The DanMan051
Banned via Warnings
- Joined
- Aug 18, 2018
- Messages
- 681
I was inspired to make this topic after some back-and-forth off topic posting in
Delzethin
's Lycanroc thread.
There seems to be two competing theories about how Ultimate's DLC support will play out.
The first being that there isn't much in the way of a set methodology and that it'll be a varied mix of characters 1st and 3rd party.
The second, which I ascribe to, is that the DLC will be mostly 3rd party and marketing-based.
Here's my reasoning/thoughts on things. And warning, this is gonna be long. I'll spoilertag the in-depth stuff
TL;DR Of all the DLC newcomers in Smash's history so far, 2 of them were 3rd party gaming icons (Cloud and Ryu), 3 of them were to promote games (probably, being Corrin, Bayonetta, and Joker), and one of them ("Brave"/most likely Erdrick... most likely) checks both boxes.
That is why I strongly believe that this'll be the trend of the Fighters Pass and any future DLC characters as well.
So, how do you think Ultimate's DLC will go? Are you in the same boat as me? Or are you unconvinced and believe that we can't really predict the "criteria" for DLC characters? Or do you have your own theory about how DLC will go? (Please respond, I don't want this to entirely be me soapboxing.)
There seems to be two competing theories about how Ultimate's DLC support will play out.
The first being that there isn't much in the way of a set methodology and that it'll be a varied mix of characters 1st and 3rd party.
The second, which I ascribe to, is that the DLC will be mostly 3rd party and marketing-based.
Here's my reasoning/thoughts on things. And warning, this is gonna be long. I'll spoilertag the in-depth stuff
First, ignore Smash 4's DLC veterans. They were guaranteed sellers (by virtue of being familiar to most of the customer base) and 2/3 (Roy and Lucas) of them were semi-clones based off of existing characters already in the game; the one who wasn't (Mewtwo) was greatly in demand and from the largest media franchise in existence and is also a clone.
Who does that leave is with? Ryu, Cloud, Corrin, and Bayonetta. They can easily be spit into two groups.
Ryu and Cloud are videogame icons and mascots of their respective genres. You could find people on the street and in nursing homes who've at least seen Ryu somewhere, and Final Fantasy VII is the most hyped and popular JRPG ever made. These guys sold themselves.
Corrin and Bayonetta... not so much. Sakurai was very up front in both the last Smash 4 Direct and in his Famitsu column that resources had been set aside for a character who would promote a recent/upcoming game and that Corrin happened to have perfect timing (and that he was initially against their inclusion until he was convinced that they could have a unique moveset).
Bayonetta is where things get slightly grayer. And a bit tangential, so it's getting spoilertagged:
TL;DR/summary of that:
Bayonetta likely had nothing to do with the Smash Ballot and was instead meant to be a shock and raise awareness of her and her games.
And that Nintendo/the Smash dev team set up an entire poll for fans to influence DLC picks and then completely ignored it, only to then allow the Ballot to influence Ultimate's base roster. Meaning that Nintendo seems to have different criteria for DLC characters and base game characters; didn't consider "fan" choices for newcomers in Smash 4's DLC, but then threw K. Rool, Chrom, and Dark Samus into Ultimate.
And now, getting to Ultimate.
The first DLC character revealed was Piranha Plant, in the November Direct. Piranha Plant is neither an iconic 3rd party character or a character who can realistically market anything that needs marketing, so he's a glaring hole in my theory, right?
...But he wasn't initially planned as a DLC character.
Not only did it have tons ofplant assets data at launch, but it has a Palutena's Guidance conversation. ...And it's been confirmed that none of the Fighters Pass characters will have Guidances. In addition, internally it's listed amidst the base roster newcomers instead of after them.
It was shortly after the November Direct that Sakurai tweeted that the character selection for the Fighter's Pass was completed and specified that Nintendo picked the characters while he decided who a moveset could be created for and actually developed.
The second was revealed at the VGAs and took many by surprise: Joker, the protagonist of Persona 5.
A character who had only debuted on a Nintendo console weeks prior via Persona Q2's Japanese 3DS launch; surely, Nintendo wouldn't have picked him to market a 3DS game when the system is being phased out and that we now know is being sent out to die with no dub by Atlus themselves? Surely, this is only because of the legacy of SMT and Persona 5's surprise success and impact?
In February, twitter user and modder Dr. Hypercake tweeted about an interesting string of text amidst the game's junk data:
"/Jack6_C06_v01_070925.mb_Jane1_pony_hairSystemShape2.mchp"
The only clear thing being that the string was tied to one of Joker's alt costumes.
Last month, Persona 5 Royale was revealed... or really, just got a teaser focused a new female character-- that had a ponytail. Though there's some dispute over whether or not they're a female protagonist (they have a first year student badge when the male's a second year, she said she didn't approve of the Phantom Thieves-- though apparently there's a point in the game where the protagonist is questioned and can say that themselves), I'm of the persuasion that whoever they are, they're Jane.
