Well, of course, we can't forget that Sakurai does not intend for this game to be competitive and Namco Bandai is the team working on this new project, so my expectations aren't too high. :-| In some of these posts, I'm reading about ways in which Samus could be improved in Brawl as it is now but I expect Smash 4 to be an entirely different game, so just giving Samus some buffs here and there probably won't cut it. Anyway, now for things that I would like to see in the new Samus:
- Restore Samus to her status of being heavier than Ganondorf. She's in a big suit of metal, complete with jetpacks and weapons. No reason she shouldn't even be heavier than Snake, let alone Ganon.
- Increase her falling speed. Jumping is and always has been a chore with her because of how long she just hangs in the air. Another reason for increasing the falling speed would be to increase the desire to use bomb jumps as a recovery tactic, something that has become pretty much obsolete for Samus when she can just float back towards the stage without any risk of falling to her death.....ever.
- Bring back the usefulness of Samus's bombs. As was stated by someone else earlier, they should have constantly active hitboxes and should also act on their own much sooner. It should also be made much easier to bomb jump. Increasing her falling speed a mite would help in accomplishing this.
- Give Samus a morph ball mode, one in which she can roll around and freely drop bombs. This could possibly be an alternative to her bomb attack so that, instead of dropping off a bomb, she becomes a morph ball with a new, but limited, moveset. More on this in a new post or an edit of this one...
- Samus is clearly a defensive zoning character meant to have good setups in certain mid- to long- range situations. With this in mind, give Samus a better long-range pressuring game. The most obvious means of accomplishing this is improving her missiles. For one, I really think they should remove the mechanic that causes Samus to stop shooting her missile if she lands on the ground while shooting it. This might complicate stuff like missile cancelling but from Brawl, it's become clear that was never at the forefront of Sakurai's mind.
- Allow Samus to charge her charge shot in the air. She's, like, the ONLY charge character who can't do that. >:-/
Edit - More on that new morph ball form:
I stated that this new form should have a new, limited moveset. For instance, pressing B could launch a bomb. Pressing downB would reset her back to her original form. It could be made so that bomb jumping is only possible in this morph ball form. This would prevent accidental bomb jumps when she's in her normal form. I think her speed and mobility should also be increased while in this form. Not only would this be true to the Metroid (especially Prime) series, where her morph ball was as fast or faster than her running speed, it would also provide Samus the possibility of creating some very interesting setups. For instance, she could shoot a smash missile, transform into the morph ball form, rush over to the opponent under cover of the missile, drop a bomb on top of them, revert back to her original form, and continue her pressure. Along this line of thinking, I think the transformation into and out of this morph ball form should be extremely fast, 5 frames or less. This would definitely make those setups I envisioned possible.
