EricTheGamerman
Smash Master
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2014
- Messages
- 3,197
I've been waiting for a little while to post my thoughts on Ashley following the news yesterday. I wanted to think a lot about it since I've had some ideas brewing in my head for a while regarding her popularity and status with regards to Smash. She was one of my top 5 (#4) for certain, and I still love the idea of her as a playable character, so I hope she can perhaps be a DLC tier character if Waluigi manages to set that precedent (And it pretty much has to be him first at this point, his whole controversy has galvanized the idea of him deserving a spot in Smash for better and for worse). That said, I got my number 1 (King K Rool) and number 5 (Simon Belmont), so my disappointment couldn't really be all that much because I had made sure I was careful on how much I bet on any single thing in this game following some of Smash 4's disappointment. This post isn't to serve as the salt in the wound to the fan base, but these are my observations regarding her.
The biggest thing I think is that Ashley is a victim of the Smash hype cycle. This fan base grew exponentially in a tiny time frame, we damn near eclipsed King K. Rool (A character who has became the main contender of Smash speculation for basically the last two cycles) in the period of about two months from E3 2018. That's a huge accomplishment to be noted of any fan base, and bodes well for her support in the future. I think with that came a lot of attention and band-wagon supporters too (I want to note, I in no way see that as a bad thing). With that attention she became the center of an Echo chamber of support. That many voices tends to have that effect on this site for better and for worse as well. It makes the confirmations all the more exciting, and the disconfirmations all the more tragically heartbreaking.
I think we might have come to overestimate the chances of Ashley, especially looking in retrospect to all of this. I wouldn't necessarily call the outpouring for a second WarioWare rep to have been huge previously for one thing. Brawl had just added Wario and his stage, and I don't remember a ton of support happening for one in Smash 4 either. The support there previously also had a much more divided fan base too in comparison to now. Mona, 9-Volt, and Jimmy T all felt like characters that had a presence in previous years as well compared to Ultimate's hype cycle. I take this to mean the support for a second WarioWare rep had previously been spread much more evenly during the ballot days and prior to the ballot. There wasn't a clear cut, next in line rep for WarioWare in terms of popularity. Not to mention Game and Wario had not done so well in recent memory, which can only hurt the whole situation. Now, while we may end up with Isabelle from Animal Crossing still, she clearly became a frontrunner for second rep upon her introduction. Unlike Ashley, she had an immediate popularity and marketable image in comparison, where as I would argue Ashley's popularity has taken more time to build up. Not to mention just the sheer size of Animal Crossing as a series at this point versus WarioWare.
I know some people seemed to express disappointment that Japan is seemingly not getting their most wanted reps as well, but I think that's a bit of a conclusion to be jumping to as well. First off, the character announcements are not yet done, so we have no clue who might or might not be in the game still. Bandanna Dee and Isabelle would certainly be big picks for Japan, and King K Rool has always seemed to have some major presence in Japan (From what I've seen he was always a top 10 pick in any polls for expected or desired newcomers). With Japan though, I think we've all struggled to really come up with nearly as much data on the subject as we'd like. I think there's been a lot of assuming done with the more limited ideas done on who is exactly popular in Japan. A big red flag to me is how quickly people latched on to the whole Ridley as Captain America thing, when in reality that wasn't remotely near how things were being handled. Ashley did pretty well on the couple of polls we got, but she closer to the end of the top 10s than the beginning in the related information I saw beforehand. I think there's a good chance that we all fell a little bit into overestimating her Japanese popularity as well. With limited information we made more conclusions than perhaps we should have. Again, Japan has always been a hotly contested topic when it comes to Smash speculation as to the validity of said information presented.
Finally, I don't think many of us would have seen Ashley as nearly as viable as a newcomer if we hadn't looked at the Nintendo Badge Arcade. As heavily featured as she was in that, I think two things to keep in mind is that the arcade also came from the WarioWare developers, so you've got a little bit of developer bias pushing her into something. Not a bad thing at all, and I imagined it certainly helped push her image as a Nintendo character. But I do wonder just how much of an effect that really had on her popularity and status in Japan. She was indeed pushed that hard with the game, but was that push truly a lasting impact? Again, that's information I'm mostly certain we lack enough research on to really determine.
That's sort of my take on the Ashley situation as a fan who began to see things get a little out of control with how certain people were becoming on her inclusion. Especially once the disconfirmation happened, I really started putting my thoughts on the matter together to start looking at why she may not have been included. I think when you start to add things up, she may not have been on Sakurai's radar in the way a lot of us thought she was, and that's always going to be the most important thing at the end of the day. That's part of the reason I also see her deconfirmation in the Direct as it was. I think there is a very high probability that she got added into the Direct once Sakurai learned of her growth in popularity late in the game. Just to get it over with. Sakurai has done a lot of quick bandaid ripping to let us down already. I could see that as just another way of his trying to let down the fans the best he knew how.
I also wonder, if a Rhythm Heaven rep gets in there may have been some precedent to that Rhythm Microgame character from an unrepresented series over another WarioWare character. I actually lean towards that as a huge possibility as well. And as much as I love Ashley and WarioWare, I could see that argument being entirely valid.
