Official Smash Ultimate Discussion

[Smashoperatingbuddy123]

How much legitimacy do you think this has?

https://twitter.com/Virum_SD/status/1013939722870116353

if thats the case

 

[Mega Bidoof]

How much legitimacy do you think this has?

https://twitter.com/Virum_SD/status/1013939722870116353

It means nothing. The update didn’t have slots for Lucas, Roy, Ryu, Cloud, and Bayo specifically. The update just had placeholder character slots open.

All the number tells us is that there were a set amount of DLC characters. Only Lucas (who was already announced), Ryu, and Roy were specifically named in that update. It was those three, and two other placeholder spots.

That’s all they were, placeholders, one of which was for the ballot winner who would later be determined.

EDIT: Nevermind I may be a fool

 

[Untouch]

I mean the bayonetta reveal trailer DID say she was #1 worldwide out of "realizable characters" which means nothing.

 

[Omega Tyrant]

I'd say the ballot was used more for Ultimate newcomers than DLC, but some scraps were likely taken from it to decide DLC for 4.

But from the evidence the Ballot wasn't used for Smash 4 DLC at all, as it appeared Bayo and Cloud were decided before the Ballot, as their data was in the game in 1.0.6, just two weeks after the Ballot launched.

 

[EnthusedPanda]

How much legitimacy do you think this has?

https://twitter.com/Virum_SD/status/1013939722870116353

This is partially my bias, and definitely my limited understanding of the situation at large, but I never fully bought that Bayonetta or even Cloud “won” the ballot, even when considering “realizable” characters. I could see Bayo as maybe a top 15 contender, but.. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen any unofficial polling data that placed Cloud anywhere near the top 10 most requested characters.. though I’m very aware of the inaccuracies of relying on unofficial polls.

But anyway. As long as the ballot influences our upcoming newcomers, I am fine with this having been a “ruse” at first blush

 

[TMNTSSB4]

She'll have to wait until Pauline gets in

Smash Ultimate Part 2?

 

[MainJPW]

It means nothing.

Ruben also said their slots were copied from characters with similar parameters and for Bayo it was ZSS, and that was only two weeks after the ballot was announced.

EDIT: Made this comment before the edit.

 

[vaanrose]

Is it just me or does every "leaker" think that Gang-Plank Galleon is the most likely new stage? I'll laugh if it's not in the game. I will ... be quite happy if it is, because that could only mean one thing.

If my precious Pirate Ship stage was cut they better darn well give me Gangplank Galleon in return, lol.

 

[Mega Bidoof]

Ruben also said their slots were copied from characters with similar parameters and for Bayo it was ZSS, and that was only two weeks after the ballot was announced.

EDIT: Nevermind I may be a fool

 

[Freduardo]

Here's a new game (since you guys keep posting games)

Pick new clone or echo characters for the following characters:

Wario

Mr Game and Watch

King Dedede

Okay... I can do this:

Rufus (from Streer Fighter IV) as the Wario echo.

Mickey Mouse’s silhouette for Game and Watch

Whac a Mole (So a giant mole with a hammer) over DeDeDe. Gordo toss becomes Ski Ball Toad.

 

[DaybreakHorizon]

Spoiler: >When Sakurai knew that the Ballot was fake all along and intended to use the characters for Smash Ultimate but let the fans hope anyways

Seriously though, this is huge.

In hindsight it makes sense though, as similar polls have been conducted in the past for previous Smash Bros. games.

 

[Kooj Kooj]

This whole two week time-frame from the ballot to having character data existing doesn't necessarily mean much. Take a look at how the poll worked-- it was announced to a wide-spread audience during a direct. How many people immediately went and voted right after the direct ended? Or, at the very worst, within a couple of days, through hearsay? There would have been a massive influx of votes to at the beginning, and it would have petered out pretty quickly. Most casual fans would vote once, maybe a second time on their friends' computer, but that's about it. For the most part, I expect that results of the poll were determined, with very little fluctuations, within a week of it's inception.

