While I understand that this game has been built from the ground up to be more competitive focused, I am still somewhat disappointed at the lack of casual offline AND online modes this game has, so I’d like to suggest some modes that would at least give a new player something to do as they get more comfy with playing the game (I’m aware that there is an upcoming story mode, but this on top of that):
Make the Target Breaking minigame available outside of arcade mode:
it kinda sucks that this is only available to play in the arcade mode itself, so it’d be cool if we could do this minigame individually per character and get a small reward for first time completion…
Give us more fleshed out custom game options:
Right now, the only settings available are the ability to change time, stock, enable teams or FFA, which is WAY too limited. Give us the ability to start at higher percents, increase or decrease knockback (it’d also be nice to change team outline color too…), the ability to make ourselves visible or invisible, to fix the camera, to shrink the blast zone, etc. , just stuff that we can do for fun offline when playing locally…
Add a few rotating Casual Party games in the Casual Mode online and make them playable locally as well:
There’s defs a dire need of “Fun” modes or party game modes for unwinding after sweating in Ranked, I think having a playlist where at least 1 rotating party mode is available biweekly would be ideal, as it not only would give something fresh for players to do, but it might be a good way for newer players to dip their toes into playing PvP with other players and at least have fun playing a silly mode, even if they lose. So here’s a few suggestions I have for such modes…
1) Super Sudden Death/Stamina combination, can call it something like Armored Deathbattle - So basically, you know how in Arcade mode on Normal and Hard, the final fight gives the opponent some armor, which makes it so they cannot take % damage until that armor is depleted? Why not make it into a FFA game mode where each player starts with 150 Armor and 300% damage, so while you have the armor you have the knockback of 0% damage, but as soon as you take damage that breaks the armor, you’re instantly sent flying since 300% is a very high damage value… I’d say it’d be a great little FFA casual mode.
2) Explosive Hot Potato - also FFA, a random player will get a 30 second timer over their head that slowly counts down, if that timer reaches zero, they are instantly KO’d, but they can pass this timer around by hitting another player, so this pretty much makes it so that players in the arena can either focus on surviving or trying to KO each other while avoiding the person who has the timer, the explosion has high blast damage, but will only instantly KO the one who has the timer. This mode can certainly lead to some chaotic fun times…
3) Gold Rush (based on a similar mode in Melee) - Can be FFA or Team based, you have unlimited lives, and 7 minutes. Anytime an opponent is hit, gold coins will fly out, the harder the hit, the more valuable the gold coins that fly out will be and if you get KO’d then at least 1/2 the coins you were holding will fly onto the stage. Team or player that has the most coins when the time expires wins…
4) Aether Ball (based this on the trophy mini game in melee where you hit trophies towards a basket) - you’re basically in a flat arena with no platforms, can be FFA or 2v2, there’s a big, round basket in the middle of the arena and small balls continously rain down, you can hit balls into the basket with any attack, and the more you attack a ball, the bigger it gets, and the more points it’s worth (up to maybe 5 points each or something), an enemy player can steal your ball by hitting it, but if a ball is hit too many times it will break, thus denying any points it would give, so you’d need to use quite a bit of strategy to maximize scoring points. The team or player to get the highest points will win…
I’m sure y’all can think of other fun modes that you can rotate every two weeks and this would at least give us something to look forward to every week, and to encourage people to at least try it out, you can even incentivize play by adding a completion reward for playing the mode at least 3-5 times (up to you as to what the limit would be…)