This is the first dlc character who actually appeals to me lol, thank god Nintendo finally decided to throw me something that wasn’t a marketing deal
If anyone bought the Smash DLC pass relying on unknown characters to justify it I’m going to have to say that’s completely their own fault. That’s just bad consumerism. You either wait until the whole thing is released to guarantee it is a worthwhile investment, or you buy it knowing that what has already been released is worth the cost or that you know you will be content regardless of what else is released.
I have no sympathy for anyone acting like they wasted their money because Byleth is the last DLC character.
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I just don’t agree with that notion, even as bad a purchasing decision as most season passes have shown themselves to be. A business putting something up for sale, making a promise about what it is, and then them not following through with it shouldn’t be the end customer’s fault.
The “buyer beware” mantra has become way too convenient a means of shifting blame away from publishers and platform-holders.
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Both the game/roster and the community have grown so large and diverse that there’s a) no meaningful way to even attempt to cater to the community beyond a certain point, and b) no reasonable way for anybody in the community to ever safely think “I’m sure I’ll like every character in this season pass that I’m buying.”
Like, this isn’t a new phenomenon at all in fighting game DLC in general, but at this point you really just have to multiply everything by like a hundred for a game like Smash, especially in the Ultimate Era where all bets seem to be off in terms of potential crossovers (unless the character shows too much skin, since Sakurai doesn’t want to deal with ratings boards anymore.)
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I’d be more sympathetic to this argument if it wasn’t the 5th dlc character. Like if we got crappy dlc picks for 2-4 I’d be in your camp, but it’s the 5th and even if they aren’t that interesting as a character pick, their kit is relatively weird for smash.
Even the main roster has this problem at this point. I’d kill to replace Lucario or Bowser JR. but that’s just fighting games, you aren’t going to like all the roster picks.
Also the only character announcement that could truly hope to unite a community as diverse as Smash’s is Goku.
But only if it was the correct Goku (Super Saiyan).
This isn’t a loot box scenario where there is no way to avoid having to gamble on your purchase. That situation can be entirely avoided with patience, so it’s on the consumer to make that choice early on.
Also what exactly did they explicitly promise that they did not deliver on? Because as far as I am aware they only promised 5 additional DLC characters, which they absolutely delivered. It’s not Nintendo or Sakurai’s fault if they playerbase had specific expectations for what those DLC characters “MUST be or riot.” Especially since there was no way they could please everyone. Even if it had been Dante like a lot of people were expecting, that may have appeased a certain group of players, but plenty would still be left unsatisfied. (Even I’d rather have Byleth than Dante, frankly.)
I’m not going to say there is literally no fault on Nintendo here. They did sell a DLC pass without revealing everything that would be in it after all. But I still have no sympathy for anyone who put themselves in a situation to regret their purchase when that absolutely could have been avoided. It’s one thing to be disappointed with the final reveal, but you choose how you spend your money.
Normally I would say that I think it’s pretty scummy to hide what people are actually purchasing. But I think the smash community is so toxic around this shit that it is smarter not to reveal who the characters are because otherwise it’s just going to be a fucking year of people mad that Issac Goldensun didn’t make it.
The expectation is mainly based on a vague quote from Reggie around the time of the Joker announcement:
“It’s emblematic of the approach that Mr. Sakurai and the team are taking with the DLC. He wants characters that are unique, different, to bring them into the Smash Bros. environment. So it’s going to be tremendously exciting.”
This is absolutely not saying “it’s all going to be new franchises”, it’s just that sort of wishy-washy marketing speak of “well it’ll probably be like this but you’ll see”. And the arc of the character releases pointed to that fan interpretation.
At the end of the day, Nintendo benefits from the enthusiasm around the What Franchise Will Be In Smash Next conversations, and they’ve been playing into it with how much song-and-dance are around these announcements. The negative response to this latest one breaking the pattern shouldn’t surprise them.
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Additionally, Ultimate is a fighting game. A lot of people play this competitively. If they want to have their knowledge of the game remain relevant to the scene, they have to buy the DLC, or else they risk putting themselves in a situation where they’re dealing with a character they’ve had no opportunity to know. Spending their money on the pass is an investment for their careers in a way. Like, idk… seems weird to me to blame consumers for having negative feelings over a corporate disappointment. Obvs. not everyone is taking this in the same way, but not all disappointment can or should be read as consumer entitlement.
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Like I said, people have every right to be disappointed, but that’s different than acting like they are “owed” something different because they bought the DLC pass. Also different than being toxic assholes on Twitter and the like about it.
The internet is simply incapable of having a measured response to anything, but I won’t give people a pass just because they spent money.
