What are your opinions on Customs Post-Evo 2015?

[Swoops]

@ TheReflexWonder

I have always been a strong supporter of that idea that "jank" exists in the vanilla smash gameplay. ZSS UpB and DownB are insane moves, Shiek DownB, and prepatch Diddy throw combos are insanely good.

But the development team are clearly showing where their balance priorities are. You can argue that they have made changes to custom moves, but they are few and far between and a dollar short.

Then there are the DLC characters. Quite honestly, I'm thrown back at the comparison that picking a DLC character without customs is like picking a low-tier. That is COMPLETELY wrong-headed. A low-tier might be incompletely balanced in a competitive game, but they were developed with a complete move set. Playing a DLC character with no customs is more akin to playing a vanilla character who is missing close to a quarter of their moves. Usefulness of those moves has no bearing on the argument, they just don't exist.

You can make the argument that people choose to use those characters, but that's ludicrous for a game we are trying to make into a successful competitive mainstream event. 4 popular characters that will most likely want to be used at a very frequent level in the metagame, and they have incomplete movelists? I don't care if they get by without them, the very notion that they don't have them get is telling of the game we are trying to play.

I still love the idea of customs, and have a lot of fun playing custom ganon and samus. However I think we are all being unnecessarily self punishing when we are actively trying to force a large community to play a game that is incomplete, shows less support for balance, and has an uncertain future of when it comes to those problems.

 

[Big-Cat]

The way I see it, the DLC characters are not incomplete. They just don't have those extras. Hell, Ryu doesn't need customs lol. He already has three types of Hadouken.

The characters in the vanilla roster have more options at the select screen, but the number never changes in battle.

 

[Swoops]

The way I see it, the DLC characters are not incomplete. They just don't have those extras. Hell, Ryu doesn't need customs lol. He already has three types of Hadouken.

The characters in the vanilla roster have more options at the select screen, but the number never changes in battle.

Calling them "extras" doesn't make any sense though. If the game we're playing is "smash 4, customs on" they aren't extras, they're an integral part of the game.

Having some level of expectations is a big part of this. If an MKX DLC character came out and they only had 1 variation, you can be damn sure that the community wouldn't say, "well, you only play with one variation during the match so you don't need them."

No, they would be pissed the **** off and demand NRS to fix that. Unfortunately we don't have a developer that is interacting with us as much as NRS. But we also have a more complete game, so the fact we are really pushing to make this incomplete mode the standard (with more effort on our part) is silly to me.

 

[LimitCrown]

Custom moves were never intended to be balanced in the first place, and I'm sure that you're intended to use equipment along with the custom moves. Both are rewards that can be obtained in single-player modes, and there is a lot of emplasis placed on using equipment in those moves. Also, there is a case in which a balance patch indirectly obsoleted a custom move. There isn't any reason to use Shocking Spin because the regular Spin Attack deals the same amount of damage, it deals more knockback, its hitlag modifier is lower, and it is better for recovering.

 

[Ninj4pikachu]

@ TheReflexWonder

I have always been a strong supporter of that idea that "jank" exists in the vanilla smash gameplay. ZSS UpB and DownB are insane moves, Shiek DownB, and prepatch Diddy throw combos are insanely good.

But the development team are clearly showing where their balance priorities are. You can argue that they have made changes to custom moves, but they are few and far between and a dollar short.

Then there are the DLC characters. Quite honestly, I'm thrown back at the comparison that picking a DLC character without customs is like picking a low-tier. That is COMPLETELY wrong-headed. A low-tier might be incompletely balanced in a competitive game, but they were developed with a complete move set. Playing a DLC character with no customs is more akin to playing a vanilla character who is missing close to a quarter of their moves. Usefulness of those moves has no bearing on the argument, they just don't exist.

You can make the argument that people choose to use those characters, but that's ludicrous for a game we are trying to make into a successful competitive mainstream event. 4 popular characters that will most likely want to be used at a very frequent level in the metagame, and they have incomplete movelists? I don't care if they get by without them, the very notion that they don't have them get is telling of the game we are trying to play.

I still love the idea of customs, and have a lot of fun playing custom ganon and samus. However I think we are all being unnecessarily self punishing when we are actively trying to force a large community to play a game that is incomplete, shows less support for balance, and has an uncertain future of when it comes to those problems.

Great point!!, but it's not that big a deal if you really think about it. "My Lucas didn't get customs!" Well isn't Lucas just a custom ness? I mean he is a clone and you can give ness very similar specials in his customs. "My Roy didn't get customs" same as Lucas, play both Roy and custom marth when the situation calls for it.

As for mewtwo and ryu, nobody is forcing you to use those characters the whole time. Use them when the situation calls, and if your opponent is going to pick a counter or a map you don't want, temporarily switch to a similar character. It's true that there really isn't a true similar character to ryu, and this is defiantly an important issue, but I don't think that this should be the reason that customs don't get used.

 

[Hippieslayer]

People should not state that banning a custom moveset is equivalent to banning a character because both are clearly different things.

Still similar in principle. Equivalent even. Shouldn't be done without good reason because: slippery slope. Good reason being: **** is broken, as in broken for real, not as in "we dun like dis and its also viable"-broken. The only reason its not considered the same in principle is because unlocking customs takes time and most people got going without them and so don't feel like they are losing anything. Most people including top players who tended to also pick chars which didn't rely on customs in order not to risk being gimp and having time invested being wasted.

Stop. Top players are at the top for putting their life and soul into this game. They do not hate customs because it "poses a risk". Let's check out Top 32 at EVO and see how many top players we find carried by Customs!

http://shoryuken.com/2015/07/19/evo...argest-fighting-game-tournament-in-the-world/

Oh.

Also suggesting Melee players don't play Smash 4 because they don't want it to cut into their winnings blows my ****ing mind, Melee players don't play Smash 4 because the game shares a title and controls and that's it. Melee is the only older game still played by the FGC because no other game in the series plays remotely like it. We need to stop pretending top players' opinions are irrelevant because they're all super selfish or something. It's an insult to the players who take this game we love to the next level.


I'm not sure how much I agree with "low tiers become much better". Okay, Palutena goes from bottom tier to high tier for sure. Everyone else gets gradual increases which in my mind are similar to top tier increases. Ike gets Close Combat, Sonic gets HSD, y'know? I mean everyone gets better (...Jigglypuff and Zelda excluded) but increasing everyone doesn't magically equate to more balance among the cast.

