Do you think customizable movesets will effect the comp scene in anyway?

[smashbro29]

A huge part is how long it will take to unlock stuff and how long it will take to set up before matches.

Once the logistics issues are confirmed to be easily dealt with then and only then can we look at balance.

 

[Tristan_win]

Customizable move sets seem great. In competitive play this could pose a problem though. There should be a move set lock in place once per set. If this isn't a guideline, that mean players will constantly be changing their move set depending on the match up. That would take too much time as well as completely change the metagame. As for "low/mid tiers" being the only ones to be able to use the feature, there's already an issue. Smash 4 is going to be balanced among all of the characters. If there is an issue with this(like there was with Metaknight in Brawl), then it will most likely use the Wii U's capabilities to update the game in order to fix the issue. The whole point of balancing is to eliminate the idea of tiers.

If we do allow multiple variations of moves then yes I agree we should have it so you are locked with that set. I don't agree with buffing mid tier though, although not common overall mid tier can win local tournaments and with us mucking around with balance we could change the meta by making a mid tier character into top tier character with a tweak. Bottom and low tier character should be the highest we go due to them having generally more then just one problem holding them down.

.....Like I want to agree with you that Smash 4 should be the most balance but I really can't. People said the same thing about Brawl before it came out and now you could argue that it's even more unbalanced then melee with Meta Knight floating in and out of Super Saiyan tier since the game came out. Now a Nintendo patch might help solve things (even though it would make a lot of people pull their hair out) but they can't be fully trusted to fix everything. Smash as wonderful and great it is IS a party game to them and we the hardcore fan's only make up like 10% of the people who buy and play this game. There's a great chance Nintendo balancers wont understand the strength of planking, or air camping, or the power of zoning in general. They will most likely see something like chaining grabbing or sheik ftilt lock *hold his heart in fear* and say 'that's anti fun' and fix it while in the overall picture they are nerfing a character that doesn't need to be nerfed.

Let's all theorycraft on how you can customize movesets, then theorycraft on if it will be broken or not!

It all depends on how they are implemented into the game. Since there is 0 way of knowing until they give us more information/the game is released, there is no way of knowing if they will be tournament viable or not.

Haha, I agree that this discussion is nearly pointless but it's so much fun ^_^

 

[JOE!]

What is with people claiming low/high tier characters already... a tier list is merely a reflection of the current metagame, not set in stone.

Would a low tier still be a low tier if a special change from A to B made 8 matchups easier?

 

[Dr. James Rustles]

Too many of you seem confident that we can throw custom movesets into the competitive/backroom oven and get results. Not only are you overestimating the success of that, you're grossly overestimating the willingness of the competitive scene to even do that. The Smash public in general doesn't seem to want custom movesets in the competitive scene yet, so what makes you think that knowledgeable players and TOs who have years of experience in refining the competitive game will want to go through the process of integrating a tertiary gameplay feature that a lot of people are against?

--

On another note, although custom moves don't have the innate randomness of items, I feel like they still have some common ground. A lot of people who want items in the game feel like they can be carefully chosen to minimize impact on the outcome of the game while still adding competitive depth to the gameplay. It's a pipe dream, really. The problem is in what kind of depth we are looking for, and how much further it would develop the gameplay.

What kind of depth could we add through custom movesets, then? We can gauge the depth of gameplay added by customs move through measuring the amount of choice and freedom in gameplay that they would provide. People don't seem to realize that custom movesets are probably a static change, that is, once the game begins you carry the moveset with you through-out the battle. This doesn't give you much choice or freedom because the only meaningful choices are the moves that would give you the most benefit for that match-up, greatly narrowing down your options. This lack of meaningful choice nullifies whatever notion there is that custom abilities add depth to the game. Blind picking abilities don't add any competitive depth either. If we're using custo movesets to give control over a character's play and counterplay, how can you meaningfully construct a game plan through your moveset against a potentially completely random enemy? Besides, a lot of people feel like there is already a significant amount of depth to the game, and some yet to be explored, even in a game like Melee (the increasingly smaller stage lists making more characters like Ganondorf stronger, for example.)

I mean, this phenomenon is principally why Meta Knight was so hated and banned in the first place: He degenerated gameplay to the point that there were not many meaningful choices to be made besides playing as Meta Knight.

