Do you think customizable movesets will effect the comp scene in anyway?

[slicesabre]

No because I think in they're minds its banned already.

 

[HipsandChips]

My guess is that there would be allotted number of "points" or resource you could put into the various customization. Since everyone would have the same number of "points" to put in wherever they want, technically the playing field would be even. So I think we need to learn more about the process, but I don't think it should be banned, unless too many over-competitive curmudgeons are too afraid of change.

 

[ChikoLad]

I'm not sure if the powers-that-be of the competitive scene will allow people to bring their own customised special moves into tournaments, but if the default movesets have some major balancing flaws that could be fixed through customising certain characters, then I feel the competitive scene should do this.

For example, Sonic's homing attack in Brawl isn't very useful to Sonic players, as it has poor accuracy and poor charge time, but it also has poor knockback and a small damage output. But if there is a version of the Homing Attack within the special move customisation menu that allows Sonic to have a homing attack that has long range, high accuracy, and no charge time, BUT does little damage and doesn't cause opponents to flinch, and can only be used once until you land again, then I say that tournaments should have that move equipped as Sonic's Neutral B as standard. It would not be a broken move in the slightest, nor would it be a useless one. It would serve as an effective chasing maneuver after you have juggled an opponent for a bit, and could be used to link into another attack. It would not change Sonic's meta game, but it would bolster it and make a previously useless move more useful for players of that character.

That's the first example I can think of off the top of my head, but there are more moves that I know are kinda lackluster and don't really do anything for certain characters. Custom movesets could fix this, and tourney organisers could just look at the ones that allow each character to perform to the best of their ability.

 

[Thor]

"Balance issues" are probably why it would be banned, but I'd dislike even more to see a ban on only certain moves than a universal ban.

For instance, let's take a character that's pretty good and apply it to this example. Now let's say in Brawl Falco had customizable moves (as did others) and he had the Brawl- slow lasers (look up "Brawl minus matches" and find one with a Falco in it if you don't know what I'm talking about - when they use the lasers you'll see what I mean). If Falco equipped the lasers, he probably would functionally destroy many non-projectile characters on FD through sheer camping ability and even would likely beat ICs and at least run even with MK (shuts down tornado hard, among other things) - maybe even becomes the new SSS rank. Understandably, people would want this banned.

But what happens then is that we artificially nerf a character (in the example, Falco) and buff others because "this move is too good (the lasers) but this one isn't (Fox equipping those lasers that due 1% each because they have no stun, so you can run through and eat ~5%, as an example)." If there's some sort of ranking system in place or power meters for setting up moves as discussed above, it might be workable, but if it's just "choose your move", then banning certain moves while allowing others may make certain characters artificially worse or better because we removed a move that they could use well or banned a move that certain characters had a problem with. Then TOs might ban different moves because they like or dislike a certain character, which means your ability to win a tournament may depend on the TO's tastes, which I think is bad. It also would (even if bans were universal) allow us to move characters around on the tier list by controlling more than just stage choice, stock count, items, and time limits, which doesn't seem quite right (I understand banning a state because a character (or many characters) can abuse a strategy to win on a stage (Fox temple circle camping, Falco can do this vs not Fox and a few others (like vs Peach), Samus can do some form of this vs certain characters as well), but it's far trickier to abuse a single move to win (even MK's tornado has attacks and tricks that break it)) [items, there is enough disagreement that a universal ban is not problematic (And the tops of the tier list are generally fast enough that they'd only exploit items even more, widening the gap) [and explosive randomness sucks] and stock count/time limits are more for timing purposes and often based on how combo-heavy a game is, so the limits make sense in the context of how we play the game instead of just nerfing/buffing characters (Admittedly, ZSS is buffed in a 1-stock Brawl format, although the intent is about keeping events on time)].

 

[-Kagato-]

Custom moves seem to be mere variations of the current special moves. Each move is essentially the same move, but different properties. Mario's fireball is still a fireball, but you have 3 different kinds of fireballs with their own strengths and weaknesses. Mario also had 2 Super Jump Punch attacks shown. One was the original multi-hit and another was more like a Shoryuken that hits once and causes more knockback, like Luigi's.

