Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - DADDY SAKURAI'S WILD RIDE HAS CONCLUDED

[Ryannumber1gamer]

At this rate, I would've taken Chibi Robo tbh.

[Kuzu]

If nothing else, this is a prime example of what happens when people buy too much into blind hype.

People set themselves up for disappointment every time there's a character reveal and it doesnt match your expectations.

 

I can understand being disappointed if you don't care about FE at all, but all of the hype and words was literally over nothing. 

 

People need to learn how to temper expectations.

[Nix]

I'm disappointed with Byleth, but the rest of the fighters in the first Fighters Pass are of exceptional quality so it's hard to mad with the offering as a whole.  Really won't feel too bad about picking up the 2nd Pass blind.

That being said, Rex/Pyra/Mythra continue to be done rotten, and I won't stand for this.

[Dr. Detective]

I wanted to come in here and type a sarcastic comment about how its okay to complain because Smash Ultimate Racing only has 15 characters or something but nah.

This game's roster includes every character thats ever been in Smash and started out with the expectation of very few new additions. Cut to 2020 and its still adding in new characters, with the promise of even more on the way. I couldn't imagine being truly upset about this, even if they add someone I don't care about.

 

 

[Wraith]

I was expecting the reaction to be negative here but I'm annoyed with the community overall on twitter/reddit/yt for their behavior about this. There are 6 more coming if you don't like this one. Get some air.

I was annoyed by the pick but the character looks decent in action. I'd be more annoyed if Byleth was another shallow rushdown character like the other FE reps but they actually finally worked the other weapon types in along with a couple other things I've wanted them to try. Looking at her kit I can't see her being very useful against the stronger characters so we're looking at another hero/banjo where she's underwhelming power wise but has some goofiness to make up for it. I don't see myself using her too much but there's enough there for me to want to try her out. 


It would be ideal if they were released earlier but I imagine they just bring these characters out in the order that they're ready to be presented and there's not a lot of forethought about how the hype cycle will be. Once again I find myself being put off by people being more critical of Smash bros's marketing than they are of it as a game. It's just a commercial. It's not meant to be entertainment. 

anyways fuck fire emblem CUPHEAD IS IN SMASH
 

FLORY FURY IS THE ONLY RECORD IN MY LOBBIES LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[Tracker_TD]

Just gonna echo what I said on Twitter:

While it can be seen as an anti-climax, I think leaving Byleth till last probably made some sense.

They'll have wanted to get the big hitters, the huge surprises, out of the way earlier to get people to buy the Pass sooner - by now most people who were gonna buy the Pass have it, so they already got their money and it's not like they can take it back - whereas a pick like Byleth earlier on might've made people uneasy about buying that pass given the reputation Fire Emblem's garnered with a lot of Smash fans.

Anyway, I'm not mad about it. Byleth looks fun, the stage in particular looks crazy-good, and I love the Mii outfits we're getting. Main thing for me is that Arle still hasn't shown up as a Mii outfit, and with six more fighters on the plate... I've got my fingers crossed. 

[Diogenes]

1 minute ago, Tracker_TD said:

They'll have wanted to get the big hitters, the huge surprises, out of the way earlier to get people to buy the Pass sooner - by now most people who were gonna buy the Pass have it, so they already got their money and it's not like they can take it back - whereas a pick like Byleth earlier on might've made people uneasy about buying that pass given the reputation Fire Emblem's garnered with a lot of Smash fans.

Why not put them in the middle, then. Two hype characters at the start to draw in early adopters, two hype characters at the end for a strong finish to pull in the stragglers. Start strong, end strong, if there's got to be a lull, put it in the middle.

[Wraith]

Like I said earlier they probably don't have a ton of control over what they get done first vs what they get done last. 

[Tornado]

1 hour ago, Soniman said:

Isn't it a little much to damn the entire DLC line up because they showed off DLC character that didn't interest you?

Writing off all of the future DLC because of this is a bit much, yes.

 

Writing off buying into another Fighter's Pass when the last entry was phoned in and/or deliberately antagonistic seems much less so. I don't think it's outrageous to think that efforts to try to get that sweet season pass money a second time around may have been seriously hampered by this Direct.

[Wraith]

10 minutes ago, Tornado said:

I don't think it's outrageous to think that efforts to try to get that sweet season pass money a second time around may have been seriously hampered by this Direct.

I do. People have been whining about the last reveal for whatever marketing cycle is going on for smash since Smash 4 rolled around with Duck Hunt. I'm not exaggerating when I say this has happened every single time. It happened with Bayonetta. It happened with Incineroar. It happened with Byleth. I expect it to happen with the next pass. 

