Can someone explain Customs vs. No Customs to me?

[Cazdon]

I'm very lost here. I put pieces together from both sides from all types of posts but I never get a full argument for or against for either side. I'm looking for logical reasoning and I know we don't even have a major tournament example yet, just waiting on EVO.

Let me be VERY clear. I don't want any attacking of people. We are to strictly talk about the sides for and against customs. So that means arguments should be structured like "Customs would be bad because xyzy" and nothing at all like "People think customs are gonna save the game." or "People who want customs suck." I want your opinion as to what the benefits/disadvantages/consequences are, not your thoughts as to the other side of the argument. Please, I can't stress this enough, I don't want this devolving into flaming in any shape or form, just civilized discussion.

 

[Mario & Sonic Guy]

One of the biggest reasons for banning customizations has to do with the fact that you have to unlock as many as 376 custom special moves in Smash 3DS and Smash Wii U. Not everyone is willing to grind for that many custom specials, considering that you can get duplicates of the custom specials that you already own.

 

[Rocket Raccoon]

People for:

• Varies meta
• No 2 matchups will be the same

People against

• Takes too long to unlock all
• Customs are random
• Some could be OP

All the ones I could think of

 

[visvim]

Core arguments seem to be as follows:

For: adds diversity + depth to the metagame

Against: adds unnecessary challenge + complexity to the metagame


Those against seem to believe that it will be too difficult to learn all possible match-ups (too much variety, too much work to unlock customs to use and/or play against). And as previously mentioned, there is a fear that certain customs will be OP requiring rule modifications, bans, patches, etc. to be implemented.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Customs significantly improve the balance and gameplay variety of this game while producing a more entertaining overall gameplay flow in a variety of match-ups. I'm firmly of the belief that customs legal is the winning argument; most arguments I see against are generally of the form "it's too soon" or "unlocking them is difficult", neither of which seem very convincing to me since they're both basically arguments about convenience moreso than arguments about gameplay merit. I have yet to see a strong argument suggesting they do anything but improve the gameplay.

 

[Sodo]

Pro customs. The metagame is still developing, yes, but why stop here? Why not add diversity and a little sprinkle of the unknown into the mix? Who knows what can be accomplished with customs, especially since we don't even know what can be accomplished without them?

To those who say the game will be "too complex", I don't understand the rationale behind that. If you want to be competitive, you need to learn the matchups. Plain and simple. By limiting customs, you're limiting competition in my opinion.

 

[Newt Floss]

Contrarians dislike customs because they're challenging, which is exactly what makes them fun, exciting and entertaining.

 

[Iceweasel]

I'm not strongly for or against, I'm just kind of neutral. Maybe a little against. I feel that customs can provide a lot of versatility to the game. If someone picks a bad MU, you can change your customs around to make it more even. If a character has bad specials, or even just "needs improvement" specials, custom moves can make an otherwise low-tier character more competitively viable.

That said, customs are an absolute **** to unlock. Forgive me a moment of salt, but there is no excuse for how awful it is to get all of them. The fastest way by far is Classic mode, which doesn't really drop customs until high levels. High level CPUs may be *******, but they're ******* that can kill you if 7 of them gang up on you, not helped by that fact that Classic has items always on. If you die, equipment and customs are more likely than anything else combined to be dropped from you. If it wasn't hard enough to get a custom to begin with, custom moves never quit dropping, even if you already have it. One day I got the message telling me that I have all of ROB's moves unlocked. And they keep dropping. I don't need a Fire Gyro, I've got like 50 of them already, and I don't even play ROB! I've even gotten 2 of the same custom moves from the same roll on the spinner! I don't know who designed this aspect of the game, but they need to get fired. Out of a cannon, into the sun.

Where am I going with all this rage? The Custom Moveset problem solved this, right? As long as the TO has a 3DS with everything unlocked, it's all good, right? No, it's not all good. It just means a player can select their moves. I don't think it's fair to players to expect them to win against moves that they haven't had a chance to train against. A tournament is supposed to be a test of skill. It's not very skillful to win because your opponent had no idea what to do to counter a certain move. It's like in sabre fencing, if one fighter never had the chance to learn how to block a thrust. Even if Fencer 1 has a perfect guard against all of their opponent's other moves and can shut down all other options, Fencer 1 may lose if they can't quickly learn how to block this new move. Likewise, all Fencer 2 has to do is spam thrust, because it's his best chance of winning. I know this isn't a good analogy, but you should get my point.


That said, if customs were made easier to obtain, I would love to have them added to the tournament rules. I'd just rather it was sooner, rather than later. It's already become nearly impossible to get 3 stocks 8 minutes in Sm4sh, because the standard has become 2 stock 6/5 minutes. If Sora eventually decides to fix the mess they made with obtaining customs in Smash 4, it may be too late to get them added to the tourney rulesets.