Important Official Custom Moveset Project

[Blue Sun Studios]

I've got a question; is it still a good idea to make a custom based on the most recurring special moves in each character's sets of ten customs for other forms of play (you know, not excluded to EVO)? The moves are the most common ones seen in sets so it's somewhat logical to believe that they would work great with each other in tandem as they do in other sets?

 

[Nintendrone]

You're suggesting that we see what imported custom sets (not in the presets) are popular, and then consider putting them in the project in the next update, correct? In that case, players would see that an unlisted set is popular/good, and then test it to see if it is more viable than the ones in the project already. If they feel that this new set is good enough, then it will likely be put in the project, potentially combined with other popular sets.

 

[Illuminose]

General question: when is the next update for this? A month or so after EVO?

 

[Splash Damage]

This just in:When Customs are on, Grabs kill at 30%.

 

[Ansou]

General question: when is the next update for this? A month or so after EVO?

Probably winter this year, unless @ Amazing Ampharos changes his mind. I don't think updating this too often is a good idea as that will require people to transfer sets again and just generates more work.

 

[TLMSheikant]

I'm starting to get uber scared for customs now. After ZeRo's recent tweets on them, a lot of people are becoming anti-customs. Worst of all, they want ALL customs banned because of a few offenders . Sigh...all that practice with fire arrows and short-fuse for nothing...

 

[Karsticles]

Great examples of ZeRo's problem with customs are Bowser and Donkey Kong. Dash Slash is amazing, and completely changes how the character plays. Cronox will agree, I'm sure, that the move is straight up addictive. It turns some matchups into a joke. Mewtwo has no hope against custom Bowser. Without customs, Bowser has a rough time in the matchup, though.

On the other hand, while Dash Slash makes Villager extremely manageable, Villager gains his own custom, the Trip Sapling. This custom makes the matchup almost impossible for Bowser, completely negating any benefit he gains from Dash Slash. As a result, the matchup becomes entirely surrounded around the Trip Sapling - if it's down, Bowser is ****ed. If it isn't, Bowser has a really good shot. Dash Slash basically turns Bowser into a whirl of unpredictable chaos. He goes from a low risk, low reward character that makes his wins off of good reads to a high risk, high reward character that makes everyone wet their pants if they don't have the matchup mastered.

Initially, I just thought it was great to give characters more options, but in reality, there are a few customs that are straight upgrades, and so powerful that they completely "remake" the character into something he/she isn't intended to be. That isn't a good thing. It isn't good that Bowser has an air dash, that Villager gains the ultimate camp move, that Donkey Kong is basically "Up B: The Character", or that Rosalina can sit back and pelt you from across the screen + disruption while sitting behind Luma. These moves take characters with defined weakness and circumvent them entirely.

After Evo, it'll be interesting to see how the community proceeds. Preferably, Sakurai could just balance the customs so they're all interesting and worth using, while toning down the stupid ones. More realistically, they should probably just be banned.

 

[Splash Damage]

I feel like no matter how high level the player, 90% of the complaints end up being "You can die at 0% to this custom guys! Let's ban them all!" and not nearly enough people actually provide reason and proof to their claims. All they have to do is say the magic words "Die at 0" and all of a sudden everyone believes their laughably false claim. More people should be concerned with the things Karsticles brought up, and even those things might even just be ironed out once the meta develops. It just pains me to see all of our thousands of collective hours of labbing and hard work making writeups and testing will be eliminated because of some lying top players and their salty followers.
If customs are banned, tens of thousands of hours of peoples' collective labbing is gone. Completely wasted due to a few petty, false claims.

 

[Illuminose]

I feel like no matter how high level the player, 90% of the complaints end up being "You can die at 0% to this custom guys! Let's ban them all!" and not nearly enough people actually provide reason and proof to their claims. All they have to do is say the magic words "Die at 0" and all of a sudden everyone believes their laughably false claim. More people should be concerned with the things Karsticles brought up, and even those things might even just be ironed out once the meta develops. It just pains me to see all of our thousands of collective hours of labbing and hard work making writeups and testing will be eliminated because of some lying top players and their salty followers.
If customs are banned, tens of thousands of hours of peoples' collective labbing is gone. Completely wasted due to a few petty, false claims.

Just saying, lab time/research wasted doesn't matter if we deem customs to be negative for the game. If anything, the research that's allowed people to utilize customs effectively would be beneficial seeing as it would provide ample evidence to back up the decision.

 

[MajorMajora]

Great examples of ZeRo's problem with customs are Bowser and Donkey Kong. Dash Slash is amazing, and completely changes how the character plays. Cronox will agree, I'm sure, that the move is straight up addictive. It turns some matchups into a joke. Mewtwo has no hope against custom Bowser. Without customs, Bowser has a rough time in the matchup, though.

On the other hand, while Dash Slash makes Villager extremely manageable, Villager gains his own custom, the Trip Sapling. This custom makes the matchup almost impossible for Bowser, completely negating any benefit he gains from Dash Slash. As a result, the matchup becomes entirely surrounded around the Trip Sapling - if it's down, Bowser is ****ed. If it isn't, Bowser has a really good shot. Dash Slash basically turns Bowser into a whirl of unpredictable chaos. He goes from a low risk, low reward character that makes his wins off of good reads to a high risk, high reward character that makes everyone wet their pants if they don't have the matchup mastered.

