So what's with the hate for Echo Fighters?

[TheYungLink]

I'm only annoyed that Lucina still doesn't have her unique idle animation and a couple of her attack animations from Fire Emblem Awakening. Her moveset is still done better by Marth, making her a "not as good" version which I'm still miffed at. Her "power balanced throughout the blade" schtick could do with a couple of multihit variations on some attacks, if they're not gonna do extra power at the tip make it so that Lucina has SOME way of getting in some extra damage with Marth's borrowed moveset.

Like, change her side special to Astra, for example. Dancing Blade is pretty much taken from Astra, except DB only does 4 hits. If Lucina had Astra, she could do up all 5 hits instead. Little things like that. Judging by Ken, she could still count as an echo if the Smash team really doesn't want to devote too many resources to differentiating her from Marth too much.

 

[Idon]

I'm only annoyed that Lucina still doesn't have her unique idle animation and a couple of her attack animations from Fire Emblem Awakening. Her moveset is still done better by Marth, making her a "not as good" version which I'm still miffed at. Her "power balanced throughout the blade" schtick could do with a couple of multihit variations on some attacks, if they're not gonna do extra power at the tip make it so that Lucina has SOME way of getting in some extra damage with Marth's borrowed moveset.

Like, change her side special to Astra, for example. Dancing Blade is pretty much taken from Astra, except DB only does 4 hits. If Lucina had Astra, she could do up all 5 hits instead. Little things like that. Judging by Ken, she could still count as an echo if the Smash team really doesn't want to devote too many resources to differentiating her from Marth too much.

It's so weird that Lucina has the same pose as Marth when Chrom was changed from Roy.

Also that Dark Pit's defining weapon is tied directly to his final smash and a weapon when he could easily just replace neutral B with it.

 

[Blade of Evil's Bane]

It's hard to apply something to all echo fighters now that some of them have various degree of differences...

The way i see it, i put them in three categories:

The Alph category(no significant differences or as some would say 'glorified alt costume'):


The almost Alph category (some minor and highly situational gameplay differences):
: Different hit boxes on some moves, all fire based atck are replaced by electric ones (they don't detonate Links bombs and don't hurt yellow pikmins)
: Holy water is not a fire based attack (it's Aura... iirc so no special effect on anything as far i know)
: Slight differences with dmg output and control of the arrows

The almost a Clone category (significant differences that will almost certainly have an effect on gameplay):
: No tipper mechanic, higher dmg/knockback overall (correct me if i'm wrong)
: Up B (how about this?), no fire dmg on sword attacks.
: The most clonish of echo fighters imo, ironically. Differences in speed, knockback, damage input etc. (i think he's secretly a clone )

The whole point of classifying like this is just to give some perspective, there is a whole spectrum in term of echoes (from basic esthetics to game mechanics variations). It's a bit pointless to try and generalize something to all echoes (i.e. the 'hate'). I think they just gives all players more choices and it's always a good thing imo even if the differences are minor ones. For example someone like Marth's playstyle but is not able to land tippers then he can choose to play Lucina, another is a Roy main but in a matchup against Link he can choose to play Chrom so he doesn't detonate the remote bomb instantly with fire attacks or more simply someone likes Daisy more than Peach (because... reasons ) etc.

Though, Young Link is pretty close to Link.

That's another subject but the Links are the more clone-ish of unique fighters, it's a bit like what i was saying about echo fighters: even if we have categories like echo/clone/unique they are just lines traced across the roster but there's still different degrees of likeliness/differences within these categories, again imo.

 

[Madwario]

My sister is very happy that Daisy is finally a playable character, even as an echo, here i hope Waluigi will atleast be an echo of Luigi

I dont hate or mind echo characters, as long as they are unique and not like a total palette swap kind of echo.

 

[Mogisthelioma]

or those Atlantean soldiers aiding Black Manta to go after Arthur and Mera in Italy.

Is that movie good?

 

[Arthur97]

It's hard to apply something to all echo fighters now that some of them have various degree of differences...

