If Ultimate Had Custom Moves

[THE SLOTH]

As we all know, custom moves pretty much got the boot in the transition from 4 to Ultimate. Most likely from all the work that would come from adding 3 variants of each character's special to a 70+ roster, even with lots of returning characters from 4. I personally miss them, they were a fun experiment, and even if there were some seriously busted moves on some characters (or the complete opposite problem for most characters, most notoriously ) they were a fun way to play with friends.

I'm not here to start a debate on if custom moves should/would/could become legal again if they were in Ultimate. Best case scenario if they came back were that they complimented the rest of a character's moveset while not being an over-reliable option while also offering a different way to play a character. Pretty impossible to do for 608 custom specials out of the 76 characters (counting individually as , , and here) in the base roster alone, but hey, one can dream. Even if they weren't balanced, they'd still be pretty fun to toy with like how Spirits are, arguably even more. Instead, I just wanna speculate/brainstorm on what could've been. Do this for one character's whole special set, only one of their specials, or heck, just one variant of one of their specials, but just think up custom moves for the characters of Ultimate. This works best with characters who are returning from Melee/Brawl, DLC from 4, a newcomer, or have had one of their specials drastically changed since 4 (ex: 's Remote Bombs). Try to keep them balanced as best you can (although this is just a creative exercise thread so I can't really stop you from making Kong Cyclone 2.0 but?? maybe don't do that?? thanks).

 

[Quillion]

If they were going to go with Customs again, I wouldn't mind if they decrease the quantity and up the quality instead. Not every character needs customs, but only those whose movesets have no room for iconic abilities would get them. Like:

• Mario with his Ground Pound
• Link with his hammer or Fire Rod
• Kirby with any number of copy abilities
• Samus with her Ice Beam
• Ganondorf with his lightning ball

I'd just prefer completely different moves rather than tweaked versions of existing ones, but they shouldn't go overboard with it.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I would've loved for Custom Moves to come back, but if Sakurai is insistent on keeping them out, I recommend that he should've assigned the custom moves to the Echo Characters and start distributing the special moves amongst the original characters & their echo's.

This way you can create TWO somewhat unique characters by splitting up the special moveset.

e.g. Marth could get a large change up in his usual special moveset while Lucina will get the other half.

Here's what I would do with Marth & Lucina as an example:

Marth's Dolphin Slash can be changed to the forward & up @ an angle variant
Marth's Shield Breaker can have the normal version with the neutral charge up and the neutral charge up + direction can be the tornado variant
Marth's Counter can be updated to his Iai version where he moves towards the target and has a wide counter arc
Marth's Custom Combo can remain the same

Lucina's Dolphin Slash can be straight vertical one
Lucina's Shield Breaker can have the normal version with the neutral charge up and the neutral charge up + direction can be the dashing poking variant that covers a lot of ground
Lucina's Counter can be the easy counter with larger opening time, but with normal version damage
Lucina's Custom Combo can be the variant that launches people away really far

This would create truly interesting variants of the same character.

Some moves can be added in as a charged up + Direction version or "Smashed Special" input command of said move.
This way characters can have more moves than the default set alone.

Imagine Mega Man having more access to all his special moves.

This would allow a wider variety of play and make the Echo fighters genuinely have important differences from the original instead of superficial differences.