Official Standard Custom Moveset Project Initial Release

[frankabus]

Yeah, I agree with the other people who have spoken already about ramping up exposure now that Apex is over. I do think it's important NOT to tout the custom moveset project as a "solution" to campy play. I don't think there's a consensus on whether custom moves as a whole will shift the aggressive/defensive line in either direction yet, so we shouldn't be making any promises. After all, the real root of the campy play issue lies more in game mechanics rather than character moves (no matter how much people blame dabuz's Rosalina). I think it's better to shout the praises of just how much variety it'll bring to casual and competitive play. Dynamic and unique matchups are inherently more fun to watch than the same 5 characters beating on each other all the time.

 

[moofpi]

I see what you're saying (though like some people mentioned, there are several Anti-Luma move(sets)), and I like it and totally agree. Campers gonna camp. But a lot of people have saying Smash 4 may be the most match-up based game, well this definitely mixes up the match-ups. I'm ready to see some speed broken Palutena hype and commentators wondering why Nairo is going with this interesting Zelda set up. I feel it's going to throw everything into turmoil and I love it, I love there being more to discover. Which custom moves have the most synergy and link to each other the best. Previously useless moves are found to be not so useless. Sorry, I'm rambling. But you know when that Online Tournament Mode patch comes through, there's going to be a lot more custom tournaments online. Brace yourselves.

 

[moofpi]

Sorry, computer double-posted. Please disregard.

 

[Raijinken]

Yeah, I agree with the other people who have spoken already about ramping up exposure now that Apex is over. I do think it's important NOT to tout the custom moveset project as a "solution" to campy play. I don't think there's a consensus on whether custom moves as a whole will shift the aggressive/defensive line in either direction yet, so we shouldn't be making any promises. After all, the real root of the campy play issue lies more in game mechanics rather than character moves (no matter how much people blame dabuz's Rosalina). I think it's better to shout the praises of just how much variety it'll bring to casual and competitive play. Dynamic and unique matchups are inherently more fun to watch than the same 5 characters beating on each other all the time.

It's quite important to note that, in most cases, defense and offense are not really specific to a move (as in no single move makes a character or game defensive or aggressive), but are rather results of a character's kit. It's very rare, for a custom move, or several custom moves at once, to change a character's over-all playstyle so drastically (Palutena being an outlier, due to Lightweight and Superspeed) as to reclassify their playstyle from one lean to another. It's important to market customs as what they are: both an additional layer to the meta-game knowledge of matchups and options, and an in-match way of tweaking characters to suit scenarios better.

There's no guarantee they'd make the game faster, or more aggressive, on the whole. But there is evidence suggesting that they make many characters more versatile or viable, and in a lot of cases, in ways these characters really need in order to keep up. There's some room for preference - to my knowledge none of these is objectively a pure upgrade, though many are subjectively vast improvements (such as Power Vision) when used skillfully and in appropriate doses. What that tends to indicate, especially with a lot of top picks wanting 0-1 customs in their arsenal, is that these moves do improve balance over-all, and offer more dynamic play.

The big hope for Online Tournament Mode is that there will be some way... ANY way to ensure (short of invitational and honor-bound player pools) that Custom Equipment is off while Custom Moves are on. While they're bound to the same system, there is always potential for a player to subtly (and unless they tweak things, untraceably) cheat on any online customs event.

 

[moofpi]

The big hope for Online Tournament Mode is that there will be some way... ANY way to ensure (short of invitational and honor-bound player pools) that Custom Equipment is off while Custom Moves are on. While they're bound to the same system, there is always potential for a player to subtly (and unless they tweak things, untraceably) cheat on any online customs event.

Good god...I forgot Customs On/Off doesn't discriminate. And as long as the stats are below zero, it shows balanced but not the effects. That makes me so upset because it's going to happen and put a dark mark on whether customs will be allowed. Same reason why if you pick up a Custom item in-game it could very well be equipment. WHY SAKURAI. WHY ARE THEY UNDER THE SAME FREAKING CATEGORY.