But wait! The Persona 5 Royale site updated and only has a PS4 logo. So back to square one... ?
...Except a "Persona 5 S" website officially launched about a week ago, with the date "4/25" displayed. The Royale teaser trailer said more news would be coming 4/24. Both days are during the time period a Persona concert is playing, and will likely reveal both "titles" in full.
...But if you're on this board, you're already aware of the "Best Buy Direct" where internal listings at Best Buy for several Switch games got leaked, including one for Persona 5 with Nintendo listed as it's publisher.
So, it would seem, Joker was put on the list because he'd tie into a Persona 5 release on the Switch.
Now, for our second Fighter's Pass character --who we really shouldn't know about but do because of datamining: "Brave", according to internal files.
...And Brave has a 99% chance of being Erdrick, the protagonist of DQ3 whose "name" is technically just a title that multiple protags fall under. A second SE character had been rumored months before the game even launched, "Brave" is a literal translation of "Yuusha"-- the Japanese term for Dragon Quest protagonists/heroes, and insiders have been fairly open that yeah it's probably Erdrick.
DQXI:S is launching on Switch in the back half of this year, the Definitive Edition of Dragon Quest XI. Dragon Quest is a massive phenomenon in Japan-- Erdrick would be an iconic choice for the Japanese crowd while serving to promote DQXI's Switch release in the West.
Who does that leave is with? Ryu, Cloud, Corrin, and Bayonetta. They can easily be spit into two groups.
Ryu and Cloud are videogame icons and mascots of their respective genres. You could find people on the street and in nursing homes who've at least seen Ryu somewhere, and Final Fantasy VII is the most hyped and popular JRPG ever made. These guys sold themselves.
Corrin and Bayonetta... not so much. Sakurai was very up front in both the last Smash 4 Direct and in his Famitsu column that resources had been set aside for a character who would promote a recent/upcoming game and that Corrin happened to have perfect timing (and that he was initially against their inclusion until he was convinced that they could have a unique moveset).
Bayonetta is where things get slightly grayer. And a bit tangential, so it's getting spoilertagged:
She was posited as the winner of the Smash Ballot and the "most realizable character" and yadda yadda, but now it's pretty much an open secret that the dev team had already begun working on her (and Cloud) in April, as early placeholder data for them showed up in the April 15th update. The Smash ballot opened on April 1st.
We know for a fact that updates often sit on the servers for a day or two before they actually get put out (that's how Roy and Ryu got leaked-- people pulled the update off of the server the day before they were officially revealed/released and found them fully complete). And, like any piece of a software, an update would have to be finalized and spend some time being playtested and vetted.
So, that pushes things back to a few days before April 15th.
Now as much as some may spout "Bayonetta's basically 1st party" and so on, she's not. The Bayonetta characters and IP are owned by Sega.
So, for Bayonetta to have legitimately won the Ballot she would've had to get a ginormous lead that would prompt Nintendo to already declare her the winner, negotiate all the rights with Sega, and already begun developing her. ...In under two weeks. You see what I'm getting it?
In addition, the Ballot got by far the most attention from the core online fandom; it was all the talk for months, you had freakin' exit polls trying to predict who was in the lead, you had indie companies embarrassing themselves to try and drum up support for their characters.
Bayonetta had virtually no presence in any of that. There were some murmurings here and there, but she wasn't even top 30 most of the time.
You know who was almost unanimously number 1 in those fan polls? King K. Rool.
You know who got into Ultimate explicitly because of strong Ballot support? King K. Rool.
I could get a moderate dissonance between the community and actual results, but the dissonance being so drastic on top of datamining discoveries and basic logic strongly suggests otherwise.
Bayonetta 1, just on the PS3 and Xbox 360, managed to break 1 million. Bayonetta 2, on Wii U, only clocked about 300k. And this was with 1 and 2 getting separate releases at half price... 2 weeks after Bayonetta was released in Smash 4.
We know for a fact that updates often sit on the servers for a day or two before they actually get put out (that's how Roy and Ryu got leaked-- people pulled the update off of the server the day before they were officially revealed/released and found them fully complete). And, like any piece of a software, an update would have to be finalized and spend some time being playtested and vetted.
So, that pushes things back to a few days before April 15th.
Now as much as some may spout "Bayonetta's basically 1st party" and so on, she's not. The Bayonetta characters and IP are owned by Sega.
So, for Bayonetta to have legitimately won the Ballot she would've had to get a ginormous lead that would prompt Nintendo to already declare her the winner, negotiate all the rights with Sega, and already begun developing her. ...In under two weeks. You see what I'm getting it?
In addition, the Ballot got by far the most attention from the core online fandom; it was all the talk for months, you had freakin' exit polls trying to predict who was in the lead, you had indie companies embarrassing themselves to try and drum up support for their characters.
