Should custom Mii/Palutena be allowed in default tournaments?

[Maraphy]

Hey all,

This idea got brought up in the social thread but I think it's worth its own topic for discussing.

Unfortunately, most of the tournaments these days don't allow customs. This is kind of a problem for Palutena because she excels so much in customs; Lightweight alone makes her significantly more threatening, but she also has really good custom specials for all of her other slots that dramatically change how she plays. I mentioned this in another topic, but I'm willing to bet Palutena's design philosophy was pretty much this: "Mediocre character that becomes god-like when customs are turned on". As people have pointed out numerous times, her reveal trailer focused on the variety of moves she has, and besides Miis she's the only character that comes with all of her customs unlocked.

So, what do you all think? As a Palutena main (considering your potential bias), do you agree or disagree? Do you think this would be a good idea for just SOME tournaments to try or should it become a staple for every default tournament? Or do you disagree that Custom Palutena should be allowed in default, and you'd rather just have more custom tournaments?

If we can come together as Palutena mains to decide what we all want, then we can propose it to the smash community at large. Before then, however, let's talk about it!

.

Well, I've been making an argument for allowing custom Palutena for awhile now. If you were to look at her trophy it says "she has special moves like Warp and Heavenly Light at her disposal. She's very adaptable—you can customize her into a long- or close-range fighter!" So clearly she was meant with customization in mind, but since people would be more unwilling with full customization I figure a single set would be the best option. I've also reviewed the frame data on her other moves and said it makes since for her to be designed around lightweight, because I think a character faster than sonic and best aerial mobility in the game with any faster frame data wouldn't be so fair. Now for people that are worried about dying at 40% off grab, why do alllow ZSS and DK then, but honestly you can just DI to end up behind Palutena in nair so that uair doesn't connect. People shouldn't be so quick to call something broken without finding a counter to it first. That paper says it's only asking for lightweight but after asking other people their thoughts, not Palutena mains, they thought lightweight would not be enough to make her a viable character, so 1 unified set is the way to go.

As for a single set, I've tried asking here, but it's going slow. Probably because of the holidays. I have asked @AeroLink_the_SoulMaster what he finds the best set to be and he thinks it's 2322: Explosive Flame, Super Speed, Jump Glide, and Lightweight. I agree with that because EF covers the ledge very well and can kill, SS can set up for kills and recover, JG is good for mobility and recovery, and I don't think Lightweight needs any more explanation.

I'm also going through Palutena matches and counting the use of special moves of both characters in the match and comparing them. I'm doing this for default and custom matches. As expected Palutena has very little use of her specials in default compared to her opponent and it seems the better characters use their specials a lot more. I haven't gotten around to viewing custom matches yet, but when I do I expect an increased use of her specials and it should help to influence what set we should use. Although it's kind of hard to find custom matches other than Aerolink, but he wins with the set he is running.

One person told me, "But customs will change her intended play style," and all I have to do is look back to the trophy description: "She's very adaptable—you can customize her." Her intended play style is customs. For the "Why can't my character have a unified set of customs as well?" No other character was intentionally designed around custom moves. No other character has completely unique customs. Zelda and Sheik still have warping up Bs, but Palutena doesn't. Fox and Falco still have a reflector, but Palutena doesn't. Everyone with a counter still has a counter, but Palutena doesn't. "Oh but Palutena will be broken." Well you've probably already picked up Sheik so what difference does it make if you want to change your character again, or how about you learn to counter something before calling it broken. Denti was able to beat Aerolink's custom Palutena with what I'm pretty sure was default diddy. He might have had a custom banana or rockets but I don't remember (should probably go watch those sets again). Do you remember seeing a custom Palutena in top 8 of EVO, because I don't. Besides this is one set, so it's not like a Palutena player could be like, "Your gonna go that character. Well I'm gonna use these customs." It's just one easy to learn set that would make a character more viable. Now if you just don't want more character viability that's messed up and you're a terrible member of this community.

Once I get a better feel on what the Palutena players think her single set should be, I'm probably going to go to the rule set discussion and convince everyone there.

 

[Dinoman96]

Mii Fighters definitely should. But with Palutena, while I wish she could use her customs, it's a bit of a grey area in that, unlike the Mii Fighters, you have to turn customs on in order to be able to use her moves. It might seem arbitrary, but some people just might think it's a bit tacky to turn an entire game option on just for one character. Mii Fighters don't have that issue as much.

