Forum:Further documentation on unplayable characters

Forums: Index → Proposals → Further documentation on unplayable characters

This discussion is in regards to a proposed change on SmashWiki. The discussion must first meet with a consensus before it is implemented.

To clarify, I don't know what the current standards are on this, but from what I see on the wiki, if I were to go ham on it, I would probably cause a ruckus of some kind, so I'm writing this up.

Recently I've been attempting to document some of the unplayable characters more effectively, mainly Giga Bowser. A thought crossed my mind regarding this, though: we don't really do moveset pages and the like for these characters, despite the only difference being their playability. Part of the inspiration for this proposal are a few "developing a meta" videos by Joseph Maolin, eg. this. They're some of the most analysis that has been done on Melee's "forbidden" characters at the very least and I think it's a shame there isn't really anywhere to put this type of thing.

So my proposal is this: should we expand upon the documentation of these characters in cases they can be played as through hacking? If so, should we design moveset pages for them that document their frame data and utility as if they were playable normally? I'm thinking to the degree of Master Hand and Crazy Hand's character pages, plus the moveset pages. Naturally, this would cover everything from the Wire Frames to 64 Metal Mario and Ultimate Giga Bowser. In Melee especially, the "forbidden" characters are decently popular and even see online use at times. Similar things can be seen for Ultimate, and while it was used for an April Fools, Rekzius did some analysis on Giga Bowser's hitboxes. I feel like there is a large benefit to analysing these characters seriously from an encyclopaedic perspective, even if it's moreso "for fun".

I suppose I should define what we're "expanding" here. I think the Giga Bowser (Final Smash) and Wario-Man pages are what I would consider to be the ideal form of documentation on the unplayable characters, it's just right. Perhaps an Overview on the character itself in the place of the final smash; this would particularly benefit the Wire Frames which have significantly different movesets to their counterparts, the current documentation is frankly not very good. I would also argue for the inclusion of moveset pages akin to what real fighters have — same for the Transformation Final Smashes that involve moveset changes of that magnitude, honestly — which would, again, make for solid documentation. This could also help the pages for Final Smash Giga Bowser and Wario-Man, as their movelists aren't too detailed as-is.

Master Hand and Crazy Hand have their own "character" pages, which has strangely not been done for any other unplayable fighter. I consider their pages to be pretty great for this role and could even be expanded on. If we were to take the character page angle, for example, I would do something like character pages for the Red, Yellow, Blue, and Green Alloys, Male and Female Wire Frames, Melee/Ult Giga Bowser, 64 Metal Mario, Brawl bosses, so on, so forth. You get the idea, yeah? Any controllable boss; the current pages for the Alloys/Wire Frames could be kept akin to the hands. I think there are a bunch of boundaries you could set for this though, which I think would be a pretty big discussion. How far do we go, etc? The standards on what defines a boss has changed significantly with Ultimate at the very least, drastically decreasing the significance of Master Hand and Crazy Hand as bosses overall, so this is perhaps something to consider.

The main argument against this is mainly "standards": they're not normally selectable, and should never be considered "real" fighters. Thus, because of the strange nature of these characters, expanding upon them is not important. I agree with this, I wouldn't include them on Fighter lists and want to take the angle of improving what's already present and improve their consistency. I do feel like there is a "market" for this type of documentation, and there is a small Melee community (specifically the Forbidden Character Discord) that has aimed to argue for the inclusion of the unplayable roster in the past. There are even mods like Smash Remix and Project M that make them playable normally, sometimes with strings attached. . It's also a pretty significant change overall, perhaps too much in some areas. There's a lot of weirdness. You could even argue that the current documentation on many bosses is sufficient, though I would disagree from an encyclopaedic perspective, considering that this proposal is being made at all and there's outside resources like Maolin's that are doing a better job than we are.

Anyway, thanks for hearing me out. The more background checks I did on this topic, the more I realised how big a "project" this would be, but I'm very interested in seeing how it plays out. --Plague von Karma 09:04, September 29, 2021 (EDT)

I think there's a fairly major distinction necessary between non-standard characters which a player is able to play as without external modification (Wario-Man, Giga Bowser, Master Hand) and ones that do require hacks to ever be under player control. I also don't see moveset tables and such being necessary for things like the Wireframes/Alloys/etc. since they're functionally just stripped down versions of normal characters' movesets. Miles (talk) 13:32, September 29, 2021 (EDT)

I'm not entirely sure as to whether they'd be unnecessary, at least for the Wireframes, which have different frame data entirely on some moves alongside varying properties. They're stripped down, yes, but the differences make them more like Melee's playable clones overall. For example, Female Wireframe's UAir and smashes may as well be different moves entirely, and Male has a freakishly huge UTilt hitbox. I can't speak for the Alloys due to general inexperience with Brawl's unplayable characters but eh. Do you agree that the rest warrant similar treatment to the hands, though? --Plague von Karma 14:33, September 29, 2021 (EDT)

Not really. I think that it would ultimately be a pretty frivolous kind of bloat to bother adding. Miles (talk) 15:35, September 29, 2021 (EDT)

Very late on this but I don't see why we shouldn't have that information on the wiki. Even if you can't play as them normally, you do still fight them, which makes that moveset information still fully relevant. A wiki that aims to be fully comprehensive about Smash should not require people to search outside the wiki for relevant game data. Omega Tyrant 19:57, April 18, 2023 (EDT)