Initially, I just thought it was great to give characters more options, but in reality, there are a few customs that are straight upgrades, and so powerful that they completely "remake" the character into something he/she isn't intended to be. That isn't a good thing. It isn't good that Bowser has an air dash, that Villager gains the ultimate camp move, that Donkey Kong is basically "Up B: The Character", or that Rosalina can sit back and pelt you from across the screen + disruption while sitting behind Luma. These moves take characters with defined weakness and circumvent them entirely.

After Evo, it'll be interesting to see how the community proceeds. Preferably, Sakurai could just balance the customs so they're all interesting and worth using, while toning down the stupid ones. More realistically, they should probably just be banned.

Who makes you the final arbiter on how a character is meant to be played? Obviously Bowser is meant to have and use dash slash. You can tell by the fact that he has dash slash.

And @ Splash Damage what you are referring to is probably crescent slash, which requires extremely specific positioning, and is on a low tier character.

Always remember to ask yourself: "Does this custom make this character S tier?" If the answer is no, then don't even begin to talk about banning it or customs. If it does, I don't see what's wrong with Diddy and Shiek having a bit of competition.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

I feel like no matter how high level the player, 90% of the complaints end up being "You can die at 0% to this custom guys! Let's ban them all!" and not nearly enough people actually provide reason and proof to their claims. All they have to do is say the magic words "Die at 0" and all of a sudden everyone believes their laughably false claim. More people should be concerned with the things Karsticles brought up, and even those things might even just be ironed out once the meta develops. It just pains me to see all of our thousands of collective hours of labbing and hard work making writeups and testing will be eliminated because of some lying top players and their salty followers.
If customs are banned, tens of thousands of hours of peoples' collective labbing is gone. Completely wasted due to a few petty, false claims.

I'm not one to talk since I haven't done a whole lot on this subject either, but I think it's pretty urgent that some of us get together online and do some (preferably streamed, but I'll settle for replayed-and-youtubed) labbing on various customs.

 

[Karsticles]

Who makes you the final arbiter on how a character is meant to be played? Obviously Bowser is meant to have and use dash slash. You can tell by the fact that he has dash slash.

And @ Splash Damage what you are referring to is probably crescent slash, which requires extremely specific positioning, and is on a low tier character.

Always remember to ask yourself: "Does this custom make this character S tier?" If the answer is no, then don't even begin to talk about banning it or customs. If it does, I don't see what's wrong with Diddy and Shiek having a bit of competition.

Sakurai has been pretty clear in that customs aren't intended for competitive play. So no, Bowser is not supposed to have and use Dash Slash. The customs were supposed to be in the same vein as equipment for serious competitive play. He has clearly said he put no effort at all into balancing them, and they aren't used at all in Japan. Your response is like saying "I can put a Vampiric Fang on Bowser to steal life, so clearly Bowser is meant to have and use life stealing abilities". Completely wrong. Given that you think Agnes has chance as DLC, though, I might be wasting my time trying to explain this to you.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Sakurai has been pretty clear in that customs aren't intended for competitive play. So no, Bowser is not supposed to have and use Dash Slash. The customs were supposed to be in the same vein as equipment for serious competitive play. He has clearly said he put no effort at all into balancing them, and they aren't used at all in Japan. Your response is like saying "I can put a Vampiric Fang on Bowser to steal life, so clearly Bowser is meant to have and use life stealing abilities". Completely wrong. Given that you think Agnes has chance as DLC, though, I might be wasting my time trying to explain this to you.

IIRC he says that "customization" isn't suited for competitive. The distinction is important because "customization" includes equipment.

Unlike equipment (and lolclones), every character has completely unique custom specials, so the devs clearly put some amount of thought into who got what.

 

[Helkulkhamen]

Sakurai has been pretty clear in that customs aren't intended for competitive play. So no, Bowser is not supposed to have and use Dash Slash. The customs were supposed to be in the same vein as equipment for serious competitive play. He has clearly said he put no effort at all into balancing them, and they aren't used at all in Japan.

Keep in mind that Sakurai never intended Smash to be played competitively at all. From the interviews he has given, the priority has always been the "casual" fanbase that prefers free-for-all items-on timed-match madness, with 1v1 as a secondary concern. Every competitive standard we have in place today is purely the result of the players themselves making the most of the optional settings given to us. I would not put too much stock into what the developer "intended" versus the reality, especially since none of us were actually involved in the development of the game and cannot know for sure how the balancing process went down.

Also, the balance patches we've received there have been changes made to custom moves; just not the ones that are currently in vogue to complain about. So they're giving some sort of attention to custom moves, even if it doesn't address the immediate issues of the day.

Great examples of ZeRo's problem with customs are Bowser and Donkey Kong. Dash Slash is amazing, and completely changes how the character plays. Cronox will agree, I'm sure, that the move is straight up addictive. It turns some matchups into a joke. Mewtwo has no hope against custom Bowser. Without customs, Bowser has a rough time in the matchup, though.

On the other hand, while Dash Slash makes Villager extremely manageable, Villager gains his own custom, the Trip Sapling. This custom makes the matchup almost impossible for Bowser, completely negating any benefit he gains from Dash Slash. As a result, the matchup becomes entirely surrounded around the Trip Sapling - if it's down, Bowser is ****ed. If it isn't, Bowser has a really good shot. Dash Slash basically turns Bowser into a whirl of unpredictable chaos. He goes from a low risk, low reward character that makes his wins off of good reads to a high risk, high reward character that makes everyone wet their pants if they don't have the matchup mastered.

