(LEGALITY) Custom Special Moves: Maybe. Modifiable Attributes: No.

[Canuckduck]

I suspect Mii's will be banned from competitive play.

 

[LiteralGrill]

I'd love having custom moves in competitive play as long as the people know what the other has picked. But let's see.

(The following only applies if they decide to ban custom moves after all)

ONE Thing I'm absolutely sure on though: At least SOME custom movesets WILL be used in competitive no matter what. Why do I think that? Easy: Because if there is a move, like Meta Knights down B, that can be bugged to high heavens they WILL select another move and make THAT the legal move instead of outright banning the character himself. Banning a whole character when you can just rebalance him somewhat by changing the broken as F move would be MADNESS. Same goes for so called "trash tier" fighters (not that i care about tiers personally) : If there is a move that makes said character trash tier, and there would be a custom option that made him mid-tier, they would most likely change it to that as a legal option. All of this only applies if the customized move would solve the issue obviously.

TL;DR : Custom Moves decided by the individual player? Maybe and Hopefully.
Custom Moves as a balancing method for the ones that decide on the rules? Definitly.

I couldn't agree less sadly. Remember how huge the fight was to ban Meta Knight? the fight would be equally as large to change his moves to something else. Plus the entire process would be so subjective no one could reasonable enforce any rules made in that manner.

I suspect Mii's will be banned from competitive play.

It really depends on how customizable their size is. So far we have 2 sizes, if that's all there is there is ZERO reason to ban them. Even if there is maybe a middle class there is still no reason. People can just use default looking Miis at tournaments on the Wii U where logistics are an issue and go all out with Miis on the 3DS where there aren't such issues.

 

[Aninymouse]

Competetive community will go with characters and moves that are most efficient for competitive play. Miis and Palutena may looked over if there's a character that's stronger than them. And even if they have these special moves, people will customize them to a point where it's best for competition. So if we find one combination is better for a character many may adopt it, or we'll have a few people who try a different approach. This is no different from a player who uses ATs and those who don't (Lucas in PM, Pink Fresh doesn't DACUS much but other plays implement it. Hell, some do B-Sticking or the like to transform how he plays as a whole), except ATs are usually hard to pick up.

And it seems these customization skew how moves work. For example - Mario's fireball. Normally, it has a set bouncing path. With the customization, it changes to a big, slow moving singular fireball (slow to get out) or one that's quick, straight and weak. It's a trade off in most cases from the usual, balanced move with both power and speed.

I think people fear this because it'll make tier lists near impossible to make. Then tiers will really *ahem* be for queers (for lack of a better word). But hell, your Mario could be having trouble getting opponents with a spaced game, so he whips out his horizontal shot fireball. Now he has something similar to Foxes laser to deal with foes, and opponents need to become smarter and play better.

So why don't people want to change? Because we fear something different - something that's out of the norm. Smash 4 is not Melee. Smash 4 is not Brawl. It's a whole new beast. And this will be a key differentiator and an awesome addition to competitive play, if we let it.

Think of it, it may take longer, but it adds more meta game to the meta game. More thinking, more thought about how to handle matches. Some will choose a move set and keep it throughout, or some will mix it up, almost like a character counter pick. I think it would be a lot of fun and a refreshing addition to the Smash Bros formula.

Again, nobody holds us back but ourselves. Melee players and Project M players may not like this because it REALLY strays from the usual. But if they thought it would be close to Melee than I'm sorry but you were at fault from the start.

To me, we should be optimistic about this addition. If it indeed proves to be unbalanced, we can scrap it. I feel as a community we'll be able to work it out.

I've been saying the same things since the very beginning. Agreeing with my man Alax, here.

Also, at this time, I am very much against customized "equipment." I could elaborate, but I don't have time now.

 

[.Shìkì]

I couldn't agree less sadly. Remember how huge the fight was to ban Meta Knight? the fight would be equally as large to change his moves to something else. Plus the entire process would be so subjective no one could reasonable enforce any rules made in that manner.