Please stop glorifying top players. They are great and we need them, but they are top for a reason and you don't seem to get that, Shaya explained it perfectly. And increasing everyone does kinda magically make the game more balanced. Top tiers may get buffed, but those buffs do not add that much to the total sum of said top tiers abilities because they are already very good, whereas for a low or mid tier customs can mean the difference between being unviable and visible. You fail to consider the additional viability which customs add in relation to the preexisting viability. Yeah Sheik gets cool needles, but they only make her marginally better anyway because default are already great. Mid or low tiers characters tend to have big flaws which in many cases can be covered up by customs. The case is not the same with top tiers, the gap is lessened even if top tiers get buffed because mid and low tiers have more to gain.

Is it really fair either way? No matter which way we go, we're essentially "Picking and choosing" who gets to be viable and who doesn't. Customs on? Then characters like and become more viable and, on the opposite side of the spectrum, characters like and get indirectly nerfed and become less viable. Customs off? Characters like and become more viable, and characters who rely on customs for viability like and become less viable. Do you see the problem yet? . It's not exactly fair either way, someone gets hurt, no matter which path we go, neither side has the moral upper ground. I'm against customs, for really just one reason, and it's a meager, pathetic if you will, reason. It's that I'm selfish, I want my main to be as viable as possible. I really wish all characters were just as viable as one another, but that isn't the case sadly, so, even though I feel sympathy for all the mains out there of characters who suffer without customs, I'll prefer to play without customs, merely to benefit myself by making sure my character doesn't become Hyrule tier yet again. I won't be outraged if customs became the standard, but I'd be a little upset, because it would mean that, once again, my character will end up near the very bottom, again, and as someone who played Brawl a lot as a "low tier", I really hate the sound of that. Sorry, but if stomping on other's viability is what it's going to take to remain at least somewhat viable, then so be it. If only every character was perfectly viable, this would never be such a problem in the first place.

And it's fair that Sheik is top in default or what? Of course customs aren't fair. Nothing is fair in fighting games. You create a standard which customs can never reach, a standard which isn't required or ever mentioned outside of customs. Customs still even the play field by allowing more characters viability so this objection is kinda silly. Customs where there from the get go. They should have been standard from the start, and they would've been if they didn't need to be unlocked. Why let the whims of a gaming company who know little to nothing about competitive gaming and do not really care for it either decide the nature of our meta?

Custom moves were never intended to be balanced in the first place, and I'm sure that you're intended to use equipment along with the custom moves. Both are rewards that can be obtained in single-player modes, and there is a lot of emplasis placed on using equipment in those moves. Also, there is a case in which a balance patch indirectly obsoleted a custom move. There isn't any reason to use Shocking Spin because the regular Spin Attack deals the same amount of damage, it deals more knockback, its hitlag modifier is lower, and it is better for recovering.

And this is relevant why? Appealing to Nintendo as an authority is not just a logical fallacy, its also kinda weird consider the company doesn't like competitive gaming and knows very little about it. Smash was never intended to be balanced or played competitively in the first place.

Anyone who thinks top players are lazy about customs or don't want them "affecting their winnings" is full of ****. Top players prepared for EVO a lot and that includes customs, to pretend otherwise discredits them. It's actually just, y'know, an educated opinion formed by playing with customs on and off at top level and exploring both metagames. ESAM is one of the most ardent anti-customs players, yet he was using 2311 Pikachu. Dabuz is anti-customs, yet he was using 2311/1311 Rosalina. Abadango is anti-customs, yet he was using 1211 Wario. Nakat is anti-customs, yet he was using 1131 Fox. 1111 is Sheik's best set outside of the Rosalina matchup (in which 2111 is), that's not just people deciding against using customs. ZeRo actually prefers Diddy's normal Up B personally, which is fine. To suggest that these players haven't experimented with and explored customs, including customs matchups, is silly.

You still don't understand the larger issue, top players don't want a potential change of the metagame hovering over them. And them not wanting customs -which while they are prepared for them too a certain degree they are still less prepared for them than for the default meta by far- to influence results does not mean they won't use them themselves. If you think the custom metagame is explored enough that people may have final, educated opinions about it you are clueless and you don't know very much about customs (or metas in general for that matter). There where tons of objectively questionable decisions made in regards to customs, even in top 8. Ally, Regi and Abadango making fatal mistakes by picking the wrong moves for one. Esam dropping games by spamming HSB rather than getting **** done. Moreover, if you think the results would've looked the same in a meta were people were comfortable and well versed with customs you are deluded, Cpt Awesome would've been knocked out much earlier for one. I really cba to elaborate, but you don't seem to understand how meta's work in general. It was extremely obvious how poorly versed tons of players where when it came to customs even at EVO, and even -though to a lesser degree- in top 8.

 

[LimitCrown]

Still similar in principle. Equivalent even. Shouldn't be done without good reason because: slippery slope. Good reason being: **** is broken, as in broken for real, not as in "we dun like dis and its also viable"-broken. The only reason its not considered the same in principle is because unlocking customs takes time and most people got going without them and so don't feel like they are losing anything. Most people including top players who tended to also pick chars which didn't rely on customs in order not to risk being gimp and having time invested being wasted.

They are not the same. Are you going to argue that 2331 Mario, 2131 Mario, and 2322 Mario are separate characters? They're not; all of them are the same character with different sets of special moves. The comparison is evidently a false analogy.

 

[Hippieslayer]

They are not the same. Are you going to argue that 2331 Mario, 2131 Mario, and 2322 Mario are separate characters? They're not; all of them are the same character with different sets of special moves. The comparison is evidently a false analogy.

Banning anything without proper reason (proper reason being: **** is broken 4 realz) is a violation of the rules which govern competitive gaming in general. Meta's develop because they are not artifially altered at the whims of players who refuse to adapt. Whether it be the banning of a character or moves, the same principle is violated, and that is what is relevant. Litteral interpretations are just a way of bypassing this point.

 

[Skarfelt]

Please stop glorifying top players. They are great and we need them, but they are top for a reason and you don't seem to get that, Shaya explained it perfectly.

I'm not glorifying top players. I'm just pretty stunned that it's apparently okay to dismiss the opinions of our best players because they're afraid of losing...? Also, afraid I'm not capable of telling the future and reading what Shaya said after my post. I do respect Shaya's viewpoint but it's just not really one I agree with - while there are definitely some players where this is the case, I doubt Dabuz went from "customs rock" to "customs suck" because he lost to someone with customs or something.