DK has that headbutt. Two variations are the normal one, and another that has hyper armor but moves far more slowly, so it can be punished by grabs more easily.
Kirby has 2 where one is his swallow/copy attack, and another is an ice attack similar to the Ice Climbers.
Pit has 2 where his arrow is large and powerful, or small and easily-controlled.

Basically, nothing seems to show as so overpowered that custom movesets should be banned yet at a mere first glance. The attacks are still the same with different variables. IMO, in a fighting game, the best players know how to act and react to anything that comes their way as long as it's not something completely random, like items.

Once we see Mario's giant, slow-moving fireball just once, we know how to handle it for the rest of the match.

IMO, instead of banning custom movesets entirely, just ban specific moves that prove to be completely broken. The competitive scene would actually become deeper and more exciting with different special moves and would allow far more character variety to be viable and would allow moveset counterpicks over entire character counterpicks.

 

[Lozjam]

I think if they are balanced, they should be used, it would provide a stronger metagame as ever, it would be like having different builds in League of Legends.

 

[Muster]

Most people use Smogon. And are you sure? Mass sleeping teams? Double team till you can't get hit? I'm pretty sure they have more rules in place or those tournies are truly pointless

I was looking at VGC.

The Banlist for moves in smogon is still extremely short. Basically it's just minimize and double team added onto OHKO moves.
These clauses are what really restrict gameplay to keep it fair. (There are also short lists of bans of abilities and items in any tier below ubers, again for balancing reasons.)
For example, Sleep moves aren't banned, but putting two or more of your opponent's pokemon to sleep on purpose is.
Pokemon that share the same Dex number are also banned, so teams aren't filled with duplicate pokemon.
Moody is one of the few universally b& abilities because it's op as ****.


Regarding custom moves, I'd love to see them added to increase variety in competitive play, but they probably won't be balanced so they'll be B&.

 

[Mewtwo_soul]

I think they'll be banned. That doesn't mean they should be, but here's why I sort of figure they more than likely will be.

1) Depending on the amount of options actually making a tier list would become a lot harder to make. Now Point 2 will also cover something similar but will be a different aspect of this concept.

2) It removes character knowledge and makes the game a guessing game. In a general game (fighter/shooter/etc.) you know how the characters you face are going to work. In shooters another skill similar to this is "map knowledge" but in fighters knowing the frames of attacks, safe/unsafe, guessing games, combos, advantage/disadvantage matchups, etc. Depending on the amount of options this would literally become just that.

I'm sure many people don't comprehend how big of a thing #2 is, but in all honesty, if you didn't understand what attacks a character had, when to block/dodge/punish/counter/counter-act the move, you're left blind, and then the game goes from an actual skill bout to a random guessing game.

Again, this doesn't mean they will 100% be banned, but it is reasonable to believe they may be. I'd love to see in moderation custom movesets be allowed though, how protocols would be set up for this (maybe a demo showing the custom changes pre-match or property changes and choices of said character?) but I digress.

 

[Morbi]

I am really late to the party; but the very first notion that occurred to me as I read the thread title was that customization move-sets are more likely than not, banned. People have probably already stated it one thousand times, but I don't mind being a little redundant.

 

[Deleted member]

The "For Glory" game mode wont allow custom movesets, those are only avalable online when playing with friends.

That points to the game being balanced around the default characters. So custom moves will probably be banned in competitive play.

 

[NewGuy79]

I posted some stuff on this topic in another custom moves thread so ill just gona expand on what I (MODs maybe you guys can merge them there basically talking about the same thing)
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First off my whole theory for how the custom move sets is similar to what Lord Kagato said above with each custom move acting as a variation of the normal one, from what we've seen so far we can infer that each character MAY receive up to 2 different variations for each of their special move. now realistically if this was the case that would mean that each character in SSB4 would have up to 8 different variations of specials to chose from their 4 standard ones, with the final roster supposedly supposed to be finished by this summer there now way that Sakurai would be able to make anymore than 8 special variation and still reach the a summer release date.

there also seems to be this Idea that the customization in SSB4 will involve adding "attributes" to special moves, with the fear being that certain attributes will prove to be Over powered when pared with certain moves, but when you even look at some of the stuff we've already seen some of the specials are just to different for them to just be the result of adding an attribute.(i.e Marth's Ike-esk N-B, and Mario's Up-B variation)

Now enough about that lets get into how I think these custom moves are gona be implemented into SSB4 and why the should be competitively viable.
-------
for example sake I'm gona use Mario's Fire ball since we've seen the most variation for it, now if my above inference is correct once SSB4 launches will have access to 3 different types of fireballs.

