[Source Gaming] Sakurai On: Balancing Smash

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Source Gaming has published another installment of the Sakurai On series. This series brings together a collection of quotes from the Smash series director in order to promote a deeper understanding of the design philosophy behind Smash.

The latest game, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS has seen numerous balance updates, and support for tournaments from Nintendo. One of the biggest focal points for Masahiro Sakurai is ensuring that Smash can cater to all kinds of audiences and playstyles.

There are moves that are completely useless in a 1v1 battle, but in a four-player free-for-all those moves might prove quite useful. Therefore, if I played only one kind of battle, the game would feel very slanted towards a particular style of play. —The Act of Balancing, June 11, 2015

Despite seeing Smash as a "party game", there has been a seemingly increased focus on character balance with every installment to the series.

During development of Super Smash Bros. and Super Smash Bros. Melee, I balanced the game personally. For the third game, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, we monitored a team of four people, looking at their records against each other, for example, and adjusted from there. This time, we’re monitoring a team of 12 people…—Famitsu Interview from E3 2014

Despite not fully understanding why competitive Smash is played the way it is, Sakurai believes that fans should play the way that makes them happy and is glad that people can enjoy the game.

Recently, there was a tournament featuring the top Japanese and American players. In 1v1s, the natural tendency is to use low risk moves to gradually deal damage to the opponent. Smash attacks rarely came out, and the matches were prone to becoming long, drawn out affairs. When considering the variety of ways Smash can be played I think this is a shame, but the winner was certainly decided by skill.

Just as surely, people who play the game this way enjoy it from the bottom of their hearts, and make many friends playing this way. Because the game accommodates a wide variety of playstyles, it’s only natural that it captivates so many people in a variety of ways. —The Act of Balancing, June 11, 2015

The full article can be read here and covers the changes with each game, and contains additional quotes.

PushDustIn is looking for someone to balance his daily life. You can offer suggestions on Twitter.

 

While I'm quite done with competitive Smash as a whole, I still do appreciate the balance patches to Atleast make it fun during the FFA moments or even make it easier during the single player aspect like Classic Mode and Smash Run on 3DS.


Plus get rid of ridiculous messes like HOO HAA and any jank regarding Pac-Man

 

While I'm quite done with competitive Smash as a whole, I still do appreciate the balance patches to Atleast make it fun during the FFA moments or even make it easier during the single player aspect like Classic Mode and Smash Run on 3DS.


Plus get rid of ridiculous messes like HOO HAA and any jank regarding Pac-Man

I'm curious as to how you arrived at finishing this post with being upset with Pacman. I'm not upset as pac-main that you mentioned him specifically, but I'm wondering how you arrived at throwing pacman in with HOO HAA.


Getting to the overall topic though. I do like how in today's world, a patch can be added to balance the characters so it keeps the pool much more diverse at tournaments. But I still think patches are done way too fast and need to be spaced out a bit more.

 

I'm curious as to how you arrived at finishing this post with being upset with Pacman. I'm not upset as pac-main that you mentioned him specifically, but I'm wondering how you arrived at throwing pacman in with HOO HAA.


Getting to the overall topic though. I do like how in today's world, a patch can be added to balance the characters so it keeps the pool much more diverse at tournaments. But I still think patches are done way too fast and need to be spaced out a bit more.

As in the issues with Pac-Man like his Trampoline Up-B send people through the stage


As in things like that. That's why I said jank

 

What I've found interesting for a while is that he clearly saw that low risk moves were used repeatedly and even though he openly expresses that this isn't how he thinks the game "should" be played (not that there's any one particular way), he's not done very much to change this.
We still have characters that have very few (if any) relatively safe or quick moves, coupled with the lack of mobility, you're going to see a lot of the same options over and over again because there's just not that much versatility.
Moves are typically used for one specific, intended purpose due to their design, and if that purpose never comes up or another character has a move that does the same thing but better, it's only natural that we'd feel compelled to not use that move.

What I appreciated about Melee and Brawl was that even the low mobility characters had moves with fast startup or sufficient range to at least sort of deal with downright better characters, but because of the way this game works with characters generally not having options to properly space attacks on shield (from my perspective), a lot of things just aren't feasible, or require heavy reads to just stay in the neutral.

Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate this game, but it's just crazy that he wouldn't change something that could benefit everyone.
I really like what they did with Mewtwo, and I kind of wish the other bottom/mid tiers would get similar treatment.

 

My balance patch wish list.
Higher hit-stun on a global level. That's all.
*I was misguided in this wish, I that that Smash 4 had less hit-stun than Melee. Turns out I was wrong.

 

My balance patch wish list.
Higher hit-stun on a global level. That's all.

Do you WANT Bayonetta to be more hated than before? On the other hand, Cloud just became #1 in the game.

 

This is pretty insightful, but, I kind of wish Mr. Sakurai would also go over his thought process with some of his choices regarding the individual characters in the patches, it would be interesting (and useful) to see why Dedede was nerfed, why Jigglypuff's been ignored, why it took so long to give Sheik the big nerf, etc, stuff like that.

 

Do you WANT Bayonetta to be more hated than before? On the other hand, Cloud just became #1 in the game.

Down throw into Limit Cross Slash killing people at 70%, sup.

 

Sakurai, and I have respect for the man, is all over the place with "balancing".

 

I respect Sakurai's visions of the game. They're the creators point of view on how the games should be played.

 

Some parts of the full article are pretty interesting. Going off what he's said, he himself is clearly not particularly fond of competitive play in Smash, but can sincerely appreciate that others do enjoy it and actively encourages people to play the way they like. (Hence the statement that he's happy both Melee and Smash 4 are growing as e-sports.)

Another thing that I find interesting is how Sakurai states that he 'leaves most of the finer details and research to the monitoring team', resulting in him 'not watching things so closely'. So I wonder to what extent he might've just left balance decisions to the monitoring team. I mean, obviously everything is run by him before it's implemented, but this to me suggests that he more or less agrees with mostly any changes the monitoring team proposes, unless Sakurai sees an immediate issue with the idea (like buffing Kirby's Stone, an idea he doesn't appear to be too fond of, because that could mess with the balance in free-for-all play).

That's how I'm interpreting that, anyway.

 

Despite not fully understanding why competitive Smash is played the way it is, Sakurai believes that fans should play the way that makes them happy and is glad that people can enjoy the game.

OH MY GOD YES FINALLY

 

My balance patch wish list.
Higher hit-stun on a global level. That's all.

All the Sheik mains would love dthrow uair and fthrow bouncing fish as kill confirms. And this would probably give it to them...

You also just made it easier for Cloud to confirm dair or uair to finishing touch, all of Bayonetta's combos work better, and good luck ever escaping Captain Falcon's dthrow knee now.

I guess make some things like DK cargo uthrow uair work longer, but this would give a pretty asymmetrical advantage to fast, low-damage-per-hit characters and make slow characters mostly worse.

Spoiler

Fun fact: Smash 4, Brawl, and Melee all have identical amounts of hitstun. Brawl had hitstun cancelling (yay coding glitch?) and Smash 4 and Brawl allow air dodges out of tumble in addition to mostly lower fallspeeds, but increasing hitstun would leave Smash 4 with the second-most hitstun in the series (or the most if they went beyond 64). I don't think that's a particularly great change, given how the combos in the game currently work.

 

Sakurai honestly has no idea how to balance a roster. Keep in mind that after he went on vacation, we conveniently got a patch that finally addressed a lot of requests. I guarantee that if Sakurai had anything to do with that last patch, we'd have gotten the usual changes that leave people asking "why".

That quote about people using too many safe moves also came from a time before the shieldstun patch. He didn't even realize how freaking defensive-friendly he made his own game. lol

It's a good thing we had Namco this time, who at least has even an iota of knowledge when it comes to balancing a character.

 

It's a good thing that Sakurai can finally see. Now can we see some serious support?

 

This is pretty insightful, but, I kind of wish Mr. Sakurai would also go over his thought process with some of his choices regarding the individual characters in the patches, it would be interesting (and useful) to see why Dedede was nerfed, why Jigglypuff's been ignored, why it took so long to give Sheik the big nerf, etc, stuff like that.