 

[frankabus]

I see what you're saying (though like some people mentioned, there are several Anti-Luma move(sets)), and I like it and totally agree. Campers gonna camp. But a lot of people have saying Smash 4 may be the most match-up based game, well this definitely mixes up the match-ups. I'm ready to see some speed broken Palutena hype and commentators wondering why Nairo is going with this interesting Zelda set up. I feel it's going to throw everything into turmoil and I love it, I love there being more to discover. Which custom moves have the most synergy and link to each other the best. Previously useless moves are found to be not so useless. Sorry, I'm rambling. But you know when that Online Tournament Mode patch comes through, there's going to be a lot more custom tournaments online. Brace yourselves.

Yupyup. Right now, Sm4sh, being new, needs to be (and should be!) a whirlwind of chaos and turmoil as far as character/ability matchups go. You don't want the dust to settle any time soon. It's an oversimplification, but between seeing 50 characters and 81*50 characters matched up against one another, I definitely choose the latter.

 

[Pazzo.]

While I'm not here to complain about Diddy Kong, Apex's finals would have looked differently if customs were turned on.

What do you think? Tackle Pikmin? Hardy Pikmin pluck?

 

[smashmachine]

While I'm not here to complain about Diddy Kong, Apex's finals would have looked differently if customs were turned on.

What do you think? Tackle Pikmin? Hardy Pikmin pluck?

Dabuz: now featuring lasers

 

[Piford]

I think the sets 2222 and 3333 should be removed in the next update. I get that they are their for experimenting, but it seems as giving players more good options is the better choice. If you still want them to be for experimentation, then have some sets that represent moves that aren't used yet but are still somewhat viable. A lot of the 2222 sets and 3333 sets are pretty bad. Of course the characters that actually benefit from 2222 and 3333 can keep those sets.

 

[moofpi]

While I'm not here to complain about Diddy Kong, Apex's finals would have looked differently if customs were turned on.

What do you think? Tackle Pikmin? Hardy Pikmin pluck?

He would probably go with that, but personally I prefer Tackle Pikmin, Explosive Pluck, and I'm ALPH.

 

[Raijinken]

I think the sets 2222 and 3333 should be removed in the next update. I get that they are their for experimenting, but it seems as giving players more good options is the better choice. If you still want them to be for experimentation, then have some sets that represent moves that aren't used yet but are still somewhat viable. A lot of the 2222 sets and 3333 sets are pretty bad. Of course the characters that actually benefit from 2222 and 3333 can keep those sets.

I think experimental slots can be left to slots 9 and 10 to be overwritten if needed, using 7 and 8 for actual sets.

 

[Galespark]

I hope TOs start experimenting witn this now that Apex is over.

Btw, Idk if this is the place to say this, but, you don't think that we should use Custom Moves to kind of balance the game by ourselves?

First: Sakurai said that Custom Moves are not allowed Online to mantain the balance of the game; meaning that Custom Moves were not made with balance in mind and we should make sure that no move makes a character broken.

Second: Sakurai also said that he does not intend to release more balance patches, and we know that Diddy Kong, for example, is a character that needs to be toned down a bit, and by giving him more options we can make him more dangerous to the metagame

So with that in mind, after testing Custom Moves in tournament we should not hesitate in banning any move that would cause a character to be broken, even default moves (for example banning Diddy's default Side-B (1) would reduce significantly his options in the neutral and weaken his recovery options, making him easier to deal with).

It's just an idea that should be taken in consideration imo.

 

[DunnoBro]

That's a possibility, monkey flip is honestly ridiculous. I dislike pseudo-jumps overall since they're "Reset buttons" essentially and make the game last forever. Some characters need them, diddy does not.

