I'm posting this to a lot of social media outlets, but I figure why not post it here too, eh? Keep in mind the formatting might be a little funky, that's just for the sake of other sites being able to display it.
For this post, I’m going to refer to the Specials that Mii Fighters have as Mii Specials, because one of the points I intend to argue is that they are NOT Custom Specials, which is what I argue every other character has, and that unfortunately includes Palutena.
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Alright, so we seriously need to talk about the legality of Mii Fighters and their Specials in Smash 4.
I’m gonna go ahead and get right to the point, and state that Miis should have full, legal access to all of their Special moves, rather than constantly being restricted to “1111” or worse, the super arbitrary “1111, 2222, and 3333.” Not only are they allowed by the game’s internal logic when the Customizations setting is set to “Off,” but they fulfill all the requirements needed to be competitively sound in the scope of tournament play. Of course, I intend to prove all of that in due time, but we first have to ask ourselves, why are a good deal of U.S. tournaments disallowing Mii Specials from use in the first place? If we answer that question, we can start to unravel the problems surrounding this controversial topic.
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Now, before I get into things, as far as height and weight settings, Guest Miis CAN be used as a standard, because Guest Miis are the only Miis that remain a constant throughout each individual Wii U. If customized height and weight combinations are used, there is obviously no guarantee that they are going to be on every single Wii U, and that could cause a few hiccups at a tournament event, so it’s fine for the most part to leave it like that. This is all stated from a logistics standpoint and it’s a perfectly valid stance to have.
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So first and foremost, let’s talk about why U.S. tournaments are generally banning Mii Specials. We just recently finished EVO 2015, and as a result, a lot of American regions have begun to disallow Custom Specials from use in tournament play. However, for a lot of these regions, that also went on to include Mii Specials in the list of exclusions. My guess is as good as anyone’s on this topic, but I believe that the reason for this is that there’s simply a stigma against ANY kind of alternative Special move usage, be it Custom Specials or something else. It’s a pretty simple conclusion to extrapolate from, considering all of the controversy that surrounded Custom Specials before they more or less met their end at the conclusion of EVO 2015. However, what a large proportion of the U.S scene doesn’t understand is that Mii Specials are a completely separate matter from Custom Specials in many regards. I’m going to be explaining my reasoning more in-depth below, but Mii Specials are extremely far removed from Custom Specials in many ways, and the differences they have will help demonstrate why Mii Specials are far more suited for competitive play than Custom Specials are.
It’s important to note that, in most non-American countries, Custom Specials were never really adopted as a standard in rulesets for any measure of time, but Mii Special legality was (Note: I said MOST, not ALL. I know Umebura just happened, and they didn’t allow Mii Specials there). This is especially prevalent in Europe, where a good amount of their countries (Apparently, Germany, France, Spain, and Norway, noted here:
http://smashboards.com/threads/zeros-current-position-on-mii-rulings.413815/page-3#post-20094148 There are probably other countries too.) follow the free Mii Special legality format. I understand that we shouldn’t just blindly follow other countries in terms of ruleset decisions, but this just feels like a natural progression we would have had in our own rulesets if we were Customization free from Day 1. Just think about it, if we, the U.S., had never run Custom Specials in our tournaments by any measure, I’m certain that we would have been allowing full legality for Mii Specials to this day. It’s only because we ran Custom Specials in the first place, and came to understand what was wrong with them, that we started to develop this aversion to Mii Specials too, since they are similar in some regards, admittedly (primarily how they are accessed through the game’s UI).
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So, to argue that Mii Specials should be legal in a Custom Specials banned environment, two points need to be proven:
- Mii Specials and Custom Specials are not the same.
- Mii Specials are perfectly viable for competition.
To do this, we need to examine the differences between the Default Specials, Mii Specials, and Custom Specials. Allow me to bullet these points down…
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1. Mii Specials and Custom Specials are not the same:
* * * Mii Specials are allowed even if Customizations is set to “Off.” * * *
So, this is the obvious point that a lot of people bring up when arguing for Mii Special legality, and it’s a valid one. When you’re on the character selection screen, if Customizations are “Off” and Mii is chosen, you still get the drop down menu to choose your customized loadout. If you try this with any other character, you don’t get to choose from any such menu. That character is simply defaulted to their 1111 moveset. Building on this, it has to be mentioned that there is NO instance in the game where you can choose Mii and you get their 1111 loadout of Specials by default. In addition, when Customizations are “Off,” and you choose a Mii, if you pick a loadout that has Equipment attached to it, that Equipment actually gets disabled for the match!
And that’s not all. In the latest update of Smash 4, which would be version 1.1.0, we obtained the ability to host online tournaments. And in these tournaments, players are allowed to set a wide variety of toggles. One of them is Customizations, of course, but interestingly, there was a new toggle added that has never been present in the offline Rules menu, named “Mii Fighters.” And it goes without saying, if Customizations are set to “Off,” and Mii Fighters are set to “On,” players participating in the tournament are completely free to choose Mii and any combination of Mii Specials that they desire, all the while with their Equipment being disabled.
