun. No one wants to try and keep track of how many grabs they got or how many smashes, all while making sure you have a healthy amount of Pikmin, and making sure you have enough space to safely Pluck the pikmin you want.

are you serious on this one? counting to 3 is tedious to you? even when theres a goddamned indicator to show you that you did it so you really dont even have to count? jesus christ dude ****ing sesame street can teach you how to do this ****

6. Players have to earn the right to kill a certain way. (*In an infomercial voice) Want to be able to Kill with a throw? Better get your grabs on so you can be ready. Want to be able to hit hard and net some lower percent kills? Use those Smashes. Also be sure to have enough room in your line up so you can Pluck them when the time comes. Also, hold back on that Pikmin Toss! You wouldn't want to overwrite all that hard work you did trying for that Blue or Purple!

you mean if i want kill someone i have to HIT THEM FIRST?! ****ing blasphemy

I think it's generally fine as it is. Sure, RNG isn't the best thing ever for Olimar but it's fairly well balanced. I think you're taking the Issue of RNG too far and creating something that is far worse than RNG.

i wrote a whopping 4 paragraphs on why rng is a terrible mechanic and you just completely ignored it. please for the sake of the argument try to provide a counterpoint to my arguments against rng because conclusion paragraphs like that get us nowhere.

I had an idea awhile ago that minimized the impact of RNG on Olimar. I will start by saying that Olimar does not need this, though it is a plausible solution to the issue of RNG with Olimar, should PMDT decide to change it.

Essentially it's where Olimar repeatedly uses the same Pikmin at the front of the line until certain moves are used that would send it to the back of the line.

Here's how it would work:
The moves that use a Pikmin which keep the same Pikmin at the front of the line are - Fair, Dair, Bair, Uair, Usmash, Grab.
The moves that would rotate the Pikmin to the back of the line are -Fsmash, Dsmash, Side B, Down B.

I think that this is fairly balanced, though it would probably push Olimar into having some better MU's. The Positives are that it lets you focus on getting what you need. Blue suddenly becomes even more dangerous because it is able to kill through a hit, but more so with a grab. Yellow would allow you chain a few Fairs together, (nothing too extreme, no more than 2-3 red Fairs), and you could pile on damage with Red, or be a melee threat with Purples. Either way it tells the opponent something but still keeps them guessing. White is about the only one you wouldn't keep in front.

The downside (which would be needed) is that they will take more hits, more often, causing them to die sooner. It's not all bad, since it would give the others more time to grow safely.

Using Pikmin Toss is also a good way to usefully cycle through your Pikmin and keep pace. You're less likely to be punished for hitting with the weakest link in your line up, (since it wouldn't happen as often) but rewarded for using the best Pikmin for the situation.

I know some people might say that one Pikmin is going to always be the best, (probably Purple) but holding a Purple tells the opponent a lot, as does holding any Pikmin. They know you're not likely to grab or Fsmash with that Purple. There is a lot of value in the RNG, in that you could get lucky and hit with the golden combo lineup, or fall flat with the worst combo lineup, but you're opponent doesn't know what to expect.

please, just remove the whole mechanic that keeps olimar's punish and neutral game fluent and interesting. that'd make olimar players stick to the character. theres already whole mechanics in place, like having a solo pikmin, that do the things that you suggested. pikmin cycling as you attack is a trademark olimar mechanic that makes him fun to play and rewards successful micromanaging. this idea just ruins that unless you use laggy moves or moves that do no knockback.

 

[Rᴏb]

From an outside perspective, a set order seems like the most logical choice. You should start every game with 5 Pikmin in the order of Red, Yellow, Blue, White and Purple and this should be the order in which Pikmin are plucked as well. This change alone would make Olimar such a better character based on the fact that he would actually become consistent. Compared to his current kit that uses RNG, this change is strictly a good one by comparison.

Two other changes that I feel would really compliment this mechanic are speeding up Pikmin Pluck and Whistle. These changes would essentially allow one to safely acquire and rearrange their lineup on the fly, which would in turn allow players a greater degree of control of their character, and promote olimar's opponents to never stop pressuring him. I believe that these changes would mitigate the amount of Pikmin farming to only occur between stocks, or when opponents are extremely reluctant to approach. Admittedly, making Olimar's ability to farm certain kinds of Pikmin easier sounds kinda scary, so at the very least I think he should get his Whistle sped up. I don't really think Olimar is a character that is reliant on farming for duplicate Pikmin in order to be good, but I do think that having duplicate Pikmin puts Olimar in a very good position, so I think he should only be able to farm when he's earned it. This kinda goes against my reasoning for allowing Olimar to farm easier, but I believe that these changes would at least speed up the pace of matches by giving Olimar a more complete lineup a higher percent of the time (and thus more options), and by giving his opponents more of a reason to approach him.

Also, I can't help but mention this last change that would also compliment a set order of Pimin. I think that Olimar's antennae should shine the color Pikmin that Olimar is about to pluck next because the way antennae functions now is kinda redundant since you can clearly see which Pikmin you're about to use. Rather than have his antennae represent something that you can already see on the screen, I think it should represent something that you would normally have to keep track of on your own.

 

[GrizzleDrizz1ed]

because youre playing a character that is hard and takes a whole lot of effort and research to play optimally. if you want to play fox you have to have fast fingers, if you want to play samus you have to get used to being campy some times. this is relatively simple compared to the rest of olimar's kit.

The weird things about Olimar is mainly about the attributes his Pikmin have. Throwing in a unique way to get certain Pikmin greatly over complicates things. Any player can pick up Olimar and notice over a short period of time what each Pikmin does, but implementing an un-intuitive way to acquire certain Pikmin is bad design.

but the thing is that an order of two different pikmin is much less of a time distance to get the pikmin you want, assuming you want a yellow or red, than a whole 5 pikmin. you arent getting hit when youre hitting smash attacks, i dont know what youre point is here. set order of 5 pikmin and set order of 2 pikmin are two vastly different things.

My original point is that you complained about Set Order because you would need to toss a Pikmin off to get a Purple, and you'd get punished for it. But your set order of 2 puts you in the same position, only you would have to hit with 3 smash attacks and have only 3 Pikmin in line, and be in a safe position to pluck it, all while making sure you don't toss a Pikmin on your opponent to overwrite the Purple. Your method makes it way more difficult to get the Purple.

like i said, the next pluck in a few seconds will be a purple. i doubt your combo will be taking more than 5 seconds after hitting 3 smash attacks, not only that, but plucking mid combo isnt that hard if youre going for a read or something. plucking is pretty damn fast. this also may be a good thing, who knows. usmash can be replaced with uair in most situations, and you arent getting 3 usmashes in one combo on anyone that isnt a fast faller, which you can chain grab if you really want a blue. i was thinking before that maybe whistling will overwrite the pikmin that you got so you can pluck yellows or reds instead of whites if youre just throwing pikmin.