And yet Smash bros has been more and more successful each time, so they'll probably never change the pacing of the marketing due to that alone. 

Why do they always save "underwhelming" characters for last? My best guess is that the most marketable content is prioritized first with the specifics figured out later. 

[Dr. Detective]

4 minutes ago, Wraith said:

I do. People have been whining about the last reveal for whatever marketing cycle is going on for smash since Smash 4 rolled around with Duck Hunt. I'm not exaggerating when I say this has happened every single time. It happened with Bayonetta. It happened with Incineroar. It happened with Byleth. I expect it to happen with the next pass. 

And yet Smash bros has been more and more successful each time, so they'll probably never change the pacing of the marketing due to that alone. 

Why do they always save "underwhelming" characters for last? My best guess is that the most marketable content is prioritized first with the specifics figured out later. 

Yeah, the last fighter for the next one will probably be a Sword and Shield rep and everyone will lose their minds despite the last four generating all the delicious hype they wanted. 

Plus, even if he weren't apart of the Fighter's pass, most people are gonna get him anyway. 

If Smash fans don't want this system around, I'd gladly ask for a trade though. Playable Professor Pickle, here I come!

[Tornado]

16 minutes ago, Wraith said:

I do. People have been whining about the last reveal for whatever marketing cycle is going on for smash since Smash 4 rolled around with Duck Hunt.

You mean Smash 4, which wasn't trying to sell characters to people in advance? Forgive me if I don't find it relevant to a discussion about literally exactly that.

 

 

People have been complaining, justified or not, about the choices in the pass since it started. Not just the characters like with 4, but specifically that the way they were sold to them means that they were on the hook for them even if they sucked (which, congratulations, Nintendo fans. Welcome to the previous console generation). That will affect whether they will line up to pay for a second one. It has happened with other games before, unless the implication is supposed to be that Smash fans specifically are too stupid to learn their lesson the first time when other fans of other companies who have been doing season passes far longer are not.

 

 

 

To say nothing if people start thinking that Nintendo are including DLC characters in Smash for the same reason that Sony included characters in PASBR, but fixated on Fire Emblem for God knows what reason.

[Ellipsis-Ultima]

49 minutes ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Yeah, the last fighter for the next one will probably be a Sword and Shield rep and everyone will lose their minds despite the last four generating all the delicious hype they wanted. 

Considering how I thought a player character from 3 houses could get in the game (and then I forgot about that until today) I wouldn't be surprised if Cinderace/Intelleon gets in the second pass.

[Kuzu]

There's no real answer here; buying a season pass means putting your faith in the devs for upcoming content that may or may not appeal to you.

A season pass is essentially a hard commitment since in most cases, you can't get a refund for them. So if the content is below your expectations, you can't help but be disappointed and lose faith.

 

The only way around that is for the devs to reveal their hand early and lay all of the cards firsthand, but that means giving up any potential buyers with the massive hype of every reveal.

 

 

Every Smash reveal is always going to generate these reactions because the demographics of it are skewered all over the place and not every reveal is going to appeal to everyone no matter who it is.

[StratusAsterion]

yah I'm sorry I don't want to sound entitled, but I honestly regret my Fighter Pass purchase and getting zero info on the next six, means I'm saving my money this time.  I'm not blindly buying into something like this ever again

[Salamander]

Given that Sakurai was working on Byleth even before Three Houses was released, it's conceivable that he and Nintendo didn't anticipate it to be something of a damp squib selection overall; and by the time that became obvious, Byleth was well and truly locked in.  Of course, the character does have eager fans; but it seemed to me that the reveal actually had quite an apologetic tone in places, with Sakurai more or less playing down expectations immediately before the trailer aired, and said trailer openly referencing the "anime swordsmen" critique chiefly aimed at Fire Emblem characters.  I think they saw this coming, so... good thing it wasn't actually the very last DLC fighter, then?  Equally, I think Sakurai's made his distaste for the Fighters Pass fairly clear, both here and previously; it's obvious he doesn't like the idea of people having to pre-purchase on faith alone.

I wonder why they've upped the number of Challenger Packs in Fighters Pass Vol. 2?  My suspicion is that they threw in a real crowd-pleaser as a send-off.  All interesting stuff, though with a much longer release window then quite likely some of these reveals are going to be a bit more spread-out.

[Johnny Boy]

While I am annoyed that yet another fire emblem character is in smash, there are at least six fighters that are gonna be on the next one. With that said Sora and Crash still have a chance so it’s all good.