That is how a LOT of competitive scenes handle things though. Also, it's really not that hard: Moves that can be gamebreaking (examples include invicibility, hitboxes that are 5 times the intended size, moves that can bug your character to be permanently floating or be invincible or glitch you into a wall etc.) will be replaced by any move that doesn't do that. Let'S say Mario'S fireball would have a glitch that made it possible to hit everyone on the stage with the normal version at the same time, change it to fast traveln linear fireball if it doesn'T have that problem, case solved.

It really depends on how customizable their size is. So far we have 2 sizes, if that's all there is there is ZERO reason to ban them. Even if there is maybe a middle class there is still no reason. People can just use default looking Miis at tournaments on the Wii U where logistics are an issue and go all out with Miis on the 3DS where there aren't such issues.

It depends more on whether custom moves are allowed at all. Judging from your reasoning concerning exchanging gamebreaking abilities for others , completely exchangeable movesets wouldn't be allowed from the get go. And if you allow custom moves you might aswell simply ban those that break the game in a manner as stated above.

 

[Hong]

A bit OT, but I'll say the Miis will take quite a bit of regulation to implement. There are many ways to go about it, and we as a community will just have to decide. Personally, I'm in favour of just having four 100% default Miis on each system. If the Mii Fighters are shown to be under-performing, we can negotiate to allow four lightweights and four heavyweights on each system as well. They look like they have a lot to offer as members of our roster, so I'll do whatever I can to accommodate them within reason.

As for balance of custom special moves, I'm entirely indifferent to it. It's not like the game is going to be balanced with or without custom special moves. There would have to be something down-right awful to have them disabled for balance reasons.

 

[Conda]

Depends if the team is working on balancing these new moves, or if the main moveset is the set considered to be 'balanced'.
When/if we get balance patches, what is the set the team will keep in mind as the baseline? If peach gets nerfed because she's strong with an alternate side B, but in ways that doesn't nerf her alternate side-b, then a meta problem happens where players have to use a certain special custom move in order to stay ahead of the curve of how Sakurai's team balances the characters.
If your character is nerfed, or intentionally weak, because a powerful alternate B attack exists for the character, then you have to use that powerful B attack to be playing a balanced setup.

This is how it has worked in MMOs for example.

Hypothetical example scenario: Hunters have a strong build in WoW. Blizzard responds by nerfing their mana regeneration. This nerf affects all hunters, not just the hunters using the powerful build. It succeeds in balancing the overpowered build, but makes the not-so-powerful hunter builds at an even bigger disadvantage now. In a future patch, the less-used hunter skill trees may get a perk that give them faster mana regeneration. The cycle continues. It's a mess, but this is how Blizzard did it.

Having alternate builds for a class/character welcomes that sort of chaos. Let's hope Sakurai's team has enough balancing experience to pull it off.

 

[infomon]

I don't get why everyone's worried about the Miis. All Miis are allowed, period. When the game comes out, if for some wacky reason it's too complicated or takes too long for players to get their Miis on tourney setups, then we may have to find a workaround way to support them, but it seems unlikely. Sakurai obviously intends this to be easy.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I don't really see why people are so weird about Miis either. It's three full characters, and it would be extraordinary and extreme to ban three full characters. There isn't a shred of evidence that they're going to be overpowered at this point so simply defining procedure to maximize diversity while minimizing time loss is IMO obvious (system Miis only on Wii U since Mii Maker takes forever, all Miis on 3DS since you can set up ahead of time). What possible reason could there be to do otherwise?

 

[Malex]

Custom Moves should not be used for balancing. It isn't our responsibility to balance the game, except for banning things that are too good. Note that by "too good", I am talking that EVERY SINGLE tournament is played by 90% of this character. So good that it makes the entire game unplayable. I'm talking Akuma from Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo good.

The argument of banning custom moves then using them for balancing is ludicrous. Why should some characters get to use their "best moves" but not others? Why should some characters get to use special moves that would hard counter other characters, but they can't switch to moves that balance that particular match up? There will be riots in the streets if you force someone to switch a good move to a useless one.

