(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'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.

It's not the depth that's the problem, it's the complexity.

 

Great, get ready for 2 more weeks of agenda-pushing to drive up ad revenue. Joke's on you, I use Adblock.

 

Some people may love a character because they played their game. And when they heard they were in smash they were overjoyed. And then when they played them the character didn't fit the play style. But then they saw something. A beacon of light. CUSTOM MOVES. So they unlocked all the custom moves for the character and gave them a shot again. And then the player discovered something. They discovered that that they really liked the character again. HOORAY FOR AMAZING SCENARIOS.

Basically what I am saying is that Customs can provide for those with different styles. The technical and the easy modes could use them to their full potential. Some may just like the character more with those moves.

Also #FRIITHEMIIS

 

It's not the depth that's the problem, it's the complexity.

Unlocking would not be a problem under my hypothetical situation of Sakurai giving us all the customs for $2. Anything else will get figured out over time.

This is honestly the first time I heard arguments that are against increasing the lifespan of a game if the dev literally gave the option to us that'll eliminate the ridiculous unlocking requirements.

 

Unlocking would not be a problem under my hypothetical situation of Sakurai giving us all the customs for $2. Anything else will get figured out over time.

This is honestly the first time I heard arguments that are against increasing the lifespan of a game if the dev literally gave the option to us that'll eliminate the ridiculous unlocking requirements.

Your right. We should force the fun out of a game by just buying everything. Why didn't anyone else think?

 

What if, every six months, the Smash community votes on Smashboards for the legality of each stage and custom moveset for every character? We take the top 8 from the CMP and vote.

 

Your right. We should force the fun out of a game by just buying everything. Why didn't anyone else think?

Allowing us to unlock every custom for a small $2 is asking too much? Do they have to make a coupe stages and more costumes too?

 

Unlocking would not be a problem under my hypothetical situation of Sakurai giving us all the customs for $2. Anything else will get figured out over time.

This is honestly the first time I heard arguments that are against increasing the lifespan of a game if the dev literally gave the option to us that'll eliminate the ridiculous unlocking requirements.

...You didn't read my post. (The one I 'd, that is.)

 

Your right. We should force the fun out of a game by just buying everything. Why didn't anyone else think?

If your idea of "fun" is tedious repetitive grinding, then hey, you do you man.

 

...You didn't read my post. (The one I 'd, that is.)

There's nothing to address because you didn't give me examples of said tons of complexity in action.

Consistent is only a temporary issue

 

I'm pretty sure my opinion on customs is shared by very few people, but I'll say it anyway because I like to think I'm a pretty smart guy.

I'm for customs NOT because they offer diversity (something we do not need in a game with so many characters), but because they narrow the tier gaps for a lot of characters. People who say they are in favor of customs because it allows for personalization and counterplay elements I think are naive--they fail to understand that too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. Unless there is never another decent Smash game, Smash for Wii U has an active life of something like 7 or 8 years. With the multiple-hundreds of variations in movesets, there is no way the meta can settle to a point where everyone is comfortable with their match-ups. As long as that discomfort exists, the highly-competitive players will start to lose interest.

In a perfect world, we could choose one "optimal" set for each character and say, "Okay, this is the set that makes the character the best universally! Take it or leave it!" But there would never be a consensus and the project would be sabotaged from the inside before it ever left the ground.

Additionally, there is the problem of high-tiers like pikachu, Rosalina and Villager all getting even better--thus increasing the tier gaps for a lot of characters that benefit very little (or get nothing) from customs.

Because I am pro-customs, and because I want to see lower tiers succeed where they reasonably cannot in the customs-off scene, the compromise I've made for my local scene is that the official tier list determines customs-eligibility. If you are high tier and up, no customs. You don't need them to be competitively viable and the problem of widening tier gaps vanishes. If you are mid-tier and down, you get access to 3 carefully chosen premade sets. This is where it will trip a lot of people up--the "all-or-nothing" Donald Trump mentality that seems to pervade customs discourse. Plus, the arbitrary nature of 3 vs. 8.

The only thing I can say is that people are happy with the compromise. 10 or even 8 custom movesets is a lot--it multiplies the match-ups many times over. It's not about being motivated or lazy--it's about what you can reasonably expect to learn in the game's lifetime. And at the end of the day, like I said before, I don't believe custom moves' greatest strength is in its flexibility, but instead its potential to make more characters viable.

 

I'd be all for customs if there was a semblance of balance to them. 2/3 of them suck and 1/4 of them are purely better then the other options. Most of the side-grades are so insignificant that there's no realistic difference between picking one or another, and with the ones that are worth looking at you can usually tell what's best for the situation at a glance. Very few characters have any depth of choice with customs.

