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Smash Wii U & 3DS Downloadable Characters Discussion and Information on Smash Ballot

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B

balladofwindfishes

Member
Seriously, Ivysaur over Squirtle? lol

Squirtle's consistently the more popular starter and has a far greater chance of ever returning compared to an awkward middle grass evolution...

Also Pichu being second behind Wolf, once you cut out Snake and Ice Climbers, who have a slim chance, is in line with what I've found just from "feelings" around Reddit. I'd seriously not overlook Pichu, especially with DLC being so vet heavy.

Young Link even having one vote is stupid. Just a waste of votes or people thinking Sakurai will add Goron, Zora and Deku Link and completely remake a clone with a feature he's already said won't work, and that's already technically already in the game.
 
Dr. Buni

Dr. Buni

Member
If we can only have one, I would gladly have Ivysaur over Squirtle, because 1. It is Venusaur's pre-evolution and Venusaur is the best Gen 1 starter and 2. We already have a Water-type starter in Smash and zero Grass-type starters. Ivysaur also represents Poison-types on top of that.

Also, on the subject of DKC games, I think they still look incredible to this day. Charming graphics and memorable character designs imo.
 
T

Tyeforce

Member
Regulus Tera said:
PushDustin posted the results of his Smash DLC mini poll. I only have one thing to say:


Who are the FUCKERS voting for Young Link before Squirtle?
Click to expand...
I wonder how a Rhythm Heaven character was treated with that poll. Looking at the early results, I saw a number of votes for a Rhythm Heaven character, but they were far from consistent. Some people, like myself, kept it vague and voted for "a Rhythm Heaven character" or something along those lines. Others voted specifically for characters like Chorus Kids (I can't remember what all I saw in the early results, but I imagine there were votes for Marshal, Karate Joe, etc., too), or used an either/or format (Chorus Kids/any Rhythm Heaven character, for example). I wonder if these votes were combined or not for this poll. If they weren't, I think they should be, and maybe then we'd see Rhythm Heaven as one of the top votes along with the others. Or maybe not. But still, the lack of Rhythm Heaven is odd to me...
 
Z

Zubz

Banned
R

Russ T

Banned
balladofwindfishes said:
Also Pichu being second behind Wolf, once you cut out Snake and Ice Climbers, who have a slim chance, is in line with what I've found just from "feelings" around Reddit. I'd seriously not overlook Pichu, especially with DLC being so vet heavy.
Click to expand...

I want to believe. :D :D

But I don't, really. ): ):
 
G

Gonzo The Great

Banned
Tyeforce said:
I wonder how a Rhythm Heaven character was treated with that poll. Looking at the early results, I saw a number of votes for a Rhythm Heaven character, but they were far from consistent. Some people, like myself, kept it vague and voted for "a Rhythm Heaven character" or something along those lines. Others voted specifically for characters like Chorus Kids (I can't remember what all I saw in the early results, but I imagine there were votes for Marshal, Karate Joe, etc., too), or used an either/or format (Chorus Kids/any Rhythm Heaven character, for example). I wonder if these votes were combined or not for this poll. If they weren't, I think they should be, and maybe then we'd see Rhythm Heaven as one of the top votes along with the others. Or maybe not. But still, the lack of Rhythm Heaven is odd to me...
Click to expand...

I hate to break it to you, but Rhythm Heaven is not that popular outside of Japan. Still, I think the series deserves playable representation at some point. "Rhythm Heaven rep" is not a character and therefore wasn't included in the results. That would be like grouping K. Rool and Dixie together arbitrarily just because they share the same series icon.
 
A

Azure J

Member
Regulus Tera said:
I voted for Isa Jo, Saki Amamiya, and Ryota Ippongi.

I have the feeling they might have thought I was posting some Dragon Ball characters.
Click to expand...

I somehow missed this particular ballot (or probably voted and forgot), what were the options or was it more of a write in ballot?
 
T

Tyeforce

Member
Gonzo The Great said:
I hate to break it to you, but Rhythm Heaven is not that popular outside of Japan. Still, I think the series deserves playable representation at some point. "Rhythm Heaven rep" is not a character and therefore wasn't included in the results. That would be like grouping K. Rool and Dixie together arbitrarily just because they share the same series icon.
Click to expand...
I'm aware of that, but regardless of the franchise's popularity outside of Japan, it seems like a Rhythm Heaven character has consistently been one of the most common requests for DLC, at least from what I've seen. The problem is that people aren't sure WHO it would be, so you don't have a single character to root for. Chorus Kids is the frontrunner, but only because of the Gematsu leak, and you've got others like Karate Joe behind that, but overall I think people don't really care about having a specific Rhythm Heaven character, and rather they just want ANYTHING from Rhythm Heaven. And I'm sure that whatever Rhythm Heaven character would be chosen would be a representation of the series as a whole, including other characters and elements in their move set, much like what Mr. Game & Watch is to the Game & Watch series. With this in mind, I don't think that general votes for a Rhythm Heaven character should be excluded from the results, because in this case it's not the specific character that matters, unlike most with most other franchises.
 