All custom moves should be legal. If a custom move is too powerful, any by "too powerful" I'm talking Akuma level powerful, then you can ban that particular move. If Slow Fireball Mario is so good that every single tournament is played with 90% attendance of Slow Fireball Marios and the top 32 of every finals bracket is Slow Fireball Mario, then it's time to ban Slow Fireball.

Perhaps there's a combination of special moves that are "too powerful." Slow Fireball + Gust Cape makes for a unique combination for some reason that is too good. Then you ban the combination. "No Mario can equip Slow Fireball AND Gust Cape."

Over time, the competitive "standard" will be established. Every character will use their best moves most of the time. Where's the problem with this? Any time a player selects a character, they also choose their special moves. This will keep tournaments operating in the same way. (Or, perhaps, let both players pick character, then special moves, if special moves can counter too hard)


As far as equipment goes, there is just not enough evidence. Logistically, it is a nightmare. This is based only on the information that they have random stats. Each Wii U will need access to the same equipment for it to be viable in tournaments. It seems there is an equipment shop, at least, so perhaps we can allow all the items from the "item shop" or something like that. But we simply don't have enough information to say whether or not they need to be banned, and committing to a decision either way is premature.


Lastly, Miis. I was under the impression that there is a scale of Speed <--> Power. Depending on the height of the character, it moves you along the scale, not that there are "Speed" Miis and "Power" Miis. It certainly isn't clear either way, but if there's a scale instead of two distinct choices, then there will be a logistical problem. However, the easiest course of action would be to have each tournament set up have 100% speed and 100% power, and we can just allow each of them. I don't really see how this is an issue.

 

[Hong]

I don't get why everyone's worried about the Miis. All Miis are allowed, period. When the game comes out, if for some wacky reason it's too complicated or takes too long for players to get their Miis on tourney setups, then we may have to find a workaround way to support them, but it seems unlikely. Sakurai obviously intends this to be easy.

I suppose that's true.

Though I don't know if the Miis you store on a Wii Remote can be extracted while in-game (or use QR codes). If not, we'll have to back out of Smash 4 and onto the Wii menu just to import them, all the while slogging through the Wii U's loading times. I'd figure having four Miis that are the lightest, four that are the heaviest, and four that are down the middle (default) would be able to accommodate the needs of the Mii Fighter player. I'll admit I could be wrong and there will be players who want to fit themselves between those three spectrums, but that aside the only lost are aesthetics.

To be fair, as long as they're not a top tier character, I suppose it won't be something we have to deal with often. If that's the case, as a TO I won't mind if every now and then they need to get their Mii imported for that setup.

 

[Renji64]

Aren't custom moves banned online meaning they most likely aren't balanced.

 

[Aninymouse]

Aren't custom moves banned online meaning they most likely aren't balanced.

There is no proof to substantiate your assumption. Not yet.

 

[Hong]

Aren't custom moves banned online meaning they most likely aren't balanced.

It's more about the fact you are playing anonymously with up to three other players, so you don't know what special moves people have until they use them. That's a huge deal. Imagine playing USF4 and not knowing what ultra they have. :x

 

[Renji64]

There is no proof to substantiate your assumption. Not yet.

Time will tell i don't think they will be balanced at all that seems like alot of work to balance the general game and all custom moves.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

"For Glory" online mode is just a quickmatch mode and really shouldn't have its settings read into for our purposes (Final Destination only, very likely time mode...). You're free to use custom moves in "with friends" which will be the main online venue for competitive play.

I mean, they might be imbalanced; I really don't know. However, that's really not something we can know until the game is in our hands. The system is designed in a way that it very plausibly could be very competitive, and that's a good reason in my book to give them a fair chance, treat them as allowed by default, and only go back to it if what's in the game proves this is a bad idea. I do strongly agree with the "all or nothing" school of thought though. We can't get into the business of baning some moves and not others, and we certainly aren't getting into the business of deciding which set-ups per character are used as a rule. If the system as it exists is not conducive to free choice by players, we won't use it.