--

Game depth issues aside, suppose for a moment we actually did decide to add custom moves. Getting custom movesets into the game was a hurdle that we somehow overcame. We still have crippling issues to work out! Everyone who wanted custom moves will have a different opinion over where to draw the line on how we integrate custom movesets into the game. Blind pick? Counterpick? Only for balancing? If we use them for balance, do we make strong characters weaker or weak characters stronger? Do we allow full custom movesets or just one ability change? Which ones work best for what we want? Are some too strong in their own right?

These questions demand to be answered. You can't just say "Oh, well it will get worked out eventually, let's just wait and see!" You can "experiment" with custom moves in tournaments, but until you even agree on what questions should be asked in the experiments, you're not going to go anywhere. You've got to demonstrate that custom moves will work to begin with before the rest of us even consider using them competitively.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

It's a bit if wait and see, then, "how long would it take to change between games?

 

[Tetraplex]

Depends on how long it takes to switch, how many options there are (IE are there lots of niggling little technical bits or is it just Preset A/B/C?), and such like.

 

[stan423321]

What kind of depth could we add through custom movesets, then? We can gauge the depth of gameplay added by customs move through measuring the amount of choice and freedom in gameplay that they would provide. People don't seem to realize that custom movesets are probably a static change, that is, once the game begins you carry the moveset with you through-out the battle. This doesn't give you much choice or freedom because the only meaningful choices are the moves that would give you the most benefit for that match-up, greatly narrowing down your options. This lack of meaningful choice nullifies whatever notion there is that custom abilities add depth to the game. Blind picking abilities don't add any competitive depth either. If we're using custo movesets to give control over a character's play and counterplay, how can you meaningfully construct a game plan through your moveset against a potentially completely random enemy? Besides, a lot of people feel like there is already a significant amount of depth to the game, and some yet to be explored, even in a game like Melee (the increasingly smaller stage lists making more characters like Ganondorf stronger, for example.)

The customization as we understand it today is a shorthand for a clone generator. We could make a character selection menu with choices from Sheik-1 to Sheik-256, where 256 is a random number I pulled from assuming every special has 3 replacements and nothing else does have any. Tournaments could ban characters with something else than -1 at the end, allow them all, or create some convoluted setups doing something weird with numbers (i.e. taking character's names first, and numbers afterwards). Nobody is obviously wishing for such a menu that would literally present us with all those choices listed as is, because it would be too huge. However mathematically speaking 255 clones for every character boil down to the same thing as a simple customization scheme.

So take in mind that all you're saying here kinda applies to multiple characters, assuming a scheme in which you choose the character at once with their customization (I'm not saying this is the best scheme, but it's a possible one). When you select a character before the match, you cannot change it afterwards. So are you proposing to make an actual Fox only tournament?

Of course, it is presented differently, which may be a problem if it takes long to switch, and then there's the question of reasons behind devs removing it from random netplay; it's possible that alternate specials simply are heavily unbalanced. But not giving customization a chance ignores the fact they actually do not bring anything radically new.

 

[Tornado_Man]

I can see Custom Moveset tournaments being seperate from the normal tournaments. Either that or find some way to make each character have options that balance each other out.

 

[Rich Homie Quan]

Some general thoughts:

Unless a good majority of the custom moves are broken, I can't see banning all custom moves as a reasonable thing to do.

I'm not going to comment on logistics because I don't have much experience in that area

Custom moves would certainly keep the gameplay fresh which I think is a big plus for smashers all across the board. It would be a shame to see them gone in competitive play.

 

[LancerStaff]

Here's an idea, why not lock everybody into one customized character per tournament?
Let's say Mario's laser type fireballs are effective against DK because he doesn't have a reflector, and DK is a popular character. With matchups starting to lean against DK, DK players look to find a different way to handle Mario, and lets say they change Fox because of his reflector. Now the matchups are leaning against Mario again, Mario will have to find a way around the Foxes.
...Get it? It'll be a way to enforce diversity, something SSB has always lacked in higher levels of play.

 

[AIM0001]

First I have to see how this customization move set thing works in smash 4 and how expansive it really is. I always felt smash could have had bigger move sets for characters like how the older KOF games gave the fighters a million moves. Of course I wouldn't want that for smash but a few more extra moves wouldn't hurt.