Fire ball A:

Fire ball B:

and Fire ball C:

looking at each variation I can already see a pattern, and that is that each variation seems to be balanced through a spectrum of speed or power. looking at Fire ball A we can see the traditional average speed and power that we all recognize it's variations however seem to either seem to skue to one side of the spectrum or the other, with Fire ball B sacrificing Speed for power and Fire ball C sacrificing power for speed. In this case if nothing is change upon release we can easily see that a player will not gain any advantage over another by picking a different fireball, at most each player would have to adopt a different play style to take advantage of the specials they have.

Competitively this means that a player will always have to sacrifice one aspect of a special to tack advantage of another. want shied pressure? take the big short range multi hitting fire ball, want to play it lame? take the quick high range low damage fire ball. as long as each variation sacrifices an aspect or the other I can't see a valid reason for banning custom moves sets in tournament, there would be no advantages just differing play styles.
this however is the Ideal situation and I'm altogether just speculating, I hope Sakurai is designing these moves with this kinda of mind sets, but well never know till release.
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In the end as I've said in another thread this debate is more of a choice between the easy familiar route ( of trying to make the game comform to melee rule and traditions) or the hard experimental route (accepting the new features and mechanics and dealing with the inevitable debate that will emerge from them). and while it might be difficult I'd like to see the community take the hard route.

well this was a lot bigger than I though it would be...well then I guess we'll call this my introduction to Smashbords post. been lurking for a while but finally glade to have joined.

 

[lightdasher]

2) It removes character knowledge and makes the game a guessing game. In a general game (fighter/shooter/etc.) you know how the characters you face are going to work. In shooters another skill similar to this is "map knowledge" but in fighters knowing the frames of attacks, safe/unsafe, guessing games, combos, advantage/disadvantage matchups, etc. Depending on the amount of options this would literally become just that.

I'm sure many people don't comprehend how big of a thing #2 is, but in all honesty, if you didn't understand what attacks a character had, when to block/dodge/punish/counter/counter-act the move, you're left blind, and then the game goes from an actual skill bout to a random guessing game..

See, this is what I've seen a lot, people are always like "But I don't know what they're going to do, I don't like change"

I think customizable move sets would freshen up instead of just seeing the same thing all the time, again I could just compare it to Pokemon.

 

[A Lucky Person]

The "For Glory" game mode wont allow custom movesets, those are only avalable online when playing with friends.

That points to the game being balanced around the default characters. So custom moves will probably be banned in competitive play.

This. Sakurai is banning custom move sets from his version of competitive play, so that's even more of a push for us to ban them from ours.

Other have brought up the point of banning certain moves, but that in itself would be unfair to that character. This is a grandiose example, but imagine that Mario's huge fireball does 100% damage when it hits you (ridiculous, I know). That's stupid and it should be banned. However, it's part of the game just as anyone else's custom moves are, so why shouldn't we be allowed to use it if we can use other characters'?

All that said, if the balance isn't super cheeky and it's feasible to do at large tournaments then I'm in. On the flip-side, if there are a billion sliders and some moves are just stupid good then I think they should be banned.

Ban them all or ban none, I say.

 

[ChikoLad]

This. Sakurai is banning custom move sets from his version of competitive play, so that's even more of a push for us to ban them from ours.

Other have brought up the point of banning certain moves, but that in itself would be unfair to that character. This is a grandiose example, but imagine that Mario's huge fireball does 100% damage when it hits you (ridiculous, I know). That's stupid and it should be banned. However, it's part of the game just as anyone else's custom moves are, so why shouldn't we be allowed to use it if we can use other characters'?

All that said, if the balance isn't super cheeky and it's feasible to do at large tournaments then I'm in. On the flip-side, if there are a billion sliders and some moves are just stupid good then I think they should be banned.

Ban them all or ban none, I say.

"Ban all of the stages or ban none, I say."

 

[A Lucky Person]

"Ban all of the stages or ban none, I say."

Apples and oranges. That's a straw man argument.

 

[mimgrim]

This. Sakurai is banning custom move sets from his version of competitive play, so that's even more of a push for us to ban them from ours.

Not really.

Our competitive plays differs vastly from his.

