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

[Dr. James Rustles]

I highly doubt they'll attach game mechanics to characters. If there was, it would probably be used as an end to change the game itself and not the characters.

tfw if you can't tell the difference between changing game mechanics and changing characters

 

[infomon]

Honestly, whether or not custom specials wind up in competitive will depend on how quickly these things can be adjusted and/or equipped from the character select menu.

And this is legitimate. I'm kind of excited if "customize your character" is an integral part of the new smash. I love the thought of hand-crafting the perfect fighter for my playstyle! Choosing a character becomes a serious part of the competition!

That being said, I'm especially concerned about Sakurai's comment that "for balance reasons," customized characters are not allowed in the anonymous online play. That suggests he's not especially trying to balance it, maybe.

Let's not jump to any conclusions too early in smash4's life. Give it several months to figure out if they are a "natural" way for people to compete -- if customized characters fighting it out truly represents skill at the game... or if it's a side-by gimmick fun thing equivalent to "everyone is giant and has bunny ears" type customizations from previous titles.

 

[lightdasher]

I highly doubt they'll attach game mechanics to characters. If there was, it would probably be used as an end to change the game itself and not the characters.

tfw if you can't tell the difference between changing game mechanics and changing characters

tfw you thought I was being serious.

 

[ChunkyBeef]

And this is legitimate. I'm kind of excited if "customize your character" is an integral part of the new smash. I love the thought of hand-crafting the perfect fighter for my playstyle! Choosing a character becomes a serious part of the competition!

That being said, I'm especially concerned about Sakurai's comment that "for balance reasons," customized characters are not allowed in the anonymous online play. That suggests he's not especially trying to balance it, maybe.

Let's not jump to any conclusions too early in smash4's life. Give it several months to figure out if they are a "natural" way for people to compete -- if customized characters fighting it out truly represents skill at the game... or if it's a side-by gimmick fun thing equivalent to "everyone is giant and has bunny ears" type customizations from previous titles.

Well, we've had the 'quickness' problem solved with Amiibo. You bring along figurines of your mains with your character data on it, all you gotta do is touch it to the Wii U Gamepad. I'd imagine the whole process won't take longer than ten seconds. You're done and set to fight.

Balancing doesn't seem to be a problem, either. I'd imagine if they decided to use customized characters in competitive, they won't be using the equipped items and just use customized specials, which makes things less complicated in the long run. People can choose specials they want to use, and most of them seem to mostly be sidegrades.

Though for the most part, I think they'll just keep it simple and play with the stock characters to make it easier, but who knows? It's entirely possible that a whole different kind of metagame evolves from the customized movesets/equipped items that's super-hype and draws more interest in comparison. It's anyone's guess at this point.

 

[Mechonis]

Well, we've had the 'quickness' problem solved with Amiibo. You bring along figurines of your mains with your character data on it, all you gotta do is touch it to the Wii U Gamepad. I'd imagine the whole process won't take longer than ten seconds. You're done and set to fight.

Balancing doesn't seem to be a problem, either. I'd imagine if they decided to use customized characters in competitive, they won't be using the equipped items and just use customized specials, which makes things less complicated in the long run. People can choose specials they want to use, and most of them seem to mostly be sidegrades.

Though for the most part, I think they'll just keep it simple and play with the stock characters to make it easier, but who knows? It's entirely possible that a whole different kind of metagame evolves from the customized movesets/equipped items that's super-hype and draws more interest in comparison. It's anyone's guess at this point.

That depends if the Amiibo's customization is seperate from your characters, since they are NPC controlled. It might not unlock your custom move set for you to apply to your character. They just made it sound like the data is used for the NPC summoned.

 

[LancerStaff]

Biggest obstacle is that you have to unlock the various moves, atleast on 3DS. Won't be a problem in the 3DS metagame or if you can transfer parts to multiple Wii Us though.

 

[Heavy C4]

Biggest obstacle is that you have to unlock the various moves, atleast on 3DS. Won't be a problem in the 3DS metagame or if you can transfer parts to multiple Wii Us though.

You also got to unlock characters so that isn't a problem. We just got to play the game until we get all the options in the character select screen.

 

[DakotaBonez]

I assumed that when you select the character, that...well...hmmm...
I can't imagine it. Maybe theres an icon on their character portrait that you select, it opens up a window that lets you select your moves?

He did say that miis wouldnt be allowed online, although that may be because he doesn't want any offensive characters online. I really hope that selecting your custom moves is easy and useable online.

 

[LancerStaff]

You also got to unlock characters so that isn't a problem. We just got to play the game until we get all the options in the character select screen.

Difference here is that it's completely random. Unless they hide them behind tough challenges. "Beat All-Star without continuing as Pichu."
Well, they didn't hide anything special behind challenges in KIU, so I can guess all the alternate moves can be unlocked randomly.

 

[gamer8]

I assumed that when you select the character, that...well...hmmm...
I can't imagine it. Maybe theres an icon on their character portrait that you select, it opens up a window that lets you select your moves?

He did say that miis wouldnt be allowed online, although that may be because he doesn't want any offensive characters online. I really hope that selecting your custom moves is easy and useable online.

Unfortunately, custom move sets aren't allowed online with anybody like Miis. It's on the smash bros. site.