And they probably knew that. It would have been easy to see the trends of the results flesh out, and maintain a relatively similar balance throughout. Generally speaking, polls (and especially those whose results aren't shown up-front) don't change much throughout. What you see in the first few days is a pretty good indicator of the final result. It would have been easy to see which of the top 20 characters were realizable, and to be perfectly frank, a desirable newcomer to Sakurai, and start implementing them early. Does that mean the poll results were fudged a bit? Probably, but I don't think the poll ever stated "the most popular character will get put in no matter what!" It was just being used to gauge interest on which characters people would want.

Or perhaps, more aaccurately, which characters people would actually buy.

 

[Omega Tyrant]

Spoiler: >When Sakurai knew that the Ballot was fake all along and intended to use the characters for Smash Ultimate but let the fans hope anyways

Seriously though, this is huge.

In hindsight it makes sense though, as similar polls have been conducted in the past for previous Smash Bros. games.

It could be that the Ballot may have been intended for DLC initially, but partway through decided it would be wasteful to spend those resources on DLC for Smash 4 when they could be pooled for a huge Smash game on the Switch that Nintendo really needed the Switch to be successful (otherwise it would have been a really long time before the Switch got its own Smash game unless it was a straight port), and thus then made up the cover story of Bayo being the "ballot winner" to save face.

 

[Smashoperatingbuddy123]

So....

i was right along

king k rool may have really ben the most voted for

so he did lied

 

[TMNTSSB4]

So....

i was right along

king k rool may have really ben the most voted for

so he did lied

Guess we’ll never truly know

 

[KingBroly]

So....

i was right along

king k rool may have really ben the most voted for

so he did lied

nah. K Rool wasn't the most voted for.

It was Goku

 

[Omega Tyrant]

This whole two week time-frame for the ballot to having character data existing doesn't necessarily mean much. Take a look at how the poll worked-- it was announced to a wide-spread audience during a direct. How many people immediately went and voted right after the direct ended? Or, at the very worst, within a couple of days, through hearsay? There would have been a massive influx of votes to at the beginning, and it would have petered out pretty quickly. Most casual fans would vote once, maybe a second time on their friends' computer, but that's about it. For the most part, I expect that results of the poll were determined, with very little fluctuations, within a week of it's inception.

And they probably knew that. It would have been easy to see the trends of the results flesh out, and maintain a relatively similar balance throughout. Generally speaking, polls (and especially those whose results aren't shown up-front) don't change much throughout. What you see in the first few days is a pretty good indicator of the final result. It would have been easy to see which of the top 20 characters were realizable, and to be perfectly frank, a desirable newcomer to Sakurai, and start implementing them early. Does that mean the poll results were fudged a bit? Probably, but I don't think the poll ever stated "the most popular character will get put in no matter what!" It was just being used to gauge interest on which characters people would want.

Or perhaps, more aaccurately, which characters people would actually buy.

Not only would the data for 1.0.6 have been done well before the date it dropped (chances are that the data was how it was before the Ballot launched), but the process of deciding Bayo/Cloud, completing the licensing to them, and starting active development on them would be extremely doubtful to have happened within two weeks.

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

nah. K Rool wasn't the most voted for.

It was Goku

Sad part is? ...This probably is right.

Albeit, at least Goku is popular as a character too and not just a meme. Unlike Shrek.

 

[CannonStreak]

How much legitimacy do you think this has?

https://twitter.com/Virum_SD/status/1013939722870116353

Can't say I am surprised. I knew some of those things right away. I just hope the real ballot choices will be in Smash Ultimate in the end.

 

[ThreeT]

This whole two week time-frame for the ballot to having character data existing doesn't necessarily mean much. Take a look at how the poll worked-- it was announced to a wide-spread audience during a direct. How many people immediately went and voted right after the direct ended? Or, at the very worst, within a couple of days, through hearsay? There would have been a massive influx of votes to at the beginning, and it would have petered out pretty quickly. Most casual fans would vote once, maybe a second time on their friends' computer, but that's about it. For the most part, I expect that results of the poll were determined, with very little fluctuations, within a week of it's inception.

And they probably knew that. It would have been easy to see the trends of the results flesh out, and maintain a relatively similar balance throughout. Generally speaking, polls (and especially those whose results aren't shown up-front) don't change much throughout. What you see in the first few days is a pretty good indicator of the final result. It would have been easy to see which of the top 20 characters were realizable, and to be perfectly frank, a desirable newcomer to Sakurai, and start implementing them early. Does that mean the poll results were fudged a bit? Probably, but I don't think the poll ever stated "the most popular character will get put in no matter what!" It was just being used to gauge interest on which characters people would want.