Bayonetta had virtually no presence in any of that. There were some murmurings here and there, but she wasn't even top 30 most of the time.
You know who was almost unanimously number 1 in those fan polls? King K. Rool.
You know who got into Ultimate explicitly because of strong Ballot support? King K. Rool.
I could get a moderate dissonance between the community and actual results, but the dissonance being so drastic on top of datamining discoveries and basic logic strongly suggests otherwise.
Bayonetta 1, just on the PS3 and Xbox 360, managed to break 1 million. Bayonetta 2, on Wii U, only clocked about 300k. And this was with 1 and 2 getting separate releases at half price... 2 weeks after Bayonetta was released in Smash 4.
TL;DR/summary of that:
Bayonetta likely had nothing to do with the Smash Ballot and was instead meant to be a shock and raise awareness of her and her games.
And that Nintendo/the Smash dev team set up an entire poll for fans to influence DLC picks and then completely ignored it, only to then allow the Ballot to influence Ultimate's base roster. Meaning that Nintendo seems to have different criteria for DLC characters and base game characters; didn't consider "fan" choices for newcomers in Smash 4's DLC, but then threw K. Rool, Chrom, and Dark Samus into Ultimate.
And now, getting to Ultimate.
The first DLC character revealed was Piranha Plant, in the November Direct. Piranha Plant is neither an iconic 3rd party character or a character who can realistically market anything that needs marketing, so he's a glaring hole in my theory, right?
...But he wasn't initially planned as a DLC character.
Not only did it have tons of
It was shortly after the November Direct that Sakurai tweeted that the character selection for the Fighter's Pass was completed and specified that Nintendo picked the characters while he decided who a moveset could be created for and actually developed.
The second was revealed at the VGAs and took many by surprise: Joker, the protagonist of Persona 5.
A character who had only debuted on a Nintendo console weeks prior via Persona Q2's Japanese 3DS launch; surely, Nintendo wouldn't have picked him to market a 3DS game when the system is being phased out and that we now know is being sent out to die with no dub by Atlus themselves? Surely, this is only because of the legacy of SMT and Persona 5's surprise success and impact?
In February, twitter user and modder Dr. Hypercake tweeted about an interesting string of text amidst the game's junk data:
"/Jack6_C06_v01_070925.mb_Jane1_pony_hairSystemShape2.mchp"
The only clear thing being that the string was tied to one of Joker's alt costumes.
Last month, Persona 5 Royale was revealed... or really, just got a teaser focused a new female character-- that had a ponytail. Though there's some dispute over whether or not they're a female protagonist (they have a first year student badge when the male's a second year, she said she didn't approve of the Phantom Thieves-- though apparently there's a point in the game where the protagonist is questioned and can say that themselves), I'm of the persuasion that whoever they are, they're Jane.
But wait! The Persona 5 Royale site updated and only has a PS4 logo. So back to square one... ?
...Except a "Persona 5 S" website officially launched about a week ago, with the date "4/25" displayed. The Royale teaser trailer said more news would be coming 4/24. Both days are during the time period a Persona concert is playing, and will likely reveal both "titles" in full.
...But if you're on this board, you're already aware of the "Best Buy Direct" where internal listings at Best Buy for several Switch games got leaked, including one for Persona 5 with Nintendo listed as it's publisher.
So, it would seem, Joker was put on the list because he'd tie into a Persona 5 release on the Switch.
Now, for our second Fighter's Pass character --who we really shouldn't know about but do because of datamining: "Brave", according to internal files.
...And Brave has a 99% chance of being Erdrick, the protagonist of DQ3 whose "name" is technically just a title that multiple protags fall under. A second SE character had been rumored months before the game even launched, "Brave" is a literal translation of "Yuusha"-- the Japanese term for Dragon Quest protagonists/heroes, and insiders have been fairly open that yeah it's probably Erdrick.
DQXI:S is launching on Switch in the back half of this year, the Definitive Edition of Dragon Quest XI. Dragon Quest is a massive phenomenon in Japan-- Erdrick would be an iconic choice for the Japanese crowd while serving to promote DQXI's Switch release in the West.
TL;DR Of all the DLC newcomers in Smash's history so far, 2 of them were 3rd party gaming icons (Cloud and Ryu), 3 of them were to promote games (probably, being Corrin, Bayonetta, and Joker), and one of them ("Brave"/most likely Erdrick... most likely) checks both boxes.
That is why I strongly believe that this'll be the trend of the Fighters Pass and any future DLC characters as well.
So, how do you think Ultimate's DLC will go? Are you in the same boat as me? Or are you unconvinced and believe that we can't really predict the "criteria" for DLC characters? Or do you have your own theory about how DLC will go? (Please respond, I don't want this to entirely be me soapboxing.)