(Editorial) A Case for Customs: What We Can Learn from Smaller Competitive Communities

Have any of you guys ever heard of Team Fortress 2?

Of course you have. Everyone who's been into gaming for any significant amount of time has heard of TF2. Its arguably one of the most addictive online shooters out there, and its built up a momentous fanbase over it's almost ten years of existence. Chances are if you haven't played it, you've at least seen it, and acquired a significant level of knowledge through osmosis alone.

But did you know TF2 has a really hardcore competitive community?

Who would've thought, right? And it isn't just a few guys getting together every couple of weeks to play teams: we're talking thousands of people, multiple leagues, ranking ladders and a variety of game modes - the most popular of which is Highlander, a 9v9 mode where only one player is allowed per class. In this mode, each team is forced to display not only which has the best players in their respective aspect of the game, but also which has the best synergy and ability to strategize in the moment.

Of course, turning what was originally imagined as a casual, "play for fun" game into a competitive experience wasn't easy: several of the maps and game-modes in TF2 just aren't fun to watch or play at a higher level, becoming frustratingly unbalanced in favor of certain classes or agonizingly slow once organized teams are brought into the mix. Because of this, Leagues usually only use a handful of the existing game modes and pick out a few of the existing maps, even going as far as to customize some of them to better suit competitive play.

Sound familiar?

Unlockables are another point of contention for competitive players, and the way they handle this is what I find most interesting. For those not in the know, TF2 allows its players to create custom loadouts for each of their classes by equipping them with a variety of unlockable weapons. Not only does this give players an extra layer of personalization, it also makes classes more viable for situations where they would otherwise struggle. They're referred to as "sidegrades", since they're not meant to be an improvement over the stock weapons, but tools to be used by players in case their classes' default arsenal isn't sufficient.

For the most part, these weapons are loved by the community: besides adding a new layer of complexity to the game, they also make some of the classes straight up more fun to play. But seeing how the game is balanced around chaotic 12v12 play, some of them become straight upgrades to their default counterparts when brought to Highlander. This causes the problem of not only having an element in the game that has little to no counterplay, but also eliminating all variety in weapon choices by having a "superior" option above the rest.

How do competitive leagues get around this? Simple: they ban said weapons. Before the beginning of each competitive season, most leagues will allow their users to vote on which weapons they think should be taken out of/put back into rotation. This helps keep the game balanced in a way that keeps the community happy while also fomenting discussion amongst players (especially from top-level players to people in lower divisions) to come to a consensus as to which weapons should and shouldn't be allowed.

Of course, I'm not just saying we should blindly copy this system for Smash 4, but I feel it gives us something to think about. Customs have been a source of controversy for the community ever since the game was released, and the arguments and feelings for each side are so strong most people have decided to drop the issue altogether. After all, why risk creating a huge split in the community (and alienating most competitive players while we're at it) when Smash 4 works perfectly fine as it is?

Although the mindset is reasonable, I do believe we as a scene are doing ourselves a huge disservice by not at least discussing ways in which we could make customs work for competitive. “The Custom Moveset Project” proposes an alternative not unlike the one the TF2 community uses: it’s one of the many options worth checking out, and the amount of support it has gotten proves that there’s a part of the community that wants to see this happen.

For a lot of players, customs as a whole may seem unnecessary, but I feel we owe it to ourselves to think about what they could contribute to tournament level play, what they could do to benefit our scene, and whether or not we really want to risk missing out on those benefits for fear of trying something new.

 

I think a common problem with some of the comments is that we assume that all of the cast is getting customs legalized. Personally, if only Palutena and the Mii's have the most balanced customs (since they were both developed with them from the start given what we know) compared to characters like Villager and DK, have them (Palutena and Mii's) be the 2 that use customs until we can suss out the rest of the cast.

Palutena's customs have different utilities that range from shields, to a high temporary speed boost, a teleport, and a variety of explosive/light based attacks.

Mii's are a similar case with each type taking queues from other chacters for their customs (heavy samus/spacies/psi kids inspiration for the gunner's customs for example).

If customs are to eventually be legalized in a widespread manner, we should start small (only have 2-4 characters have legal customs - 3 Mii's and Palutena).The Custom Moves Project is a worthwhile endeavor, but it's not been widely used as some of expected it to be because of how radical of a change it is.

