Thanks for watching everyone, and thanks to MintJoy Pictures for being onboard with this video idea! I've linked the original below and I cut a lot of its original runtime down in editing, if you want a more fleshed out version and/or liked what you saw please go show them some love on my behalf. Original video: th-cam.com/video/SoK5eQROgtc/w-d-xo.htmlsi=xRYALtIHvQ7OQ18F *Main channel:* th-cam.com/users/mockrocktv *Twitter:* twitter.com/MrMockRock *Patreon:* www.patreon.com/mockrock *Twitch:* www.twitch.tv/mockrocktwitch *Teespring:* teespring.com/stores/mockrock *TimeBolt affiliate link* (excellent software I use to speed up editing on my videos, use code "MOCKROCK" for a discount): mockrock--timebolt.thrivecart.com/order-page/
To reuse the same comment I left on that video: People don't seem to recognize they're in the Old Married Couple phase with Smash, which leads to them hyper focusing on the negatives and finding new problems they didn't have before.
im in the regret for what could’ve been phase with ultimate. it’s like i know we had plenty of tourneys and ranking and ups and downs but i still feel like we missed a major chunk of time. Which I guess we did with covid. But idk it feels like the story still isn’t complete and won’t be even when the new smash gets announced
Those are my thoughts. Excluding the game’s controversies that tainted the community’s reputation, Ultimate is still an excellent game in a vacuum. However, some people are either too pessimistic or serious from a competitive perspective to realize that. It’s still fun when you move past the game’s somewhat noticeable flaws, such as the online delay or lag and character balancing.
Not sure about the conclusion reached by this video… Breezed over the effect Fighter’s Pass 2 had on the game and didn’t comment at all on the panda cup/ smash world tour debacle. No examples or focus on any of the individual player scandals, no mention of Steve’s and Sonic’s passive playstyle turning away viewers… but Nintendo’s updated tournament guidelines was the final nail in the coffin? The announcement was scary at first but it seems to have made 0 impact on the competitive scene aside from requiring TOs of big events to secure a license, which they’ve all been doing successfully.
Getting a licence did have something about not being allowed to ban characters without a theme, but LMM a few weeks ago quietly banned Steve anyway without any big issues. HungryBox’s Coinbox series did just lose its sponsor because of Nintendo, although that’s more justified given that it’s a crypto company that had gotten into trouble with the US government earlier this year.
Haven’t watched the video but a majority of the roster when optimized ( this is from listening to top players but this maybe a scrub take) are extremely campy
@@paulakroy2635 That is true to some extent, although there are different forms of camping as well as how rewarding it is to get in. A character like Joker or most sword fighters need to stay in the mid-range, whereas someone like Samus or Steve wants as much space as possible. There's a funny anecdote of Zackray responding to chat messages complimenting his aggression by clarifying that he didn't approach at all as Joker. Then there's how rewarding it is to break the zoning. Part of what makes Steve so strong is that he's able to punish approaches very well, so his opponents aren't incentivised to approach him either.
@@paulakroy2635One of the polarizing things in ultimate is that there are characters who love to camp and there are characters who you must camp. Kazuya is probably the most blatant example. Kazuya has fairly consistent touch of death combos, 0 to death. He has very consistent 0 to 60+ combos that can be followed by his super armor-kill-move-command-grab. The logical counterplay to Kazuya is to never risk interaction. Play slow, hit him once, don’t do any combos that aren’t 100% frame tight. Kazuya is the most competitively viable “must camp” character but he’s not the only one. Incineroar, Jigglypuff, Little Mac, and Luigi are all characters that are best beaten by setting up a tent and not letting them touch you ever. It ends up being a pretty uninteresting match overall because it’s either dictated by someone dying in 1 combo or someone dying by a thousand cuts.
Viewers are stupid though… I mean it they don’t know anything and just want to see unga bunga stop playing neutral do the thing! Hype hype yoyoyoyoyo.. catering to the viewer experience is silly IMO. even the commentators usually just scream because they literally know nothing. Correcting them in my head all the time. No That’s not what happened there etc etc…
No hate to mintjoy but having 90% of the video just be an extremely surface level timeline of the smash series and them listing their personal opinion on the dlc characters doesnt make much of a compelling video, the only reason i kept watching was bc of your commentary which actually felt like it gave some proper insight that was otherwise severely lacking
You and PKBeats, more casual-competitive content creators, are the ONLY smash content creators I watch primarily because I am not a die-hard competitor just a game I find interesting. I find it smart to acknowledge your audience like that.
I’m literally the greatest casual in the world (lol) because I got completely dragged into competitive but I like it and kill at it with ease. Only ever went to one local and came in third. I guess this group of college guys would come in and dick on everyone and we’re even using their off characters and I pressed stomped a dude and he even asked if he could use his main and I said of course and still won. Don’t recall what I lost to. They were also surprised I was doing it with falco.. who I only like in the games everyone else doesn’t hah
The shutdown of smash world tour and panda/panda cup was really sad. Several of my favorite pros were signed by panda (esam, Marss, WaDi, Coney), and the scene as a whole just felt like it was in shambles. Panda's youtube channel had a lot of fun content as well, and it's something you just dont see anymore. Personally, I had discovered Smash Bros right around the time the pandemic hit, and found the competitive scene pretty soon after through Hungrybox. Over the next couple years, tournaments came back, and I even attended a major (Low Tide City). I got to meet some of my favorite players, and was super invested in the scene when the two circuits disappeared. I remember being glued to twitter to keep up with all the things that were going on, and just feeling pretty bleh about all of it. Now, I still keep up with Marss and Zackray, and will watch various sets if they seem interesting. But for me, there just isn't much wind in the sails anymore...
I quit Smash for about half a year, during the 4 horseman era ( Sparg0's Cloud, Acola's Steve, Sonix's Sonic, Miya's G&W ) That's the low point for me, every top 8 looks the same, and unlike the 5 Gods of Melee who brings a different flavor to the table, these 4 bring about the same play style, either spam your safest move till you win, or stall till time runs out
Not a great sign for the original video that I guessed the creator's explanation for the downfall in the first ten seconds, but 75% of the video was summary until it finally got to the point.
From a writing perspective I can't blame him. It does sound fun to wtite about the game you love from the start to the end. Granted if people found this approach clickbaity but I can't blame them.
Lol yeah, even though I'm a big fan of the "Oops all Fire Emblem" meme. saying it started there was a bit silly, even if all the FE characters felt like shitty cookie cutter copies of eachother despite there being nearly a dozen of them.
The reason the grinch link was so “believable” is because the image of the leaked banner was next to a bunch of promotional material for the at the time upcoming illumination “grinch” movie. This promotional material (cardboard cutout of a never before seen grinch render, for example) had not been seen before but I think shortly after it got officially used. This led people to believe this person also somehow had intel on smash ultimate.
Thank you so much for your reaction! This was an absolute treat to look back and hear your persepective on! Looking back, I will admit there's definitely some things I could have polished. A lot of the things I've said were a combination of my personal experiences and the overall sentiment amongst other players in the community. Of course a lot of what I said especially in regards to the actual downfall may not be accurate to some, but in the end it's all just a matter of perspective. This was just a topic I've wanted to tackle for a very long time, so I don't have any regrets making that video. If anything, I'm very happy to see even more people tuning in, and would love to hear everyone's thoughts on the matter! Thank you so much for reaching out and I'll be sure to create even more polished Smash related vids in the future!
Thanks again for coming onboard! Don't sweat the omissions too much, I've been professionally neck-deep in Smash for half a decade and can nitpick coverage more than most haha, overall it was a great effort and I enjoyed watching it!
There are two big things I would work on if I were you; 1) Your 'accountability' is quite low. You said a lot of things that you didn't support. Like, when you said 2018's teasers made the community grow 'exponentially'...if you're going to say shit like that, you NEED to justify it. The reaction for the average listener when they hear hyperbole like that, where you don't even TRY to justify it, is to say "this MuntJoyPictures guy plays fast and loose with the truth and doesn't really give a shit about making sure the things he says to his audience are correct." It's a bad look, and it isn't necessary. Just be honest that it's your personal experience. "Let me tell you, I was in the community at the time and these teasers WORKED. The community was HYPED." Secondly, I'd run your scripts through a grammar checker before recording. This is a smaller thing, it won't bother so many, but you have a distinctly unusual way of expressing yourself that is sometimes charming but often confusing. You have little instances of dropping words, using the wrong word, and words in the wrong order in (literally) every second sentence. Now, I'd never correct a friend's grammar if he was just chatting with me, but you're putting out this video on to the internet; getting that stuff wrong feels like a distinct lack of polish, you know? Most word processors would tell you when you messed up and would let you create a script that flows better and has fewer 'snags' the listener can catch on. I hate to be negative, so I'll end with telling you your editing was by far the most polished part of your video, and that's WAY harder to improve on than the script stuff. I think you have all the skills you need to really be a fun and persuasive communicator if you work on your accountability and expression. Have fun creating!
@@conorkelleher2571 I don't agree and this is coming from someone who works in the content creation space. Yes saying the community grew exponentially is hyperbole but it's still figuratively true, the larger install base of the switch substantially grew the fanbase. I will agree that the script does have areas where it lacked polish. A 2nd opinion would've benefited it but I didn't find myself to be that annoyed by that either. TH-camrs aren't always professionals, they come from different walks of life and it's understandable that not everyone is going to have perfect diction. That's a skill that develops the more you write and the more you work on things. (And even then I don't think it's all that important to making a video compelling.)
@@conorkelleher2571 "I hate to be negative" Proceeds to write multiple paragraphs of negativity but only a couple sentences of positivity lmao. Trust me, nobody but you cares about those "issues." Just feels pretentious tbh
@skaionex Thanks for the input! If I could offer some constructive criticism, your comment would have more of a point to it if you had supported what you said in any way. Right now, it looks like you have some negative self-perception issues and get irrationally angry when you see someone confidently expressing themselves in a way that triggers your feelings of inadequacy. But those feelings needn't control you; you are a valid and clever person who could overcome anything if you put your mind to it.
