Official Smash Ultimate Discussion

[ColietheGoalie]

tbh I don't think that's realistic, I'm fully expecting more. We've got a dev cycle of over 2 years, one version of the game, no story mode and all the veterans are probably going to be straight ports over from wii u

How do you know there’s no story mode?

 

[DJ3DS]

More than 10 newcomers with no cuts is a dangerously bloated character roster.

 

[The Original Robot boy]

How do you know there’s no story mode?

Knowing Sakurai woudln't want his game cutscenes all over youtube so i say a adventure mode is our best bet than any

 

[MoonlitIllusion]

How do you know there’s no story mode?

Okay true but sakurai's made his stance on that clear last game, I'm not expecting one at least, and if there is one I seriously doubt it'll be anywhere as big as brawl's

More than 10 newcomers with no cuts is a dangerously bloated character roster.

I don't see what's wrong with that, a roster can't be "too big" if the characters are all unique

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

Huge rosters still have something important to think about; balance. So yes, too big is very much a thing. It has to be done carefully. There isn't that much time between games, so I'm not banking on a huge roster myself. 5-8 newcomers, imo. Low, but it's what I feel.

Also, there's a difference between Story Mode and huge cutscenes. Melee still does it just fine with few cutscenes. I'd like Adventure Mode back too. The story was "okay" in Brawl, mind you. Very neat bosses/enemy designs, though.

 

[Bowserlick]

Busted Mimikyu sound effect

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmZK7_8dBb4

 

[Icedragonadam]

Well as long at least every series gets a platforming segment in the Adventure Mode unlike in Melee where I felt it was underutilised.

 

[Wyoming]

A roster can definitely be too big for a fighting game.

Yes, I know, Sakurai cares not for competitive but even just balancing and programming 70+ characters would require outrageous time and effort from the whole staff.

 

[MoonlitIllusion]

Huge rosters still have something important to think about; balance. So yes, too big is very much a thing. It has to be done carefully. There isn't that much time between games, so I'm not banking on a huge roster myself. 5-8 newcomers, imo. Low, but it's what I feel.

Also, there's a difference between Story Mode and huge cutscenes. Melee still does it just fine with few cutscenes. I'd like Adventure Mode back too. The story was "okay" in Brawl, mind you. Very neat bosses/enemy designs, though.

Smash 4 is already fairly balanced tho, at least more than any other smash game, they just have to balance the newcomers and tweak vets according to that.

A roster can definitely be too big for a fighting game.

Yes, I know, Sakurai cares not for competitive but even just balancing and programming 70+ characters would require outrageous time and effort from the whole staff.

Not if 58 are already programmed and mostly balanced

 

[Wyoming]

Even if they port assets they won't respond the same to new physics, items or whatnot right away.

Smash 4 had ported Brawl assets but required fine tuning since the physics and gameplay were vastly different.

 

[APC99]

I'm just going to guess that amiibo releases have little to no indication of a character's popularity, and that Nintendo simply makes more amiibo because it's still getting them money.

If amiibo figures are representative of who'd get in Smash, then hoo boy, I'm not prepared for the "Sakurai has Animal Crossing bias and hates every other franchise" threads that'd pop up every other day or so.

 

[Guybrush20X6]

Every time a character is added, they have to be balanced against every other character that came before so the amount of effort needed for each additional one grows, especially when with Smash 4's design philosophy where near every new character had a unique gimmick to them.

 

[MoonlitIllusion]

Even if they port assets they won't respond the same to new physics, items or whatnot right away.

Smash 4 had ported Brawl assets but required fine tuning since the physics and gameplay were vastly different.

I'm fully expecting the game will be mostly the same still tho, even if they tweak the physics and the gameplay and stuff they're still not gonna be building a game and all it's characters from the ground up like they did for smash 4 (at least I hope so cause that would be a ****ing waste of time lol)

 

[Icedragonadam]

I agree. The leap from Wii U to Switch isn't that big compared to Wii to Wii U. So I think the Switch will just be polishing, balancing and tuning out the kinks from the Wii U version graphics wise.

 

[MrReyes96]

I think if Nintendo plans to go through with their plan to support the switch for 7-10 years, this could be our only smash for a while
Ideally this game keeps getting supported well after launch, at minimum until 2020
New fighters, new stages, costumes, and new updates to keep the game fresh
They could even add DLC in conjunction with new game releases
E.g, release Sylux with Metroid prime 4, release new fire emblem protagonist with next fire emblem

 

[AlphaSSB]

honestly just look up vanquishes gameplay, doing something like that but with star fox would be dope.

