Custom Move Striking: A rulechange proposal

[Therealwaldo]

It appears that the community unanimously agrees that custom moves should be allowed in tournaments, seeing as they offer more variety, inspire more creativity and allow some characters to be viable. However critics are quick to point out how some customs (Villager's tripping sprout, DK's tornado UP-B and Mii Brawlers OHKO UP-B) break the game and make it worse competitively because scrubs can get free wins by spamming a select number of moves. Thus, I would like to propose an addition to the rules in order to appease custom move critics and supporters alike.

Game 1: Both players pick their characters and agree on a starter, no bans. This is to allow some characters a chance to shine with their broken custom, but only once.

All subsequent games: After the winner selects their character the loser strikes one custom or default special move and that move stays banned FOR THE REST OF THE SET regardless of whether or not it has been used in the previous game. This is to prevent players from flashing a broken custom in the second game.

*Character switch clause, if a player switches characters for game 3 (and 4/5 for best of five sets) the opponent is allowed to ban customs off of that character equal to the amount of games he/she has lost. This is to prevent a player from spamming multiple characters with broken customs for the entire set.

What do you guys think of this proposal? I am eager to read any criticisms you may have.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Few things:

Your idea requires the ability to make freeform custom sets instead of simply using presets like with AA's project. This in turn implies that the setups have all customs unlocked which won't be happening for quite a while if ever.

You mention "customs" but mechanically there's no difference between them and defaults once they're unlocked. And honestly I'd ban Diddy's default banana first thing if I was given half a chance.

 

[Indigo Jeans]

As PDrone pointed out this would necessitate having every custom unlocked on every setup, which at this point in time I believe is still unfeasible.

Aside from that though, I'd be all for it. Striking things like standard Needles, standard Bouncing Fish, standard Bananas, and standard Monkey Flip at the expense of Timber Counter and Extreme Ballons sounds good to me.

 

[Therealwaldo]

I'll give you this one, it will be a pain to set up if there are any that don't have all customs unlocked, however because only two customs could be banned at a time I believe that this could be integrated in the AA project's decision making without much issue

 

[Pyr]

Horrible, horrible idea. You're proposing eliminating part of characters' movesets because you don't want to learn to deal with them.

This is to prevent a player from spamming multiple characters with broken customs for the entire set.

All credibility lost.

Edit:

... break the game and make it worse competitively because scrubs can get free wins by spamming a select number of moves

Missed this one on my first read. So scrubs can get free wins by spamming moves? Are you trolling here? If ANYONE wins because they spammed 1 move, you deserve to lose.

 

[stancosmos]

This is pretty unnecessary. I've watched and played in a lot of tournaments that use customs, there so far hasn't been anything game breaking or ban worthy. How about we stop making complicated solutions to made-up problems?

 

[Helkulkhamen]

I strongly disagree that we should treat custom moves as though they were stages, complete with striking and bans. Custom movesets are effectively alternate characters (think of them as clones with minor changes), and I do not know any tournament that allows character-striking between matches, which striking custom moves would be equivalent to. While character-striking might have been an interesting system, I feel that most players would not enjoy it simply because learning to play a character competitively, especially at the highest level, is really hard work. There's a reason a lot of players only stick to one character for an entire tournament, and even the ones that don't tend to gravitate around one character with a tiny handful of pocket characters. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that people want to play the character that they've invested their time in, so banning specific moves on the fly would throw in a huge curve ball that most players would probably find annoying. Others have already pointed out the absurdity of forcing a character to not use some of their default moves, and this is the same thing.

 

[Sleek Media]

This is too complicated even for me. You could wipe out half of any character's sets by just naming any common move. I'd rather a simple character strike.

 

[Pyr]

This is too complicated even for me. You could wipe out half of any character's sets by just naming any common move. I'd rather a simple character strike.

A character strike is literally the opposite of simple.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Also, while this proposal is obviously aimed at customs like Timber Counter, what about characters like Jigglypuff whose specials are all meh at best?

 

[Sleek Media]

A character strike is literally the opposite of simple.

I strike a character. You strike a character. What a logistical nightmare.

Have you ever struck a stage before a match?

 

[Pyr]

I strike a character. You strike a character. What a logistical nightmare.

