Discussion YMMV / SuperSmashBrosUltimate

How so?

Nope, that's too small a sample size. An installment needs to be notably polarizing to count as a Contested Sequel. The reception to Ultimate, as far as I know, has been overwhelmingly positive outside of a few gripes like the online stuff.

To trope, or not to trope...that is the question.

Other than the flawed online infrastructure (which, then again, has been a regrettable thing for the Smash series as a whole), Ultimate is widely regarded as a better installment than Smash 4. And, speaking from my purely personal perspective, I have a hard time considering the roster of 4 "better" when Ultimate has all of its characters plus characters that were missing plus its own newcomers. Same with the single-player content: Aside from Master/Crazy Orders and 3DS's Smash Run, I haven't seen almost any positive defense towards Smash 4 in that regard, especially consideing how reviled Smash Tour was.

Lastly, other than your cited examples being a Vocal Minority, King K is hardly a reliable gaming critic, due to its scathingly biased views on several video games. He almost feels like Joseph Anderson minus the charisma.

Edited by MyFinalEdits 135 - 169 - 273 - 191 - 188 - 230 - 300

How is King K “biased”? Only time he seemed to not give a game a fair shake was the Mother trilogy and he’s stated on Twitter he has some regrets over those videos

And when I said roster I mean the newcomers they picked

Edited by Mariofan99

Yeah, but since Ultimate has those same characters that were newcomers in 4 this is moot.

In any case, the main point is that we cannot give undue weight to every dissenting opinion on a game, or else every single sequel in existence would be a Contested Sequel and neither "even better" sequels or "sequelitis" examples would exist. The proportion of SSB4 defenders versus SSBU defenders favors too much the latter group.

135 - 169 - 273 - 191 - 188 - 230 - 300

fair

Are there examples beyond ARMS, though? If not, we should see how things are 6 months from now.

I feel like all of them don't fit except maybe the first two. Though, I've hardly seen anyone talk about how the sans costume creeped them out given his status as a meme. If anything, I feel like some of these are better in They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character

Learn to grammar

There's a thread in Ask the Tropers going on about this. You may wanna pop in.

Edited by MegaMarioMan "Come on! Let's get this show on the road."

It's not a YMMV trope and it's already listed on the main page.

"Lucian, don’t be afraid, we’ll make it through this."

It's not a YMMV trope, and it's already added.

Oh. I didn't know that. XP

Peace out, peeps.

I agree the Memetic Loser section is getting too lengthy and some of the examples are questionable. It should be cleaned up.

I hope my cleanup is acceptable but if anyone has any convincing arguments for why stuff should be added back then post here.

It was actually only one stage that was removed because of mass reporting and there are still plenty of trans flag stages still up.

My issue is that it is too petty to be listed. I have not once seen an ounce of a complaint about this topic - not even the cesspool known as GameFAQS has displayed any outcry. This feels like something one, single guy took issue with and assumed that everybody else had a problem with it too.

This trope is for stuff that is truly, viciously hated, and this is a minor nuisance at worst. Even the character unlocking system got some degree of bile, however small; this is just... nothing.

Edited by DocSharp

The reason I edit warred about it (I'm sorry about that, by the way, I got too worked up) was because even if more than one person has ever complained about that, I found the logic for it questionable at best. I know, I know, YMMV and all, but I feel like Scrappy and That One X tropes need to be rooted in a foundation that isn't broken if you think about it for more than a few minutes, otherwise the door is opened to allowing things like trolling complaints that have no basis in fact, but someone may have unironically said it once somewhere. and I just don't think "My Music is annoying if you go out of your way to adjust sliders for all 800+ songs in the game" or the part that I deleted, "the other game modes ignore your choices and go with pre-chosen battle themes" hold up under any scrutiny. It's also really silly to complain about adjusting all the sliders when the game actually lets you outright pick the BGM, no reliance on random sliders necessary.

Edited by wikibby

I think there's a kernel of an entry in there in that it's annoying how there's no way to quickly unlock certain characters (as they mentioned, you're not getting Palutena for a while since she's the last to unlock in order, and you'd have to beat Classic mode 8 times as Kirby to get to her).

