I don't mind the silence aspect, I hate mics for games too, namely because you can take an ordinary person, give them a microphone and a bunch of people they don't know, can't see, and will never see in their lives, and a competetive game and 95% of the time they just turn into a dick. A big huge dick. And that says nothing of teenagers, and people that are already dicks to begin with. So, I would prefer to smash in silence.
But it could use some kind of lobby, with chat function. That's all it needs to create an online community. It doesn't even have to be standard, you could still choose random smash. But also have an option to go to a series of rooms where you can chat, and make matches. It doesn't need leaderboards, like Sakurai said only the top 1% of people on the leaderboards even care, and I'm not going to go into the other problems leaderboards create. But a lobby, just a room you could pop into, maybe with your mii or something, talk about smash, then play a few rounds in silence with some cool people you just met, BAM online community created. That easy.
Nintendo is going with simplicity, they always do, and it will do what they intended. It will be super simple to pop online a play, and will be completely nonthreatening or bogged down by people that want to tell you about their sexual exploits with your mother in great detail. But an online forum wouldn't be that hard to do. If gamefaqs can create a heavily censored moderated forum, then surely nintendo could.
You can find me on facebook as Markus Van Rijn, if you friend me just mention you're from VGchartz and who you are here.