We are continuously ignoring the logistic issues in order to argue back and forth in this circular "CUSTOMS MORE VARIETY CUSTOMS ARE JANK" argument that has gone absolutely nowhere in 13 pages, so let's take a different route.

There is a huge difference between turning up to play at your first tourney to lose to a camping Sonic and turning up to a custom DK's Up B. The Sonic is there from the start, easily practiced against from home and the player is likely familiar with what's going on... even if it is stupid. The DK Up B? It's an alien ruleset with this person just spamming an obviously stupid strategy that is damn near certain to make that player not return to tournaments.

On one hand, for sure, that new player should learn matchups of any rulesets he/she participates in. On another point, the player should just get over themselves when they lose and git gud like basically everyone had to do when they first start. However, I've seen first hand a ton of players go 0-2 at their first tourney and feel like crap afterwards. If you go 0-2 to a ruleset you're not familiar with due to its incredibly difficult accessibility, you're just going to say "screw that" instead of spending weeks grinding out to compete at that ruleset. After all, there's For Glory if they do want to play "competitively".

As I said earlier, this is the first Smash game which offers a direct route into the competitive scene with For Glory. I'm not saying we should copy and paste For Glory's ruleset but I do think it should be as close as possible while still being competitive and, most importantly, easily accessible is vital for the ruleset. There seems to be a common mindset that we shouldn't cater to For Glory players and I don't really get that. It's the most accessible, direct route to growing and strengthening our community Smash has ever provided. I don't see the point in closing it off to them.

So, lemme just bullet point my arguments against Customs that are totally unrelated to balance.

• Entry Barrier: New players are likely to struggle getting into their local scene with an alien ruleset which is very likely to be different to what they're used to playing at home.
• International Breakdown: Players from other regions are much less likely to travel to America if the ruleset/metagame is so different. Japan isn't changing any time soon and I doubt most of EU will. Sure, Japanese playres did go to EVO but if you have customs next year I can nearly guarantee you that Rain etc. won't be back unless paid by a sponsor.
• Practice: It's much harder to train for matchups in Customs due to their difficulty to unlock and, in addition, Custom strategies tend to absolutely annihilate people when they're not ready for them (Killager, DK - they can be beaten but it's not immediately obvious how to). I mean, you could just unlock your own character's customs but then your friend comes over and - whoops, I don't have Rosalina's customs. Guess we're playing default.
• Potential money barrier: This one may seem a bit weird but basically you can either spend a ton of hours unlocking everything or you can just get a 3DS powersave. It's similar to League's system where you can just buy everyone or grind it out and I don't think that's a healthy system for a competitive game at all.

EDIT: grammar and sentence structure

 

[LimitCrown]

Banning anything without proper reason (proper reason being: **** is broken 4 realz) is a violation of the rules which govern competitive gaming in general. Meta's develop because they are not artifially altered at the whims of players who refuse to adapt. Whether it be the banning of a character or moves, the same principle is violated, and that is what is relevant. Litteral interpretations are just a way of bypassing this point.

You're trying to sidestep my statements. Many of you have compared custom movesets with separate characters, stating that the two were the same. I've shown that this comparison is a false analogy. Also, you're speaking as if custom moves were enabled at the beginning.

There are reasons for why people are against custom moves that were already stated in this thread. You generalized that group as "players who refuse to adapt".

 

[Ninj4pikachu]

Some

I'm not glorifying top players. I'm just pretty stunned that it's apparently okay to dismiss the opinions of our best players because they're afraid of losing...? Also, afraid I'm not capable of telling the future and reading what Shaya said after my post. I do respect Shaya's viewpoint but it's just not really one I agree with - while there are definitely some players where this is the case, I doubt Dabuz went from "customs rock" to "customs suck" because he lost to someone with customs or something.

We are continuously ignoring the logistic issues in order to argue back and forth in this circular "CUSTOMS MORE VARIETY CUSTOMS ARE JANK" argument that has gone absolutely nowhere in 13 pages, so let's take a different route.

There is a huge difference between turning up to play at your first tourney to lose to a camping Sonic and turning up to a custom DK's Up B. The Sonic is there from the start, easily practiced against from home and the player is likely familiar with what's going on... even if it is stupid. The DK Up B? It's an alien ruleset with this person just spamming an obviously stupid strategy that is damn near certain to make that player not return to tournaments.

On one hand, for sure, that new player should learn matchups of any rulesets he/she participates in. On another point, the player should just get over themselves when they lose and git gud like basically everyone had to do when they first start. However, I've seen first hand a ton of players go 0-2 at their first tourney and feel like crap afterwards. If you go 0-2 to a ruleset you're not familiar with due to its incredibly difficult accessibility, you're just going to say "screw that" instead of spending weeks grinding out to compete at that ruleset. After all, there's For Glory if they do want to play "competitively".

As I said earlier, this is the first Smash game which offers a direct route into the competitive scene with For Glory. I'm not saying we should copy and paste For Glory's ruleset but I do think it should be as close as possible while still being competitive and, most importantly, easily accessible is vital for the ruleset. There seems to be a common mindset that we shouldn't cater to For Glory players and I don't really get that. It's the most accessible, direct route to growing and strengthening our community Smash has ever provided. I don't see the point in closing it off to them.

So, lemme just bullet point my arguments against Customs that are totally unrelated to balance.

• Entry Barrier: New players are likely to struggle getting into their local scene with an alien ruleset which is very likely to be different to what they're used to playing at home.
• International Breakdown: Players from other regions are much less likely to travel to America if the ruleset/metagame is so different. Japan isn't changing any time soon and I doubt most of EU will. Sure, Japanese playres did go to EVO but if you have customs next year I can nearly guarantee you that Rain etc. won't be back unless paid by a sponsor.
• Practice: It's much harder to train for matchups in Customs due to their difficulty to unlock and, in addition, Custom strategies tend to absolutely annihilate people when they're not ready for them (Killager, DK - they can be beaten but it's not immediately obvious how to). I mean, you could just unlock your own character's customs but then your friend comes over and - whoops, I don't have Rosalina's customs. Guess we're playing default.
• Potential money barrier: This one may seem a bit weird but basically you can either spend a ton of hours unlocking everything or you can just get a 3DS powersave. It's similar to League's system where you can just buy everyone or grind it out and I don't think that's a healthy system for a competitive game at all.