Several points I'd like to hit on:
1. Changing how a character fundamentally plays is NOT necessarily a bad thing. Vanilla Palutena is an overly-defensive character with (non-recovery) specials that ranged from "use this maybe once a match, if at all" to a rushdown aerial speedster with a lethal grab game. I doubt anyone would find the former more exciting than the latter. Customs-on Rosalina becomes more aggressive, and given the reaction to her effectively-defensive playstyle championed by Dabuz at Apex, it's difficult for me to see why taking away her aggression options improves the game.
2. How would a character that "makes wins off of good reads" be considered "low-risk". Isn't the requirement of making reads to get hits & kills the definition of a "high-risk" character? Did you mean he is a high-risk low-reward character in vanilla that becomes a low-risk high-reward character in customs, instead?
3. I am not familiar with the Bowser vs Villager match-up, so would you mind explaining why dash-slash (a move that I thought was primarily used from the air) is invalidated by the villager's trip sapling (which is used to force opponents away from the ground).
4. Ultimately, it seems the point that you are trying to make is that match-ups become a "whoever has the better custom wins", but we're really not seeing that in tournament results. Have any custom Bowsers been dominating their locals (never mind anything greater)? Villager has been performing well, but he has also been placing highly in vanilla too, and his top-8 placings haven't changed too much with customs. I'd be interesting in seeing which characters you think were the biggest winners from a customs-legal meta, and comparing their tournament results and more importantly how their match-ups changed. Which match-ups go from "these characters had an even chance" to "this character now destroys this other character" with customs? Mewtwo has only been out for a month, and his viability was already being seriously questioned - few players are giving a better impression of him than "mid-tier", and this was without considering the Bowser-matchup specifically. (Keep in mind, if we're going to count how many match-ups become slaughter-fests with customs on, we should also be counting how many match-ups are slaughter-fests without customs.)

A character's reliance on a certain move comes down to how well their opponent can punish that move. The strongest options in the game are the ones that are considered "safe", where even if your opponent performs optimally their opportunity for punishing is limited. Kong Cyclone is considered as strong as it is because it is believed to be un-punishable thanks to the combination of the landing-lag cancel and super-armor, but even KC is starting to show cracks.

Also, after listening to Zero's post-DVDA victory interview, some of the customs complaints are quite perplexing. This is the first time I've seen anyone complain about Luigi's green-missile customs. Heck, most high-level Luigis barely even use customs. Allegedly, Zero was taking issue with the ease with which that custom lets Luigi make it back to stage, invalidating Sheik's edge-guarding and thus removing a section of the gameplay that he found enjoyable and healthy for the meta. But, if Sheik's edge-guarding is so strong against Luigi, then aren't Luigi's customs (helping his recovery) opening more gameplay options, at least from the Luigi player's perspective?

 

[Unknownkid]

Sakurai has been pretty clear in that customs aren't intended for competitive play. So no, Bowser is not supposed to have and use Dash Slash. The customs were supposed to be in the same vein as equipment for serious competitive play. He has clearly said he put no effort at all into balancing them, and they aren't used at all in Japan. Your response is like saying "I can put a Vampiric Fang on Bowser to steal life, so clearly Bowser is meant to have and use life stealing abilities". Completely wrong. Given that you think Agnes has chance as DLC, though, I might be wasting my time trying to explain this to you.

Yet he went out of his way to patch Dragon Rush (1.04) before the community can officially use it in the tournament scene. At the time, Dragon Rush was a bit overpower compared to Flare Blitz. If Customs were meant to be broken or not intended for competitive play, why even patch some of the moves? Why fix Charizard's, ZSS', Link's, Sonic's, and Swordfighter's custom moves.

I am sick and tired of players using this argument without doing some research.

 

[Karsticles]

If Sakurai really cared about balanced customs, so many more changes would have been made in the last patch.

Keep in mind that Sakurai never intended Smash to be played competitively at all. From the interviews he has given, the priority has always been the "casual" fanbase that prefers free-for-all items-on timed-match madness, with 1v1 as a secondary concern. Every competitive standard we have in place today is purely the result of the players themselves making the most of the optional settings given to us. I would not put too much stock into what the developer "intended" versus the reality, especially since none of us were actually involved in the development of the game and cannot know for sure how the balancing process went down.

Also, the balance patches we've received there have been changes made to custom moves; just not the ones that are currently in vogue to complain about. So they're giving some sort of attention to custom moves, even if it doesn't address the immediate issues of the day.



Several points I'd like to hit on:
1. Changing how a character fundamentally plays is NOT necessarily a bad thing. Vanilla Palutena is an overly-defensive character with (non-recovery) specials that ranged from "use this maybe once a match, if at all" to a rushdown aerial speedster with a lethal grab game. I doubt anyone would find the former more exciting than the latter. Customs-on Rosalina becomes more aggressive, and given the reaction to her effectively-defensive playstyle championed by Dabuz at Apex, it's difficult for me to see why taking away her aggression options improves the game.
2. How would a character that "makes wins off of good reads" be considered "low-risk". Isn't the requirement of making reads to get hits & kills the definition of a "high-risk" character? Did you mean he is a high-risk low-reward character in vanilla that becomes a low-risk high-reward character in customs, instead?
3. I am not familiar with the Bowser vs Villager match-up, so would you mind explaining why dash-slash (a move that I thought was primarily used from the air) is invalidated by the villager's trip sapling (which is used to force opponents away from the ground).
4. Ultimately, it seems the point that you are trying to make is that match-ups become a "whoever has the better custom wins", but we're really not seeing that in tournament results. Have any custom Bowsers been dominating their locals (never mind anything greater)? Villager has been performing well, but he has also been placing highly in vanilla too, and his top-8 placings haven't changed too much with customs. I'd be interesting in seeing which characters you think were the biggest winners from a customs-legal meta, and comparing their tournament results and more importantly how their match-ups changed. Which match-ups go from "these characters had an even chance" to "this character now destroys this other character" with customs? Mewtwo has only been out for a month, and his viability was already being seriously questioned - few players are giving a better impression of him than "mid-tier", and this was without considering the Bowser-matchup specifically. (Keep in mind, if we're going to count how many match-ups become slaughter-fests with customs on, we should also be counting how many match-ups are slaughter-fests without customs.)

