Interesting discovery regarding Bayonetta and the ballot

GalacticPetey

GalacticPetey

Donkey Kong
Do note: None of this is 100% confirmed and I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist, but the evidence here is pretty damning.

https://twitter.com/Ruben_dal/status/1013925354682101760

Basically in update 1.0.6 of Smash 4, when Mewtwo was added, placeholder slots were added for the following characters: Lucas, Roy, Ryu, Cloud, and Bayonetta. The only one missing is Corrin and we know that he was added later as a promo character. Now, we already knew about Lucas at this point and this lines up with the datamined Roy and Ryu that followed shortly. Now, Cloud and Bayonetta are the odd ones out here. These slots were copied from characters with similar parameters. Ike for Cloud and ZSS for Bayonetta.

Why is this important? Well this means that Bayonetta was planned in April and only two weeks after the ballot went live. With this in mind, there's no way Bayonetta was the actual ballot winner. I know people were skeptical, but this pretty much confirms it.

Going forward this means one of two things. One, the ballot never mattered at all. Or two, it DID matter, but it's being used for Ultimate. And with Sakurai seemingly going out of his way to please the fans, that's very possible.
 
Well since the roster was finalized in 2015, and we got both Ridley and Inkling (two highly requested characters, heck I voted Ridley), and not to mention that Sakurai has been focusing on fan-demand lately, my guess is that the ballot's true purpose was for Ultimate.
 
Which bodes well for big fan favorites who would struggle to get in normally. Characters like Isaac and King K. Rool have never been in a better position.
 
So it was for Ultimate, but they decided to add Bayonetta because they had the time, and left Ridley, who might be the actual winner to appear Ultimate to surprise fans?
 
Captain America said:
Basically in update 1.0.6 of Smash 4, when Mewtwo was added, placeholder slots were added for the following characters: Lucas, Roy, Ryu, Cloud, and Bayonetta.[...]there's no way Bayonetta was the actual ballot winner.
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I knew there was another reason why I didn't like Bayonetta. Now I know what it is.

Regardless, I hope all my votes for Isaac mean something in Ultimate :smug:
 
Most important takeaway from all of this though:
ballot-jpg.151191


To quote someone on SmashBoards.

The problem isn't that Bayonetta didn't 'win'.

The problem is that the community decided that the ballot was something that could be won
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I'll admit my language about Bayonetta "winning" in the OP was misleading.
 
If this means I'm potentially getting my boy Shovel Knight in Ultimate then count me the fuck in
 
Well, I voted Ice Climbers in the ballot and now they're in Ultimate.

Coincidence or ....? :boshi:
 
I voted for Daisy and Waluigi from two different areas, and while I've got one in so far, I am curious on where Waluigi is placed in the rankings, since he's got a resurgence around the time of E3, and the apparent disappointment that came with the Assist Trophy once again.

Thank you for reading.
 
When it comes to the Smash Ballot conspiracy theories they say that the Smash Ballot was for Ultimate and that they rigged the ballot to make Bayonetta get into Smash. Also on SmashFAQs as we Smashers in the Ultimate board on GameFAQs call it, I heard that nobody voted for Bayonetta, it was rigged (which I mentioned earlier in this post), that Sakurai put her in despite not winning the ballot, yeah so those conspiracy theories are out of control since that tweet.
 
the one thing they probably won't (or shouldn't) do is reveal the ballot results even after ultimate is out, unless they did actually put all the top 10 characters in the game or something

the whinging would still be incessant
 
How can you be so sure that those slots really are for Bayonetta? As one user pointed out, perhaps they knew the results already at this point, so they prepared Bayonetta, that's another possibility. These slots are completely blank otherwise. The only "evidence" that's there is that it's been copied from Zero Suit Samus, which if you want to try to connect the flimsy dots, I guess it makes a little more sense. But even if the ballot character changed and looks nothing like Zero Suit Samus they could always change it to another placeholder. Calling it "pretty damning" is a stretch. Was expecting a slot literally named "Bayonetta" but even then, it's not that (as I know smash file names, they are just numbers).

Writing it off as conspiracy theory. You might not call yourself a conspiracy theorist, but this, this is speculation backed by no good evidence.
 