40% of the big players being predators definitely didn’t help with Ultimate’s reputation *cough cough* CinniPie, Nairo, Keitaro, MrWizard, list goes on and on… Then there’s Leffen just being Leffen
i recently thought about buying another copy of ssbu to try comp again along with roa2. i came across the banned players registry and safe to say i am a proud roa enjoyer…
Honestly, moving away from one side of the Smash scene (The more competitive side) and taking a more casual approach to it really helped me maintain my love for the game. Ultimate has everything I love about Smash, with some of my favourite games of all time being represented (Metal Gear, Tekken, More Xenoblade, etc). I can definitely see how someone who isn’t as into games as a whole like I am being more disappointed by Ultimate as times gone on, but as someone who sees gaming as the ultimate art form, I find Ultimate to be a phenomenal celebration of that art
The new way they did final smashes and replacing badges with spirits are the only serious “casual” disappointment I had with the game. I wish I knew some ppl who played goofy
7:38 So the origin of the leak was there was supposedly this guy that worked at this advertisement company that had access to a bunch of different media marketing assets. He was claiming to have access to the full Ultimate Mural that showed off all those characters, which didn’t really have any obvious origin/editing to the art. One of the assets people noticed in the back though were these ads for the Illumination Grinch movie that had not been released to the general public at that time, making it more believable this person worked at the advertising firm (Hence the “Grinch” leak). There is still not a clear answer as to how the fake mural was made or how this person had access to these marketing assets. Very surreal to say the least 😅
The reason so many people bought into the Grinch leak was because the leaker at the time released some screenshots from the upcoming illumination grinch movie alongside the smash leaks, and it was such an arbitrary thing to include that people thought it could’ve been legitimate
The main thing was that it included a render from the Gringe movie that was unreleased yet, everything was just lining up to looking very similar to the original Smash 3DS leaked that leaked the entire roster before launch
Another factor for Byleth was that they had THE WORST trailer of any Smash character. Character immediately revealed. A LOT of time was spent talking (especially from Sothis). And a dual reveal....for the Female Byleth....which was already expected. It was a BAAAAAD trailer
Honestly the video covered was pretty bad ngl. It just covered the surface level stuff like the hype cycles and a few of the controversies in little detail. And hell, they didn't even finish their thought about FP2 and the future of the game beyond the basics. Was expecting them to go into more detail like the Panda Cup debacle. Especially if they named it the *Downfall* of Ultimate. I appreciate your commentary basically fixed it by giving more insight
To be honest, i think the "fall off" just happened, because we are at the end of the patches, with no future DLC to come A lot of the excitement around smash came from who would be next, what DLC characters would come out? In short, the game just stopped getting content, so it got way less mainstream coverage, so now only the most devoted of players are holding onto it Also, Smash became mainstream at Brawl, not Melee. Melee may have been the breakthrough to get it really rolling, but it was Brawl and Sm4sh that got it into the main stream You could liken it to Souls where 64 is like the Demon Souls, the experimental game that catvhes on and gains a cult following, with the follow up, Melee and Dark Souls being what made them popular but still quite niche games, before Brawl/Sm4sh and Bloodborne/DS3 catapult it into mainstream with Ultimate/Elden Ring firmly cementing it as hyper popular and mainstream
I really wish that Ultimate got just a few more balance patches before they ended support. Even small nerfs to Steve and Kazuya and buffs to weaker characters would've gone a long way.
@@silvergalaxia8538 It's egregious at how quickly they cut support. Considering games like T7 and SF5 got support well beyond the 5 years Ultimate had.
@@Krona-fb4dn kinda considering it, but DS2 is just shit, and i didn't want to taint brawl with that comparison, but in a way, it fills the same place of being a radical departure of what made the previous game great to the detriment of every following entry
I don’t think Smash Ultimate is dying, or dead because of any event. I think it’s been 6 years since the game released and 4 since the last major update. The game’s old at this point. We can take Minecraft as an example platter for this. By its 6th year we had the World of Color Update and “Discovery” Update. Neither of which did much of anything. The next update was Update Aquatic a year later. Smash is in a lull, not because of 2020, or because of SWT/Panda Cup being shut down, or because of Steve, Kazuya, and Min Min. It’s because it’s 6 years old and the passage of time is not always kind. We expect our games to last forever, it was a big deal when Minecraft and TF2 made it to 10 years with support. TF2 and Minecraft have had their rutts too, this is fairly normal. Hell, TF2’s still in its rutt. But still spikes whenever new stuff gets added in. We just gotta cruise and work at what we got to try and welcome a new spike whenever one comes.
The only issue with that is, unlike TF2 or Minecraft, Ult has not received any patches the past few years and won't receive anymore moving forward. We're stuck in a meta where interacting as little as possible and maximizing what little advantage state you get ahold of is the name of the game. It's still a meta that requires skill and lots of patience but for a casual audience it's boring to watch and not the most fun to get into. If Ult continued to get patches after Sora we would probably be in a much more positive spot. Online, Ult's buffering system making most interesting tech impractical (unless you're Steve), and a barebones training mode that needs mods to be up to par with other fgs doesn't help either. Literally the only thing that's going to help this game is well... another new game... that will hopefully end up in a healthier meta
7:29 the grinch wasn’t the name of the leaker, but the leak. Named after the fact whoever was leaking it had access to some print production company’s assets, including posters for that Illumination Studios Grinch movie that was coming out around that time. They were someone who had what was more than likely a real version of the “everyone is here” banner that they personally edited, drew in, and printed shadow, Isaac, etc. into. They theoretically had the credentials to have that banner of the real roster poster, and the (very blurry but still extremely good) mock-up of the poster looked real enough for many people.
The Grinch leak didn't actually come from someone called "the Grinch" it was from someone who was working at a print shop making promotional prints for games and films at the time. One of the movies being the, at the time, new 3D animated Grinch film. And that person also happened to have a promotional banner for Smash Ultimate, that was completely fake and photoshopped. But it LOOKED real
Well yeah when a game is 6 years old and counting, of course it stops being mainstream... The fact that we're watching this video in the first place implies that its not as "dead" as everyone acts like it is.
Smash Ultimate had its highs and lows, which were outlined in this video. But to imply that the game had a "downfall" like practically every single live service disaster of a game experiences these days is just baseless hyperbole. You can hate the inclusions or movesets of certain characters, but that doesn't automatically paint the game as some sort of failure. Sure, the competitive scene has shrunk and dwindled from how big it used to be, but it's not gone entirely. Not to mention how many casual fans still get together regularly to play it. To me, calling it a downfall implies Smash Ultimate experienced a dramatic drop in quality overnight or some controversy from the developer side took place and now absolutely no one touches the game as a result. That's not what happened. Even the shit that went down with the outed Smash players is not the game's or the dev team's fault. It would be far more accurate to say that Smash Ultimate has experienced a gradual decline, rather than an outright downfall. But that is simply due to the fact that the game is six years old, it has stopped getting new content and patches, and most casual gamers have simply moved on to other, newer games. That's not bad, it's inevitable. The hype cycle will kick back into full swing again the milisecond a new Smash game is announced or even teased for the Switch's successor. Besides, Smash Ultimate is the best-selling fighting game of all-time. If a game that sells that well can have a downfall, then most games WISH they could have a downfall like that.
It is crazy how Joker went from being viewed as a broken DLC inclusion, to now where it feels like he NEEDS Arsen to keep up with base-roster characters at higher levels of play
I feel like MockRock's commentary saved this video, I think that MintJoy Picture's video is _very_ surface level and you probably wouldn't learn much on its own, but MockRock's experience did help lift it up.
28:28 still one of the deepest scars that I've gone from Nintendo honestly. A tournament that was supposed to be one of the biggest of them all along with being in the same exact city that I was heading back home to in San Antonio to then hear one day less than 2 weeks from the event that they were going to shut the tournament down. I had friends from my college that were planning to head in and compete along with just knowing how many players are going to be there to then just have it all shut down because of Nintendo partnered with Panda and they didn't want to have any other big tournaments being held without them. I cannot believe the memories and matches we could have seen got burnt instantly away due to just this greediness and how everything was perfectly lined up to then never happen it truly disappoints me to this day.
I've had to learn something over the course of Ultimate, and it's that I love Smash more as a casual than a diehard competitor. I never participated in any major tournaments but I remember when I was really interested in taking the game seriously. However, with online being my only source of "serious" training due to the limitations of being a high schooler with no job, I grew frustrated easily due to goofy online shenanigans (didn't help that I was mainly playing Ganondorf but who cares, he's fun to me dammit). Then the pandemic hit and the 2020 purge and fans getting super outraged over fictional characters really got to me. I seriously considered no longer sticking around after growing up with Brawl and 4, but then I remembered all of the good times I had playing casually. The most soul from really any multiplayer experience comes from the parties you play it with, and it was those individuals who didn't care if the last guy was Master Chief or Sora, or who was at the top of the rankings. Smash is best to me when I'm watching the chaos unfold as 8 of us beat the crap out of each other with Home-run Bats and unleash Final Smashes and shout "Hey, so-and-so's still got 3 stocks!" That's not to downplay the people who have spent hundreds or even thousands of hours perfecting their gameplay; they're really talented individuals, but the frustrations went away when I stopped taking it super seriously. Time definitely is a huge factor considering we're 3 years out from Sora's release and almost 6 years out from the base game's release, and more people are interested in what happens next considering the next Nintendo console will drop soon. We've also seen a ton of competitors come and go, like the Nick games, MultiVersus and Rivals 2 just dropped. Those games each have their own merits but trying to stack up to a 25 year legacy is an insane task for any game to take on. There's a reason that guys like Alpharad and Coney have branched out their content from being exclusively Smash. I look forward to the future of this series, I still love it dearly, and oh my God if people really complained about Steve being for cringe kiddos imagine the shitstorm that would transpire if we saw Fortnite or Among Us in the DLC cycle. Alright, paragraph over, enjoy yourselves reader!
7:54 Wow he made the narrative choice to make an entirely black screen at this point. This is a metaphor for how he is screaming into the void and Smash fans will absolutely believe when someone reveals a low quality AI generated render of Goku punching Genos in Smash for the next hype cycle. Bravo, MockRock.
The grinch leak wasn't called that because of the leaker's name, it was a picture where somebody had the completed smash ultimate banner on their fridge, and people identifying (or trying to) characters on it foound several that were desperately hoped for, and since it looked like an accident, and people LOVE to be in denial about Geno, lots of people believed it. (I think the grinch was also a sticker on his fridge, where the name came from, and of course some people took that as a "hint")
yeah it actually showed a later-released promotional banner for the grinch movie which was why people believed it; it's likely that the "leaker" just slapped a fake smash ultimate banner on the wall next to the actual ad at the company
the grinch leak wasn't a guy named the grinch leaking characters. it was a forged advertisement containing the "finished everyone is here" banner art. the reason it was called that was because there was a printed grinch ad in the background
Well it is also awkward because this video only covers US numbers whereas smash is bigger than ever in Japan with regular majors over 300 participants and super majors guaranteed over 1000 participants. It really only rose over there.
I find it funny how I can watch this guy talk about competitive Smash for hours, and yet the one time I tried to watch an actual set, I had it on for 5 minutes before I shut it off because I was bored. Animation tier lists, top 10s about random topics, individual technique breakdowns, I find these interesting. Watching an actual competitive match felt like I was just watching 2 hyperactive hummingbirds dancing back and forth. It was boring as all hell.
The reason the Grinch Leak was so believed was actually because of a lot of real-world coincidences. In the background of the leak, they could see some Grinch movie promotional material, hence where the name comes from. People eventually found the exact company where this had been printed, and what do you know? They had a list of companies they had worked with previously, and Bandai Namco was displayed front and center. BN are the developers of SSBU. Additionally, the company actually had a now-deleted introduction video on their page, and people speculated that Nintendo had asked them to shut it down. There’s a bunch of other things that I won’t get into here, point is, the Grinch leak was (accidentally) very credible, plus people were on heavy copium with this being the “last” direct.