A character's reliance on a certain move comes down to how well their opponent can punish that move. The strongest options in the game are the ones that are considered "safe", where even if your opponent performs optimally their opportunity for punishing is limited. Kong Cyclone is considered as strong as it is because it is believed to be un-punishable thanks to the combination of the landing-lag cancel and super-armor, but even KC is starting to show cracks.

Also, after listening to Zero's post-DVDA victory interview, some of the customs complaints are quite perplexing. This is the first time I've seen anyone complain about Luigi's green-missile customs. Heck, most high-level Luigis barely even use customs. Allegedly, Zero was taking issue with the ease with which that custom lets Luigi make it back to stage, invalidating Sheik's edge-guarding and thus removing a section of the gameplay that he found enjoyable and healthy for the meta. But, if Sheik's edge-guarding is so strong against Luigi, then aren't Luigi's customs (helping his recovery) opening more gameplay options, at least from the Luigi player's perspective?

Dash Slash is good on the ground, too. It lets Bowser punish more things, like Villager Fair.

 

[thehard]

It's more likely that we as a community hadn't been playing with customs long enough at the time of the patch to give Nintendo enough hard data to make custom changes - also, focusing on nerfing Diddy was of a bigger priority.

 

[Helkulkhamen]

I also like to think that Nintendo learned a lesson or two from their early patches and how Little Mac drifted into irrelevance after being complained about by the community at large; specifically, that knee-jerk changes to the game without substantive data-supported reasoning is a bad thing and should be avoided.

 

[Blue Sun Studios]

I am sick and tired of players using this argument without doing some research.

They still aren't meant to be "competitive" but people will raise hell over them if used in "competitive" settings if they're broken and cause some sort of outcry, and that's not good press to have with a large community, even if it's minor compared to the rest. Sakurai made Brawl the way he did with no intention of appeasing to the "competitive crowd" but the reputation it has with them was the greatest backlash he had ever faced, so he tried to make them somewhat happy with 4.

 

[Zelder]

I'm glad that someone is finally standing up to the meta-defining terror that is Bowser with the Dash Slash. Just ruining tournaments and destroying brackets left and right.

 

[digiholic]

It seems like every week there's a new meta-defining terror that winds up being utterly emasculated by the time the next Xanadu rolls around. First it was Dongcopter, then it was Vill-ledge-er, then it was Super Hoop, then it was the Pika Train, now it's Dash Slash.

 

[Venks]

If Sakurai really cared about balanced customs, so many more changes would have been made in the last patch.


Dash Slash is good on the ground, too. It lets Bowser punish more things, like Villager Fair.

The balance changes are far from perfect. Link lost his jab infinite while Fox continues to have his. And yes I know Fox's jab thing isn't a true infinite, but neither was Link's. Why does Link deserve that nerf more than Fox? Personally I think the reason that happened was just Link's infinite was more heavily broadcasted, had more people talking about it.

The custom moves see very little use and discussion compared to other things like Little Mac and Diddy. I don't think this is the only thing the Smash Team looks for when deciding balance changes, but it's definitely a factor. If customs get highlighted at EVO and DK or Villager wins by spamming up+B? My money is on the moves getting nerfed.

But who knows? Sakurai is the same guy that said Samus was the strongest character in the E3 build, despite everyone who played the game saying she was one of the weakest.

 

[W.A.C.]

Can anyone link me to a tournament video of a great Bowser player utilizing dash slash? I'm starting to hear more complaints about that custom, yet I almost never see anyone use Bowser at tournaments anymore.

 

[Karsticles]

The balance changes are far from perfect. Link lost his jab infinite while Fox continues to have his. And yes I know Fox's jab thing isn't a true infinite, but neither was Link's. Why does Link deserve that nerf more than Fox? Personally I think the reason that happened was just Link's infinite was more heavily broadcasted, had more people talking about it.

The custom moves see very little use and discussion compared to other things like Little Mac and Diddy. I don't think this is the only thing the Smash Team looks for when deciding balance changes, but it's definitely a factor. If customs get highlighted at EVO and DK or Villager wins by spamming up+B? My money is on the moves getting nerfed.

But who knows? Sakurai is the same guy that said Samus was the strongest character in the E3 build, despite everyone who played the game saying she was one of the weakest.

I would love for you to be right - we will see.

 

[Name Cannot be changed]

Sakurai has been pretty clear in that customs aren't intended for competitive play. .

So, we care about what Sakurai says about competitive play now?

 

[Unknownkid]

The only person that uses Bowser in a tournament scene is Calm Animal and he recently started using Dash Claw. Even though he knew what he can do for a while.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcWFhJESquI

They still aren't meant to be "competitive" but people will raise hell over them if used in "competitive" settings if they're broken and cause some sort of outcry, and that's not good press to have with a large community, even if it's minor compared to the rest. Sakurai made Brawl the way he did with no intention of appeasing to the "competitive crowd" but the reputation it has with them was the greatest backlash he had ever faced, so he tried to make them somewhat happy with 4.

You know, you made a good point here. Brawl wasn't meant to be "competitive". Sakurai has done a lot to make that happen and even stated himself yet... the community besides how the mechanics work, how silly Metaknight was, and how "boring" it became - they still kept it going for what 6-7 years...? Ridiculous right?