No sane person would claim the game is more balanced in character balance or in balancing the mechanics. Okay, Dorf goes up but then Jiggs and Zelda go down. Cloud and Diddy go down but then Mario and Rosalina go up.

I just can't think of a reason to turn customs on, and that's before you get into the effort required to set them up and use. And if Nintendo's going to keep supporting tournaments I doubt they're going to want people save hacking just so people can play...

 

1.1.1.

Thank you.

 

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.

There is a large difference between complexity and depth.
While the customs add a large amount of complexity to the game- possibly changing MU's for a character all together- and having a variety of different options for every situation only complicates the already complex meta.

Personally I don't see customs as adding depth, as they have very little in terms of deep mechanical uses, being simple button presses with clear and distinct uses. However, they serve to complicate things for vanillia players and create huge walls for meta growth, which isn't a good thing.

 

Honestly i have already accepted mii movesets (only movesets, not sizes). But i think we should just leave the customs button off. People say it's already broken because they haven't adapted, but the thing is. There's so much left to learn without customs. Adding more customs into the game would just add more to learn making the growth of this game slower. We have what.. 1? consistent player being ZeRo. This game still has a long way to go.

Ofcourse the DLC characters don't have customs either (Kinda personal bias for being a Roy main )

But yeah, the whole problem with this debate is: There's 2 sides. I was looking at customs when they were thought to be legal. i was okay with it, whatever, go with the meta. NOW we're at no customs. Which has created a more positive environment for most people i have met, most people are used to it by now, Can't we just stick with it?

Banning certain customs will just create more arguments about people disagreeing, so i don't think that's a good option. Disagreement is the whole reason this customs debate exists anyways.
Alot of people including me are just sick of the endless arguments and non defined rules. 2 to 3 stocks is and argument that has less impact IMO, i've played both. being an EU player i'm used to 3 stocks but didn't have too much trouble adapting to 2 stocks. (3 stocks still being my favorite).

Oh yeah keep in mind, for smaller tournaments, Unlocking customs would still be a problem. We take our own wii u's with us and we don't have the customs there.

Anyways, these are my thoughts.

Not even one; Nairo has only won two sets against ZeRo, both at the same tournament, and nobody else has won more than one.
That's not because we don't know much, it's because ZeRo's fundamentals are so good. It's why he was dominant in Brawl, PM, and Smash 4, and why he does well in Melee despite not labbing it as much.

 

There's nothing to address because you didn't give me examples of said tons of complexity in action.

I did: custom moves.

If you need another one, then just imagine a game with a mana system for attacks (each with varying costs), defense, attack, special defense, and special attack stats, type effectiveness, varying attack range, supports, and a bunch of other mechanics. See what I mean? It's a lot to keep track of.

Consistent is only a temporary issue

How so?

 

Man Li Gi since you didn't even bother to counter my arguments and resorted to name calling with a childish attitude. I don't think I'll bother with most of your "points" however I want to keep something clear.

Also, most TOs act independently if you haven't noticed. Having actually been a TO, talking to others, we make our own decisions. At some point we do try to standardize based on how large regions run while making our own tweaks, but listening to viewers or players usually does nothing.

If the community isn't united, Smash 4 is doomed. Remember what happened with Brawl Meta Knight? Well if you didn't know, Brawl MK was received a different treatment in every region (full ban, no ban, dubs bN). As a result the Brawl scene fragmented itself and now the game is pretty much dead. If every region uses it's own rules and it never unifies itself, the entire community will get damaged, Finally, what you haven't noticed yet, is that your 50 man locals don't remotely affect the scene the way CEO and EVO do.

 

There is a large difference between complexity and depth.
While the customs add a large amount of complexity to the game- possibly changing MU's for a character all together- and having a variety of different options for every situation only complicates the already complex meta.

Personally I don't see customs as adding depth, as they have very little in terms of deep mechanical uses, being simple button presses with clear and distinct uses. However, they serve to complicate things for vanillia players and create huge walls for meta growth, which isn't a good thing.

Depth is the amount of options a game has to offer, not complicated button presses. Customs increase the amount of things possible (which you just said and I quote," having a variety of different options for every situation only complicates the meta"). Customs aren't bad at all honestly, it's just that unlocking them and getting together a universal rule set (that still haven't even happened yet) has diminished the look of customs by the public, which is a shame since customs really enhance the amount of play styles that are available in the game.

The two flaws that keeps customs from being used globally right now is that's unlocking them is beyond a hassle and we've came too far now. Everything too developed towards the current rule set and I doubt that's going to change.

 

I did: custom moves.

If you need another one, then just imagine a game with a mana system for attacks (each with varying costs), defense, attack, special defense, and special attack stats, type effectiveness, varying attack range, supports, and a bunch of other mechanics. See what I mean? It's a lot to keep track of.