Commenting before I watch: this just seems like an overdramatic video essay made by a youtuber just trying to find his footing. On the topic of the Grinch leak, it was believed because the picture of the poster feat the Ultimate roster was taken alongside an unreleased Grinch movie poster. So people believed the leaker to work at a poster making company. Commenting after I watch: yep I think I was right on my assumptions, a very surface level look at Ultimate's lifecycle that didn't really delve into how much of "downfall" Ultimate expereinced.
"everyone likes it" the casual audience is dead due to the game having no updates, content or balance wise, and the comp community doesnt like it bc they remember how much better the game used to be pre fighters pass 2
I think blaming fighters pass 2 for Ultimate’s competitive unhealthiness is naive at best if not just willfully ignorant. Sonic and Game & Watch are base roster characters. Hell, the best Sonic player can’t win a major and yet he easily stomps every Steve player in his path. I see so many people rushing to the defense of these characters and I’m convinced it’s just a vain effort to protect this forced narrative of the big bad DLC ruining the otherwise utopian balance of Smash Ultimate. It’s nonsense and I absolutely despise both its deceitfulness and how it has led to Steve players being wrongfully disparaged and harassed over the years. I mean for fuck’s sake, Steve can’t even win a major without Acola, who has already more than proven himself a top player without using Steve. Nevertheless, people will continue to bitch and complain for as long as the game is around. No matter how many low tiers make huge runs or how many players make monumental rises through the ranks, people will whine that their character isn’t good enough or the game is unfair until the heat death of the universe. If you ask me, that’s the real reason Smash Ultimate is “dying.”
if I recall correctly, the grinch leaker was a person who allegedly worked in some poster factory and in their fake leak they posted a picture with a fake version the ultimate mural, and I think an real poster for the at the time upcoming grinch movie. I think the thought for believing the leak was if they had classified promotional graphics for one poster, than the mural was also accurate
As a casual player today, I’m still having a lot of fun with ultimate despite everything that’s been going on because in my opinion the online isn’t that bad if the two players involved have a good connection. I’ve been having some Solid games with it with my Internet. Plus casually it still has an impact on many people. myself included who I’ve been learning about many game franchises. I’ve been trying to play through everyone’s home series and I’ve been enjoying most of them.
Smash was the reason my current friend group exists so i’ll always thank it for that. As for the game itself I haven’t seriously pitched time into it in over 3 years.
I used to adore Ultiamte and think it was incredible, and it was my favorite game for a really long time And then I played more fighting games and realized how many more fighting games I like then Ultimate (GGST, SF6, and MC3 are the main ones) Still love Ultimate but it’s worn on me a bit, doesn’t mean I’ll cherish the memories and friends it’s given me and less though
@@Mike-di3moYou’re using the word objectively very recklessly there. For one, I don’t think Ultimate is all that comparable to a standard fighter because their gameplay is very different in nature. Comparing ultimate to Rivals or Melee is a far fairer comparison because their gameplay elements and game design are more similar in nature. I love Rivals 1 and Ultimate, and I also adore Skullgirls. I enjoy them for different reasons. With that being said, they’re absolutely not objectively worse. They’re not comparable in terms of gameplay. You could say that art direction, animation, music, characater design, monetization, online functionality, etc, can be compared, but core gameplay and game design isn’t similar enough in nature to call one better or worse. Also, the use of the word objectively is absolutely unwarranted when there’s nothing objective about that. You’ve commented a very opinionated statement. In no way is that objective. You can dislike the main genre of fighting games and prefer the subsection that is platform fighters, but that doesn’t imply any level of objectivity towards their inherent value or quality as games.
@@ElariaFlori Yeah your right, but I feel like more people like smash I general because of the characters and other stuff like that, that why I feel like smash is objectively better.
Smash 64 not a mainline Smash game? Nobody knew who Terry was? There are some very questionable takes in this video. I don’t agree with the basic premise. Ultimate is a good game and is still very popular. Every game’s popularity fades with time, and Ultimate is extremely popular for a game that released 6 years ago. The section of the video about Nintendo’s intervention is the only part that I think holds much water, but somehow the Panda controversy was left out
I always felt like the hate for Byleth was overblown. I get that the amount of Fire Emblem characters in Smash is disproportionate to its significance as a Nintendo IP, especially since it now outnumbers Legend of Zelda 4 to 3 (even moreso if you don't want to consider the two extra Links), but I never viewed that as Byleth's fault. It made sense to want FE's most recent title, especially given that Three Houses, even to this day, is one of the highest regarded FE titles, and as far as I'm aware, there's no issues with Byleth the Smash fighter like there are with some other DLC characters. Byleth just so happened to be the most recent one, so they ended up taking the brunt of the anger; I would sooner turn my ire towards characters like Chrom who ballooned the FE count without really adding anything to the game beyond rounding out the Awakening trio, which didn't feel like a necessary achievement. At least Byleth felt a little fresh and like there was a purpose to them being there.
I think Joker was to me the character that broke the fanbase, in terms of expectations. Before third parties had some connection to Nintendo, while Joker shifted the conversation to gaming celebration as a whole. It lowkey shifted the identity of the cast.
Honestly, I’d argue that the subsequent addition of Min Min was a worse call for the roster than adding Byleth alone was. Where Byleth is from a long and storied franchise with a massive JP fan base AND what is statistically the most successful game of their series, Min Min is a new IP character from a game that wasn’t received particularly well and was a frequently predicted character. For a lot of people I know who aren’t into FE, these are considered the two worst additions and I think putting them back to back was a real gut-punch for a lot of players
It was a combination of fire emblem being entirely oversaturated in smash(seriously the series has a comparable amount of reps to fcking MARIO and POKEMON), byleth's trailer being frankly, shit, and also incredibly mistimed as the finale to FP1, with also just the hype that was drummed up about the reveal before we knew what it was making the crash down to "It's just the protag from the new fire emblem" even more severe
@@keithflippers4429because mario and pokemon are nintendo's two biggest franchises whereas Fire emblem has equal amounts of rep for being a niche series at best, that almost died out completely if not for the miracle of Awakening
The grinch leak was the picture that was posted of the poster of the full roster. It was extremely believable because it was a blurry image on a wall in a video as he panned the camera past it. People paused the video and deblurred it and found characters on there for the base roster (I remember banjo was one of them). It was referred to as the grinch leak because of being posted near Christmas I believe
As a Smash 4 fan who was really disappointed at the lack of things to do in Smash Ultimate, I was a long-time critic of the game for a really long time, even though I tried to accept this game's core identity, I still feel cheated that I won't be able to play with any of the earlier Smash games' gamemodes, characters, or anything else they had and that I, being a Nintendo customer stuck on the Switch and Wii Us and other consoles becoming the rarity that they are, feel cheated and scammed a bit by Ultimate, especially since the entire fanbase had no idea what kind of Smash Brothers game Ultimate was going to turn out to be. Though early on, I REMEMBER being caught up in the hype, and I definitely contributed quite a bit to it, but eventually, I just thought everyone was missing the point of what Smash Ultimate needed and eventually just drifted away from the discussion because I thought nobody understood what Smash Bros truly needed, that I was becoming the sole voice of reason and nobody wanted to listen to me. I used to be just as focused on the characters as everyone else, but I eventually realized that the mentality around character inclusions was getting unrealistic, unhealthy, and borderline tribal among fans, and even when it wasn't, it felt like the actual things we could be putting the characters in were getting overlooked for their inclusion. The game we were imagining with all of our characters was slowly just becoming a museum more than the game we grew up with. That genuinely feels like... we lost the plot somewhere along the line.
The tournament collapse is a massive omission and it’s very strange that it wasn’t in the video to begin with. Like, that was huge. But I agree “Time” is the real answer and it’s wild these days a lot of people think things are going poorly a game is sucking because they’re not forever games. Nothing is meant to last forever, with the exception of Melee because the Melee people are just insane. Hype doesn’t last forever, interest doesn’t last forever, and people need to be more okay with that. Sometimes you’ve just had your fill of enjoyment and you e worn yourself out on the fun. It’s that simple, but it doesn’t take away from the joy you had before.
I think this video made some very solid points (COVID, Nintendo’s threats, online not being an ideal playing experience, the purge), and since this video comes from a smaller creator that mainly makes 10-20 minute videos, it’s understandable why some parts were glossed over. That being said, I do wish the video was longer to be a more comprehensive look on the game and expanded on a few of the bigger points made, such as what you mentioned with what FP2 did to the game causing discontent, a big amount of well known tournament groups disbanding due to costs, the whole SWT/Panda fiasco, and the biggest one of all: time. I also feel like the tournament guidelines didn’t really affect anything? Still feels like most tournaments went on as normal.
The reason why people bought so much into the Grinch leak was because, through a combination of pure coincidence and confirmation bias, it seemed like a whole lot of stuff was adding up to it being real. I'll be honest, I was a believer. I've definitely learned my lesson since then and tend to be much more cautious about leaks. I did end up getting Banjo in the end though.
I think saying that Ultimate "ended" is an over exaggeration. I would also say Rivals 2 is a hit too, it always felt like most competitors had this abusive relationship with Nintendo, for some weird reason every other publisher kept butchering their platform fighters so competitors had to remain on Smash but they were always just waiting for a chance to dump Nintendo. Rivals 2 so far seems to be exactly that. I think the only thing that can stop Rivals 2 now is a Smash 6 announcement.
smash was always going to die off slightly bc it was abandonded by nintendo, no only no content patches but not even any balance patches but the main thing thats also made the community more jaded towards the game is the complete mess that is DLC pass 2
The best part of smash ultimate was just the pure respect and homage to all the 3rd party series. Terry, Belmonts, and Joker trailers are just oozing so much love to their creators. I don't think we'll ever get that much care and respect to gaming culture again honestly.
I absolutely agree with your final point about Smash World Tour. That, coupled with the Smash purge really soured me on the community and how constantly naive everyone is. Like, everyone wanted Smash to be a big, serious, mature thing but there was just so many other things that no one wanted to take responsibility for improving and then all the backstabbing going on with the world tour stuff. Just reminded me that whenever money is on the line, trying to be good and decent just goes out the window. Frustrating to witness all that. I think MintJoy's video isn't fully complete, honestly. It def needed a little more research and maybe a little more time to cover how complex the whole thing is.
The lighter note being Min Min got me so good. Every time I see her I just remember that clip somebody made of the Smash announcer just going ham with "FUCKING MIN MIN" then her just bodying people from the next ZIP code over.
i remember buying a couple snacks at a gas station for the 5th dlc fighter announcement and sitting down. i saw that it was a fire emblem character, and just sighed and turned off the video half-way through i dont really mind anymore, but i still dont understand why fire emblem specifically got so many characters in smash lol
In my opinion, the downfall of Smash really came from the lack of EOL balancing patches for different characters, specifically Steve, Kazuya, and Luigi IMO. Unlike Melee, where some people can do surprising things with lower or mid-tier characters, Ultimate’s meta is extremely stale. I just see the same strats day and day out; I know a lot of combos players tend to use are called “bread and butter” for a reason, but if you eat bread and butter for long enough you get sick of it.
