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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Should Smash Have Been Released in August with Fewer Characters and Slowly Built to 75 with Free DLC?

Shiken on 14 December 2018
Kai_Mao said:
Shiken said:

That still does not give me all of the content on the cart I payed 60 dollars for.  Your argument is invalid to my point.

That's the thing too. Smash Bros. is supposed to be a big AAA Nintendo game. People have criticized Splatoon and ARMS launching at $60 so it would be hard to imagine Smash Bros. either releasing at a lower price or getting away from the same criticisms just because its Smash Bros.

Either of those would have resulted in much more criticism toward Smash than Splatoon and ARMs got too.  Those were New IPs, so people were just happy to see them being supported.

 

Smash on the otherhand has a standard that has been set for over a decade.  Plus this was arguably Switch's megaton game in an otherwise slow year, so if they tried to release an incomplete game with incremental updates to make it complete, the backlash would have been MASSIVE.

 

Nintendo made the right choice here, and to be honest, this would always be the right choice.  Just because people accepted the method used for Splatoon, that does not mean they would prefer it over having everything at launch if given the choice.



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Shiken on 14 December 2018
NightlyPoe said:
Kai_Mao said:

Sorry that you think the current Smash DLC plan is over-expensive and exploitative. I just find it hard to understand it somewhat since its $6 for a character, a stage, and some music tracks. Music tracks individually tend to be like about $0.99 or something like that on iTunes. If there are like 5-10 tracks, that's already close, if not greater than the $6 price tag. Then you got the stage and character being made from scratch. That's still money and resources to being utilized. Of course, you could say the same for the extra content Splatoon and ARMS had, but their initial launches were way different compared to Ultimate. Plus, this is all-new content being developed AFTER the game went gold. There are no echo fighters or returning veterans to be considered for the upcoming Smash Bros. DLC. What makes Joker, the first challenger pack, and his stage and music over-expensive and exploitative?

And as for the Splatoon/ARMS/Mario Tennis Aces model, it all depends. You say Sakurai should adapt, but then others will criticize this particular format. The controversy surrounding the game will likely not bode well, especially when you're talking about an established franchise that has been all about an increasing all-star cast. ARMS and Splatoon were new IPs at the time (and even Splatoon 2 had criticisms when it launched the same way the original did) while Mario Tennis Aces was a sequel to Ultra Smash, which was pretty much a laughing stock for having nothing else but quick play matches and random online matches. Smash Bros. is a critically acclaimed franchise with each iteration is expected to be bigger than the last.

Whether you can change the way it can be marketed or not, having the title "Ultimate" but starting with a 20-man roster with more coming in late summer or fall may not necessarily go the way you wanted. I don't know if Smash Ultimate would have had the incredible first week it has now if it started off with the model you suggested. Who knows, because its Smash, the game would still do well in the Summer, but Nintendo wanted the game to help kickstart the holiday rush or Switch in December while Pokemon carried the load in November.

I'm uninterested in music or even more stages (I've got 103 of them, how many more do I need)?  The only thing that would interest me is more characters.  I got Smash Ultimate for $48.  Offering only 5 more characters for more than 50% of what I paid for the game as a whole is just a rip-off.  If the price of DLC is that high, I want something on the level of Xenoblade 2, Splatoon 2, or Mario + Rabbids.

If they were also offering some more modes or another single player campaign to go along with it, then I'd be fine.  But I don't like locking core game mechanics like additional fighters behind a paywall, particularly one this high.  It feels icky and lowers my goodwill towards a game.

Also, I suggested around 40 characters, which only about 10 fewer than Smash for Wii U.  As releasing new fighters soon afterwards so it would outstrip Wii U quickly.  And, I believe that Nintendo chose December for launch because the game was being expedited and needed every last minute they could give them.  I suspect they would have been very happy to release Let's Go... in September and have Smash release in the weeks ahead of Black Friday.  Reggie even talked about the December release being challenging.

Would everyone have been happy with an August release?  Perhaps not.  However, I don't think the complaints would translate to lower sales as long as the product delivered was still of high quality.  It only really hurts games to do this when the core game itself is poorly made and requires extensive fixing.