Patches in general take a lot of work. Sakurai can't just flip a switch and suddenly say "this character is buffed/nerfed". It takes careful fine tuning to properly balance characters, so everything can't be done immediately. As for characters getting ignored, there's likely a queue of priority for the team. Clearly Mewtwo and other DLC fighters were a big priority as they released later, thus having less time to be worked on. Fighters like Jiggs and Dedede are probably still in their queue, just with less priority than characters who were already touched.

 

Patches in general take a lot of work. Sakurai can't just flip a switch and suddenly say "this character is buffed/nerfed". It takes careful fine tuning to properly balance characters, so everything can't be done immediately. As for characters getting ignored, there's likely a queue of priority for the team. Clearly Mewtwo and other DLC fighters were a big priority as they released later, thus having less time to be worked on. Fighters like Jiggs and Dedede are probably still in their queue, just with less priority than characters who were already touched.

Lack of priority? Like Dr. Mario's dash attack? Heheh... *Sigh*. I need friends

 

I appreciate how he said people should play the game the way they enjoy most, but his confusion over the lack of Smash attack usage shows that he doesn't understand how games are actually played in practice.

Smash attacks, in general, are unsafe due to their startup and/or end lag. Most people who play the game more than once in a blue moon will learn not to constantly throw out moves that are unsafe because, surprise, they get hit. It's called negative reinforcement. You don't have to be an expert on match-ups and advanced techniques to pick up on that simple concept. Even casual players want to win because winning is fun, so of course they're going to avoid doing things that cause them to regularly lose.

In Sakurai's mind, thinking ahead and learning from past mistakes is not how you should play a video game (because refusing to think ahead is the only situation where you and your opponent would always be running into each other's Smash attacks.)

 

I appreciate how he said people should play the game the way they enjoy most, but his confusion over the lack of Smash attack usage shows that he doesn't understand how games are actually played in practice.

Smash attacks, in general, are unsafe due to their startup and/or end lag. Most people who play the game more than once in a blue moon will learn not to constantly throw out moves that are unsafe because, surprise, they get hit. It's called negative reinforcement. You don't have to be an expert on match-ups and advanced techniques to pick up on that simple concept. Even casual players want to win because winning is fun, so of course they're going to avoid doing things that cause them to regularly lose.

In Sakurai's mind, thinking ahead and learning from past mistakes is not how you should play a video game (because refusing to think ahead is the only situation where you and your opponent would always be running into each other's Smash attacks.)

I imagine you could call Mario's up smash the ideal Sakurai Smash attack? It's got great coverage, it's quick, powerful, and high priority with the invincible head and all, which makes it stupidly safe to use.

As well, each How to Play video somewhat encourages using Smash Attacks as just finishers, not bread and butter moves.

 

but casuals liked playing PM too

 

As well, each How to Play video somewhat encourages using Smash Attacks as just finishers, not bread and butter moves.

Which is why what he said doesn't make sense. If the game encourages you to use Smash attacks primarily as finishers, why would he expect to see them being thrown out so often? Using your safe, quick moves is the best way to build up percent to get your oponent into KO range.

 

Which is why what he said doesn't make sense. If the game encourages you to use Smash attacks primarily as finishers, why would he expect to see them being thrown out so often? Using your safe, quick moves is the best way to build up percent to get your oponent into KO range.

Agreed. I think he likes matches to end as quickly as possible, and at first glance smashes seem like a great way to quickly rack up damage to do that. With their lack of safety however, one of two things would have to happen to allow this; either make them safer by e.g. speeding them up, or make them kill absurdly early.

 

Its quite interesting how Sakurai takes his viewpoint of this.

 

Ugh... This George Lucas...

I don't get why he insists on creating the game to be free-for-all scenarios. Don't matches just end up being 1 v 1 in the end? Unless....you're playing on time....which is the default choice when starting the game...
Ohhhhhhhh...
Seriously, who plays with Time? I've never met anyone who enjoys playing Time smash because it only results in running away at the end (even with 4 players) and a winner is easily identifiable by the last 15 seconds (you ain't getting that needed kill when everyone's got low percent).
"But items?" I guess, but again, with 15 seconds left and a beam sword pops out, it's like, "welp, game over".

And again, the fact that the vast majority of people play Stock matches, even when going at it with 3 other friends, shows that Time is not that enjoyable.
He should just make the game as balanced as it can be for 1 v 1 (like Witch Time was clearly intended for 4 player free for alls) because that's what matches come down to. Whether your a hardcore competitive Smash or a casual gamer hanging out with friends with items on, 1 v 1 is what it will always come down to the vast majority of the time.