This is mostly you trying to justify the breaking up of combos and other things you could do instead of doing what you want.

2-3 lineup is actually optimal in most matchups due to you getting more of the pikmin you want more often. 4 pikmin lineup is only really good when you get 2 purples and you want a yellow and a blue or something. not only that but... who said you arent allowed to have 4 pikmin? you can always pluck reds and yellows.

Two things. 2-3 Pikmin is not Optimal in most MU's. It's good when you have opponents in a certain percentage range and also have 2-3 of the Pikmin type that is good for dealing with opponents at that percentage. It's situational. Secondly, If my opponent is in Blue throw kill range and I need to get 2 Grabs to have that option opened to me, I don't want to pluck a Purple, Yellow, White, or Red. Fresh off losing a stock, having that option not being available sucks.

are you serious on this one? counting to 3 is tedious to you? even when theres a goddamned indicator to show you that you did it so you really dont even have to count? jesus christ dude ****ing sesame street can teach you how to do this ****

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smCfhbSQEiE
Yes. I'm serious with this one. Olimar already has us thinking about micromanaging Pikmin significantly more than any other characters micromanage. Stacking an attack based, tally-to-determine what Pikmin you can pull, on top of everything else is crappy. I don't care that there's a little light on his head that tells me the cake is ready, I don't want to be in a situation where I want a Blue, and I can't use Usmash cuz it would overwrite the Blue I just earned.

you mean if i want kill someone i have to HIT THEM FIRST?! ****ing blasphemy

It seems as though you didn't fully read my first sentence. The part you missed is "a certain way." The Full quote with a brief explanation is: Players have to earn the right to kill a certain way. Which means that if you want to be able to kill with a grab, you'll need to first get several grabs, and have that Blue Pikmin grab them when they are high enough percent. Like I said earlier, if you're fresh off a stock and they're at high percents, a grab kill is off the table for you. Either way you slice it, earning the right to kill a certain way in a fighting game is bad design.

i wrote a whopping 4 paragraphs on why rng is a terrible mechanic and you just completely ignored it. please for the sake of the argument try to provide a counterpoint to my arguments against rng because conclusion paragraphs like that get us nowhere.

I really don't see it as much of an issue. I think the Pikmin are fairly well balanced on average, and if you play it right, you can make the best of the situation. If I could make changes to them, I'd make it so Red and Purples are able to kill with Uthrow, and increase the KBG of yellow to be able to kill a little earlier with Fair and Bair and Uair. I'd also increase the Grab range of Purple to match the others, because it's often a game changer if you barely miss a grab with Purple. But in general, I don't think people farm at all anymore since they're all good. Sure, I'll try to kill Yellows and Whites if they're at high percents but I don't farm for certain Pikmin anymore. You might just be over thinking it and holding onto old habits and really high standards with the expectation of being able to be 100% optimal at nearly all times. And I really don't think your solution to RNG is the right one.

please, just remove the whole mechanic that keeps olimar's punish and neutral game fluent and interesting. that'd make olimar players stick to the character. theres already whole mechanics in place, like having a solo pikmin, that do the things that you suggested. pikmin cycling as you attack is a trademark olimar mechanic that makes him fun to play and rewards successful micromanaging. this idea just ruins that unless you use laggy moves or moves that do no knockback.

Like I said before in that and in this post, I don't care if this gets in or not. I think it's generally fine as it is.

But in this idea, it lets the player keep the Pikmin they want. They can also change it out on the fly quickly through Side B or Whistle. It would be really efficient and fairly balanced. The way I see it, is that people would tend to use Red early on for getting the damage up quickly. The Yellow to get multiple hits quickly and have an advantage in neutral, White would be tossed when it was flowered. Purple would be be for attempting 80%-100% kills, and Blue would be for later in the stock when you could kill throw at 120%. Olimar as a character uses the right tool for the right job at the right time. That's the concept of this idea. Again, I don't care if they do it or not, but I think it stands as a viable and good option that's fairly well balanced and mitigates RNG while giving players the tools to change up their play style on the fly.

 

[steelguttey]

The weird things about Olimar is mainly about the attributes his Pikmin have. Throwing in a unique way to get certain Pikmin greatly over complicates things. Any player can pick up Olimar and notice over a short period of time what each Pikmin does, but implementing an un-intuitive way to acquire certain Pikmin is bad design.

it really, really doesnt. counting to 3, at most, and when it does it for you, isnt over complicated in the slightest. is it really that hard to notice that 3 smashes gives you a purple, or two grabs give you a blue even after your antennae directly show you? the attributes of pikmin are way more complicated than this.

My original point is that you complained about Set Order because you would need to toss a Pikmin off to get a Purple, and you'd get punished for it. But your set order of 2 puts you in the same position, only you would have to hit with 3 smash attacks and have only 3 Pikmin in line, and be in a safe position to pluck it, all while making sure you don't toss a Pikmin on your opponent to overwrite the Purple. Your method makes it way more difficult to get the Purple.

the big word here is "HIT" as in "THEY ARENT ATTACKING YOU WHEN YOU HIT THEM". not only that, but one pluck does not put you in a bad position, plucking and throwing and plucking and throwing does. if yo hit someone with 3 smashes, they arent going to punish you for an 11 frame move. making sure you dont toss a pikmin before you pluck is pretty damn easy you just pluck before you throw, i dont think thats complicated at all.

This is mostly you trying to justify the breaking up of combos and other things you could do instead of doing what you want.

ok just completely ignore the other points i made its ight i dont mind. like i said, you arent getting more followups after 3 usmashes except a fair on fast fallers, and if you want a blue you can just chain grab fast fallers anyway. i really dont get what your point is here.