When you put all of this information together, it tells us that the game’s definition of “Customizations” extends to Equipment attached to any character, and Custom Specials for all of the other characters. Mii Specials, however, are treated in a much different fashion. Regardless of whether or not Customizations are present, Mii Fighters with any combination of Mii Specials are treated the EXACT SAME WAY as a default character locked to their 1111 moveset. They are NOT considered in the same way as Custom Specials.
The game holds such a huge distinction between Mii Specials and Custom Specials. And by the way the UI handles the selection of Miis, it tells us that each individual Mii Fighter, with their own individual combinations of Mii Specials, should be treated as their own individual default character. They are not “Custom” in the same way Custom Specials are.
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* * * A massive proportion of Mii Specials are being balanced in addition to Default Specials, whereas Custom Specials are seeing very little in terms of balance adjustments. * * *
So let’s talk about balance updates. Since the game’s release, many, many Default Specials have been receiving changes with each balance update, whereas very few Custom Specials have received the same kind of treatment. You can actually see a tabulated list of changes to Default Specials and Custom Specials between 1.0.4 and 1.0.8 here:
http://smashboards.com/threads/offi...edition-evo-sets.395721/page-18#post-19549768 There are 58 changes to Default Specials, and 11 changes to Custom Specials. And don’t forget, there are TWICE as many Custom Specials as there are Default Specials, so that puts these numbers into perspective. It’s plain to see that Default Specials are receiving much more care and attention in the balancing department, especially when you take into account that most changes to Custom Specials are bugfixes or infinite removals, rather than actual balance adjustments.
With the latest update of 1.1.0, this trend continues, with a wide array of Default Specials being touched up for competitive play, and Custom Specials being relatively unchanged for the most part. You can view a complete changelog here:
http://smashboards.com/threads/tournament-mode-1-1-0-community-patch-notes.412130/ What’s interesting about this latest update, however, is that many of the Mii Specials, including the 2s and 3s Specials have received actual balance adjustments. A total of 14 out of the 36 available Mii Specials got this treatment, and if you’ll notice, 12 out of those 14 were 2s and 3s Specials! You’ll also note that these changes were actual balance adjustments, rather than the extremely sparse “bug fixes and infinite removals” you see with Custom Specials (Case in point: one of the only changed Custom Specials in 1.1.0 was Pikachu’s Thunder Wave, and its only change was to remove its ability to infinite opponents).
With all of this in mind, there’s a reason why these moves in particular are receiving balance adjustments. It implies that the developers’ intent was for players to take ALL of the available Mii Specials as seriously as Default Specials, unlike Custom Specials where it is difficult to pinpoint exactly how competitive they were intended to be.
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2. Mii Specials are viable for competition:
* * * Mii Specials are being balanced. * * *
So, I just went through this point, but MII SPECIALS ARE BEING BALANCED. Regardless of whether or not you want to take them as seriously as Default Specials, it’s undeniable that the development team is actually fine tuning them for competition. Custom Specials aren’t being balanced, and I suppose that’s part of the reason why we ultimately dropped them after EVO 2015 concluded… But Mii Specials are receiving the same amount of fine-tuning and care that any other character and their Default Specials are receiving. There’s not much else to say about this, but I would hope this counts as a huge point in favor of Mii Special legality.
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* * * None of the 2s or 3s of Mii Specials warrant a ban. * * *
This is somewhat an obvious point, but not a single Mii Special is even close to being overpowered enough to warrant a ban from competitive play. If nothing about these moves comes across as broken or overpowered, then there really should be no reason for them to be banned in the first place. That’s pretty much all that needs to be said on the matter, but regardless, I suppose this point is also worth mentioning…
The only Mii Special you COULD make a case for being overpowered is Mii Brawler’s Helicopter Kick, with its high base knockback and ease of comboability. However it’s severely underwhelming when compared to a lot of other characters’ “finisher” Special moves, and harmless once you know how to work around it. Aaand… I might as well just tell you how to do that right now. If you get grabbed and Dthrown by Mii Brawler at the following percents:
0% to 30% - There’s not much you can do to avoid the Helicopter Kick follow-up, but you won’t die no matter where on the stage you’re caught with this.
30% to 60% - You still can’t avoid the Helicopter Kick follow-up, but now it may kill you at this percentage range if you’re caught close to the edge of a stage. So… stay away from the edges of stages at all costs.
60% and higher – DI towards Mii Brawler’s back and Helicopter Kick will become impossible to connect with at this point. You can also use this DI at the previous damage ranges to make it harder (but not impossible) for him to land the combo.
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So… that’s really all I had to say on the matter. Mii Fighters truly are a unique group of characters. With the ability to mix up their Special moves on the fly, they are characters that can be customized to a player’s tastes, and it's a really interesting concept, even if I and many others don’t use these guys in tournament play. However, I hate to see their potential squandered just because TOs are so super afraid of anything that even resembles Custom Specials. I hope you all can understand my point of view, and hopefully help change the “official” ruling on Mii Fighters for the best.
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tl;dr: We have a stigma against Mii Specials because of Custom Specials and really need to cut it out. The developers designed Mii Specials to be something completely different from Custom Specials and Customizations in general. Mii Specials are also completely sound for competitive play, and there’s absolutely no reason to disallow them.
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