Sakurai needs to stop being a George Lucas and insisting that people play his games the wrong way. Cuz while he's never said it, "when considering the variety of ways Smash can be played I think this is a shame....", it comes off as passive aggressive as when George Lucas said that the fans are gonna love episode 7, then later said it was just a beat for beat remake of episode 4 that tried nothing new, essentially making his first comment seem less like praisal of episode 7 and more as criticism of the fans taste in film.

 

All the Sheik mains would love dthrow uair and fthrow bouncing fish as kill confirms. And this would probably give it to them...

You also just made it easier for Cloud to confirm dair or uair to finishing touch, all of Bayonetta's combos work better, and good luck ever escaping Captain Falcon's dthrow knee now.

I guess make some things like DK cargo uthrow uair work longer, but this would give a pretty asymmetrical advantage to fast, low-damage-per-hit characters and make slow characters mostly worse.

Spoiler

Fun fact: Smash 4, Brawl, and Melee all have identical amounts of hitstun. Brawl had hitstun cancelling (yay coding glitch?) and Smash 4 and Brawl allow air dodges out of tumble in addition to mostly lower fallspeeds, but increasing hitstun would leave Smash 4 with the second-most hitstun in the series (or the most if they went beyond 64). I don't think that's a particularly great change, given how the combos in the game currently work.

That's actually really informative, thanks for that info.

 

At times I feel I hav to learn how ta use sum characters over again cuz ov sum zee patches XP

 

I can see a few more balancing patches coming out in the future. Despite how I feel about my girl Bayo I can see her getting nerfed a bit more because of the communities view about how unbalanced she is. If balancing characters and the game will help promote the game and keep old players playing and new players wanting to play then lets do it. Competitive Smash is my thing but its not for everyone and the game should be appealing for all types of players....even if I want the competitive scene to be pushed a little bit more.

 

I do think that balancing is good overall and that this "haphazardness" of winning should return but I also think that the current patch will make the competitive scene more interesting. Sure people are considering banning Bayonetta but top players like ZeRo are saying we need to find a way to counter her. It's this kind of drive that will help the game evolve and further itself as players will push themselves to the limits as well as their characters. I think it's possible we could see a growth in the Smash 4 competitive scene if this happens.

 

Sakurai honestly has no idea how to balance a roster. Keep in mind that after he went on vacation, we conveniently got a patch that finally addressed a lot of requests. I guarantee that if Sakurai had anything to do with that last patch, we'd have gotten the usual changes that leave people asking "why".

That quote about people using too many safe moves also came from a time before the shieldstun patch. He didn't even realize how freaking defensive-friendly he made his own game. lol

It's a good thing we had Namco this time, who at least has even an iota of knowledge when it comes to balancing a character.

Conveniently ignoring that in previous patches they addressed and fixed a lot of issues when Sakurai was on board, like nerfing the Hoo Hah, toning down Sonic and Rosa a bit, removing Lucario's Aura Lock to shield break, removing Zamus's infinite on Robin, Pikachu's infinite combo; while buffing several weak characters such as Ike, Link, DK, Bowser, Zelda, Falco, Robin, Shulk, Charizard, Marth, Lucina, Palutena, etc. It's cute that you pretend that not having him around does nothing but good so you can make your fallacy seem coherent despite that you are selectively leaving out information that already proves you wrong. You can't guarantee squat about whatever comes in a patch because you obviously don't know what you are talking about. Be aware as well that balancing a 58 character roster is a herculean task that may take years to fully realize.

 

As in the issues with Pac-Man like his Trampoline Up-B send people through the stage


As in things like that. That's why I said jank

Yeah that was patched a long time ago in 1.1.0 at the end of July 2015. The only pacman jank left is his generic fruit and hydrant play

 

Conveniently ignoring that in previous patches they addressed and fixed a lot of issues when Sakurai was on board, like nerfing the Hoo Hah, toning down Sonic and Rosa a bit, removing Lucario's Aura Lock to shield break, removing Zamus's infinite on Robin, Pikachu's infinite combo; while buffing several weak characters such as Ike, Link, DK, Bowser, Zelda, Falco, Robin, Shulk, Charizard, Marth, Lucina, Palutena, etc. It's cute that you pretend that not having him around does nothing but good so you can make your fallacy seem coherent despite that you are selectively leaving out information that already proves you wrong. You can't guarantee squat about whatever comes in a patch because you obviously don't know what you are talking about. Be aware as well that balancing a 58 character roster is a herculean task that may take years to fully realize.