Love the vids, Mock. I have a suggestion for some videos. Build the best Pokémon character cherry-picking moveset from existing Pokémon characters then once complete, which actual Pokémon would it be? Then, the same concept but Fire emblem character.
It was never going to last forever, but I still love the game. Honestly I've been looking for a chill community to play with. I'm not really interested in 'competitive' Smashing anymore. I just don't have the reflexes I used to, but that's all anyone ever seems to want to do. I played some games with a few old friends the other day and we did it all wrong. Items, 4v4 free for all... even turned on hazards here and there. It was the most fun I've had playing a game in a good long while, but getting my friends together to play is proving challenging, trying to find a community who enjoys this kind of Smashing is like searching out the unicorn. Though even if I do manage to find one, I doubt I'll be able to keep up with them anymore. I'm just not as good as I used to be.
I originally got into Ultimate because of Little Z, but eventually I found out about Melee. While Ultimate had horrible online, Melee got Slippi rollback net code. While Ultimate got predators exposed, Melee’s community stayed the same. While Ultimate started hating on Steve and Kazuya, mid tier heros started to emerge in Melee. It felt very natural to move to Melee so I lost interest in Ultimate.
my experience... was a downward spiral. the last few times i played it before i quit, it just wasn't fun anymore. smash ultimate is a can of worms and might actually be the last smash game i play. I'm just so done.
I enjoy playing Smash Ultimate, but as a spectator experience it just doesn't hold a candle to Melee. I tried to follow competitive Ultimate, but gave up on it relatively quickly b/c it just wasn't very interesting. I still watch Melee tournaments all the time.
One if the big issues going between multiversus and ultimate is nair I love the fact you just have a neutral attack button instead of a second attack button so you can move more freely with a nair instead of trying to avoid a fair or bair
Man, this is a heavy topic, but start to end o’ve loved ultimate, but I don’t feel qualified to talk as much as im not a heavy competitive player, hell, i’ve never been to a tournament, but I hope that my thoughts aren’t useless
im really surprised that the Panda Cup canibalizing Smash World Tour wasnt on here. As both of those circuits were huge and smash would be way better off, if we had even one of them
The people I know who actually like smash today I can fit on half of one hand. When it was being updated and was fresh that number would probably need both hands. However I strongly disapprove of the direction of this game, the direction of the developers. SSBU just doesn't have good gameplay, tournaments are exciting but that's about it - I just like competition.
Yeah I think the first major step of the "downfall" was the 2020 purge; and the second was the SWT/Panda debacle. Nothing has compared to those. And the first poisoned it for the casual onlooker, while the second poisoned it for the competitive scene. Honourable mention to Steve and Kazuya for also slightly ruining the game.
In order for a game to stay relevant, it needs to give people a reason to still care about it after they've seen all it has to offer. Now that DLC is over, Smash Ultimate has shown us everything it has to offer, and once you've acknowledged the long list of well known names, there's very little worth discussing aside from what the developers sacrificed to make that list. There's simply not much to go back to the game for aside from competition. This is why any Smash 6 we get needs moveset overhauls and a substantial story mode, because fueling the hype with DLC is not healthy compared to accurately representing and building off of what these characters mean to people, imo.
My hot take is that the only thing ultimate did better than 4 was have more ppl. Final smashes are stupid now, some of the animations actually seem lazier, spirits are 100% worse than badges those were actually fun sometimes, and frankly thanks to the admittedly much appreciated “safe stages” for competitive ended up backfiring because since it can’t just be toggled we needed up with more stages than ever with no more competitive ones than usual.. probably less. Also Ridley should have been a dlc character so it felt like ANY love was put in him Edit: and nerfed bayo
24:00 - I think to call Tekken "quite a big fighting game" is a bit of an understatement, Tekken 3 had ridiculous numbers for the era it released in and Tekken 7 ended up creeping to 10 million in sales by the end of its lifespan, and that's just home releases which ignore its relevance in the arcade scene. Obviously part of this is anecdotal but between even the casual videogame enjoyers who don't seem to know or care about anything Nintendo related, they do always seem to know Tekken. That's an audience that would otherwise not be captured by Smash at all unless the inclusion were something a little more out there, like a Crash Bandicoot. But in a time where Crash is effectively dormant, Kazuya (alongside Pac-Man, who'd been in for a while but captures a wholly different, older audience) is effectively the Sony representative of the lot given Tekken's history on Sony platforms.
Interesting video. I found your commentary amusing. Me? I like Ultimate. It's a game that I easily sunk several hundred hours into since buying it in 2019. However, it's not my favorite Smash game. I feel like it needs more stuff to do in single player beyond Classic Mode and VS. matches. I appreciate what you said about Smash 4's art style. Its colorful, cartoony aesthetic goes a long way in keeping it my favorite Super Smash Bros. game. I do feel bad about all the nonsense with the competitive scene, though. Now, I don't play Smash all that seriously, but there are some high-level people I do follow. Fortunately, they seem to be doing alright in their own lives. It could be possible that the honeymoon phase has passed with Ultimate amd people are more aware of its shortcomings now compared to 2019. I'm just spitballing here... Either way, this is a good video.
If anything is killing it these days, it's that net code. I still think it's amazing but after playing Guilty Gear Strive, Nick Smash and especially Rivals of Aether 2, it just feels impossible to get back into. I really hope the next game has it. It really needs it.
For me it's pretty simple: After Fighters Pass 2 failed to live up to pass 1 (albeit with generally more hype reveals) the only thing left for Ultimate was it's fanbase. A loyal and hardworking group of people Nintendo promptly stomped on just for shits n' giggles. Ever since than the community has been clinging on to the very few things it can get away with at large. Funny to think Smash 4 never had this problem as the mouth frothing property goblins at Nintendo needed a new smash asap
I personally believe that Smash didnt die it just lost popularity. A lot of people moved on from ultimate, whether it be from quitting or people like me moving on to other fighting games. A lot of casuals found new games or just play smash once in a blue moon. Ultimate hasnt died but it isnt as popular as it was. Idk if this makes sense and I am willing to explain more or try to clarify if people want clarity
TF2 is another game that has largely remained beloved past the end of its content cycle, issues with bots notwithstanding as people understand that to be a separate issue from the game itself
I kinda understand. I still love smash bros but for both smash 4 and ultimate my enjoyment of the game dramaticly decreassed after dlc fighters were added becuase there usually horribly balanced. Ulitimate wasnt nearly as bad as smash 4 but its still pretty annoying Steve isnt fun to play against at all. even just in a fairly casual setting he still gets spammed. So just like causally trying to have fun playing online just ends up be frustrating
Back when i was playing smash constantly and hadn't touched three houses i thought byleth was a waste of a character slot, now that i've played three houses i realized byleth is an even bigger waste of a character slot than i thought, because what the hell do you mean byleth can be a brawling magician/healer with time rewing powers and none of that got represented? and no god shattering star, absolute horrible inclusion all around
And it's a truly deserving downfall. Ultimate has always been a garbage competitive game since launch. Terrible buffer system, not being able to turn on or off easier short hops, characters that needed fixing and still not fixed, badly designed characters that lead to 99% of matchups in the game feeling extremely campy (made worse with DLC), Steve, etc. Casually it's fine I guess, but I don't really care for that side to begin with. But when my main enjoyment with the game comes from the competitive aspect of it and it mainly sucks, yeah I don't blame some top players for switching to other games like Street Fighter 6. Ultimate is what truly killed my love for the series and it's a damn shame, bc this game truly taught me that as long as Sakurai is directing this series, he will do anything to make the game as casually friendly as possible (which is definitely smart from a business standpoint) and punishing the competitive and hardcore fans of the series by introducing awful and infuriating competitive mechanics that ruins the fun of competitive play (tripping in Brawl, rage in Smash 4 and the general clunkiness of Ultimate due to the awful buffer system and higher input delay). If I want to play Smash now, I will stick to games like Melee, Project + and Smash Remix which are more fun experiences than the dissapointment and garbage game that is Smash Ultimate (more like Trash Ultimate).
For me, smash ultimate is the best game in the series and I hate that it is. In my eyes, what i loved about smash was sacrificed to 2 gods, one of competitive play and the other being style. Casually, this game is the worst for playing. The items are almost exclusively "play for me" mechanics than an advantage to shake up gameplay, and the ones that aren't only exist to be thrown (rip bat) and the whole game feels like a big cutscene that looks like smash. World of light doesn't encourage me to do more than play normal smash but with the right sticker equipped. And every character feels like a button masher, because they kinda have to be to be competitive. I've never cared for competitive, and I"m fine and happy that people can enjoy it that way. But when the first DLC was worthless ol' joker, I had a gut feeling that smash wasn't for me any more. And I was right. I moved on to Rivals 1 and 2 because at least they're fun competitively. Unlike smash, which use to be my party game, but now is a less good competitive one.
competitive smash players gotta know this if they forgot. this is a party fighting game, NOT competitive on purpose. its like trying to make mario party competitive.
Thanks for watching everyone, and thanks to MintJoy Pictures for being onboard with this video idea! I've linked the original below and I cut a lot of its original runtime down in editing, if you want a more fleshed out version and/or liked what you saw please go show them some love on my behalf.
Original video: th-cam.com/video/SoK5eQROgtc/w-d-xo.htmlsi=xRYALtIHvQ7OQ18F
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Awesome Smash video!
Umm, when I fall downwards in smash it's called a "K.O." but okay.
i hate you for this
i love you for this
i am indifferent to you for this
i goon to you for this
i
To reuse the same comment I left on that video:
People don't seem to recognize they're in the Old Married Couple phase with Smash, which leads to them hyper focusing on the negatives and finding new problems they didn't have before.
1:06
On track there.
I had old couple syndrome the second Joker came out. I already knew 5.99 was back and sadly it got worse.
im in the regret for what could’ve been phase with ultimate. it’s like i know we had plenty of tourneys and ranking and ups and downs but i still feel like we missed a major chunk of time. Which I guess we did with covid. But idk it feels like the story still isn’t complete and won’t be even when the new smash gets announced
Those are my thoughts. Excluding the game’s controversies that tainted the community’s reputation, Ultimate is still an excellent game in a vacuum. However, some people are either too pessimistic or serious from a competitive perspective to realize that. It’s still fun when you move past the game’s somewhat noticeable flaws, such as the online delay or lag and character balancing.
That doesn't sound like a very healthy marriage ..
Meanwhile melee players are on the honey moon phase 20 years in
Not sure about the conclusion reached by this video… Breezed over the effect Fighter’s Pass 2 had on the game and didn’t comment at all on the panda cup/ smash world tour debacle. No examples or focus on any of the individual player scandals, no mention of Steve’s and Sonic’s passive playstyle turning away viewers… but Nintendo’s updated tournament guidelines was the final nail in the coffin? The announcement was scary at first but it seems to have made 0 impact on the competitive scene aside from requiring TOs of big events to secure a license, which they’ve all been doing successfully.
Getting a licence did have something about not being allowed to ban characters without a theme, but LMM a few weeks ago quietly banned Steve anyway without any big issues. HungryBox’s Coinbox series did just lose its sponsor because of Nintendo, although that’s more justified given that it’s a crypto company that had gotten into trouble with the US government earlier this year.