And yeah we already have 3 universes, we might as well stick with this one and see where it goes, there's literally no reason to bring back the old timeline by this point, it's been well over 10 years since it's had a game after all, most people barely remember it while Zero is fresh in people's minds anyway.

Alright, watched some Vanquish gameplay. It looks alright, a bit bland though. Granted, it was in 2010, so I'm sure if improved upon, it would work a lot better.

Although the game really wasn't the best, Mass Effect: Andromeda's combat system would actually make for a good template to use as a reference. Andromeda offered a lot to Mass Effect's combat and made it a lot more free and fluid. Should Star Fox come back on foot, I don't know if I'd want there to be a true cover system, as I feel that it influences combat scenarios negatively. Andromeda allows you to use cover, but you can also jump around, shoot, and run freely.

As for the universes, I think it can go either way. Sticking with Zero's universe has its pros and cons, and going back to the established universe has its pros and cons. If we stay with Zero's universe, then they have a lot of stuff that they're going to want to improve on. If we went back to the established universe, then we'd have to get a narrative that ensures us that this is what they'll be sticking with. In the end, Star Fox's next game absolutely needs to establish where they will stay for now on.

 

[FlareHabanero]

Every time a character is added, they have to be balanced against every other character that came before so the amount of effort needed for each additional one grows, especially when with Smash 4's design philosophy where near every new character had a unique gimmick to them.

Don't forget that they also have to worry about every possible situation while doing so. This means 1 vs 1, free for all, 2 vs 2, items and no items, etc.

 

[DJ3DS]

I don't see what's wrong with that, a roster can't be "too big" if the characters are all unique

Sure it can, for balance reasons and for wanting a CSS that isn't a complete monstrosity.

Beyond that, a friendly reminder that even as we are now, the roster is bloated with characters that are nowhere near unique:









Yes, I really don't care that much about the normals - if their specials are entirely variants of one another, they aren't unique characters.

You could remove all bar one character from every single one of those columns except the top (preferably making Ganon his own character) and it fundamentally wouldn't make a big difference to the character roster, despite having removed 7/58 characters (nearly an eighth of the entire roster!).

Obviously I'm biased by having no attachment to any of these characters but I truly believe the smash roster is already bloated and could do with a lot of the fat trimming off to make room for newer, more unique newcomers.

 

[MoonlitIllusion]

Sure it can, for balance reasons and for wanting a CSS that isn't a complete monstrosity.

Beyond that, a friendly reminder that even as we are now, the roster is bloated with characters that are nowhere near unique:









Yes, I really don't care that much about the normals - if their specials are entirely variants of one another, they aren't unique characters.

You could remove all bar one character from every single one of those columns except the top (preferably making Ganon his own character) and it fundamentally wouldn't make a big difference to the character roster, despite having removed 7/58 characters (nearly an eighth of the entire roster!).

Obviously I'm biased by having no attachment to any of these characters but I truly believe the smash roster is already bloated and could do with a lot of the fat trimming off to make room for newer, more unique newcomers.

I don't think it'd make room for new characters, it would be cutting for the sake of cutting considering they're already done and were made in smash 4, not to mention they're clones and don't take up as much dev time anyway. Maybe in the next game in 6-7 years but not now with a game that's likely a port turned sequel.

 

[TumblrFamous]

tbh I don't think that's realistic, I'm fully expecting more. We've got a dev cycle of over 2 years, one version of the game, no story mode and all the veterans are probably going to be straight ports over from wii u

I don't see that many more newcomers left to add. The roster is already huge as is, I can't see us going over, say, 70-75 characters. Balancing, as many have said above me, is a huge issue. And having 70+ characters is ridiculous if we want a good and balanced game.

I'll concede to the one version of the game. But what's your source on no story mode? We probably won't have SSE again but we could very easily have more in-depth features like Adventure mode.

 

[Deleted member]

I expect anywhere from 10-13 unique newcomers with 4-6 as DLC. Probably one or two new clones as well, with ~3 unique veterans cut from Smash 4 + maybe custom moves. I don't think we've hit the tipping point for characters yet, especially since all the assets from the Wii U version are ready to go. The main thing that sells Smash, and other Nintendo properties through promotion, are the characters. I highly doubt we get less than 10 newcomers just from looking at the situation from a corporate perspective.