But even if Palutena had such an option, I doubt it would matter either way. The competitive scene for this game just doesn't want to anything related to customization. ZeRo once stated that he thinks that Miis are "bad for the game" and Vinnie was actually contemplating on leaving just because of the idea of Miis being able to use their moves.

Another thing to consider: Aerolink (Palutena's best player) recently attended a tourney that allowed for Palutena's customs. Of course, he smashed right through it. Afterwards, he planned on going to another tourney that intially allowed for her customs, but at the last second they bailed and disallowed them, seemingly a response to Aerolink dominating the other event.

https://twitter.com/AeroLinkSSB4/status/659927818822807552
https://twitter.com/AeroLinkSSB4/status/659930984914141184

 

[Maraphy]

Yeah, I just checked and you're right about the Miis not requiring customs to be on. I thought they did.. it is tacky to have to turn it on when the other player has to play default, though would it be a big deal?

Another thing to consider: Aerolink (Palutena's best player) recently attended a tourney that allowed for Palutena's customs. Of course, he smashed right through it. Afterwards, he planned on going to another tourney that intially allowed for her customs, but at the last second they bailed and disallowed them, seemingly a response to Aerolink dominating the other event.

Damn, that's unfortunate. One thing we should consider is HOW good is custom palutena in a default tournament? A lot of people might say she'd be top tier, and I think it's likely that she would be. But would she be good to the point of being OP? If that's an issue then she'd be banned from default anyway. It's possible that nobody has experience fighting her though, because this was likely the first tournament that included her. It's hard to say, and I think we're gonna need time and data.

 

[4chanJoe]

The way I see things, Palutena/Mii customs only is the closest we can get to not only Palutena being a contender in tournaments but a fair compromise in terms of allowing customs at tournaments.

I've been hovering in and around Midwest for a while and the one thing I have seen from a standpoint of expressing opinions on the matter is that TO's are usually more against customs than the players. While keeping in mind that it could just be the regional differences, a lot of TO's I've talked to say the reason they don't run custom tournaments is because unlocking ALL the customs is a chore. In the past couple weeks after MLG, however, when I approached some of my TO friends about just having it be Pally and Mii fighters having their customs. While hesitant at first to consider running the ruleset for something as big as a monthly or regional, they were all for running a weekly with these rules and saw no real issue with it. To them, and to me, it makes the most logistical sense if a customs on meta were to exist.

As unfortunate as that is for the customs meta as a whole the reality is if we want to see customs of any kind, let alone Palutena, at any tournament the name of the game is logistics. The path of least resistance is one that is often taken by TO's and I believe that the best chance we have to break the restrictions on Palutena's customs is to push the idea from a logistical standpoint. Mii fighters gained their ground on the helping fact that all their customs are unique, interchangeable, and probably most important from where I'm standing easily accessible. It cuts the time in half of getting a tournament ready Wii U ready if you only have to worry about creating presets for two characters as opposed to unlocking all the customs and making presets for 48 characters. Less time means you can set up and run tournaments quicker and more efficiently, and efficiency is awesome because nobody wants to be at a tournament that goes past it's end time by six hours.

But that's just my two cents, so I could be wrong. I just think if we approach this situation with a logical platform then we can definitely make some headway for letting Pally have her moves. While I am content with her default set up and I've put in more than enough hours to make that set up work, I wouldn't mind if tournaments laxed up and threw Palutena mains a bone.

 

[wpwood]

I think it's pretty clear that Palu was a character designed to played with customs. We are there by limiting her design in the current meta. I talked about this for 4 days in the character viability boards. I also was just asking about giving her lightweight, but they said she would need all her customs to make any sort of impact. Plenty of people said she would, even with all customs, 1) not be broken and 2) would still not be good enough with her current flaws. I'm sure all Palutena mains would disagree with that but you can go read the discussion for yourselves.

Now Aerolink winning the Arkansas tournament can be linked to him being a good player and general Palutena match up inexperience. I think he possibly could have won with just default Palutena because almost no one has Palutena match up, also went on a little rant in the viability boards on this. It is a fact that Palutena is better in customs and if someone wanted to learn that match to be ready for the BEST CUSTOM PALUTENA MAIN they could've come here and asked for some games. So banning her because she won is the wrong way out. Banning her because she is broken would be fair, except that she isn't broken. She is just a stronger character with new weaknesses.