I am indeed disappointed she isn't in the base game (and I do think we should exclusively look at things as such). She would have been a great character, and I stand by the belief we need more magic users in Smash as well. I can't deny that we've managed to achieve a lot in a little amount of time though, we made a character with a limited backing one of the future top contenders in Smash. I understand the disappointment for now, but don't devalue that reality we've helped to make. Especially if we keep supporting the character in the future, she has a chance to show up in Smash someday.
The biggest thing I think is that Ashley is a victim of the Smash hype cycle. This fan base grew exponentially in a tiny time frame, we damn near eclipsed King K. Rool (A character who has became the main contender of Smash speculation for basically the last two cycles) in the period of about two months from E3 2018. That's a huge accomplishment to be noted of any fan base, and bodes well for her support in the future. I think with that came a lot of attention and band-wagon supporters too (I want to note, I in no way see that as a bad thing). With that attention she became the center of an Echo chamber of support. That many voices tends to have that effect on this site for better and for worse as well. It makes the confirmations all the more exciting, and the disconfirmations all the more tragically heartbreaking.
I think we might have come to overestimate the chances of Ashley, especially looking in retrospect to all of this. I wouldn't necessarily call the outpouring for a second WarioWare rep to have been huge previously for one thing. Brawl had just added Wario and his stage, and I don't remember a ton of support happening for one in Smash 4 either. The support there previously also had a much more divided fan base too in comparison to now. Mona, 9-Volt, and Jimmy T all felt like characters that had a presence in previous years as well compared to Ultimate's hype cycle. I take this to mean the support for a second WarioWare rep had previously been spread much more evenly during the ballot days and prior to the ballot. There wasn't a clear cut, next in line rep for WarioWare in terms of popularity. Not to mention Game and Wario had not done so well in recent memory, which can only hurt the whole situation. Now, while we may end up with Isabelle from Animal Crossing still, she clearly became a frontrunner for second rep upon her introduction. Unlike Ashley, she had an immediate popularity and marketable image in comparison, where as I would argue Ashley's popularity has taken more time to build up. Not to mention just the sheer size of Animal Crossing as a series at this point versus WarioWare.
I know some people seemed to express disappointment that Japan is seemingly not getting their most wanted reps as well, but I think that's a bit of a conclusion to be jumping to as well. First off, the character announcements are not yet done, so we have no clue who might or might not be in the game still. Bandanna Dee and Isabelle would certainly be big picks for Japan, and King K Rool has always seemed to have some major presence in Japan (From what I've seen he was always a top 10 pick in any polls for expected or desired newcomers). With Japan though, I think we've all struggled to really come up with nearly as much data on the subject as we'd like. I think there's been a lot of assuming done with the more limited ideas done on who is exactly popular in Japan. A big red flag to me is how quickly people latched on to the whole Ridley as Captain America thing, when in reality that wasn't remotely near how things were being handled. Ashley did pretty well on the couple of polls we got, but she closer to the end of the top 10s than the beginning in the related information I saw beforehand. I think there's a good chance that we all fell a little bit into overestimating her Japanese popularity as well. With limited information we made more conclusions than perhaps we should have. Again, Japan has always been a hotly contested topic when it comes to Smash speculation as to the validity of said information presented.
Finally, I don't think many of us would have seen Ashley as nearly as viable as a newcomer if we hadn't looked at the Nintendo Badge Arcade. As heavily featured as she was in that, I think two things to keep in mind is that the arcade also came from the WarioWare developers, so you've got a little bit of developer bias pushing her into something. Not a bad thing at all, and I imagined it certainly helped push her image as a Nintendo character. But I do wonder just how much of an effect that really had on her popularity and status in Japan. She was indeed pushed that hard with the game, but was that push truly a lasting impact? Again, that's information I'm mostly certain we lack enough research on to really determine.
That's sort of my take on the Ashley situation as a fan who began to see things get a little out of control with how certain people were becoming on her inclusion. Especially once the disconfirmation happened, I really started putting my thoughts on the matter together to start looking at why she may not have been included. I think when you start to add things up, she may not have been on Sakurai's radar in the way a lot of us thought she was, and that's always going to be the most important thing at the end of the day. That's part of the reason I also see her deconfirmation in the Direct as it was. I think there is a very high probability that she got added into the Direct once Sakurai learned of her growth in popularity late in the game. Just to get it over with. Sakurai has done a lot of quick bandaid ripping to let us down already. I could see that as just another way of his trying to let down the fans the best he knew how.
I also wonder, if a Rhythm Heaven rep gets in there may have been some precedent to that Rhythm Microgame character from an unrepresented series over another WarioWare character. I actually lean towards that as a huge possibility as well. And as much as I love Ashley and WarioWare, I could see that argument being entirely valid.
I am indeed disappointed she isn't in the base game (and I do think we should exclusively look at things as such). She would have been a great character, and I stand by the belief we need more magic users in Smash as well. I can't deny that we've managed to achieve a lot in a little amount of time though, we made a character with a limited backing one of the future top contenders in Smash. I understand the disappointment for now, but don't devalue that reality we've helped to make. Especially if we keep supporting the character in the future, she has a chance to show up in Smash someday.