Shiken said:

That still does not give me all of the content on the cart I payed 60 dollars for.  Your argument is invalid to my point.

Fair enough.  However, you've got to admit that particular fight was lost a long, long time ago I think.  

*looks at pile of Switch games complete on the cart*

 

Wat?



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V-r0cK on 14 December 2018

It's not Smash Bros Ultimate if it wasn't released with 75 characters from the get-go.

If they released it in August with fewer characters then they might as well be called Smash Bros Meh.



Shiken on 14 December 2018
NightlyPoe said:
Shiken said:

*looks at pile of Switch games complete on the cart*

 

Wat?

Do you see the trend of physical games that require large downloads reversing?  I certainly don't.  Particularly with multiplayer online games, most of which are unplayable without a patch anyway.

Does not seem to be the case on Switch as long as the cart is big enough.

 

But any way you slice it, even a digital purchase should have FULL content at the time of release.  You pay full price, you should get the full product.  If you honestly think that if Nintendo released an incomplete product with the promise to deliver the rest in patches overtime on their biggest release of the year would not result in backlash on a major scale, you need to re evaluate the situation.

 

What you might what to happen for whatever reason does not equate to what the gamer masses want.  Just because it is tolerated from time to time, that does not make it right.  Paying full price for something and not getting it out of the box (or download) should be unacceptable by all means.

 

As I said before, just because it worked with Splatoon does not mean that people would not have rather had everything out of the gate instead.



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Kai_Mao on 14 December 2018
NightlyPoe said:
Kai_Mao said:

Sorry that you think the current Smash DLC plan is over-expensive and exploitative. I just find it hard to understand it somewhat since its $6 for a character, a stage, and some music tracks. Music tracks individually tend to be like about $0.99 or something like that on iTunes. If there are like 5-10 tracks, that's already close, if not greater than the $6 price tag. Then you got the stage and character being made from scratch. That's still money and resources to being utilized. Of course, you could say the same for the extra content Splatoon and ARMS had, but their initial launches were way different compared to Ultimate. Plus, this is all-new content being developed AFTER the game went gold. There are no echo fighters or returning veterans to be considered for the upcoming Smash Bros. DLC. What makes Joker, the first challenger pack, and his stage and music over-expensive and exploitative?

And as for the Splatoon/ARMS/Mario Tennis Aces model, it all depends. You say Sakurai should adapt, but then others will criticize this particular format. The controversy surrounding the game will likely not bode well, especially when you're talking about an established franchise that has been all about an increasing all-star cast. ARMS and Splatoon were new IPs at the time (and even Splatoon 2 had criticisms when it launched the same way the original did) while Mario Tennis Aces was a sequel to Ultra Smash, which was pretty much a laughing stock for having nothing else but quick play matches and random online matches. Smash Bros. is a critically acclaimed franchise with each iteration is expected to be bigger than the last.

Whether you can change the way it can be marketed or not, having the title "Ultimate" but starting with a 20-man roster with more coming in late summer or fall may not necessarily go the way you wanted. I don't know if Smash Ultimate would have had the incredible first week it has now if it started off with the model you suggested. Who knows, because its Smash, the game would still do well in the Summer, but Nintendo wanted the game to help kickstart the holiday rush or Switch in December while Pokemon carried the load in November.

I'm uninterested in music or even more stages (I've got 103 of them, how many more do I need)?  The only thing that would interest me is more characters.  I got Smash Ultimate for $48.  Offering only 5 more characters for more than 50% of what I paid for the game as a whole is just a rip-off.  If the price of DLC is that high, I want something on the level of Xenoblade 2, Splatoon 2, or Mario + Rabbids.

If they were also offering some more modes or another single player campaign to go along with it, then I'd be fine.  But I don't like locking core game mechanics like additional fighters behind a paywall, particularly one this high.  It feels icky and lowers my goodwill towards a game.

Also, I suggested around 40 characters, which only about 10 fewer than Smash for Wii U.  As releasing new fighters soon afterwards so it would outstrip Wii U quickly.  And, I believe that Nintendo chose December for launch because the game was being expedited and needed every last minute they could give them.  I suspect they would have been very happy to release Let's Go... in September and have Smash release in the weeks ahead of Black Friday.  Reggie even talked about the December release being challenging.