 

[Illuminose]

Keep in mind that Sakurai never intended Smash to be played competitively at all. From the interviews he has given, the priority has always been the "casual" fanbase that prefers free-for-all items-on timed-match madness, with 1v1 as a secondary concern. Every competitive standard we have in place today is purely the result of the players themselves making the most of the optional settings given to us. I would not put too much stock into what the developer "intended" versus the reality, especially since none of us were actually involved in the development of the game and cannot know for sure how the balancing process went down.

Also, the balance patches we've received there have been changes made to custom moves; just not the ones that are currently in vogue to complain about. So they're giving some sort of attention to custom moves, even if it doesn't address the immediate issues of the day.



Several points I'd like to hit on:
1. Changing how a character fundamentally plays is NOT necessarily a bad thing. Vanilla Palutena is an overly-defensive character with (non-recovery) specials that ranged from "use this maybe once a match, if at all" to a rushdown aerial speedster with a lethal grab game. I doubt anyone would find the former more exciting than the latter. Customs-on Rosalina becomes more aggressive, and given the reaction to her effectively-defensive playstyle championed by Dabuz at Apex, it's difficult for me to see why taking away her aggression options improves the game.
2. How would a character that "makes wins off of good reads" be considered "low-risk". Isn't the requirement of making reads to get hits & kills the definition of a "high-risk" character? Did you mean he is a high-risk low-reward character in vanilla that becomes a low-risk high-reward character in customs, instead?
3. I am not familiar with the Bowser vs Villager match-up, so would you mind explaining why dash-slash (a move that I thought was primarily used from the air) is invalidated by the villager's trip sapling (which is used to force opponents away from the ground).
4. Ultimately, it seems the point that you are trying to make is that match-ups become a "whoever has the better custom wins", but we're really not seeing that in tournament results. Have any custom Bowsers been dominating their locals (never mind anything greater)? Villager has been performing well, but he has also been placing highly in vanilla too, and his top-8 placings haven't changed too much with customs. I'd be interesting in seeing which characters you think were the biggest winners from a customs-legal meta, and comparing their tournament results and more importantly how their match-ups changed. Which match-ups go from "these characters had an even chance" to "this character now destroys this other character" with customs? Mewtwo has only been out for a month, and his viability was already being seriously questioned - few players are giving a better impression of him than "mid-tier", and this was without considering the Bowser-matchup specifically. (Keep in mind, if we're going to count how many match-ups become slaughter-fests with customs on, we should also be counting how many match-ups are slaughter-fests without customs.)

A character's reliance on a certain move comes down to how well their opponent can punish that move. The strongest options in the game are the ones that are considered "safe", where even if your opponent performs optimally their opportunity for punishing is limited. Kong Cyclone is considered as strong as it is because it is believed to be un-punishable thanks to the combination of the landing-lag cancel and super-armor, but even KC is starting to show cracks.

Also, after listening to Zero's post-DVDA victory interview, some of the customs complaints are quite perplexing. This is the first time I've seen anyone complain about Luigi's green-missile customs. Heck, most high-level Luigis barely even use customs. Allegedly, Zero was taking issue with the ease with which that custom lets Luigi make it back to stage, invalidating Sheik's edge-guarding and thus removing a section of the gameplay that he found enjoyable and healthy for the meta. But, if Sheik's edge-guarding is so strong against Luigi, then aren't Luigi's customs (helping his recovery) opening more gameplay options, at least from the Luigi player's perspective?

Ok, so here's the issue with Luigi's extra recovery. Luigi is a top-tier character. He really has it all: the devastating combos, easy kill confirms off grabs, powerful smashes with low cooldown, low lag aerials on the whole, and a projectile that allows him to dominate neutral. Luigi's only true weakness is his recovery, which is definitely gimpable. Luigi's Side B in particular is an important component of this in terms of edgeguarding Luigi, as it needs to be charged to get real distance, and has enough cooldown to allow for a punish as well before Luigi can move into his other recovery options, depending on the character. Float Missile, however, doesn't need to be charged for it to shoot Luigi really far. This invalidates Luigi's weakness that sort of (heavy emphasis on sort of) balances him out as a character.

This actually applies to a lot of characters in customs who gain better recoveries from customs. Think Donkey Kong (Kong Cyclone), Dr. Mario (custom Down B that has a lot of vertical distance), Falco (Distant Firebird and Fast Firebird), Fox (Twisting Fox), Ike (both Side B and Up B), Mii Brawler, and R.O.B. These customs, to varying degrees, make it much more difficult to punish and edgeguard these characters. While this is obviously beneficial to the characters, it's detrimental to the characters in terms of their balancing. While these aren't all exactly top characters (a few not by far), and buffing their recoveries might not be such a terrible thing, but in the cases where these already good characters get powerful recovery buffs that can even almost invalidate edgeguarding, it makes dealing with them that much more difficult.

That's an issue that many players have with customs as a whole. It's not so much that lower tier characters are buffed, but rather that high tier characters are also buffed. Why does Sheik deserve a grenade that is much faster, stage spikes, and true combos into tipper up smash? What is bad about Rosalina that means she needs the equivalent of a Brawl Falco laser as well as the Luma Warp custom that transports Luma much more quickly and is difficult to react to? Why does Pikachu deserve a Side B that kills at absurdly low percents and a Neutral B that sets up into his kill moves with ease if it lands? Why does Luigi deserve a recovery buff? Why does Diddy Kong deserve an absurdly powerful Up B kill move that can be comboed into and comes out quickly as well while making edeguarding Diddy much more of a risk? Why does Sonic deserve a spin dash that grounds opponents? Why does Villager deserve a sapling that trips and balloons that you can't even challenge without suffering significant damage to enhance his camping gameplay? The benefits of customs to good characters outweight the benefits of customs to mid-tier or bad characters because those customs affect the metagame more. I think that this is more of the issue with customs than anything else.

