Smash Bros. Ultimate patch updates play, various characters in mysterious ways

Nintendo has released an update for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate that brings the game up to version 1.2.0, but the patch notes provide few specifics on what has changed.

The patch has “adjusted the difficulty of approaching challengers” in offline mode, while offering the following two changes to playing online:

• When matchmaking in Quickplay, the Format setting of your Preferred Rules will be prioritized more. This may cause matchmaking to take more time. Also, there is no guarantee that matchmaking will be done exactly as shown in the set Preferred Rules.
• Increased the stability of the synchronous connection within Battle Arenas.

Those adjustments are good news, but the rest of the patch is much more mysterious. The official patch notes state that there are “game balance adjustments,” as well as “various gameplay fixes,” in the patch, without giving us any details about what those changes may be.

We do know that the following characters have been given “specific adjustments and changes,” we just don’t know what those adjustments might have been:

• Donkey Kong
• Link
• Kirby
• Luigi
• Ice Climbers
• Young Link
• Olimar
• Toon Link
• Villager
• Greninja
• Pac-Man
• Duck Hunt
• Isabelle

The community of players is already hard at work trying to figure out what, exactly, this patch has done.

“It’s really frustrating they do this,” one player wrote on the game’s subreddit. “Even something simple like ‘fixed some inconsistencies with Ice Climbers where the second climber would act in unintended ways’ would at least clue us in. I really hope they didn’t take the desynch out but it seems like they might’ve. And there’s no way to tell cause the patch notes are useless, yay!”