 

[Raijinken]

While banning certain moves (including defaults) is possible, I don't think it's wise to jump the gun on them in any way. Monkey Flip is really good, yes, but we've got 50 other characters with 8 new and largely untapped moves to learn with. Monkey Flip might not be the most absurd thing. And it's almost always better for making a high-level game to balance things towards broken rather than away from broken. Great care should be used if something like that ban is to be considered - it should only be if it's a universally good and overpowered move, which I don't believe it is (it's great, don't get me wrong, but it's not nearly Diddy's trump card). A target level of balance should be aimed at (for instance, Balanced Brawl's approach of shooting for roughly Marth-level), and the tweaks should be targetted toward attaining that balance. If Monkey Flip is good, but has nothing to do with the HooHah, then it should be ignored. Bananas, on the other hand, could maybe use a tweak, since they directly lead into the HooHah. That sort of thought process is necessary when considering a ban.

Better to give everyone a broadsword and a rocket launcher than to take away the swords and give everyone daggers.

 

[popsofctown]

I hope TOs start experimenting witn this now that Apex is over.

Btw, Idk if this is the place to say this, but, you don't think that we should use Custom Moves to kind of balance the game by ourselves?

First: Sakurai said that Custom Moves are not allowed Online to mantain the balance of the game; meaning that Custom Moves were not made with balance in mind and we should make sure that no move makes a character broken.

Second: Sakurai also said that he does not intend to release more balance patches, and we know that Diddy Kong, for example, is a character that needs to be toned down a bit, and by giving him more options we can make him more dangerous to the metagame

So with that in mind, after testing Custom Moves in tournament we should not hesitate in banning any move that would cause a character to be broken, even default moves (for example banning Diddy's default Side-B (1) would reduce significantly his options in the neutral and weaken his recovery options, making him easier to deal with).

It's just an idea that should be taken in consideration imo.

Custom moves already improve the balance of the game, without any pruning. It's unclear exactly what Sakurai meant about balancing online play and it could just mean that the default moves got some extra debugging time, but across the board custom specials seem to shore up the weaknesses of the weaker characters and do little for the best characters.

In general, increasing the number of options improves the balance of any game anyway. It's more likely that anything has a counter somewhere, and it's more difficult to master everything in the game.

Custom moves could be used to rebalance characters, but it should only be used with the same strict, heavy criteria that banning a character would have.


And PSA and reminder, Dragon Rush did get a rebalance nerf between the DS and Wii U versions of the game, meaning custom moves have gotten looks.

 

[DunnoBro]

Personally the idea that pseudo-jumps and "reset buttons" like monkey flip, bouncing fish, and falco phase (sideb2) being banned/locked to worst option is something we should consider for the future. It depends on if we want to limit the defensive options and promote offensive ones. Pseudo-jumps are free "return to neutral" cards against a lot of characters and bring the game back to brawl level speed where combos and juggles are very rare.

But currently we have no precedent for claiming any ban is justified without a competitive meta to draw data from.

Also, according to players I talked to from Hawaii at Apex who hold customs tournaments, while diddy is rather tame in that meta, Sheik is possibly the best in the game. As expected, she benefits a lot from kill set-ups, along with penetrating needles that do more shield damage, thus letting her shield poke and set-up for kills/combo more reliably.

They mostly use their default mains though, and their best player, Void, is a sheik main from brawl and brawl minus who claims customs sheik plays a lot like brawl- sheik, who apparently he's been playing for years. So it could just be he was ready to use this sheik, too.

 

[Neoleo21]

Personally the idea that pseudo-jumps and "reset buttons" like monkey flip, bouncing fish, and falco phase (sideb2) being banned/locked to worst option is something we should consider for the future. It depends on if we want to limit the defensive options and promote offensive ones. Pseudo-jumps are free "return to neutral" cards against a lot of characters and bring the game back to brawl level speed where combos and juggles are very rare.

But currently we have no precedent for claiming any ban is justified without a competitive meta to draw data from.

I think the issue is mostly with Monkey Flip since it can be B-reversed unlike the other two, making it near impossible to avoid a reset, Falco would probably want Phantasm 90% of the time in his match ups, I'm not versed enough in Shiek's customs to make a point about her.

 

[DunnoBro]

I think the issue is mostly with Monkey Flip since it can be B-reversed unlike the other two, making it near impossible to avoid a reset, Falco would probably want Phantasm 90% of the time in his match ups, I'm not versed enough in Shiek's customs to make a point about her.