How so?

you didn't give me examples how custom moves only adds complexity and little depth.
Like, how is it that custom moves only add complexity and little depth when more than 100 moves have just been added into competitive play, thus furthering the amount of options you get to choose to define your plsystyle? That's my point, you didn't give me an example to address what I just said.

That analogy doesn't seem like it supports your thesis. Adding all those mechanics into the fray only deepens the cognitive thinking required to making the decision, no?

And consisentency is only a temporal problem because MUs get figured out with time. it may take longer to figure it out, but is it a bad thing? MvC2 and melee took over a decade to get truelly well-developed.

 

...

I have a similar way of thinking, but I believe we shouldn't allow full custom sets, at least not in the begining of customs on again, cause there are some moves that may be fine, but you put 4 fine moves together in the same moveset and it may get from fine to superb... it may or may not be enough to compete with higher tiers, who knows, but I would rather a single custom move use per character and this "buff" only available to low tiers... see how it works and then may even ban some moves or allow a 2 customs per character or higher tiers getting a custom move...

PRO CUSTOMS,ONLY IF THEY HAVE A LIMIT OF 1 CUSTOM PER CHARACTER AND ONLY AVAILABLE TO LOW TIERS.

Specific enough?...

 

As usual this crappy community ruled over by entitled little children likes to ban things for no reason. Customs do nothing but give the cast back the option you took away from them. Just because certain characters like using their 1-1-1-1 set doesn't mean it's somehow more fair than someone who likes the 1-3-1-1 set instead. It's not like Mario having a different fireball not affected by gravity or a recovery that is more powerful but shorter is totally going to ruin the game and remove the competitive aspect of it.

Having customs on doesn't mean you need to learn a million new matchups. That Mario having a longer upB this game? Oh boy now I need to learn how to fight Mario again! This is too much for me! Please let me skip all the work and just shut it off I want my easy mashing wins with Sheik.

All these useless and pointless bans and limitations that you force upon the whole community who doesn't know any better and you are all fine with it. How come nobody has a problem with forcing people to buy all the DLC for the game? Why aren't the DLC characters banned? They don't even have customs, they are not complete characters.

All my rage, Smashboards, never again...

 

As usual this crappy community ruled over by entitled little children likes to ban things for no reason. Customs do nothing but give the cast back the option you took away from them. Just because certain characters like using their 1-1-1-1 set doesn't mean it's somehow more fair than someone who likes the 1-3-1-1 set instead. It's not like Mario having a different fireball not affected by gravity or a recovery that is more powerful but shorter is totally going to ruin the game and remove the competitive aspect of it.

Having customs on doesn't mean you need to learn a million new matchups. That Mario having a longer upB this game? Oh boy now I need to learn how to fight Mario again! This is too much for me! Please let me skip all the work and just shut it off I want my easy mashing wins with Sheik.

All these useless and pointless bans and limitations that you force upon the whole community who doesn't know any better and you are all fine with it. How come nobody has a problem with forcing people to buy all the DLC for the game? Why aren't the DLC characters banned? They don't even have customs, they are not complete characters.

All my rage, Smashboards, never again...

Then go to tournaments with customs. I personally think we should hold a vote.

 

All we need now is Custom moves for DLC.

Smash will be a pay to win game.

Anyone who doesn't support this is probably a Gibus-wearing 2Fort Sniper lolololol

But really, please. Can we just buy them? Please, Sakurai!

l really do love the comparison with TF2, as l'm trying to get into it myself without trying to pay for it (totally not because someone's father doesn't want his 15 year old son to be playing an M rated FPS....), and it gets kinda crazy seeing how many different loadouts are possible. l always figured Pyro was an ambush class before the "Puff-and-Sting" tactic was introduced to me, for example. Soldier's generally a well-balanced class, until he gets Rocket Jumper and a Market Gardener. Then he's essentially a worse flying Demoknight. (Also, Demoknights by themselves, come on. That's cool) Combat Medics, front-line Spies, flanking Heavies, so much that's theoretically possible. As any somewhat experienced TF2 player would've learned the hard way, some loadouts just don't work, some do, but those could be situational. Some could completely change a class's style (again, Pyro) leaving the old style to be alien and possibly threatening when used.

Smash 4's customs don't even change the characters that much in comparison (except Palu and Miis and even then, they have a similar idea.) l would really enjoy seeing something like this in SSB4. TF2 got the toys little by little, while smash gets everything all at once (besides unlocking it, l guess...), so that much variety seems a little scary.

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.

ldk how much this actually helps. Just your average W+M2 (No, not M1) Pyro who's having a hard time remembering how much he loves smash.

 

Voting would be nice, educated voting would be even better. Though I think everyone would rather just have the attitude of "I don't want to deal with it so I'm going to ban it."

 

Then go to tournaments with customs. I personally think we should hold a vote.