Two things. 2-3 Pikmin is not Optimal in most MU's. It's good when you have opponents in a certain percentage range and also have 2-3 of the Pikmin type that is good for dealing with opponents at that percentage. It's situational. Secondly, If my opponent is in Blue throw kill range and I need to get 2 Grabs to have that option opened to me, I don't want to pluck a Purple, Yellow, White, or Red. Fresh off losing a stock, having that option not being available sucks.

you just like ignoring the point i make, dont you. like i said, having less than 4 pikmin means you get the pikmin you want for that specific matchup more often, its the best buff he got in 3.6 and why he has a better onstage game in general. by the way, if your opponent is at kill throw range that means that you probably threw them 2 times. either that, or you have a flowered red which will kill anyway at blue kill throw percent.

Yes. I'm serious with this one. Olimar already has us thinking about micromanaging Pikmin significantly more than any other characters micromanage. Stacking an attack based, tally-to-determine what Pikmin you can pull, on top of everything else is crappy. I don't care that there's a little light on his head that tells me the cake is ready, I don't want to be in a situation where I want a Blue, and I can't use Usmash cuz it would overwrite the Blue I just earned.

are you forgetting how fast pluck is? you can do it mid combo if you want a blue, really, try it. usmash, pluck, usmash is a combo i have gotten before, it isnt hard at all. pluck is 11 frames, you have that time during a combo. counting to 3 is absolutely not a hard thing and it wont get in the way of micromanaging because it goes hand in hand. this idea reduces micromanaging anyway because you dont have to adapt to your lineup anymore.

It seems as though you didn't fully read my first sentence. The part you missed is "a certain way." The Full quote with a brief explanation is: Players have to earn the right to kill a certain way. Which means that if you want to be able to kill with a grab, you'll need to first get several grabs, and have that Blue Pikmin grab them when they are high enough percent. Like I said earlier, if you're fresh off a stock and they're at high percents, a grab kill is off the table for you. Either way you slice it, earning the right to kill a certain way in a fighting game is bad design.

yes, they have to earn the right to kill a certain way. which is also translated to "good game design", being rewarded for doing things that the matchup suggests you do. getting 2 grabs isnt exactly a challenge considering its our punish option whenever we successfully use side b. if you lose a stock, you shouldnt be rewarded with a kill based off of what the wii tells you, thats why rng is kinda silly. dying can put me at more of an advantage than before. and its not like reds cant kill, leaf reds kill earlier than blue throws depending on the stage. olimar is a high risk high reward character, my idea supports that.

I really don't see it as much of an issue. I think the Pikmin are fairly well balanced on average, and if you play it right, you can make the best of the situation. If I could make changes to them, I'd make it so Red and Purples are able to kill with Uthrow, and increase the KBG of yellow to be able to kill a little earlier with Fair and Bair and Uair. I'd also increase the Grab range of Purple to match the others, because it's often a game changer if you barely miss a grab with Purple. But in general, I don't think people farm at all anymore since they're all good. Sure, I'll try to kill Yellows and Whites if they're at high percents but I don't farm for certain Pikmin anymore. You might just be over thinking it and holding onto old habits and really high standards with the expectation of being able to be 100% optimal at nearly all times. And I really don't think your solution to RNG is the right one.

see the problem is that "making the best of a situation" doesnt fix the fact that we can be in a much worse situation or a much better situation based on what the wii tells us to do. red and purples being able to kill with uthrow? what? why would you just give them that for no reason, that isnt helping pikmin balance at all just giving **** to pikmin for no apparent reason other than "they need a kill throw" when there is a pikmin with two kill throws. i dont know about you, but when im playing against a fox and i have two whites and two yellows, im gonna start farming because im forced to. i cannot kill fox or beat him in neutral with that lineup. that lineup makes the matchup significantly worse. on the other side of the coin, if i have nothing but purples, it becomes a near even matchup. "adapt to what the wii gives you" is a bull**** excuse that has been the reason for rng staying in the game for too long. reliability is important when youre picking a character and olimar is far from reliable right now.

From an outside perspective, a set order seems like the most logical choice. You should start every game with 5 Pikmin in the order of Red, Yellow, Blue, White and Purple and this should be the order in which Pikmin are plucked as well. This change alone would make Olimar such a better character based on the fact that he would actually become consistent. Compared to his current kit that uses RNG, this change is strictly a good one by comparison.

Two other changes that I feel would really compliment this mechanic are speeding up Pikmin Pluck and Whistle. These changes would essentially allow one to safely acquire and rearrange their lineup on the fly, which would in turn allow players a greater degree of control of their character, and promote olimar's opponents to never stop pressuring him. I believe that these changes would mitigate the amount of Pikmin farming to only occur between stocks, or when opponents are extremely reluctant to approach. Admittedly, making Olimar's ability to farm certain kinds of Pikmin easier sounds kinda scary, so at the very least I think he should get his Whistle sped up. I don't really think Olimar is a character that is reliant on farming for duplicate Pikmin in order to be good, but I do think that having duplicate Pikmin puts Olimar in a very good position, so I think he should only be able to farm when he's earned it. This kinda goes against my reasoning for allowing Olimar to farm easier, but I believe that these changes would at least speed up the pace of matches by giving Olimar a more complete lineup a higher percent of the time (and thus more options), and by giving his opponents more of a reason to approach him.

Also, I can't help but mention this last change that would also compliment a set order of Pimin. I think that Olimar's antennae should shine the color Pikmin that Olimar is about to pluck next because the way antennae functions now is kinda redundant since you can clearly see which Pikmin you're about to use. Rather than have his antennae represent something that you can already see on the screen, I think it should represent something that you would normally have to keep track of on your own.

1. set order. this is a big one that i have argued endless times for hours and hours on end and i cant stress how poor of an idea it is. this will hurt olimar more than help him, and i would rather have rng than this. it essentially means you are going to have to stall and play the waiting game to get the lineup you want, and stocks go so fast in this game that it can all just blow away any second, all it really does is distract you from playing the game. pikmin farming is a technique that should be kicked out from olimar's gameplay. we should not have to limit ourselves from playing the actual game because we want to win the matchup. ivysaur gets solarbeam by attacking people, why cant we have something similar so we dont have to farm? all pikmin farming does is kill olimar's gameplay by forcing him to sit at one side of the stage and hope the opponent doesnt rush him down. and set order will promote farming in the most tedious way. lets say that the order of plucking is something like red, yellow, blue, white, purple. you start off the game with no purple, and you throw the pikmin you dont want and pluck a purple. guess what, any character in the game is fast enough to punish you doing that. olimar is offstage and youre probably dead. not only that, it makes it nearly impossible to get duplicate pikmin, one of the most important things in some matchups. double reds give you comebacks, double purples let you beat rushdown characters (or jigglypuff) and double yellows with a purple help you a ton against characters with disjoint. if you want two of the same pikmin, you will have to pick a stage with a low bottom blastzone- wait did i mention that yet? the speed of farming is also based off of HOW LOW THE BOTTOM BLASTZONE IS ON THE STAGE meaning that if we want to have a set order or any type of plucking that promotes farming we have to not go to dreamland or delfino's because that essentially doubles the time farming takes. really really bad idea. anyway, if you want two of the same pikmin, you have to pick a stage with a low bottom blast zone, pray your opponent's controller isnt working or that you get a lucky sky ko and then MAYBE if youre lucky you will get a duplicate. farming is unintuitive and not fun for either players during a match. it makes olimar unnecessarily campy and it doesn't add anything special to his gameplay. farming is not an essential part of olimar and it really needs to go, all it is doing is hindering him..

