YUSH Finally had the chance to do a full-on investigation on K Rool's chances.
Now before I get into the Mii Costume cases, let's look at those what people call advantages(or just general points) for K Rool.
Popularity
Ah, sure thing. When it comes to ballot vote(?) and related polls, K Rool is always recognized the top. Some will even go as far as calling him a lock as well. Well... that won't happen. No one is a lock. Nor will high popularity make one 99.999% in. When the ex-so-called-guaranteed guy Wolf already got a hit on Chance here, those rating K Rool 90% is just laughable for me.
Back to the main point. So is K Rool exactly the most popular? Like I mentioned days earlier, veterans are always ranked above newcomers in the Japanese Smash community. And even as I've heard, King K Rool isn't exactly a popular choice, but is recognized likely because it's popular here. When calculated worldwide, K Rool might not be the top choice. Sure, this had the Japan polls put into more weight, but point is,
K Rool isn't unbeaten in popularity. He's still very high in support, that's unarguable.
To be more realistic tho. These polls only reflect what happens in the portion of Smash community who goes online and hauls their choice everywhere. Sure that could have been a big part of the community, but when it comes to a site exposed to people of any age, it's possible that the number of votes of non-video game characters have already outnumbered the popular characters mentioned here. This has been reflected in the other site full of 9-year-olds, Miiverse. ...Well, Japanese Miiverse, to be exact. I've seen many really really unpopular votes in there before, and they happen not to be judged for doing so at all.
Continuing with the point, even if he is popular, is he
actually well known? I'm asking this because, out of this Smashboard community who everyone should've already learnt from other users and knew more about the franchise just by clicking in the respective thread, K Rool may seem like a bandwagon. Many here can spit out a moveset within seconds by command, but for the general fanbase? There might be a portion where they support K Rool solely because "He's heavyweight, a villain, and a DK Rep". In other words, not truly wanting the characters, just dragged in because they've heard about why he should be in.
Deserving Arguments
Well, we're coming back to the deserving arguments again. That might not even be a point, but I need to mention stuff about this.
Sure, Smash don't have much heavyweight, villains, and DK Reps. But do we
really need more of these? The last one... maybe. The former? I think not.
While this is completely subjective, being a heavyweight and villain doesn't really mean stuff. No one really had officially set a specific ruleset about how many heavyweight should be there, how many villain should be there, etc. All these deserving points are just fan theories and wishes.
Relevancy
Eh, the bane of K Rool supports prior to update 1.1.0. When one wants to counter K Rool, they will almost only take this point out first. Being unused as a villain since 2007, and only had one game appearance after Brawl. Downright replaced in the main game, etc.
また、未来にソフトが出る可能性や予定がないシリーズやキャラは、どうしても優先度が下がります。~Sakurai ~Sourcegaming ~Me copypasting
Sakurai already claimed those who have likely no future in game will be lowered in priority, so this does damage his chance somehow. Well, not until some "important" event happened.
Mii Costume
Oooooh boy. My favorite part comes again. On the 29th of July, a twitter that flooded the K Rool support up to ~200 users+guests viewing appeared. My response of this was "OMG WTF", then "LEL SAKURAI", then instant hype for the rest of the day. I was completely sidetracked by the Mii Costume releasing the next day in work, checking every minute to see if the next Mii Costumes are announced. Rather surprisingly, he's the only one popular character receiving such a treatment.
To begin, let's see people's reaction.
... Oh.
To be fair, let's tally up people's response on what happens in threads.
First of we have the Smashboard community.... better not. The thing is like 4 pages long within an hour and expanding
dong, but the basic idea is: Everyone freaks out, everyone is raging at Sakurai, with like one comment being a picture of Sakurai laughing which inevitably got warned.
Anyways, let's see what happens in the Japan community.
sus
So here's some translations of the response
間違ってはいないが・・・
Well, this is perfect... (sarcasm)
ついに参戦か
しかし…
So he ended up joining?
However...
このクソ暑いのに着ぐるみとか
毛糸と零といいなんで季節感ズレてるんだよ！
At such f**king hot days we don't need these character-cosplay costume or fursuit thing
That doesn't fit the season at all!
Miiのコス化って不名誉なことなんだよね？
Being turned into Mii Costume a great disgrace, no?
そんなにアイスクライマーいるの？
So if there's something like this where's Ice Climber? (I'm guessing he wants a ICies costume)
本当に死んで欲しい
I WANT TO DIE
Like so. I tallied up these and see the overall response of the event, sorted by emotion, categorized like this:
- Desperation (Feeling hopeless, highly disappointed, etc)
- Anger (Hating on Sakurai's decision, etc)
- Ridicule (Laughing out loud from this, making jokes out of it, "that's pretty good actually" etc)
- Calmness (Care more about what Sakurai is trying to do than the actual costume itself)
- Denying ("This affects nothing! It made K Rool more likely!")
