When Dragon Quest’s Hero was first detailed by director Masahiro Sakurai last month, some fans had a lot of concern about the character’s competitive viability. While some character incorporate random elements into their gameplay, Hero’s mechanics are a nod to Dragon Quest’s RPG mechanics and tend to center on a random number generator. The competitive community has been split about what to do with the character, but at least one tournament has decided to outright ban him.
South Australia Smash Central posted a notice via Twitter last night stating that they would be banning the character from competitive play at the tournament. It was not an issue that he is too new, like Evo’s time-based rules on how close DLC characters can release for a game after Skarlet turned out to be rather broken in Mortal Kombat X. This time around, the issue is that Hero himself is just too dependent on random attacks.
“RNG permeates every element of Hero’s design, from spell selection to random critical hits and hocus pocus effects,” a Twitlonger posted by the tournament account reads. “While randomness has to varying degrees always been present in competitive games and other Smash games, Hero is so dependent on randomness that it cannot be ‘played around’ or accounted for in competitive play. The argument is similar to the reason why items are banned in competitive play.”
The Smash Bros. community is already divided over the response, as other tournament organizers have been weighing the character’s inclusion as well. It also brings to light a larger discussion within the community about how far is too far when you start banning characters, which has come up before when Bayonetta was considered too good to be allowed in tournament play.
Dragon Quest’s Hero is the second character of a five-character season pass for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, with Banjo & Kazooie coming next.
