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While many tournaments and streams have been picking up customs with Evo 2015 having customs on officially for Smash Wii U so the announcement earlier today by Jebailey, creator of CEO Gaming, that customs would be off for CEO 2015 was something very different from the usual as of late. Jebailey promised he would create a formal post on the topic and he has done just that on Facebook.
At #CEO2015, Custom moves will not be allowed in Smash 4. I'm sticking to my guns on this one. Will have a formal post explaining why later.
— Alex Jebailey (@Jebailey) February 24, 2015
While there is no proper substitute for reading the full post, Jeybailey's personal TLDR was: "No Customs at CEO because too many hours need to be invested in single player modes to unlock moves for competitive tournament play that a vast majority of players may not be able to invest in doing." Here is the post for those interested:
A few of the most major highlights:Jebailey said:To those attending CEO for Super Smash Bros. for WiiU please read my reasoning for not allowing Custom Movesets this year.
Hey everyone, as always I try to be as transparent as possible with CEO so you can feel just as much a part of the process as possible to make it an even better experience for you in the end.
With that said, Super Smash Bros. for WiiU came out a few months ago and has thus proven to be an enjoyable game for everyone. With the tournament scene doing great so far(Tampa recently had a 170 man Smash 4 Tournament alongside SF, XRD and Marvel) especially here in Florida.
So far there has been a big debate in allowing Custom moves in tournament play. For those that don't play Smash, The newest version allows you to unlock additional moves for each character that you can set up before a match altering the way they play. For the most part there haven't been too many broken maneuvers but the problem with customs is by default they are not unlocked and the process of unlocking everything is very tedious. The average player must spend hours upon hours unlocking moves in single player modes. It has been said it's much easier to unlock every custom move on a 3DS but most players have moved onto the WiiU Version for tournament practice.
This debate would not even be happening if all custom moves were unlocked and selectable by default the moment you turn on the game, but not every player can invest time and prepare themselves for a large scale event to learn a long list of additional moves that may or may not be included with the intention of balance. Yes a player should be prepared for anything but historically in other Fighting Games such as Soul Calibur, Created Characters or custom moves have been banned. To reiterate, if all custom moves were unlocked by a single code or by default I would allow them.
I feel the meta so far is pretty healthy and players are still discovering strategies to deal with characters such as Diddy Kong or Sonic that won recently here in Florida. Why should my opinion matter? Well for one I think I'm still the only active FGC TO that enters Smash tournaments whenever I can and I have a decent pulse on the community. Even I have been entering Local Smash 4 tournaments and still learning basic matchups. For this early in the game's cycle to open up the possibility of 500+ plus moves to be learned in an already huge lineup of characters, I can just imagine it an entire weekend of post match complaints if customs become popularly used or certain moves just complete change results. "I had no idea what that move was, I never got a chance to unlock it myself and prepare for it". I think at the end of the day, customs won't change the players that end up in top 8 as the same dedicated players will always find a way to excel, and while this defeats the purpose of making the event fun for everyone else, as a TO you have to make it fair as possible across the board.
Logistically it can also be a nightmare to implement correctly in large events but the community has taken initiative and proven ways that TOs can get an "unlock all moves" with a Master 3DS setup(God Bless the poor soul that had to spend days unlocking everything) that can take about 15 minutes to upload to each WIIU that the community chosen preset moves that everyone would need to agree upon. While I hope this works out in the long run, I think it's too soon to check everything for balance until custom tournaments happen more frequently on a smaller scale and I'd rather not be that first major event to experiment with it. I have been hearing of some events having a hard time getting everything unlocked and not using customs in the end as well as have chatted with prominent Smash TOs that may not agree with customs either. There's also ways to allow players to link up their own 3DS to a console and input their presets but any major tournament frowns upon the use of installation methods by individual players. After the experience with PM last year and mid round coaching, this can also open up a new world of counter picking rules and delays that would need to be enforced to keep from excessive blind picking of move sets and characters.
At Tampa Never Sleeps 5 this past weekend, I asked whomever I played or that was around how they felt about Customs and most were indifferent or were happy with how the game was without them. End of the day I always go with what my local community seems to enjoy, not what the internet or players that most likely can't make it out to my event want to see on a stream. Believe it or not there's still a huge market of players out there that have no idea about reddit, facebook groups and the like. Last thing I want is to scare away casual players that may Attend CEO for the first time, find out about the scene but have no idea what they just went up against in the form of custom moves.
I highly commend and respect EVO for making customs legal at CEO and really hope it works out. However they did try Brawl with items on back in 2009 and now items are non existent in every form of Smash Competitive play. If we allow something like Customs to open up a variety or new excitement to the game because people "think" it's already failing compared to Melee, why not just allow items as well to set it apart? If A solid standardized set of customs rules is established without being a 20 page bible of rules for the common player to learn, I will definitely change my mind for future CEO's and local events I host. I'll continue to listen to everyone's feedback and if the outcry by REGISTERED players(Which goes live this weekend on ceogaming.org) is big enough leading up to CEO I will revisit the issue.
As for other Rules, As of now I'll be going with the gernal EVO Ruleset such as 2 Stock 5 minute timer since that's the standard setting for Smash 4 Online Ranked play which I rather enjoy still playing online.
If this affects your interest in attending CEO then my apologies, I take full responsibility for my decisions and if a mistake is made after the fact I'll have no problems apologizing and adjusting properly for future events and encouraging other local events to do the same. For those that still plan to attend are happy with my decision, keep on practicing those matchups so you don't get Hoo-Hah'd!
Oh and and don't forget No coaching delays between games at CEO or you'll be sorry!
Thanks for listening.
Jebailey
- "I'll continue to listen to everyone's feedback and if the outcry by REGISTERED players is big enough leading up to CEO I will revisit the issue." So he is still open to changing the rule with feedback from registered players.
- "To reiterate, if all custom moves were unlocked by a single code or by default I would allow them."
- While not custom related he announced a 2 stock 5 minute timer for the tournament which is similar to Evo
SmashCapps is always interested in ruleset discussion of all kinds. Follow him on Twitter to discuss customs, stock counts, timers, or anything else!
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