I am lucky that my local tournaments have customs enabled. I am pissed because I can't travel to other tournaments.

 

I am lucky that my local tournaments have customs enabled. I am pissed because I can't travel to other tournaments.

Why would you want to? Customs are normally banned now

 

you didn't give me examples how custom moves only adds complexity and little depth.
Like, how is it that custom moves only add complexity and little depth when more than 100 moves have just been added into competitive play, thus furthering the amount of options you get to choose to define your plsystyle? That's my point, you didn't give me an example to address what I just said.

I never said that. I said that while customs do add depth to the game, the complexity is just too much. Again, it's like a really big, nice mansion that you can't afford; it'd be nice to have, but the cost is just too much, and you're doing just fine in your regular home anyway.

That analogy doesn't seem like it supports your thesis. Adding all those mechanics into the fray only deepens the cognitive thinking required to making the decision, no?

It also adds a metric ton of complexity – so many things to keep track of, memorize, etc. It's not only a high barrier to entry, but also not as enjoyable to play as once you do get into it (assuming that the complexity levels are that high of course).

And consisentency is only a temporal problem because MUs get figured out with time. it may take longer to figure it out, but is it a bad thing? MvC2 and melee took over a decade to get truelly well-developed.

Learning the MUs (which is quite ridiculous to expect of people when there are this many customs anyway) =/= consistency. Consistency means that something always acts the same. Mario always plays like Mario, for example, with a powerful edgeguard and combo game (and all of his other attributes). That way, there's a sense of familiarity, and the ability to know what exactly is going on. But if you turn on customs, then suddenly there is no consistency in terms of fighters (besides the downloadable ones). You don't know how Mario plays, because you don't know what Mario's moves are. As a spectator, this means you're often lost because you don't know what's happening. As a player, this means you don't have anything solid to fall back on; no one reliable strategy that you can really use. And while that may be fine on one or two characters like the Miis, having it for every character in the game makes the entire game inconsistent. There is no consistency, and consistency is crucial to a competitive game such as this.

As usual this crappy community ruled over by entitled little children likes to ban things for no reason. Customs do nothing but give the cast back the option you took away from them. Just because certain characters like using their 1-1-1-1 set doesn't mean it's somehow more fair than someone who likes the 1-3-1-1 set instead. It's not like Mario having a different fireball not affected by gravity or a recovery that is more powerful but shorter is totally going to ruin the game and remove the competitive aspect of it.

Having customs on doesn't mean you need to learn a million new matchups. That Mario having a longer upB this game? Oh boy now I need to learn how to fight Mario again! This is too much for me! Please let me skip all the work and just shut it off I want my easy mashing wins with Sheik.

All these useless and pointless bans and limitations that you force upon the whole community who doesn't know any better and you are all fine with it. How come nobody has a problem with forcing people to buy all the DLC for the game? Why aren't the DLC characters banned? They don't even have customs, they are not complete characters.

All my rage, Smashboards, never again...

Firstly, accusing players of wanting "easy mashing wins with Sheik" isn't exactly going to help your case.

Anyway, I've outlined this enough times already, so I'll keep this brief. The main problem with customs is their high barrier of entry; not only in terms of unlocking the darn things, but also because of the insane amount of complexity that they add. You have to memorize all of these moves to know what your opponent is going to do, know about prominent sets, know how to counter move-specific strategies... it's just too much. (IMO anyway.)

I won't repeat myself too much though, I've written other posts here detailing this.

 

I never said that. I said that while customs do add depth to the game, the complexity is just too much. Again, it's like a really big, nice mansion that you can't afford; it'd be nice to have, but the cost is just too much, and you're doing just fine in your regular home anyway.

It also adds a metric ton of complexity – so many things to keep track of, memorize, etc. It's not only a high barrier to entry, but also not as enjoyable to play as once you do get into it (assuming that the complexity levels are that high of course).

Learning the MUs (which is quite ridiculous to expect of people when there are this many customs anyway) =/= consistency. Consistency means that something always acts the same. Mario always plays like Mario, for example, with a powerful edgeguard and combo game (and all of his other attributes). That way, there's a sense of familiarity, and the ability to know what exactly is going on. But if you turn on customs, then suddenly there is no consistency in terms of fighters (besides the downloadable ones). You don't know how Mario plays, because you don't know what Mario's moves are. As a spectator, this means you're often lost because you don't know what's happening. As a player, this means you don't have anything solid to fall back on; no one reliable strategy that you can really use. And while that may be fine on one or two characters like the Miis, having it for every character in the game makes the entire game inconsistent. There is no consistency, and consistency is crucial to a competitive game such as this.

Firstly, accusing players of wanting "easy mashing wins with Sheik" isn't exactly going to help your case.

