ThatGuyYouMightKnow
Smash Champion
For a while now this topic's been pretty heated among the community, and frankly, I was going to make this type of post before EVO rather than after it, but I fell into business consistently and had forgotten about it. Many people are most likely going to disagree on my neutrality, but I don't mind. I just had to get this off my chest before customs are gone.
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Table of Contents
1. Storytime
2. Tournament Results
3. Analysis and Conclusion (aka TL;DR)
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1. Storytime
Yes, you can pretty much skip this if you want.
1. Storytime
2. Tournament Results
3. Analysis and Conclusion (aka TL;DR)
______________________________________________________________________
1. Storytime
Yes, you can pretty much skip this if you want.
This is a mentally stressful 'issue'. There are multiple reasons why this 'issue' has gotten me a bit upset, however it isn't because of any reason that pro-customs or anti-customs players have in their minds. Most of the time it's 'I'm against customs' or 'I'm for customs'. I'm neutral on this. I like customs, I enjoy what it does for the game, even if some of them are rather drastic of a change to neutral game and the flow of the game--I'm looking at Villager. However, there is one and only one thing I have continuously protested since the start of all the 'controversy' amongst this topic, and it's something I wish people would think about more often; the actual reason why any of you are for or against customs.
This is a heavy topic for me due to how awfully this aspect of the 'customs debate' has been addressed, along with it being paired with the spread of misinformation throughout the community. I am no top player, but you don't need to be amazing at this game to be able to watch those who are amazing, and look at results of their play. Knowing that, let's realize something; from day 1-or shall we call it day 0, as most games have demos or pre-play before release nowadays-, 'theorycrafting', 'labbing', or any sort of mental brainstorming on how to push the limits of the game and kick off the metagame begins. We don't even have our hands on the game yet and we're already deciphering its riddles, and figuring out what character suits us, what they can do, combos, neutral game, the 'best/worst characters' (remember Bowser pre-release?). This all happens BEFORE the game is even out. And then, afterward, when the game does; day 1. We're all new to this. Day 1 is the Hyperbolic Time Chamber day. You sit at home, call out of work, and grind. Everyone starts thinking up their best combos and neutral game movements, how to abuse their character's advantages, all before actually playing other opponents with those characters.
That's the climax. Fighting other people. After a single day, for some, a week, or longer, you come to opponents or tournaments with your best strategies and tactics that they haven't fought or known yet, and you hit them hard with it. They'll probably fall for it, too, and you'll fall for their tricks; how could you have known they had a frame three startup invulnerable defensive move, or a projectile that you couldn't get around without getting swatted out of the air? You didn't know because you had to learn. Between the two of you, whoever lost had to make this loss their lesson, or fail against it once again; choose to either learn, or falter. 'I underestimated him, and I didn't know he could do that. I'll remember next time and see if there's a way to beat it.', or, 'I don't know how to beat that, how was I supposed to know? I can't beat it at all.'
If your first reaction to anything related to fighting games is the second quote instead of the first, you are on a path to failure.
Fighting games ever since the first few years of competitive play between friends in arcades have always worked the same. Someone, presumably a friend or someone you heard about, had spent a few more bunches of quarters playing that game you love so much, and once you came to challenge them thinking you had the upper hand and wanted to show them up, you got your ass kicked. That one move and that one tactic he was using was pretty potent, but you couldn't figure out what the hell to do. So you lost your quarters, and he got another free arcade run while you had to watch. That was your lesson. You were expected to either respect him, and his win, or don't. They didn't need to care. Because until you learn to beat that tactic, he's going to keep doing it and keep shaming you until you quit. Quitters never win, right?
This transfers over to our modern day fighters well, however the stakes are at times higher, and with internet video streaming capabilities, our pride is put to the test even further with hundreds, possibly thousands watching us instead of the friends, and possibly dozen others at arcade gatherings. Players bring their most deadly and unbeatable tactics and strategies, and use them in tournament settings where money is on the line. If you can't keep up and take them down, that's on you. You should have known how to win against it, if you have access to the same game they do. No one is going to tell you how to beat them.