Or perhaps, more aaccurately, which characters people would actually buy.

Then why make it last for several months?

 

[Opossum]

> Remembers voting for Chrom on close to one hundred school computers one boring weekend at college.


Maybe it meant something after all.

Spoiler

It likely didn't.

 

[EnthusedPanda]

Then why make it last for several months?

Ｔ ｈ ｅ 　 ｉ ｌ ｌ ｕ ｓ ｉ ｏ ｎ 　 ｏ ｆ 　 ｃ ｈ ｏ ｉ ｃ ｅ

 

[PlayerOneTyler]

> Remembers voting for Chrom on close to one hundred school computers one boring weekend at college.


Maybe it meant something after all.

Spoiler

It likely didn't.

Man, I thought I was clever for voting once on my home computer and once on my work computer.

 

[Smashoperatingbuddy123]

nah. K Rool wasn't the most voted for.

It was Goku

lol yea thats probably true

but goku was probably the unreasonable choice by what im seeing

when i said king k rool i was talking realistic choices wise

 

[KingBroly]

Maxillian dood called out Bayo before DLC was even a thing and I believed him and looked what happened.

I knew the ballot was a ruse, these talks were done way before launch.

magically gets heels out of nowhere as if her model was being used for someone else.

Wait, seriously? Bayonetta started as a ZSS clone?

 

[Murlough]

You all really need to appreciate how amazing the art is in Ultimate.

I mean this looks 4K, and the Switch does not even support 4K.

We all should thank Sakurai and his team for his work for this game instead of ranting.

But why not both?!

 

[Makai Wars]

This whole two week time-frame from the ballot to having character data existing doesn't necessarily mean much. Take a look at how the poll worked-- it was announced to a wide-spread audience during a direct. How many people immediately went and voted right after the direct ended? Or, at the very worst, within a couple of days, through hearsay? There would have been a massive influx of votes to at the beginning, and it would have petered out pretty quickly. Most casual fans would vote once, maybe a second time on their friends' computer, but that's about it. For the most part, I expect that results of the poll were determined, with very little fluctuations, within a week of it's inception.

Going off of this there was no reason to have the ballot open for what? 5, 6 months? Going off of who got the most votes FASTEST kind of undermines the entire point of having a poll to begin with, that's more like a race.

We know DLC characters take around 6 months to make, we know the point of the ballot was to be more of a suggestions box, we never got the ACTUAL numbers and we have no idea what Nintendo meant when they said "realizable character", like yes that obviously excludes Goku, but we don't know who else counts as non-realizable. Going off of all the evidence posted ITT so far, saying that Bayo was chosen right after or even before the Ballot was released is not that far of a stretch.

> Remembers voting for Chrom on close to one hundred school computers one boring weekend at college.

Didn't they make a point to say they threw out obvious duplicate votes? That's why I only voted once from my laptop and once from my phone, then just tried to get other people to vote for Ice Climbers and Shantae through Twitter.

 

[Troykv]

Wait, seriously? Bayonetta started as a ZSS clone?

Not exactly... Bayonetta was made using the ZSS's model as a base; using both the same skeleton.

 

[Opossum]

Wait, seriously? Bayonetta started as a ZSS clone?

Not necessarily. They're just built off the same skeleton, so to speak. Like how Cloud used a lot of Ike assets.

 

[Imadethistoseealeak]

Ok why has this come up now? I'm sorry but I don't follow why this is coming up now and is valid and believeable... Wouldn't this have come up earlier?

There has never been a case where an inaugural character, no matter how “boring” they may be considered, was passed over for a secondary character.

If ARMS gets a character in Smash, it will be Spring Man first. It’s the same thing as XC2. If XC2 gets a character in Smash, it would absolutely be Rex and Pyra.

Fiora is one of the most popular Xenoblade characters. We still got Shulk as the first Xenoblade character.

It really isn’t complicated. I totally get why certain characters might be wanted over Spring Man or *insert character here*. But chances are the main, “title character” is going to be the first character from their respective franchise to be added.