Monkey flip is probably the best, I just listed the others for examples of what I mean by pseudo-jumps. Though regular phantasm is probably one too, come to think of it.

 

[Raijinken]

Personally the idea that pseudo-jumps and "reset buttons" like monkey flip, bouncing fish, and falco phase (sideb2) being banned/locked to worst option is something we should consider for the future. It depends on if we want to limit the defensive options and promote offensive ones. Pseudo-jumps are free "return to neutral" cards against a lot of characters and bring the game back to brawl level speed where combos and juggles are very rare.

But currently we have no precedent for claiming any ban is justified without a competitive meta to draw data from.

Also, according to players I talked to from Hawaii at Apex who hold customs tournaments, while diddy is rather tame in that meta, Sheik is possibly the best in the game. As expected, she benefits a lot from kill set-ups, along with penetrating needles that do more shield damage, thus letting her shield poke and set-up for kills/combo more reliably.

They mostly use their default mains though, and their best player, Void, is a sheik main from brawl and brawl minus who claims customs sheik plays a lot like brawl- sheik, who apparently he's been playing for years. So it could just be he was ready to use this sheik, too.

Defense is not innately bad, though, and Smash4's relatively balanced validity of offense vs defense should be maintained if possible. Banning an option because it is defensive is not a good idea. Nor, necessarily, because it provides a "free reset to neutral". Smash is unique in its neutral game.

One can't justify banning, say, Phase, when Phantasm does the same thing almost identically (just ever so slightly more punishable), and other characters have similar moves even in their default movesets that function as resets. Perhaps it's a stretch, but that's like banning Wavedashing because it lets you retreat too quickly from any facing orientation.

 

[DunnoBro]

Defense is not innately bad, though, and Smash4's relatively balanced validity of offense vs defense should be maintained if possible. Banning an option because it is defensive is not a good idea. Nor, necessarily, because it provides a "free reset to neutral". Smash is unique in its neutral game.

One can't justify banning, say, Phase, when Phantasm does the same thing almost identically (just ever so slightly more punishable), and other characters have similar moves even in their default movesets that function as resets. Perhaps it's a stretch, but that's like banning Wavedashing because it lets you retreat too quickly from any facing orientation.

I didn't claim it was innately bad, I just said that if we want a more aggressive game that's more combo/follow-up based rather than read and punish, banning them would bring us closer to that. Whether we actually even need that though, is up for debate.

But on your comparison, wavedashing and pseudo-jumps are incomparable. Wavedashing is a movement/punish option, pseudo-jumps are an anti-pressure option. Pseudo-jumps aren't really used for general movement, just for escape. (at least as a whole, each individual special has it's own purpose)

sm4sh rolls and pseudo jumps are more comparable.

Another option would be to restrict recovery options so more characters can actually be edgeguarded.

 

[Galespark]

I'm not saying that Monkey Flip is what makes Diddy good, or that we should ban it right away. What I'm saying is: We should not rule out the possibilities of banning moves to limit the options of dominant characters and find a good balance in the game. I'm pretty sure that if there were customs in Brawl, people would probably ended up banning MK's Tornado. The same here, we have the opportunity to adjust the game balance by ourselves and we should do it if necessary. But then again, Custom Moves need testing in the competitive field.

 

[Krysco]

I agree that we should start opening the ideas of customs more now that APEX is over but I don't agree with banning any moves, especially default ones, at least for now. No custom is broken on its own with the closest I've seen being considered such is Brawler's Piston Punch. We should allow all customs to be used freely and only ban them if we really have to. I understand that's what people are getting at but if someone who wasn't sure if they like the idea of customs or not came in here and read that we are already thinking of banning something like Monkey Flip it wouldn't help making them show up at tournaments at all.

I altogether feel we shouldn't ban default specials at all no matter how good they are. They are the moves used when customs are off and are the moves people are most comfortable with. I can imagine the way customs will start to be used is people will only change 1 or 2 of their moves to try new things and also stick with something familiar. Banning Monkey Flip/Phantasm/Bouncing Fish/any other default says to anyone who uses those characters that they have to leave their comfort zone to use their character.