Anyway, I've outlined this enough times already, so I'll keep this brief. The main problem with customs is their high barrier of entry; not only in terms of unlocking the darn things, but also because of the insane amount of complexity that they add. You have to memorize all of these moves to know what your opponent is going to do, know about prominent sets, know how to counter move-specific strategies... it's just too much. (IMO anyway.)

I won't repeat myself too much though, I've written other posts here detailing this.

High barrier Entry to competitive play? That's gonna happen regardless and that's not even a totally bad thing. It's gonna happen regardless because it happens to every competitive game. You just started playing N64 smash? Okay, get your main and develop it (takes about a good 3 months to develop it really good), learn 8-9 MUs like the back of your hand (takes around 11 months since you're not able to actively practice those MUs so you have to play a lot of people),and develop your fundamentals like footsies and knowledge of the game mechanics (the latter takes 2 months, the former takes years and years of play).

You're literally describing Match-Ups; Being familiar with who you're fighting. That's Match-ups. You'll get that familiarity when you play more and you start to gain more experience against these characters. And it's not ridiculous to expect people to know these Match-ups because they'll always get broken down and dissected as time goes on.

Like, even if you didn't know your MU, you still have fundamentals that you can fall back on, playing to your character's strengths and hiding their weakness. I.e. Spacing Bairs and Ftilts/Dtilts as Doc against Whoever and constantly gaining knowledge on how fight it on the fly.

 

High barrier Entry to competitive play? That's gonna happen regardless and that's not even a totally bad thing. It's gonna happen regardless because it happens to every competitive game. You just started playing N64 smash? Okay, get your main and develop it (takes about a good month to develop it really good), learn 8-9 MUs like the back of your hand (takes around 8 months since you're not able to actively practice those MUs so you have to play a lot of people),and develop your fundamentals like footsies and knowledge of the game mechanics (the latter takes 3-4 weeks, the former takes years and years of play).

The fact that a barrier to entry already exists, does not mean that more of a barrier to entry would not be a bad thing. As another example of this fallacy:

"The house already gets dirt in it. Why can't we track mud inside?"

Similarly, while there is some amount of a barrier to entry to competitive Smash Bros., it is related directly to skill, the thing that is being and should be tested (whereas the barrier-to-entry for customs tests how long you're willing to grind for them, and how many things you can memorize). Also, customs add even more of a BtE to the point where the game comes downright inaccessible. Learning nearly 60 characters, the game mechanics, the stages, strategies, etc is already complicated enough; we don't need over four hundred more moves to remember and to unlock. All this will do is turn off potential players because of the ridiculously high barrier to entry.

You're literally describing Match-Ups; Being familiar with who you're fighting. That's Match-ups. You'll get that familiarity when you play more and you start to gain more experience against these characters. And it's not ridiculous to expect people to know these Match-ups because they'll always get broken down and dissected as time goes on.

Like, even if you didn't know your MU, you still have fundamentals that you can fall back on, playing to your character's strengths and hiding their weakness. I.e. Spacing Bairs and Ftilts/Dtilts as Doc against Whoever and constantly gaining knowledge on how fight it on the fly.

But knowing matchups before you enter the match is a pretty big advantage. If you know that say, Villager is going to camp you, then you know to get up-close ASAP. Or that a given fighter is going to rushdown you, to play a bit more defensively. (Or a different strategy.) But with customs, that gets thrown out the window – you essentially have no idea how to play against your opponent. And as we've seen with the additions of DLC fighters, not knowing a MU can lead to the other player having a big advantage, since you don't know how to effectively deal with the strategies that they employ. The metagame benefits from the development and studying of certain characters, and with customs bringing to the table nearly limitless combinations of moves, it just isn't possible to be prepared for it all.

In order to succeed in a customs-on environment, you need to:

• Spend lots of time unlocking customs to practice against (you're best off getting all of them to prepare for unforeseen characters, which takes even more time)
• Spend even more time and energy memorizing and studying them

Which frankly, bogs down the experience too much to be worth the benefits IMO. I personally don't play Smash to spend hours unlocking and studying hundreds of customs – but hey, if that's your thing, then more power to ya.

 

How are custom moves too complex? Wavedashing, the most basic tech in Melee, is more complex than a custom move.

If it's a matter of unlocking all of them, that's why you use community-determined sets of custom moves that can be pre-loaded a day before the tournament begins instead of waiting untill the week the tournament starts and then trying to grind them all out.

Say, for example, a Villager wants Extreme Balloon Trip as one of his moves. That Villager will have to use one of the pre-determined EBT sets, which probably are going to have some detrimental customs on them to balance out EBT's strengths. Same with Pikachu and HSB and Rosalina with Luma Warp; those customs would be placed on sets with other, less powerful customs to balance out the power level, so they can't be broken if they're not free-form selection.