EDIT: grammar and sentence structure

Some of your points are invalid, there already is a money barrier due to DLC characters, should they not be allowed because I don't have $20 to spend on all of them? What about DLC stages?

We didn't have for glory in melee and people still practice, it's YOUR job as a player to ensure that you are prepared for these things. I would elaborate on more points but I have to get to my class,

I shall return with more points but for now I'll just let hippieslayer do the talking since he is so damn good at this debate thing lol

 

[Skarfelt]

Melee is an entirely different game whose origins are also entirely different. It took it 14 years to get as big as it is right now and Smash 4 is still bigger after less than 1 year. Believe it or not, it's not that Smash 4 is just that good or something - Smash 4 is MUCH more accessible. Keeping that accessibility high should be the primary goal of our stagelist.

On the subject of DLC characters, I find it pretty unfair they're locked behind a paywall too but there is literally no point me bringing up that argument as it will get nowhere. The thing is that DLC costing money is something we can do nothing about. Custom moves costing either time (that could be better spent practicing the game) or money is something we can do something about. Just because things were unfixable before doesn't mean they weren't bad. 64 had no option for a timer and having a timer on isn't default but it's really obviously a fixable thing. Kind of a strawman argument but you get my point.

 

[Hippieslayer]

You're trying to sidestep my statements. Many of you have compared custom movesets with separate characters, stating that the two were the same. I've shown that this comparison is a false analogy. Also, you're speaking as if custom moves were enabled at the beginning.

There are reasons for why people are against custom moves that were already stated in this thread. You generalized that group as "players who refuse to adapt".

No I'm not, that a move is not the same thing as a character is trivial and irrelevant to the topic at hand. You don't seem to understand what an analogy is, it is showing a relevant similarity between two different things. You're stuck on the things being different in an irrelevant sense.
They, the moves, weren't enabled at the beginning, neither were plenty of characters, lets not use those characters or what? Or should we decide what we use based on how long a time it takes to unlock something, ergo the whims of Nintendo?

 

[verbatim]

Stop. Top players are at the top for putting their life and soul into this game. They do not hate customs because it "poses a risk". Let's check out Top 32 at EVO and see how many top players we find carried by Customs!

http://shoryuken.com/2015/07/19/evo...argest-fighting-game-tournament-in-the-world/

Oh.

I really don't like this reasoning, since it creates an impossible catch-22 in opposition to customs. If Dapuffster, who is famous for pushing the Mii Brawler metagame (jab locks and all), and unquestionably a talented player, took first at EVO people would immediately blaem customs for "stealing" the win from Zero/Mr. R/Nairo. If no one with customs made it into the top 32, everyone would say that top players don't want them. Honestly, I think customs got the best showing they possibly could at EVO. The one person (please don't make personal attacks/threats against captainawesum, it's horrible and community ruining) most synonymous with "custom jank" got beat by 1111 Sheik by someone who doesn't main her. Everyone in top 4 either didn't use customs or used them situationally as a meta counterpick (Wario Speeding Bike as an anti-Luma tool and a recovery mixup against Sheik is probably my favorite use of customs of all time). Several characters that usually don't make a national appearance made it into the top 64 wielded by tremendously skilled players, John Numbers (WFT), Dapuffster (Mii Brawler), etc.

 

[WakerofWinds]

We are continuously ignoring the logistic issues in order to argue back and forth in this circular "CUSTOMS MORE VARIETY CUSTOMS ARE JANK" argument that has gone absolutely nowhere in 13 pages, so let's take a different route.

So, lemme just bullet point my arguments against Customs that are totally unrelated to balance.

• Entry Barrier: New players are likely to struggle getting into their local scene with an alien ruleset which is very likely to be different to what they're used to playing at home.
• International Breakdown: Players from other regions are much less likely to travel to America if the ruleset/metagame is so different. Japan isn't changing any time soon and I doubt most of EU will. Sure, Japanese playres did go to EVO but if you have customs next year I can nearly guarantee you that Rain etc. won't be back unless paid by a sponsor.
• Practice: It's much harder to train for matchups in Customs due to their difficulty to unlock and, in addition, Custom strategies tend to absolutely annihilate people when they're not ready for them (Killager, DK - they can be beaten but it's not immediately obvious how to). I mean, you could just unlock your own character's customs but then your friend comes over and - whoops, I don't have Rosalina's customs. Guess we're playing default.
• Potential money barrier: This one may seem a bit weird but basically you can either spend a ton of hours unlocking everything or you can just get a 3DS powersave. It's similar to League's system where you can just buy everyone or grind it out and I don't think that's a healthy system for a competitive game at all.

EDIT: grammar and sentence structure

I don't think we've ignored the logistics issue at all. There was quite a bit of discussion on it a few pages back, but I agree, let's talk about it more.

Unfortunately there will always be an entry barrier. Routinely, players ask whether or not they're ready for their first tournament. They're told they're going to lose, but they're told to do their best and have fun with it. Nobody is going to be ready for that first tournament experience, whether customs or on or off. The same argument could be made with stages. Either they're not going to be used to non-FD stages, or they won't be used to having only neutrals. I agree that players will quite possibly not be used to customs on, but I don't think it makes the barrier for entry that much higher (note: it does make it higher, I just don't think it's that much).

I actually really agree with this. Obviously aMSa would be back, but if none of the other top players come over it would be pretty sad. I don't have any meaningful response for this argument because it really is just sad, even if the Americas are the strongest region.

I don't know about this. I feel like players are going to be annihilated by anything they're not ready for. Your first sheik match against a decent player? Done. First match against a competent Sonic? Done. That said, it's certainly hard to train for customs, but I can't really see it being that much more difficult.

I agree with the money barrier, nobody wants that for new players or veterans. It's unfortunate that DLC characters also fall into that.

I think you left out the biggest issue, and that's local TOs. How are they supposed to deal with it? We can't necessarily expect them to be able to have all customs unlocked for all of their setups. Customs makes it harder on the small TOs, and that's not a good thing. We want more people to be willing to TO, and a customs on rule set doesn't make that happen. While I support customs 100%, I think it should be up to every individual TO; I don't want to make their jobs any harder than they already are.

 

[LimitCrown]

No I'm not, that a move is not the same thing as a character is trivial and irrelevant to the topic at hand. You don't seem to understand what an analogy is, it is showing a relevant similarity between two different things. You're stuck on the things being different in an irrelevant sense.
They, the moves, weren't enabled at the beginning, neither were plenty of characters, lets not use those characters or what? Or should we decide what we use based on how long a time it takes to unlock something, ergo the whims of Nintendo?