 

[ChikoLad]

My point is that people are coming up with arbitrary and hypothetical reasons to ban them before we've truly seen how they actually work, and that said arguments don't make sense as can be seen by applying the same argument to something else.

To me, it seems like people aren't willing to treat Smash 4 as it's own game with it's own unique features, and instead, are already dead set on making the ruleset a similar to Melee tourneys as possible. No other fighting game community does this. Look at Tekken in comparision to Tekken Tag Tournament.

 

[mimgrim]

To me, it seems like people aren't willing to treat Smash 4 as it's own game with it's own unique features, and instead, are already dead set on making the ruleset a similar to Melee tourneys as possible. No other fighting game community does this. Look at Tekken in comparision to Tekken Tag Tournament.

Other fighting game communities don't seem to have our problems.

 

[ChikoLad]

Other fighting game communities don't seem to have our problems.

Other fighting game communities aren't as close minded, but they face the exact same problems.

For example, Item Moves in the Tekken games that have them are tourney legal.

 

[A Lucky Person]

Not really.

Our competitive plays differs vastly from his.

This is the first time Sakurai is making a competitive form of Smash built-in to the game, so how can anyone say in what ways his and our forms of "competitive Smash" differ? Look at any other game. For example, if Nintendo had banned all mega evolutions from the VGCs (official Pokémon tournament) then Smogon would've followed suit immediately and there would be no mega evolutions in any format of theirs.

We're going to go to the pace Sakurai sets. In the first three Smash games he didn't have a large hand in the competitive community, so we made our own path.

 

[ChikoLad]

This is the first time Sakurai is making a competitive form of Smash built-in to the game.

Tourney Mode says hi.

 

[mimgrim]

This is the first time Sakurai is making a competitive form of Smash built-in to the game, so how can anyone say in what ways his and our forms of "competitive Smash" differ? Look at any other game. For example, if Nintendo had banned all mega evolutions from the VGCs (official Pokémon tournament) then Smogon would've followed suit immediately and there would be no mega evolutions in any format of theirs.

I seriously doubt that. But I don't know much about competitive Pokemon other then that Smogon and Nintendo have different rulesets on certain things.

We're going to go to the pace Sakurai sets.

That's doubtful.

 

[A Lucky Person]

Tourney Mode says hi.

And it's never implemented into any tournament of any kind because it's terrible.

I guess that supports your argument more than mine.

 

[ChikoLad]

And it's never implemented into any tournament of any kind because it's terrible.

I guess that supports your argument more than mine.

That doesn't change the fact Sakurai was mindful of the competitive scene. He couldn't predict all of the nuances that people might want.

Not to mention that many people on this site are already saying "For Glory" mode is terrible.

 

[ITALIAN N1NJA]

Customizable move sets seem great. In competitive play this could pose a problem though. There should be a move set lock in place once per set. If this isn't a guideline, that mean players will constantly be changing their move set depending on the match up. That would take too much time as well as completely change the metagame. As for "low/mid tiers" being the only ones to be able to use the feature, there's already an issue. Smash 4 is going to be balanced among all of the characters. If there is an issue with this(like there was with Metaknight in Brawl), then it will most likely use the Wii U's capabilities to update the game in order to fix the issue. The whole point of balancing is to eliminate the idea of tiers.

 

[stan423321]

1) Depending on the amount of options actually making a tier list would become a lot harder to make.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but a tier list is not an aim or even a necessity for competitive gameplay. If a fighting game is almost perfectly balanced, it would be really hard to create a tier list for it, but this does not mean we should discourage devs from trying to balance stuff. If a tier list for custom movesets will be hard to make, it's actually a good sign.

2) It removes character knowledge and makes the game a guessing game. In a general game (fighter/shooter/etc.) you know how the characters you face are going to work. In shooters another skill similar to this is "map knowledge" but in fighters knowing the frames of attacks, safe/unsafe, guessing games, combos, advantage/disadvantage matchups, etc. Depending on the amount of options this would literally become just that.

Now I'm not sure what exactly do you mean by that. If you're talking about an element of surprise brought in by player bringing in an unknown moveset, maybe it's worth to try announcing the selection before the match? Then again, a lot of games work fine without that. If you're talking about the fact that number of things to remember rises, I don't really see anyone finding this a reason for banning the customization...