Perhaps if we want to gradually introduce customs, we could start at the bottom tier so we can work out the source of most of the janky customs and perhaps develop counters to certain moves (like the explosive ballons).

But one thing that can go sour for customs is the DLC cast: can they stand up to customs even without them, even if the most janky ones are banned?

 

This is STILL going on? Jesus, there's so many Mii/Custom articles now. Are you guys THIS pressed to create journalism??

 

It's not that hard. The main problem with customs is unlocking them. Time consuming and not everyone will have them. If Nintendo released a $2 unlock every custom option, then there would be no point against customs.

 

I commonly hear the argument that since some characters become better or viable with customs, that customs are over powered.
Donkey Kong is commonly cited in this line of reasoning.

It seems odd to me that having more viable characters would be a bad thing in the first place. Its not like people are outright crying that Donkey Kong becomes the best character in the game, or anything. He just becomes usable. So whats the problem with that?

There are lots of character that just suffer from poor design choices. Like Ganondorf for instance. He basically has no recovery. He does become better with customs but not because wizard drop kick is an overpowered move, but just because it fills a gapping hole in his moveset.

I for one want as many viable options as we can allow for. The more characters that are playable at high levels the more variety we get as players and spectators which will increase the longevity of the game.

I said it once already this might not be something the community is ready for but I think its a chance we don't want to pass up.

 

I personally love the idea of customs and play with them all the time with my friends. However, while I agree that if customs became the norm it would introduce a huge amount of diversity in terms of match ups and tier rankings, I think the main point that many of us pro-customs supporters are missing is scope.

I mean, using the TF2 example - there's less than twenty classes, so having all of those customization options is important for even -having- variety. But when applied to Smash... well, Melee only has about 25 characters, depending on how you're counting. And Melee is STILL evolving. It took years before it even settled.

Now let's look at the scope of Smash4, you already have more than double the number of playable fighters (AND stages), which exponentially increases the number of matchups and potential for new combinations to be found. It's -still- in a fluctuating meta right now just using custom-less fighters. The scope of adding in essentially -THREE TIMES- the movesets is boggling when you consider how long it will take for the vanilla meta to settle.

Adding in customs changes the game from something like Melee's 25 options to something more like Pokemon, and all the rules-lawyering that goes into trying to make THAT a viable competitive scene. Does anyone REALLY want to see Smashboards turn into Smogon? (Sorry Smogon, I respect how hard it is please everyone when you're juggling 700+ characters to balance, but I don't want Smash to ever be put in that situation...)

Perhaps someday customs will be the answer to a stale community, but I feel like a new Smash game will come out loooong before Smash4 has time to get that stale. Unfortunate. I rather LIKE the idea of viable Palutena... *sigh*

 

And you know what I'm going to do? Make a Customs thread in the Competitive Smash forums for the Smash 4 game, but my own arguments as to why Customs (and maybe even bring in Equipment) should be tournament legal.

 

The only way you'll convince me of allowing multiple move sets for miis is if you allow me to use customs on my main in tournament. And it isn't a mii. I don't care what case you're making. They're custom moves exactly the same as characters. The only difference is you have to make them and the custom tab on the character select screen won't delete them. I'm sick of mii players wanting special treatment. I'm not gonna give it to them.

 

Why should we do it tho? We saw what happened with Custom moves amd what's happening with Three vs Two stocks arguments. These "innovative" rulesets are fragmenting the scene, do you remember what happened last EVO with customs? I would rather keep a conservative ruleset than risking the destiny of our community with something like this.

Exactly. All these stupid people who want special treatment are pushing people away from the game. And they don't even know it. It's super dumb.

 

Exactly. All these stupid people who want special treatment are pushing people away from the game. And they don't even know it. It's super dumb.

I will ask, do you not see the hypocrisy here? Do you not see that the 'vanilla' meta lovers are getting their own style of special treatment by simply getting their way, even if there are arguments that can hold a candle and shine brighter than that, thus refuting the anti-custom arguments?

 

Customs honestly have too many logistical issues for me to support them anyway, but they do also affect gameplay in a negative way (IMO).