B

balladofwindfishes

Member
Pretty much every poll taken over the last month or so has had fairly consistent results. Kind of getting the feeling that's a similar order and list that the west actually did vote for. That, or it's just the same groups voting in polls over and over, which might be likely.
 
I

IntelliHeath

As in "Heathcliff"
Regulus Tera said:
PushDustin posted the results of his Smash DLC mini poll. I only have one thing to say:


Who are the FUCKERS voting for Young Link before Squirtle?
Click to expand...

Young Link vote(s) is pretty much wasted.

balladofwindfishes said:
Also Pichu being second behind Wolf, once you cut out Snake and Ice Climbers, who have a slim chance, is in line with what I've found just from "feelings" around Reddit. I'd seriously not overlook Pichu, especially with DLC being so vet heavy.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't underestimate someone else's chance.
 
R

Regulus Tera

Romanes Eunt Domus
It's no coincidence that two of the four DLC characters we have had so far have similar body structures to other characters already in the roster. That's what Wolf and Pichu have in their favor over Snake, Ivysaur, and Squirtle.

I would be okay with Pichu as long as they found another gimmick for it besides hurting itself.
 
J

jph139

Member
balladofwindfishes said:
Pretty much every poll taken over the last month or so has had fairly consistent results. Kind of getting the feeling that's a similar order and list that the west actually did vote for. That, or it's just the same groups voting in polls over and over, which might be likely.
Click to expand...

It's 100% that. Smashboards. Reddit. GameFAQs. NeoGAF. Occasionally /v/. There's rarely, if ever, any deviation.

What these polls reflect best is trends within these communities. Remember when Banjo-Kazooie was topping the polls? Now he's trailing Bandanna Dee. I'm more surprised that Dixie is in the top five here (she rarely shows in these things) and Shantae is still competitive. I figured Shovel Knight would have relegated her to the also-rans at this point.
 
B

balladofwindfishes

Member
So a few pages back there was a theory on Reddit that DLC pack 2 wasn't selling well. I was wondering if there was a roundabout way for a regular person to figure out if there was anything behind that. And today I was playing Tourney mode and noticed, like, 90% of the Tournies never change the stage list. So this would be a good way to see who owned what stage (or Ryu). If you just allow all stages, the game bans the ones you don't own or haven't unlocked yet.

So I clicked through about 60 or so Tournies just to see what DLC was owned. And yea, Pack 2 is downright dire, but more on that later. This is all very scientific as well. So scientific I didn't even bother recording numbers and didn't realize I should have until 20 minutes later when I was done looking through tournies obviously started by children. So these are eyeballed numbers.

- I ignored everyone who banned a stock stage. There was one dude who really did not like Big Battlefield, as he banned nothing but Big Battlefield. He was ignored though, as I couldn't tell if he banned the DLC or not (he didn't own any). One kid had every comp starter stage, but then inexplicably also allowed Coliseum. Ok, that's weird. Based on his bans, he probably didn't own Dreamland either, as he wouldn't have banned it. Anyway.

- A hilarious amount of these people haven't unlocked stages (75% or more didn't have all the stages). Pac-Land BY FAR is the least unlocked stage in the game. Like, at least half of the Tournies didn't have Pac-Land. PL is a garbage stage, but I really doubt all of these people just randomly banned PL and nothing else, so I'm assuming they didn't have any banned. It's annoying to unlock as well. One dude, also, bless his heart, had no stages unlocked. But he owned Ryu! So he jumped into Smash 4 for the first time, bought Ryu and then jumped right into Tourney mode. Crazy. A bizarre amount of people didn't have Stadium 2, Smashville or Kongo unlocked, so I assume they never bothered to touch Event mode.

- Suzaku Castle is by far the most bought DLC. This should have been obvious, but it dwarfs the other DLC. Also 99% of people who own at least one DLC also own Ryu. Only one person in all the Tournies I checked, didn't own Ryu but owned a stage (in this case, Peach's Castle). I'd say a little under half owned Ryu. That's a lot of DLC, way above what normal games retention for DLC is as far as I'm aware.