Would everyone have been happy with an August release?  Perhaps not.  However, I don't think the complaints would translate to lower sales as long as the product delivered was still of high quality.  It only really hurts games to do this when the core game itself is poorly made and requires extensive fixing post-release.

Really though, could you imagine the waves of hype if the game came out with Ridley as the lone new character, then a month later we get Simon, then a month after that we finally get King K Rool?  That's marketing in and of itself and keeps the game in the press for months on end as people get hyped about which new character is being released this week.

Shiken said:

That still does not give me all of the content on the cart I payed 60 dollars for.  Your argument is invalid to my point.

Fair enough.  However, you've got to admit that particular fight was lost a long, long time ago I think.  

The pricing of the DLC fighters are similar to that of packs of other fighting games. And again, these fighters and stages are being made from scratch, so you don't expect them to be free.  Would be cool, but that's not the expectation. Sorry that it affects your view of the game, but what do you supposed Nintendo, Sora Ltd., and Bandai Namco to do when they put in time and resources just like Aonuma and his team did with the DLC in BoTW or Takahashi w/Xenoblade 2's DLC? Plus, we're looking at third party characters like Joker. Licensing and rights to the characters, the stages, and music aren't free. I wouldn't expect Cloud to have been free when he came to Smash 4 as a DLC character.

And of course Reggie said its challenging to release Smash Bros. in December. And I'm sure Nintendo pushed Sakurai, Sora Ltd., and Bandai Namco to release the game earlier. Nonetheless, Sakurai wanted the game to be complete and deserving of the title "Ultimate."

And yea I would be excited to see King K. Rool and Ridley slowly being added into the game. But I think Nintendo made a good call and we're seeing that in the sales and hardware push.



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Cloudman on 14 December 2018
NightlyPoe said:
Kai_Mao said:

I don’t know if the game will be as well received then compared to now if we go by your recommendation. Street Fighter V suffered from that mindset.

plus, as I mentioned before, we’re talking about Sakurai. That’s not his style.

Well, a couple different things.  I suggested the Splatoon/Arms/Mario Tennis model of giving free DLC and for the updates to be much more frequent.  Like by Christmas there would already be another 20 characters in the game with the lineup finished by the end of March.

I'd also point out that we're talking completely free DLC here.  People like getting free stuff.  Their reactions to free DLC is vastly different than paying for season passes or having to grind through the game.  That alone would make the Street Fighter V experience completely different animals.

As for it being Sakurai's style.  It wasn't his style to do DLC at all before a few years ago.  He might have even liked the process.

Cloudman said:
I don't think this sort of system would work with World of Light, since that's closely tied with other parts of the game, like characters and spirits. It wouldn't really work if the game was chopped up into pieces... Or you'd be closed off from advancing the story until more parts of the game released...

Either way, I'm happier with a completed game at launch, rather than some half built game with promised content down the line. SFV seems like a good lesson in this.

I mentioned in the first post that World of Light would be problematic.  Though I'm sure they could have come up with a solution if they'd know this is what they were doing well ahead of time.

For the Street Fighter V comparison, see above.

I think the issue with SFV wasn't merely that people had to grind to unlock more of the game, but that the game was lacking when it was released. Sure, they could perhaps find a solution to releasing parts of the game in pieces as well as world of light, but why even do that when they can just release the game in full? Why release a game that can in time be good when it can be good from the start? Releasing more to a complete game works well and adds more on top of it. Releasing part of a game and get the rest later? That doesn't sound good to me.



 

              

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StriderKiwi on 15 December 2018

I would be against such a decision personally. The live service model games are adopting is only excusable if the game launches with enough content to justify a $60+ purchase. Otherwise I will wait for a discount. If that doesn't happen soon enough, then I move on, because there's no shortage of great games coming out regardless of platform choice.

You bring up Splatoon 2 and Mario Tennis Aces. I didn't get the former when it launched so I can't speak to it but I did get Aces and it was a little too lacking in content at launch. Haven't played it in months despite the new free content because by the time that came I had moved on. And had I known better, I would've waiting for the free updates (and discounted pricing) to make the purchase.