Dragon Quest XI S Developers Weigh In On 'Overpowered' Hero In Smash Bros.

Well, daddy Sakurai likes him, what can you do?

Dude is mad silly but I wouldn't say he's OP after fighting against him for a while. Though I get salty every time he thwacks me... And kamikaze/magic burst on the ledge is waaaay too good.

@PBandSmelly - As an old Melee pro and a player of countless ranked systems. This is an ultimate, unbelieved truth.

It happens every time.

People are saying he's OP, huh? Interesting, I haven't played Smash in a couple months, maybe I ought to hop online and fight a few people to see what his deal is. I mean, I'll lose regardless because I am not good at Smash and only play once in a while, but I kinda want to see what everyone's talking about.

He's fun to play with. And maybe I don't play enough or too competitively. But I find him just fine. I got my butt kicked online every time I've used him

I mean, he doesn't have a lot of downsides for sure. Not a ton of risk for the rewards.

On the one hand, I've seen this song and dance before (Joker, anyone?).

On the other hand... he does have some REALLY powerful moves...

...I'll wait for the next patch before making the judgement call.

I really don't think he's OP. Any projectile based character is thought to be OP by anyone who hasn't found a strategy to deal with projectiles, but the game gives any character ways to deal with projectiles, like shielding, jumping, and attacking the projectile, plus characters with counters, reflectors, and super armor. His neutral B is good, but most of his specials are high reward, really high risk. And besides critical hits, most of his tilts aren't great. He's good, but if anything he does is blocked or dodged, he's wide open.

Love to play as the hero, super fun character honestly.
I don't have the online active at the moment however, so it's purely me having fun spamming spells to the CPU XD

Also...wait... did they really said that the most important part of a Dragon Quest game is making sure people finish them?
...I didn't play all of them, but in a few of them I had to give up toward the end cause the game became a boring long grind fest. Still amazing games and loved them, but I wouldn't say they succeded in their priority...

Overpowered? When my brother and I play, Hero gets flattened by everyone except Little Mac and we play 5 lives, 1 on 1, random stage, random characters. He's really fun to play but the only way I win is through the RNG and I haven't been too lucky with him. Plus, we both Kamikazee at least once -_-

I think he isnt consistent enough to be considered broken.

@BakaKnight That's not what they said. They just said it was one of their design principles. I'm sure it is just one of many.

I do hear you about the grinding, though. I give up on so many RPGs when they start to become repetitive. There are so many games like that, which I haven't finished. I seriously hope DQ11 won't let me down. Really looking forward to it.

Back to the original topic, I agree with everyone saying this happens with every new character in a competitive game. Seen it so many times. After a while people start learning to beat them with new techniques, and they are no longer considered OP.

I don't think Hero is OP, but his chaotic element is definitely annoying to work around. Those critical hits are a problem.

His overpowered-ness can work against him too. I was fighting a Hero online with my Ike, and I countered a critical smash attack. It sent him from 0% to 57.8% and won me the match right then and there!

Hero's pretty fun, and in a sense, the RNG balances him out. I wouldn't say he's overpowered, though, as pretty much all of his crazier moves except for the Whack and Thwack duo require a lot of sacrifice on the player's end. I don't think he'll be banned (at least everywhere), but I won't be surprised if they ban something like Hocus Pocus.

No one is saying hero is op. At most they say he is anti competitive due to the copious amounts of rng in his move set. Most people are taking a wait and see approach to hero, unless they are in Australia. They did ban him, but again not because he is op.

I was hoping that Samsora's Peach pulling a Bob-omb out of her ass and blowing up MKLeo's Joker in Shine 2019 would've silenced the competitive circuit's complaints about "RNG".

He is too randomized to be broken and you have to be really quick at reading the menu and selecting a command. Without the spacing, his down special could be practically nullified.

People often seem to neglect the actual reasons for the outrage in this scenario. I can think of two tangible issues and one conceptual one. The tangible issues are:

1. A small Smash community in South Australia already enacted a Hero ban, and so controversy exploded. This is a shame because no one really thought about why they did it, or what their own players thought about it. South Australia is a tiny state in a country with a small population, and the South Australian Smash scene is subsequently very small and doesn't compete at remotely close to an international level. The whole community was on board with the Hero ban, and doing what is best for your local community is the only way you will grow your scene. I will explain why the ban seemed necessary in the third point.

2. The second tangible point is understandable concern from players with visual impairments. Luckily for us, Smash is a very vivid game with very well animated and telegraphed moves so even players with mild visual impairments can compete at a high level confidently. Having to read from a text box during a match, however, is a completely different story, and many players have voiced that they are unable to read Hero's command box fast enough for it to be of any use to them to try. This is minor relative to the third point but it is still important and hopefully it can and will be fixed with a patch to add icons or increased text size for ease of identification.

3. The conceptual issue (and the reason for the SA Hero ban) is how Hero affects mid-level tournament play. At the casual level, Hero isn't overpowered because any character can be OP at a casual level. At the highest level, Hero isn't overpowered because the highest level players tend to prefer consistency and better frames, two things Hero does not offer relative to other top tier characters. At the mid level, while maybe not overpowered, Hero has INSANE upset potential. You could have stronger fundamentals than another mid level Hero player and still lose in tournament because he lucked out and managed to punish you with a win button. One can say "get good", but top level players are almost universally streamers or full time competitors. What this means for the mid level (which is where the MAJORITY of tournament players lie) is consistent mid level performers or consistent regional winners can start to lose confidence in their gameplay because of random upsets. A big psychological driver of wanting to get better at something is seeing your performance improve with time, and if you were expected to make it into winners side top 64 at a national event but got booped into losers by an unfortunate series of events in a Hero match in pools, it could really hurt momentum.

Hero isn't overpowered, but at the mid level, he has some of the most ridiculous upset potential I've seen in a game with an active competitive scene. Given all games prior to the top 8 of most tournaments are played as a Best of 3, you really don't get a whole lot of time to adjust to your opponent's play style, so adding an entire RNG system into the mix can prove quite frightening for consistently attending mid level players. I'm hoping more nuance to this ordeal is brought to the light; people have very legitimate concerns.

Everyone is OP when you just smash random buttons when playing a fighting game.

@RedderRugfish
I can imagine the smiles on the devs as they programmed nonsense like Kamikaze and that Metal Form (forget the name) spell into the Hero's moveset...it's like being paid to officially troll the Smash player base