- NOBODY OWNED HYRULE CASTLE. Okay. Seriously. No, not kidding. I clicked through about 60 tournies. Not a single Hyrule Castle. NOT ONE. WHAT THE HECK.

- Only about 3 people had Peach's Castle. Better than Hyrule, but still... yikes.

- A lot of people had Dreamland (maybe ~15 or so). Not a single Dreamland was owned without Ryu. People clearly went to the shop to buy Ryu and grabbed Dreamland with him.

- I played a 16 man Tournament and there were 5 Roys (I was one). Played a couple more as well, consistently seeing lots of Roys. Didn't see a Lucas at all, a few Ryu in there though. Holy god, so many Roys though.


Based on this, everything the Reddit guy said is true.

- Pack 2 is selling like absolute garbage. Hyrule Castle is just downright disappointing to see the figures for.

- People go to the shop to buy characters and then buy whatever else. All but one person who owned a single piece of DLC, also owned Ryu. Also every single person who owned Dreamland owned Ryu, and Dreamland was the best selling of the 3 64 stages by a wide margin.

- Based on what I've seen in tournies and tournaments, Ryu is the most bought DLC, along with Roy right behind him and Lucas at the end. I didn't really pay attention to Mewtwos because I have no idea if they were free or not. One Mewtwo though was absolutely rocking, what an amazing guy, seriously good play.

- There were more Tournies with the word "Epic" in their title than Tournies that owned a stage from pack 2.
 
B

balladofwindfishes

Member
I actually expect pack 2 to do better once the next character is out. It'll get people to the store and paying attention to DLC.

Character DLC is the most obvious DLC to a person who doesn't know. You play online for a few hours and you're bound to meet one of the four and from there you head to the shop.

Stages though, those only come up randomly in FG occasionally, and someone might not even realize they're on a stage they don't own. And certainly seeing a stage in FG isn't going to make you know what the stage actually looks like.

Gonzo The Great said:
Sakurai is probably thinking to himself: "Nobody bought Hyrule Castle, therefore nobody wants more stage DLC."
Click to expand...

I doubt it. I imagine they know it's characters that ultimately sell DLC.
 
R

Regulus Tera

Romanes Eunt Domus
I wonder how much of that is to blame due to the fact that neither Hyrule Castle nor Peach castle have been featured in a Smash game since 1999.
 
I

IntelliHeath

As in "Heathcliff"
Gonzo The Great said:
Sakurai is probably thinking to himself: "Nobody bought Hyrule Castle, therefore nobody wants more stage DLC."
Click to expand...

Well, they should change their strategies with downloadable contents; like bundling the stages with the characters for like a dollar or two dollars increase, like Ryu and Suzaku Castle.

I know it would piss some people off nevertheless they would buy it.
 
P

PK Gaming

Member
Russ T said:
I can't say I have any concern for the story of the DKC games. I just wanna play as my man DK!

He's rad.

I do get that that's what some people like, though, which is why my opinion is so often at odds with other fans of DKC.
Click to expand...

Oh don't get me wrong, I couldn't give a rat's ass about the story, but the experiencing of saving the main the protagonist—the hero of the previous game as Diddy Kong, the sidekick (a character that I was fairly attached to as a kid) was highly enjoyable.
 
Dr. Buni

Dr. Buni

Member
IntelliHeath said:
Well, they should change their strategies with downloadable contents; like bundling the stages with the characters for like a dollar or two dollars increase, like Ryu and Sazuku Castle.

I know it would piss some people off nevertheless they would buy it.
Click to expand...
A stages bundle would be interesting, too.
 
A

Ahnez

Member
IntelliHeath said:
Well, they should change their strategies with downloadable contents; like bundling the stages with the characters for like a dollar or two dollars increase, like Ryu and Sazuku Castle.

I know it would piss some people off nevertheless they would buy it.
Click to expand...

That would be the best solution

You can only play on stages that all players have, and because many don't buy dlc stages, even less stage dlcs are bought, because they probably won't get used that much

Its recursive
 
B

balladofwindfishes

Member
Ahnez said:
That would be the best solution

You can only play on stages that all players have, and because many don't buy dlc stages, even less stage dlcs are bought, because they probably won't get used that much

Its recursive
Click to expand...
Well, all DLC stages are in rotation in For Fun and For Glory.

But odds are not good that they show up.

And FG isn't good advertising for stages at all. Omega Peach's Castle is super ugly.
 