Yes, they add options for players, but they also add complication to the metagame. Like, a lot of complication. Too much, at least in my opinion. There's so much to memorize, so much to study, so much to unlock... It's a high barrier to entry, to say the least. And no, this isn't a good thing – by itself anyway. While there is a decent amount of depth added by customs, there's also loads and loads of complexity. (Depth and complexity)

In game design (disclaimer: I'm in no way an expert in this field), it's often said that complexity is like currency you use to buy depth. So if you add, say, a mana mechanic to your strategy game, then yeah, the player has to become familiar with that added complexity, but it also adds depth in that you have to make strategic choices about how you use your limited supply.

To me, custom moves are like an extravagant million-dollar mansion. Sure, it's a really nice mansion and it's really big too, but it costs a million dollars, and (assuming you're not incredibly wealthy) you can't really afford that. Sure, customs add a lot of depth, but I don't think that we can afford all of that complexity.

Another issue is how customs remove a lot of the game's consistency. A Mario, currently, is a Mario; you know what to expect. But with customs, that sense of consistency in the game is lost, and some consistency (quite a bit of it) is vital for a competitive game like this. Otherwise you don't have any one thing to practice against / study, spectators may be lost as to what's going on, etc.

Plus there are the occasional custom moves that seem to disrupt the flow of gameplay at a quite fundamental level (e.g. bomballoons and planking, HSB, etc), but I don't have much competitive experience beyond online play, let alone experience with customs, so I'll let those who are more qualified discuss this facet of custom moves.

Actually, in game design we urge away from the thought that making a game complex will inherently add depth. Because it's not a 1 to 1 ratio most of the time. Often times simplicity can breed just as much depth with an easier entrance ratio than just adding more and more mechanics to add depth. It will be superficial and eventually just become a new hurdle new players and veterans have to deal with to get to doing what they're doing now anyway.

Adding mechanics to something that works fails to improve it more often than not. If it doesn't do that, then it will either do a great job roping in new players or alienate anyone who isn't down for learning customs and stickers and mii combinations and all the characters and all the new tech that keeps being found and frame data and this new shield block data pressure and more and more and more. It's all stacking up so fast and I've had friends openly tell me "I'd rather join you in guilty gear or street fighter 5." and I can't blame them. Smash 4 now requires you to memorize and practice against so much without all the extra garbage. Just keep it simple, guys. You'll have a bigger and happier community if you do.

 

I will ask, do you not see the hypocrisy here? Do you not see that the 'vanilla' meta lovers are getting their own style of special treatment by simply getting their way, even if there are arguments that can hold a candle and shine brighter than that, thus refuting the anti-custom arguments?

Customs over complicate the game. There's already so much to learn and memorize and practice against and be in the lab for as is. During the time when customs were legal, my friend left as he was trying to gt into competitive smash because it was too much as apposed to the simple mechanics that are already there. Lots of people are splitting the community by wanting to bring all this new stuff to a community that's having trouble staying as is with the toxic community, differing rulesets and now this new pentient to get back in the lab and learn every matchup over again several dozen times over.

 

Actually, in game design we urge away from the thought that making a game complex will inherently add depth. Because it's not a 1 to 1 ratio most of the time. Often times simplicity can breed just as much depth with an easier entrance ratio than just adding more and more mechanics to add depth. It will be superficial and eventually just become a new hurdle new players and veterans have to deal with to get to doing what they're doing now anyway.

Adding mechanics to something that works fails to improve it more often than not. If it doesn't do that, then it will either do a great job roping in new players or alienate anyone who isn't down for learning customs and stickers and mii combinations and all the characters and all the new tech that keeps being found and frame data and this new shield block data pressure and more and more and more. It's all stacking up so fast and I've had friends openly tell me "I'd rather join you in guilty gear or street fighter 5." and I can't blame them. Smash 4 now requires you to memorize and practice against so much without all the extra garbage. Just keep it simple, guys. You'll have a bigger and happier community if you do.

I will always ALWAYS argue for whatever brings in more players. Never will I support the thing that scares them away.

 

Well it wouldn't be a problem if you and other anti-custom people didn't waste your time training for the vanilla meta, and instead, training and finding out some good utilization of customs, unlocking them, etc.