For the few custom Palutena tournaments there are, everyone there is probably not going to have any MU knowledge. The way to end that would to be allowing custom Palu at more tournaments and then people can actually learn the match up and realize her weaknesses. I agree with the first point the people said, she will not be broken by any means. Everyone is just so quick to call it jank that they don't bother to learn how easy it is to counter. Not necessarily easy, but it's not on an unbeatable level. People worried about down throw > nair > uair don't know that it works in a 10%-15% window and that they could just smash DI to end up behind Palu and avoid the uair. If people don't want to learn new match ups, then by that logic we shouldn't allow DLC characters.

I think we should first ask for completely custom Palutena, give our reasons why we think she should be able to use customs, and get told no. Then we should argue for 1 set that we can agree will make her better and that way not everyone would have to learn every single custom Palutena has. If we get told no to 1 set the very least we should settle for is lightweight, but we cannot be so quick to give up on full custom and 1 set of customs. By posing 3 separate arguments we should be able to convince a majority of people. The most hardcore proponents to this argument / movement would not be in favor of full customs, but we need to convince as many people as possible that way if we have to drop to asking for 1 unified set it seems much less than full customs and we should still have a good bit of support.

I guess I could rewrite this to argue more for a full set of customs or maybe a single unified set of customs. I think for a unified set we should ask for explosive flame, super speed, lightweight, jump glide or warp. I'm indifferent on jump glide and warp.

Damn, that's unfortunate. One thing we should consider is HOW good is custom palutena in a default tournament? A lot of people might say she'd be top tier, and I think it's likely that she would be. But would she be good to the point of being OP? If that's an issue then she'd be banned from default anyway. It's possible that nobody has experience fighting her though, because this was likely the first tournament that included her. It's hard to say, and I think we're gonna need time and data.

Again custom Palutena has plenty of weaknesses and is by no means broken. No one has experience fighting default Palutena anyway. If she could use customs people would actually learn the match up. There are plenty of weaknesses and drawbacks to using her custom moves and people need to understand that if we're to have any chance of getting the rules changed.

We should really plan out everything we would want to say and be prepared for any counter arguments that people may pose. Although some counter arguments may just come from someone not reading everything that we say, and so we should all understand what we are saying so that any Palutena player could argue this.

I've been hovering in and around Midwest for a while and the one thing I have seen from a standpoint of expressing opinions on the matter is that TO's are usually more against customs than the players. While keeping in mind that it could just be the regional differences, a lot of TO's I've talked to say the reason they don't run custom tournaments is because unlocking ALL the customs is a chore. In the past couple weeks after MLG, however, when I approached some of my TO friends about just having it be Pally and Mii fighters having their customs. While hesitant at first to consider running the ruleset for something as big as a monthly or regional, they were all for running a weekly with these rules and saw no real issue with it. To them, and to me, it makes the most logistical sense if a customs on meta were to exist.

As unfortunate as that is for the customs meta as a whole the reality is if we want to see customs of any kind, let alone Palutena, at any tournament the name of the game is logistics. The path of least resistance is one that is often taken by TO's and I believe that the best chance we have to break the restrictions on Palutena's customs is to push the idea from a logistical standpoint.

I don't know who would be better to convince more: the TOs or the players. It would of course be better to convince both. TOs are the ones who decide if Palutena can even use customs but TOs will more often than not listen to what the players want.

I like the logistic argument and it could be very strong in convincing people, weather for full customs or a single set of customs.

Starting with weekly tournaments would be best because they happen more often and more exposure to custom Palutena is better.

WE SHOULD WAIT TILL AFTER THE NEXT UPDATE. The next patch will be in December and I think we should wait till then and see how and if Palutena changes. During the time leading up to the next patch we should come together and construct our argument and consider everything. So we have about a month or so to get our proposal sorted out and to be the best we can create it to be.

 

[Kero the Invincible]

What bothers me the most is, what would it matter if Palutena was top tier with customs? How would a dominating Palutena be any worse than the dominating Sheiks and Rosalumas we already have?