Now, with Smash, unlike most fighting games played competitively (there have been fighters in history where certain 'things' were 'disallowed'), it chooses to undertake a plethora of 'rules' within the game's own setting, whereas there are no true rules in motion once the game is started. Street Fighter has changeable rounds, yes, other fighters are only capable of a single round win. But Smash has many other factors to consider, such as random-access item play (ban #1), stage play (ban #2), and game mode (ban #3). The first two are harsh topics as unlike most fighters, the arena chosen can drastically affect the outcome of a match so much that much lesser skilled players may just be in the wrong spot at the wrong time, and lose for it, unpredictably. Item play falls into the same category; random placement of items can both help and harm competitors. No one likes when a Bob-Omb spawns right where you're swinging and kills you. That defies the aspects of a 'competition' where the 'most skillful' players are to dominate one another. Randomly generated moments of death don't prove who trumps who mentally.
Now, when comparing items and stages to custom moves, custom moves obviously are not 'randomized'. They're used by the player and you clearly know when they have them up for use. That's not a problem. Just like the story posted above, many players will be quite confused and unable to figure out what to do just yet against most custom moves through their first experiences with them, and even after some practice, it may take time to adapt and defeat them. The same applies to the game's base, without custom moves, as well. The situation doesn't change with or without the modifier of custom moves; if a player is not ready or knowledgeable on the tactics and/or strategies presented by another player, they will most likely lose. With time and practice, however, it suddenly becomes a much more even, or even easier, experience, and simply boils down to trumping the other mentally, as designed.
Is there a difference when custom moves are involved?
The logical answer? No.
Logical movements:
-All players have the means to access custom moves used by characters, and practice against them, or at the very least find information about them somewhere.
-All players enter a competitive environment knowing that most have come to play-to-win, and will use every trick in their arsenal to do just that, including those other players are not expecting or know about.
-Only the strongest and most adept will win. This has not changed, and will not change.
-The most well-known line in the history of competitive fighting game tournaments, ever; "If you don't know how to beat it, learn to beat it, or use it against them". AKA, if you can't beat them, join them. Use their tactic. Use their character. Or learn to beat it with yours.
Illogical movements:
-Taking away anyone's ability to use a character because of one's own ability/preferences.
-Using theory and research dominantly over results and practice.
-Assuming and concluding that all areas of the world experience the same competitive experience as you.
With or without custom moves, those three concepts have not changed. No, custom moves are not characters, which are much more necessary; and yes, it is rather disappointing that we as a community must ban anything inside of a game we play, even if it's necessary. Sm4sh has seen a rather wide and hard storm of custom move shenanigans, however some do believe it is much more negative than positive. I myself would be inclined to agree, had I not thought logically about this rather than theorized about it all. Let's look at the past large-scale tournament that had customs and Miis allowed (source: SmashWiki):
EVO2015, Las Vegas, Nevada, July 17th-19th, 2015
Placements:
1st
ZeRo
2nd
Mr. R3rd
Nairo
4th
Abadango
5th
Dabuz5th
Ally
7th
ESAM
7th
FOW
9th
Larry Lurr
-9th
RAIN-9th
SS
-9th
StaticManny
-13th
False-13th
Dapuffster
-13th
Regi
-13th
Mocha-17th
8BitMan
-17th
John Numbers
-17th
Tyrant
-17th
MJG-17th
Angel Cortes-17th
Bloodcross
-17th
CaptAwesum-17th
MVD-25th
Trevonte
-25th
Shaky-25th
Salem-25th
Mr. ConCon
-25th
falln-25th
Vinnie-25th
Christian Rendon-25th
Tweek
-Analysis:
Most used:
(7)Possible wild cards:
(1)(1)(1)(1)(2)(1)(2)Notable mention:
This was the huge, winner take all, international, world-scale tournament everyone was waiting for. Customs and Miis allowed, DLC characters disallowed. To start off, Zero won. That much is obvious. But let's look at the rest. Abadango shook everyone up with his masterful use of both Pacman and Wario, two of the least used characters in the game, and made 4th place among some of the world's current best players. He used the Speeding Bike, which is a general upgrade from the regular bike, however the bike is more easily broken. Even with Wario's ability to run back and forth without much contesting and recovering faster with the bike, he still had trouble using it freely, and in turn, had to resort to Rosalina when PacMan didn't seem like a reliable option. Ally's Mario was the best showing we've had from Mario so far, throwing out some crazy upB usage, however despite how 'strong' his Gust Cape is, it still didn't see much use, nor did it ever actually land any kills or gimps. Pikachu, again, not too popular, and ESAM is the only Pikachu to show among the best, yet the infinite was only landed once throughout all matches seen on Saturday, and even then he lost convincingly. In one example of a match vs Ally, Heavy Skull Bash was avoided nearly every time it was used, and ESAM even killed himself with it once, nearly killing himself 3 other times. Villager, however, was the largest example of a notable shift in the top placings; two Villagers saw top 32, and both made it to the final bracket. However, neither survived within the winners side, despite the customs chosen, and SS showed much less usage of 'offstage tactics' than CaptAwesum, yet progressed farther. Mii Brawler, who saw a good amount of use at FCReturn by KP Joey, fell short at 13th when used by DaPuffster. Another large example of notable shift, two Wii Fit Trainer players, John Numbers and Christian Rendon, who fell short despite their ability for offstage play. StaticManny did well, but ended up being timed out through his own tactics utilizing Hammer Spin Dash, which helped him avoid attacks well. A well known strong player and places well normally.