 

[Chauzu]

Here's an idea, why not lock everybody into one customized character per tournament?
Let's say Mario's laser type fireballs are effective against DK because he doesn't have a reflector, and DK is a popular character. With matchups starting to lean against DK, DK players look to find a different way to handle Mario, and lets say they change Fox because of his reflector. Now the matchups are leaning against Mario again, Mario will have to find a way around the Foxes.
...Get it? It'll be a way to enforce diversity, something SSB has always lacked in higher levels of play.

Replace Smash char names with names of pokes in competetive Pokémon and giggle at the resemblance.

I agree, btw.

 

[Goten21]

I saw a similar conversation somewhere. I don't exactly remember where, though.

Anyway, the special-B will obviously all be customizable. At first, I thought that was all, but then I took a look at some of ZSS' screenshots, and found something interesting

http://www.smashbros.com/sp/images/character/zerosuit_samus/screen-7-thumb.jpg

Her kick is, seemingly, an ice kick
Does this mean A-button moves will be customizable too? If so, to what extent?

 

[Oniric Spriter]

That's just a blue effect showing the power of the WiiU.

 

[Substitution]

For one, as of right now, it's specials.
Though, I'm not ruling out standard attacks. That could still happen.

Two, that's not an ice kick.
It's the "jet" from the jet boots.

 

[Goten21]

For one, as of right now, it's specials.
Though, I'm not ruling out standard attacks. That could still happen.

Two, that's not an ice kick.
It's the "jet" from the jet boots.

That's just a blue effect showing the power of the WiiU.

Thanks for clearing that up!

 

[Pazzo.]

Who knows... after all, Sakurai did show quite a few things during the "mysterious" section of the direct.

 

[bigbro2233]

In the Direct, a giant DK did seem to take quite a few punches from Little Mac without even flinching. Maybe we'll even be able to customize the character?

 

[SenseiJosh]

I'm really curious about links custom moves

 

[Oniric Spriter]

In the Direct, a giant DK did seem to take quite a few punches from Little Mac without even flinching. Maybe we'll even be able to customize the character?

No, what he did in that clip was slow down his down special but at the same time make his head/hitbox bigger and the frames when Mac was stuck in the ground lasted longer (I assume the latter though, not a DK main).

 

[NewGuy79]

this may not be related but I just came across this pic that seems to emulate the ideal implementation of custom moves in SSB4

(and I just wanted to post it)

If we end up with the ability to change move sets as quickly as changing an assist in MVC2 then that would be awesome.

 

[ImaClubYou]

No, what he did in that clip was slow down his down special but at the same time make his head/hitbox bigger and the frames when Mac was stuck in the ground lasted longer (I assume the latter though, not a DK main).

It's possible that DK is slowed down because of the lag of getting repeatedly punched which was apparent in Brawl.

 

[Hitzel]

I doubt that they will become standard, but we all know that custom moveset side tournaments will be HYYYYPE

 

[Z25]

While they could be used really interestingly in competitive matches, I could see them being banned from tournaments depending on how they work. I will wait to see more though before I give my final judgment on them.

 

[Stueyman2099]

Would make for a fun side tourny. I have a feeling that since it's also a casual game that some of these moves are going to be blatantly broken.

 

[thedoctr11]

I would love to see custom move sets in tournament. It looks like if they attack is made stronger then it is also slower(or faster but weaker). IF they are balanced correctly I could see this leading to a very deep metagame. But it could just get real salty really fast and then get banned.

 

[Necrojinsei]

Well I think it depends on the type of custom-ability that it provides. For instance would you be able to change Falco's down B to one that acts like Foxes rather then kicking it? Or can we change Mario's Down B to his tornado spin? If those were the case that I could see them being defiantly a competitive aspect to it.

 

[EdgeTheLucas]

It wouldn't be out of the ordinary for tournament players coming together and debating what combination of custom moveset edits to each individual player could make everyone balanced.

We wouldn't even need a high-scale Project M-type of mod to do that, maybe tourney sets could tell everyone in advance what custom moveset edits are going to be instated for each character, and to practice with them that way.

Let's say Mario's F.L.U.D.D. attack still sucks, like in Brawl, without any edits and continues to hurt Mario's recovery. However, if a moveset edit to F.L.U.D.D. allowed it to, say, boost Mario forward (like the Turbo Nozzle), it could give Mario the horizontal recovery he always lacked.

Other edits, like giving Mario more or less power in some of his normals, could be instated to create what the competitive community feels is the most perfect, balanced Mario if Sakurai's original, non-edited Mario turns out to not be very good.