This is a game that is centered around Call of Duty-styled equipping. Look at Call of Duty and other shooters, they allow people to utilize custom attachments on weapons to make them more balanced to the other weapons, and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U is no different.

I will always ALWAYS argue for whatever brings in more players. Never will I support the thing that scares them away.

Hypocrite.

There are people who are actually interested in playing with Customs on, and if they see that they can't use customs in tournaments, then they will feel no point to even play the game since tournaments are catering to only ONE type of people.

Tournaments and the competitive scene are just going to get stale without custom moves, and prohibiting custom moves is also scaring away people to participate in tournaments. If you have a 128 man tournament with normals, by comparison, you would have a 288 man tournament with customs, highly likely. Adding customs would attract, not dissuade.

 

Well it wouldn't be a problem if you and other anti-custom people didn't waste your time training for the vanilla meta, and instead, training and finding out some good utilization of customs, unlocking them, etc.

This is a game that is centered around Call of Duty-styled equipping. Look at Call of Duty and other shooters, they allow people to utilize custom attachments on weapons to make them more balanced to the other weapons, and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U is no different.



Hypocrite.

There are people who are actually interested in playing with Customs on, and if they see that they can't use customs in tournaments, then they will feel no point to even play the game since tournaments are catering to only ONE type of people.

Tournaments and the competitive scene are just going to get stale without custom moves, and prohibiting custom moves is also scaring away people to participate in tournaments. If you have a 128 man tournament with normals, by comparison, you would have a 288 man tournament with customs, highly likely. Adding customs would attract, not dissuade.

No fighting game ever has gotten stale without custom moves unless everyone complains about it. Stop calling me a hypocrit. Unless you're willing to dish out all the money for every player in the world to buy them a 3DS, a cheat device and work with them to make every combination of character for them to train against.

It's a lot of work to unlock all the customs and practice against all the different combinations. Hell, I argue that it's impossible to fully prepare for any tournament while customs are legal. It's so much goddamn work and you'll never be able to find someone who can emulate what big players are doing with every permutation. So you'll go to a tournament and someone will pull outa move you've never seen and suddenly you're out of the tournament of no fault of your own. Yeah. New players will love that.

Everyone is just looking at this issue from a personal perspective and they have no idea what it will do to the community.

 

This is great. I've always been interested in the depth that customs add to the game outside of competitive play, and bringing them to the table would give us a whole new meta to potentially explore! And now that the game is officially done, that sounds like a pretty great thing to keep our hype from dying.
And as for customs making characters more viable and thus being "broken", anything to prevent another 20XX.

 

No fighting game ever has gotten stale without custom moves unless everyone complains about it. Stop calling me a hypocrit. Unless you're willing to dish out all the money for every player in the world to buy them a 3DS, a cheat device and work with them to make every combination of character for them to train against.

It's a lot of work to unlock all the customs and practice against all the different combinations. Hell, I argue that it's impossible to fully prepare for any tournament while customs are legal. It's so much goddamn work and you'll never be able to find someone who can emulate what big players are doing with every permutation. So you'll go to a tournament and someone will pull outa move you've never seen and suddenly you're out of the tournament of no fault of your own. Yeah. New players will love that.

Everyone is just looking at this issue from a personal perspective and they have no idea what it will do to the community.

Here's one answer to the first thing: Mortal Kombat.

As for the issue of fully preparing, you do know there is a list of tournament allowed customs, right? So should tournaments follow that list, you can easily train against the opponent. And it's not even that hard to adjust if the opponent is using different customs, since you'll know what it will do upon first glance (at least I would, don't know about you anti-custom 'dude bruhs') and go against accordingly.

And besides, you're ignoring the fact that there are some people who won't know much against the normal vanilla specials.

 

Actually, in game design we urge away from the thought that making a game complex will inherently add depth. Because it's not a 1 to 1 ratio most of the time. Often times simplicity can breed just as much depth with an easier entrance ratio than just adding more and more mechanics to add depth. It will be superficial and eventually just become a new hurdle new players and veterans have to deal with to get to doing what they're doing now anyway.