- Ignorance (Off topic posts, not about the costume but other thing that may happen alongside)
I sorta made up the response in here, since 100+ posts of raging is a bit too hard to check within the time given, but the Japanese is based on the link given above. (Only the main thread, not the comments, there are like 100+ posts again. They're mostly the same as the main one anyways)
Apparently the Japanese didn't really care about the costume again (don't care as in "this doesn't affect me", not "this doesn't affect K Rool"). A few wanted explanation, some made fun of the costume, some simply asked "why are they making costume when they can't be used online" etc.
One thing though, this is the first day reaction, and by now many have calmed down already.
In this community, obviously, most fans has calmed down and now took this Costume as an advantage rather than an impact to its chances, and those who don't has obviously lost hope of K Rool and moved forward to their second choice (or just simply get K Rool out of their list of choices). The Japanese community tho. Dang it's hard to find later responses on this, they move on so quickly (I managed to find "predicting the future DLC" after "few DLC left" thread tho), and most of them are ignoring the K Rool event as a whole already. As said above, some mention K Rool only because he's popular in the western community. The comments of the thread are left with few salty K Rool fans flaming at stuff and Sakurai, and no responses are found after the first of August. I occasionally find Miiverse with requests of K Rool, but not much, mostly desperate posts.
The reason I'm mentioning this is... Oh well nothing. I was trying to see what would the Japanese think when this appeared, I've never checked the threads until today, but apparently... they don't care the slightest. Or when they do, they go like "F*** YOU F*** YOU SAKURAI GO TO DIE NAO" and rage at Sakurai because they're angering the Western community. I don't see any post about "K Rool has more chance" yet, but afaik, everyone basically thinks he's deconfirmed (or simply don't care about K Rool), or just "with the support especially in the western community, it doesn't really feel like K Rool has no chance."
Eh... Nothing. Moving on to the responses here.
Costume Mean Nothing / Helps The Character Argument
Right back when the Inklings were released, everyone was hopeless for them, the ratings dropped by a quarter. Now this happened, and many of the users rated 90+, some even 100%. Double standard huh?
Before I begin, I would like to reach a base consensus: The costume doesn't deconfirm K Rool.
It dekonfirms him. Chances will be affected, but not in a rate he's confirmed/deconfirmed.
1. Link Costume! Meta Knight Costume! Samus Costume!
This has been the most common argument when it comes to "does costumes deconfirm the character", even back when Inklings are given outfits. Samus outfit didn't exist by then, but the Meta Knight was never mentioned. Funny.
Anyways, this has been covered by Etika. Again by no means do I say he's a reliable source, I've faced people counter me by countering his personality, but my claim is: he has the point.
Metaknight, Link, Sheik, Kirby, Mario, Luigi, Peach, Donkey Kong, Bowser, C.Falcon, and ALL the rest were hats in the mii plaza and obtainable BEFORE smash came out. Most of the mii hats that were already in the plaza were simply transferred to smash 3DS/WiiU. This cannot be used as an argument that KRool/Chrom still have a chance, because no character in a slot has had a mii outfit come out for them in smash that wasn't already in the plaza since the game came out, besides alt Megaman. Links hat recently became a smash mii outfit, but had been in the mii plaza for years since the 3DS was released. ~Etika ~Me Copy Pasting again
I've done a quick search, K Rool costume has no prior appearance (obvious). (I also find Wolf hat, but that's off the point) If King K Rool has to be released, he would've gotten in as a character, not a costume. Samus's outfit is another case, since the hat is done, so the outfit being published isn't a problem either (Besides, this may just be a consolation rep for Metroid series since they have no ridley or other characters to put).
One countercounterargument I've received is that "it never happened doesn't mean it won't", sure, but the chances of that happening is not quite high, and is already enough to cripple K Rool's chance.
So it's come to the conclusion that..
2. But... What if this is a lie/marketing trick?
Chances are, this is as slim as Ridley being announced as a Fighter. Okay, maybe not that extreme, but it's really not that likely. As mentioned, MK costume came 1 day before the official announcement of the character. As days have passed, the chance of that being a substitute is lowering day by day, if Wolf is measured by the same way. Sure, it may happen at a specific timing, but the same could be said for Wolf. Only 1-2 people claimed that possibility on Wolf's day, yet I've seen several of this argument in a row already. Wolf even had a possible safety net, K Rool don't. All the latest appearance of K Rool in games is something 7 years earlier, or maybe this pathetic costume being bashed around at the very first day.
Okay, ending this argument before it turns into a Wolf vs K Rool thing, but point is, it's not likely. At least not likely enough to be 90% in chance, unless you're really biased.
