I sat down and played the game for like 6 hours last night. Went through probably 65% of the entire cast from the top down. All the way down to Charizard (didn't play him, watched). Only characters I didn't get to see on screen were Jigglypuff, Olimar and Lucario. My opinions changed COMPLETELY and I definitely love it now. Seems like I was either:
1) Watching people play who had nearly no idea what they were doing on Youtube, including players I thought would understand a bit better based off their recognition in Brawl. This gave off the impression that the game was "campy" (watching Dallas' tournament was disgusting because of camp lol and players barely knew how to control their character) and now I'm seeing Keitaro trying to advocate "a 2 stock revolution". Gonna go ahead and say that off of a six hour impression of the game I'm completely certain it'll be at least 30% faster than Brawl in game time. I was watching Dabuz slaughter Zero on stream in under 45 seconds on certain games w/ Sheik. This is on day TWO of the release. Zero was also beating moderate to beginner level players in under a minute and a half consistently. Some character's spacing options and tools can have them stealing a stock in under 20 seconds flat w/ the proper pressure and precision. 2 Stocks will be WAY too quick and we need to take into consideration pacing and have more room for fault or error within a game. Three stocks will be perfectly fine once more players learn to control their character and understand the mechanics of the game. Just give it a bit more time, this is the 2nd day of release. It's likely the players who are advocating a lower stock ruleset aren't killing w/ the proper moves yet. A large amount of reputable players are going about the movement in the game as if it's Brawl. Let time pass to the point where people can develop their own playstyle that suits Smash 4 instead. Plus we'll have the gamecube controller, thrown out moves connecting will raise in percentage naturally on the Wii U version.
2) Playing the wrong characters. Based off of the demo the characters' potential aside from Mario and possibly Pikachu I thought were horrible. Sync practiced Villager practically all night as well and learned some interesting combos and kill potential w/ axe and other stuff so my impression of him has risen (still middle tier though in singles, imo). Megaman I still think is pretty weak and isn't going to have proper approaching options cause of how linear his movement is once people learn to control their characters. But yeah.. aside from that, once I got to the actual roster I was really impressed from the changes. Every single character seemed buff aside from maybe Luigi, Toon Link and Falco (I got all the way to Charizard) and wasn't copy / paste from Brawl like I initially thought. A few obvious nerfs but they are completely understandable. i.e Diddy's Bananas, Metaknight or how Marth was nerfed a bit but it's not as poor as people have been preaching. Aerial dancing blade has a ton of potential and can practically replace the gutted removal of his double F-Air approach as well as a properly spaced short hop B-Air to F-Air through short hop. There's creative outs to a lot of shifts from Brawl to this release, just can't play the character the same way it was under Brawl's engine.
I love this game's speed. It's EXACTLY what I wanted it to be, a mix between Melee and Brawl. You can still improvise your movement and decide what to do after a hit, but the speed allows for Melee-ish combos. Sheik, Zero Suit Samus and Robin are going to be some of the strongest characters off the bat from my experience playing it. I'll likely be maining Zero Suit Samus along w/ Robin and Peach. I honestly just wanna try everyone lol, I love what they've done to each Brawl character to this one. Wario, Samus, Bowser, Yoshi, ROB, Dedede and DK all have real cool new tweaks that give a new twist to how their played. Yoshi's second jump and mobility is incredible. Jab -> Up Smash is real and there's so many things to string. Samus is way more quick and physically driven rather than missle cancelling. It seems as if camping isn't going to be too much of a viable option or Nintendo was purposely trying to veer away from that style of play. Zoning and approaching seems way more efficient than constantly running due to lag placed on a majority of those specific moves. Bowser's buffs are pretty widely known, Dedede's gordos are a great way to add pressure and DK's speed suits his playstyle perfectly cause it compliments his strength. Love the switches w/ B-Air his dash attack and D-Air. Wario's super quick D-Tilt is absolutely perfect to continue carrying a character across the stage when deciding to follow up with N-Air or jab. All of the new characters add something unique to the game as well that I've never seen before, so excited to learn them all.
Regarding custom moves - I wouldn't want their to be two separate metas (i.e. play custom moves ONLY on 3DS), cause it would discourage attendance. Either keep them both or ban. I'm all for custom moves though, especially on the WiiU.
Just play Smash under seasons similar to how Konami regulates Yu-Gi-Oh, Smogon w/ Pokemon, etc. until we encounter a problem. People are going to play the game regardless near the beginning even if everything is utterly insane. The deeper the game's lifespan will be, the more "accepted" and "tournament viable" it will become. You can keep the metagame at such a fair and beautiful state w/ the proper type of monitoring and the right amount of time. And by that I mean we can have this game exactly how we want it if we keep our communication w/ each other at a decent level. We've even done it in prior releases. Wobbling? Banned. Infinite Cape Glitch? Banned. DDD infinite? Banned. Even in the massively famous Project M we see characters tinkered with to appease to it's audience. It still amazes me how people are willing to ban EVERYTHING off the bat without even giving it an honest chance yet to see how it plays out come Wii U release... when we're being given exactly what a good portion of the community is already doing (Project M) on a silver platter from Sakurai himself.
Even if a majority of custom moves are broken - there's a high chance that every character has at least ONE of those moves assigned to each special. I don't think Sakurai would just go outright crazy on making a select few characters overpowered within range of everyone else. In fact I've seen a few used myself and they aren't even insanely overpowered. It just adds preference or potential combo material. Lucario's force palm is the only thing that seems much more powerful than the default, and if it's an issue? Ban it for a SEASON. I don't think it will even become one though, people will just learn what to expect from Lucarios when using that specific move. Players are going to naturally flock to the stronger custom specials regardless, and if they don't it could be for their own personal reasons (adding depth to the metagame/their playstyle). And by that I mean we'll be able to gauge a pretty efficient tier list on characters even with the custom moves legal. Tournament results will still prove a character's worth regardless of how many options there are, the thing is - we'll just have 4x the amount of potential to allow that said character and this game to develop. Regarding the time constraint argument, matches are naturally going to become faster due to the moves helping the strengths of characters or improving combos. Time wasted on setting them after selecting on the roster can be recovered through 30 or so seconds in a single game, perhaps even more within a set. Not to mention the fact that the custom moveset interface is already efficient enough to be tournament viable. I haven't heard anyone mention any complaints regarding setting them yet. Shouldn't be a problem, especially once people have a moveset already ready within their mind at a setup.
I know Xyro's against custom moves off the bat and we're running it as a side event for now until something becomes concrete and I'm completely fine with that. People can learn how to actually play the game before digging deeper into how to use other options when the game has become actually developed. East Coast is planning to use custom moves from the start, iirc. I'm glad we're having different approaches to them at first but I feel as though within time a majority of us should be under the same ruleset at least in that regard. What do you guys think about them?