The way i see it, i put them in three categories:

The Alph category(no significant differences or as some would say 'glorified alt costume'):


The almost Alph category (some minor and highly situational gameplay differences):
: Different hit boxes on some moves, all fire based atck are replaced by electric ones (they don't detonate Links bombs and don't hurt yellow pikmins)
: Holy water is not a fire based attack (it's Aura... iirc so no special effect on anything as far i know)
: Slight differences with dmg output and control of the arrows

The almost a Clone category (significant differences that will almost certainly have an effect on gameplay):
: No tipper mechanic, higher dmg/knockback overall (correct me if i'm wrong)
: Up B (how about this?), no fire dmg on sword attacks.
: The most clonish of echo fighters imo, ironically. Differences in speed, knockback, damage input etc. (i think he's secretly a clone )

The whole point of classifying like this is just to give some perspective, there is a whole spectrum in term of echoes (from basic esthetics to game mechanics variations). It's a bit pointless to try and generalize something to all echoes (i.e. the 'hate'). I think they just gives all players more choices and it's always a good thing imo even if the differences are minor ones. For example someone like Marth's playstyle but is not able to land tippers then he can choose to play Lucina, another is a Roy main but in a matchup against Link he can choose to play Chrom so he doesn't detonate the remote bomb instantly with fire attacks or more simply someone likes Daisy more than Peach (because... reasons ) etc.


That's another subject but the Links are the more clone-ish of unique fighters, it's a bit like what i was saying about echo fighters: even if we have categories like echo/clone/unique they are just lines traced across the roster but there's still different degrees of likeliness/differences within these categories, again imo.

A lot of Young Link's moves are copies. Moreso than the Toon variety who leans more to semi-clone. Again though, it seems Melee newcomers were exempt from any sort of echo status for some reason.
Edit: TheYungLink Oh, I could make Lucina a semi clone fairly easily.

 

[letsgetsmashing]

My annoyance with clones and echoes in general is it basically stops the character from ever having a unique moveset. Just look at Ganondorf. He was thrown in near the end of Melee's development, so they made him a clone of the only character that somewhat made sense. Personally, I would've rather had him cut entirely from Melee and made a unique fighter in Brawl, and this is the case with most echoes/clones. There is no reason Ganondorf, one of the most iconic, beloved, and menacing Nintendo villains of all time should be echoing some racer who he has no correlation to, especially when you consider the immense moveset potential for Ganondorf. So for me, it's not so much that I hate the idea of having clones, it's just that up until this point we've never seen a fighter truly decloned. I mean to this day Ganondorf is still basically Captain Falcon with a few animation changes.

I do think in some instances echoes/clones do work. Lucina/Marth, Simon/Richter, and Ryu/Ken are three instances where I think echoes were the right decision, because the characters compliment each other. Ness/Lucas and Villager/Isabelle are two situations where I think semi-clones work well, because in both instances both characters have a move that is essential to the series (Example: Isabelle needs the net and pocketing, because both are really important to Animal Crossing, so her sharing those moves with Villager are fine). Mario/Luigi is a Ganondorf like situation in my opinion that I am not fond of. While Luigi feels quite different than Mario nowadays, I don't think they moved him in the right direction. I would've preferred if they made him more of a representation of Luigi's Mansion rather than giving him weird moves that don't really correlate to anything.

Anyways, my last complaint about echoes is I think there is a few situations where they're used that actually hurts the echo. Take Dark Samus as an example. Dark Samus' assist trophy showed off what was unique about it, which makes it's echo almost feel like a downgrade. Dark Samus and Samus virtually fight the exact same, with Dark Samus just being floaty and having a few different animations. The two even have the exact same final smash! I just feel it was kind of lazy to change Dark Samus from an assist trophy that showed off it's uniqueness to an echo. Like would it have been that hard to give two of the moves it used as an assist trophy into actually moves, and make it a semi-clone? So that's my opinion on why I personally hate echoes.

 

[Arthur97]

My annoyance with clones and echoes in general is it basically stops the character from ever having a unique moveset. Just look at Ganondorf. He was thrown in near the end of Melee's development, so they made him a clone of the only character that somewhat made sense. Personally, I would've rather had him cut entirely from Melee and made a unique fighter in Brawl, and this is the case with most echoes/clones. There is no reason Ganondorf, one of the most iconic, beloved, and menacing Nintendo villains of all time should be echoing some racer who he has no correlation to, especially when you consider the immense moveset potential for Ganondorf. So for me, it's not so much that I hate the idea of having clones, it's just that up until this point we've never seen a fighter truly decloned. I mean to this day Ganondorf is still basically Captain Falcon with a few animation changes.

I do think in some instances echoes/clones do work. Lucina/Marth, Simon/Richter, and Ryu/Ken are three instances where I think echoes were the right decision, because the characters compliment each other. Ness/Lucas and Villager/Isabelle are two situations where I think semi-clones work well, because in both instances both characters have a move that is essential to the series (Example: Isabelle needs the net and pocketing, because both are really important to Animal Crossing, so her sharing those moves with Villager are fine). Mario/Luigi is a Ganondorf like situation in my opinion that I am not fond of. While Luigi feels quite different than Mario nowadays, I don't think they moved him in the right direction. I would've preferred if they made him more of a representation of Luigi's Mansion rather than giving him weird moves that don't really correlate to anything.