 

[Malex]

"For Glory" online mode is just a quickmatch mode and really shouldn't have its settings read into for our purposes (Final Destination only, very likely time mode...). You're free to use custom moves in "with friends" which will be the main online venue for competitive play.

I mean, they might be imbalanced; I really don't know. However, that's really not something we can know until the game is in our hands. The system is designed in a way that it very plausibly could be very competitive, and that's a good reason in my book to give them a fair chance, treat them as allowed by default, and only go back to it if what's in the game proves this is a bad idea. I do strongly agree with the "all or nothing" school of thought though. We can't get into the business of baning some moves and not others, and we certainly aren't getting into the business of deciding which set-ups per character are used as a rule. If the system as it exists is not conducive to free choice by players, we won't use it.

By "all or nothing" do you mean to allow them all of them or none of them at start? Or do you mean that if we have to ban a single move to ban them all?

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

By "all or nothing" do you mean to allow them all of them or none of them at start? Or do you mean that if we have to ban a single move to ban them all?

I mean the latter. If you have to start banning some moves, ban them all. If you don't need to ban them all, allow them all. There may be wiggle room if there's a crazy situation like precisely one custom move is a thousand times better than all others and breaks the game while all of the others are obviously fair, but I find that unlikely to the point that we shouldn't worry about it.

 

[Terotrous]

Aren't custom moves banned online meaning they most likely aren't balanced.

Every stage other than FD is banned online, too. Sakurai is a dope.

I think it's fairly clear that we test out custom moves in the first few tournaments and if they're broken garbage then we ban them. As for Miis, I would hope there's some way to put your Mii on a Wiimote and bring it with you or something.

 

[Raijinken]

Too many pages to read, but I think it's reasonable to imagine that if a character seems underpowered with their default attributes and moveset, that an "established" specific customization would be reasonable on a tournament-by-tournament basis. Allowing player-level customization is of course out of the question unless it's generally agreed that the tradeoffs are universally fair. Even then, short of saving data via an Amiibo or something (since details on that are vague right now), the setup time tradeoff is too high for large tournaments.

Besides, Sakurai said they'd like to do post-release patching, so hopefully it won't be an issue anyway.

 

[Malex]

I mean the latter. If you have to start banning some moves, ban them all. If you don't need to ban them all, allow them all. There may be wiggle room if there's a crazy situation like precisely one custom move is a thousand times better than all others and breaks the game while all of the others are obviously fair, but I find that unlikely to the point that we shouldn't worry about it.

I don't like gray areas, but I feel that an "all or nothing" approach on banning custom moves is not the right way to go. On the other hand, I don't feel that there is a magic number I can give you either, it really just depends on how much we benefit from custom moves being implemented.

Let's say that there are 20 OP custom moves that are game breaking good, most of them are ok, and some of them are useless. So, we ban all customs, and are left with 15 "competitively viable" characters. If we allow custom moves and now we have 25 viable characters, I think it's something we should be considering, since you've almost doubled the amount of characters may perform well in a tournament.

I really don't like dealing with situations like this, and an "all or nothing" is a very practical approach, but I think we will have to take a serious look at the big picture when it comes time to make the decision.

 

[infomon]

Allowing player-level customization is of course out of the question unless it's generally agreed that the tradeoffs are universally fair.

Nope, it is the default, expected modus operandi unless there's something fundamentally broken about it (e.g. waayy too difficult to setup during tournaments).

Even then, short of saving data via an Amiibo or something (since details on that are vague right now), the setup time tradeoff is too high for large tournaments.

We have no reason to expect this to be true. Amiibo is one possibility, and we just have to wait to find out.

 

[Raijinken]

Nope, it is the default, expected modus operandi unless there's something fundamentally broken about it (e.g. waayy too difficult to setup during tournaments).



We have no reason to expect this to be true. Amiibo is one possibility, and we just have to wait to find out.

Seeing as (last I saw), PM tournament ops are still wondering and complaining that there are too many button checks and long coaching sessions dragging tournaments out, I imagine it will ultimately just depend on the tournament size and host.