The only added complexity from customs is choosing a set of customs if you even choose any at all. One menu. That's it. The challenge of unlocking customs is rendered a pointless complaint if we have premade sets for all characters that can be loaded on before a tournament begins by the people bringing in their units. Loading it onto EVO's WiiU Smash setups once keeps them there forever, unless they delete the sets.

And just like Baby_Sneak said, there's always a high entry barrier to any competetive game. Do you really think that any random Joe could beat Daigo in a Street Fighter tournament? No, because obviously Daigo is far, far better because of that high entry barrier. Same thing here; no random Joe is going to 4-stock Mew2King on FD or Zer0 on Battlefield because those two are just far superior due to that same entry barrier.

Hell, do you think any random Joe can beat Wayne Gretzky's accolades or be as universally loved as Ed Belfour or Maurice Richard? No, of course not! They spent years getting great at their games, and their games are way more complex than Smash Bros. is. I don't see why raising our skill cap due to custom moves would make for an absurd entry barrier; hockey has a more absurd entry barrier than Smash ever will!

Just like not every hockey player will be the next Rocket Richard, not every Smash player will be the next Mew2King. Those who can adapt the best to change will succeed, those who can't adapt as well to change will fall behind.

 

there's just SO MANY custom moves. it also takes a ton of time to get all of them. it makes the game way too complicated with the hundreds of outcomes characters can have with them. i think we should just keep things consistent and not use customs.

 

How are custom moves too complex? Wavedashing, the most basic tech in Melee, is more complex than a custom move.

Yes, but my point is, as jigglesthepuff said, the sheer amount of them. The complexity of a wavedash, although this isn't very relevant, isn't that high – other than a still-rather-simple input, it's just a slide along the ground. It's got more depth to it than complexity.

Still, though. Say an advanced technique is... two times as complex as a custom move. (These things aren't quite possible to quantify, but oh well.) While that is true, if you add all 400+ customs together, you have 225 ATs' worth of complexity. See what I mean? It's the fact that you have to memorize all the customs, become familiar with them, know about strategies, et cetera.

If it's a matter of unlocking all of them, that's why you use community-determined sets of custom moves that can be pre-loaded a day before the tournament begins instead of waiting untill the week the tournament starts and then trying to grind them all out.

Say, for example, a Villager wants Extreme Balloon Trip as one of his moves. That Villager will have to use one of the pre-determined EBT sets, which probably are going to have some detrimental customs on them to balance out EBT's strengths. Same with Pikachu and HSB and Rosalina with Luma Warp; those customs would be placed on sets with other, less powerful customs to balance out the power level, so they can't be broken if they're not free-form selection.

The issue with unlocking, while an inconvenience to tournaments, is more of an issue to actual players, particularly those who are newer to the scene. They likely don't have access to a "master 3DS" with all of the sets on it or whatnot.

The only added complexity from customs is choosing a set of customs if you even choose any at all. One menu. That's it. The challenge of unlocking customs is rendered a pointless complaint if we have premade sets for all characters that can be loaded on before a tournament begins by the people bringing in their units. Loading it onto EVO's WiiU Smash setups once keeps them there forever, unless they delete the sets.

I think we're working with different definitions of "complexity." In the way I'm using the term, it means the amount of systems present in the game itself, how much stuff there is going on essentially. (Depth being the amount of options and strategies that come about from complexity.)

And just like Baby_Sneak said, there's always a high entry barrier to any competetive game. Do you really think that any random Joe could beat Daigo in a Street Fighter tournament? No, because obviously Daigo is far, far better because of that high entry barrier. Same thing here; no random Joe is going to 4-stock Mew2King on FD or Zer0 on Battlefield because those two are just far superior to that same entry barrier. And Smash doesn't have nearly the amount of intricacies Street Fighter or Quake do.

As I said in my previous post, the existence of a barrier to entry, does not mean that there is such a thing as too much of one. Too much of a BtE, and the game becomes inaccessible. (See my "tracking mud" example from before.)

The barrier to entry that customs present also tests a different, and less important, thing. Consider this analogy: a foot-racing team has a tryout race, and the top five in the race get in. This tests how good you are at foot-racing, and the best get into the team. This mirrors the current situation with Smash Bros.: you need skill in order to compete, you need to be good at the game. No problems here.

However, what if that foot-racing team added a part of the tryouts focused around chess, and winning a chess game was a requirement to make the team? That doesn't make no sense – chess has nothing to do with foot-racing! Similarly, customs force players to go through the tedium of unlocking and studying over four hundred moves in order to perform as well as possible, and be prepared to battle. Smash Bros. isn't about the ability to cope with tedium, or about studying copious amounts of information (at least, not to this extent); it's about being able to predict your opponent's reactions, knowing your options, and reacting when your reads fail. (And a bunch of other stuff, I'd imagine.)

