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

[Cloudman]

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.