Have you ever struck a stage before a match?

You are implying that stage = character. Forgetting that there are dedicated mains and that this idea was proposed before, a character is, in fact, not a stage and, surprisingly enough, HAS 50000x THE IMPACT WHEN STRIKED.

 

[Thinkaman]

Competitive League of Legends does it all the time. Every ranked or tourney game starts with 3 character bans per team.

Though to be clear, this is awful. Competitive Smash should not be a battle of 4th-best characters, no encourage players to spy on each other so they know what to ban.

Unbridled competition is the only true competition.

 

[Therealwaldo]

Horrible, horrible idea. You're proposing eliminating part of characters' movesets because you don't want to learn to deal with them.



All credibility lost.

Edit:



Missed this one on my first read. So scrubs can get free wins by spamming moves? Are you trolling here? If ANYONE wins because they spammed 1 move, you deserve to lose.

I'm not the one who personally believes those things, I'm just repeating what other people have said, did you even read the first part?

no encourage players to spy on each other so they know what to ban.

How does this encourage spying? And what even is spying in this game anyway?

Also, while this proposal is obviously aimed at customs like Timber Counter, what about characters like Jigglypuff whose specials are all meh at best?

The opponent would still be able to ban things like Rest if they so choose, but characters that as re not really centralized around their specials would not be affected as heavily

You could wipe out half of any character's set.

Accounting for non-B moves it would wipe out way less than half, and even not accounting for it it would only wipe out half in best of 5 sets, and even then it doesn't "wipe out" anything, just replaces, many characters have other specials they can fall back oj

 

[Trieste SP]

The opponent would still be able to ban things like Rest if they so choose, but characters that as re not really centralized around their specials would not be affected as heavily

Quit posting. Its against the rules.

 

[ぱみゅ]

Quit posting. Its against the rules.

Technically speaking, micro-modding is, too.

@ Therealwaldo , please do not post multiple times in a row, make a write up with every reply in a notepad before posting, or if you already published and you need to add something, use the edit button.

 

[Trieste SP]

Technically speaking, micro-modding is, too.

@ Therealwaldo , please do not post multiple times in a row, make a write up with every reply in a notepad before posting, or if you already published and you need to add something, use the edit button.

Sorry about that...

 

[Sleek Media]

You are implying that stage = character. Forgetting that there are dedicated mains and that this idea was proposed before, a character is, in fact, not a stage and, surprisingly enough, HAS 50000x THE IMPACT WHEN STRIKED.

So, do you always change the argument when your point falls apart, or is this thread special?

 

[DarkDeity15]

Nope. This just makes things insanely complicated. It should never catch on. Ever. Why should I be forced to play my caracter the way someone else wants me to? Hell no.

 

[Ansou]

I really don't see a point in striking moves. No custom move is completely broken (not accounting for the Olimar glitch) and if they were, we should just ban them from the start. Good players will learn to handle things like Kong Cyclone and Counter Tree while low level players very well might get destroyed by them. There is no point in crippling characters just for the sake of it.

 

[BestTeaMaker]

It's worth repeating that the reason character striking is feasible in a MOBA-style game is because there are a large number of characters that fulfill certain roles of the team (Carry, Jungle, Support, etc...). Thus, if a character is banned, a player can simply choose another character. Yes, each character will play differently, but in the large focus of a team match, those differences are mitigated.

For any fighting game, however, you don't get those roles. Yes, they can be classified (Shoto, Zoner, Grappler, etc...) but their individual unique talents is far more apparent in a 1v1 match. This means that people will tend to gravitate towards specializing in certain characters, so for them, the pool of useable characters is noticeably smaller. Banning these characters effectively removes the player's ability to play well.

Another comparison to make is the number of moves to learn. For MOBAs, it's usually 4. For Smash, it's 4 special attacks + 5 neutral attacks + 5 aerials + 4 grabs + maybe a Zair. The human brain is only able to learn so much about a character. Some people are able to play more characters, but a majority are gonna specialize. We can argue forever whether MOBA or Fighting games are more complicated to learn and master, but in terms of raw abilities of the characters, Fighting games have a lot more inputs to worry about.

