Here’s what Super Smash Bros. 6 needs for the esports scene to grow

There’s a Nintendo Direct tomorrow (September 9th) and there’s a rumor that we will get the first confirmation that Super Smash Bros. 6 is on the way. This isn’t really a big surprise or secret: Kirby’s father, Masahiro Sakurai, has been saying he wants to work on another Smash for years now. He just needed to finish Kirby Air Riders first.

Super Smash Bros. 6 is more a matter of when.

The Ultimate scene is getting a bit stale as players wait for a new title. While older games like Smash 64 and Melee have a dedicated scene formed over decades, the Ultimate scene is often full of a wide range of players and characters. It’s not as set in stone. It’s ready to be shaken up. Refreshed.

However, Smash 6 needs a few things to keep the Smash esports scene growing. Although knowing Sakurai and the rest of the team at Nintendo, we can just keep on daydreaming.

The Nintendo Switch 2 is said to have better rollback netcode than the previous console, but it’s still quite far behind for those who are looking to compete in online tourneys or have competitive practice matches.

Said one player on Reddit: “The online scene is quite alive, never ever have trouble finding a match since the game came out to this day. It’s just frustrating due to the not-so-great netcode. So if both players don’t have an optimal connection, it’ll have input lag or stuttering. With two wired connections, it’s pretty good.”

Added another: “Putting such a bad netcode in your MAIN fighting game, quite possibly your best-selling game of all time for that console, shows the greed and the carelessness we can expect from Nintendo. Just devastating.”

Despite the horrendous lag making online play totally different from LAN matches, Nintendo has no interest in doing much about it. In fact, Nintendo is actively working on keeping it this way. A recent update specifically targeted Delay Mod, a mod meant to fix Nintendo’s rollback netcode. Apparently blasphemous.

If Nintendo doesn’t fix the rollback netcode for Super Smash Bros. 6, it will continue to reduce the number of competitive players who don’t want to deal with online lag in matches. One of the reasons that other fighting games have continued to grow is good online play, something severely lacking in Smash. That lack of connectivity among players and having fewer practice options is most definitely a struggle for the esports side of things.

The competitive stage pool for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a bit snoozeville. Previous games, like Melee, had a lot more interactive and dynamic stages. Pokemon Stadium 2 has that one transformation with a potential glitch, but the rest of it creates a lot of opportunities for varying strategies and gameplay styles.

While stage hazards are definitely unappealing to competitive players, it seems that Ultimate overcorrected its stages, making them almost too safe. They’re all very similar to one another, lacking in transformations and shapes in exchange for Battlefield in a variety of sizes.

“The stages in Ultimate overcorrected previous stages’ faults,” noted one player on Reddit. “While they’re not awful like the retro, scrolling, and giant stages, there’s little to say about Ult’s new lineup. It makes even less sense that a lot of the stage gimmicks are mostly cosmetic now that hazard toggles and the Battlefield/FD layouts were implemented for every stage.”

While Melee has the same six characters fighting over and over again in the Top 8, the stages offer a lot more switch-ups, strategy, and entertaining moments than the three platform stages with various backgrounds over in Ultimate.

I DON’T CARE WHAT ANYONE SAYS, I’M STILL FIGHTING FOR CAPTAIN TOAD!

I’m so sick of Captain Toad being looked over. Yeah, yeah, Waluigi is a hilarious, outdated, overdone meme. Sure. But Captain Toad has actual potential. He has an actual moveset just waiting to be implemented.

Toad has such a long history in Mario’s universe. Captain Toad himself can pluck and throw turnips, use a pickaxe, and use power-ups to restore health or duplicate himself. But Toad has super speed, poison, wall climbing, and super strength. He was the strongest character in Super Mario Bros. 2, capable of carrying Mario and Luigi.

I mean, you guys accepted Piranha Plant. Why can’t Captain Toad be on the roster?

At the same time, however, I want the roster to be smaller. I know the “everyone is here” thing was hype. But we really don’t need that many characters on the roster. Melee proved that.

Ultimate had a lot of “echo fighters” like Peach/Daisy and Mario/Dr. Mario, where there was very miniscule changes between the characters. I always thought, “Why can’t Daisy just be a skin for Peach?” Just seems not necessary.

There are also tons of very similar characters, like all the swordies that are the same archetype with different speeds and strengths, and a few special movements. Why not just drop Ike and others that are less used? I’m sure Ike wouldn’t be missed.

In fact, I think Sakurai should look at the play hours of all the characters and just cut the ones that nobody cares about. I think Ultimate would become a lot more competitive if the roster was more selective. Right now, Ultimate feels a bit chaotic. It could be seen as fun to have that kind of variety in the Top 16, but there’s a reason that the Melee pros have to really push themselves to master characters in order to be at the top. When everyone is playing the same characters, you really have to find all of the secrets and techniques that set you apart.

It’d be fun to see that kind of competitiveness in the modern Smash scene, which is often condemned for being less serious.

With such a massive roster and Nintendo’s disdain for competitiveness, there’s just not complete balance in Ultimate.

Said one fan: “Perfect balance is impossible simply due to characters having differences, as even if two characters have the smallest of differences, it means that one will be better than the other, that is just the nature of balance.”

There’s blatant stuff like getting rid of OP characters like Steve. Or at least completely reworking their moveset. There should never be characters that have no weak spots, an answer to everything, and the ability to camp the entire match.

But each character also needs a bit of a rework. It’d be nice for some characters to have more interesting passives and more unique moves. Other characters need to be a bit faster and not as powerful. I’m sure the Smash community could go on and on with characters that need some changes. I’ve seen people complain about Pit’s triple jump despite others saying he’s the most honest in the game.

It’s tough with 90ish characters on the roster. You won’t please everyone.

I mean, I personally hate Hero’s randomness. I think that’s not needed in a competitive game. Of course, Nintendo doesn’t want Smash to be competitive. But this is just a wishlist, alright?

And that brings me to the last one: Nintendo has to actually care about the Smash esports scene for it to become viable at all beyond just the passionate top players.

Unfortunately, it’s a well-known fact that Nintendo does not care at all about Smash esports. In fact, it has actively fought against it for decades. This includes removing Smash from Evo, shutting down Smash World Tour, sending cease and desist letters to locally run tournaments, and never offering any prize money or marketing materials. Ever.

With no support from Nintendo, pro players like Juan “Hungrybox” DeBiedma and streamers like Ludwig Ahgren have stepped up to run tournaments, fund players, and grow local scenes. Unfortunately, Nintendo has not provided any financial support to these dedicated players. Instead, Nintendo has argued that Steve can’t be banned and continued to ignore its horrible console lag.

It’s clear Nintendo doesn’t care about the competitive scene right now, which could mean a lot of these meaningful changes to Super Smash Bros. will not happen. Instead, we may get more silly moving stages. More items. A bloated roster. Broken characters. What would Nintendo care? It only wants families to have fun and Steve is fun for children, right?

Let’s see if Sakurai has come around. Even a little.