Haven’t watched the video but a majority of the roster when optimized ( this is from listening to top players but this maybe a scrub take) are extremely campy
@@paulakroy2635 That is true to some extent, although there are different forms of camping as well as how rewarding it is to get in. A character like Joker or most sword fighters need to stay in the mid-range, whereas someone like Samus or Steve wants as much space as possible. There's a funny anecdote of Zackray responding to chat messages complimenting his aggression by clarifying that he didn't approach at all as Joker. Then there's how rewarding it is to break the zoning. Part of what makes Steve so strong is that he's able to punish approaches very well, so his opponents aren't incentivised to approach him either.
@@paulakroy2635One of the polarizing things in ultimate is that there are characters who love to camp and there are characters who you must camp.
Kazuya is probably the most blatant example. Kazuya has fairly consistent touch of death combos, 0 to death. He has very consistent 0 to 60+ combos that can be followed by his super armor-kill-move-command-grab. The logical counterplay to Kazuya is to never risk interaction. Play slow, hit him once, don’t do any combos that aren’t 100% frame tight.
Kazuya is the most competitively viable “must camp” character but he’s not the only one. Incineroar, Jigglypuff, Little Mac, and Luigi are all characters that are best beaten by setting up a tent and not letting them touch you ever.
It ends up being a pretty uninteresting match overall because it’s either dictated by someone dying in 1 combo or someone dying by a thousand cuts.
Viewers are stupid though… I mean it they don’t know anything and just want to see unga bunga stop playing neutral do the thing! Hype hype yoyoyoyoyo.. catering to the viewer experience is silly IMO. even the commentators usually just scream because they literally know nothing. Correcting them in my head all the time. No That’s not what happened there etc etc…
No hate to mintjoy but having 90% of the video just be an extremely surface level timeline of the smash series and them listing their personal opinion on the dlc characters doesnt make much of a compelling video, the only reason i kept watching was bc of your commentary which actually felt like it gave some proper insight that was otherwise severely lacking
Agreed
You and PKBeats, more casual-competitive content creators, are the ONLY smash content creators I watch primarily because I am not a die-hard competitor just a game I find interesting. I find it smart to acknowledge your audience like that.
You might like the Underdogs.
Them and pjiggles too. I like to watch tcnick3, but thats more of a gaming channel and not an informative channel.
You might like whydo's item series then
I’m literally the greatest casual in the world (lol) because I got completely dragged into competitive but I like it and kill at it with ease. Only ever went to one local and came in third. I guess this group of college guys would come in and dick on everyone and we’re even using their off characters and I pressed stomped a dude and he even asked if he could use his main and I said of course and still won. Don’t recall what I lost to. They were also surprised I was doing it with falco.. who I only like in the games everyone else doesn’t hah
@@monk3110 uh... you might be replying to the wrong comment
The shutdown of smash world tour and panda/panda cup was really sad. Several of my favorite pros were signed by panda (esam, Marss, WaDi, Coney), and the scene as a whole just felt like it was in shambles. Panda's youtube channel had a lot of fun content as well, and it's something you just dont see anymore.
Personally, I had discovered Smash Bros right around the time the pandemic hit, and found the competitive scene pretty soon after through Hungrybox. Over the next couple years, tournaments came back, and I even attended a major (Low Tide City). I got to meet some of my favorite players, and was super invested in the scene when the two circuits disappeared. I remember being glued to twitter to keep up with all the things that were going on, and just feeling pretty bleh about all of it.
Now, I still keep up with Marss and Zackray, and will watch various sets if they seem interesting. But for me, there just isn't much wind in the sails anymore...
btw wadi is banned for being a creep/pedo or whatever 🙃
@@tubbyidk1474a little irrelevant but okay
I thought about mentioning it, but decided it wasn't worth bringing up
Gay
I quit Smash for about half a year, during the 4 horseman era ( Sparg0's Cloud, Acola's Steve, Sonix's Sonic, Miya's G&W )
That's the low point for me, every top 8 looks the same, and unlike the 5 Gods of Melee who brings a different flavor to the table, these 4 bring about the same play style, either spam your safest move till you win, or stall till time runs out
Not a great sign for the original video that I guessed the creator's explanation for the downfall in the first ten seconds, but 75% of the video was summary until it finally got to the point.
I mean its always the same talking points just rehashed and what a loud minority says.
From a writing perspective I can't blame him. It does sound fun to wtite about the game you love from the start to the end. Granted if people found this approach clickbaity but I can't blame them.
Is there a more generic "Smash Player" take than "the downfall started because a Fire Emblem character was DLC"?
Lol yeah, even though I'm a big fan of the "Oops all Fire Emblem" meme. saying it started there was a bit silly, even if all the FE characters felt like shitty cookie cutter copies of eachother despite there being nearly a dozen of them.
0:51 - Hey that's me!
0:51 - Hey that's you!
The reason the grinch link was so “believable” is because the image of the leaked banner was next to a bunch of promotional material for the at the time upcoming illumination “grinch” movie. This promotional material (cardboard cutout of a never before seen grinch render, for example) had not been seen before but I think shortly after it got officially used. This led people to believe this person also somehow had intel on smash ultimate.
It was never believable you are all just gullibable.
@@obba40and ur just restated
@@whitneysimonetti3847 because i dont believe every single edited "leak" online? Ok Mr Smartypants guess im stupid.
@@obba40 glad you realized that 😊
Thank you so much for your reaction! This was an absolute treat to look back and hear your persepective on!
Looking back, I will admit there's definitely some things I could have polished. A lot of the things I've said were a combination of my personal experiences and the overall sentiment amongst other players in the community. Of course a lot of what I said especially in regards to the actual downfall may not be accurate to some, but in the end it's all just a matter of perspective. This was just a topic I've wanted to tackle for a very long time, so I don't have any regrets making that video. If anything, I'm very happy to see even more people tuning in, and would love to hear everyone's thoughts on the matter! Thank you so much for reaching out and I'll be sure to create even more polished Smash related vids in the future!
Thanks again for coming onboard! Don't sweat the omissions too much, I've been professionally neck-deep in Smash for half a decade and can nitpick coverage more than most haha, overall it was a great effort and I enjoyed watching it!
There are two big things I would work on if I were you;
1) Your 'accountability' is quite low. You said a lot of things that you didn't support. Like, when you said 2018's teasers made the community grow 'exponentially'...if you're going to say shit like that, you NEED to justify it.
The reaction for the average listener when they hear hyperbole like that, where you don't even TRY to justify it, is to say "this MuntJoyPictures guy plays fast and loose with the truth and doesn't really give a shit about making sure the things he says to his audience are correct."
It's a bad look, and it isn't necessary. Just be honest that it's your personal experience. "Let me tell you, I was in the community at the time and these teasers WORKED. The community was HYPED."
Secondly, I'd run your scripts through a grammar checker before recording. This is a smaller thing, it won't bother so many, but you have a distinctly unusual way of expressing yourself that is sometimes charming but often confusing. You have little instances of dropping words, using the wrong word, and words in the wrong order in (literally) every second sentence.
Now, I'd never correct a friend's grammar if he was just chatting with me, but you're putting out this video on to the internet; getting that stuff wrong feels like a distinct lack of polish, you know? Most word processors would tell you when you messed up and would let you create a script that flows better and has fewer 'snags' the listener can catch on.
I hate to be negative, so I'll end with telling you your editing was by far the most polished part of your video, and that's WAY harder to improve on than the script stuff. I think you have all the skills you need to really be a fun and persuasive communicator if you work on your accountability and expression. Have fun creating!
@@conorkelleher2571 I don't agree and this is coming from someone who works in the content creation space. Yes saying the community grew exponentially is hyperbole but it's still figuratively true, the larger install base of the switch substantially grew the fanbase. I will agree that the script does have areas where it lacked polish. A 2nd opinion would've benefited it but I didn't find myself to be that annoyed by that either. TH-camrs aren't always professionals, they come from different walks of life and it's understandable that not everyone is going to have perfect diction. That's a skill that develops the more you write and the more you work on things. (And even then I don't think it's all that important to making a video compelling.)
@@conorkelleher2571 "I hate to be negative"
Proceeds to write multiple paragraphs of negativity but only a couple sentences of positivity lmao.
Trust me, nobody but you cares about those "issues." Just feels pretentious tbh
@skaionex Thanks for the input! If I could offer some constructive criticism, your comment would have more of a point to it if you had supported what you said in any way.
Right now, it looks like you have some negative self-perception issues and get irrationally angry when you see someone confidently expressing themselves in a way that triggers your feelings of inadequacy. But those feelings needn't control you; you are a valid and clever person who could overcome anything if you put your mind to it.
40% of the big players being predators definitely didn’t help with Ultimate’s reputation
*cough cough* CinniPie, Nairo, Keitaro, MrWizard, list goes on and on…
Then there’s Leffen just being Leffen
That deeply upsets me
i recently thought about buying another copy of ssbu to try comp again along with roa2. i came across the banned players registry and safe to say i am a proud roa enjoyer…
Still letting Nairo be a prominent member to this day is insane. The loops they go too to defend a grown man is also insane.
Finding recently skyjay behind it yeah I was disgusted.
I thought Nairo was the one who was assaulted.
Honestly, moving away from one side of the Smash scene (The more competitive side) and taking a more casual approach to it really helped me maintain my love for the game. Ultimate has everything I love about Smash, with some of my favourite games of all time being represented (Metal Gear, Tekken, More Xenoblade, etc). I can definitely see how someone who isn’t as into games as a whole like I am being more disappointed by Ultimate as times gone on, but as someone who sees gaming as the ultimate art form, I find Ultimate to be a phenomenal celebration of that art
The new way they did final smashes and replacing badges with spirits are the only serious “casual” disappointment I had with the game. I wish I knew some ppl who played goofy
7:38 So the origin of the leak was there was supposedly this guy that worked at this advertisement company that had access to a bunch of different media marketing assets. He was claiming to have access to the full Ultimate Mural that showed off all those characters, which didn’t really have any obvious origin/editing to the art. One of the assets people noticed in the back though were these ads for the Illumination Grinch movie that had not been released to the general public at that time, making it more believable this person worked at the advertising firm (Hence the “Grinch” leak). There is still not a clear answer as to how the fake mural was made or how this person had access to these marketing assets. Very surreal to say the least 😅
Thanks. That's a much better explanation than a lot of the others floating around here.
The reason so many people bought into the Grinch leak was because the leaker at the time released some screenshots from the upcoming illumination grinch movie alongside the smash leaks, and it was such an arbitrary thing to include that people thought it could’ve been legitimate
Bingo
Also the leak included Ken which he was leaked on the Splatoon Stage before the Grinch showed up, everything lined up perfectly for the best fake leak
@@brandonwilliams6119 That too.
The main thing was that it included a render from the Gringe movie that was unreleased yet, everything was just lining up to looking very similar to the original Smash 3DS leaked that leaked the entire roster before launch
Another factor for Byleth was that they had THE WORST trailer of any Smash character.
