Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

@Krull yep maybe ii jsut came at it with a different mindset. I started playing the game expecting to be immersed with the lore and i environment considering that people was saying that it takes que from skyrim and other open world rpgs for its exploration.

@Shizuelle why does it “need” to be anything?

@Shizuelle exactly

Same, but I'm of the opinion that realism in general is boring. I'd much rather be immersed in a world completely separate from our own. I mean, if humanity's never gonna go to other planets, I'll take the next best thing.

@subpopz I'm not a huge fan of realistic visuals in video games, but the vistas and landscapes in RDR2 are gorgeous. It also has some really good visual design, from what I've seen.

But, in general, I agree: realistic visual styles don't impress me much. I can look around me and see perfect photorealism, so why would an imperfect facsimile by Naughty Dog get me hot and bothered?

Ratchet and Clank, though? Okami? Dragon Quest XI? Those games are gorgeous, and they feed me visions that are impossible in real life.

Ironically, I think some unrealistic game worlds look better

Not every Nintendo game has to use every controller that is compatible with the system.

Thank you, I've been waiting for someone else to finally say that.

I'm not really sure why I'm supposed to be excited by this graph:

"Yay, franchise bloat!" I guess... I mean to be honest, I find the very existence of this graph to be quite tragic. Not only because it reeks of desperation, but also it just plays into the infantile mentality of the gaming community. In no other form of media/entertainment would such a thing be made. A movie director wouldn't show the progression of their films by the fact that each one had 10 more scenes than the last. A musician wouldn't show the progression of their albums because each one had 5 more tracks than the last. Because that would obviously be laughable. But sadly in gaming, this quantity > quality philosophy and the idea that a game's length/size determines its value prevails...

I mean really, all this graph does is make me yearn for the older games (when I was a kid we were happy with 9 stages dammit! What the hell happened?) 100+ stages is ridiculous... And what are there, like 80 playable characters now or something? Christ, 90% of your play time will probably just be in the damn character/stage selection screens... With such an excessive, exhausting quantity, series newcomers will likely only ever get to play each one a couple of times, so they're not going to leave much of a lasting impression. It kind of makes me think how, for Goldeneye players, Facility is such an iconic, memorable, beloved map, that we spent so much time in and thus became so immersed in, that we all know it like the back of our hands and could probably navigate it with our eyes closed. But if Goldeneye had 100 multiplayer maps, no one would even be able to remember which one Facility was. It would just be lost in the pile. This is why restraint is a good thing. This is why you can have too much. Sometimes less is more. You're going to get much more out of an album that has 10 songs on it than an album that has 100 songs, despite the latter having more "content". I feel if more gamers didn't just think about things on the most basic, child-like level, they'd understand this (though as I may be in danger of sounding quite sanctimonious now, I will add that I'm not 100% innocent on such things, as I did recently slightly balk at the idea of paying £18/$23 to download Layers of Fear when I knew it was only a 3 hour game). Oh well, maybe I should just be grateful that I'm not a newcomer to the series with this one. Or maybe it's supposed to be like a Mugen parody now or something...

I realize the general consensus among gamers is "You can never have too much of something lol" (which is obviously a totally idiotic mentality and obviously objectively wrong, but never mind...) I realize that we're in this modern DLC era where games seem to have to keep expanding (as if we had enough time to play them all to begin with...) which already seems to be conditioning gamers into thinking that nothing is ever enough; "More Mario Odyssey worlds plz!" "More Mario Kart 8 tracks plz!" etc. (it's already the Deluxe version FFS...) And I realize that Nintendo have got nothing else to go with here other than an "exhausting/overwhelming amount of content! It's the biggest one ever!" approach, but I'm not sure how this graph is supposed to represent anything positive. All it says to me is that Smash Bros is tired, stale and bloated if this is how they're having to sell it now, and I don't think that was their intention...

Unless of course this is the last ever Smash Bros, in which case, perhaps it makes some sense, but I highly doubt it. I mean, this is Nintendo, I doubt they'd skip an opportunity to keep milking a popular franchise, so where do they go from here, if just "bigger" is literally all they have now? The corner that they've now completely unnecessarily pinned themselves into. 1000+ stages and characters maybe...? I mean, if this isn't the last one, then they're needlessly screwing themselves for the future by branding it as the "ultimate" one and focusing it entirely around just quantity...

@Haywired The movie scene comparison doesn't really make any sense. Movies are structured so that you experience the scenes as a cohesive whole, all in one setting. That just doesn't happen when a person sits down to play a round of Smash.

The music comparison makes a lot more sense if you consider those "greatest hits" collections that are often released. I often prefer the larger collections that are more likely to have all of my favorite songs on it. Think of Smash Ultimate as partially a "greatest hits collection," which also has a ton of new content to it.

Anyway, I've been saying since Smash 4 and its boatload of DLC that they're trapping themselves into a cycle where they'll have to keep bloating the amount of in-game content in order to 'one-up' previous Smash games, which is why I thought they'd just re-release Smash 4 with all of the DLC on Switch instead of developing a new title and risk disappointing fans with a smaller roster. I'll admit I was genuinely surprised when I saw just how much... erm... volume there was to this title, even including multiple meaty-looking single-player modes. But Smash Ultimate just magnifies the concern: the "Ultimate" approach is one you can only do once. So what on Earth could they possible do for the next Smash that won't lead to it being a massive letdown from the sheer scope of this entry?

Only two things I can think of: either they opt for the service-route for Smash going forward (Smash Ultimate becomes, not so much the newest franchise entry, but rather the platform for an ever-expanding roster of stages, characters, etc. delivered via DLC), or the next one changes the formula radically, to the point where it doesn't make sense to compare it to previous games (which would be a divisive approach, to say the least).