 

[GrizzleDrizz1ed]

Look, There are 5 types of Pikmin and you can hold 4 in your lineup. You have a 20% chance to pull any type of Pikmin, and it's not very common to have 3 of one type in your lineup. If you want a blue, or any other color that you don't have, you have options to get them. Yellow and White have little health. I found the best way to get rid of Yellow is to toss it at the opponent when they are off the stage and it'll either miss and it'll die, or latch on to deal a few percent before being knocked off the edge or killed when they do their Up B. When they are killed, you can pluck another one.

Here's how I see the line ups throughout a stock with your method.
Start: Red, Yellow, Red, Yellow,
Red, Red, Blue, Yellow
Red, White, Blue, Red
Red, Purple, Blue, Red

As you can see, it appears that it would take some time to get a varied lineup.

Here's how I see the RNG method's lineup throughout a stock.
Red, Blue, White, White
Red, Blue, Yellow, White
Red, Blue, Yellow Purple
Yellow, Blue, Blue, Purple

With RNG, I can start out with a varied lineup. and it always is or becomes varied. Stuff dies and gets replaced.

The real RNG problem that I could see is not being able to use the Pikmin you would have liked to use in that specific situation because it happened to not be next in line when you did the move. Your method results in the same kind of varied lineup as the RNG method, only your method takes longer and you have to make room and fulfill certain criteria before getting that varied lineup.

Your method just lets you know what the next Pikmin you'd pluck is, but there's simpler ways of doing that instead of having people jump through hoops to get it. An easier solution would be to change the color of the Whistle to the color of the next Pikmin that would be plucked, and whistling would cycle through a set order. If you just plucked indiscriminately, you would just get a random Pikmin. This would give you control over your lineup, and not be overly intrusive on how the player wants to play, but isn't free. I will say again though, that neither of these options are needed, but I think the Whistle is the better option of the two.

Side question: What is your favorite lineup in general? Not MU specific but the lineup that you feel is well balanced and often serves you well throughout an entire stock.

 

[steelguttey]

Look, There are 5 types of Pikmin and you can hold 4 in your lineup. You have a 20% chance to pull any type of Pikmin, and it's not very common to have 3 of one type in your lineup. If you want a blue, or any other color that you don't have, you have options to get them. Yellow and White have little health. I found the best way to get rid of Yellow is to toss it at the opponent when they are off the stage and it'll either miss and it'll die, or latch on to deal a few percent before being knocked off the edge or killed when they do their Up B. When they are killed, you can pluck another one.

Here's how I see the line ups throughout a stock with your method.
Start: Red, Yellow, Red, Yellow,
Red, Red, Blue, Yellow
Red, White, Blue, Red
Red, Purple, Blue, Red

As you can see, it appears that it would take some time to get a varied lineup.

Here's how I see the RNG method's lineup throughout a stock.
Red, Blue, White, White
Red, Blue, Yellow, White
Red, Blue, Yellow Purple
Yellow, Blue, Blue, Purple

With RNG, I can start out with a varied lineup. and it always is or becomes varied. Stuff dies and gets replaced.

The real RNG problem that I could see is not being able to use the Pikmin you would have liked to use in that specific situation because it happened to not be next in line when you did the move. Your method results in the same kind of varied lineup as the RNG method, only your method takes longer and you have to make room and fulfill certain criteria before getting that varied lineup.

Your method just lets you know what the next Pikmin you'd pluck is, but there's simpler ways of doing that instead of having people jump through hoops to get it. An easier solution would be to change the color of the Whistle to the color of the next Pikmin that would be plucked, and whistling would cycle through a set order. If you just plucked indiscriminately, you would just get a random Pikmin. This would give you control over your lineup, and not be overly intrusive on how the player wants to play, but isn't free. I will say again though, that neither of these options are needed, but I think the Whistle is the better option of the two.

Side question: What is your favorite lineup in general? Not MU specific but the lineup that you feel is well balanced and often serves you well throughout an entire stock.

youre playing the statistics game here, though, which is still unreliable. if theres a 20% chance of me getting one pikmin that i want, that means that there is also an 80% chance of me not getting the pikmin i want. this is beyond unreliable and just tedious and makes matchups worse unnecessarily. yellows dont have little health. they have 17 health, which means that they arent dying to anything that doesnt take more than 30 frames of startup to use. the only pikmin you can reliably kill by throwing it at the opponent is white, and even then 10% is hard to find on some characters.

are you really saying you can predict what happens in every match? there are so many things that can happen during a match that if you think you can tell me how many times i will throw a pikmin, or grab, or use a smash attack, youre not playing the same game i am. i dont know about you, but i dont get the same rng every match. how are you gonna predict what rng does, its random. thats literally impossible. i have no idea what your thought process was here. even if it was just an example, its a ridiculous one, because your lineup can also be 4 whites, or 4 purples, or any mix of pikmin. i chose yellows and reds at the start because they are neutral pikmin that wont change your gameplan drastically because you have them, and its easy to get other pikmin with them. i dont think you understand how easy it is to meet these requirements. one throw means one white, that means we can force people to approach more often. 3 smashes means we have better matchups against fast fallers, because its easier to get them. if we chain grab marth that means we are one of the few characters in the game that can shield grab fair. the list goes on and on. you should be rewarded for playing the matchup correctly with a pikmin that helps you with that matchup. risk/reward, its how olimar has been working since brawl. my method does not take longer at all, its faster in most situations actually. 2 grabs is nothing and one pikmin throw is even less, and 3 smashes is ac ombo on fastfallers and two combos on midweights.