J

jph139

Member
The fact that so many people haven't even unlocked all of the stages tells me they're much, MUCH lower priority to the general population. If you're not going to spend ~10 minutes to get one for free, you're not going to spend ~5 minutes going to the store, downloading, and installing one for cash.

Which is too bad, because I do think it'll impact future DLC choices.
 
Z

Zubz

Banned
Gonzo The Great said:
Sakurai is probably thinking to himself: "Nobody bought Hyrule Castle, therefore nobody wants more stage DLC."
Click to expand...

Which is a shame, IMO; I'm just as excited about stages as I am about characters! Plus, I'd pay for a Hazard Toggle. I mean, I'll admit that I'm desperate..

One reason why Dream Land 64's selling better is because it's tournament legal, in my opinion. I mean, I was just at an actual in-person tournament last week, and they were asking people to bring their Wii U's. You didn't need every stage unlocked, but you needed to have bought Dream Land 64. It didn't matter if you had bought all the stages, or even unlocked any of them outside of Duck Hunt, but Dream Land was necessary for your system to be used.

I'm not saying that there's a significant increase just because people want to get their systems tournament-legal, but clearly, enough of the audience likes that stage because it's balanced, whereas Hyrule Castle has the tornado, and Peach's Castle just feels cramped. I mean, I like those stages, but I can tell they're less possible. When I'm playing with friends, they avoid that stage like the plague (Well, they do that with most stages, but that's why I feel like we need more stages/a Hazard Toggle!).
 
G

Gonzo The Great

Banned
balladofwindfishes said:
And FG isn't good advertising for stages at all. Omega Peach's Castle is super ugly.
Click to expand...

I think this is the number one reason why they aren't selling. They look super antiquated, yet Nintendo is charging top dollar for them. To top it all off, Peach's Castle and Hyrule Castle are both banned in competitive play. Who are they trying to appeal to?

I haven't been impressed with the DLC so far. The characters feel "incomplete" because they are missing custom moves, and the stages and Mii costumes are grossly overpriced.
 
B

balladofwindfishes

Member
jph139 said:
The fact that so many people haven't even unlocked all of the stages tells me they're much, MUCH lower priority to the general population. If you're not going to spend ~10 minutes to get one for free, you're not going to spend ~5 minutes going to the store, downloading, and installing one for cash.

Which is too bad, because I do think it'll impact future DLC choices.
Click to expand...
The vast majority had all stages unlocked except Pac Land. It's the most time consuming unlock able stage, not even all tournament set ups have it.
 
P

powerdrain

Member
But to be fair, no one is forcing you to buy them. We asked for DLC back in Brawl but it wasn't possible, and Nintendo have only really doing DLC recently, it's not a big thing for them, but I've been happy with the offerings.

I don't mind how ugly the 64 stages look. They're meant to look like that - that's what people wanted: Untouched retro stages as we remembered them. I love how ugly they are with the crisper character models! And I do feel like the missing customs are a bit of a bummer. I never use customs, I'm not a huge fan of the idea, but it'd be nice if the DLC characters had them but that'd be a whole load more work and we probably wouldn't have got any extra DLC after Ryu.

Whether the matter that the new stages are selling well or not, this is what people asked for and those select people, like me, will snag them up. DreamLand will, as mentioned earlier, sell better because it's tourney legal and it appeared in Melee pro-play for years too.

And I also agree that a hazard toggle would be nice, and I'm surprised this time around we didn't get one. It means you can enjoy themed stages that aren't just flat, but not have to deal with stuff you hate, like the lava in Brinstar for example.
 
P

PushDustIn

Member
BGBW said:
I hope my vote wasn't counted as a joke vote in that deleted 40.
Click to expand...

I deleted repeat votes (if one person voted for the same character multiple times), votes who selected less than four characters total, and troll/ nonvotes like "I don't care". Since it was a fill in, I used the search function to count the number of votes (while confirming that I didn't miss any).

Variations of the same character were counted together.

Rythmn Heaven rep was divided. Some people wanted a general rep, others Karate Joe or a specific character. By themselves none of them seemed to have a significant amount of request.

I also just got linked to where the Wolf support thread saw the poll, so I'll need to update the article when I get home.

My goal in this was to measure if people wanted more newcomers or veterans (A or B) but then I realized I could also measure if support groups could hijack poll results and how much impact they have. Unsurprisingly they did.
 
NeonZ

NeonZ

Member
powerdrain said:
They're meant to look like that - that's what people wanted: Untouched retro stages as we remembered them.
Click to expand...