But this is a huge wall of text rant that goes way too far for what seems more like a personal complaint.

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Why specifically as Kirby?

Seriously, a few hours of playing casually on regular Smash mode unlocked literally every single character for me and my brother.

https://www.ssbwiki.com/List_of_unlockables_(SSBM)

Look at at that list — Mr. Game and Watch sure looks like it's "annoying" to get; moreso than Palutena would be. So the idea that it's somehow more arduous than previous games is faulty.

This amounts to a complaint that you have to actually do something to unlock the characters, which is not a change — if anything, the changes have made it easier to unlock people.

Edited by MrDeath

What I see in the Troper's trope and (valid) issue is not characters in themselves being locked, but too many characters being locked, making it antithetical, impractical and inconvenient to the partying nature of Smash, and limiting out-of-the-box character matchups in multiplayer, countdown timer or not. Not all people may be able to powerplay the game to quick-unlock characters in an afternoon.

For comparison's sake, N64 had a roster of 8/12 (but 66% in this case), Melee 15/26 (58%), Brawl 20/34 (59%), 3DS 36/48 (75%), and Wii U 40/48 (83%). However, Ultimate's starting roster being 8/72 (under 10%) is a rather drastic drop in starting rosters, even understanding the idea behind it. There's also quite a difference between fighting to unlock 12 hidden characters and fighting to unlock 64 of them, regardless of lowered requirements. The trope's underlying point, I suspect, is there should have been a better compromise between starting and unlocked characters.

The reason Larkmarn said Kirby specifically is because Palutena is on his Classic unlock tree.

I'm not the OP of the trope, btw- it was already there, including the hassle bit. My only hand in it was editing it to help others understand that point of view.

Edited by DarkChirano Nothin' much, just cookin'.

Melee Mewtwo is harder to get than the entire Ultimate roster combined, and yet you rarely see people complain about that because it's just one character. The sheer volume of Ultimate's roster makes you think you're doing more work than you actually are.

Besides, the big issue with this entry is that... most people actually don't have much of a problem with the unlockables. Sure, internet Joe dislikes it because he just wants his favorite characters, but that's because he knows who is available, knowledge that is lacked by most people. Why would they be mad over something like this? That's without getting into the other internet Joes who liked the idea of a steadily increasing roster as well.

So yeah, count me as a vote against keeping the entry.

Edited by DocSharp

My point was that in previous games, there were specific unlock conditions that meant certain characters might never be unlocked with regular play — you might not be able to complete a 100-man melee, and thus never get Falco, or if you only like to use a few mains and neglect, say, Pichu entirely, you won't get Mr. Game and Watch. And Luigi's is specific as hell. By contrast, in Ultimate, just playing regular Smash will, eventually, get you everybody.

Sure, it's a lot. That doesn't make it a Scrappy Mechanic, otherwise we might as well put it on every Final Fantasy page because you can't unlock your favorite armors or spells until you spend 40 hours getting to the third disc.

Maybe we should also put as a Scrappy Mechanic that you have to be decent at the game to unlock the final cutscene of World of Light. Surely that's a hassle, too.

I just do not see how, "You have to play the game to unlock stuff" counts as a Scrappy Mechanic.

(Also, minor nitpick, but 8/72 is 11%)

If I remember right Melee had alternate unlocking conditions dependent on number of regular smashes played, so you could unlock everyone without the specifics as long as you played enough.

The Protomen enhanced my life.

Even then, Mr. Game and Watch requires 1,000 VS mode matches to unlock — if each of those is a minute, you're talking about 16+ hours of play time, which is still more than the wait time for unlocking Palutena in Ultimate through the same method.

Speaking from personal experience, I spent 2 days playing the game using the fastest method to unlock every character (reset exploit). It still takes a pretty lengthy amount of time—even longer if you lose against a character and need to fight against them multiple times. Which is common, considering that the CPU in this game is infamously difficult. The tedium of the unlocking process is not exactly a niche opinion.

The comparison to Final Fantasy is also flawed. In Final Fantasy, leveling up or gaining new equipment/characters/abilities is the "meat" of the game. it's the entire point. In a competitive fighter, unlocking characters is not. World of Light is an exception, given its an RPG in itself. That's why WOL's characters stay locked even if you earned them in other modes.