EDIT: missed the last question, my favorite lineup is probably yellow purple yellow

 

[Rᴏb]

lol, it'd be cool if you responded directly rather than copy/paste what you previously said, but I'll pick apart your post anyway.

ight lets get it.

1. set order. this is a big one that i have argued endless times for hours and hours on end and i cant stress how poor of an idea it is. this will hurt olimar more than help him, and i would rather have rng than this. it essentially means you are going to have to stall and play the waiting game to get the lineup you want, and stocks go so fast in this game that it can all just blow away any second, all it really does is distract you from playing the game.

A set order is infinitely better than RNG on the bases of getting rid of a random element and replacing it with consistency. Having to farm for Pikmin doesn't "distract you from playing the game" anymore than having to farm with RNG does, and honestly I don't buy that it is even a distraction; it is playing the game.

pikmin farming is a technique that should be kicked out from olimar's gameplay. we should not have to limit ourselves from playing the actual game because we want to win the matchup. ivysaur gets solarbeam by attacking people, why cant we have something similar so we dont have to farm? all pikmin farming does is kill olimar's gameplay by forcing him to sit at one side of the stage and hope the opponent doesnt rush him down. and set order will promote farming in the most tedious way. lets say that the order of plucking is something like red, yellow, blue, white, purple. you start off the game with no purple, and you throw the pikmin you dont want and pluck a purple. guess what, any character in the game is fast enough to punish you doing that. olimar is offstage and youre probably dead.

This is why I suggested Pikmin Pluck & Whistle to be sped up. It would make farming and managing your lineup a lot faster and reliable. I don't think it would force you to camp because, as I mentioned before, you would start with every type of Pikmin and be able to restock on every type of Pikmin which would lead to you having a full lineup for a greater amount of time per match.

not only that, it makes it nearly impossible to get duplicate pikmin, one of the most important things in some matchups. double reds give you comebacks, double purples let you beat rushdown characters (or jigglypuff) and double yellows with a purple help you a ton against characters with disjoint. if you want two of the same pikmin, you will have to pick a stage with a low bottom blastzone- wait did i mention that yet? the speed of farming is also based off of HOW LOW THE BOTTOM BLASTZONE IS ON THE STAGE meaning that if we want to have a set order or any type of plucking that promotes farming we have to not go to dreamland or delfino's because that essentially doubles the time farming takes. really really bad idea. anyway, if you want two of the same pikmin, you have to pick a stage with a low bottom blast zone, pray your opponent's controller isnt working or that you get a lucky sky ko and then MAYBE if youre lucky you will get a duplicate. farming is unintuitive and not fun for either players during a match. it makes olimar unnecessarily campy and it doesn't add anything special to his gameplay. farming is not an essential part of olimar and it really needs to go, all it is doing is hindering him.

I think you're exaggerating the importance of duplicate Pikmin in some matchups, but I'll take your word for it since I don't play this character.

I just tested how long it takes to throw a Pikmin offstage and pluck a new one. I tested it on Smashville, GHZ, DL, DS and BF. My results were that it takes an average of ~2 seconds per Pikmin with a difference of ~30ms between the times it takes on DL and BF. This is pretty negligible as-is, but again, my suggested change for Pikmin Pluck would only make this faster. By making farming faster, you are getting rid of the need to play overly campy, promoting approaches from opponents due to how valuable having duplicate Pikmin supposedly is, and giving Olimar a consistent reward (time to get a more desirable Pikmin lineup) for taking the opponents stocks.

 

[steelguttey]

lol, it'd be cool if you responded directly rather than copy/paste what you previously said, but I'll pick apart your post anyway.


A set order is infinitely better than RNG on the bases of getting rid of a random element and replacing it with consistency. Having to farm for Pikmin doesn't "distract you from playing the game" anymore than having to farm with RNG does, and honestly I don't buy that it is even a distraction; it is playing the game.

This is why I suggested Pikmin Pluck & Whistle to be sped up. It would make farming and managing your lineup a lot faster and reliable. I don't think it would force you to camp because, as I mentioned before, you would start with every type of Pikmin and be able to restock on every type of Pikmin which would lead to you having a full lineup for a greater amount of time per match.

I think you're exaggerating the importance of duplicate Pikmin in some matchups, but I'll take your word for it since I don't play this character.

I just tested how long it takes to throw a Pikmin offstage and pluck a new one. I tested it on Smashville, GHZ, DL, DS and BF. My results were that it takes an average of ~2 seconds per Pikmin with a difference of ~30ms between the times it takes on DL and BF. This is pretty negligible as-is, but again, my suggested change for Pikmin Pluck would only make this faster. By making farming faster, you are getting rid of the need to play overly campy, promoting approaches from opponents due to how valuable having duplicate Pikmin supposedly is, and giving Olimar a consistent reward (time to get a more desirable Pikmin lineup) for taking the opponents stocks.

consistency in the form of farming is not the kind of consistency you want in a fast paced smash game like pm. it makes olimar much slower and easier to punish when he wants to get a better lineup for the matchup. having rng doesnt distract people from the game in the slightest, set order stops you from playing and forces you to take boring steps to get the lineup you need to get a better matchup.

if i wanted a specific lineup, such as two yellows and a purple, i would need to throw away every pikmin but those two and keep plucking until i get a yellow. that is going to take far to long and in that amount of time any character can walk over and combo me. duplicate pikmin are extremely important because having two yellow fairs extends combos or having two purples doesnt let people approach for that amount of time. its a risk/reward situation that you get from micromanaging. speeding up whistle wouldnt really do much because its already insanely fast, 3 frames iirc.

2 seconds, or 120 frames, is enough time for any character in the game to run from one side of fd to another, some can even walk from on side of fd to the other. and thats farming for one pikmin. if you want a specific lineup, youre going to have to hope your opponent accidentally unplugs their controller or you arent getting that lineup. this isnt negligible at all. it would just be a direct nerf to olimar and make him much more boring to play in general.