The “blind season pass” model definitely benefits the publishers more than the consumers, though I dunno, I think a lot of people do enjoy the kind of prolonged excitement of getting a character reveal every couple of months as opposed to hearing about everybody at once. Granblue Versus recently announced 4 out of the 5 characters in their first season pass. Capcom eventually moved away from season passes in general, but also the last time they had one they announced everybody up front (probably because they got tired of their season pass rosters constantly getting leaked anyways.) I can’t remember what MK11 did; I think their character pass may have been on sale before they announced everybody? Tekken 7 still keeps season pass characters and features hidden, like Smash does.
I dunno. As a fighting game player I’m kinda stuck. Ultimately if I buy a retail release of a game and decide that I like it enough to play it, then I kinda feel obligated to own every character because I can’t access DLC characters to figure them out in training mode unless I own them, so even if I’m not going to use them I still have to buy them–in which case buying a season pass saves me some money over buying everything piecemeal.
So the optimal DLC practice for fighting games would be… announce all the characters in your season pass up front, and don’t gate them off for training mode? I guess?
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It goes without saying that, extreme backlash bordering on blaming the development team (I’ve seen plenty of hyperbolic posts like this on other forums today) is an absurd overreaction and the usual misappropriation of fan anger.
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I didn’t like Three Houses at all, but it doesn’t really bother me that Nintendo would put the main character of one of their big hits in the Nintendo big crossover game. Nor does it bother me that there’s another Fire Emblem character, in general, though I wish they’d go with one of the Lords or the green-haired lady I’ve forgotten the name of instead of the player-insert. Robin, Corrin, AND Byleth is a lot. My preference is for whichever Lord had the lance (was it Dimitri?), because I am thirsty for pole weapons. Byleth having it as an option ain’t quite the same as a dedicated lancer.
I also like to play online, so I’d buy the fighter pass even if all of the characters were from games I actively despise.
I think that Smash community disappointment is such a sore spot. The community continuously gets excited about stuff that is realistically not going to happen. Then gets mad about actually cool stuff. I’m still genuinely frustrated so many people in the community don’t appreciate Terry being added.
Not loving the whole roster is to be expected in a fighting game. People are mad that Dante isn’t in game when stuff like that should be a surprise, not an expectation. Fighters like Byleth SHOULD be expected but the community acts like it’s a tragedy. So while I can one hundred percent get a reasonable amount of disappointment, after all I am disappointed Byleth was the last fighter of the first pass. While I can understand that disappointment, it’s just so exhausting hearing that the Smash community once again isn’t happy about something, especially since it’s a something they should have seen coming. I just can’t help but shake the feeling that they should be used to feeling some amount of disappointment about the roster not being perfect because that is just how fighting games work, and I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this sentiment.
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Too many FE characters sure but the joke DLC lineup Jason Schrier posted is the actual best.
Still though, put Geralt in Smash.
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I think you can explain the weird set of expectations that some folks have for Smash through the nebulous and often unchecked state of “leaks” and the culture surrounding them. People put a lot of weight on leakers and their insider knowledge, which then gets pumped onto YT channels and forums where they tear it apart. I have a discord group DM where friends and I talk about leaks and what we find can get fucking rowdy.
These semi-anonymous people have a lot of power in that subset of the community, which, given that they can say basically anything and have some people believe them, leads to a very vitriolic runoff into the mainstream. I’m honestly surprised this is the first time I’ve heard people talk about this in this discussion because from my angle, nearly everything that separates Smash from Tekken or SF with this post-launch hype cycle stems from this.
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Every fighting game has those people, but there’s a difference in scale on multiple levels. Smash’s community is larger and the number of character names any “leaker” can throw against a wall is infinitely larger. Street Fighter 5 adding Poison/Honda/Lucia was posted on Twitter by somebody weeks before it happened (or before the trailer got accidentally leaked ahead of time) but nobody really… cared? Like, it just doesn’t have the same impact as “Smash is adding [LITERALLY ANY VIDEO GAME CHARACTER I CAN THINK OF]” wrt getting people’s attention.
Also Smash has managed to avoid having their characters be reliably datamined out of the gate, unlike everybody else, so the business of Smash character speculation even without considering the much larger community and much larger potential pool of characters is just automatically more… profitable?
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Worth nothing too that the SFV example is 3 characters with some amount of pre-destined knowledge on them (Poison and Honda more than Lucia), whereas Dante being DLC #5 is some wild shit that could go literally any way, and largely fuels itself. Is it DMC1, 3, or V Dante? Does he have the multiple weapons? Does style factor into his play? Does he come with assist trophies? etc. etc.
Really, the fundamental difference is that Smash’s range and the diverse levels of commitment in the “community” (which is a silly term for a multi-million selling Nintendo game IMO) means that stuff like the Fighter’s Pass and Smash Directs have now respectively become tickets and tour dates for consumer hype. Nintendo has (maybe unknowingly) made a product out of participating in this in and of itself while letting the extremes get dragged out away from their influence.
Personally, I would need a lot of convincing to think that them announcing every character upfront would still lead to such a sour fanbase.
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