Also, the argument that previous games were harder to unlock doesn't really matter. The genre has significantly changed since then; not the least of which being that unlocking characters is deterimental to Esports scenes, which play no small part in a game's fanbase these days. The fact that tournament organizers have to unlock the ENTIRE roster for every copy of the game is itself a justified criticism, nevermind that even casual feelings on it have signficantly changed.

I do kiiinda think in THAT specific context (competitive tournaments needing to unlock 89% of the roster for multiple copies) this has a slight case. But even taking away the comparison to previous games in the series and how much harder that was, I've rarely actually seen people complain about having to unlock characters. Most people, including several official review outlets, seem to view it as a positive and welcome the "slowly growing roster" thing as the game encouraging you to try all the characters instead of defaulting to your favorite out of 74 instantly.

Another way to look at this is, think of it this way: Scrappy Mechanic is the opposite of an Anti Frustration Feature, right? I have my own issues with that trope, but as of now, "the greatly simplified method of unlocking characters" is listed as an AFF on the main page. It's silly to list this as two antithetical tropes, unless there's a specific scenario in which it becomes a problem like competitive organizers and multiple copies - and even then, it should be noted how specific that context is, and it shouldn't rant on and on for several lines like the original entry.

Based on this article, it seems that the issue is a bit of a Broken Base at the moment. Fans LIKE the idea of unlocking the entire roster, but under a leisurely environment. Someone who wants to play a specific character right away, or practice competitively, or wants to play the game with friends in person/online has to grind for hours to get all of the options unlocked.

Actually, wait, hang on. The comparison to earlier games being harder than this one is completely fair. Know why? Because Melee is still regularly competitively played to this day. And, as noted, it takes significantly more time and effort to unlock the paltry 11 hidden characters in that game than the sixty-some in this one. Yet T Os seem to make do! (maybe it's cuz everyone just plays Fox, but that's definitely neither here nor there)

Don’t they have memory cards for that though?

Unlocking the characters is the meat of the game. It's the major measure of progress, and the fact that you only start with 8 indicates the developers intended it to be a set of major milestones for the players.

With both this and the previous, unlocking the characters was part of the fun when my friends and I have got together and played. Nobody felt pressured to unlock everything before anyone showed up — when the challenger showed up, we got excited and cheered on whoever was fighting.

As to the difficulty, that might have been a point before they patched the game. Now they're not difficult at all.

Esports and the super serious competitive tournaments are a niche at best and a Misaimed Fandom at worst when it comes to Smash — Sakurai's said repeatedly that he at best doesn't really care about the competitive scene and is explicitly not designing the game for that kind of play.

The trope isn't, "A small group of people are slightly inconvenienced when playing the game in a way the developers didn't really intend," it's when a mechanic "in an otherwise fun/enjoyable game that generates a sizable hatedom." (Emphasis added)

Plus, even for those people, it's a "mechanic" that's not going to matter a week after they get the game. Once they're unlocked, they're unlocked and it's done.

So just to recap:

• The argument that competitive players hate it is faulty because they've put up with this shit for years/don't care.

• The process is so heavily streamlined that the only frustrating part is the length.

• There aren't actually that many people moaning about this at all, and in fact a sizable chunk of the fanbase enjoys it.

• You only have to do it once. You're not suddenly forced to unlock characters again.

If we're gonna list this strictly because "a couple of people think it takes too long", that's begging to get Scrappy Mechanic slam-dunked into the Trope Repair Shop. No way, no how. We're not keeping this entry.

tbh I kinda think Scrappy Mechanic should be slam-dunked into the Trope Repair Shop anyway but that's an argument for another day

"Unlocking the characters is the meat of the game." No, it is not. Only in World of Light is that true, and I've already mentioned why that's an exception. The "meat" of any fighting game is the fighting, and Smash is no exception. Unlocking the characters is just a price of entry. It might be "part" of the fun, but it is in no way the meat of the game. In Japanese role playing games like Final Fantasy, leveling up to get more stuff is the bulk of the gameplay. Comparing that to Smash is a faulty argument on many levels.