 

[True Blue Warrior]

More than 10 newcomers with no cuts is a dangerously bloated character roster.

I don't ever speculate for Smash Switch with the mentality that there won't be cuts, so I personally see no reason why we couldn't get at least 12. Melee had 14 newcomers, Brawl 18 and Smash 4 had 17 in the base roster.

As for why I think cuts are inevitable? Well, one reason is that Sakurai himself has stated that every character added is not just an addition, but a multiplication.

 

[BluePikmin11]

I went to an anime convention today and saw a gaming panel where people could play Smash Bros. Wii U. I decided to go out there and share my speculation Smash Switch roster to the fans, asking them how they would react if my roster happened for real. Some interesting responses came up:

1. There was one particular young person who *really* wanted Rex/Pyra for Smash.
2. One female Smash fan screamed out loud when she saw Ice Climbers in my roster.
3. A lot of people expect an ARMS character to get in the game.
4. Some people started discussing and loving the idea of Isabelle and Tom Nook for Smash, pointing out potential moves like Nook throwing bells and one *specifically* pointing out Isabelle fighting with the use of Public Works projects.

Definitely some interesting answers.

 

[Tree Gelbman]

Tom Nook throwing bells around makes me laugh.

As if that Tanooki would even for a minute throw his money around.

Actually let me toss money at people so I can say 'I'M MAKING IT RAIN" while playing Smash Brothers.

 

[Scoliosis Jones]

Going to say it again...just because a character is new doesn’t mean that they MUST be added.

Zelda is, in my humble opinion getting two revamped vets. If we count Link and Zelda as “newcomers”, and we’re getting a total of 10-12 as some are suggesting, are we really expecting 1/4 to be Zelda characters?

I like the Champions quite a bit. But c’mon now. Personally I think Zelda will get their powers as specials, or they may show up on a stage. I don’t think they’ll be playable.

 

[TumblrFamous]

The roster was able to grow from each addition because it had the room to. Having 58 characters already, all with custom moves, is a lot. There's not going to be a lot of room for the roster to grow because, yes, it can get bloated very easily.

I don't ever speculate for Smash Switch with the mentality that there won't be cuts, so I personally see no reason why we couldn't get at least 12. Melee had 14 newcomers, Brawl 18 and Smash 4 had 17 in the base roster.

Okay, but this is being argued as mainly being taken from the Wii U, keeping mostly everything the same (including the roster), and adding 15 on top of that at least. That's a LOT of characters.

 

[Kotor]

How many newcomers were people expecting during the pre-SSB4 period?

 

[TumblrFamous]

Going to say it again...just because a character is new doesn’t mean that they MUST be added.

Zelda is, in my humble opinion getting two tevamped vets. If we count Link and Zelda as “newcomers”, and we’re getting a total of 10-12 as some are suggesting, are we really expecting 1/4 to be Zelda characters?

I like the Champions quite a bit. But c’mon now. Personally I think Zelda will get their powers as specials, or they may show up on a stage. I don’t think they’ll be playable.

Do you expect Link and Zelda will get a total move overhaul? Or just a bit of a revamp? I can see their specials changing to but I can't see a lot of their normals changing outside of just buffing them/adding properties to them (I'm hoping I'm wrong, I'd rather have more revamped characters that have gone pretty stale in my opinion).

How many newcomers were people expecting during the pre-SSB4 period?

If I remember correctly, I said roughly 15-18 newcomers, and I believe a lot of people had the same opinion. Of course, there are always outliers (some people had a 40 character roster, others had 70s-80s), but most people probably had anywhere to a 48-55 character roster.

 

[A Distant Demon]

Man y'all are optimistic. Im expecting between 6 and 8 newcomers and a few returning vets for base game. Y'all are throwing out numbers like 18!

 

[True Blue Warrior]

Going to say it again...just because a character is new doesn’t mean that they MUST be added.

Isn't that basically true for every single potential newcomer character at this point? As far as I'm concerned all the "needed" characters have already been in by Brawl and at this point we are just dealing with the icing on the cake.

 

[Chandeelure]

How many newcomers were people expecting during the pre-SSB4 period?

I remember most people didn't expect more than 10, for the same reasons they don't expect much now.

Because there are not so many icons left, Nintendo needs to save characters for the next game, etc.

Pretty dumb tbh, if you are going to do something, do it right.

I expect 15 or more newcomers for this Smash haha.

