The DanMan

What other characters do you think could've had ZSS as a base? And if they did decide to lock in basic character params right when the Ballot started, then that would still mean that they largely ignored the ballot and just went for the highest-placing guy with a big sword and acrobatic realistically-proportioned girl.

Was trying not to make it too clickbaity, but it seems I ended up skewing in the opposite direction.

So I wasn't some crazy conspiracy theorist after all. "Most realizable character" and all the numbers they threw out in the last Smash Direct really were just vague PR wank to cover a character who had been planned since April.

Sakurai himself said that Chrom wasn't included because he'd be too similar to Ike; if he got in as an Echo, he'd be one of Ike.

あなたは本気ではない。

Then why not just tweak some damage numbers and make him an Echo fighter? I'd prefer if Echoes were just "premium alts" like that, but the Smash team seems to have decided otherwise-- I consider this very unlikely.

DW at least kept most/all of the characters, and varying shades of clones I believe had always been a thing outside of 8. Smash losing 70% of its characters after Ultimate would be a massive change; honestly, I think 30 is the minimum they could go with.

Off the top of my head, Tetris and Baiten Kaitos have both got new arrangements in Smash and no stage; what with the lack of a series icon, I don't see why this wouldn't be a similar case.

It's nice to see all the variances/differences between what people would go with and is a big reason why I made this topic.

He's really chill and even-keeled, IMO moreso than basically anyone else you could suggest.

I mean, you can choose who you want to an extent, but I'm also trying to keep things realistic here. Though really, I can't stop you from just doing what you want.

I don't have the quote on me, but I seem to recall Sakurai also saying that this would be the "last chance to do this"; really, you've basically got everybody in Smash already that isn't flavor of the month/really obscure. Ultimate feels like a compilation/one last sendoff before eventually diving into something new. Honestly, as someone who had been excited over the thought of a Smash reboot/directional shift, having a roster this truncated would definitely be a tough pill to swallow-- and with it seemingly a when, not if, it makes me greater appreciate what we've got right now.

In his Famitsu column that was published right after E3, Sakurai made mention of the choice they faced when it came to Ultimate: "We had a choice between completely overhauling the game systems and feel, or working off of what they had established in the last game, we ended up going with the latter. If we had gone with the former the roster would probably end up being ⅓ the size." Coupled with certain statements made during Smash 4's pre-release ("we're at the upper limit of what's feasible" and "a change in direction may be needed"), I think it's fairly obvious that a Smash reboot of some kind has been considered and is an eventuality. So, which 20 characters (about 1/3 of Smash 4's roster) would you pick to come back? Please, try to not to be too biased and, more importantly, don't get too worked up over it. I personally think this is an interesting topic that could bring about interesting comparisons and discussion, but that because it involves Smash and character cuts I'm not so dumb to think that it will go perfectly smoothly. Anyways, here's what I've got as my picks: This was so hard for me that I flip-flopped between making the limit 20 or 25. Honestly, if it's too hard to do 20 then by all means make it 25; if I could make it 25, Robin, DeDeDe, Shulk, Captain Falcon, and Ness would be on my list.

He's only played the 3DS games, to my knowledge. Honestly, the only decent active community member is Rey, who has the little issue of a full time job and life.

With the hints about it starting out at a military academy, the latter seems almost certain.

Camus is of French origin, while it seems (judging from this thread) like Samus is Hispanic, so different pronunciation rules and all.

They already explicitly said there wouldn't be as many newcomers this time around, so yeah this is the logical stance.

But if the Ballot ended up not applying to Smash 4's DLC, there definitely would've been some outrage. Really, at this point I'm just spitballing and we're going in circles; as I said, I find the circumstances around Bayo's inclusion as the ballot winner to be a bit fishy and I haven't seen anything that clears it up. At this point let's just drop it, because it hardly has anything to do with Ultimate anymore.

To try to mitigate backlash by painting her as number 1 something in the ballot-- after all, if they did basically ignore the top characters for the time being and went for someone else instead, there'd be even more backlash and it would be completely deserved.

The bigger issue is that overall she has basically zero effect on the plot, with CorAlm doing everything of note.

Did they lie? After all, she was only the "most realizable character". Really, I've laid out all my logic already and have little else to say. As someone who wasn't really hoping/rooting for anyone in the ballot I just find the circumstances around Bayonetta winning it very vague and fishy. We'll likely never know for certain one way or another; I'm just a bit intrigued that I'm the only person here who sees it like that.

Sakurai is one person; he's in the director's chair, but he's one person. He's got an entire dev team and has to answer to Nintendo. I doubt most decisions like this are exclusively made by him. It could be that Nintendo decided to save the ballot results because they will be using the top voted characters. But Smash is gonna cause a ton of salt either way. The only info I remember was that Cloud was the most poplar final fantasy character in the ballot. Who knows what happened exactly? I just don't think things line up-- we have a character who came out of nowhere yet was purpotedly the ballot winner (despite being all but absent in fan polls) based on vague criteria and know absolutely nothing else about the results. My gut says she was picked after the ballot was under way due to marketing and moveset potential and that the vagueness around it all is directly related to that-- I mean, she could be the "most realizable character" because they thought they could do more with her than K.Rool and co./"realize" a better moveset. TL;DR I don't know exactly what happened and don't claim to know for a fact, but I personally doubt she beat many other characters which is a belief spurred on by the complete vagueness around the situation.

Obviously it excludes characters who they'd have to go through licensing issues to get and non-videogame characters in general, but that's still a very broad pool to go off of. I can totally get a moderate amount of disparity between fan polls and the final result-- but Bayonetta was nowhere on them. The whole situation seems incredibly vague-- for instance, the CYL polls for FEH were very transparent about things and gave out halfway results. Why couldn't they have done anything like that for the Ballot? Heck, would it have hurt to release the supposed top 5 after the fact? The whole thing just doesn't make much sense; we know absolutely nothing about anybody on the Ballot except what they told us about Bayonetta.

Obviously; hence why I said we know roughly what it excludes. I just find the entire thing so vague overall as to be rendered largely meaningless-- for a ballot and its purpoted winner, we know virtually nothing about the criteria by which they "won" as well as their overall competition.

What exactly does "realizable character" mean? We roughly know who that excludes, but who do is it include? It seems like a very specific adjective, and the fact they said absolutely nothing about the results besides that is definitely a bit eyebrow raising to me.