The esports scene is no longer a "misaimed fandom" at all—and that isn't what that trope means anyway. This game is the most tailored towards esports any Smash has ever been, with the exception of the unlocking method.

• The argument that competitive players hate it is faulty because they've put up with this shit for years/don't care.
  • This is a gross oversimplification.

• The process is so heavily streamlined that the only frustrating part is the length.
  • The difficulty of the characters is also an issue, as is the inability to pick which character gets unlocked. But it depends on the person.

• There aren't actually that many people moaning about this at all, and in fact a sizable chunk of the fanbase enjoys it.
  • Calling it "moaning" kind of betrays a biased opinion on this, but I won't get into that. It's hard to find actual numbers that show how many people like/dislike it. As I mentioned before, it's generally seen as "pretty neat, but waith a few problems".

• You only have to do it once. You're not suddenly forced to unlock characters again.
  • Not really relevant to whether or not something is a Scrappy Mechanic. There are plenty of examples that only need to be done once, like a Unexpected Gameplay Change or something that only exists in one stage.

---

My personal opinion on this is that it seems to be a pretty valid case for Broken Base, but time needs to pass to see if the negative opinions subside. They probably will, just because the game won't be fresh any more. But if so, oh well.

That's my take on it. But I find a lot of the people arguing AGAINST its inclusion to have very flawed and, in some cases, disrespectful arguments.

If I am being disrespectful, I heartily apologize. That was not my intent, not in the slightest. But my point is that the mass opposition this trope mandates does not exist. The people who didn't like it are overwhelmingly beaten by either the people who enjoyed it or flat out did not care. They are the exception, and we simply do not care for those. Just because we see the opposition does not make it large, especially when opposition to that opposition is also visible.

Side note: I'm a tad annoyed you instantly tossed aside the points about competitive players. I have literally never seen any TO or player complain about this - not even a mild "oh it's kind of annoying". The belief that unlocking everything is a problem for them is little else but a rumor, because the save data can be transferred from Switch to Switch. It was only a problem on the first day; nobody could host day 1 tournaments because of the unlock system, and we are not interested in listing something so small and minor. Compare this to the complaints about the online, where we have a ton of evidence showcasing how much people hate it.

Edited by DocSharp

I have heard T Os complain about the character unlocking, but I have no way of proving it because I don't remember by whom. It was possibly during commentary at either the Glitch 6 or Frosty Fausting tournaments, where they specifically said how much of a pain in the ass it was for the tournament staff to unlock every character for every copy that was going to be played. But that's anecdotal, so whatever. Just throwing it out there.

Oh damn, Glitch 6? Shiiiiiit, that's actually a big one. Okay, if that's the case, I'll take back what I said. I'm a bit more okay with putting the entry back, if only for tournaments.

Edited by DocSharp

Well, again, I don't remember who exactly said it or when. It could have been at FF.

That was the reason I didn't even bat an eyelash when I saw the entry; it was like, "Oh yeah, I remember hearing that was an issue."

Whether it was Glitch 6 or Frosty, a respectably sized tournament took issue with this, which is a game changer as far as the "in favor" arguments go. As a personal suggestion, how about we wait for more tourneys to run? If only for a bigger sample size - we're only about 2 months into this after all.

Edited by DocSharp

That's exactly what I suggested earlier, so yeah...that's a good idea to me.

I disagree that it isn't the meat of the game. It is the measure of progress, and that they only give you 8 at the start indicates they intend for it to take some time and be part of the game's experience. Unlocking them through Vs. matches is pretty clearly, to me, intended to encourage you to play it and unlock it with friends.

As said, the "they're too difficult" complaint no longer applies. They patched it the first week the game was out.

https://www.shacknews.com/article/109034/super-smash-bros-ultimate-ver-120-eases-challengers-approach-difficulty

(WTF is wrong with linking in discussion pages, anyway?)

I'm going to want to see some links to where this is being complained about. I am unfamiliar with these tournaments — and I will posit, again, that even if it's a "big" tournament, it represents a very small fraction of Smash players; we're talking, what, a couple hundred out of the millions who've bought the game?