Well Sakurai has gone on record it takes like six months to complete a character. That means development would have had to started in August or earlier. And she's also a third party so negotiations had to take place to get her into Smash since Sega owns her. Now the update that this character slot first appears in was but two weeks after the ballot, these character slots would have had to have work done on before that. Games aren't just patched out of the blue, so work on these slots likely started before the ballot even went live. We know for a fact that these were used as the basis for the DLC characters, with Ike being used a starting point for Cloud and Corrin, which akes sense given build, proportions, and methods of attack. ZSS being used as a base highly suggests Bayonetta.

Look, there are people more experienced in datamining and game development who can explain this stuff better than I can. The evidence is there. Plenty of people of SmashBoards have made write ups.
 
it is not a surprise.

All the DLC was planned way before it was revealed starting with Mewtwo, remember Roy and Ryu were datamined in early updates.

Bayonetta was totally planned and it seems her addition was a bussiness move to make the game have a more mature tone, plus it basically established Bayonetta as a Nintedo exclusive series due to the hystory with it being saved on the Wii U release of Bayonetta 2.

i think it was as smart move on Sakurai to save the inklings and Ridley for Ultimate since we all know this is a bigger deal than Smash 4.
 
Captain America said:
Well Sakurai has gone on record it takes like six months to complete a character.
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That makes me raise an eyebrow because this implies it takes six months each. We have four new unique DLC characters, so this would mean 2 years max and we expect the last three DLC to be on roughly at November of 2016 (game is released on 2014). This doesn't include development for the stages or for compatibility for the 3DS version. Maybe those take a shorter amount of time, but saying six months per character... I don't think that's the full picture.
 
do you actually think Bayo won the ballot or
E:i mean i guess its possible that she did. but tbh i still have serious doubts about it and what the OP said still makes hella more sense to me than her winning, despite the lack of evidence either way
 
Nah, I don't think she actually won the ballot. That annoying "realizable" is a weasel word.
 
looking it back, she obviously didn't win lmao.

Not to be harsh but it's kinda delusional to believe she did. I mean , as much as i personally like her being completly real her winning is the same as a FE character being added as the winner.

Her series almost died and Nintendo saved her, her games are good but they aren't let's say ''the Last of Us'' or anything of the sort.

It's literally fishy that she won but people didn't care too much because she brough hype and as a fighter she is very fun and unique.
 
Swiftie_Luma said:
but people didn't care too much because she brough hype and as a fighter she is very fun and unique.
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And now the competitive community despises her for how busted she is.

I don't think she's Brawl Meta Knight bad but good lord Smash 4 Bayonetta is strong.
 
So does this mean everyone just assumed that the ballot would put the most-voted character into Smash 4 through DLC when really they just wanted to get an idea of what people wanted without any requirements to actually put the characters in? If that's true, I feel like they didn't quite get the message across... It's funny though because it never seemed right to me that Bayonetta won since I don't remember her being oft talked about as a potential character in the ballot days; everyone was busy talking about people like King K. Rool and Shovel Knight.
 
I think the ballot was always meant to be more of a suggestion box than a popularity poll. They weren't just gonna put in a person who got a lot of votes. The text on the site even said "we'll consider adding this character". "Consider". They could add no one and it wouldn't by lying as long as said characters were at least momentarily considered.
 
Monika said:
If this means I'm potentially getting my boy Shovel Knight in Ultimate then count me the *bleep* in
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Half cursed
 
Eh, still beyond amazing that he is the frikkin' first ever indie character to even appear physically in Smash to me, playable or not.

I mean, I thought Shantae had more chance than him.
 
Lucario said:
Eh, still beyond amazing that he is the frikkin' first ever indie character to even appear physically in Smash to me, playable or not.
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CommanderVideoTrophyWiiU.png
 
Princess Mario said:
CommanderVideoTrophyWiiU.png
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It would be a very cool surprise if Commander Video ended up playable. After all, his series debuted on the WiiWare, and the various bit.Trip games can be used as inspiration. A farfetched dream, but I hope that if he got in, we get a Charles Martinet trophy (named "Narrator", but we all know it's him).

Thank you for reading.
 
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