It is relevant because other people, including you, continue to make the comparison and use that as a reason for why custom moves should be allowed even though the comparison is clearly fallacious.

 

[ぱみゅ]

With the current Custom Project System, TOs only need ONE 3DS with all the setups (it doesn't have to be theirs) and they trasnfer them and they're good to go.

That's what I did for my tournament, and actually a player approached to me and asked me to transfer all the Custom Sets to his Wii U, which I did, so he practiced and actually the next time he showed up with a Custom Character himself. It was pretty amazing and very contrary to what people keep saying here.

 

[Hippieslayer]

I'm not glorifying top players. I'm just pretty stunned that it's apparently okay to dismiss the opinions of our best players because they're afraid of losing...? Also, afraid I'm not capable of telling the future and reading what Shaya said after my post. I do respect Shaya's viewpoint but it's just not really one I agree with - while there are definitely some players where this is the case, I doubt Dabuz went from "customs rock" to "customs suck" because he lost to someone with customs or something.

We are continuously ignoring the logistic issues in order to argue back and forth in this circular "CUSTOMS MORE VARIETY CUSTOMS ARE JANK" argument that has gone absolutely nowhere in 13 pages, so let's take a different route.

There is a huge difference between turning up to play at your first tourney to lose to a camping Sonic and turning up to a custom DK's Up B. The Sonic is there from the start, easily practiced against from home and the player is likely familiar with what's going on... even if it is stupid. The DK Up B? It's an alien ruleset with this person just spamming an obviously stupid strategy that is damn near certain to make that player not return to tournaments.

On one hand, for sure, that new player should learn matchups of any rulesets he/she participates in. On another point, the player should just get over themselves when they lose and git gud like basically everyone had to do when they first start. However, I've seen first hand a ton of players go 0-2 at their first tourney and feel like crap afterwards. If you go 0-2 to a ruleset you're not familiar with due to its incredibly difficult accessibility, you're just going to say "screw that" instead of spending weeks grinding out to compete at that ruleset. After all, there's For Glory if they do want to play "competitively".

As I said earlier, this is the first Smash game which offers a direct route into the competitive scene with For Glory. I'm not saying we should copy and paste For Glory's ruleset but I do think it should be as close as possible while still being competitive and, most importantly, easily accessible is vital for the ruleset. There seems to be a common mindset that we shouldn't cater to For Glory players and I don't really get that. It's the most accessible, direct route to growing and strengthening our community Smash has ever provided. I don't see the point in closing it off to them.

So, lemme just bullet point my arguments against Customs that are totally unrelated to balance.

• Entry Barrier: New players are likely to struggle getting into their local scene with an alien ruleset which is very likely to be different to what they're used to playing at home.
• International Breakdown: Players from other regions are much less likely to travel to America if the ruleset/metagame is so different. Japan isn't changing any time soon and I doubt most of EU will. Sure, Japanese playres did go to EVO but if you have customs next year I can nearly guarantee you that Rain etc. won't be back unless paid by a sponsor.
• Practice: It's much harder to train for matchups in Customs due to their difficulty to unlock and, in addition, Custom strategies tend to absolutely annihilate people when they're not ready for them (Killager, DK - they can be beaten but it's not immediately obvious how to). I mean, you could just unlock your own character's customs but then your friend comes over and - whoops, I don't have Rosalina's customs. Guess we're playing default.
• Potential money barrier: This one may seem a bit weird but basically you can either spend a ton of hours unlocking everything or you can just get a 3DS powersave. It's similar to League's system where you can just buy everyone or grind it out and I don't think that's a healthy system for a competitive game at all.

EDIT: grammar and sentence structure

The thing with the top players is they obviously have very real reasons for not wanting customs, but irregardless of that it's just an appeal to authority, just bring out the actual arguments instead. Like the ones you made in this post, with solid points which can't just be dismissed on their lack of substance like the whole top players this or that thing.

Honestly don't think customs hurt accessibility that much. It takes a lot less time to unlock customs manually -yes I've done it myself, it was dull as ****, but following guides it went pretty quickly, just get a fox, deck him with a bat and first striker invisibility, as well as fast bat smasher and go ham in crazy orders, then fill out the gaps with trophy rush once you have unlocked most of the customs- than it does getting good at the actual game. Plus it seems pretty feasible to have at least once person in each scene able to transfer power saves to others allowing them instant access to customs, and if not then quite feasible to see to it that there is.The reason its hard to practice for customs is simply because too many people shun them and don't use them. Unlocking customs for specific characters doesn't take very long in trophy rush either, if a certain friend lacks the customs you need specifically that is easily fixed via trophy rush. Moreover the ruleset is only alien because a majority don't use it, there is nothing inherently alien about customs, they are a part of the game and even casuals access and use them.

In regards to the international breakdown - really isn't much to be said about it, the consequences have to be considered. Personally I say screw them for using an inferior ruleset. Perhaps they will come around in a year or two once the default meta begins to stale and customs can be considered without being so through turd-colored glasses. I agree that in regards to DLC characters its unfortunate that there is a money barrier, but still inconsequential. But I believe the point being made is that the main reasons for why customs are not allowed in most places is the barrier that unlocking them presents, even though its not an insurmountable barrier, and even though there are transfers now, default became the standard in the fetal stages of the meta. The reason people can cry so loudly about custom moves being OP or jank when there are default moves which are just as good is because when they denounce customs they don't feel like they are losing anything, since default was and is all of the game to them. Even though the reason that it came to be so is one which has nothing to do with how the game should be played whatsoever.

It is relevant because other people, including you, continue to make the comparison and use that as a reason for why custom moves should be allowed even though the comparison is clearly fallacious.

I have explained the how and why of the comparison to you. Reread, its not hard to get. You have not explained what is the problem with it in any other sense than by pointing out the extremely obvious and trivial fact that a move is not the same thing as a character. Please understand (what an analogy is, that no one is saying a move and a character is the same thing).

 

[Seagull Joe]

Can we talk a little bit about this "at the top level" mentality. People who play this game as a second or primary job, and do it at an international level are extremely good at what they do. Whether or not they used them, everyone who placed top 8 at EVO were prepared for the custom meta game and performed exceptionally well, including Abadango, who came from a country with next to zero custom exposure and beat the best Pikachu and a top tier Sonic with customs in his journey to 4th place.

He beat the with custom . And true blue is not what I would consider top play.