The only "problem" I could see from this is the current top-tier mains having to learn a new competitive match-up. That, or they just main Custom Palutena, and suddenly there's nothing wrong with her at all.

In an ironic sort of way, top-tier players are the ones who care the least about character balance.

 

[wpwood]

I believe the term for those people are tier *****

 

[Number Three]

I believe that both Miis and Palutena should be allowed to use customs in the form of specific custom sets like the ones that EVO allowed. Their customs are all unlocked from the very beginning so you don't have to painfully grind them out. I don't see why people have a problem with this. It's not like either of them become broken. Heck, the only reason people want these for the Miis is for Brawler. Despite getting a bit better, Swordfighter and Gunner still blow even with customs (inb4 Swordfighter and Gunner mains angrily reply to me). So, if this were to happen, we'd get a new high tier (Brawler) and a new mid tier (Palutena). I think smaller tournaments should try this and see how it works. If it's a success, then we could start using it for bigger tournaments.

 

[wpwood]

If we really want that to happen we first have to get 2 things done. We NEED to decide among ourselves what we would want the set to be. I vote for 2322. If we do not have this we can not do anything else and our argument will go no where. After we decide on a single set we have to bring this conversation up EVERYWHERE! It does us no good to only talk about this here on the Palutena boards where everyone here is in favor of this proposal! We have to convince TOs and players that it will be right and I've said what my argument is and what I came up with over in the social if you want to go read it there. Bring notice of this everywhere and it will succeed. Silence is the number 1 stopping factor and it will require everyone to talk about it. Not just 5 or so of us in 5 different regions can get this to happen on a national level. I don't expect a national to allow this for awhile, but we have to convince enough locals to allow it before even thinking of going to a larger scale.

But seriously the faster we can decide on a single set the faster we can get everything else going. I do want to be fair and hear everything any Palutena player has to say about it, but I want to get this happening soon. I'll start a thread asking about what her single set should be once I finish some work latter tonight maybe, or if someone else wants to make it go ahead.

 

[Maraphy]

I wonder if a default set with just Lightweight changed would be viable?

then again people would probably turn it down because that'd only be changing one move

I will say I prefer Auto Reticle over Explosive Flame, but I could learn to get used to it. That'd also make Custom Palutena feel much more different than playing as Default Palutena.

 

[wpwood]

I wonder if a default set with just Lightweight changed would be viable?

then again people would probably turn it down because that'd only be changing one move

I will say I prefer Auto Reticle over Explosive Flame, but I could learn to get used to it. That'd also make Custom Palutena feel much more different than playing as Default Palutena.

Honestly I'd be fine with just lightweight, but when I tried that: "She would need all her customs to actually be viable," are the responses I got from other players. That is why I have transformed it into 1 custom set instead of just lightweight. Although lightweight alone would help tremendously.

 

[Lvl99Gamer]

I've been reading up on this whole custom moves thing today. I think it's totally fine for Palutena to use her custom moves however, people WILL get salty as in, why can't my Bowser or *insert low tier character* use customs to get more viable as well? And I think that would raise plenty of issues with the playerbase and cause people to vote against it. I was just wondering if it's better for your cause if you advocated customs in general instead of just for Mii's/Pally in order to have more people on your side, however this could work against you as well... just a side thought from me.

Personally, I'm in favor of customs. I mean, characters need to be grinded too and nobody complains about that. (some logistic stuff is also fixed by having a 3DS be able to export pre-made sets to multiple WiiU's I think)
Most of the friction is caused by characters that WILL get OP with customs on and it takes a lot of work to sort that out which many people don't wanna do and an issue I'm not completely sure that's easily solved.

If it were up to me I would decree that everyone currently in Low tier gets 2 custom moves, Mid tier 1 and High tier none (sorry Luigi my man) or more realistically I'd make a list of custom moves/sets that would just get banned period.
Sadly, it's not up to me and to achieve all of these things we would need a sizable part of the community, top players and TO's on the side of customs. Though I'm not gonna give up advocating the benefits of the variety customs can bring.

You have my support whether it's for customs in general or just for Palutena though. (What can I say, I'm a man who likes green)

 

[red hot roy]

i know the some tournament groups have a specific bracket for customs that is separate from the main smash 4 brackets. I think that is a good idea since i think it would be unfair for 1 character to get customs while all the others don't. I know that they allow mii fighters in tourney play with their default moveset but i think that they as well should be banned from normal play. let customs have their own bracket so it doesn't interfere with the normals. I would also like to see a tier list for customs as i feel it would be so different from the normal tier list.