Of course, i’m sure somebody will respond that “Sakurai changes the way he does things all the time!”, which isn’t wrong by any means. But make no mistake, just because he changes certain things doesn’t mean he’ll change others.

I'd argue Robin & Chrom. Chrom was literally passed over because he didn't bring anything to the table.

HOWEVER and I know this, it's not the same thing with Springman because even if he's the most bland ARMS fighter he still represents a new and unique way to fight. But just wanted to point out I think you can say Sakurai has passed over the more bpand option, it just depends on how we are defining bland.

 

[Captain Fun]

Not necessarily. They're just built off the same skeleton, so to speak. Like how Cloud used a lot of Ike assets.

...Wait. they did? Do they actually use the same assets or are they just similar?

 

[Opossum]

Didn't they make a point to say they threw out obvious duplicate votes? That's why I only voted once from my laptop and once from my phone, then just tried to get other people to vote for Ice Climbers and Shantae through Twitter.

The beauty of having access to multiple computer labs with different IP addresses, as well as wording each one differently...and a VPN or two. :^)

 

[cmbsfm]

It always never made sense to me how they had Bayo ready so soon after the ballot was over. Like we know it takes a while to make a character. But I had the feeling she wasn’t the true winner, and that Wolf,Snake, K Rool or Goku(do not underestimate Latin America and little kids) won the ballot.

It is kinda upsetting that they mislead us like that. But I do think the Ballot is the reason why we got “Everyone is Here” as the theme for ultimate. I think Snake and Wolf topped the ballot and it made Sakurai realize people wanted the vets back badly, leading him to bring back every vet ever. So that’s why I’m not up in arms about my vote “not mattering”, because it clearly did: it got me Snake back. He even said it himself -“back by popular demand.”

I just hope the other fan favorites get in this time and he lays off the WTF characters for this iteration. Especially with less time to make newcomers.

 

[KingBroly]

Not necessarily. They're just built off the same skeleton, so to speak. Like how Cloud used a lot of Ike assets.

I probably should have worded my statement better. But it's pretty interesting

 

[Omega Tyrant]

Ok why has this come up now? I'm sorry but I don't follow why this is coming up now and is valid and believeable... Wouldn't this have come up earlier?

As said:

The Mario slots having stats wasn't known at the time and was discovered after the fact, a lot of the datamine stuff was a process to figure out (like stats weren't known how to find for a long time, for example Dedede's air speed nerf was discovered after the fact, and landing lag wasn't known how to be found in the data for nearly the entirety of Smash 4's active patching period, meaning landing lag changes had to be found by manually recording everyone and counting the frames of their landing lag)

 

[Kooj Kooj]

Not only would the data for 1.0.6 have been done well before the date it dropped (chances are that the data was how it was before the Ballot launched), but the process of deciding Bayo/Cloud, completing the licensing to them, and starting active development on them would be extremely doubtful to have happened within two weeks.

Unless I misunderstand, it sounds like the data in 1.0.6 was just a carbon copy of Ike and ZSS, correct? If not then I understand where you're coming from, but if it's just copied numbers to get development started, then why not? If Square came back and said no about Cloud, well they had just picked Ike's model data. He's a relatively generic male frame, and ZSS fits that for female frames too. Not that I have a particularly in-depth understanding of the character creation process, but I feel like they could have started a multitude of characters from that point.

Then why make it last for several months?

More entries solidifies your data. Just because the initial burst has a trend, doesn't mean more time doesn't widen (or close) the margin, which helps down the road as more DLC characters were being added. The top end would be pretty obvious right away, but not necessarily the middle ground, and the extra time could help differentiate closer ties in the middle.

 

[Wyoming]

Well at least it was discovered recently. Had it been the case three years ago this would have been toxic fuel.

I must say this bombshell is a shock.

 

[Swamp Sensei]

So folks...

Here's a question.

Does this question change how you feel about Bayonetta in Smash?

 

[Deleted member]

Not necessarily. They're just built off the same skeleton, so to speak. Like how Cloud used a lot of Ike assets.

"Cloud used a lot of Ike assets."

You still have a lot of learning to do.

 

[PlayerOneTyler]

So folks...

Here's a question.

Does this question change how you feel about Bayonetta in Smash?

Nope. Never wanted her to begin with, haha.