Character immediately revealed. A LOT of time was spent talking (especially from Sothis). And a dual reveal....for the Female Byleth....which was already expected.
It was a BAAAAAD trailer
I still cant believe Phoenix Wright didnt even get a spirit 😢
Not even a Mii Costume with a music track which Sans, Cuphead, and Shantae got
Honestly the video covered was pretty bad ngl. It just covered the surface level stuff like the hype cycles and a few of the controversies in little detail. And hell, they didn't even finish their thought about FP2 and the future of the game beyond the basics. Was expecting them to go into more detail like the Panda Cup debacle. Especially if they named it the *Downfall* of Ultimate. I appreciate your commentary basically fixed it by giving more insight
To be honest, i think the "fall off" just happened, because we are at the end of the patches, with no future DLC to come
A lot of the excitement around smash came from who would be next, what DLC characters would come out?
In short, the game just stopped getting content, so it got way less mainstream coverage, so now only the most devoted of players are holding onto it
Also, Smash became mainstream at Brawl, not Melee. Melee may have been the breakthrough to get it really rolling, but it was Brawl and Sm4sh that got it into the main stream
You could liken it to Souls where 64 is like the Demon Souls, the experimental game that catvhes on and gains a cult following, with the follow up, Melee and Dark Souls being what made them popular but still quite niche games, before Brawl/Sm4sh and Bloodborne/DS3 catapult it into mainstream with Ultimate/Elden Ring firmly cementing it as hyper popular and mainstream
Would be a better comparison if Brawl was Dark Souls 2 in this case lol
I really wish that Ultimate got just a few more balance patches before they ended support. Even small nerfs to Steve and Kazuya and buffs to weaker characters would've gone a long way.
@@silvergalaxia8538 It's egregious at how quickly they cut support. Considering games like T7 and SF5 got support well beyond the 5 years Ultimate had.
@@Krona-fb4dn kinda considering it, but DS2 is just shit, and i didn't want to taint brawl with that comparison, but in a way, it fills the same place of being a radical departure of what made the previous game great to the detriment of every following entry
I don’t think Smash Ultimate is dying, or dead because of any event. I think it’s been 6 years since the game released and 4 since the last major update. The game’s old at this point.
We can take Minecraft as an example platter for this. By its 6th year we had the World of Color Update and “Discovery” Update. Neither of which did much of anything. The next update was Update Aquatic a year later.
Smash is in a lull, not because of 2020, or because of SWT/Panda Cup being shut down, or because of Steve, Kazuya, and Min Min. It’s because it’s 6 years old and the passage of time is not always kind. We expect our games to last forever, it was a big deal when Minecraft and TF2 made it to 10 years with support. TF2 and Minecraft have had their rutts too, this is fairly normal. Hell, TF2’s still in its rutt. But still spikes whenever new stuff gets added in. We just gotta cruise and work at what we got to try and welcome a new spike whenever one comes.
The only issue with that is, unlike TF2 or Minecraft, Ult has not received any patches the past few years and won't receive anymore moving forward. We're stuck in a meta where interacting as little as possible and maximizing what little advantage state you get ahold of is the name of the game. It's still a meta that requires skill and lots of patience but for a casual audience it's boring to watch and not the most fun to get into. If Ult continued to get patches after Sora we would probably be in a much more positive spot. Online, Ult's buffering system making most interesting tech impractical (unless you're Steve), and a barebones training mode that needs mods to be up to par with other fgs doesn't help either.
Literally the only thing that's going to help this game is well... another new game... that will hopefully end up in a healthier meta
7:29 the grinch wasn’t the name of the leaker, but the leak. Named after the fact whoever was leaking it had access to some print production company’s assets, including posters for that Illumination Studios Grinch movie that was coming out around that time.
They were someone who had what was more than likely a real version of the “everyone is here” banner that they personally edited, drew in, and printed shadow, Isaac, etc. into. They theoretically had the credentials to have that banner of the real roster poster, and the (very blurry but still extremely good) mock-up of the poster looked real enough for many people.
The Grinch leak didn't actually come from someone called "the Grinch" it was from someone who was working at a print shop making promotional prints for games and films at the time. One of the movies being the, at the time, new 3D animated Grinch film. And that person also happened to have a promotional banner for Smash Ultimate, that was completely fake and photoshopped. But it LOOKED real
Well yeah when a game is 6 years old and counting, of course it stops being mainstream...
The fact that we're watching this video in the first place implies that its not as "dead" as everyone acts like it is.
Woah, was not expecting to see my clip of Smash's poor netcode show up in a MockRock video. That was a bit of a jumpscare lol.
Smash Ultimate had its highs and lows, which were outlined in this video. But to imply that the game had a "downfall" like practically every single live service disaster of a game experiences these days is just baseless hyperbole.
You can hate the inclusions or movesets of certain characters, but that doesn't automatically paint the game as some sort of failure. Sure, the competitive scene has shrunk and dwindled from how big it used to be, but it's not gone entirely. Not to mention how many casual fans still get together regularly to play it. To me, calling it a downfall implies Smash Ultimate experienced a dramatic drop in quality overnight or some controversy from the developer side took place and now absolutely no one touches the game as a result. That's not what happened. Even the shit that went down with the outed Smash players is not the game's or the dev team's fault.
It would be far more accurate to say that Smash Ultimate has experienced a gradual decline, rather than an outright downfall. But that is simply due to the fact that the game is six years old, it has stopped getting new content and patches, and most casual gamers have simply moved on to other, newer games. That's not bad, it's inevitable. The hype cycle will kick back into full swing again the milisecond a new Smash game is announced or even teased for the Switch's successor.
Besides, Smash Ultimate is the best-selling fighting game of all-time. If a game that sells that well can have a downfall, then most games WISH they could have a downfall like that.
It is crazy how Joker went from being viewed as a broken DLC inclusion, to now where it feels like he NEEDS Arsen to keep up with base-roster characters at higher levels of play
Joker is just Sheik with the occasional Ganondorf Stand Summon
I feel like MockRock's commentary saved this video, I think that MintJoy Picture's video is _very_ surface level and you probably wouldn't learn much on its own, but MockRock's experience did help lift it up.
“Ultimate has fallen, billions must camp”
28:28 still one of the deepest scars that I've gone from Nintendo honestly. A tournament that was supposed to be one of the biggest of them all along with being in the same exact city that I was heading back home to in San Antonio to then hear one day less than 2 weeks from the event that they were going to shut the tournament down. I had friends from my college that were planning to head in and compete along with just knowing how many players are going to be there to then just have it all shut down because of Nintendo partnered with Panda and they didn't want to have any other big tournaments being held without them. I cannot believe the memories and matches we could have seen got burnt instantly away due to just this greediness and how everything was perfectly lined up to then never happen it truly disappoints me to this day.
I've had to learn something over the course of Ultimate, and it's that I love Smash more as a casual than a diehard competitor. I never participated in any major tournaments but I remember when I was really interested in taking the game seriously. However, with online being my only source of "serious" training due to the limitations of being a high schooler with no job, I grew frustrated easily due to goofy online shenanigans (didn't help that I was mainly playing Ganondorf but who cares, he's fun to me dammit). Then the pandemic hit and the 2020 purge and fans getting super outraged over fictional characters really got to me. I seriously considered no longer sticking around after growing up with Brawl and 4, but then I remembered all of the good times I had playing casually. The most soul from really any multiplayer experience comes from the parties you play it with, and it was those individuals who didn't care if the last guy was Master Chief or Sora, or who was at the top of the rankings. Smash is best to me when I'm watching the chaos unfold as 8 of us beat the crap out of each other with Home-run Bats and unleash Final Smashes and shout "Hey, so-and-so's still got 3 stocks!" That's not to downplay the people who have spent hundreds or even thousands of hours perfecting their gameplay; they're really talented individuals, but the frustrations went away when I stopped taking it super seriously. Time definitely is a huge factor considering we're 3 years out from Sora's release and almost 6 years out from the base game's release, and more people are interested in what happens next considering the next Nintendo console will drop soon. We've also seen a ton of competitors come and go, like the Nick games, MultiVersus and Rivals 2 just dropped. Those games each have their own merits but trying to stack up to a 25 year legacy is an insane task for any game to take on. There's a reason that guys like Alpharad and Coney have branched out their content from being exclusively Smash. I look forward to the future of this series, I still love it dearly, and oh my God if people really complained about Steve being for cringe kiddos imagine the shitstorm that would transpire if we saw Fortnite or Among Us in the DLC cycle.
Alright, paragraph over, enjoy yourselves reader!
7:54 Wow he made the narrative choice to make an entirely black screen at this point. This is a metaphor for how he is screaming into the void and Smash fans will absolutely believe when someone reveals a low quality AI generated render of Goku punching Genos in Smash for the next hype cycle.
Bravo, MockRock.
that speculation cycle is going to be MISERABLE
The grinch leak wasn't called that because of the leaker's name, it was a picture where somebody had the completed smash ultimate banner on their fridge, and people identifying (or trying to) characters on it foound several that were desperately hoped for, and since it looked like an accident, and people LOVE to be in denial about Geno, lots of people believed it. (I think the grinch was also a sticker on his fridge, where the name came from, and of course some people took that as a "hint")
yeah it actually showed a later-released promotional banner for the grinch movie which was why people believed it; it's likely that the "leaker" just slapped a fake smash ultimate banner on the wall next to the actual ad at the company
the grinch leak wasn't a guy named the grinch leaking characters. it was a forged advertisement containing the "finished everyone is here" banner art. the reason it was called that was because there was a printed grinch ad in the background
Well it is also awkward because this video only covers US numbers whereas smash is bigger than ever in Japan with regular majors over 300 participants and super majors guaranteed over 1000 participants. It really only rose over there.
I find it funny how I can watch this guy talk about competitive Smash for hours, and yet the one time I tried to watch an actual set, I had it on for 5 minutes before I shut it off because I was bored. Animation tier lists, top 10s about random topics, individual technique breakdowns, I find these interesting. Watching an actual competitive match felt like I was just watching 2 hyperactive hummingbirds dancing back and forth. It was boring as all hell.
The reason the Grinch Leak was so believed was actually because of a lot of real-world coincidences. In the background of the leak, they could see some Grinch movie promotional material, hence where the name comes from. People eventually found the exact company where this had been printed, and what do you know? They had a list of companies they had worked with previously, and Bandai Namco was displayed front and center. BN are the developers of SSBU. Additionally, the company actually had a now-deleted introduction video on their page, and people speculated that Nintendo had asked them to shut it down. There’s a bunch of other things that I won’t get into here, point is, the Grinch leak was (accidentally) very credible, plus people were on heavy copium with this being the “last” direct.
Commenting before I watch: this just seems like an overdramatic video essay made by a youtuber just trying to find his footing.
On the topic of the Grinch leak, it was believed because the picture of the poster feat the Ultimate roster was taken alongside an unreleased Grinch movie poster. So people believed the leaker to work at a poster making company.
Commenting after I watch: yep I think I was right on my assumptions, a very surface level look at Ultimate's lifecycle that didn't really delve into how much of "downfall" Ultimate expereinced.