Possibilities
Now, what are the possibilities that this K Rool event is going towards?
1. Consolation Prize
So some may say K Rool turns into a costume due to Sakurai not able to make him a character, and ended up making him a costume, thinking the bowling ball thing would have worked. The problems are:
- What makes him not able to be made as a fighter? As mentioned by many, there's nothing really wrong with this character in terms of technical gimmicks. That is, he doesn't seem to have/need them. Some mentioned about movesets representation problem, but what's the point in that, when there are so many characters (Wario, Ganondorf, etc) not representing their actual appearance already?
- Why is K Rool planned so early? As again said he isn't solidly the top requested character, and even so why did they decide to release K Rool costume this early when everyone was waiting for the ballot to end and see the resulted characters?
The possible explanation is that "Developers see K Rool being highly requested, but they decided he can't be a fighter so he's thrown in as a costume" but, the first point is still as suspicious as ever.
Also another explanation of "K Rool is highly suggested, but not the highest". Either this points to only 1-2 characters will become DLC (since K Rool is really high up around top 3, even if not top), or some unnamed characters are actually having much higher supports or so.
2. The Ballot is a hoax
Another theory many made up from the K Rool costume Salt Field. "Name your favorite character and we'll turn him into a Mii Costume!" something like this.
Now, someone in reddit even bought up the problem of "mistranslation" in response of the cause of this, but of course, since that's Japanese, I can translate them into English and see if they really are mistranslated.
I'm not translating the whole thing again, but the worth mentioning point:
本ソフトの参戦キャラクターの検討等
"As a consideration or so of coming characters in this game..."
Two key words. 参戦キャラクター and 検討. The first one proves that
characters are what will happen to the submitted results, and the second one, is that the character will only be served as
consideration.
This shows that even if the top character didn't make it in, you cannot blame them for lying because they're just "considered", but it's definitely a trick to make safe excuses when it comes to fans raging about their character not getting in, which is the most likely outcome if such a ballot feature is given.
While this doesn't make it a hoax, it definitely proves the next point:
3. The Ballot is a suggestion box
Sourcegaming has covered this. Again this is only an opinion, a possibility, but would be the one making the most sense. The only thing not making sense is, why would developers even ignore the most popular choice?
This is a tiny theory that doesn't count as a possibility, but I'll mention anyway: These hype characters are saved for later use, so that the hype will not all drain out in one game. This theory has quite a few remarkable questions, but that's not exactly the point I'm referring to. It would be:
4. The costume is served as an extra marketing trick.
Again as covered above, this doesn't work in the slightest, and would really not worth it since, the costume only earns the company a few cents to a dollar, when the actual DLC costs up to 5-6 dollars. This wouldn't be done unless:
- The character cannot be implemented in game (already has a role, tech limits, cost of making the said DLC is higher than the actual income)
- They already know the character won't sell as a fighter.
While the second one is totally impossible, the first one is more likely, but... how? This remains a mystery and hey, there may be more possibilities to list but this is already splitting too much in sub-possibilities so let's skip that for now.
5. The costume shows that they are aware of the character.
Very likely, but the question is: so what will happen? This basically proves nothing in the end, other than that the previous possibilities may be true as well, or that the character will happen later, just not this time or such. Implied possibilities for this are infinite, so... next point.
6. The costume is not a part of the ballot.
Another theory up, this time even backed by some Nintendo workers... Well, we don't even know if they know what Sakurai is thinking, or if they even know about Smash. And even so, that contradicts the "fan-service" claim from PushDustIn.... hmmm...
7. Everything is preplanned
This. We have no evidence to prove or disprove this, so this is basically furtive fallacy.
--
I don't know if I've even covered everything, but point is made:
- K Rool is by no way a lock. And shouldn't even get a score higher than 80%.
- The Mii Costume is causing lost of support, that's inevitable.
- The Mii Costume does not increase his chance. Even when there are just so many reason that the costume helps him, but there are much more on the negative side and is more likely.
- There are a few optimistic looks on the Mii Costume thing, but that's purely some unproved, "conspiracy" theories that cannot be proved or disproved.
I, obviously shown in the explanation above, do not want K Rool one bit
So, here's the main thing you wanted, the-guy-who-collects-scores:
Chance: 45%/2 = 22.5%.
The Mii Costume just isn't in his favor. This may really be a coin flip, but the positive possibilities are almost all hypothetical. If anything, he'd more likely be in the next game.
Want:
-1085249728676295834765187658724% 0%/2 = 0%
Okay, that crossed point is true. When I went to give a want score for everyone in the Top-10 list, I literally gave K Rool 0%. There are more characters under this percentage, but still.
My opinion hasn't changed, and may even be strengthened due to... today.
Abstain from prediction and nomination.
(3155 words, wow)