And yes, you do have to familiarize yourself with a decent amount of information already, i.e. default movesets... but adding more memorization does not enhance the experience. (Again, see the "tracking mud" example.)

 

[deleting]

 

As usual this crappy community ruled over by entitled little children likes to ban things for no reason. Customs do nothing but give the cast back the option you took away from them. Just because certain characters like using their 1-1-1-1 set doesn't mean it's somehow more fair than someone who likes the 1-3-1-1 set instead. It's not like Mario having a different fireball not affected by gravity or a recovery that is more powerful but shorter is totally going to ruin the game and remove the competitive aspect of it.

Having customs on doesn't mean you need to learn a million new matchups. That Mario having a longer upB this game? Oh boy now I need to learn how to fight Mario again! This is too much for me! Please let me skip all the work and just shut it off I want my easy mashing wins with Sheik.

All these useless and pointless bans and limitations that you force upon the whole community who doesn't know any better and you are all fine with it. How come nobody has a problem with forcing people to buy all the DLC for the game? Why aren't the DLC characters banned? They don't even have customs, they are not complete characters.

All my rage, Smashboards, never again...

You know you actually have a good point. Custom moves are only a reskin and thus should take you little time to adapt. Plus most characters are hardly worth their custom moves outside of characters like DK or Villager.

 

Some customs are op, some are worthless, and none of them are balanced towards the characters' movesets. I don't think they fit in.
Not to mention, there's 8 customs x 51 characters (assuming none of them are banned) = 408 customs. 376 of which have to be unlocked. That's way too many to expect people to unlock, memorize, and prepare counter strategies for. It makes learning the game a bit of a headache. But hey, if people can agree on the particular customs that can be used (balanced ones, which tier characters can use them, how many loudouts, etc.) without actually shortening the game's lifespan and things turn out better that way, then go for it.

I'd rather low tiers stay low tiers than gift them a strong special they're going to use all the time to shoot up the tiers. For example, If I mained Zelda, and she had a really good custom, I wouldn't want her to become high tier because of one special move that overshadows the rest of her moveset. Honestly, I think it hurts the characters' integrity to play like that, and to me everything feels and looks better and cleaner vanilla.

Not entirely sure where I stand with Palutena and the miis, though.

Again, that's why you have predesignated sets which can be ported from tournament to tournament. And really, learning custom moves is nothing compared to the rigorous training sports players go through.

And why should low-tiers stay low-tier just because you don't want anything in the meta to change? Melee's survived as long as it has because the meta keeps changing. Zelda used to be high-tier in Melee, look where she is now. Yoshi and Icies used to be middling in the lower tiers, and now both are considered high tier.

Compare the Melee of 2004 to the Melee of today, and they look like totally different experiences. Being consistent with advanced tech in Melee takes as much time as learning the MU's in customs matches (actually, learning customs MU's is shorter, since all you need to really learn for customs matches is how to change your strategy depending on the set your opponent is running, not learning the entire MU again).

It's not like customs are some game-breaking mechanic that lets Charizard kill Sheik and Zamus at like 20% or something stupid, it's all sidegrades and tweaks to the base moveset. If anything, it promotes use of more characters because there's more to learn. Sure, it's not as easy, but life shouldn't be easy, even if you're playing sports.

There's nothing wrong with wanting a stable meta, but when that stable meta has so much potential that people are willing to squander just because of whatever smoke and mirrors they can conjure up to barrier it out for one thing, there's going to be a problem with some people.

Let's be real; do we really want to be in a situation where almost everyone in the top percent uses Zamus or Sheik? Because frankly, I don't. I'd like more diversity here, especially since some characters have been buffed heavily and are full of potential.

 

The fact that a barrier to entry already exists, does not mean that more of a barrier to entry would not be a bad thing. As another example of this fallacy:

"The house already gets dirt in it. Why can't we track mud inside?"

Similarly, while there is some amount of a barrier to entry to competitive Smash Bros., it is related directly to skill, the thing that is being and should be tested (whereas the barrier-to-entry for customs tests how long you're willing to grind for them, and how many things you can memorize). Also, customs add even more of a BtE to the point where the game comes downright inaccessible. Learning nearly 60 characters, the game mechanics, the stages, strategies, etc is already complicated enough; we don't need over four hundred more moves to remember and to unlock. All this will do is turn off potential players because of the ridiculously high barrier to entry.

But knowing matchups before you enter the match is a pretty big advantage. If you know that say, Villager is going to camp you, then you know to get up-close ASAP. Or that a given fighter is going to rushdown you, to play a bit more defensively. (Or a different strategy.) But with customs, that gets thrown out the window – you essentially have no idea how to play against your opponent. And as we've seen with the additions of DLC fighters, not knowing a MU can lead to the other player having a big advantage, since you don't know how to effectively deal with the strategies that they employ. The metagame benefits from the development and studying of certain characters, and with customs bringing to the table nearly limitless combinations of moves, it just isn't possible to be prepared for it all.

