Customization: Giving attacks new directions

[Chiroz]

So to anyone who hasn't read this:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/07/03/creating-super-smash-bros-for-wii-u-and-3ds

That is the second interview where Sakurai states that the current idea for customization, although it may change in the future, is changing direction of attacks (although the actual meaning of this sentence may also be wrongly translated but given that he has said it in 2 interviews lets assume it is exactly that).

According to this interview and some of the othe interviews going around Sakurai has outright expressed that customization will not come in the form of other skins or models, it won't mean being able to place new attacks and this customization isn't referring to only one character such as Mii. He has also said that this customization will not allow you to gain more power or speed.

Basically what is planned until now is allowing the playing to change the direction of the attacks (this could be a mistranslation but it has been present in 2 interviews which begs for some consideration).

What does this mean for competitive play? How does the fact that needing a 3DS in order to access this customization affect its use?



Personally I believe that one of 3 things will happen.

1. All customization will be banned from competitive play and thus everyone must play with the base characters.

2. Customization will be banned at a "attack" level, meaning every attack will be looked into and some specific angles will be banned because of possible infinites or uncounterable tactics.

3. Customization will be made in default versions. Basically we will have 5 different versions of Mario, all tournament legal and you can choose any of those default versions at any match.

I believe that most probably option 1 will happen and customization will just be used in friendlies, for fun and to show off awesome incredible combos.



I do believe though that customization will add a plethora of new options. Being able to customize directions will bring new strategies and combos to smash like we haven't seen before.

What are your thoughts?

 

[Deleted member 212841]

This could be a way to manually balance the tier list as well.

 

[Commando]

This sounds interesting, but since it would probably be banned in tournaments, I wouldn't utilize it as much. Of course, we still don't know much about it, so I expect something else will come up. If the direction of attacks is the only customization feature available, I will be very surprised.

 

[Dark Phazon]

I guess that low spinning kong DK done was a customization?

Ahhh man..i reallyyyy wanted alt costumes...and needing a 3DS just to do this? I dont think so imo...

At this rate the only thing i see the 3DS doing is streetpass/spotpass stuff like stickers/trophies liitle accesseries etc to the WiiU version maybe exclusive trophies and stickers etc on each version and you gotta trade em all to catch em all poke gimmic thing.

Imo its best that way the 3DS Version could have easily screwed over the WiiU version thank god Sakurai is not gonna do that.

Plus dropping story mode and not having extensive cutscenes was a extremely good descion too! But i hope it wasent purely to bring the release date forward...i want Sm4sh to feel like its 1000x better than Brawl in every way i dont think thats even hard to do..mainly features/modes is what im tryna get at. I really hope they expand from brawl and keep the good stuff..err pretty much more bosses or just as much (only good thing about brawl..(-_-)

I hope they spend all the extra time cutting story mode and cutscenes on char balance and online which ''seems'' like is what Sakurai is doing! Im really pleased atm.

Customization easily could have broke the game if it edited chars power/speed another great moce by Sakurai.

The only thing now is Ridley/K.Rool/Mewtwo then i will propose to Sakurai xD

 

[BluePikmin11]

@Dark Phazon, that would be boring and useless to get in reality.

 

[Mr. Mumbles]

I kinda like the idea. I wouldn't get too attached to it though as it sounds like one of the main reasons he isn't being very specific, is he isn't sure. Basically it sounds like he wants people to be able to customize characters, but he doesn't want them to become imbalanced, and at the moment he is still tossing around ideas of how this could be possible.

 

[SmashCentralOfficial]

1. All customization will be banned from competitive play and thus everyone must play with the base characters.

This will probably be what happens in the end. I think that being able to change "the direction" of some attacks means you'll be able to change whether a certain move hits opponents up, down, or horizontally, which would eventually lead to the discovery of unavoidable meteor smash setups or other hit/grab-death combos.