Tournament heads could make a rule, to promote diversity (in character choice, not custom movesets) and balance for everyone, to limit custom movesets for everyone to very strict sets like these so everyone in a Smash 4 tournament has a chance to shine with any of the cast.


...is anything unclear? If it is let me know.

 

[lightdasher]

Why not something like "oh you pick one custom moveset per character for the entire tourney" or something, so the character plays how you want them to play.

 

[Zekersaurus]

1. Most competitive players would be quick to say no to custom movesets but the fact is we haven't had customization of this level in a ssb game before and we don't know the full extent of what we can do with it.

2. As far as implementing custom moves for balance purposes is concerned, smash has always been a very deep game. You would probably need a year at the very least before you would even see half the potential of all these characters, especially with this massive roster. The game would have to be out for while before you would even know how to go about balancing certain characters.

3. Most players agree that this is freaking awesome, or else there wouldn't be any debate at all... Just sayin.

Btw... I made a thread about custom movesets long before sakurai mentioned anything like it and I got mostly negative feedback. Now people are goin crazy over it. Haha... funny.

 

[Gameboi834]

As long as Toon Link gets Fire/Ice Arrows, I'm okay.

 

[Its_Groovie]

Copy-pasted from a thread I (accidentally) made.

I believe they will add a whole new level to the meta-game if it meets the following criteria:
1. Not all moves are changeable.
2. The properties of the move change
3. The individual percent properties are not customizable

What that means is that when you choose one of the "new" moves, it would tell you how the moves is different, but not let you specifically change things such as speed, knock-back, damage, ect. Because in fighting game, all your moves are just tools, and a tool has a specific purpose. In a game, you're essentially using your tools to try and beat your opponent and their tools. But perhaps you don't have the right tool, or find one of your tools lacking for some reason. So of course you'd want to switch tools, and that's exactly what I hope custom moves brings to smash 4.

I'll be using Mario's fireball for an example. In the direct, we saw 2 variants of the fireball, one that is slow, heavy, and hits multiple times. Then we saw one that's quick and has no knockback. So, lets say in some match-up, I want to be able to edge-guard better, so I choose the slow and heavy fireball, because I want to shoot it off the ledge when my enemy is trying to recover from below, and I like how the new fireball multi-hits and lingers. I can't really apply pressure with it but I felt it was a good trade-off. Or perhaps I prefer to zone my enemy and tack on damage before going for the sure-kill. Then, having a fast, accurate fireball sounds way better than having to ledge-guard.

However, if I change all my moves, am I really playing the same character? Also, if I could just make a giant, fast fireball that insta-kills... Well, that should be self-explanatory.

So, say I have you convinced this is how things will go, what would be an easy way to implement this? In what I believe to be a perfect world, tournament legal custom moves would look like this. First you pick your character as you normally would, then perhaps there would be a little icon you could select on your character's picture. Then there'd be a scrolling list of moves that appears over the character like if you were choosing a name and on that list there's all the customizable moves. Next, you'd choose the move you want to customize and it's give you 3 options, the normal move, variant 1, and variant 2. Once you were done customizing you'd hit "done" and you'd be ready to go.

So if I wanted to play Mario with a different fireball, then I'd simply choose him, hit the edit icon, go to fireball, and choose the fireball I want, while the other players choose their character and make whatever changes they want.

 

[Qsmash]

A big thing I think some people are over looking is how long changing movesets will take. A lot of big tournaments have to run on a tight schedule and if changing movesets will take up a lot of time, then it will be banned. If they're easily and quickly customizable from the character select screen, then its time to start thinking about balance.

 

[Zekersaurus]

[quooverlookQsmash, post: 16646530, member: 237888"]A big thing I think some people are over looking is how long changing movesets will take. A lot of big tournaments have to run on a tight schedule and if changing movesets will take up a lot of time, then it will be banned. If they're easily and quickly customizable from the character select screen, then its time to start thinking about balance.[/quote]
You would most likely have savable presets tied to a name or the customization would be so quick and simple that it would only take a few seconds.

 

[lightdasher]

A big thing I think some people are over looking is how long changing movesets will take. A lot of big tournaments have to run on a tight schedule and if changing movesets will take up a lot of time, then it will be banned. If they're easily and quickly customizable from the character select screen, then its time to start thinking about balance.

What if it tied custom movesets to names?