And again, Scrappy Mechanic requires a "sizeable hatedom." I don't think that saying some of a small part of the userbase complained counts. Not when most of the players seem to either like it or not care.

(Also, what is a TO?)

Edited by MrDeath

Unlocking the cast is not the "measure" of progress—it's the price of entry, as I already said. It is not comparable to a JRPG like Final Fantasy, because leveling up and acquiring new abilities/weapons is what the entire game consists of from the start of the game all they up to the Infinity Plus One sword. Unlocking characters in Smash is just a minor part of it. Again, this comparison is a massive stretch.

Whether the difficulty was patched or not is not relevant; it still happened. We still trope things that are changed patched out of an initial work. If anything, the fact that it was patched so fast demonstrates how unwanted it was.

Tournament players number in the thousands. Even if the game sold millions, that's still a sizable amount of people.

Also, don't a link isn't necessary at this point, since two of us are arguing for a "wait and see" approach.

Edited by NubianSatyress

At this point, we might just be talking in circles, especially since the big disqualifying factor (the fact that no shortage of people actively enjoyed it) has not been rebuked. Agree to disagree, fellas.

I should also mention that "competitive scene only" examples are allowed, or at least seem to be. We've got buffering listed, which is definitely a Scrappy Mechanic for the pros. One of the only things I left alone when I cleaned up BrokenBase.Super Smash Bros was an entry regarding the ban of Brawl Meta Knight, and the cleanup thread for that trope seemed okay with it.

Finally: TO means Tournament Organizer, the guys who set up everything from the Switches to the reserved seating.

Edited by DocSharp

My two cents:

• I don't think that there actually is enough of a sizable hatedom for the unlocking mode to qualify for Scrappy Mechanic. I can see why some, maybe even plenty of users may find it annoying but I don't think this hatedom actually exists.
• Melee is irrelevant.
• Claiming "unlocking characters is the meat of the game" is just... no. By that metric 3DS/Wii U doesn't have meat. I'd say it's not until the last character is unlocked that the game truly begins in earnest.
• Eventually, this could become a Broken Base between the "it's annoying to unlock my character" side and "it's nice that it encourages you to try new characters" side. But that's a discussion for five months from now.

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Maybe list it as an Underused Game Mechanic then? I know it ought to be listed in some fashion.

First, UI needs citations from a reliable source. This example has no citation and is a borderline Zero Context Example as well.

Second, I thought the page was locked?

To trope, or not to trope...that is the question.

Sounds like someone on the GameFAQs boards who tried to complain that Mr. Sandman was represented by Donkey Kong, therefore the devs were all racist against blacks.

Game Rant has an article that is pointing out the alleged racism being represented, specifically how Dee Jay from Street Fighter is Diddy Kong, Mr. Sandman is Donkey Kong (though mention of DK being a hidden Punch Out boss is noted), and how Tac the Thief is a Black Villager, perpetuating the double stereotype that black people are fast and are thieves.

People are generating buzz about the issue, at least.

OK, why won't this freaking link work? https://gamerant.com/super-smash-bros-ultimate-racist/

Edited by DRCEQ

Agreed. This was brought up in ATT: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/query.php?parent_id=70827&type=att - Since the story is basically an Excuse Plot and there isn't any Character Development to really be had, it's a huge stretch for the trope to apply to pretty much anyone in the game.

I say cut as well.

Cut it. And hopefully it will stay cut this time.

Please help out our The History Of Video Games page.

Gonna hop on this to add that as a corollary to this, your fanfic ideas for what you wish World of Light was instead of what we got is very flagrantly not They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot either, because that's when the plot is in there but is executed poorly.

What was the Waluigi situation?

People are upset that Waluigi is not a playable character. I'd say wait, as I don't think it's gotten truly out of hand or anything. There's just a fair amount of people who are upset.

The Waluigi situation was summed up in Vocal Minority.

After almost 90% all these crazy theories be more false that Waluigi be playable, is kinda annoying see too much in the page. Whatever is the real creator of this page, please can you give chance this.

It'd be nice if someone could edit the page to simply link to the page as opposed to redundantly have both.

