A Hypothetical Regarding Custom Moves

[WritersBlah]

I had a thought today I'd like to share with you guys. So, around the Smash 4 community, there tends to be a somewhat popular question asked which usually goes something along the lines of "will the be a Smash 4 Project M?" Now, to that notion specifically, I'd really disagree with that being a development we should dedicate time into. Project M already exists, and though I see the appeal of wondering what the new characters would play like if we had wavedashing and such, I don't really think it's a worthy investment to do PM a second time over. However, I did have a thought that might be considered similar to a game engine overhaul, but not in the way most people think. And that's where we get into custom moves. See, a lot of the issues arising from custom moves revolve around some of them being overpowered, making the counterpicking process for characters a lot more complicated, and the simple logistics of collecting all of them. In addition to this, wizrad made a joke thread a few weeks ago which compared Ryu and his ability to have access to different variations of his special moves within a match and compared them to switching custom moves on the fly, effectively satirizing the argument a lot of extremists make about Mii Fighters' nature of being custom fighters and having no predetermined moveset (said thread can be read over here.) But after thinking about it for a bit, a thought crossed my mind.

What if all the characters had access to all their custom specials? At the same time?

I mean, legitimately think about it for a second. What if you performed one special by tilting and pressing B, did another by smashing and pressing B, and did the other by doing a Street Fighter motion on the stick and pressing B? (Neutral B would require the hadoken and EX hadoken motions for the variations, and Down B would utilize a new half-EX motion) Imagine increasing the timeframe of the initial dash animation so that you could technically run towards an opponent and still be able to smash-side B, which would indirectly bring back dash dancing? (no other Melee techs though) How much of a game changer would this be, were such a thing to exist. I'm not really asking the technical likeliness of something like this being able to happen, just asking a general what if? Do you guys think this would be a good or bad way to fix the whole "customs" issue?

 

[wizrad]

I like this. It's a cool idea. The issue would be integrating it into the current control scheme. Tilting and smashing wouldn't work because of moves like Link's Boomerang and Samus's Missiles, so maybe every character would have to work like Ryu: different moves for tapping, holding, and specific inputs.

I do however, support a sort of PM for SSB4. Not necessarily to make it play like Melee, but just tweak some things to make the game more exciting. Higher gravity, less landing lag, limited air dodges, edge hogging while invincible, remove magnet hands, stuff like that. Not Melee, just Smash 4.2.

Edit: I also think we'll have to take roster balancing into our own hands and that we should wait until the game is finished being patched, which will likely be within the next year. Finally, I don't think it'll happen at all. Smash 4 doesn't need to be fixed like Brawl did.

 

[Zeekfox]

I think giving characters all their customs at once would make ultimately make the controls too complex for Smash, no matter how you do it. Honestly, if Smash 4 was gonna implement customs in a way that was more tournament friendly, they could just split equipment away from customs and let you select your character, then have a 4-slot dropdown menu set that let you pick customs just by their numbers and names without needing to go to the character customization page and save it. Then, like your name, have it stick (to that character) until changed to something else or the game is reset.

Also, you can't turn ledges into Melee form in a game that supports up to 8 players at once. Granted, I'm sure PM fans are thinking Smash 4 M would only be played 1v1 or 2v2, but still.

 

[wizrad]

Melee ledges are dumb. I didn't mean it like that. I'd like it so that when you're invincible from grabbing the ledge for the first time, others can't grab the ledge. When you're not invincible from grabbing the ledge for the first time, you can be trumped.

 

[wizrad]

Bumping this because I have an idea related to it.

What if specials worked like tiltable moves? >B is normal, >B^ is custom 1, and >Bv is custom 2. If the move can be angled/change directions, hold B and input the direction. It would work the same for up and down, but how could we do neutral specials? Ryu style tap/hold only gets two.