The other issue with customs is that players become reliant on them instead of developing the base character. The Japanese argument following off his is that customs are a crutch for worse players, which I quite frankly don't buy because the better player still usually wins, but I still can see the merit in the idea. The best two examples of this are Villager and Donkey Kong. Ranai, the best Villager in the world, is a Japanese player who does insane things with Villager that American Villagers are simply not achieving. Instead of enhancing his camping with customs and making it so much easier, what Ranai has done is developed the base character's tools and makes the very most out of them. As for Donkey Kong, he can still do things without customs. The point I'm trying to make is that it's more impressive and deep to make the most of the tools a character is provided without customs and pushing the boundaries of the characters, which customs somewhat limit as many characters get options that instantly give them powerful tools.

 

[Sixfortyfive]

Is there some particular way people are differentiating between the various sized Mii fighters (brawler)?

is there some prefix that people are putting before the set numbers?

I use ####HW, where the last two characters are Height and Weight.

S = small (0%)
Q = quarter (25%)
M = medium (50%)
L = large (100%)

 

[Splash Damage]

(Just an extra note:When I said above that grabs kill at 30% with customs on, I was speaking sarcastically about one of the statements ZeRo made against customs on twitter.)

 

[HelpR]

So I suppose I should ask, has anyone uploaded a Datel powersave with the CMP set? If not, I'll most likely go ahead and make one at some point in the future and throw it on a dropbox when I'm done creating the sets

EDIT: It took a while, but here it is: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qgytfyhaxertwde/AXCEfa2861c2_2015-06-05_01-04-27_(CMP no miis).bin?dl=0

Please keep in mind that you need a datel action replay powersave in order to use this. Also, you need to place the file in this specific folder file path for the powersave to find it:

"C:/Users/(the account of the user who installed powersaves here)/Powersaves3DS"

If you place it in the wrong directory, then powersaves won't be able to find it.

Please also note that the power save lacks MOST of the miis. I did mii brawler, but got tired after that, and I probably won't revisit the rest of the mii's. If you want them, make them yourself.

Finally, please remember this will wipe ALL your data for smash, so all your records, replays, etc will be gone. I doubt anyone has anything of major value, but it's worth mentioning.

 

[SomeDumbAcs]

All I need to know is when will sets be cut down from 10 to whatever is less than 10 so I can use my sets because EVO sets a ruining my fun

 

[Unknownkid]

All I need to know is when will sets be cut down from 10 to whatever is less than 10 so I can use my sets because EVO sets a ruining my fun

LOL! You are one magnificent troll! Pops to you. You should have been to upload your build for smash attack. It is only in EVO that you couldn't. What build did you want anyways? I know it involve the Flame Chain.

 

[Sixfortyfive]

Now that some time has passed and EVO is on the horizon, I wanted to drop in and ask you guys how customs tournaments are going in your neck of the woods and how your players generally feel about them.

The local tournament series I'm involved with in Atlanta has been running customs for every biweekly since EVO announced their intentions of using them. The first couple of events were a little tiring logistically, as it was a lot of work getting all of the consoles set up, but once a handful of the regular players' consoles had been taken care of, logistics have basically been a non-issue ever since. We've also been offering to unlock 3DS customs via Powersaves or transfer sets to players' Wii Us whenever someone wants to bring in one, so there's been decent progress made when it comes to distributing custom sets throughout the local scene for the players who want to practice and use them.

There haven't been that many complaints about outright "cheap" or "broken" moves. I've seen some occasional salt from players who lose to things like Dongcopter, but that situation isn't that common, and the lower or mid-tier players who are using those supposedly problematic moves aren't really making that much waves when it comes to results. For the most part, our tournaments (anywhere from 20 to 50 players per event) have been dominated by the same 4 players using the same 4 characters (Cap Falcon, Mega Man, Diddy, Rosalina), whether it was before or after we started using customs. And those 4 players have been making use of customs for their characters as well. Because there hasn't been any shake-up at the top, I'm inclined to believe that a lot of the fear regarding overpowered moves is mostly unfounded.

That said, some of our better players do have an anti-customs argument that I'm willing to consider in greater detail. They say that while customs aren't necessarily "broken," they do have a tendency to over-centralize and over-simplify various characters' playstyles to the point where the game becomes somewhat less interesting. To paraphrase one such player: When a character has maybe a dozen or so equally useful options by default, and then you replace one or two of those options with far more useful options, the in-match decision making process for that character ends up centralizing around those one or two powerful options, which simplifies and weakens the quality of the game as a result. So, while customs may bring beneficial additions to the game in some aspects, such as giving low-tier characters some needed options to compete and allowing players to adjust their moves on a per-matchup basis, they may also actually be reducing the number of strategic elements during the matches themselves, and different players are pro- or anti-customs depending mostly on which of these aspects of the game that they value the most.

I'm not quite sold on that argument yet, but only because I haven't been shown enough concrete examples of it to feel that it's a frequent and significant enough issue. I do think it's a reasonable argument, though, and I kind of want more opinions on it.