Nice thing about the 3DS is that there is easily room to have these customizations saved to a player's cartridge, so they can tailor their character on their own time and bring it to the tournament (if the tournament allows them). The U version probably won't be that flexible unless there is some similar function in the Amiibo, so depending on how long it takes a player to customize their character, there is potential for a significant timesink if everyone comes in planning to tweak their character.

I'm all for the options, but there's a lot of room for it to go wrong, depending on how it's implemented, and as you've said, we'll just have to wait and find out.

 

[Aninymouse]

Too many pages to read, but I think it's reasonable to imagine that if a character seems underpowered with their default attributes and moveset, that an "established" specific customization would be reasonable on a tournament-by-tournament basis. Allowing player-level customization is of course out of the question unless it's generally agreed that the tradeoffs are universally fair. Even then, short of saving data via an Amiibo or something (since details on that are vague right now), the setup time tradeoff is too high for large tournaments.

Besides, Sakurai said they'd like to do post-release patching, so hopefully it won't be an issue anyway.

That's not how Amiibos work.

Amiibos just store data on a CPU fighter that you train and level-up and customize, not a player-controlled character. It's a totally separate (with some similarities) feature of the game.

 

[Raijinken]

That's not how Amiibos work.

Amiibos just store data on a CPU fighter that you train and level-up and customize, not a player-controlled character. It's a totally separate (with some similarities) feature of the game.

I think you yourself said above here that "There isn't any proof yet to substantiate your assumption. Not yet."
We know the current plans for Amiibo, but until they're released, all we can do is speculate.

My point was that unless the U has a similar player-level (as opposed to character-level or system-level) means of storing customization data for quick transfer between systems (which, currently only the Amiibo, or maybe internal storage on a Wiimote seems to even have potential to offer), then the size of the tournament, and the host's views, will determine whether or not the time it takes to customize a character (if such customizations are allowed) is worth spending on potentially every player participating in the tournament, or if players will be stuck with either a generalized customization (such as a specific special attack version considered better for competitive) or simply playing vanilla versions of each character.

Good logistics (disregarding how likely or unlikely it is someone heeds good logistics) encourage that you account for the worst case, which would be that every player comes in with a different customization in mind, and has no way to quick-load it from an external storage device. If you have a 40 person tournament and each only spends a minute customizing their character, you're still running 40 minutes behind by the end of the night.

 

[Bladeviper]

Good logistics (disregarding how likely or unlikely it is someone heeds good logistics) encourage that you account for the worst case, which would be that every player comes in with a different customization in mind, and has no way to quick-load it from an external storage device. If you have a 40 person tournament and each only spends a minute customizing their character, you're still running 40 minutes behind by the end of the night.

true but if they can cut down on the amount of hand warmers that time could be used to set move sets, just a thought

 

[Senario]

Huh, for me it is the opposite. Seeing customizable attributes like character speed and such makes me question what exactly that could do besides faster movement. That said if there is a standard setting of attribute changes that are applied to every character it could prove useful without changing setup time.

Custom moves though are a hit iffy. They vary between character and have different effects between them that could break a character easily. Not to mention it'll be much more up to personal preference for each player rather than something like a universal speed boost that you pretty much have to pick because if you don't the opponent will do so which puts you at a disadvantage.

Edit: vanilla probably will still be best.

 

[KawaiiPiranha]

This is coming from someone who doesn't play competitively, but I thought I'd share my thoughts-

I think its silly that people are already talking about banning things before the game is even out. Give things a chance before you outright refuse to use them.
What if, through stat modifications, every single character is viable in competitive play? I don't play competitively, but for example: what if there was a universally accepted rule that Bowser gets +5 speed?

Because of stat modifications, people are going to be able to effectively alter character's strengths and weaknesses, so why not use them to balance the playing field a bit? If the game comes out, and NOBODY uses a certain character because of their stats, why not beef that character up a bit so that they can compete?
There are universally accepted rules about which stages are banned, right? Why not do the same thing about stat modification?