 

[smashbrolink]

My thought on his statement was that we'd be able to affect the direction that certain tilts, smashes, and aerials hit at.
For instance, letting the second slash of Link's forward Smash hit either high or low depending on player preference, which might also affect which direction it would send the opponent flying?
Or perhaps adjusting the angle at which his double-back-kick strikes when airborn?
Just a thought......

 

[Erimir]

What if all he meant was changing the direction you had to press to perform the moves?

At any rate, it's pretty vague.

 

[Vintage Creep]

Personally, this sounds like ****.
I seriously hope this doesn't happen and we get an intelligent customization involving COSTUMES.

 

[Dark Phazon]

@Dark Phazon, that would be boring and useless to get in reality.

What?

 

[BluePikmin11]

What?

I was referring the costumes.

 

[soviet prince]

seems interesting I prob stay with the defaults and I hope there is a way to play in a mode online to wear you can play ppl that has not customize there character

 

[Pyra]

Personally, this sounds like ****.
I seriously hope this doesn't happen and we get an intelligent customization involving COSTUMES.

Versus strategic customization involving the moves directly?
Roger that.

 

[PlayerXIII]

I seriously hope this is what happens and that tournaments allow for default costumization. Over time, people could discover other combinations that are legal and are added to the default sets of every tournament.

 

[Erimir]

Unless the combinations of changes are rather limited or universally make the characters worse, I think there's little chance of that kind of customization being legal in tournaments. Too much variation means it's too hard to get any significant data about the changes.

The only way is if there's some group like the people who worked on Balanced Brawl or Project M, etc. figured out some ways to buff the low tiers and nerf the high tiers. But then I would assume that there would only be two variations accepted: the defaults for all characters, or the "balanced" custom forms for all characters, and a tournament would only use one or the other.

It's not exactly like you're allowed to go into a tournament and use custom Brawl modifications - it's either original Brawl or a full mod like BBrawl, Brawl+, etc. The advantage here being that if it's part of the unhacked game, then people may be more open to running tournaments with it, since it doesn't require hacking the game and nobody will be left out because of an inability/unwillingness to hack their game.

But Sakurai apparently is interested in patching characters for balance (although what he considers a situation where patching is necessary might be very different from competitive players' opinions) so a lot of this might be moot.

Personally, assuming the game is pretty balanced and patches are adequate to correct any oversights, I'd rather we have customizable costumes/palette swaps.

 

[BADGRAPHICS]

I think we really need to stop assuming (or desiring) aspects of this game to be banned in tournaments. A thing doesn't get banned until it's found to limit fairness.

Character customisation doesn't necessarily limit fairness, because everybody can do it. Does not knowing everything about your opponent's character limit fairness or deepen the metagame? I would argue the latter.

 

[[Corn]]

I think we really need to stop assuming (or desiring) aspects of this game to be banned in tournaments. A thing doesn't get banned until it's found to limit fairness.

Character customisation doesn't necessarily limit fairness, because everybody can do it. Does not knowing everything about your opponent's character limit fairness or deepen the metagame? I would argue the latter.

Actually knowing the enemy perfectly and such is part of heavy competition in video games.

You should never be in the dark about your opponents tools in a video game that is played competitively.

 

[BADGRAPHICS]

Actually knowing the enemy perfectly and such is part of heavy competition in video games.

You should never be in the dark about your opponents tools in a video game that is played competitively.

Ever play competitive Pokemon? Although not always true, mystery is a valuable asset to metagame, and not one to be dismissed.

 

[Erimir]

The issue is more that it could break the game by making it about using character customization to create inescapable chain grabs and so forth. Which does not make for a fun tournament scene.

Hence why I think if it's allowed, it will be on the basis of pre-defined sets - either you play it the normal way, or with this set of tweaks meant to make the game more balanced.

 

[peeup]

I think its like 99% likely that customization will be banned, for obvious reasons.

I think it would be interesting, though, if there were standard customizations for each character that would give them balance. I had also hoped something like this would happen with Brawl's stage builder. For example, all TOs would have a set of standardized tournament legal custom stages.