 

[Lvl99Gamer]

i know the some tournament groups have a specific bracket for customs that is separate from the main smash 4 brackets. I think that is a good idea since i think it would be unfair for 1 character to get customs while all the others don't. I know that they allow mii fighters in tourney play with their default moveset but i think that they as well should be banned from normal play. let customs have their own bracket so it doesn't interfere with the normals. I would also like to see a tier list for customs as i feel it would be so different from the normal tier list.

Personally I think it would be MORE fair to not give the already strong characters access to customs as it allows the currently weaker characters to keep up with the top tier part of the cast. Aside from that I'm also not too keen on having seperate brackets as that's too divisive for the Smash 4 Community. I think the best bet for Smash 4's competitive future is creating a more equal playing field than we currently have.

To further exemplify my point, doing it this way leaves the like of Sheik, ZSS, basically the whole high tier at their current strength while allowing to weaker characters to "get on their level" as it were.

 

[red hot roy]

Personally I think it would be MORE fair to not give the already strong characters access to customs as it allows the currently weaker characters to keep up with the top tier part of the cast. Aside from that I'm also not too keen on having seperate brackets as that's too divisive for the Smash 4 Community. I think the best bet for Smash 4's competitive future is creating a more equal playing field than we currently have.

To further exemplify my point, doing it this way leaves the like of Sheik, ZSS, basically the whole high tier at their current strength while allowing to weaker characters to "get on their level" as it were.

i guess i should have seen it that way, i guess that customs definitely could make low tiers viable against top tiers. basically any top/high tiers cannot use the customs wheres the mid/low tiers should. that does make sense.

 

[Eisal]

People usually argue that tiers are just made up by players, and just because we say some characters are better than others it doesn't mean it's necessarily true.

So when we start allowing some characters the use of customs, it's unfair towards others. Therefore all characters should be allowed customs.

Well, this was the argument of someone in my local gaming group, and I don't agree with it.

I might be biased because I do main Palutena, but I think if we can boost characters up from the bottom to a better competitive level, I think that's great and will be far more interesting.

 

[Lvl99Gamer]

People usually argue that tiers are just made up by players, and just because we say some characters are better than others it doesn't mean it's necessarily true.

So when we start allowing some characters the use of customs, it's unfair towards others. Therefore all characters should be allowed customs.

Well, this was the argument of someone in my local gaming group, and I don't agree with it.

I might be biased because I do main Palutena, but I think if we can boost characters up from the bottom to a better competitive level, I think that's great and will be far more interesting.

Well, you could argue that Sheik having such insane frame data compared to others is also unfair. There are a few good points to be raised against only allowing certain characters to have customs though.

I've spent the past few days discussing and thinking about this but it remains a bit of an issue.

 

[Eisal]

Well, you could argue that Sheik having such insane frame data compared to others is also unfair. There are a few good points to be raised against only allowing certain characters to have customs though.

I've spent the past few days discussing and thinking about this but it remains a bit of an issue.

I'm actually a little bit unsure myself. I'd like to believe I'm for customs, but I can very much understand the counter argument for it too, and agree with it.

So I'm a little bit in a grey area.

But as people have said in the bigger thread over at the competitive forum, it's easier to ban than unban, and it's easier to not do anything for customs than try to do something for it.

Many top players shun customs, making it easier for the crowd to just go along with their wishes. They are important, and we are not.

I would at least like to see more customs, especially for bottom tier characters if they can boost them up some.

If not for viability, then at least for fun.

 

[wpwood]

If not for viability, then at least for fun.

We don't use those words.

Palutena just needs a tweek to frame data to make her amazing. She has options that almost no other characters have and her default move set is decent. Nearly every move has its uses and better start up or FAF is all that's needed. The player also needs to realize they're playing a more defensive character than offensive and should play according to that idea. She has good MUs against most the cast. Granted she looses to some of the top tiers kind of easily, so pick up a secondary. This game has 55+ characters and 1 character is going to have positive MUs against everyone, and a secondary is needed to past those hard MUs.