You sure do love to wave your pom-poms around for Sakurai. lmao

I can easily say not having him around does nothing but good, because so far, it has. Can't wait for the next patch to do even more things that don't leave people going "why?".

Like nerfing that mistake, Bayonetta.

 

You sure do love to wave your pom-poms around for Sakurai. lmao

I can easily say not having him around does nothing but good, because so far, it has. Can't wait for the next patch to do even more things that don't leave people going "why?".

Like nerfing that mistake, Bayonetta.

Haha, not really, I just believe in fair criticism. No one is exempt of being criticized but whatever is said about someone must be accurate as well, and you are not exactly a shining example considering how spoiled and spiteful you tend to be in this matter, speaking about things you don't fully understand.
And you will be wrong as well, since it only takes me a few links to the previous patch notes' threads to prove that that is not the case. I understand you avoided addressing that part of my post because it pretty much brings down your argument. Why would you fact-check in the first place when for you that is merely an obstacle that prevents you from feeling outraged

 

I can easily say not having him around does nothing but good, because so far, it has.

I agree.
Sakurai was like "No DLC". Then Mewtwo was announced. Then Sakurai was like "no more DLC" and then more got leaked.
And then before the hoo hah got nerfed, Sakurai was like "No more balance updates". I'm positive Nintendo went around his back for the DLC characters and assigned a team to keep it up. Cuz that was money for Nintendo. The man has contradicted himself plenty of times and always for the better.

If Sakurai was completely out of the picture, 1. We woulda gotten two Smash Ballot characters instead of Corrin
2. The game would be balanced for 1 v 1s because all matches end in 1 v 1 except for in Time matches which, let's be honest, only a small minority actually plays in and
3. Time matches would not be the default option. Not that big a deal, but it's just more "Sakurai not knowing what he's doing".

The man is like George Lucas. Thank you for creating this universe and series......but when you have complete control and no external influence, we get Jar Jar Bink aka tripping.

 

Haha, not really, I just believe in fair criticism. No one is exempt of being criticized but whatever is said about someone must be accurate as well, and you are not exactly a shining example considering how spoiled and spiteful you tend to be in this matter, speaking about things you don't fully understand.
And you will be wrong as well, since it only takes me a few links to the previous patch notes' threads to prove that that is not the case. I understand you avoided addressing that part of my post because it pretty much brings down your argument. Why would you fact-check in the first place when for you that is merely an obstacle that prevents you from feeling outraged

"Have you ever made a game?"

If Sakurai was completely out of the picture, 1. We woulda gotten two Smash Ballot characters instead of Corrin
2. The game would be balanced for 1 v 1s because all matches end in 1 v 1 except for in Time matches which, let's be honest, only a small minority actually plays in and
3. Time matches would not be the default option. Not that big a deal, but it's just more "Sakurai not knowing what he's doing".

Yeah, we probably would have gotten actual deserving characters, unlike Corrin. While I feel that Bayonetta winning the ballot is extremely questionable, it was still pretty dumb to not even have a runner up character. Would have been much better than Corrin. Ganondorf would probably also be ****ing Ganondorf too without Sakurai around.

 

"Have you ever made a game?"

Ah, you give me a non-answer by using an out of context quote. Quite sad, but I wasn't expecting anything worthwhile from you. I'll just take your silence and lack of intelligence in replying as your graceless defeat, so there isn't really anything else left for me to be said

I agree.
Sakurai was like "No DLC". Then Mewtwo was announced. Then Sakurai was like "no more DLC" and then more got leaked.
And then before the hoo hah got nerfed, Sakurai was like "No more balance updates". I'm positive Nintendo went around his back for the DLC characters and assigned a team to keep it up. Cuz that was money for Nintendo. The man has contradicted himself plenty of times and always for the better
If Sakurai was completely out of the picture, 1. We woulda gotten two Smash Ballot characters instead of Corrin
2. The game would be balanced for 1 v 1s because all matches end in 1 v 1 except for in Time matches which, let's be honest, only a small minority actually plays in and
3. Time matches would not be the default option. Not that big a deal, but it's just more "Sakurai not knowing what he's doing".