Anyways, my last complaint about echoes is I think there is a few situations where they're used that actually hurts the echo. Take Dark Samus as an example. Dark Samus' assist trophy showed off what was unique about it, which makes it's echo almost feel like a downgrade. Dark Samus and Samus virtually fight the exact same, with Dark Samus just being floaty and having a few different animations. The two even have the exact same final smash! I just feel it was kind of lazy to change Dark Samus from an assist trophy that showed off it's uniqueness to an echo. Like would it have been that hard to give two of the moves it used as an assist trophy into actually moves, and make it a semi-clone? So that's my opinion on why I personally hate echoes.

Luigi is about where he needs to be. Like Mario, but still his own thing.

Lucina should not fight like Marth and it just perpetuates the myth that her main thing is pretending to be Marth.

 

[letsgetsmashing]

Luigi is about where he needs to be. Like Mario, but still his own thing.

I appreciate how far Luigi has come from Mario, but I feel a moveset based on Luigi's Mansion would better represent who he is, and how he has evolved from a direct clone of Mario back in the NES days. They have made him different, but all of the moves that differentiate the two are random moves that do a better job exemplifying Luigi's personality rather than what actually makes him different.

 

[Arthur97]

I appreciate how far Luigi has come from Mario, but I feel a moveset based on Luigi's Mansion would better represent who he is, and how he has evolved from a direct clone of Mario back in the NES days. They have made him different, but all of the moves that differentiate the two are random moves that do a better job exemplifying Luigi's personality rather than what actually makes him different.

His physics and personality often are his biggest differences. And Luigi's Mansion has fair representation in his moveset for a spinoff series with 2 soon to be 3 entries. They even used unreleased content for him.

 

[osby]

I appreciate how far Luigi has come from Mario, but I feel a moveset based on Luigi's Mansion would better represent who he is, and how he has evolved from a direct clone of Mario back in the NES days. They have made him different, but all of the moves that differentiate the two are random moves that do a better job exemplifying Luigi's personality rather than what actually makes him different.

They literally gave him a grab and Final Smash just from Luigi's Mansion.

 

[letsgetsmashing]

His physics and personality often are his biggest differences. And Luigi's Mansion has fair representation in his moveset for a spinoff series with 2 soon to be 3 entries. They even used unreleased content for him.

I think 3 entries for a series is pretty good. Kid Icarus has only had three games, one of which is widely forgotten and ignored, and it has two unique characters and an echo. Plus Luigi is one of Nintendo's most known characters. I definitely see where you're coming from, because he does have a grab and final smash, but there's so much more they could pull from Luigi's Mansion, especially when you consider that is Luigi's single most important role to date.

 

[Arthur97]

I think 3 entries for a series is pretty good. Kid Icarus has only had three games, one of which is widely forgotten and ignored, and it has two unique characters and an echo. Plus Luigi is one of Nintendo's most known characters. I definitely see where you're coming from, because he does have a grab and final smash, but there's so much more they could pull from Luigi's Mansion, especially when you consider that is Luigi's single most important role to date.

They could, and admittedly, Green Missile could go even if it is kind of iconic to Smash at this point, but remember we're dealing with Sakurai here. It's amazing he even got the grab.
Edit: He also decided apparently that they should make Lucina and even Dark Pit even more samey. For someone who supposedly values unique movesets so much, he's awfully amendment about not giving some fighters more uniqueness.

 

[letsgetsmashing]

They could, and admittedly, Green Missile could go even if it is kind of iconic to Smash at this point, but remember we're dealing with Sakurai here. It's amazing he even got the grab.

honestly true

 

[BXBX]

Most of the echos come off as half-baked. I don't think its crazy to ask that they have some different battle properties despite having the same attack animations just like melee fox/falco. If my only reason to pick daisy over peach is her look, then that is an alt costume criterion not a character slot criterion. But if daisy's smash attacks were say slower, but stronger that would be good enough for me.

 

[osby]

Most of the echos come off as half-baked. I don't think its crazy to ask that they have some different battle properties despite having the same attack animations just like melee fox/falco. If my only reason to pick daisy over peach is her look, then that is an alt costume criterion not a character slot criterion. But if daisy's smash attacks were say slower, but stronger that would be good enough for me.

Then stack them and pretend they are alt costumes?

 

[BXBX]

Then stack them and pretend they are alt costumes?

I could pretend about a lot of things, but I thought the point of the thread was about our opinion of "echo fighters".