Despite all of this, the largest possible upset within top 32 was Game and Watch, placed at 13th by Regi, a character with no truly notable custom moves and debated to be on the lower side of 'tiers'.
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3. Analysis and Conclusion (AKA TL;DR)
Only top placings were used in these examples. This is necessary in order to truly know what a character can do when pushed to their limits, and handled by those who understand the characters in and out. It is NOT beneficial to analyze lower level and intermediate play, where as results show, that seems to be where custom moves deal the most damage to the metagame or player competition.
If lower and intermediate level play are the only places where custom moves truly are harmful, then does this truly pose a threat to competition as a whole? No. Regardless of whether custom moves are allowed or not, results show that after plenty of time being able to adapt to and learn how custom moves work, top placements have remained the same; Zero dominates, the remaining top placers have remained top placers, and the same characters are used throughout them--Sheik, Rosalina, Sonic, Diddy, and in some cases, ZSS, Ness, and very few others, custom moves or not. The largest and 'most controversial examples' of custom moves--Donkey Kong, Villager, Wii Fit Trainer, Palutena, Ganondorf, and few others--have not seen results that prove their 'spike in power' due to customs, nor have a large percentage of the players who make top placings picked and abused these characters for what they're worth. (Remember: 'Pick A Top Tier') If these characters are so controversial, troublesome, and plain 'negative', then it is purely within the lower and intermediate levels of play where this happens. And a tournament is not made to help anyone. Tournament settings are where people play to win, and abuse their best tactics, moves, and characters, to win. If lower and intermediate level players are losing to the same tactics and characters presented to everyone, then that is of no character or move's fault. Just as spoken of in the story above, the player is losing due to an inability to adapt and learn, while those who have that ability are those who are winning, and not falling for these tactics. Most players understand this, however, once the topic of custom moves approaches, many who are 'anti-customs' seem to take a complete reverse on that statement.
That is my issue, and why I've come to post this long, unnecessary wall of words; the hypocrisy I'm seeing throughout the community about custom moves is highly appalling. I am, again, neutral, when it comes to 'pro' or 'anti' customs. But I am COMPLETELY AGAINST banning customs for illogical reasons. If your reasoning for banning them has classified under any of what I've posted above, which is that it 'damages the metagame', 'beats even top players really badly', or 'they're broken/they're unstoppable/they have no counterplay', I will not ever accept that as a reason, and based on factual evidence, you're just plain wrong. You are completely defying almost 20+ years of fighting games' history, where players had no means of just banning or disallowing what they couldn't fight or win against (again, items/stages excluded here), and simply 'got good' until they could win. That Metaknight ban didn't last long, now did it? And it wasn't even an 'official' ban. It barely did anything. People adapted, did better, or used Metaknight. Towards the end of Brawl's life, and even before, Metaknight was no longer seen as a character who completely dominated the 'metagame' no matter what matchup he was given. That's how it's always been, that's how it should be.
Turning around and doing a complete 180 on this with custom moves is just shameful. I will always say this, and I will always believe that even if custom moves are banned everywhere. I won't mind; I'll be content either way. But if they're banned for something this idiotic, I swear I'll never look at the community the same. I'm just ****ing sick of hearing people complaining about Donkey Kong and his upB or Plankager everywhere I go even though no one uses the damn characters or wins with them, but people would rather fight busted ass dominant Sheik all day while we still haven't knocked her down any pegs aside from 'she can't kill reliably'. Absolutely sick of it. Either use them and stop complaining all day or just ban them completely already, either way is fine with me.
I apologize if any of this was a waste of your time.
I apologize if any of this was a waste of your time.
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