The man is like George Lucas. Thank you for creating this universe and series......but when you have complete control and no external influence, we get Jar Jar Bink aka tripping.

Honestly, why am I still surprised that this fanbase has a lot of unintelligent people like you and Phantom who fail at every level in reading comprehension? Sakurai said at the time before the release of the 3DS version that were currently no plans for DLC (keyword: currently, not hard to miss) which is not to say that there was never going to be. Sakurai was hired by Nintendo and there is just so much he can say about the game during development without violating his NDA; his response about DLC wasn't about confirming it or denying it but leaving the option in the air. Same with the balance patches: "We don't have any such plans"; it doesn't mean that they'll never do it but this pretty much the PR response you give so people don't get their hopes up, and even if they do have something in store they can't say it right away. He also never said "No DLC" but this shows how utterly uninformed you are in the matter.

If Sakurai was completely out of the picture, 1. We woulda gotten two Smash Ballot characters instead of Corrin

And you know this because...? I would love to hear the reasoning behind this claim, assuming that you have one. I supposed you were working behind the scenes of the DLC of this game to know such thing. Or, in the most likely scenario, you are pulling this from your butt and fallaciously claiming that we could have gotten two more characters instead of Corrin, showing how little you know regarding character development and the process that was utilized in choosing the ballot winners.

2. The game would be balanced for 1 v 1s because all matches end in 1 v 1 except for in Time matches which, let's be honest, only a small minority actually plays

The number of people that do that is bigger than you think. At parties or meetings with several people where there is bound to be 4 players or more, Time Matches are played very frequently specially when there are a lot of people with varying skill levels. The problem with Stocks in such places is that the weaker players lose quickly while the best ones stay for a while longer fighting each other which ends up isolating the other ones who are eagerly waiting their turn so that they can play again. With Time however, everyone can enjoy a match without having others hog their play time. Just because you don't play like that it doesn't mean that everyone else doesn't. You can't ignore free-for-all play regardless and your mentality of shifting focus exclusively to 1 vs 1 just shows how unqualified you are to have a say in this matter.

3. Time matches would not be the default option. Not that big a deal, but it's just more "Sakurai not knowing what he's doing".

See the above paragraph.
You are only weighing options from your point of view without considering how others would play the game so if the man doesn't know what he's doing then you are even more clueless than he can ever be since you are only speaking out of selfishness.

The man is like George Lucas. Thank you for creating this universe and series......but when you have complete control and no external influence, we get Jar Jar Bink aka tripping.

Nah, he is far from being like George Lucas. You only claim this because you haven't gotten your way and you use this accusation as a vehicle for your own bias, hence the silliness of the points you made that I already refuted. The comment about tripping seems uncalled for; that was a mechanic added in a game that was released 8 years ago and it was removed in the newest iteration which shows that they learned from past mistakes. Considering how unable you are to read or even make an educated assumption, it's no surprised you skipped over this fact. Try at least gathering information before jumping on that keyboard, it'll save a lot of embarrassment.

 

Ah, you give me a non-answer by using an out of context quote. Quite sad, but I wasn't expecting anything worthwhile from you. I'll just take your silence and lack of intelligence in replying as your graceless defeat, so there isn't really anything else left for me to be said

I can tell you're pretty red faced under all those smileys, friendo. I'm just not really engaging you because you really are a bit of an apologist.

I mean, look at how you got so worked up in defending Sakurai's honor. lol

 

I agree.
Sakurai was like "No DLC". Then Mewtwo was announced. Then Sakurai was like "no more DLC" and then more got leaked.
And then before the hoo hah got nerfed, Sakurai was like "No more balance updates". I'm positive Nintendo went around his back for the DLC characters and assigned a team to keep it up. Cuz that was money for Nintendo. The man has contradicted himself plenty of times and always for the better.