 

[GrizzleDrizz1ed]

youre playing the statistics game here, though, which is still unreliable. if theres a 20% chance of me getting one pikmin that i want, that means that there is also an 80% chance of me not getting the pikmin i want. this is beyond unreliable and just tedious and makes matchups worse unnecessarily. yellows dont have little health. they have 17 health, which means that they arent dying to anything that doesnt take more than 30 frames of startup to use. the only pikmin you can reliably kill by throwing it at the opponent is white, and even then 10% is hard to find on some characters.

are you really saying you can predict what happens in every match? there are so many things that can happen during a match that if you think you can tell me how many times i will throw a pikmin, or grab, or use a smash attack, youre not playing the same game i am. i dont know about you, but i dont get the same rng every match. how are you gonna predict what rng does, its random. thats literally impossible. i have no idea what your thought process was here. even if it was just an example, its a ridiculous one, because your lineup can also be 4 whites, or 4 purples, or any mix of pikmin. i chose yellows and reds at the start because they are neutral pikmin that wont change your gameplan drastically because you have them, and its easy to get other pikmin with them. i dont think you understand how easy it is to meet these requirements. one throw means one white, that means we can force people to approach more often. 3 smashes means we have better matchups against fast fallers, because its easier to get them. if we chain grab marth that means we are one of the few characters in the game that can shield grab fair. the list goes on and on. you should be rewarded for playing the matchup correctly with a pikmin that helps you with that matchup. risk/reward, its how olimar has been working since brawl. my method does not take longer at all, its faster in most situations actually. 2 grabs is nothing and one pikmin throw is even less, and 3 smashes is ac ombo on fastfallers and two combos on midweights.

EDIT: missed the last question, my favorite lineup is probably yellow purple yellow

I'm not playing the statistic game. What I'm saying is that you can have a more versatile line up in the beginning and not have to work for a blue or purple. You will also have a more versatile lineup each stock. Sure, it's possible to get 4 of one color, but it's extremely unlikely.

I'm not sure where you get the whole thing about me knowing what happens in a match, but that isn't what I was saying at all. It seems like you're straw manning my position. If you are referring to how I laid out a scenario on how your Pikmin could be plucked, know that it was an example to show how you have to work to simultaneously get rid of Pikmin and fulfill certain criteria in order to get a varied line up. While the RNG method could just start you out with the Pikmin you want. Out of 5 Pikmin types and 4 Pikmin slots, your're likely to have at least 2 of the Pikmin you want. If you want Blue and Purple in you're lineup, there's a good chance to have it for every set of 4. Your method makes you have to get rid of Pikmin before you can pull the one you want, provided you meet the criteria.

Also, the last paragraph on your post to Yursaman was ridiculous. You're acting as if the Olimar player stops playing the game while he waits to be able to pluck a Pikmin. Then that any character can waltz over and start comboing. Ridiculous!

I'm also against Set Order. I think it would be too hard to get multiples of Pikmin and it's always exciting to get 2-3 Purples.

 

[Rᴏb]

consistency in the form of farming is not the kind of consistency you want in a fast paced smash game like pm. it makes olimar much slower and easier to punish when he wants to get a better lineup for the matchup. having rng doesnt distract people from the game in the slightest, set order stops you from playing and forces you to take boring steps to get the lineup you need to get a better matchup.

If farming was made faster, would that not help the pace of the game remain fast? Doesn't the current way the mechanic works already stop you from playing and force you to take boring steps to get the lineup you need to get a better matchup? The only difference is that it would no longer be a guessing game; I don't see any cons compared to what we already got dude.

if i wanted a specific lineup, such as two yellows and a purple, i would need to throw away every pikmin but those two and keep plucking until i get a yellow. that is going to take far to long and in that amount of time any character can walk over and combo me. duplicate pikmin are extremely important because having two yellow fairs extends combos or having two purples doesnt let people approach for that amount of time. its a risk/reward situation that you get from micromanaging. speeding up whistle wouldnt really do much because its already insanely fast, 3 frames iirc.

It actually takes 10 frames for your Pikmin to switch, and you can act on the 11th frame. I would probably change it so that your Pikmin switch on the 2nd frame and you can act on the 4th. Also while I was testing I noticed that sometimes your Pikmin just don't switch... That has to be a bug right?

Anyway, I think my changes would make the character more focused around having a complete lineup with all 5 Pikmin at his disposal, and I'd go so far as to argue that this coupled with my whistle buff would have the potential to be just as useful as having duplicate Pikmin. Having a more versatile lineup just seems better to me.

 

[steelguttey]

i was in a ****ty mood when i read these and completely forgot you guys responded LMAO

anyone one month late lets get back at this

I'm not playing the statistic game. What I'm saying is that you can have a more versatile line up in the beginning and not have to work for a blue or purple. You will also have a more versatile lineup each stock. Sure, it's possible to get 4 of one color, but it's extremely unlikely.

I'm not sure where you get the whole thing about me knowing what happens in a match, but that isn't what I was saying at all. It seems like you're straw manning my position. If you are referring to how I laid out a scenario on how your Pikmin could be plucked, know that it was an example to show how you have to work to simultaneously get rid of Pikmin and fulfill certain criteria in order to get a varied line up. While the RNG method could just start you out with the Pikmin you want. Out of 5 Pikmin types and 4 Pikmin slots, your're likely to have at least 2 of the Pikmin you want. If you want Blue and Purple in you're lineup, there's a good chance to have it for every set of 4. Your method makes you have to get rid of Pikmin before you can pull the one you want, provided you meet the criteria.

Also, the last paragraph on your post to Yursaman was ridiculous. You're acting as if the Olimar player stops playing the game while he waits to be able to pluck a Pikmin. Then that any character can waltz over and start comboing. Ridiculous!

I'm also against Set Order. I think it would be too hard to get multiples of Pikmin and it's always exciting to get 2-3 Purples.

working for a blue and purple by playing the game. my idea rewards you for good pikmin management and playing matchups correctly and doing things right, also how videogames work. risk and reward, like i said, has been olimar's thing since 3.0 and this does nothing but promote that idea. im sorry i misconceived your idea. but your logic is still flawed. most of the time, the lineup you want is one purple with 2 other pikmin that arent purples. so you have a 20% chance of getting that purple, 80% chance of getting the other two. dandy. its not like you arent gonna spawn with four purples, so you are going to get 2 non-purples. but the problem is that non-purples are matchup dependent. yellows are good against swords, reds are good for combacks or fastfallers that you can combo well, whites arent really good for any specific matchup and blues are good against characters with approaches that are linear and easy to bait. so you have alot of options. if i want 3 different kinds of pikmin, it means i have a 20% chance of getting the lineup i want.

was it really? farming takes forever. you are throwing a projectile into thin air while doing an animation that puts out no hitbox, they could simply pressure you while you do it and now youre forced to roll because youre near the ledge and olimar.