 

[Sodo]

Since the last 13 pages have literally produced nothing but the same arguments we've heard since the game came out, I think it's pretty clear that we should all just go play a different game.

 

[Skarfelt]

Stuff about unlocking

Ya, you can just grind out customs faaaiiirly okay. It'll still take FAR longer than it has any right to but you can do it fairly quickly. The thing is though that unlocking these isn't an extension of just playing the game. You do not get better at the game while unlocking customs whereas you do when unlocking characters or spending that time that could have been spent on customs playing the game.

Personally I say screw them for using an inferior ruleset.

I doubt that we'll suddenly realise that the rest of the world is sooo much better or something. England tried customs. They didn't really worked out. They stopped. Every Smash game has ended up gravitating towards a more simplistic ruleset as its lifespan continues so I doubt this will be an outlier.

Spoiler: Irish Local Details

This point is more selfish and not as relevant to the discussion but might help offer a better insight on smaller local scenes/my own mindset. The locals suffering thing is actually a HUGE issue and my main qualm against Customs but it's quite a selfish one so I don't really bring it up. Ireland is not exactly the biggest scene in the world and while, yes, we can get tourney setups with Customs but Ireland has a ton of players that live in the countryside or nowhere near anyone else. Lots of people here that play online. Lots of people who turn up to tournaments from For Glory or Anther's and, more importantly, lots of people who have spent their entire time playing vanilla. That isn't to say that every single player is against Customs - I'm fairly sure it's pretty evenly split but, as per usual, every single top player in Ireland is against Customs. Additionally, pretty much everyone here plays all the Smash games and like hell are the Melee/PM players spending time unlocking Customs on a game they're playing on the side for fun - they'll just stop, most likely.

 

[Swoops]

Great point!!, but it's not that big a deal if you really think about it. "My Lucas didn't get customs!" Well isn't Lucas just a custom ness? I mean he is a clone and you can give ness very similar specials in his customs. "My Roy didn't get customs" same as Lucas, play both Roy and custom marth when the situation calls for it.

As for mewtwo and ryu, nobody is forcing you to use those characters the whole time. Use them when the situation calls, and if your opponent is going to pick a counter or a map you don't want, temporarily switch to a similar character. It's true that there really isn't a true similar character to ryu, and this is defiantly an important issue, but I don't think that this should be the reason that customs don't get used.

I do get what you're saying, but I really want people to have some higher standards and broader view when it comes to this game at a higher competitive level.

"Hey, Lucas/Mewtwo/Roy/Ryu players just deal with it. Lucas is just a clone Ness with a different...everything" is not an argument that makes one think highly of this game on a larger scale. Customs on smash is a half-assed game from nintendo.

Whether Nintendo is good at it or doing it on purpose, they are now actively supporting the competitive scene. They introduced an alternate FPS with intent to break into the online competitive scene, they sponsored EVO, and they are introducing regular-ish patches based on feedback from the Japanese scene and a "For Glory" mode (plus tournament mode and youtube uploads.)

Now people are telling me they want to implement a game that has an AWFUL and INCOMPLETE UI, sloppy balance, genuinely incomplete characters, and very little evidence of future support.

So people want to support this game when there is a very similar and fun game, whose meta game is still new and brimming with possibilities. Not to mention it is receiving fairly decent balance updates. I don't get it. It reminds of the brawl days, where I'm just being ignored and Nintendo doesn't give a **** about me. I'm sorry but I got out of that quick and I'm not sure why others would be okay with it.

 

[⑨ball]

So, lemme just bullet point my arguments against Customs that are totally unrelated to balance.

• Entry Barrier: New players are likely to struggle getting into their local scene with an alien ruleset which is very likely to be different to what they're used to playing at home.
• International Breakdown: Players from other regions are much less likely to travel to America if the ruleset/metagame is so different. Japan isn't changing any time soon and I doubt most of EU will. Sure, Japanese playres did go to EVO but if you have customs next year I can nearly guarantee you that Rain etc. won't be back unless paid by a sponsor.
• Practice: It's much harder to train for matchups in Customs due to their difficulty to unlock and, in addition, Custom strategies tend to absolutely annihilate people when they're not ready for them (Killager, DK - they can be beaten but it's not immediately obvious how to). I mean, you could just unlock your own character's customs but then your friend comes over and - whoops, I don't have Rosalina's customs. Guess we're playing default.
• Potential money barrier: This one may seem a bit weird but basically you can either spend a ton of hours unlocking everything or you can just get a 3DS powersave. It's similar to League's system where you can just buy everyone or grind it out and I don't think that's a healthy system for a competitive game at all.

New players in general are going to be dealing with an alien ruleset unless they were already interested in competitive play in which case they've likely done their homework on the tournament they plan on attending. I highly doubt a player coming directly from For Glory to his local is going to know anything about things like percent leads/wins, stage striking, counterpick system, suicide clauses, arbitrary mii bans, ect ect. but if you're serious about it you make the effort to learn whether pre or post tourney.

International Breakdown imo is the best argument against making customs standard. That said, we haven't really had much international attendance aside from players who've been showing up customs or no (Abadango, RAIN, Mr. R) and before we start making decision that help connect our communities we need to establish some type of constant communication so that these things can be discussed in advance.

Practice. Bad argument because there are a number of factors that go into what you're able to practice against. That camp sonic example you used? CPU Sonic's don't camp so if you don't have a convenient friend to help you practice this strategy against you're just as unfortunate. Or maybe you do and she's not able to grasp the concept well enough to help you practice effectively. There's also DLC characters which cost money some players simply don't have, or may just be against paying for. We want to create an even playing field for everyone but we simply can't hold everyone's hand in instances like these.

Money Barrier kind of sits with the practice point. No money for DLC? Lost to Ryu SRK OoS because you didn't know he could do that? Not sure what to tell you. There are also alternatives to getting everything. Chances are if the tournament you're going to is running Customs, they have all the customs and you can contact them for assistance as 9/10 they are running on AA's system. There's also your local community in general as well as smashboards. There's pretty much always going to be alternatives available if it's sought out, but it comes down to whether or not it's worth it to each player.

 

[LimitCrown]

I have explained the how and why of the comparison to you. Reread, its not hard to get. You have not explained what is the problem with it in any other sense than by pointing out the extremely obvious and trivial fact that a move is not the same thing as a character. Please understand (what an analogy is, that no one is saying a move and a character is the same thing).