This is going to be an entirely new game. Even putting aside the new characters and stages, there's a lot of customization involved this time. If you don't want to play competitively with customization, there are already 3 smash bros games for you to play without them. This is going to be a new game with a new meta and new rules. I think people need to at least give the new mechanics a chance before dismissing them.

 

[Bladeviper]

Huh, for me it is the opposite. Seeing customizable attributes like character speed and such makes me question what exactly that could do besides faster movement. That said if there is a standard setting of attribute changes that are applied to every character it could prove useful without changing setup time.

Custom moves though are a hit iffy. They vary between character and have different effects between them that could break a character easily. Not to mention it'll be much more up to personal preference for each player rather than something like a universal speed boost that you pretty much have to pick because if you don't the opponent will do so which puts you at a disadvantage.

Edit: vanilla probably will still be best.

i dont see a problem with personal preference in move sets its the same as picking a character to learn to me, most people are gonna pick a character they like to learn at first

 

[Conda]

How would that work? What combo do you do to use those 12 differents move?

Also, side not, but you can rank up that amount of combo a bit. Each Mii class has their custom moves too:

Isn't being able to develop a tier list a good thing? If you can't determine which character is the best, doesn't it means the game is avtually balanced?

Tier lists aren't about which is better, it's about which has had most success in tournaments. Kind of like when a certain sports team is recognized for being one of the best, or one of the worst performing. It's about net player performance of that character, not inherent balance.

Bowser could be the #1 balanced in Brawl if our tournament structure was "try to live for the longest amount of time against 3 human opponents", but that's not our tournament structure. It's 3 stocks, no items, with some banned levels and such. When you introduce rules to a sport or event, you give advantages and disadvantages to certain types of people.

ie. Since the net is high up in basketball, this gives an inherent disadvantage to shorter players. Shorter players will as a result perform well less often than taller players will.
Smash is the same way. Whatever type of match you play, the map you pick, whether items are on, the speed and gravity options, etc - these things change what characters will have players that tend to perform better.


We have a ruleset, and that means characters will have advantages and disadvantages. Certain characters may just take years to master or discover styles for, while others are easier to master and are lucky enough to have less design-disadvantages with how a lot of the characters are designed - thus they will do better in tournaments. It makes sense and is logical and is how everything in the natural world works.

 

[Raijinken]

This is coming from someone who doesn't play competitively, but I thought I'd share my thoughts-

I think its silly that people are already talking about banning things before the game is even out. Give things a chance before you outright refuse to use them.
What if, through stat modifications, every single character is viable in competitive play? I don't play competitively, but for example: what if there was a universally accepted rule that Bowser gets +5 speed?

Because of stat modifications, people are going to be able to effectively alter character's strengths and weaknesses, so why not use them to balance the playing field a bit? If the game comes out, and NOBODY uses a certain character because of their stats, why not beef that character up a bit so that they can compete?
There are universally accepted rules about which stages are banned, right? Why not do the same thing about stat modification?

This is going to be an entirely new game. Even putting aside the new characters and stages, there's a lot of customization involved this time. If you don't want to play competitively with customization, there are already 3 smash bros games for you to play without them. This is going to be a new game with a new meta and new rules. I think people need to at least give the new mechanics a chance before dismissing them.

Pretty much this. I'm all for using it for balance, I'm just concerned that allowing them on a player-by-player basis will take a lot of time to setup.

 

[Bladeviper]

Pretty much this. I'm all for using it for balance, I'm just concerned that allowing them on a player-by-player basis will take a lot of time to setup.

it will depend on the way you have to set them up then, if you can do it from the css then it should be fine i think

 

[Raijinken]

it will depend on the way you have to set them up then, if you can do it from the css then it should be fine i think

That or from the 3DS version's data. For that matter, using the 3DS version as a sort of save carrier to load your customizations quickly into the U version may work in place of what I was suggesting for Amiibos above, too.