Huh, really? Never knew that ACI was anything *but* some rando's completely obscure interpretation.

Intermission

The way I see it, YMMV pages shouldn't list every obscure opinion or idea under the sun. If my uncle's cousin's friend's dog thinks that Samus secretly wears clown shoes when nobody is looking, we shouldn't list it.

Any of The Scrappy-style tropes really should wait until... Some time has passed. Incineroar was announced yesterday. Claiming something so broad before the game comes out is iffy at best, claiming it the day after the character is announced is folly.

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Don't worry, King Clark. raidpirate9 is just salty that his fave character is getting hate and wants to dispel such talk he despises.

Edited by Enderguy059 Intermission

Comment it out.

I'm guess I'm not understanding the problem. What do you mean by "more than just 'listening to fans complain'"? The examples are based on Audience Reactions, even if they're reactions to the previous games. I can see how some of them are reaching and might not be valid, but the addition of the "Echo Fighter" designation and swords to Ganondorf's moveset seem like clear corrections based on fan complaints.

The problems might be legitimate, but the work itself hasn't reached the audience. People don't have the full game to evaluate its merits and see how it compares to previous games. I ask, isn't this a bit rash?

At the very least, I think the entries about "every character being announced pre-release" and "not enough Street Fighter music" sounded like really minor issues and should probably be cut anyway.

Like I said before, the issues might be legitimate, but the work itself hasn't yet reached the audience. Author's Saving Throw only applies when the work has been fully released, evaluated and compared to previous games. In other words, Author's Saving Throw should only be added in December.

Fair enough. Your objection originally sounded more like "this only qualifies if a work corrects its own faults and not those of prior installments"; but "let's make sure it actually corrects them" makes sense.

Heads up: Ferot_Dreadnaught opened a query about this over at Ask The Tropers.

Probably not. I think most of his current popularity is just because he's new and surprising. We should at least wait until the game is out before we start adding Ensemble Dark Horse entries.

Fair point.

Eat bread, make sandwiches, know what I'm saying?

I say take the entries out, especially the entry under Germans Love David Hasselhoff, unless someone can actually provide concrete evidence that Lip is a "Japan-favorite."

The last poll I saw listing what characters the Japanese fanbase wants in Smash didn't have Lip anywhere in the list, so I have my doubts that she's a "Japan-favorite."

In all my personal experience with Smash Bros.-related communities, the only time I have ever seen Lip discussed beyond a passing thought is on this site's own forum, and only by the same Troper who added the contested entries in the first place. That strongly suggests soapboxing, and misrepresenting the unanimity of their individual opinion.

However, I believe the troper responsible, Midna, should be given a chance to defend their position and provide evidence in favor of the entries staying.

You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!

The Germans Love David Hasselhoff part should just be axed regardless for being useless bloat and blatant soapboxing.

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

I've seen plenty of support, Japanese and otherwise, for Lip in Smash. There's a series of animations on YouTube, a number of fan art and tweets in support of her, and that's just from the Japanese side. The poll you're talking about was performed on just one forum on one website, so it's hardly representative of what all Japanese fans want...even English-language polls vary widely based on what website they were performed on.

If this hasn't convinced you to not cut it, though, then go ahead. I guess I can't stop you.

I firmly vote not to cut the Epileptic Trees entry though. I'm just one of many people who have noticed this quirk, and thought it strange that even though Lip's Stick is back and looks basically the same, the flower has been completely redesigned. Just because you can't find any of us at a casual glance doesn't mean we don't exist.

The poll, at the very least, provides harder evidence than "Take my word for it, I swear it's true!" so I'm more inclined to believe that unless something more concrete is provided. As for the Epileptic Trees entry, it seems more like something that goes under WMG.

I personally don't care what happens with the Epileptic Trees entry because I don't know what its deal is.

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

@dragonfire5000 The same could be said of all Epileptic Trees theories.

No.

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Broken Base / Base-Breaking Character now requires six months since the work releases.

You also need to prove that there is very little to no middle ground concerning Chrom. And no, the internet is generally not a good place to get a good idea of what the majority of the fanbase thinks.