Adding mechanics to something that works fails to improve it more often than not. If it doesn't do that, then it will either do a great job roping in new players or alienate anyone who isn't down for learning customs and stickers and mii combinations and all the characters and all the new tech that keeps being found and frame data and this new shield block data pressure and more and more and more. It's all stacking up so fast and I've had friends openly tell me "I'd rather join you in guilty gear or street fighter 5." and I can't blame them. Smash 4 now requires you to memorize and practice against so much without all the extra garbage. Just keep it simple, guys. You'll have a bigger and happier community if you do.

Right, that's what I'm saying – it's just like buying things with currency. You try to spend as little money as possible to get the same things, and you try to add as little complexity as possible to get the same depth. And if you don't have enough money for something (like the mansion), then it's simply not a viable option – like how customs simply add too much complexity to the game, even if they add lots of depth too (which they do in my opinion).

 

As for the issue of fully preparing, you do know there is a list of tournament allowed customs, right? So should tournaments follow that list, you can easily train against the opponent. And it's not even that hard to adjust if the opponent is using different customs, since you'll know what it will do upon first glance (at least I would, don't know about you anti-custom 'dude bruhs') and go against accordingly.

What if you don't have those custom moves on your console? What if you don't have a 3DS + cheat device to get those custom moves? You're at a significant disadvantage and can't prepare properly. The solution may be to unlock them, but what if they don't unlock? The ability to unlock the custom moves is entirely out of the players control, so without some exceptional luck, favourable circumstances or a rather hefty purchase you're doomed to get bad results at all your tournaments due to lack of preparation. That essentially locks out these players from tournaments.

You could argue that not having customs on locks out the pro-custom players, but the difference is the pro-customs players would be choosing not to go based on a feature they WANT to have. Non customs players would be locked out because of a feature they CAN'T HAVE.

 

Here's one answer to the first thing: Mortal Kombat.

As for the issue of fully preparing, you do know there is a list of tournament allowed customs, right? So should tournaments follow that list, you can easily train against the opponent. And it's not even that hard to adjust if the opponent is using different customs, since you'll know what it will do upon first glance (at least I would, don't know about you anti-custom 'dude bruhs') and go against accordingly.

And besides, you're ignoring the fact that there are some people who won't know much against the normal vanilla specials.

I'm assuming you're talking about MKX. Which does not have customizable characters. It has 3 variations of the same character. That's it. Easy to learn since it's always the same. Customs are entirely different.

And isn't it limiting to only allow specific sets of customs? If that's the case then what's even the point?

 

The only way you'll convince me of allowing multiple move sets for miis is if you allow me to use customs on my main in tournament. And it isn't a mii. I don't care what case you're making. They're custom moves exactly the same as characters. The only difference is you have to make them and the custom tab on the character select screen won't delete them. I'm sick of mii players wanting special treatment. I'm not gonna give it to them.

Except miis aren't like your characters lol. Your character had their designs built around their default move sets. Miis don't have that design intention. They're made to be whoever their players want them to be, hence the unlockableness from the start, size changes, costumes.

I could go on

 

Except miis aren't like your characters lol. Your character had their designs built around their default move sets. Miis don't have that design intention. They're made to be whoever their players want them to be, hence the unlockableness from the start, size changes, costumes.

I could go on

Ok. So do miss change their normals?

 

It was a good read, but you seem to focus mainly on the customization of characters, and I believe we should at least try a different approach in stages, there are many "unlegal" stages that are not viable because of weird transitions, or unfair hazards... Why not replicating an stage transition, or the same stage without hazards with the stage builder option??... No one seems to ever discuss this, why can't we build a 2 platform stage similar to pkmn stadium and make it legal, or a Halberd like layout, maybe delfino standard without transitions?... we could even document the standard stage build for "competittive play" or straight download the same stage so everyone would have the same stage...

Legalizing Custom documented Stages is far more interesting than legalizing custom moves...

Well now with the talking about custom Moves, I believe that allowing "low" tier characters (the last 20/25 characters in the "official" tierlist) to use a limited number of custom moves (1 at the beginning then maybe 2) would be a good start, why?... cause the main problem in allowing customs would be how high/top tier character would become higher than before, so only low tier can try to gain a "buff" in the form of a move to "balance" the game, if the "buff" proofs to be too much, then ban the move...

who is going to listen to a non-top player anyway...

 

Ok. So do miss change their normals?