 

[Wyoming]

I think we'll hit the sweet spot of 13 newcomers + ICs for the base game and the rest will be added as DLC.

I'd love Wolf to be back, but if he made it into the base game I'd be surprised.

 

[MoonlitIllusion]

How many newcomers were people expecting during the pre-SSB4 period?

I remember people saying around 15 which is what we got, but I don't think people were expecting 6 cuts to happen so yeah. We got 9 new characters technically.

 

[Tree Gelbman]

I think it's the early 2016 start date that leads people to believe there will be a significant amount of newcomers. After all the Switch has been out for year now and Nintendo had no idea how successful it would be and really were on a hope situation. They ported over some of their biggest games immediately and had other series lined up as well.

Sakurai could've easily stopped production at anyone point by now and we'd already have a Smash for Switch. It's just a ''What could take him since early 2016 till what will most likely be the end of 2018" sort of situation.

 

[True Blue Warrior]

I don't think Smash Switch was ever intended to be a port seeing as the only thing that seemingly indicated it was a port was a bunch of rumours from unreliable sources. Besides, a new game has more hype and sales potential than a Smash 4 port with a few extra features.

I remember people saying around 15 which is what we got, but I don't think people were expecting 6 cuts to happen so yeah. We got 9 new characters technically.

That's not how it works. There's no such thing as a -1 newcomer, only 17 newcomers and 6 less veterans from Brawl with the addition of a Melee veteran who was cut before. DLC got us 3 more returning veterans and 4 newcomers.

 

[MoonlitIllusion]

That's not how it works. There's no such thing as a -1 newcomer, only 17 newcomers and 6 less veterans from Brawl with the addition of a Melee veteran who was cut before. DLC got us 3 more returning veterans and 4 newcomers.

Yeah exactly, there were 6 characters cut from brawl's 39, giving us 33, and then they added 15 new characters, making 48 unique fighters they had to develop. Instead of developing say snake they developed someone else. I'm assuming cuts give them more time to develop new fighters, had all the brawl vets returned they probably would've had less newcomers.

But we probably don't have to worry about that with this game, I'm not expecting cuts at least.

 

[CatRaccoonBL]

How many newcomers we sweaty boys and girls thinking we will be getting?

I'm going with 12 newcomers. A little optimistic, but I still think they would want a relatively sizeable amount of new characters.

 

[TumblrFamous]

I remember most people didn't expect more than 10, for the same reasons they don't expect much now.

Because there are not so many icons left, Nintendo needs to save characters for the next game, etc.

Pretty dumb tbh, if you are going to do something, do it right.

I expect 15 or more newcomers for this Smash haha.

If I remember correctly, right after the explosion of Smash at E3 2013, in addition to Mega Man, Villager, and Wii Fit Trainer, most people on these threads had roughly the same characters/types of characters on their prediction rosters: a new Mario rep, Palutena, Shulk, Little Mac, Pac-Man, Miis, Dixie and/or K. Rool, a FE rep (usually Chrom), Takamaru, and the return of Mewtwo. Then you had less agreeable things like Bandana Dee, Ridley, Duck Hunt Dog, a new Zelda rep, etc. that were harder to predict but usually entertained as at least a possibility.

Roughly 14 newcomers (using newcomers loosely as I lumped in Mewtwo, it's more of an addition to the previous roster). And most people weren't expecting a lot of cuts either. I think that was bolstered by Toon Link and Lucario's relatively early reveals, who were high on the priority list to be cut back in the day (granted we technically had 6 cuts, but that's besides the point).

This time, most people are under the assumption that no cuts will be made because it's probably a "port-turned-sequel". If that happens, adding another roughly 15-18 newcomers to an already large 58-character roster, in my humble opinion, is too much due to balancing and simple oversize.

That was a lot of word-vomit If anyone reads it, thanks!

 

[Opossum]

Personally I can see anywhere from 8-12 newcomers, so on the lower end, but it depends on how many cuts there are.

 

[MoonlitIllusion]

I don't think Smash Switch was ever intended to be a port seeing as the only thing that seemingly indicated it was a port was a bunch of rumours from unreliable sources. Besides, a new game has more hype and sales potential than a Smash 4 port with a few extra features.

No it will most certainly be a new game, but it'd just be a massive waste of time and resources to scrap all the old work they did and restart from scratch so I don't think they will. A new game using old framework is essentially what I'm thinking, taking the old game and rebranding it as a sequel, like splatoon 2 essentially did.