If Sakurai was completely out of the picture, 1. We woulda gotten two Smash Ballot characters instead of Corrin
2. The game would be balanced for 1 v 1s because all matches end in 1 v 1 except for in Time matches which, let's be honest, only a small minority actually plays in and
3. Time matches would not be the default option. Not that big a deal, but it's just more "Sakurai not knowing what he's doing".

The man is like George Lucas. Thank you for creating this universe and series......but when you have complete control and no external influence, we get Jar Jar Bink aka tripping.

Sakurai never said "No DLC". He said "there are no plans for DLC".

–“No More DLC”
This quote was taken out of context. Sakurai said that he and his team were not working on DLC at the time of the interview (November 19th), which for all we know, is true.

-Is Sakurai a Liar?

He said there wasn't plans for a balance update. Not that there wouldn't be any. Check out the Is Sakurai a Liar? article for more information.

Characters take a long time to make. It's because they need to debug them across a wide variety of modes, and playstyles. They also needed to create characters for not one version, but two and then make them play identical when the hardware is different. I was saying from the start that we wouldn't get a lot of DLC characters (One of the few people to say that too). Based on the characters we got, and the data mining it seems that the DLC characters took up to 6 months each. Lucas was probably the easiest as they could import from Brawl/ modify Ness (he inherited some more Ness like qualities in Smash for Wii U/3DS). Ryu required them to rework some of the engine (Source). There's some reason to believe that Corrin was the last decided fighter, as he's in the last slot, and that slot wasn't in the April update (Source) but Sakurai has never commented on it. Just that it was decided to add a character to promote an upcoming game (My full thoughts here).

However, you are overestimating the size of the competitive community.

Melee sold 7.09 million copies.
Brawl sold 12.93 million copies.
Wii U sold 4.61 million copies.
3DS sold 7.92 million copies.
(Sources here)

How many people are on /r/smashbros?
203,096 people subscribed.

How many people are on SmashBoards?
229,899 registered users.

On the old Wii Channel, you had 1,690,757 players report their Brawl time. You don't need to be a mathematician to know that's a much bigger number than both /r/smashbros and SmashBoards combined. And the Wii Channel was opt in. So people had to actively send their data. These aren't people who just bought the game and put it down either. The average play time among those 1.5 million people? Over 77 hours.(Source)

Project M had almost a million downloads (3.0) (Source). The 3.6 beta was downloaded 61,399 times (Source). Again, that's <8% of the people who bought Brawl.

So unless you have data for the millions of people playing Smash that you pulled out of thin air, then it's kind of big assumption that the "only a small minority actually plays" 1v1 matches, and stock. Especially if you are just basing it off the <1% of the Smashers who are registered on online forums.

Now, you can argue that the game can be balanced for a 1v1 setting, and free for all. But you can't act like the majority of Smashers are hardcore competitive players who only play 1v1, because there is no evidence to suggest that. Heck, Chris Pranger, former Nintendo Treehouse Localizer, even said that competitive Smashers aren't the majority (Podcast here). He said we are loud, but we aren't the majority and I think he's 100% correct.

 

I can tell you're pretty red faced under all those smileys, friendo. I'm just not really engaging you because you really are a bit of an apologist.

I mean, look at how you got so worked up in defending Sakurai's honor. lol

You know someone is cornered when they call you an apologist for no good reason, oh you. If it helps you sleep better at night sure, think of me as that, it doesn't make your idiocy less notable nor your case more solid but ignorance is bliss for little minds like yours

 

If anyone noticed that in the article it talked about how Sakuri mentions that he doesn't even understand the 1 v 1 competitive Smash scene. If anyone is pushing for the competitive scene to expand it is Nintendo itself but Sakuri himself may or may not even have full hands on any of the recent patch updates. Which yes these recent updates have benefitted the competitive scene like how Mewtwo has gone from bottom tier to possibly high tier or how Sheik has gone from the top of the top tier to maybe middle of the top tiers. None of it was possibly directed at the competitive scene and instead their date and decision to in-act the changes was to balance the overall smash scene, both online and offline. Character's like Sheik and Zss dominated the online scene while other characters like Ganon and Mewtwo were nearly unplayed at all. Now since the change the number of players for Mewtwo has gone up while the domination of Sheik has been lessoned and has allowed for other characters to begin shining.