No? What's the point of this question?

My point remains unaffected

 

No? What's the point of this question?

My point remains unaffected

What you are saying is that custom mii fighters and custom versions of the regular fighters both don't change their normals after customization. Interesting.

 

What you are saying is that custom mii fighters and custom versions of the regular fighters both don't change their normals after customization. Interesting.

Technically, you can. Size changes the range and power of the normals. Just remembered. That's why small and fat miis are the preferred ones.

 

Technically, you can. Size changes the range and power of the normals. Just remembered. That's why small and fat miis are the preferred ones.

So what you're saying is that the options for Miis are limitless?

 

So what you're saying is that the options for Miis are limitless?

He's saying they're essentially near-limitless, but they are still limited by creation.

 

He's saying they're essentially near-limitless, but they are still limited by creation.

Hold on. Just gonna start practicing against a limitless number of the same character.

 

Hold on. Just gonna start practicing against a limitless number of the same character.

Tournaments could easily limit the size of the Miis to a standard size; otherwise, things would indeed be quite complicated. Whether it be guest size or small size, some standardization is definitely required here.

As for the actual moves... Just familiarize yourself with the moves, what they do, and how they're used / how to counter them. There's sure to be a select moveset that ends up being more prominent anyway. And if you can familiarize yourself with over 1,000 moves (roughly the amount you get by adding together the default movesets of all characters), surely a measly 24 extra moves for Miis (a number that goes down further when you consider how say, one of Brawler's nspecs is just a Falcon Punch, or how again certain moves will be used very rarely in comparison to others) isn't too much to handle.

 

Tournaments could easily limit the size of the Miis to a standard size; otherwise, things would indeed be quite complicated. Whether it be guest size or small size, some standardization is definitely required here.

As for the actual moves... Just familiarize yourself with the moves, what they do, and how they're used / how to counter them. There's sure to be a select moveset that ends up being more prominent anyway. And if you can familiarize yourself with over 1,000 moves (roughly the amount you get by adding together the default movesets of all characters), surely a measly 24 extra moves for Miis (a number that goes down further when you consider how say, one of Brawler's nspecs is just a Falcon Punch, or how again certain moves will be used very rarely in comparison to others) isn't too much to handle.

It just seems dumb to me. They're fighting to allow all these extra move combonations but I can't use, say, palutena however I want.

 

It just seems dumb to me. They're fighting to allow all these extra move combonations but I can't use, say, palutena however I want.

Palutena IMO would be fine (if perhaps a bit controversial due to "equality" or whatever) since her customs don't have to be unlocked, thus avoiding a main problem of customs: logistics. Customs only being available to a very small portion of the cast (Miis and Palutena) also helps mitigate the issue of complexity, as well as retaining the consistency which is crucial to the game.

 

Customs further enhance the amount of options that a player could have. That's enough of a pro for me; ain't no set unbeatable or OP or w/e. It just takes patience to beat villager and you can hit DK put of Kong cyclone.

Honestly, if Sakurai were to allow us to buy customs for $2 or something, I guarantee that we would be playing customs.

easily.

No, we wouldn't. And I'll tell you why:

Customs allow for an impossible amount of permutations in the way the game can be played. They don't enhance current options. They completely change the options a player might have. They can completely ruin the flow of a match, or completely destroy momentum. Honestly, I don't want to get hit by a counter that is lower lag than standard counters and kills earlier, and is overall a better option (in terms of Iai counter)

There are too many changes in the way that the game is played that are not practicable against. Imagine if we let short/fat Miis of all different variations be legal. You'd never, EVER be able to practice against the almost limitless variation. It'd just lead to confusion, secret keeping, and it'd bog down the meta.

The vanilla meta already has a large amount of matchups to learn that we havent even began to master. An insane amount of different counterpicks and options you can choose
And now you're telling me you want to multiply that by like, 10 at least? there are so many different possible custom variables that are added into this.

An impossible amount to practice against.

Also, why such the big push for customs? Its never been needed in any other fighting game. Its not like it'll add so much to the game that it'll keep it alive for the next 30 years. I can only see customs doing harm to the community. They will confuse spectators and lame playstyles will discourage players; They will hurt small TO's without all the customs, and they will hurt the Meta's ability to grow- because no one will be able to practice against everything. Certain movesets will completely dominate the meta one season, and then when we ban those, next season a new set of broken moves will arise.