I'm also gonna be a bit less 'professional' or whatever here and say **** anyone who says we need to make this game more offense oriented. If you want strictly offense, play Melee. Strictly defense was Brawl's style and 4 has a nice mix of both. There are combos in this game and there are rush down/offense oriented characters but this is the same game that introduced . All characters who are at least somewhat campy/defensive/spacing characters and there's also the returning characters of these styles. I'll apologize for my insult but I still partly mean it after seeing the way some Melee players behaved towards 4's GF at APEX all because it wasn't fast or offensive enough to their liking. Let Smash 4 grow up to be it's own game instead of trying to make it like any other game. No offense intended to anyone :x just bothered by a mentality I disagree with is all.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Custom moves already improve the balance of the game, without any pruning. It's unclear exactly what Sakurai meant about balancing online play and it could just mean that the default moves got some extra debugging time, but across the board custom specials seem to shore up the weaknesses of the weaker characters and do little for the best characters.

I've noticed that unless Sakurai (or his translator, to be precise) specifies character balance, he seems to instead be talking about a nebulous idea of skilled vs. new players and trying to limit the amount of facerolling that can take place just by virtue of having unlocked more stuff or read about some obscure technique or whatever. Smash being intended as a party game where everyone can join and have fun, this specific sort of balance is fairly high priority to him.

I say it's nebulous because obviously a skilled player can wipe the floor with a new one any day of the week, but I think he wants to avoid situations where the new player is completely overwhelmed by unusual moves and basically anything they can't figure out by reading the manual. And the line between the two is a bit blurry.

 

[DunnoBro]

I'm also gonna be a bit less 'professional' or whatever here and say **** anyone who says we need to make this game more offense oriented. If you want strictly offense, play Melee. Strictly defense was Brawl's style and 4 has a nice mix of both. There are combos in this game and there are rush down/offense oriented characters but this is the same game that introduced . All characters who are at least somewhat campy/defensive/spacing characters and there's also the returning characters of these styles. I'll apologize for my insult but I still partly mean it after seeing the way some Melee players behaved towards 4's GF at APEX all because it wasn't fast or offensive enough to their liking. Let Smash 4 grow up to be it's own game instead of trying to make it like any other game. No offense intended to anyone :x just bothered by a mentality I disagree with is all.

No, the game quite clearly needs to be more offense oriented in order to survive. Unfortunately, the behavior of the melee players isn't confined to just them, the game must gain more entertainment value to be able to survive. Brawl died due to this lack of it. Customs alone already bring this, however.

The type of defense I'm talking about removing is not the kind specific to campy/defensive playstyles. In fact, none of those characters listed have any of the potentially problematic moves I was talking about.

The type of defense that removes the core mechanic of being punished is what I'm referring to. Whether it actually needs to be banned is something I don't know yet, though.

 

[Banjo-Kazooie]

Well, I'm all up for it. I'll be collecting the remaining customs I'm missing this week and building the pack. Already showed this thread to the Facebook group of my little community. Hopefully they will be interested in using customs on our weekly tournaments (or at least start a 2nd tournament with customs).

Hopefully a bigger tournament starts allowing these customs. Or even better, if Nintendo added the option to toggle custom moves while keeping equipment off to their future tournament mode. I think this would help convice a lot of people.

 

[Bjurrse]

I fully support this! Time to grind the 200 moves I got left :o. Is there an easier way to check which moves you are missing, than to manually check each character? Ill convince my group of players that customs are the way to go!

 

[Thinkaman]

Real Talk: The closest thing to a broken special move is default Oil Panic in teams.

We would 100% ban this before even considering banning any other options.

 

[Galespark]

The thing is not that a move being broken by itself, I mean, WFT has a custom UpB that apparently is like Brawl's MK Tornado, but she already has limited options unlike Brawl's MK so even with that move she should not become a problematic character with it.