I hate how click bait this guys video was, “smash ultimate downfall” bro it’s been selling so well and everyone likes it, is this rage bait?
"everyone likes it" the casual audience is dead due to the game having no updates, content or balance wise, and the comp community doesnt like it bc they remember how much better the game used to be pre fighters pass 2
@ guess the game is shit now
It ain’t dead. Not everyone plays online.
@@Keeby. Brother the game is 6 years old, of course people stopped playing it lmao
I think blaming fighters pass 2 for Ultimate’s competitive unhealthiness is naive at best if not just willfully ignorant. Sonic and Game & Watch are base roster characters. Hell, the best Sonic player can’t win a major and yet he easily stomps every Steve player in his path. I see so many people rushing to the defense of these characters and I’m convinced it’s just a vain effort to protect this forced narrative of the big bad DLC ruining the otherwise utopian balance of Smash Ultimate. It’s nonsense and I absolutely despise both its deceitfulness and how it has led to Steve players being wrongfully disparaged and harassed over the years. I mean for fuck’s sake, Steve can’t even win a major without Acola, who has already more than proven himself a top player without using Steve.
Nevertheless, people will continue to bitch and complain for as long as the game is around. No matter how many low tiers make huge runs or how many players make monumental rises through the ranks, people will whine that their character isn’t good enough or the game is unfair until the heat death of the universe. If you ask me, that’s the real reason Smash Ultimate is “dying.”
if I recall correctly, the grinch leaker was a person who allegedly worked in some poster factory and in their fake leak they posted a picture with a fake version the ultimate mural, and I think an real poster for the at the time upcoming grinch movie.
I think the thought for believing the leak was if they had classified promotional graphics for one poster, than the mural was also accurate
As a casual player today, I’m still having a lot of fun with ultimate despite everything that’s been going on because in my opinion the online isn’t that bad if the two players involved have a good connection. I’ve been having some Solid games with it with my Internet. Plus casually it still has an impact on many people. myself included who I’ve been learning about many game franchises. I’ve been trying to play through everyone’s home series and I’ve been enjoying most of them.
Smash was the reason my current friend group exists so i’ll always thank it for that. As for the game itself I haven’t seriously pitched time into it in over 3 years.
I used to adore Ultiamte and think it was incredible, and it was my favorite game for a really long time
And then I played more fighting games and realized how many more fighting games I like then Ultimate (GGST, SF6, and MC3 are the main ones)
Still love Ultimate but it’s worn on me a bit, doesn’t mean I’ll cherish the memories and friends it’s given me and less though
Smash is still objectively better then all of those, but you do you 😊
@@Mike-di3moYou’re using the word objectively very recklessly there. For one, I don’t think Ultimate is all that comparable to a standard fighter because their gameplay is very different in nature. Comparing ultimate to Rivals or Melee is a far fairer comparison because their gameplay elements and game design are more similar in nature. I love Rivals 1 and Ultimate, and I also adore Skullgirls. I enjoy them for different reasons. With that being said, they’re absolutely not objectively worse. They’re not comparable in terms of gameplay. You could say that art direction, animation, music, characater design, monetization, online functionality, etc, can be compared, but core gameplay and game design isn’t similar enough in nature to call one better or worse. Also, the use of the word objectively is absolutely unwarranted when there’s nothing objective about that. You’ve commented a very opinionated statement. In no way is that objective. You can dislike the main genre of fighting games and prefer the subsection that is platform fighters, but that doesn’t imply any level of objectivity towards their inherent value or quality as games.
@@Mike-di3mosmash input delay is objectively worst than all of those 😊
@@chiga3388 who cares?
@@ElariaFlori Yeah your right, but I feel like more people like smash I general because of the characters and other stuff like that, that why I feel like smash is objectively better.
Smash 64 not a mainline Smash game? Nobody knew who Terry was? There are some very questionable takes in this video.
I don’t agree with the basic premise. Ultimate is a good game and is still very popular. Every game’s popularity fades with time, and Ultimate is extremely popular for a game that released 6 years ago.
The section of the video about Nintendo’s intervention is the only part that I think holds much water, but somehow the Panda controversy was left out
I always felt like the hate for Byleth was overblown. I get that the amount of Fire Emblem characters in Smash is disproportionate to its significance as a Nintendo IP, especially since it now outnumbers Legend of Zelda 4 to 3 (even moreso if you don't want to consider the two extra Links), but I never viewed that as Byleth's fault. It made sense to want FE's most recent title, especially given that Three Houses, even to this day, is one of the highest regarded FE titles, and as far as I'm aware, there's no issues with Byleth the Smash fighter like there are with some other DLC characters. Byleth just so happened to be the most recent one, so they ended up taking the brunt of the anger; I would sooner turn my ire towards characters like Chrom who ballooned the FE count without really adding anything to the game beyond rounding out the Awakening trio, which didn't feel like a necessary achievement. At least Byleth felt a little fresh and like there was a purpose to them being there.
I think Joker was to me the character that broke the fanbase, in terms of expectations. Before third parties had some connection to Nintendo, while Joker shifted the conversation to gaming celebration as a whole. It lowkey shifted the identity of the cast.
People complain about FE characters yet want more Mario and Pokémon rep
Honestly, I’d argue that the subsequent addition of Min Min was a worse call for the roster than adding Byleth alone was. Where Byleth is from a long and storied franchise with a massive JP fan base AND what is statistically the most successful game of their series, Min Min is a new IP character from a game that wasn’t received particularly well and was a frequently predicted character. For a lot of people I know who aren’t into FE, these are considered the two worst additions and I think putting them back to back was a real gut-punch for a lot of players
It was a combination of fire emblem being entirely oversaturated in smash(seriously the series has a comparable amount of reps to fcking MARIO and POKEMON), byleth's trailer being frankly, shit, and also incredibly mistimed as the finale to FP1, with also just the hype that was drummed up about the reveal before we knew what it was making the crash down to "It's just the protag from the new fire emblem" even more severe
@@keithflippers4429because mario and pokemon are nintendo's two biggest franchises whereas Fire emblem has equal amounts of rep for being a niche series at best, that almost died out completely if not for the miracle of Awakening
idk about fp2 not existing would be better for the game because i feel like better and more frequent balance changes would help a lot
The grinch leak was the picture that was posted of the poster of the full roster. It was extremely believable because it was a blurry image on a wall in a video as he panned the camera past it. People paused the video and deblurred it and found characters on there for the base roster (I remember banjo was one of them). It was referred to as the grinch leak because of being posted near Christmas I believe
8:17 oh so many afternoons spent scrolling on the Bandana Waddle Dee SmashForums… this took me back.
Just ban Mario, Donkey Kong, Link, Samus, Yoshi, Kirby………………….Kazuya, and Sora. It would be revived then.
As a Smash 4 fan who was really disappointed at the lack of things to do in Smash Ultimate, I was a long-time critic of the game for a really long time, even though I tried to accept this game's core identity, I still feel cheated that I won't be able to play with any of the earlier Smash games' gamemodes, characters, or anything else they had and that I, being a Nintendo customer stuck on the Switch and Wii Us and other consoles becoming the rarity that they are, feel cheated and scammed a bit by Ultimate, especially since the entire fanbase had no idea what kind of Smash Brothers game Ultimate was going to turn out to be.
Though early on, I REMEMBER being caught up in the hype, and I definitely contributed quite a bit to it, but eventually, I just thought everyone was missing the point of what Smash Ultimate needed and eventually just drifted away from the discussion because I thought nobody understood what Smash Bros truly needed, that I was becoming the sole voice of reason and nobody wanted to listen to me.
I used to be just as focused on the characters as everyone else, but I eventually realized that the mentality around character inclusions was getting unrealistic, unhealthy, and borderline tribal among fans, and even when it wasn't, it felt like the actual things we could be putting the characters in were getting overlooked for their inclusion.
The game we were imagining with all of our characters was slowly just becoming a museum more than the game we grew up with. That genuinely feels like... we lost the plot somewhere along the line.
The tournament collapse is a massive omission and it’s very strange that it wasn’t in the video to begin with. Like, that was huge.
But I agree “Time” is the real answer and it’s wild these days a lot of people think things are going poorly a game is sucking because they’re not forever games. Nothing is meant to last forever, with the exception of Melee because the Melee people are just insane. Hype doesn’t last forever, interest doesn’t last forever, and people need to be more okay with that. Sometimes you’ve just had your fill of enjoyment and you e worn yourself out on the fun. It’s that simple, but it doesn’t take away from the joy you had before.
I think this video made some very solid points (COVID, Nintendo’s threats, online not being an ideal playing experience, the purge), and since this video comes from a smaller creator that mainly makes 10-20 minute videos, it’s understandable why some parts were glossed over. That being said, I do wish the video was longer to be a more comprehensive look on the game and expanded on a few of the bigger points made, such as what you mentioned with what FP2 did to the game causing discontent, a big amount of well known tournament groups disbanding due to costs, the whole SWT/Panda fiasco, and the biggest one of all: time. I also feel like the tournament guidelines didn’t really affect anything? Still feels like most tournaments went on as normal.
The reason why people bought so much into the Grinch leak was because, through a combination of pure coincidence and confirmation bias, it seemed like a whole lot of stuff was adding up to it being real. I'll be honest, I was a believer. I've definitely learned my lesson since then and tend to be much more cautious about leaks. I did end up getting Banjo in the end though.
Yo, Clairen special getup is in the intro now?
I think it's her dair, but good catch, still!
@@BigLord I caught it based off of the audio, and I think it sounds more like special attack from ledge.
Smash fans on their way to immediately hate on the latest entry
Still better than multiversus
I think saying that Ultimate "ended" is an over exaggeration. I would also say Rivals 2 is a hit too, it always felt like most competitors had this abusive relationship with Nintendo, for some weird reason every other publisher kept butchering their platform fighters so competitors had to remain on Smash but they were always just waiting for a chance to dump Nintendo. Rivals 2 so far seems to be exactly that. I think the only thing that can stop Rivals 2 now is a Smash 6 announcement.
A 6 year old game fell off? Surprise surprise
smash was always going to die off slightly bc it was abandonded by nintendo, no only no content patches but not even any balance patches
but the main thing thats also made the community more jaded towards the game is the complete mess that is DLC pass 2
as a competitive fighter, sure? but ultimate is still racking in sales and even to this day is played by the casual audience frequently so 😂
19:20 Idk why but his blank expression at the images is funny
Using sad-anime-girl.jpg #1 through #7 as the background images for such a heavy subject matter is definitely a choice
The best part of smash ultimate was just the pure respect and homage to all the 3rd party series. Terry, Belmonts, and Joker trailers are just oozing so much love to their creators. I don't think we'll ever get that much care and respect to gaming culture again honestly.
I absolutely agree with your final point about Smash World Tour. That, coupled with the Smash purge really soured me on the community and how constantly naive everyone is. Like, everyone wanted Smash to be a big, serious, mature thing but there was just so many other things that no one wanted to take responsibility for improving and then all the backstabbing going on with the world tour stuff. Just reminded me that whenever money is on the line, trying to be good and decent just goes out the window. Frustrating to witness all that.