 

[webbedspace]

I'm not all that convinced either. As an example, does Gravity Grenade really outclass or invalidate any part of Sheik's default game? Normal grenade is such an underwhelming/situational choice that GG essentially fills an untapped niche. And on the other hand, compare ROB's High Speed Burner or Shulk's Power Vision: it essentially covers the same choice as the default, without encroaching on the utility of any other part of their moveset. having Power Vision doesn't really make, say, a challenging up-smash a worse choice in more situations.

 

[SomeDumbAcs]

LOL! You are one magnificent troll! Pops to you. You should have been to upload your build for smash attack. It is only in EVO that you couldn't. What build did you want anyways? I know it involve the Flame Chain.

2322 for Ganondorf wasn't on there well the stream system
I like 2212 for Falcon, 3323 for Marth and 2213 for Ike

 

[thehard]

Now that some time has passed and EVO is on the horizon, I wanted to drop in and ask you guys how customs tournaments are going in your neck of the woods and how your players generally feel about them.

The local tournament series I'm involved with in Atlanta has been running customs for every biweekly since EVO announced their intentions of using them. The first couple of events were a little tiring logistically, as it was a lot of work getting all of the consoles set up, but once a handful of the regular players' consoles had been taken care of, logistics have basically been a non-issue ever since. We've also been offering to unlock 3DS customs via Powersaves or transfer sets to players' Wii Us whenever someone wants to bring in one, so there's been decent progress made when it comes to distributing custom sets throughout the local scene for the players who want to practice and use them.

There haven't been that many complaints about outright "cheap" or "broken" moves. I've seen some occasional salt from players who lose to things like Dongcopter, but that situation isn't that common, and the lower or mid-tier players who are using those supposedly problematic moves aren't really making that much waves when it comes to results. For the most part, our tournaments (anywhere from 20 to 50 players per event) have been dominated by the same 4 players using the same 4 characters (Cap Falcon, Mega Man, Diddy, Rosalina), whether it was before or after we started using customs. And those 4 players have been making use of customs for their characters as well. Because there hasn't been any shake-up at the top, I'm inclined to believe that a lot of the fear regarding overpowered moves is mostly unfounded.

That said, some of our better players do have an anti-customs argument that I'm willing to consider in greater detail. They say that while customs aren't necessarily "broken," they do have a tendency to over-centralize and over-simplify various characters' playstyles to the point where the game becomes somewhat less interesting. To paraphrase one such player: When a character has maybe a dozen or so equally useful options by default, and then you replace one or two of those options with far more useful options, the in-match decision making process for that character ends up centralizing around those one or two powerful options, which simplifies and weakens the quality of the game as a result. So, while customs may bring beneficial additions to the game in some aspects, such as giving low-tier characters some needed options to compete and allowing players to adjust their moves on a per-matchup basis, they may also actually be reducing the number of strategic elements during the matches themselves, and different players are pro- or anti-customs depending mostly on which of these aspects of the game that they value the most.

I'm not quite sold on that argument yet, but only because I haven't been shown enough concrete examples of it to feel that it's a frequent and significant enough issue. I do think it's a reasonable argument, though, and I kind of want more opinions on it.

This is one of the only anti-customs arguments that makes sense to me; I think it's a natural fear to have...however....

Overreliance on custom moves only happens and only works in the midst of inexperienced players (this can of course mean brand-new players or top-level players who have never faced a move before). Customs are largely, largely just supplementary tools and hard punish enhancers.

When new, strong elements are introduced into a multiplayer competitive game, it's pretty natural to see them being overused and spammed especially as proper counterplay only comes after these moves are abused sufficiently. But as time goes on, these elements usually fall into place like any other and "clean" play prevails. Which is why it's important to keep playing with customs on.

As the collective skill level rises, overzealous, spammy play dwindles.

This phenomenon is not much different than a low-mid level player spamming Mario's up-smash or trying to bait every airdodge with Sheik's Vanish.

Even Kong Cyclone, which is always treading this very thin line, doesn't really see overuse by the inarguable best DK player, Will, if you watch his matches. This is because he's usually in the presence of high-level players who know just how to do him in for one-dimensional gameplay.

I'm glad this was brought up, but I REALLY disagree. It might help if you provided specific examples of characters your fellow players think get an overcentralizing boost from custom moves.

 

[Splash Damage]

Thehard and especially Webbedspace summed up my overall thoughts on this argument. It shocks me that even some top players still believe that that argument is all-encompassing, when they have seen firsthand the holes it has. If we're judging a game by low-level play, then Little Mac is the worst character in the game because he has a bad For Glory winrate.
Additionally, on Webbedspace's analogy of Shiek's grenade, I have another point to add: Default grenade is such an unimpressive, situational option that anything decent would comparitavely appear to be a much better move, as we're comparing it to the alternative option of default. What I mean by this is that a very slow, highly reactable move that you cannot combo into is counted as polarizing just because it has one use: confirming into Up Smash sometimes. That's...pretty underwhelming for something counted as 'making the character from best to broken.' But why is it thought of as such? Because despite the fact that it's not even that great, it's miles better than the default option, so people are led to believe it's good due to the comparison.

 

[Unknownkid]

Snip.

While this is true about the overused or heavy use on the customs, what about default characters that have good special moves and their "overuses"? Like Sheik, Diddy, Sonic, Pikachu, etc. As a Kirby main, once I get your power I will abuse it to kingdom come. Is this bad or over centralizing over a powerful option? Sure. But like that spamming Down B Pikachu, Up B/Down B Kirby novice players - you abuse it until you get punish severely for it. Once the opponents start capitalizing on the Custom moves uses, the player will eventually learn unique ways to incorporate their moves strategically. This will lead to more interesting match or I at least hope so. But need more custom tournament or else the effort will go into the gutter.