Other characters though, like Sheik, Rosalina or Diddy are already very good/dominant, and if somehow custom moves makes them even better to the point they will still be overly dominant, we should CONSIDER limiting their options.

But again, like I said and people don't seen to understand; all this after sucessfully integrate Custom Moves into the competitive play AND enough testing/developing

 

[Protom]

Nebulous starting sunday seems to be aalowing customs again, and it looks likke they're going to aim to get this projects sets onto as many setups as possible.
I'll be going there and ill make sure to report how it goes..

 

[moofpi]

Nebulous starting sunday seems to be aalowing customs again, and it looks likke they're going to aim to get this projects sets onto as many setups as possible.
I'll be going there and ill make sure to report how it goes..

And that'll be streaming Sunday right?

 

[Thinkaman]

The thing is not that a move being broken by itself, I mean, WFT has a custom UpB that apparently is like Brawl's MK Tornado, but she already has limited options unlike Brawl's MK so even with that move she should not become a problematic character with it.

Well, four big differences: one good, three bad.

First, it does a max of 30% raw damage. (A crazy amount) That's the good news.

Second, it does this over 5 slow hits. This means you can actually interrupt it OoS with many fast OoS moves.

Third, it hits outward. You can get a few consecutive hits if you push into them, but getting all 5 hits for the full 30% is really hard. 2 hits for 12% is in my experience the usual reward on-hit.

Fourth, it has TONS of cooldown lag. She basically has to aim to end on a ledge, or a distant platform.

It's a great move for what it is (single-handedly saves WFT imo), but it must be used responsibly to be effective.

Other characters though, like Sheik, Rosalina or Diddy are already very good/dominant, and if somehow custom moves makes them even better to the point they will still be overly dominant, we should CONSIDER limiting their options.

Diddy's options are just downright awful.

Sheik, along with Ness and Jigglypuff, has custom options that are really dubious in value.

Rosalina has 2 great customs nominally (Luma Warp and Shooting Star Bit), but suffers in a customs environment due to the sheer number of matchups that gain good anti-Luma options.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Nebulous starting sunday seems to be aalowing customs again, and it looks likke they're going to aim to get this projects sets onto as many setups as possible.
I'll be going there and ill make sure to report how it goes..

Awesome, and if in addition to the report, you could save some replays and get some good footage, that would be even better.

 

[moofpi]

Do any big players go to Nebulous? I'm not familiar with the series. Either way, I just realized I'm pretty hype to see a lot of characters come out of the woodwork for this in a big way.

The only time I get to see customs in action is when me and my friend play 3DS during our work breaks when we have recently started playing consistently with customs

Spoiler

and equipment.

 

[Galespark]

Diddy's options are just downright awful.

Sheik, along with Ness and Jigglypuff, has custom options that are really dubious in value.

Rosalina has 2 great customs nominally (Luma Warp and Shooting Star Bit), but suffers in a customs environment due to the sheer number of matchups that gain good anti-Luma options.

These were just examples, what I'm saying is: In an hypothetical scenario where TOs have implemented Custom Moves in the game, there has been enough testing, and characters like Ganondorf are getting better results BUT Diddy Kong is still the dominating character winning most tourneys with or without Customs and getting still ranked "SS" in Tier Lists; the community should take actions in the subject and find a way to balance a the character banning certain moves so he get reduced options.

I use Monkey Flip as an example, because one of Diddy's weakness is his recovery and this move make this weakness much less exploitable. Also it is a very strong option in his neutral game.

But once again, this is just an hypothetical assumption.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

@ Amazing Ampharos do you think it would be worth linking to Nairo's playlist of every custom move in the OP? And spreading it around in general whenever the customs debate crops up elsewhere I guess.

 

[freezy]

This is a great project.

I think Apex showed that Smash4 metagame would greatly benefit from custom moves. We should really push tournament organizers into considering it with the help of this project. Just yesterday Jebaily said on twitter that he does not want to allow custom moves for CEO because he deems them unfair and a pain to unlock. I answered him that in fact the metagame would be much better with customs and also directed him to this project, he then answered that he will keep an open mind and may consider it if the community really wants it. So I think everyone should go out and try to convince the TOs and other figureheads. Convincing casters and famous players would also be good as they usually have a large following and can push for it. For example Hungrybox stated some weeks ago that he thinks that custom moves should be legal, but he didn't know about this project back then. Spread the word!