If farming was made faster, would that not help the pace of the game remain fast? Doesn't the current way the mechanic works already stop you from playing and force you to take boring steps to get the lineup you need to get a better matchup? The only difference is that it would no longer be a guessing game; I don't see any cons compared to what we already got dude.

It actually takes 10 frames for your Pikmin to switch, and you can act on the 11th frame. I would probably change it so that your Pikmin switch on the 2nd frame and you can act on the 4th. Also while I was testing I noticed that sometimes your Pikmin just don't switch... That has to be a bug right?

Anyway, I think my changes would make the character more focused around having a complete lineup with all 5 Pikmin at his disposal, and I'd go so far as to argue that this coupled with my whistle buff would have the potential to be just as useful as having duplicate Pikmin. Having a more versatile lineup just seems better to me.

its still farming and you cant increase pikmin's speed without side b becoming a dumb move. and the biggest problem is that farming speed is based off of the bottom blastzone and how close it is to the stage. so that also limit's olimars stage selection along with his gameplan. and no, rng doesnt do that because a smart player wouldnt rely on rng to get the pikmin they want. you kinda gotta roll with the punches, which is another reason why rng is dumb. farming is a mechanic that is on olimar for reasons of laziness and laziness alone, theres no reason to keep it in the game and its doing nothing but keeping olimar from playing the game. the cons of set order are
- doesnt let olimar get duplicate pikmin, something seriously needed in some matchups (fox)
- the way you get the lineup you want fastest is through farming, which takes longer depending on the stage youre on
- it seriously limits your combo game by not being able to do things like yellow uair to white uair to purple fair, setups that require weaker pikmin going into stronger ones. it does this by having the same order, so there is very little you can change about it.

its a bug, pikmin order is one of the buggiest things ever

duplicate pikmin is better than having every single pikmin type at the same time because pikmin are well designed, basically. they have attributes that are different than each other which makes some extremely more useful than other at times. having duplicate pikmin let you force your advantage against certain opponents in certain matchups by using what the pikmin is best at over and over again. my idea makes that part of a high-risk high-reward situation.

 

[Boiko]

First and foremost, the whistle not rearranging Pikmin isn't a bug. It has already been debunked. Pikmin ordering is fine as far as I can tell. It works exactly as intended.

That being said, I think that you're over and undervaluing different dynamics of gameplay and it's causing you to objurgate RNG. Your line of thinking is far too one dimensional, and I feel like if you broaden it, you won't see RNG as an inherently bad thing. I don't really know how I feel about it altogether, but here are some other things to think about:

RNG doesn't just affect you, it affects your opponent:
Let's say your opponent is sitting at 100%, and your line up is PPRP. You're extremely threatening. To counter this, your opponent is going to play a more defensive game. They're going to sit back, let you come to them, and try to punish a sloppy approach. This is where you can use a purple side b to control some space, a red side b to force them to act, getting the pikmin off, or just try to power through their defenses. No matter what, you're the one putting the pressure on. Plus, because you only have two pikmin types, you can cycle your order with a single whistle.

Now, let's take that same situation. Your opponent is at 100%, and your line up is WYWW. Now, you're CQC is significantly less threatening because all you're going to do is send someone off stage if anything. You're not going to secure an early kill like you would with your other line up. So, what will your opponent do now? They're not going to sit back and play defensive. Otherwise you'll just shower them with white pikmin and increase their damage incredibly fast. No, they're going to approach. Now it's your choice to play defensive. You can still control space by throwing white pikmin at them. Utilizing side b effectively is going to halt someone's momentum and allow you to maneuver into better positioning. You're essentially controlling the flow of the game by forcing your opponent to respect your option. Although you may not be able to kill, you can still punish sloppy approaches by putting your opponent off stage, you can still force approaches by camping, you're controlling the game.

Pikmin management is an engagement between you and your opponent. You have to be better at utilizing what you have than they are at countering what you have. If your line up is seemingly random: YWPR, you still have a form on interaction control. Are they above you? Whistle and put the red in front and punish their landing. Are they trying to close the gap? Utilize a disjointed aerial, follow up with a white toss, punish their reaction with a purple fair. If they don't know how you're using the pikmin in your line up, but you know how to use the pikmin to counter their options, you're already winning.

Nothing is as simple as having an "ideal lineup." That doesn't exist, IMO. There are different uses for different situations. Would it be nice to have a purple if someone is in a perfect f smash position? Yeah. But it's not always the case. Instead utilize what you have and put them into a different position so you're not just punishing with a white f smash.

tl;dr Stop thinking about, "I can't do this because I don't have this." and instead think, "I have this. What can I do with it?"

Edit: And to be clear, I'm explaining how the move works in the context that it exists now. I'm not taking a side on the RNG vs. non RNG debate.

 

[Rᴏb]

That's an interesting way to look at it Boiko, but it just makes me wonder how much deeper the interactions would become if the Olimar player had more control of his line up :/

The "working with what you got" archetype would be much more accessible, rewarding and developed if there was even a shred of consistency within this mechanic.

And guttey, I'm just gonna agree to disagree with you. I think you're just creating a false dilemmas to make your system seem more appealing... While your system is extremely convoluted, would most likely require a ton of changes to Pikmin and dedicated, top level players to develop (something Olimar will probably never have unless he gets a set order).

 

[Boiko]

I feel like getting what you want would just promote farming, camping, and non-interaction, and then when you get it, interaction. That would then reset when you lose a stock.

RNG instead provides a dynamic environment of constantly changing variables that promote varying levels of adaptation. It's a lot less static, obviously.

But yes, you're right. There are always two sides of the coin.

I don't agree with guttey's system or the rationale behind it, personally. I think that it would promote even more farming, but a different form of it. Something a lot of people refer to as "degenerate gameplay." Plus, it's unnecessarily convoluted. Far too many working pieces:
What if you perform a pikmin toss, but now you're out of pikmin, and your next pull is white, but you don't want white? It's restrictive.