 

[DakotaBonez]

Unfortunately, custom move sets aren't allowed online with anybody like Miis. It's on the smash bros. site.

Send me the link yo, thanks.

 

[gamer8]

Send me the link yo, thanks.

http://www.smashbros.com/us/howto/entry2.html and it was mentioned in the smash direct as well

 

[DakotaBonez]

http://www.smashbros.com/us/howto/entry2.html and it was mentioned in the smash direct as well

Man he must really think that feature is broken if ya can't use it online against anyone. Well at least it works in friend battles.

 

[infomon]

All the different customizations including Miis/Palutena make this a pretty insane / unique fighting game.

Also sounds impossible to balance. But with so much customization, it doesn't need to be perfectly balanced overall; figuring out what combinations you want to use, and how to counterpick them, could be truly remarkable for competitive play. It would be easy for us to blacklist certain moves for being too powerful, and noone cares if DK's third side-B special is useless.... DK as a character with different options could still be viable. etc.

If the custom-fighter thing is super easy and natural, I could very well see it as an expected mode of play for smash4. And if it's what normal people expect to do with regards to playing the game, then I expect it to be what we all choose to use for tournament-play; unless the custom movesets are clearly broken / over-powered. But it looks like they'll be just different sets of reasonable options for each character.

I'm excited!

 

[ChillySundance]

Considering there's only 2 extra options per characters (that we know so far) I don't see how it could be terribly unbalanced. That's less in the way of customizable options than Arcana Heart, which enjoyed a lot of popularity in the FGC amongst doujin players and remained fairly balanced.

If all of the skills are tradeoffs rather than straight-up improvements over the default option, which so far they appear to be, then I'm sure custom movesets will be tournament viable.

 

[infomon]

Considering there's only 2 extra options per characters (that we know so far) I don't see how it could be terribly unbalanced. That's less in the way of customizable options than Arcana Heart, which enjoyed a lot of popularity in the FGC amongst doujin players and remained fairly balanced.

http://www.smashbros.com/us/howto/entry2.html

Each of a character's 4 specials has 3 options (normal + 2 custom). 3^4 = 81 versions of each character. Except for Miis which have even more options. We don't quite know what total configurability Palutena will have.

Granted, the variations will probably be minor and have tradeoffs, like you say. So the configurability will be an amazing part of the metagame IMO!

 

[staindgrey]

There's going to be a heavy rift between high tier users and low tier users on this issue. The high tier characters likely won't need custom movesets to get better while the low tier characters will have a chance to benefit from them. I see this being a very big and unsolvable issue in the tournament scene after release.

 

[LancerStaff]

http://www.smashbros.com/us/howto/entry2.html

Each of a character's 4 specials has 3 options (normal + 2 custom). 3^4 = 81 versions of each character. Except for Miis which have even more options. We don't quite know what total configurability Palutena will have.

Granted, the variations will probably be minor and have tradeoffs, like you say. So the configurability will be an amazing part of the metagame IMO!

Actually, Miis have just as many options as the others so long as we count the three separate.

 

[ChillySundance]

Oh right, still not a huge, unmanagable amount of options per character though. At the very worst, it's going to come down to things like "Mario's Strong fireball creates overpowering unblockable setups when spammed due to stunlocking players in their shields, so this move is banned in competitive matches due to lack of counterplay."

But again, I severely doubt any of these moves are going to be banned unless something incredibly broken is found.

On the high tier vs low tier thing. Don't forget that high tier characters get just the same amount of customization options as low tier characters. There's a very high chance that a high tier character will get even more OP when correctly configured.

I mean, imagine Meta Knight with a projectile tornado or something along those lines?

 

[infomon]

Good points, @ LancerStaff and @ ChillySundance . Agree 100%.

 

[ChillySundance]

Also, on Sakurai thinking this feature is broken, it's probably because it allows players to give tools to certain characters that they weren't balanced around in the first place.

Like, let's assume that Mario's Electric Cape stuns enemies, similar to ZSS's down smash.

Mario isn't exactly a character who's lacking in KO power. His smash attacks are more direct and less awkward than ZSS's, and if he lands that against a grounded opponent, he's most likely going to get a half-charged smash attack off it, which is really nasty when you consider how wide the hitbox is on his cape compared to ZSS's down smash.

That's just one example, but ultimately it's going to come down to just what everyone can do with their modded specials and how strong the options are. Whatever the case, I see no reason why we can't have two separate metagames - one for vanilla smash and one with customized moves.

Perhaps the stars will align and everyone will be so broken that it's balanced, just like Mahvel. Who knows?

 

[NewGuy79]

can't we infer that well be able to customize our movesets form the character screen via this pic:

to have an on switch on the Character screen that turns on a feature that you have to set up out side of it seems redundant so I think its safe to assume that we will indeed be able to customize are characters on the select screen. (solving the time issue)

at most changing special moves will probably take as much time as Baning/picking stages in melee douse.

the question now is how? how exactly are we gona activate the menus to change these?
I would suggest possible a button activated solution, meaning that once it says "ready to battle" ( or whatever) maybe some one can press - (select) instead of start to activate the custom moves window.

either way its gona be real interesting seeing just hoe Sakurai implements this stuff, and im hella excited for it glad to see im not the only one who seeing the potential in all this.