The biggest problem I have for customs is-- They were not intended to be used competitively. There is no balancing to them at all, and no changes have been made to them since release, depsite obvious problems some of them pose. They are an option meant to be used casually, in tandem with equipment. That is where they synergize the best, and work properly.

 

My only problem with allowing customs is the fact that DLC character don't have them. I don't think it would be fair if everyone else is allowed to use there customs while the DLC characters don't even have the option.

 

The biggest problem I have for customs is-- They were not intended to be used competitively. There is no balancing to them at all, and no changes have been made to them since release, depsite obvious problems some of them pose. They are an option meant to be used casually, in tandem with equipment. That is where they synergize the best, and work properly.

If you want to be technical, there were patches that did indeed change the customs.

I don't know how i feel about using customs overall, but I distinctly remember patch changes to Kirby's customs or something of the sort, and I'm pretty sure there's a few more. Either way it doesn't really matter; I just thought i'd point it out.

 

If you want to be technical, there were patches that did indeed change the customs.

I don't know how i feel about using customs overall, but I distinctly remember patch changes to Kirby's customs or something of the sort, and I'm pretty sure there's a few more. Either way it doesn't really matter; I just thought i'd point it out.

Extremely minor patches have been released to deal with glitches that have happened with some customs. A personal favorite was Olimar had something called like... Tackle pickmen. Which had an infinite that would KO anything. That got fixed. So far every patch that came out came out while customs were being experimented on for tournaments. And they were all nerfs against all the glitches they didn't think they'd need to test for. But they got so much hate mail whenever something broken got found and brought to tournaments through the customs.

After tournaments said "no, customs are dumb" they stopped touching customs since nothing new was being found that was just pissing people off. That's what happened.

 

After tournaments said "no, customs are dumb" they stopped touching customs since nothing new was being found that was just pissing people off. That's what happened.

Technically, the Mario Maker update back in late September occurred after tournaments stopped using customs, and it almost consisted entirely of changes to custom moves.

 

Technically, the Mario Maker update back in late September occurred after tournaments stopped using customs, and it almost consisted entirely of changes to custom moves.

I don't remember this. Which number patch was that?

 

I don't remember this. Which number patch was that?

1.1.1.

 

We get it. Miis exist.

Gues what? I still believe in the 1111 default size standard. You will never change my opinion on that.

 

No, we wouldn't. And I'll tell you why:

Customs allow for an impossible amount of permutations in the way the game can be played. They don't enhance current options. They completely change the options a player might have. They can completely ruin the flow of a match, or completely destroy momentum. Honestly, I don't want to get hit by a counter that is lower lag than standard counters and kills earlier, and is overall a better option (in terms of Iai counter)

There are too many changes in the way that the game is played that are not practicable against. Imagine if we let short/fat Miis of all different variations be legal. You'd never, EVER be able to practice against the almost limitless variation. It'd just lead to confusion, secret keeping, and it'd bog down the meta.

The vanilla meta already has a large amount of matchups to learn that we havent even began to master. An insane amount of different counterpicks and options you can choose
And now you're telling me you want to multiply that by like, 10 at least? there are so many different possible custom variables that are added into this.

An impossible amount to practice against.

Also, why such the big push for customs? Its never been needed in any other fighting game. Its not like it'll add so much to the game that it'll keep it alive for the next 30 years. I can only see customs doing harm to the community. They will confuse spectators and lame playstyles will discourage players; They will hurt small TO's without all the customs, and they will hurt the Meta's ability to grow- because no one will be able to practice against everything. Certain movesets will completely dominate the meta one season, and then when we ban those, next season a new set of broken moves will arise.

The biggest problem I have for customs is-- They were not intended to be used competitively. There is no balancing to them at all, and no changes have been made to them since release, depsite obvious problems some of them pose. They are an option meant to be used casually, in tandem with equipment. That is where they synergize the best, and work properly.

I'm sorry, I don't understand how adding depth to a game makes the game worse off. You have additional options added to the game because not all customs are direct upgrades. You can't generalize like that and be accurate with your statement.