2322 for Ganondorf wasn't on there well the stream system
I like 2212 for Falcon, 3323 for Marth and 2213 for Ike

Like I said - you should have been able to add them. Just ask John# next time.

 

[LanceKing2200]

big post

New England Smash 4 TO here.

I love customs, I think they add a lot to the game and I really want them to be tournament standard. Over the last 6 months I've put in tons of work in our scene getting customs working. I have my own personal fully unlocked 3DS which I manually made all the sets on and uploaded them to about 2 dozen consoles. I have printed sheets that I bring to all events that have all of the custom moves and numbers printed on them, and I make sure to inform everyone about the Android app to look up customs. I've had hours long discussions with my players about custom move viability and what is and isn't good for the metagame and the future of Smash 4.


That's why it's so painful for me to say: customs are dying.


It isn't any one thing, there's lots of factors but the fact of the matter is that our players just don't really care about customs anymore. All but a small few of my players either don't care about customs at all, or actively dislike them. If I had to break it down into key problems:

1. Customs don't provide enough benefit for all the work they require to implement. For all the work of developing sets, getting them built and transferred to consoles, providing information on how sets are chosen and what they represent, making sure new players understand the system, providing reference materials, making sure sets are correctly built, making sure all event consoles have the correct sets, etc. all customs really provide is a small mixup to the mid-tier players. We in New England have been playing with customs for months now, and of our top players only one actively uses customs (and he has said that he would prefer customs be off, he just uses them because they're there). Enough people just don't even use them any more that we're putting in tons of effort for very few players.

2. Whether it's true or not, a lot of people believe that customs create problems in the meta. Trust me, I've had long conversations with people about this. Villager camp isn't going to take over tournaments, but it IS boring to watch and play against. DK cyclone doesn't suddenly make him top tier, but it IS annoying to play against due to it's weird hitbox. Even if customs are overall good for the meta, it does present problems, and even if we were to ban certain customs, it would really just be a bandage.

3. There's something that our best player told me about customs that I've never really seen discussed, and while it may not be as dramatic as this, it is true at a basic level. Because custom moves are all B moves, any changes that they make to a characters moveset are very isolated. Things like grabs, shielding, and aerials are core to a character's gameplay, and interweave with each other to form the basis of how the character plays. Adding in things like basic combo strings, fast falling, teching, and other movement options is what makes a character, and a player, good. All of the best players in every smash game (including Smash 4) are the best because they have mastered these fundamentals and move on to things like predictions, mind games, and meta knowledge. SOME special moves fit into the basic toolkit of characters (Sheik and ZSS down-B and Pikachu's Up-B for example) but for most characters special moves are used for recovery or big finishing blows (C.Falcon Side-B and Wario Down-B). The problem here is that when a player focuses on learning custom moves, they focus on learning a very specific move that does a very specific thing, instead of working on fundamental aspects of their character that can be used in a variety of situations. TL;DR: Players trying to improve get hampered up learning "really powerful" custom moves and how to use them instead of fundamentals and good gameplay skill and as a result don't improve as much or a quickly as they could. This is true, I've seen it happen with some players.


I really do love customs, but unless Nintendo or Sakurai announces an update next week that makes customs easier to unlock/select/test (or there's some HUGE meta shakeup at EVO) I think they're going to fall out of fashon.

 

[Splash Damage]

On Lance's viewpoints brought up, after having attended his tournaments I've heard some...interesting things said about customs. I've heard a few people say things like "There's so many threats here today man, I might have to bust out custom Villager, has to be done" or "Long as I use the shooting star bit I don't think I'll have any issues." This has me thinking that those statements about "Mid-level player mixups" are relatively accurate, as those people did get a good way along in bracket while using the customs they mentioned. Additionally, saying that improving players forget to learn fundamentals and legitimate strategies don't do so thanks to their character having jank customs for easier wins is a completely accurate statement that I can agree with, though I haven't faced anyone who was worse than me who won due to customs yet. At the same time, however, there's a DK player who uses customs & also attends Lance's events who actually uses his fundamentals of the game rather than just +x6,000, and the same Rosa player who made the quote above is far from a player who relies solely on the custom he mentioned. That being said, it'd be ignorant of me to say that no one has ever won a set by use of customs at the mid-level of play, even at our venue. Overall though, looking at tournament results, none of the Rhode Islanders who won't stop coming here and crushing us who consistently win these tournaments have began losing due to jank customs and have still consistently won through them. It seems like, in the worst cases, lesser skilled players are winning for the first few rounds of bracket against mid-level players who may not have labbed enough, only to have the top 8 still be the exact same as it would have been regardless due to thge customs' viability cap not beating the top players' skill cap. This could definitely turn off mid-skill players with little resolve to improve/lab to beat these customs, though that may be a bit of a stretch. As a relatively mid-level player who doesn't use many customs(almost always just one custom per set), I have never had this issue and have never lost a match or won a match due to custom moves. A possible bias, though I haven't yet heard any johns or recollections of custom losses from other players either, besides people who don't even have the game and aren't able to lab against them, though that's a different concern altogether.
From a TO standpoint I can definitely see where bigger problems would ensue, as setting up all those WiiUs with all the customs, checking them, ensuring no one tampers with them, ensuring all the people who bring setups have customs on them, ect ect ect. And, considering TO's are the first deciders of rulesets, this may be a hurdle for customs to jump through.
Overall, customs definately have problems and hurdles to jump through, though exactly what these problems are/will become will be determined for certain with some more meta development.