A Viewpoint: Customs, Miis, Stages, and Sm4sh

[deepseadiva]

There's a lot of discussion happening about what to include inside the scope of Smash tournaments mainly concerning all these new elements Smash 4 brings to the table. I wanted to highlight the viewpoint and concept of being more inclusionary rather exclusionary with these elements. Change is always a horrible horrible scary thing and should be avoided at all costs, but indeed the cost of this fear is missing out on potentially enriching content that never threatened you in the first place.

With all these new elements Sm4sh brings - customs, Miis, stages, 8-player Smash - a simple, natural way of determining whether they benefit competitive play is to allow them. Allow all of them, and everything with no restrictions, no standardizations, no restraint at all.

Of course that's not realistic. Even before we start we've removed items, equipment, "crazy" stages. Some things are obviously not benefiting competitive play. The muddier things, Mii differences, 8-player, the "weird" stages all deserve the benefit of the doubt. "Innocent until proven guilty" is a system to protect those who have done no harm, with the idea that if there was harm done, it will be evident.

If these elements are harmful, they will be evident soon enough. My bet is a lot of them will never show harm.

Importantly, to note, is community opinion. If nobody wants to play with customs nobody will play with customs. I just hope we can embrace this new game for what it is, rather than imposing what we think this Smash should be.

I ask:
- Does free Mii customization delay tournaments too long?
- Are customs popular enough to be allowed?
- Does free move customization take up too much tournament time?
- Do custom moves pose too much of a challenge for players? Are they too much to learn about?
- Would we all just rather play with all defaults?

Just questions I'm sure TOs everywhere have already discussed. Honestly, this was all coming from my disappointment in how custom moves worked for this game. Palutena and the Miis were revealed to have huge movesets, and I first expected all characters to be the same. The weird variations of specials is honestly laziness on Nintendo's part (or really time restraints). But I envision Smash 5 to have huge movesets for every single character, rather than the 4 lucky ones in this game. There might be more vocal majority once your main has interesting customs, but today, for this game, I believe it is also important to think of the minority. I don't see anything wrong with letting Little Karissa entire a tournament with her lovingly crafted Mii.

Thank you for reading.

 

[Conda]

These topics have been discussed in length in other threads, aptly titled. But I'll help summarise things for you since maybe you're just wanting to be brought up to speed. Which is cool.

- Does free Mii customization delay tournaments too long?

No, custom move selection is quick. Customizing Mii hats/costume etc is unneeded and likely not allowed. Height/Weights are an issue currently as there is no transparency in-game as to what the Mii's weight/height is before a match starts. Also, the default Miis are average/average. Adding a Mii with short/fat stats requires leaving the game and going to the Mii Maker app.

Thus, there will likely be a selection of standard Miis, ranging in standard weights (short/skinny, tall/skinny, average/average, etc). This is yet to be standardized but likely will be in time to make Mii play in tournaments possible for those without a 3ds. Standardizing weight/heights also has the benefit of making Miis possible to practice against, as there will be a standard set of attack ranges, attack speeds, run speeds, etc to deal with. Adding the full range of Mii weight/height settings would make these 3 characters impossible to practice against, which should result in them being banned if we cannot toughen up and just standardize a set of Miis.

- Are customs popular enough to be allowed?

Yes. The current consensus is that they will be allowed at most tournaments in a couple months once all tournament setups can realistically have all customs unlocked. There are some broken/buggy customs (notably 1) - Mii Brawler's piston punch. But this will likely be patched. Brawler use is rare enough that it's not an issue, but when it shows up it becomes one.

Otherwise yes, customs will be tournament legal unless we realise as the meta progresses that the current balance levels is ideal and worth not altering.

- Does free move customization take up too much tournament time?

Not at all, it appears to be quick enough and isn't something you'll need to do too repeatedly. Most common custom setups will be pre-built to avoid players having to create them from scratch each time, but even doing that doesn't take too long.

- Do custom moves pose too much of a challenge for players? Are they too much to learn about?

The bigger cast is a similar 'issue' in this way. It only provides more variables for players to have to wrap their heads around. More matchups to learn, more matchups with different customs to learn, etc. Some customs are more popular than others though so the meta will streamline down the road. It's a welcome amount of additional variety. It's only special moves that can be changed, so it's still a fairly controlled competitive environment.


- Would we all just rather play with all defaults?