 

[steelguttey]

as ive said before, whistle would clear the pikmin that is next, which means you dont have to wait so long for a pikmin that isnt white. whistle is pretty damn fast

i dont really see how hitting your opponent is degenerate because i still need to do alot to get those hits because of how olimar works. i dont like the argument that rng is good because its "exciting" or "dynamic" because i'd much rather take reliability over "oh geez i have a purple" because of how much rng can **** olimar players over. sure, its all about adapting, but its still adapting to a ****ty situation the wii put you in. if i have a bad line up, sure i have to adapt to it and thats cool but im still at a disadvantage for no reason. and there are simply some situations where you are at a serious disadvantage because of the pikmin type you have. mostly with purple side b and how versatile it is, or getting a purple and having a super short range grab, or getting shield pressured by a sword or something and not being able to shield grab it like you usually would with a blue, depending on the move. pikmin are factually better in certain situations, and while there always is a solution to the problem at hand no matter the pikmin, some pikmin just dont provide enough of something to be good in that situation. and thats mostly because pikmin are well designed with cool attributes that are different from each other, and thats good.

 

[Boiko]

All of those situations are so niche though. You may have a blue in your line up when getting shield pressured, but it may not be in the front of your line up. I have yet to encounter a situation where my thought was, "This lineup is costing me the game."

The situations you are describing are niche in nature. A "bad" line up is contingent upon hundreds of moving variables. I understand that knowing what comes next, and predictability are both important for Olimar. But you should consider widening your perspective a bit more.

You're looking at the value of X Pikmin in X scenario but you're limiting yourself by thinking like that.

 

[steelguttey]

All of those situations are so niche though. You may have a blue in your line up when getting shield pressured, but it may not be in the front of your line up. I have yet to encounter a situation where my thought was, "This lineup is costing me the game."

The situations you are describing are niche in nature. A "bad" line up is contingent upon hundreds of moving variables. I understand that knowing what comes next, and predictability are both important for Olimar. But you should consider widening your perspective a bit more.

You're looking at the value of X Pikmin in X scenario but you're limiting yourself by thinking like that.

god the amount of times you make me ****ing say this is ridiculous but

ight u right

jerk

 

[Boiko]

god the amount of times you make me ****ing say this is ridiculous but

ight u right

jerk

We'll theory craft more next time we play.

 

[Captive]

I am a fan of RNG for quite a few of the reasons Boiko pointed out. I just want a little more control and knowledge of what is coming next. So here is my idea!

1. You can’t pluck the same color Pikmin twice in a row.

2. After each use Pikmin Pluck and after a set amount of time the next Pikmin you would pluck changes.

3. Whistle is the color of the next Pikmin you would pluck.

I feel this works for a few reasons. It rewards the use of your resources while on the surface it functions almost the exact same way as it does now. You can use aerial pluck to shuffle away the pikmin you don’t want or you can platform cancel the pluck after a part of the animation to shuffle as well. Then use whistle to check what comes next to decide if you want shuffle or just plan around it.

 

[GrizzleDrizz1ed]

Honestly, I really don't have a problem with the RNG on Olimar. Due to how good each Pikmin is, it becomes really rare to have a Pikmin that's detrimental in a situation. The only one I can think of is purple grabs. That one can hurt really bad so it'd be nice if his grab range was at least average, even if they reduced the effectiveness of the throw.

While the Pikmin do have extremes, they work off of each other well. While some of them let you get in extra hits due to low KB at lower percents, the other ones that break combos have the potential to kill at higher percents. Doing a Yellow/White Uair into a Purple for a kill feels great. Part of playing Olimar is to have a healthy lineup, and that can mean caring a little less about certain Pikmin at certain times. I don't think that there is a way to both allow for creativity and max efficiency. I do think that we currently have creativity and a fair amount of efficiency that is acceptable for Olimar players. I actually would prefer RNG Pikmin Pluck over Set Order Pikmin Pluck to be honest. With set order, I would never really see 3 purples in a lineup, and I love that I could get that.

 

[Tobb99]

I may be a bit late to this discussion since PMDT has ceased the development of Project M but I'm still going to share my idea.

So I thought about the idea of having Olimar pressing a taunt and getting a different pikmin for each direction, idea 2, and elaborated it a bit.

What if, instead of getting a different pikmin by pressing different directions, he'd get a different "RNG set". What I mean by this is that he would have different "sets" with different RNG for the different pikmins, so one might have a higher chance of plucking reds, blues and yellows than purples and whites. What this does is that it alters the RNG so you can use it more strategically for different MU and different playstyles. Each set would be set to each taunt (up,side,down) so it would be 4 different sets altogether. So when you start a game you can hold a direction to start with a different set, if you don't hold any direction you'll get the standard set (all pikmins have 1/5 of being plucked), similar how Samus can chose to start in ice mode by holding the taunt button before when loading the game. You would also be able to change set mid match by using a different taunt, so if you started with the "U-taunt set" you could do a D-taunt mid match and that would change it to the D-taunt set, and if you did a U-taunt mid match with the U-taunt set you'd "reset" it to the standard set (1/5 for each pikmin). Lastly a visual effect would be added above Olimar when switching sets (taunting), making it easier to see which set you switched to.

Some examples of what the sets could be:

Standard set:
20% chance for each pikmin

The Camp/Gambler set:
26% Purple
25% White
21% Yellow
14% Red
14% Blue

This set has a higher chance of getting "the strong" purple, but also a higher chance of getting "the weak"white, and also a slightly higher chance of getting a yellow. Can also be a really good camping set.

The Neutral pikmins set:

25% Red
25% Blue
25% Yellow
12.5% Purple
12.5% White

This set would have a higher chance of plucking pikmins that are more "neutral". So it has a lower chance of plucking purple and white pikmins, which are more special and differ more than red, blue and yellow.

The Grab set:

27% Blue
23% Purple
21% White
14.5% Red
14.5% Yellow

This one has a really high chance of plucking a Blue, but also has a higher chance of plucking a Purple and a White. So this set allows for different options, if you want to grab, and if you want kill with Purple, and if you want to rack up damage with White.

I don't know how well these sets are, I tried making them balanced, none to overpowered/underpowered, so each set would have it's uses and potential. I also thought that if you start a game with a specific set, then you'd start with the pikmins with the highest rate of that set. So for example if you start with the Camp set, you'd get 1 Purple, 1 White & 2 yellows to start with. And when you lose a stock you'll also start with the 4 pikmins with highest chance of plucking.

So with this said let's move on to a brief summary:

Advantages:
-Allows to alter the RNG, making Olimar less bases on RNG.
-Rewards strategic decision-making.

Neutral Changes:
-Makes Olimar's MU-spread slightly better, since he can change the RNG for the pikmins depending on different MU's.

Disadvantages:
-Sort of complicated system.
-Removes the ability to taunt sort of (you can still do 2 taunts instead of 1 if you don't want to switch set when taunting)