 

[Steran]

Didn't sakurai say that echo fighters don't take time to create and aren't taking spots from anyone? He also said people that complain about echo's taking slots are most likely little children that don't understand that echo's don't take much time to create.

 

[soviet prince]

Didn't sakurai say that echo fighters don't take time to create and aren't taking spots from anyone? He also said people that complain about echo's taking slots are most likely little children that don't understand that echo's don't take much time to create.

ppl don't actually read the facts, takes then to long

 

[Sabertooth]

If you think echoes should be better left as alts instead of "not-Melee" clones... just stack their slots. Problem solved.

Yeah, honestly I agree. This feature is an absolutely godsend. I just wish I could do the same for other clones like Dr Mario and Young/Toon Link.

 

[Arthur97]

I don't like the slot stacking. Makes them feel even more inferior.

 

[Pirate Goomba]

Echos should have been like Alph, skin only.

 

[osby]

Echos should have been like Alph, skin only.

Why? It would be weird if Dark Samus, Dark Pit or Daisy had the same animations with Samus, Pit or Peach.

 

[Guynamednelson]

Yeah, honestly I agree. This feature is an absolutely godsend. I just wish I could do the same for other clones like Dr Mario and Young/Toon Link.

The difference is, echoes are supposed to have very little gameplay differences while non-echo clones aren't.

Why? It would be weird if Dark Samus, Dark Pit or Daisy had the same animations with Samus, Pit or Peach.

The male and female Pokemon Trainer have different animations. A bigger concern would be them losing their distinct particle effects and moveset changes.

 

[osby]

The male and female Pokemon Trainer have different animations. A bigger concern would be them losing their distinct particle effects and moveset changes.

Sure, but trainers themselves aren't playable. Their animations are just...there.

 

[Xigger]

Answers to questions, in no particular order:

1. Why the dislike? A lot of people dislike clones, and echoes are the pure essence of clones.

2. Why are some clones not Echoes? Gameplay balance. Echoes require "minimum work", while clones still get the full treatment, and are balanced separately. (Pichu is small and avoids many attacks, Dr. Mario can reflect projectiles, while Lucina only has minor differences)

3. Ganondorf not having a unique moveset is a crime, and is the worst part of clones.

 

[Swamp Sensei]

I'm gonna go the opposite way and say that poor Alph was robbed.

He should be an echo fighter.

JUSTICE FOR ALPH

 

[Arthur97]

Answers to questions, in no particular order:

1. Why the dislike? A lot of people dislike clones, and echoes are the pure essence of clones.

2. Why are some clones not Echoes? Gameplay balance. Echoes require "minimum work", while clones still get the full treatment, and are balanced separately. (Pichu is small and avoids many attacks, Dr. Mario can reflect projectiles, while Lucina only has minor differences)

3. Ganondorf not having a unique moveset is a crime, and is the worst part of clones.

I wouldn't exactly call Doc as having the full treatment since he still essentially has multipliers on Mario's stats rather than his own.

 

[lordvaati]

I view them in a similar vein to the Alternate Character skins in Injustice 2 and have grown used to them now.

On top of that there is an option that makes them into essential character skins on the CSS so the most common rebuttal has already been addressed.

 

[Sabertooth]

I'm gonna go the opposite way and say that poor Alph was robbed.

He should be an echo fighter.

JUSTICE FOR ALPH

I agree wholeheartedly.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

For me, Echos are a way to add a character without needing to get super technical with the assets and design needed to add them.

It’s a good idea and has been done for years.

 

[YoshiandToad]

Can confirm upon beating the World of Light I once again forgot Richter and even Lucina existed when collecting all the Fighters. The more similar Echoes(aka not Chrom and Ken) don't seem to register with me for some reason like I have a big mental block for a lot of them. I only remember Dark Pit since he basically became a meme in my friendship circle.

 

[Xigger]

I wouldn't exactly call Doc as having the full treatment since he still essentially has multipliers on Mario's stats rather than his own.

You're definitely right, it's still very much Echo-levels of development.

It just makes a lot of sense with Sakurai's mindset on gameplay balance, not that it makes a lot of sense in general.

 

[Arthur97]

You're definitely right, it's still very much Echo-levels of development.

It just makes a lot of sense with Sakurai's mindset on gameplay balance, not that it makes a lot of sense in general.

Sakurai just seems to like contradicting himself. Let's make new fighters unique, but also, let's never make clones accurate to themselves.

 

[The_MP8]

Echoes are okay. It's like a reskin. Same everything, but it has a different look. Like for instance, Samus or Dark Samus. Sure, Samus is the original, but Dark Samus looks pretty cool. (nintendo please have more than 6 dlc characters maybe 15 or so)