I think MintJoy's video isn't fully complete, honestly. It def needed a little more research and maybe a little more time to cover how complex the whole thing is.
Yeah, the VG Bootcamp/Panda Global collapse really killed any momentum that Smash was going to have.
The lighter note being Min Min got me so good. Every time I see her I just remember that clip somebody made of the Smash announcer just going ham with "FUCKING MIN MIN" then her just bodying people from the next ZIP code over.
i remember buying a couple snacks at a gas station for the 5th dlc fighter announcement and sitting down. i saw that it was a fire emblem character, and just sighed and turned off the video half-way through
i dont really mind anymore, but i still dont understand why fire emblem specifically got so many characters in smash lol
In my opinion, the downfall of Smash really came from the lack of EOL balancing patches for different characters, specifically Steve, Kazuya, and Luigi IMO.
Unlike Melee, where some people can do surprising things with lower or mid-tier characters, Ultimate’s meta is extremely stale. I just see the same strats day and day out; I know a lot of combos players tend to use are called “bread and butter” for a reason, but if you eat bread and butter for long enough you get sick of it.
Love the vids, Mock. I have a suggestion for some videos. Build the best Pokémon character cherry-picking moveset from existing Pokémon characters then once complete, which actual Pokémon would it be? Then, the same concept but Fire emblem character.
It was never going to last forever, but I still love the game.
Honestly I've been looking for a chill community to play with. I'm not really interested in 'competitive' Smashing anymore. I just don't have the reflexes I used to, but that's all anyone ever seems to want to do. I played some games with a few old friends the other day and we did it all wrong. Items, 4v4 free for all... even turned on hazards here and there. It was the most fun I've had playing a game in a good long while, but getting my friends together to play is proving challenging, trying to find a community who enjoys this kind of Smashing is like searching out the unicorn.
Though even if I do manage to find one, I doubt I'll be able to keep up with them anymore. I'm just not as good as I used to be.
I originally got into Ultimate because of Little Z, but eventually I found out about Melee. While Ultimate had horrible online, Melee got Slippi rollback net code. While Ultimate got predators exposed, Melee’s community stayed the same. While Ultimate started hating on Steve and Kazuya, mid tier heros started to emerge in Melee. It felt very natural to move to Melee so I lost interest in Ultimate.
my experience... was a downward spiral. the last few times i played it before i quit, it just wasn't fun anymore. smash ultimate is a can of worms and might actually be the last smash game i play. I'm just so done.
3:15 I mean Melee pretty much started the competitive scene so it does have that going for it.
I enjoy playing Smash Ultimate, but as a spectator experience it just doesn't hold a candle to Melee. I tried to follow competitive Ultimate, but gave up on it relatively quickly b/c it just wasn't very interesting. I still watch Melee tournaments all the time.
All I asked was balance patches after Sora released. But Sakurai grabbed his coat and said no.
Project M and HDR has kept my fighting spirit alive.
One if the big issues going between multiversus and ultimate is nair
I love the fact you just have a neutral attack button instead of a second attack button so you can move more freely with a nair instead of trying to avoid a fair or bair
Rivals 2 has this as well and I've always resisted using them because I'm so worried about screwing up my Ultimate muscle memory haha
The lack of grab already broke that for me
Man, this is a heavy topic, but start to end o’ve loved ultimate, but I don’t feel qualified to talk as much as im not a heavy competitive player, hell, i’ve never been to a tournament, but I hope that my thoughts aren’t useless
im really surprised that the Panda Cup canibalizing Smash World Tour wasnt on here. As both of those circuits were huge and smash would be way better off, if we had even one of them
The people I know who actually like smash today I can fit on half of one hand. When it was being updated and was fresh that number would probably need both hands. However I strongly disapprove of the direction of this game, the direction of the developers. SSBU just doesn't have good gameplay, tournaments are exciting but that's about it - I just like competition.
All things considered I think it’s still possible to have another Smash Sponsored Circuit with Nintendo on for casuals and one for competitive play
Yeah I think the first major step of the "downfall" was the 2020 purge; and the second was the SWT/Panda debacle. Nothing has compared to those. And the first poisoned it for the casual onlooker, while the second poisoned it for the competitive scene. Honourable mention to Steve and Kazuya for also slightly ruining the game.
In order for a game to stay relevant, it needs to give people a reason to still care about it after they've seen all it has to offer. Now that DLC is over, Smash Ultimate has shown us everything it has to offer, and once you've acknowledged the long list of well known names, there's very little worth discussing aside from what the developers sacrificed to make that list. There's simply not much to go back to the game for aside from competition. This is why any Smash 6 we get needs moveset overhauls and a substantial story mode, because fueling the hype with DLC is not healthy compared to accurately representing and building off of what these characters mean to people, imo.
My hot take is that the only thing ultimate did better than 4 was have more ppl. Final smashes are stupid now, some of the animations actually seem lazier, spirits are 100% worse than badges those were actually fun sometimes, and frankly thanks to the admittedly much appreciated “safe stages” for competitive ended up backfiring because since it can’t just be toggled we needed up with more stages than ever with no more competitive ones than usual.. probably less. Also Ridley should have been a dlc character so it felt like ANY love was put in him
Edit: and nerfed bayo
24:00 - I think to call Tekken "quite a big fighting game" is a bit of an understatement, Tekken 3 had ridiculous numbers for the era it released in and Tekken 7 ended up creeping to 10 million in sales by the end of its lifespan, and that's just home releases which ignore its relevance in the arcade scene.
Obviously part of this is anecdotal but between even the casual videogame enjoyers who don't seem to know or care about anything Nintendo related, they do always seem to know Tekken. That's an audience that would otherwise not be captured by Smash at all unless the inclusion were something a little more out there, like a Crash Bandicoot. But in a time where Crash is effectively dormant, Kazuya (alongside Pac-Man, who'd been in for a while but captures a wholly different, older audience) is effectively the Sony representative of the lot given Tekken's history on Sony platforms.
Having universal 3 Frame jump squats was a mistake
Interesting video. I found your commentary amusing.
Me? I like Ultimate. It's a game that I easily sunk several hundred hours into since buying it in 2019. However, it's not my favorite Smash game. I feel like it needs more stuff to do in single player beyond Classic Mode and VS. matches.
I appreciate what you said about Smash 4's art style. Its colorful, cartoony aesthetic goes a long way in keeping it my favorite Super Smash Bros. game.
I do feel bad about all the nonsense with the competitive scene, though. Now, I don't play Smash all that seriously, but there are some high-level people I do follow. Fortunately, they seem to be doing alright in their own lives.
It could be possible that the honeymoon phase has passed with Ultimate amd people are more aware of its shortcomings now compared to 2019. I'm just spitballing here...
Either way, this is a good video.
If anything is killing it these days, it's that net code. I still think it's amazing but after playing Guilty Gear Strive, Nick Smash and especially Rivals of Aether 2, it just feels impossible to get back into.
I really hope the next game has it. It really needs it.
I miss the MockRock intro with Sylvanos's howl...
For me it's pretty simple: After Fighters Pass 2 failed to live up to pass 1 (albeit with generally more hype reveals) the only thing left for Ultimate was it's fanbase. A loyal and hardworking group of people Nintendo promptly stomped on just for shits n' giggles. Ever since than the community has been clinging on to the very few things it can get away with at large.
Funny to think Smash 4 never had this problem as the mouth frothing property goblins at Nintendo needed a new smash asap
MockRock: Talking about how Fighter Pass 2 characters are unbalanced.
Me when he doesn't mention Sora (main): 😎
The game is a lot better when played casually, the moment you try to push it to a more competitive level it falls more into a chore than a fun time
I personally believe that Smash didnt die it just lost popularity. A lot of people moved on from ultimate, whether it be from quitting or people like me moving on to other fighting games. A lot of casuals found new games or just play smash once in a blue moon. Ultimate hasnt died but it isnt as popular as it was. Idk if this makes sense and I am willing to explain more or try to clarify if people want clarity
TF2 is another game that has largely remained beloved past the end of its content cycle, issues with bots notwithstanding as people understand that to be a separate issue from the game itself
thank you father mockrock for feeding us🙏
I kinda understand. I still love smash bros but for both smash 4 and ultimate my enjoyment of the game dramaticly decreassed after dlc fighters were added becuase there usually horribly balanced. Ulitimate wasnt nearly as bad as smash 4 but its still pretty annoying Steve isnt fun to play against at all. even just in a fairly casual setting he still gets spammed. So just like causally trying to have fun playing online just ends up be frustrating
Back when i was playing smash constantly and hadn't touched three houses i thought byleth was a waste of a character slot, now that i've played three houses i realized byleth is an even bigger waste of a character slot than i thought, because what the hell do you mean byleth can be a brawling magician/healer with time rewing powers and none of that got represented? and no god shattering star, absolute horrible inclusion all around
And it's a truly deserving downfall. Ultimate has always been a garbage competitive game since launch. Terrible buffer system, not being able to turn on or off easier short hops, characters that needed fixing and still not fixed, badly designed characters that lead to 99% of matchups in the game feeling extremely campy (made worse with DLC), Steve, etc. Casually it's fine I guess, but I don't really care for that side to begin with. But when my main enjoyment with the game comes from the competitive aspect of it and it mainly sucks, yeah I don't blame some top players for switching to other games like Street Fighter 6. Ultimate is what truly killed my love for the series and it's a damn shame, bc this game truly taught me that as long as Sakurai is directing this series, he will do anything to make the game as casually friendly as possible (which is definitely smart from a business standpoint) and punishing the competitive and hardcore fans of the series by introducing awful and infuriating competitive mechanics that ruins the fun of competitive play (tripping in Brawl, rage in Smash 4 and the general clunkiness of Ultimate due to the awful buffer system and higher input delay).
If I want to play Smash now, I will stick to games like Melee, Project + and Smash Remix which are more fun experiences than the dissapointment and garbage game that is Smash Ultimate (more like Trash Ultimate).
For me, smash ultimate is the best game in the series and I hate that it is. In my eyes, what i loved about smash was sacrificed to 2 gods, one of competitive play and the other being style. Casually, this game is the worst for playing. The items are almost exclusively "play for me" mechanics than an advantage to shake up gameplay, and the ones that aren't only exist to be thrown (rip bat) and the whole game feels like a big cutscene that looks like smash. World of light doesn't encourage me to do more than play normal smash but with the right sticker equipped. And every character feels like a button masher, because they kinda have to be to be competitive.
I've never cared for competitive, and I"m fine and happy that people can enjoy it that way. But when the first DLC was worthless ol' joker, I had a gut feeling that smash wasn't for me any more. And I was right. I moved on to Rivals 1 and 2 because at least they're fun competitively. Unlike smash, which use to be my party game, but now is a less good competitive one.
It’s hard to go back to Smash Ultimate after playing NASB 2.
competitive smash players gotta know this if they forgot. this is a party fighting game, NOT competitive on purpose. its like trying to make mario party competitive.
19:40 ah, The Smash Summer Scandal. At least that's what I called it 💀