 

[Bladeviper]

That or from the 3DS version's data. For that matter, using the 3DS version as a sort of save carrier to load your customizations quickly into the U version may work in place of what I was suggesting for Amiibos above, too.

i think they said you can do that but i might be going crazy but it seems like it would be double, the problem with that is going to be that not everyone will have a 3ds to do it with should that be an option

 

[Aninymouse]

That or from the 3DS version's data. For that matter, using the 3DS version as a sort of save carrier to load your customizations quickly into the U version may work in place of what I was suggesting for Amiibos above, too.

Although we haven't seen proof of this, I would think that this would be the more likely scenario.

I still think Amiibos will just do Amiibo stuff.

 

[Raijinken]

i think they said you can do that but i might be going crazy but it seems like it would be double, the problem with that is going to be that not everyone will have a 3ds to do it with should that be an option

Right, but the option would be present, which would cut down the time significantly.

 

[Bladeviper]

Right, but the option would be present, which would cut down the time significantly.

yup, i just still think there will be a way to do it from the css so other players besides player 1 can fiddle with the move sets, it would seem like such a big over-site if they didnt allow the other players to do so

 

[Beats]

Pretty much this. I'm all for using it for balance, I'm just concerned that allowing them on a player-by-player basis will take a lot of time to setup.

There are problems which make this very impractical though. The meta game is always evolving, and new things are always being discovered, and so there's no real way of knowing how tier lists will change over time. If you start adding and taking away different modifications every time we learn something new about character match ups and so forth, it's going to be very messy and pretty much impossible to coordinate a universal rule set.

On top of that, every small change has big effects. For example, changes in speed or power might change up some combos completely, allowing them to be longer or shorter against different characters. All these differences may be more or less noticeable for a number of different match ups. Balancing is very tricky business, and it's impossible to just "improve" a lower tier character without throwing a lot of chaos into the whole thing.

 

[Aninymouse]

There are problems which make this very impractical though. The meta game is always evolving, and new things are always being discovered, and so there's no real way of knowing how tier lists will change over time. If you start adding and taking away different modifications every time we learn something new about character match ups and so forth, it's going to be very messy and pretty much impossible to coordinate a universal rule set.

On top of that, every small change has big effects. For example, changes in speed or power might change up some combos completely, allowing them to be longer or shorter against different characters. All these differences may be more or less noticeable for a number of different match ups. Balancing is very tricky business, and it's impossible to just "improve" a lower tier character without throwing a lot of chaos into the whole thing.

I agree with what you're saying, and I'm not saying you're saying this, but I think it needs to be clarified that no one makes decisions based on the tier list. The tier list is not a consideration in balance decisions, normally. It's a very inconsequential thing that is just there because we can make one. "Not being able to have a concrete tier list" is not a concern to serious players, is what I mean.

Again, not saying that's what you said, but I'm just throwing that out there.

 

[LeeYawshee]

Not sure if this video has been linked yet but if not, please watch it. It brings up some really good points that not a lot of people are seeing.

 

[Raijinken]

There are problems which make this very impractical though. The meta game is always evolving, and new things are always being discovered, and so there's no real way of knowing how tier lists will change over time. If you start adding and taking away different modifications every time we learn something new about character match ups and so forth, it's going to be very messy and pretty much impossible to coordinate a universal rule set.

On top of that, every small change has big effects. For example, changes in speed or power might change up some combos completely, allowing them to be longer or shorter against different characters. All these differences may be more or less noticeable for a number of different match ups. Balancing is very tricky business, and it's impossible to just "improve" a lower tier character without throwing a lot of chaos into the whole thing.

I'm pretty used to some online games doing this exact sort of thing. A constantly changing game state forces the metagame to evolve to suit. Some characters can go unchanged between versions and suddenly become viable just due to a new discovery in style. Then again, Smash Bros tournaments don't use character picking and banning for strategy/balance, making universal customization appear more as a strategic choice (like an item build in Dota) than a player skill choice.

I guess what I'm saying is that I find the chaos fun and refreshing, and I find a six-character roster over more than a decade to be bland.