 

[ChikoLad]

To be honest, there is nothing wrong with there being a slight surprise factor in Smash. After all, mind games are already an established part of the meta game. Custom movesets would effectively make that better.

And bringing up Tekken again, Item Moves are legal, and they ADD moves to characters in Tekken. If that's legal, why can't variations of the same move be?

 

[LancerStaff]

We know custom moves are banned... From the Wii U version which can't use them without the 3DS one. They're banned from SSBU's online so it's an even battleground. Sakurai was about as clear as mud when it came to SSB3D's online features, remember?

To be a bit more on track, I believe the Wii U scene won't use custom moves while the 3DS scene will. I'll bet the 3DS scene as a whole will be much more liberal than the Wii U's while I'm at it.

 

[NewGuy79]

When you think about it maybe we need some surprises in our meta game, look at the recent civil war 6 and youll get what I mean. a whole bunch of spacies dittos followed by the accessional Marth or C.falcon or Ice climber or jigs, our melee meta game as it is isn't the shining example of fairness and balance, but I digress.

I just think it would do use good if the community take some chances with SSB4 instead of just trying to play it like melee upon release, if we don't know matter how good or how bad this game is were gona be disappointed cus, honestly nothings gona top melee at being melee.

 

[lightdasher]

We know custom moves are banned... From the Wii U version which can't use them without the 3DS one.

[Citation needed]

 

[LancerStaff]

[Citation needed]

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/06/13/wii-u-and-3ds-smash-bros-will-not-have-cross-platform-play-wil/

"Specifically, players will be able to take characters they've customized and transfer them to the Wii U version."

 

[ChikoLad]

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/06/13/wii-u-and-3ds-smash-bros-will-not-have-cross-platform-play-wil/

"Specifically, players will be able to take characters they've customized and transfer them to the Wii U version."

This doesn't confirm that the 3DS version will be needed, it only confirms that transferals are possible.

Sonic Lost World 3DS allowed you to build RC vehicles and transfer them to Wii U, but you could still unlock them with just the Wii U version. Even though the press never mentioned this.

 

[LancerStaff]

This doesn't confirm that the 3DS version will be needed, it only confirms that transferals are possible.

Sonic Lost World 3DS allowed you to build RC vehicles and transfer them to Wii U, but you could still unlock them with just the Wii U version. Even though the press never mentioned this.

So why would customizations only be one-way?

 

[ChikoLad]

We don't know if they are yet. Just wait until more info comes out.

 

[NickRiddle]

Let's all theorycraft on how you can customize movesets, then theorycraft on if it will be broken or not!

It all depends on how they are implemented into the game. Since there is 0 way of knowing until they give us more information/the game is released, there is no way of knowing if they will be tournament viable or not.

 

[LancerStaff]

We don't know if they are yet. Just wait until more info comes out.

We've seen that it's always "SSB3D to SSBU" in interviews. If it truly was possible both ways, he'd of said so by now.

 

[ChikoLad]

We've seen that it's always "SSB3D to SSBU" in interviews. If it truly was possible both ways, he'd of said so by now.

Those were very early interviews, nothing about them was final. Sakurai even said each time that "I'm thinking of implementing", not "we definitely have done this thing this exact way".

 

[NewGuy79]

Let's all theorycraft on how you can customize movesets, then theorycraft on if it will be broken or not!

It all depends on how they are implemented into the game. Since there is 0 way of knowing until they give us more information/the game is released, there is no way of knowing if they will be tournament viable or not.

personally I see only two possible options for implementation if custom move sets have any chance of being viable. they either A; have to be selectable and interchangeable directly on the character selection screen or B; able to be pre set and saved to multiple names.

If they end up just becoming a part of some secluded optional mode well... that will be the end of custom moves tournament wise.

 

[LancerStaff]

Those were very early interviews, nothing about them was final. Sakurai even said each time that "I'm thinking of implementing", not "we definitely have done this thing this exact way".

Do you think Sakurai would just wing it with Super Smash Bros.?

 

[Krast]

In other fighting games, devs add patches and such to help balance the game. With custom moves, the players themselves become the ones to balance the game. Have a community consensus or have SBR do "balance patches". Throw in an option for import/export and boom, a more balanced system for competitive play that can be easily disseminated for tournaments.

Of course this is assuming that it'll be an extensive customization system.