 

[Dr. James Rustles]

Going by a recent survey, most people (something hovering about 75% if I recall, probably wrong) don't want custom moves in competitive play. It's worth noting the context: The poll wasn't necessarily conducted in a competitive sub-forum, so I'm betting the poll demographic is partially skewed towards those in favor of custom movesets. Of the remaining people who want the custom movesets, about 25%, they all have differing opinions on what custom moves are acceptable and how they should be implemented.

So:

• 75% who don't want custom movesets
• 25% who do want custom movesets, and among them think that:
  • We should limit players to using a single custom ability,
  • We should allow entire movesets to use custom abilities,
  • We should use custom abilities to balance the game,
    
  • Custom abilities as counterpicks,
  • Custom abilities as blind picks (ugh wtf),
  • Include all custom abilities regardless of power permanently,
  • Include all custom abilities regardless of power but ban them as we need to,
    
  • Shouldn't allow custom abilities that are too strong from the start,
  • Shouldn't allow custom abilities until we have experience and understand the characters,
    
  • Consecrate a backroom to decide what custom abilities are allowed.

(Bear with me, I am aware a few of the above might have the same implications.)

That's a lot of different ways to approach this. Several of these ideas conflict with each other and you're already a minority opinion. Good luck making that work. I don't see custom moves in mainstream play happening.

 

[Its_Groovie]

Going by a recent survey, most people (something hovering about 75% if I recall, probably wrong) don't want custom moves in competitive play. It's worth noting the context: The poll wasn't necessarily conducted in a competitive sub-forum, so I'm betting the poll demographic is partially skewed towards those in favor of custom movesets. Of the remaining people who want the custom movesets, about 25%, they all have differing opinions on what custom moves are acceptable and how they should be implemented.

So:

• 75% who don't want custom movesets
• 25% who do want custom movesets, and among them think that:
  • We should limit players to using a single custom ability,
  • We should allow entire movesets to use custom abilities,
  • We should use custom abilities to balance the game,
    
  • Custom abilities as counterpicks,
  • Custom abilities as blind picks (ugh wtf),
  • Include all custom abilities regardless of power permanently,
  • Include all custom abilities regardless of power but ban them as we need to,
    
  • Shouldn't allow custom abilities that are too strong from the start,
  • Shouldn't allow custom abilities until we have experience and understand the characters,
    
  • Consecrate a backroom to decide what custom abilities are allowed.

(Bear with me, I am aware a few of the above might have the same implications.)

That's a lot of different ways to approach this. Several of these ideas conflict with each other and you're already a minority opinion. Good luck making that work. I don't see custom moves in mainstream play happening.

A few of those sound like like good ideas. But I think a few, like the "only 1 custom move" thing wouldn't really work because most people would just find that single one move per character that benifits them the most. I think for it to work a few custom moves at least would have to be picked to flesh out the really unique playstyles.

 

[mimgrim]

I think we need to know more about custom moves and how they will work and how big you can change them before we can decide to use them or not.

But I seem to be of an even smaller minority here.

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

I think we need to know more about custom moves and how they will work and how big you can change them before we can decide to use them or not.

But I seem to be of an even smaller minority here.

No, that's a good point. If it's small things, and it has a very select choice of what can be added, we can test this and find optimal but balanced builds. Also, it's possible the customization might even have a limit, like many Wrestling games do. Like a certain amount of points used.

It's not just the matter of it being a balanced set of options(as in you can't make extremely overpowered moves), it's whether it allows you or forces you to balance out the moves. To note, it looks like it might be Special Moves only. Another thing this could do is possibly let us use past moves from clones. Like you could set all 4 of Pikachu's specials to damage himself like Pichu, or give Mario all of Dr. Mario's moves. Never mind giving Marth Roy's Flare Blade, etc. This might allow us to use past characters, and justify giving them costumes based upon them.

 

[CoolPalMitch]

Based on what we've seen so far, I can't really say that any of the custom moves we've seen so far could be considered "broken". Honestly I would say that I'm in the 'Only ban certain Custom Moves' group. Everyone seems to be making the idea sound like a giant hassle when I highly doubt it will be. Also, to those who are saying they should be banned because they're not allowed in For Glory, the Online metagame we'll most likely be participating in won't involve For Glory.

I really want Custom Moves to be tourney-legal; I feel they would be a great and really interesting way to shake things up in the meta-game. but that's just me.