 

[[Corn]]

Ever play competitive Pokemon? Although not always true, mystery is a valuable asset to metagame, and not one to be dismissed.

Non comparable in terms of gameplay

 

[MrBigstuff]

I'm too lazy to read, so this might have been said, but what if direction doesn't mean literally which cardinal direction the attack goes, but more like it's purpose. Like Shine could be customized to be a damage racker, or to set up for combos, or as a kill move for example.

And do infinite chaingrabs warrant banning? Cough *ICs*Cough*D3*

 

[Chiroz]

I'm too lazy to read, so this might have been said, but what if direction doesn't mean literally which cardinal direction the attack goes, but more like it's purpose. Like Shine could be customized to be a damage racker, or to set up for combos, or as a kill move for example.

And do infinite chaingrabs warrant banning? Cough *ICs*Cough*D3*

Some people have said this but here is a quote from Sakurai that sort of contradicts this in a way: "We do not want to give the player stronger or weaker attacks."

This can be interpreted in many ways, but in my opinion it has to do with not allowing the player to change his attacks properties, although it might mean something else.

 

[[Corn]]

I'm too lazy to read, so this might have been said, but what if direction doesn't mean literally which cardinal direction the attack goes, but more like it's purpose. Like Shine could be customized to be a damage racker, or to set up for combos, or as a kill move for example.

And do infinite chaingrabs warrant banning? Cough *ICs*Cough*D3*

Nothing is for certain at the moment, but I dont believe he would implement a feature so blatantly hard to balance.

And infinites in nature don't really need bans unless they are extremely easy and effect the entire metagame in a negative way. D3 only has infinites against what, like 4 characters and the rest against a wall?

Icies in melee had wobbling and Brawl ones had BFD throw ones. Neither of them made any matchup really unwinnable and most took some time to set up or relied on your opponent making a mistake.

 

[MrBigstuff]

@Raykz
I interpreted that as saying he won't use the sticker system, which iirc was just straight buffs for certain attacks in story mode, or something similar. And changing an attacks role/function/properties would not necessarily buff or nerf it, unless one "direction" of the attack was universally agreed to be better or more useful.

I do agree it would be a pain to balance and is probably incorrect, but to me it makes more sense than saying I want all my FSmashes to point up a bit.

@(corn)

I know. I was mostly joking. But can't Brawl ICs chaingrab can be done after any grab ever, unless the IC player drops it, or am I mistaken? I'm just saying infinites are going to happen, unless Bandai does a VERY nice job balancing with the entire cast in mind.

 

[DakotaBonez]

Wait where does Sakurai say ya need a 3DS to do the customization?
Anyway, what if this is the next Smash's big gimmick? Melee had side specials, Brawl had Final smashes, Smash 4 has customizeable specials? Maybe like Mario's fireballs turn into pills, bounce more, bounce less, roll, hover, freeze, grow, etc...
Maybe they just get some cool special FX like a neon trail of light.

Whatever it may be, it'll probably be banned from tournaments for being too fun.

 

[TheTuninator]

Customization of move direction would be a nightmare to balance, would not be consistent across characters, and would unfairly handicap WiiU players who do not own a 3DS to customize with. I cannot see Sakurai treating a segment of the fanbase so unfairly.

We're probably just interpreting his words far too literally.

 

[Evil-Guy]

My favorite post by my favorite skype user:
[7/5/13 12:28:05 AM] Kansa: [...]consider customizations like that possible.”
[7/5/13 12:28:24 AM] Kansa: omg peach might be able to float upside down LOL!!!


Hooray! :D I hope they make this very chaotic and fun so the brawls can be more chaotic and fun!

 

[Dark Phazon]

I'm too lazy to read, so this might have been said, but what if direction doesn't mean literally which cardinal direction the attack goes, but more like it's purpose. Like Shine could be customized to be a damage racker, or to set up for combos, or as a kill move for example.

And do infinite chaingrabs warrant banning? Cough *ICs*Cough*D3*

Rofl...were have you been...lmfaooooooooo.....(-_-)