Trophy Discussion

[TheWill]

Making this topic because I'm interested in the discussion. To get to the point: Does anyone actually care for trophies?

When they first came out in Melee, I loved collecting trophies as a kid. They were probably my favourite new 'feature', but I had a lot of fun with the different missions and requirements to unlock them all. As the series continued however, my interest for them dwindled.

I think this is partially due to the selection process of the trophies just felt iffy. A lot of items and stages became collectible trophies, whilst I preferred them as exclusively memorable or noteworthy characters of a series. I guess the way I saw them, were a means to reimagine older characters with newer, shiny graphics. Looking back at Wii U and 3DS trophy selection, look no further than the Fire Emblem trophies. Some of these trophies were nothing short of beautiful (A.Tiki's trophy on the 3DS), but the character selection for both games just felt so wrong. The Wii U version had a small amount of trophies in general with a select few Radiant Dawn characters being chosen and the 3DS version was even worse, only including exclusively characters almost exclusively from Awakening.

For me, personally, I'd love to take a step back and use them as an opportunity to re-imagine old, popular characters from the NES to modern era. 

So:

• For the Zelda series, don't just do just the Breath of the Wild characters (Mipha, Daruk, Urbosa & Revali), but also do the likes of other memorable Zelda characters like: Marin, Malon, Ruto, Ravio, Skull Kid, Vaati and so on.  
• For Fire Emblem, why not re-imagine the likes of characters across the whole series? It'd be great seeing the likes of Hector, Ephraim, Eirika, Micaiah and so on. Not just characters from Awakening/Fates/Shadow of Valentia.

 

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I would be outraged if trophies and similar collectibles exited the series. Even the very first Smash Bros. had character bios. And that information is what lead me to seek out the games these other characters come from. My first of those excursions was Ocarina of Time, and I credit that game with making me into a gamer. And if you consider Smash Bros. to be a celebration of Nintendo's history, lore tidbits are an extremely good concept for a collectible. 

The one issue with trophies is that creating a 3D model of a character does take some effort. This is in contrast to Brawl's stickers which were all official artwork. If a 3D model of a character already exists under ownership of another company, then Sora has been known to request them for use as trophies. And in the case of the famous Rayman trophy, Ubisoft were so enthusiastic that they built one for the game. Also, a lot of characters, especially from older games only have official artwork/sprites as 2D images. So the 3D modeler has to envision how that character looks from all angles. I dunno the artistic integrity implications of that process, but it sounds iffy.

As for trophy selection, I've got no specific demands. Just practical suggestions like putting in anything that has an existing, high definition model so no precious development time is put towards creating a new one. HD-ifying trophies from previous Smash games might prove frugal as well, since I can't imagine people getting upset about that sort of re-used content. 

Edit: oh and I should note that I liked the trophy shop in Smash 4. Really speeds up the process of collecting trophies that aren't tied to a specific achievement. Now if only they had a custom moves and mii headgear shop...

Edited March 11, 2018 by Glennstavos

[NegativeExponents-]

I love the trophies. Sometimes I just like looking at them and appreciating all the details that went into making them. Also reading the trophies description is always interesting to me and a big reason I explore other games.

Have two complaints tho. The first is Smash 4’s trophy shop. It lets you buy repeat trophies and sometimes the only thing available is repeat trophies and having multiple of the same trophies does nothing. Why bother doing it at all?

Melee and iirc Brawl at least had the lottery where if you bet enough coins you’re guaranteed a new trophy. Sure you could get repeats but at least you don’t have to wait till it changes whatever trophies are currently available and still possibly get screwed with repeats.

Also, series outside of Mario could use some more love and diversity when it comes to trophies. Outside of fighters, did all the 3ds Fe Trophies need to be Awakening? Or did the 3 WiiU Tellius trophies need to be all characters that were already used as trophies in Brawl? What about Ninten or the Runaway Five or the Dragos as trophies for the Mother series? Just seems like a few series are unnecessarily low on or too focused on what’s new for trophies when they have stuff to work with.

Edited March 11, 2018 by NegativeExponents-

[Lau]

I loved Smash 4's display cases, and I hope that that returns, just expand them more.

Trophies are just fun to collect, but I would like more series to get more trophies, like FE, Earthbound, etc.

[HK Motendra]

What I find notably egregious is how we're 3 games in with Fire Emblem and there has yet to be a single Archanean trophy. Ya can't just have Marth there by himself. Likewise, the same notion should be applied to Roy (assuming he stays), though really, any of the peeps that already appeared as stickers might as well be trophies as well, or whatever new thing they come up with.

• BB had Roy, Lilina, Deke & Rutger
• Blazing had the 3 lords, Ninian & Guy
• SS had the twin lords, Joshua & Myrrh
• PoR had Ike, Mist, Greil, Ashnard & BK
• RD had Micaiah, Sothe & Ike again.
• MotE had Marth, Caeda and Navarre

As far as Trophies go, aside from the playable peeps, Lyn & Chrom (who are in both versions), all there was (in both Brawl and Wii U) is BK, Elincia and Sothe. That's it. Meanwhile in the 3DS version, Awakening alone had 9 plus one, which were:

• Lissa
• Anna
• Lon'qu
• Gaius
• Cordelia
• Tiki
• Owain
• Inigo
• Validar
• Tharja

And then DLC brought Ryoma & Xander. It was a missed opportunity to bring in more trophies from the rest, considering how the entire 3DS library of trophies was supposed to focus on hand-held games, which could have included a few from FE6 onward, barring FE9/10

[Armagon]

I think trophies are fine. My biggest complaint in Smash 4 was that in the 3DS version, when you completed All-Star Mode with a character, you just got a trophy of them in an alternate color. In the Wii U version, you get a trophy of their Final Smash. As someone who lacked a Wii U, i felt cheated.

Anyway, trophies are an important part of Smash. Even if you don't like them, they exist to inform people of characters and other things they may not have known. it's like a miniature database. The only problem with that is that they tend to reveal stuff that they shouldn't. Just look at Mecha Fiora's trophy in Smash 4 or how Jade Face's trophy revealed who he was. And while i'm excited to possibly see new Xenoblade content in Smash 5, i'm worried that they're just gonna spoil the shit out of the games again.

But yeah, tl;dr, trophies are good and they should stay.

[Ronnie]

I only cared about trophies in Melee because I was a kid and the trophy room looked super cool.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I wonder if trophy descriptions ought to include spoiler warnings. Not just as a courtesy, mind you. One express purpose of this franchise is to sell current nintendo games. But then you have to ask what's the cutoff point, should it be games released within the same year as Smash? Within the past five years? Forever? Now that Sheik is a separate character from Zelda, is her identity something worth preserving in trophy descriptions?