[Zaysho]

On the real, though, I can't say this was what I expected the first expansion pass to end on. I'm a bit disappointed, but I'm not really upset about another FE character either. Honestly, I just think the avatar is a boring choice. While I admit I haven't played 3H, I think I'd have preferred seeing one of the other characters like any of the lords, who would just bring a new weapon class entirely to FE's representation in Smash Bros..

To be clear, I don't really have anything against swordsmen in Smash--hell, my most wanted characters all fucking use them. But I think FE draws some ire because it's almost always protagonists or avatars. Now Ike, Robin, Corrin, and Byleth are all unique in their own way at least (which is more than I can say for Marth and his clones--speaking as a Lucina player), and I think giving Byleth the other lords' weapons is clever, it still feels like a half-measure because they ultimately didn't want to favor a particular house. Just commit and get it over with, people would be mad anyway, but it'd just be a more interesting creative choice in my mind to just pick one and get it over with. This would be like putting in Cross from Xenoblade X and giving them access to all the different classes' weapons instead of just using Elma, the actual main character, because she only has the one class. Boring and safe for marketing purposes.

[Kuzu]

46 minutes ago, Zaysho said:

On the real, though, I can't say this was what I expected the first expansion pass to end on. I'm a bit disappointed, but I'm not really upset about another FE character either. Honestly, I just think the avatar is a boring choice. While I admit I haven't played 3H, I think I'd have preferred seeing one of the other characters like any of the lords, who would just bring a new weapon class entirely to FE's representation in Smash Bros..

To be clear, I don't really have anything against swordsmen in Smash--hell, my most wanted characters all fucking use them. But I think FE draws some ire because it's almost always protagonists or avatars. Now Ike, Robin, Corrin, and Byleth are all unique in their own way at least (which is more than I can say for Marth and his clones--speaking as a Lucina player), and I think giving Byleth the other lords' weapons is clever, it still feels like a half-measure because they ultimately didn't want to favor a particular house. Just commit and get it over with, people would be mad anyway, but it'd just be a more interesting creative choice in my mind to just pick one and get it over with. This would be like putting in Cross from Xenoblade X and giving them access to all the different classes' weapons instead of just using Elma, the actual main character, because she only has the one class. Boring and safe for marketing purposes.

I do agree, but picking any of the lords would have probably resulted in an even bigger backlash. Because now both Fire Emblem fans are gonna be gunning for Sakurai.

 

Its definitely safe and boring, but it was kind of a necessary evil.

[Diogenes]

55 minutes ago, FFWF said:

Given that Sakurai was working on Byleth even before Three Houses was released, it's conceivable that he and Nintendo didn't anticipate it to be something of a damp squib selection overall; and by the time that became obvious, Byleth was well and truly locked in. 

"Too much Fire Emblem" has been a running complaint at least since Smash 4, though, and Corrin still gets hate for basically being in the same position Byleth is now. Plus the rest of the pass was all surprising third party additions, so Byleth sticks out like a sore thumb. It should've been immediately obvious that this would be divisive, at the least.

[Wraith]

They knew it would be divisive but they also know they made a lot of money off of 3 Houses and the last couple of fire emblem characters they released as DLC so, unsurprisingly, fans whining online for a week was considered worth taking the hit for the long run.

[Zaysho]

2 hours ago, Kuzu said:

I do agree, but picking any of the lords would have probably resulted in an even bigger backlash. Because now both Fire Emblem fans are gonna be gunning for Sakurai.

 

Its definitely safe and boring, but it was kind of a necessary evil.

Eh, if I can deal with people complaining about Incineroar being picked over Decidueye, FE fans can weather Sakurai picking Dimitri.

[Soniman]

All I know is that Sakurai will probably have to make sure the next DLC character will be enough to please the rabid dogs, whoever it is. Good luck bro (release the Bandicoot)

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

6 minutes ago, Wraith said:

They knew it would be divisive but they also know they made a lot of money off of 3 Houses and the last couple of fire emblem characters they released as DLC so, unsurprisingly, fans whining online for a week was considered worth taking the hit for the long run.

They really could've saved it for the second pass though and not have broken the first one's strong streak.

Seriously, of all the characters, let alone finales to keep locked down from leaks, this was the weakest one to hype up as the lord of all secret characters.

1 minute ago, Soniman said:

Good luck bro (release the Bandicoot)

And the lawyer.

[Wraith]

1 minute ago, Nina Cortex Jovahexeon said:

They really could've saved it for the second pass though and not have broken the first one's strong streak.

Seriously, of all the characters, let alone finales to keep locked down from leaks, this was the weakest one to hype up as the lord of all secret characters.

 There's no time they could have put Byleth where you guys suddenly would have been okay with him being in the game long term, so there's no point in nitpicking. Just say you don't care about Fire Emblem and move the fuck on. Damn.