Either way, as hyped as I am for Smash Ultimate, I could see it being disastrous for the franchise in the long run. As you said, the series is a massive seller, so I can't really see Nintendo just dropping it in the future.

@Haywired Sakruai already said that potential games after Ultimate will look extremely different and that they can't pull the "everyone/thing is here" again. And Ultimate is special in that a huge part of it was bringing back a lot of old content, something no other game has the luxury of boasting. Odyssey didn't have the benefit of having 64/Sunshine/Galaxy levels, BotW didn't have the benefit of having old dungeon layouts, etc. A huge majority of what's in Ultimate are very known quantities. So even if there's more games after, Ultimate is just the end of an era of these ~20 years of Smash as a "Greatest Hits" version, with enough new stuff in it.

The fact of the matter is, most of these fighters and stages are quality and we know this because we've had these most of these fighters and stages before in the past. So we get both quality and quantity, and they've even axed some modes to focus on a better single-player and multiplayer experience. Modes like Squad Strike/Smashdown are literally designed so you get the most use out of the soon-to-be-80 fighter roster, and Stage Morph was also added so you can effectively pick two stages at once.

Creating 100+ stages and 80 fighters from scratch is indeed extremely difficult and would take too many years to achieve. But the basic framework of a huge majority of fighters have already been made, so the planning and balancing is actually feasible.

I doubt newcomers would be terribly overwhelmed. Remember that random options exist, and the aforementioned modes are to help them ease themselves into each character. They could literally just pick random every time with Stage Morph, then after a bit they'll find select stages they really like. Or they can just do it like we've always done, pick out the guys we know or the guys that look cool and keep trying. There's bound to be someone out there for everyone. And they still have to unlock over 60+ characters somehow, so they can get a feel for every character as they progress through something like single-player.

They also literally decided the removal of trophies, stage builder, Home Run Contest, and Break the Targets from the start just so they could prioritize the stages and fighters, the most important part of Smash, as well as make the single-player as expansive as it is with Spirits.

Because of all that, all of your examples of "less is more" doesn't hold up as well. If everything in Ultimate was actually brand-new, then I would be more inclined to agree since you can't make 100 memorable stages from scratch without some degree of copy-paste and uninspired things, nor could you REALLY balance out 70+ fighters well enough. But that isn't the reality. It's more like 10 brand new songs versus 92 completely remastered songs of their old work + 8 brand new songs. Newcomers can see the entire "Greatest Hits" lineup of the artist's songs while looking into what they're capable now.

Besides, no one's saying newcomers HAVE to use everyone. I know for a fact that I'm not going to use some characters, but that doesn't mean they're not valuable to the game since other people can get use out of them.

@Ralizah We've kind of already seen this with Street Fighter. Street Fighter III took out a lot of the old Street Fighter II cast, which as we know has been built up for years with various new editions like Super Street Fighter II, Turbo, etc. So Smash can do the same, but how they do it is up to Sakurai. But everyone, including him, knows they can't pull the "everyone is here" approach again.

@ReaderRagfish A fair point. But regardless we're probably never ever being seeing anything like Ultimate again.

My theory is they're going to really trim down the roster and strip away almost everything, but somehow change the gameplay drastically so it plays so extremely differently from all the current Smash games. Even going from 64 to Ultimate, the overall gameplay is largely the same with pretty much QoL additions like being able to grab ledges if facing away from it in Brawl and air dodging in Melee.

It would indeed be a very interesting game after Ultimate. However, I think there's still some potential for further evolving Smash. Sakurai is a damn genius, and something like Stage Morph is evidence that there's always a way to liven things up. Imagine what would happen if he rethought the basics of Smash to change some fundamental core of the gameplay, for better or worse.

@EvilLucario @ReaderRagfish a turn/tactics based Smash game? The audience would lose their mind - half from hate/dread, the other half from sheer anticipation!?

I don’t think it’d ever happen but a guy can dream, right?

@EvilLucario
Honestly, I imagine the next Smash game starting fresh and having 3D gameplay, kinda like Custom Robo I guess. It's really risky, but would be the easiest way to separate it from much bigger past games in the series.

I'd just hope Nintendo(since I'm pretty sure Sakurai won't be involved in the next game) can figure out how to make the gameplay work, because it would NOT be an easy transition due to the way attack inputs work in Smash

Warframe is too busy for me.

@Neweegee I didn't even think of that but that's a really good point. Really, we don't have much 3D fighting games. The most I know is Power Stone on the Dreamcast and ARMS... and that's it. Nearly every fighting game worth its salt is 2D.

If Ultimate is 2D Smash's swan song and the next Smash will be played completely 3D, that would be extremely cool. It would indeed be extremely difficult to pull off, but if anyone can do it it's Sakurai.

@Bayonereza that’s not an unpopular opinion with me, I agree almost entirely!

I’s been infecting games like Assassins Creed/Far Cry for years and has slowly spread out to other series, ME: Andromeda & DA: Inquisition being two of the biggest/saddest tragedies unfortunately...

I actually think ‘we gamers’ as a collective are responsible for a lot of it - how many reviews have you seen/read where people constantly ask ‘how long is the game?’ or ‘how big is the map?’ - just pushed the creators in the wrong direction for me with games getting bigger and often not for the better - sometimes less is definitely more!

@Bayonereza on the flip side those you describe aren’t busy work but rather the games you dont like just doesnt cater to you and your preference?

My favourite Silent Hill game is Silent Hill 4: The Room. I don’t really know how people generally feel about SH4 today, but I remember almost everybody hating it back in the day.

@JoakimZ i think the the stems from the it not being Silent Hilly add to the fact that it wasn’t even supposed to be a silent hill game at all during its development