I read your comment before, and my point still stands. It is clearly a false comparison, and it is used in other misleading arguments like the following: "Banning custom movesets is the same as banning a character, and it's wrong to ban a character without any reason."

Also, here is something that I would like to know. Why do those who are against custom moves need to be the ones to justify their position more than those who are for custom moves?

 

[Hippieslayer]

I read your comment before, and my point still stands. It is clearly a false comparison, and it is used in other misleading arguments like the following: "Banning custom movesets is the same as banning a character, and it's wrong to ban a character without any reason."

Also, here is something that I would like to know. Why do those who are against custom moves need to be the ones to justify their position more than those who are proposing the usage of custom moves?

Because they are the ones who want to ban something.

No its not clearly a false comparison. If you have a point make it. It's wrong to ban anything without sufficient reason, be it character or customs, people are pointing out that customs are excluded from this anything since its okay to have them be banned for logistical reasons which would never work with stuff other than customs, as well as by calling them broken when broken doesn't actually mean broken but rather centralizing and/or lame, Sheik and her needles are centralizing and lame, but no one would argue we should ban Sheik. Why do I even bother.

 

[ぱみゅ]

So far the best anti-custom argument I heard is that if Pro-Custom get stubborn and keep hosting Custom events, Anti- won't show up, but if Anti- host their tournaments, Pro- will.

 

[SoniCraft]

Ya, you can just grind out customs faaaiiirly okay. It'll still take FAR longer than it has any right to but you can do it fairly quickly. The thing is though that unlocking these isn't an extension of just playing the game. You do not get better at the game while unlocking customs whereas you do when unlocking characters or spending that time that could have been spent on customs playing the game.

Didn't Melee players have to spend a similarly long time playing modes that didn't help them improve much(no c-stick???) in order to unlock all the relevant stages and characters? I remember when I first did that, and that was a PAIN. I have a friend who couldn't unlock Final Destination until he got the 20XX hack pack. So what is it with unlocking customs(which have developed strategies to speed up the process) that makes them so special that we have to just forget about them?

What if Melee players just forgot about Final Destination or Mr. Game and Watch? Yes I know they've had 14 years by now, but back then I'm almost certain it was DEFINITELY an entry barrier people had to go through.

 

[Skarfelt]

I don't believe it's fair to say we are the ones wanting to "ban something" that is off by default. Surely it's the other way around.

Practice. Bad argument because there are a number of factors that go into what you're able to practice against. That camp sonic example you used? CPU Sonic's don't camp so if you don't have a convenient friend to help you practice this strategy against you're just as unfortunate. Or maybe you do and she's not able to grasp the concept well enough to help you practice effectively. There's also DLC characters which cost money some players simply don't have, or may just be against paying for. We want to create an even playing field for everyone but we simply can't hold everyone's hand in instances like these.

This whole post is extremely good but I'm not going to reply to anything but this as they're valid replies I can respect/agree with. This one I do not, though. You can practice against pretty much everything online if you look for it. Plenty of groups for matchup practice - I can go find a Sonic main to play against online if I need to know the matchup. The chances of those players having all Customs is much less likely, unfortunately.

You can also practice matchups by playing as the character. When you play as Luigi, you become MUCH more aware of his poor mobility, limited neutral, bad recovery and how easy to juggle he is. It's not as obvious when you're playing against him.

EDIT: Re: Melee unlocks. It takes nowhere near as long to unlock everything but, more importantly, you can copy save files to other memory cards. If (for some ungodly reason) you are unable to unlock everything, you can just bring your memory card to a tourney and get the savefile. Much more awkward to bring your Wii U and get customs from a 3DS... and even then, you can't experiment with different setups at home.

 

[J_the_Man]

So what happens if in the next patch all customs are automatically unlocked?

 

[TheReflexWonder]

So what happens if in the next patch all customs are automatically unlocked?

It would undermine all the unlocking Sakurai clearly wanted us to do (which is why some customs are hidden behind the challenge wall). It's supposed to be fun.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I have heard this argument about an entry barrier for new players before, but I haven't seen it play out that way in practice at all. As a member of a pretty fast growing local scene, I certainly haven't noted new players being dissuaded (me using Rosa and just not letting them down from juggles probably dissuades them more...). I asked my local TO (@DeLux ) about it, and he informed me that consistently about 25% of the entry pool of our continually growing events consists of new players. We always allow customs, to be clear, and we are basing our tournaments out of Kansas which I guarantee has a lower population density than Ireland or whatever other scene you want to cite (to be fair, if you want to cite North Dakota, you can probably win here). Heck, I remember how surprised we all were when an otherwise unknown Mega Man player showed up to one of our events and started counterpicking customs to match-up cleverly and ended up placing top 8 (I was the one to end his run, but he put up a VERY good fight). I can pretty much guarantee that without Danger Wrap he wouldn't have gone as far as he did (at the time, no one knew anything about MM and Danger Wrap as an anti-air threw people for a loop), and him going as far as he did was awesome as we permanently secured ourselves a solid Mega Man player that allowed our entire scene to grow in our understanding of the game.

If customs actually posed a significant entry barrier to new players, I'd be totally down for that argument, but I think real life experience confirms that's pretty much not what happens. If anything, a more diverse game gives newer players more ways to find a niche in which they can succeed while a more closed game with fewer viable options helps entrench whoever is currently at the top. Even among newer players who initially don't use customs, I've observed a progression in which they find stuff they like and start using it, and just plain having more ways to win is really what new players need more than anything else (by far the hardest way to win is being a worse version of someone else in your scene).

 

[LimitCrown]

So what happens if in the next patch all customs are automatically unlocked?

That isn't going to happen, so there isn't any point to thinking about that.

Because they are the ones who want to ban something.

No its not clearly a false comparison. If you have a point make it. It's wrong to ban anything without sufficient reason, be it character or customs, people are pointing out that customs are excluded from this anything since its okay to have them be banned for logistical reasons which would never work with stuff other than customs, as well as by calling them broken when broken doesn't actually mean broken but rather centralizing and/or lame, Sheik and her needles are centralizing and lame, but no one would argue we should ban Sheik. Why do I even bother.

Yeah. It's a "ban" even though the custom moves are something that you need to enable in the first place. You make it sound like not allowing custom moves is inherently incorrect. Also, explain why the comparison isn't a false comparison instead of only asserting that it isn't.