In order to succeed in a customs-on environment, you need to:

• Spend lots of time unlocking customs to practice against (you're best off getting all of them to prepare for unforeseen characters, which takes even more time)
• Spend even more time and energy memorizing and studying them

Which frankly, bogs down the experience too much to be worth the benefits IMO. I personally don't play Smash to spend hours unlocking and studying hundreds of customs – but hey, if that's your thing, then more power to ya.

I'm still under the hypothetical of Sakurai giving us the $2 for all customs; the hypothetical that I'm arguing that would've helped customs be mainstream for years to come. So that leaves me with this Point: "custom moves add a barrier to entry that is unreasonable, and other games entry to barrier is directly related to skill. Also, the game throws MUs out the window because of the limitless nature of it all."

Okay let's go

• Skill is a factor that contributes to the entry barrier of course, but good players aren't just fundamental players; they're scientists and smart players who know a lot more than a beginning competitive player about the game they play. You still have to learn a bunch of MUs, learn the system and game mechanics (memorization), and also further develop your main for the constantly increasing skill level of the other players. Customs may increase the barrier to entry by adding more things to learn, but in turn, you have more options to ultilize to your advantage.
• And about MUs, it's still a non-issue. Why? building a basic guideline for each MU is very minimal work. That's enough to get you from being killed off of plain ignorance. Mastery of a MU, however, will take years and years of experience.

Which isn't a bad thing. Customs would add so many years to the game and increase the longevity by so much it's ridiculous.

 

I honestly think that customs do not add anything to the game in terms of spectating. It honestly makes matches more repetitive, and timing out can become the status quo in some cases. So as a spectator, I think customs detract from the watchability of Smash 4. Honestly, that will take away a couple years away from Smash 4's lifespan if that happens

 

[deleting]

 

Why is everyone assuming that customs need to take over the main meta? I think I speak for most customs advocates when I say that we at least want a side meta like Glitch is doing somewhere along the lines of Doubles. Why can't we let both the customs and non-customs singles metas exist?

There are so many cool moves being unused right now because of pettiness and logistics. There is so much potential being left unexplored because there are a few annoying moves and concerns about setup, etc. We really should be giving customs a shot again by getting some side events going or having an official ladder for customs on Anthers or something.

Btw guys, be sure to join our Customs discord if you're interested in customs: https://discord.gg/0pqkuGnInuFrMfiV. There are also singles and doubles ladders for Wii and 3DS there! We need more people on those.

 

Man Li Gi since you didn't even bother to counter my arguments and resorted to name calling with a childish attitude. I don't think I'll bother with most of your "points" however I want to keep something clear.



If the community isn't united, Smash 4 is doomed. Remember what happened with Brawl Meta Knight? Well if you didn't know, Brawl MK was received a different treatment in every region (full ban, no ban, dubs bN). As a result the Brawl scene fragmented itself and now the game is pretty much dead. If every region uses it's own rules and it never unifies itself, the entire community will get damaged, Finally, what you haven't noticed yet, is that your 50 man locals don't remotely affect the scene the way CEO and EVO do.

You want me to address your points yet won't address mine? Hmm not a fair trade plus I don't even think you should be countering mine since you aren't a TO of any capacity or probably doesn't regularly go to tourneys.

I never named called. In fact you called me childish for whatever reason I want to know how so. I refrain from using ad hominems so when I win an argument, its not because I played dirty. I can see if you said I was being condescending, but I wasn't insulting you.

There are multiple reasons why Brawl died. The banning of MK was temporary ( like 3 months in 2012 after Apex 2012 was flooded with so MKs). After that event double MK teams was forever banned. The ban was lifted but tainted the perception of Brawl to casuals or people unfamiliar with the game. To this day, people say to me that MK is banned when he wasn't. Many regions didn't even adhere to that 3 months unenforced ban since they deemed it dumb. The only major that banned MK was the WHOBO series 1-4. WHOBO 5 included MK. In the end banning of MK didn't do much of anything except taint Brawl. What really fragmented the community was PM since it was like a good band aid and hold over till Smash 4 came out. That game took many Brawl and Melee vets, was hype, and even made VGBC. PM was the biggest deterrent to play Brawl in the end. Plus a lot of top Smash 4 players are Brawl players. So that means that Smash 4 stole even more of the weakened Brawl scene.

Anyways, whatever size of tourney I've hosted doesn't matter since I've game from hosting 50-64 to 150 to 296 before. Granted the 296 was a co host operation, but yeah I don't know where you're trying to go from. I just told you TOs act independently so EVO or CEO were never interested in what I did. Plus EVO does it own thing in tourneys. For Christ sake, items were on for EVO 2008 for Brawl.