Some players feel this way. Currently Japan does. However, our findings so far is that roster balance can achieve a more even level with customs in the picture. Some lackluster characters can get tools that help them overcome obstacles that their defaults can't. There aren't any that appear overpowering. Hammer Spin Dash is a super strong one, but currently I'd say the majority of us are optimistic and cannot wait to play with customs.

Hope that was helpful.

 

[lordvaati]

pretty much I think everyone generally feels that custom Moves are OK, since that kind of is an important part of Palutena for example. it's Equipment that everyone agrees needs to GTFO.

Miis are generally fine too, I hear there is issues in the fact that miis are split between Light/Medium/Heavy bodies but I feel it can be worked around(the weight gaps aren't that big either, as I think it's 101/98/97 for the Miis.)

 

[Cornstalk]

The 3DS version can help quite a bit here. For a 3DS tournament, obviously everyone should have their stuff set up before hand.

For players going straight to the Wii U version, all it takes is one kind person to lend their 3DS to custom transferring. I used an action replay on my 3DS to unlock all the customs (lazy mode, yay!). So if I'm at a Wii U Smash 4 event, pretty much any custom set up you need can be set up ahead of time and then quickly loaded on to the system before the match starts.


We'll see if any of the customs need a ban as the game progresses. A few come to mind right away.

Extreme Judge
The hammer is always a 1 or 9 with the 9 slightly toned down. Even still, this one could turn the match more into a gamble then a true show of skill so long as the GW player could frequently land the hammer. The amount of luck required to go all the way to 1st place relying on this is unheard of, but it would certainly make anyone eliminated by it be pretty salty.

Dragon Rush
The reason I even play Charizard. It feels like a better version of Metaknights Over-B, as there's very little risk to using it with the added bonus of no free fall. Maybe not powerful enough to be straight banned, but a gentleman's rule of not spamming the crap out of it may come up once and a while.

Extreme Thoron
Balanced by 1 use per Book and a long charge time... but you get a much harder to avoid Samus/Lucario charged shot for it. I could see some pro players getting really nasty with this custom if their Robin style doesn't rely on regular Thoron use.

Counter Tree
A 10 second banana peal you can't get rid of. Water it for a 10 second that only your opponent has to watch out for. Serious stage control that's particular annoying to characters that like to hang to one side to charge up/shoot. Bonus because you still get the Water Can, Axe, and can chop the thing down for a nasty big hit.


Any other moves that can lead to stupid early KO's that are really hard to avoid or super easy to combo into would make for an interesting list of "Let's keep an eye on it". But like it's been said, none of the specials so far seem so out of whack that a good player will suddenly be bodied by it. Heck, even Nintendo is keeping an eye on it! Dragon Rush got a damage Nerf for 1.04.

 

[cardboardowl]

Atm custom moves may not be in tournies, but with time when more people have **** unlocked, it should be fine. It doesn't take too long.

Same for mii's

 

[T0MMY]

I ask:
- Does free Mii customization delay tournaments too long?
- Are customs popular enough to be allowed?
- Does free move customization take up too much tournament time?
- Do custom moves pose too much of a challenge for players? Are they too much to learn about?
- Would we all just rather play with all defaults?

1. Free Mii customization takes about as long as inputting your name and control settings. Additionally anyone mainly using a Mii will most certainly have it pre-made and ready to upload. Very quick to use Mii!
   
2. Yes, but there's a catch!: Popularity is speaking of majority and majority rule should NEVER be used when determining rules. Why? Because the majority of players are casuals, randoms, newbs, and scrubs with very few veterans and sensible people making up the minority. The majority of players will be completely out of the scene in less than a year and some with just ONE tournament attendance. So if customization is OFF for a tournament then please at least have some side events allowing for customization, items, wacky stages, etc. for the sake of the majority of the attendees.
3. No, again like the Mii it takes about as much time selecting which Custom Moves you want as it does inputting a name and control setting (possibly less!).
4. This is dependent on the player in question. And this question is outside the scope of competitive AND casual play. Either use customization or don't and let the players determine if they want to play the game or move on to something more simple (tiddlywinks anyone?).
5. I am unsure who this "we all" you are speaking of. I cannot answer for anyone but myself and my answers are going to be reasonable and follow a valid conclusion. I would advocate to everyone to be weary of those who speak as though they are a head of a group. Usually this is tactic of illusion where majority rules (see above) and is meant to intimidate individuals into agreeing with the illusionary group.