There may be a case for character banning in Doubles, but most people treat them as using their Singles character in a duo.

EDIT - seeing that the topic is more about custom moves, I thought I should add that it is not feasible to strike custom moves either because of how it can affect play. Say that a person has practiced with all his might using only Kong Cyclone as his up-b. This player has found the best setup with this moveset. Now, that move is banned, and all of his strategies for using that character is now moot. In fact, it may be the only reason he decided to play and practice that character. Now he's forced to use a character that he is suboptimal with.

The idea is that custom moves not only changeup the movesets for characters, but they also change our perception of how good that character is. Palutena's defaults are not that great, but when we consider lightweight/super speed, suddenly she's considered really damn good. It's only 1-2 moves that changed out of her entire repetoire, but it's enough to change our perception of them.

Custom moves don't actually change a character's style of play drastically. A Timber Counter villager or a regular Timber Villager will still play campy regardless. Paralyzing Needles or regular Needles on Sheik will still make her neutral game consist of rushdown and grabs.

 

[New_Dumal]

The main point here is time.
We're playing the game with 2 stocks and discussing coach-ban because we usually don't have time enough.
So ... custom move strike? This would require a lot of extra-time, not so fast and fun to watch and organize.
But the idea itself, it's okay. Not viable, but okay.

 

[Judo777]

At first glance, this idea seemed kinda neat to me actually. Unfortunately I then thought of most of the issues already stated.

As said we would need all custom moves unlocked.

Secondly I feel that most of the time, this rule won't be used as intended and ban obscure broken custom moves, but instead have moves that aren't really even that good. To go along with this, it should probably allow (for consistency) default specials to be bannable, which is definitely not ok. There are MANY characters that a HUMONGOUS part of their game is based off one of their default specials, obvious ones being Diddy (down B, side B), Sheik (neutral B, down B), Bowser (up B), DHD (neutral B).

Maybe I have the wrong mentality here, but I feel like I should never be forced to play without default specials (especially like recovery moves). Maybe a solution could be to say that default specials (custom set 1) can't be struck.

Because another obvious exploit, is that many characters have 1 up b custom that is a horrible recovery for some other great effect, well a good strategy would be to strike the other 2 choices so your opponent has a garbage recovery.

For real tho, all of these issues pale in comparison to point 1, we can't make custom sets mid match.

 

[mega4000]

Worst Idea I've seen ever. Why people hate custom moves so much? just pretend they are their default moves. What would you do? nobody banned meta knight in brawl os wtf?

 

[Teh Sandwich]

Too much striking...
Too many player decisions before matches.
Bad idea...

 

[chaosmasterro]

The problem I see is that this gives the opponent the edge to ban a character's recovery if their default is not good enough.

 

[Therealwaldo]

The problem I see is that this gives the opponent the edge to ban a character's recovery if their default is not good enough.

True, but then again the other player can do the same, giving both players the same unfair advantage

 

[Piford]

This is a horrible idea. First off if theres a single move that's on every set banning that move would essentially ban that character. Next this clearly favors characters with good customs unproportinonally. If my character only has 1/3 specials in one spot thats good, and that move is central to how they play, then banning it severely cripples the character. Characters who have a lot of equally good options benefit much more. This also can remove a lot of the strategies in picking custom moves. It also just removes a bunch of characters options that make them interesting.

It seems like a good Idea in theory to nerf Villager or Diddy Kong, but you'd end up nerfing other characters much more.

 

[Judo777]

This is a horrible idea. First off if theres a single move that's on every set banning that move would essentially ban that character. Next this clearly favors characters with good customs unproportinonally. If my character only has 1/3 specials in one spot thats good, and that move is central to how they play, then banning it severely cripples the character. Characters who have a lot of equally good options benefit much more. This also can remove a lot of the strategies in picking custom moves. It also just removes a bunch of characters options that make them interesting.

It seems like a good Idea in theory to nerf Villager or Diddy Kong, but you'd end up nerfing other characters much more.

Actually this would make Villager really strong, because Villager has arguably the best customs in the game (pushy lloyd, counter timber, extreme balloons). You would have to go through banning extreme balloons and counter timber, just to deal with his really good ones, then he still has pushy lloyd.