I really fear the smash4 meta will end stale and camp heavy if we can't establish custom moves.

this reddit thread also did a great job explaining why custom moves would be good and how mainly low and mid tier characters would benefit from them, balancing the game: http://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/2t87jp/with_smash_4_confirmed_for_evo_lets_talk_about/
maybe in the OP here in this thread some explanation should be added in the first paragraph, explaining why this project is so useful.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

this reddit thread also did a great job explaining why custom moves would be good and how mainly low and mid tier characters would benefit from them, balancing the game: http://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/2t87jp/with_smash_4_confirmed_for_evo_lets_talk_about/
maybe in the OP here in this thread some explanation should be added in the first paragraph, explaining why this project is so useful.

Oh hey that's my thread. Good to know it made an impression on someone.

 

[John12346]

I mean, the best we can do right now is try to sway our respective regions to at least entertain the idea of customs.

In NYC we have a few tournament series that are customs legal and a few that are customs banned. At the moment I'm doing my best to shout at the banned ones to at least poll our community to understand what we'd like to see in tournament.

 

[Krysco]

No, the game quite clearly needs to be more offense oriented in order to survive. Unfortunately, the behavior of the melee players isn't confined to just them, the game must gain more entertainment value to be able to survive. Brawl died due to this lack of it. Customs alone already bring this, however.

The type of defense I'm talking about removing is not the kind specific to campy/defensive playstyles. In fact, none of those characters listed have any of the potentially problematic moves I was talking about.

The type of defense that removes the core mechanic of being punished is what I'm referring to. Whether it actually needs to be banned is something I don't know yet, though.

I think it's too early to say for sure that the game needs to be more offense oriented in order to survive. The game is still new and I highly doubt the entire metagame has been figured out yet. Plus Brawl is apparently still alive, not cared for that much mind you but still alive since it was at APEX. I do agree however that customs will prolong 4's lifespan.

Entertainment value and the goals of the actual players aren't always the same, assuming that when you say entertainment value you mean for the spectators and not the players themselves. Viewers are more likely to want to see quick, flashy, effective combos and fast game play much more than slow, drawn out matches. However, the players simply want to place well and if they do so with a slow, campy character then they will use that slow, campy character.

The moves you mentioned have both offensive and defensive uses with the defensive ones generally being getting from point A to point B in a short amount of time and resetting to neutral. I wouldn't exactly call that a bad thing. Why take a hit or stay in an unfavorable situation when you don't have to? Heck Falco has had Phantasm for 3 (4 if you count P:M) games now and none of his customs change the point A to point B/resetting to neutral ability it has, they either nerf the distance for a stronger hit or get rid of the hitbox for less startup.

Looking at the top 8 of this years APEX we had two Diddys, two Sheiks with one of them also using Falcon, a Sonic and a Little Mac. Comparing that to the one Duck Hunt, one Pac-Man and Dabuz using two defensive characters Rosa and Oli. There were more offense oriented characters used than defensive ones and only Dabuz and Abadango used strictly defensive characters (although the offensive characters had the kind of moves you mentioned). That's only an example but it is the first example for a major tournament like APEX.

As I said before, I think we should just leave 4 alone for the most part, we shouldn't be thinking of banning anything right now other than stages. We should work toward making customs legal for more tournaments and save the idea of banning any moves for when they truly show to be problematic in a tournament environment.

If I failed to address or acknowledge something you said then please, by all means tell me though I believe you and I have differing opinions altogether.

 

[freezy]

k Jebaily now said that he will look out for other tourneys that start using custom moves. So if you guys got some positive examples of tourneys with custom moves, you should tweet them to him to convince him (@CEOJebaily)

If CEO does it, Evo will be much more inclined to allow them aswell. And if Evo allows it, every other tournament will too.