Many of the arguments for custom moves in the very beginning were either appeals to novelty or grand claims about the custom moves, which were mainly statements about how the custom moves would certainly benefit the games and claims that those would make the game more balanced because the lower-tier characters reportedly benefit from them more than the high-tiers. This turned out to not really be the case, and custom moves didn't seem to meet those expectations or balance the game in a significant way.

Also, here is what I don't understand about the last argument. People complain about Sheik and some of the problematic things about her moveset. People use this to support custom moves for some reason. How does this detract from the criticisms about some of the custom moves?

 

[SonicvMario]

Ya, you can just grind out customs faaaiiirly okay. It'll still take FAR longer than it has any right to but you can do it fairly quickly. The thing is though that unlocking these isn't an extension of just playing the game. You do not get better at the game while unlocking customs whereas you do when unlocking characters or spending that time that could have been spent on customs playing the game.

I doubt that we'll suddenly realise that the rest of the world is sooo much better or something. England tried customs. They didn't really worked out. They stopped. Every Smash game has ended up gravitating towards a more simplistic ruleset as its lifespan continues so I doubt this will be an outlier.

This point is more selfish and not as relevant to the discussion but might help offer a better insight on smaller local scenes/my own mindset. The locals suffering thing is actually a HUGE issue and my main qualm against Customs but it's quite a selfish one so I don't really bring it up. Ireland is not exactly the biggest scene in the world and while, yes, we can get tourney setups with Customs but Ireland has a ton of players that live in the countryside or nowhere near anyone else. Lots of people here that play online. Lots of people who turn up to tournaments from For Glory or Anther's and, more importantly, lots of people who have spent their entire time playing vanilla. That isn't to say that every single player is against Customs - I'm fairly sure it's pretty evenly split but, as per usual, every single top player in Ireland is against Customs. Additionally, pretty much everyone here plays all the Smash games and like hell are the Melee/PM players spending time unlocking Customs on a game they're playing on the side for fun - they'll just stop, most likely.

I was playing with Hackle Serpent a few weeks ago and he was definitely pro customs

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

That isn't going to happen, so there isn't any point to thinking about that.


Yeah. It's a "ban" even though the custom moves are something that you need to enable in the first place. You make it sound like not allowing custom moves is inherently incorrect. Also, explain why the comparison isn't a false comparison instead of only asserting that it isn't.

Many of the arguments for custom moves in the very beginning were either appeals to novelty or grand claims about the custom moves, which were mainly statements about how the custom moves would certainly benefit the games and claims that those would make the game more balanced because the lower-tier characters reportedly benefit from them more than the high-tiers. This turned out to not really be the case, and custom moves didn't seem to meet those expectations or balance the game in a significant way.

Also, here is what I don't understand about the last argument. People complain about Sheik and some of the problematic things about her moveset. People use this to support custom moves for some reason. How does this detract from the criticisms about some of the custom moves?

Did it turn out not to be the case? We had a Palutena and two Wii Fit Trainers in top 32. None of the high performing Sheiks really relied on customs, and when they did use customs, it didn't seem to make much of a difference. Even within top 8, customs were definitely instrumental in Abadongo's Wario giving dabuz's Rosalina the business. The magnitude of effect may be lower than you hoped for, but the effect itself seemed very much present to me in a significant way.

 

[neohopeSTF]

Just wanted to give apologies for the "real tournament player" and the "Majority rules" comment, in retrospect both are pretty dumb and it was kind of eating me up. Also I don't have much to say on customs until august to see what, if any, customs are patched.

 

[Ninj4pikachu]

Also, here is what I don't understand about the last argument. People complain about Sheik and some of the problematic things about her moveset. People use this to support custom moves for some reason. How does this detract from the criticisms about some of the custom moves?[/quote]

The fact that most of her meta revolves around opening people up and shuting people down with her needles. In short, she is centralized around that attack.

Many claim that customs will centralize some characters around a certain move, but this already exists in sheik and other characters.

 

[Skarfelt]

I was playing with Hackle Serpent a few weeks ago and he was definitely pro customs

Yeah Hackle is definitely one of the pro custom guys. Him and S00N/Purple Taster (whatever you wana call him) are the main pro custom guys in Ireland that are still a threat in tournaments. Re: Kansas, Smash 4 generally gets less than 20 entrants per tourney here so if you're smaller than that... well, that sucks. I wish my scene was bigger but we are growing a lot =]

Pretty surprised to hear that the entry barrier hasn't posed a problem, that's actually pretty good to hear.

EDIT: Sheik's neutral is about oppression with Fair, not Needles... Needles are good but not her entire neutral what in the

 

[SoniCraft]

Also, here is what I don't understand about the last argument. People complain about Sheik and some of the problematic things about her moveset. People use this to support custom moves for some reason. How does this detract from the criticisms about some of the custom moves?

The fact that most of her meta revolves around opening people up and shuting people down with her needles. In short, she is centralized around that attack.

Many claim that customs will centralize some characters around a certain move, but this already exists in sheik and other characters.[/quote]
Just wanna add to this. Some people may claim that Pikachu becomes a character that's much more centralized around HSB when customs are on, and that's bad(for some reason). However, if you look at the customs off scenario, things don't change too much. In neutral, you mostly see Pikachus using Quick Attack whenever they can because it can be cancelled, making it a very safe approach/bait/get away tool. And when they're not doing that, they're just spamming Thunder Jolt to apply pressure at all times. The irony is that it seems if Pikachu plays with customs on properly, he may actually become a character that is LESS centralized on a couple moves. Without customs, Pikachu would never use side b outside of recovering. With customs, he can use all of his specials to full effect.

 

[Ninj4pikachu]

Yeah Hackle is definitely one of the pro custom guys. Him and S00N/Purple Taster (whatever you wana call him) are the main pro custom guys in Ireland that are still a threat in tournaments. Re: Kansas, Smash 4 generally gets less than 20 entrants per tourney here so if you're smaller than that... well, that sucks. I wish my scene was bigger but we are growing a lot =]

Pretty surprised to hear that the entry barrier hasn't posed a problem, that's actually pretty good to hear.

The anti-custom people have brought up good points and they have proven that their are some barriers to overcome, but I feel like if we as a community continually work to over come the barriers we can use them. I don't think anyone here thinks that they are OP anymore, and now we are just down to logistics.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

North Alabama gets very good numbers for their monthlies (last HASLfest had 74 enter Smash 4 Singles, iirc) and they swear by customs. The good players there are split on whether or not they choose to use them, but nobody seems vehemently opposed to them.