Hm... Is it though? It's not like there was an option and people voted for that. Smash 64 was the worst selling Smash Bros, there's probably a lot of people who have no nostalgia for those stages. And even some people who have nostalgia for them might prefer to see them updated.
 
B

balladofwindfishes

Member
NeonZ said:
Hm... Is it though? It's not like there was an option and people voted for that. Smash 64 was the worst selling Smash Bros, there's probably a lot of people who have no nostalgia for those stages. And even some people who have nostalgia for them might prefer to see them updated.
Click to expand...

They were updated

Gonzo The Great said:
I think this is the number one reason why they aren't selling. They look super antiquated, yet Nintendo is charging top dollar for them. To top it all off, Peach's Castle and Hyrule Castle are both banned in competitive play. Who are they trying to appeal to?

I haven't been impressed with the DLC so far. The characters feel "incomplete" because they are missing custom moves, and the stages and Mii costumes are grossly overpriced.
Click to expand...

Hyrule Castle and Dream Land look great in Smash 4. The updated textures look good and Hyrule got some additional detail. There's a minor bug with a texture on Hyrule though, just a texture that needs to be mirrored but isn't at the top of the tower. Other than that, I think they're fine. Hyrule is charming to me because it's basically exactly the same graphics as Ocarina of Time. And Dreamland is timeless.

Peach's Castle was an ugly stage in 64. It didn't get better with age. It's too abstract, it barely even looks like a Mario stage. Should have given us Sector Z or Saffron, although Saffron probably aged terrible as well. Sector Z would have had the charm Hyrule had, being extremely faithful to the source material.

The Omega for Peach's Castle though just looks janky. It has a weird rug in places that looks like it should be placed somewhere else. I realize that rug is on the steps on the real stage, but when flattened it looks bad.

I think Peach's Castle and Hyrule aren't selling pretty much entirely because the majority of Smash players started with either Melee or Brawl, and so they aren't familiar with anything that wasn't in those versions. Which is why Kongo Jungle and Dreamland would be familiar to them, but Peach's and Hyrule are entirely unknown. Peach's being so abstract doesn't help either. Put that with no character to get them onto the shop, and you have low sales. Not sure why they started with the most popular 64 stage first, because it can only go down from there. Dreamland probably could have sold well even without a character.

I don't really care about customs. They were big when DLC was coming out, which made them a bigger issue, but now that customs have been entirely phased out of major tournaments, it's basically a non-issue. I honestly care more about the CSS positioning than I do customs.
 
R

Russ T

Banned
PK Gaming said:
Oh don't get me wrong, I couldn't give a rat's ass about the story, but the experiencing of saving the main the protagonist—the hero of the previous game as Diddy Kong, the sidekick (a character that I was fairly attached to as a kid) was highly enjoyable.
Click to expand...
I'd say that counts as enjoying the story. :p

But yeah I get you. That just ain't for me. DK or bust!

Although... I do admit to liking Lanky Kong from DK64 of all things, so I'm part of the problem. :D
 
S

Sponge

Banned
Russ T said:
I'd say that counts as enjoying the story. :p

But yeah I get you. That just ain't for me. DK or bust!

Although... I do admit to liking Lanky Kong from DK64 of all things, so I'm part of the problem. :D
Click to expand...

In your defense, Lanky was the coolest new character in DK64. If any character needs to return that wasn't in Tropical Freeze, it's Lanky.
 
P

PK Gaming

Member
Gonzo The Great said:
I think this is the number one reason why they aren't selling. They look super antiquated, yet Nintendo is charging top dollar for them. To top it all off, Peach's Castle and Hyrule Castle are both banned in competitive play. Who are they trying to appeal to?

I haven't been impressed with the DLC so far. The characters feel "incomplete" because they are missing custom moves, and the stages and Mii costumes are grossly overpriced.
Click to expand...

Folks like me who played those stages for hours on end

Playing against my brother on that stage (as Mario against his Luigi)

Many tears were shed
 
K

KelpPlankton

Member
They clearly know the top requests on the ballot and probably are already working on the DLC coming based on it, so do yall think that we'll get a stream announcing a character or two on the day it ends(or shortly after, like within a week) or will we have to wait until 2016 to know what's next?

I want to imagine they want another DLC out there for the holidays and continued Amiibo production. Because once we hit December the only remaining Smash Amiibo to make will be Ryu, Lucas, and Roy. Gotta get people pumped about Smash for the holidays again right?
 
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