Dabuz
Fraud at Smash
Hello, my name is dabuz, I am the top NY/ NJ smash 4 player, the nintendo open national tournament winner, a retired top brawl and PSASBR player, have had smash 4 since the Japanese version was out, and after lots of thoughts have come to a conclusion on customs.
After having played this game for almost 2 months, experimented with customs, seen them in action, discussed with players, ect., I've come to the conclusion that prematurely banning them is BAD. this isn't to say in the future customs should remain legal, but for now the argument against customs are all weak: Balance: So far every custom has a weakness to accommodate for it's strength, some are definitely superior but none are gamebreaking, it's like learning a new MU, at first the strong ones are going to seem overbearing because no one knows how to deal with them, it's no different than when people encounter gimmicks, uncommon matchups, or anything really. The only difference between customs and defaults is that people use the fact that it's a "custom" move to justify it being banworthy, which by itself means nothing. Assists aren't banned in marvel vs. Capcom despite certain ones being VERY unbalanced, players aren't locked to a single ultra in street fighter despite certain ones obviously overwhelming another one.
All these players saying "DK's up-B is broken, Rosa's luma shot is too good, all these guaranteed recovery up-Bs are bad for the game" haven't put in enough time or reached a level of skill that they can justify saying we should REMOVE A MASSIVE PORTION OF THE GAME. It disgusts me so many regions have already banned customs and so many players are fine with it because they are lazy, selfish, or need an excuse to explain why they lose. Every customs so far has been beatable, it has had a weakness, imagine if we banned moves in other fighting games because the month 1 and month 2 players couldn't adapt, G&W wouldn't be allowed to use Bair, MK's nado would be banned, DDD CGs, Snake tilts, ect. It may sound like a ridiculous statement, but that's in essence what is happening by banning customs without the time or proper data needed.
Counterpicking: The more I think about the "issue" of CPing customs, the less it's an issue. When you pick a character, you pick your customs, it's an extra step but it's not a time-consuming step and if it becomes a problem, it's very easy to put a time limit on it, I remember some tournies would put a 5 minute time limit of CPing a character/ stage and there would be a penalty for going over the time limit. In theory it is possible to get extremely hard counterpicks with customs, but I have yet to see that in practice so until the data proves the theory correct, it's a non-issue. There is also another issue about knowing what customs a player is using, the simple solution: ask the player what customs they are using and make it a rule that players may request to see their opponent's customs, there we go, 30 seconds and the problem is solved.
Unlocking them: Yes, this is an issue when the WiiU version is first out. This is not going to be an issue 3 months into the WiiU version when it's actually not hard to unlock any character's customs, Ninjalink was able to have all of them unlocked in i think it was 3 week's time. I can go into 9.0 classic, use the pause trick, and on average have all of a character's custom moves + a couple for another character in an hour worth of classic playtime. That's also assuming we have to start form scratch with unlocking them on the WiiU version. It might be very possible to transfer custom move data over from multiple 3DS games to the WiiU and have a majority of them unlocked from the start permanently. If that's not possible, it's not too much to ask for players to bring their 3DS copy with a copy of the game or even borrow someone else's with the customs they use for matches on the WiiU, since even if it's temporary, that just means the responsibility is on the player to have what they need for their character available, not a big deal.
Regardless of whether customs are banned or not, the best players will still win, tournaments will still happen. Customs are good for the game, they add variety, they improve every single character, 3 months of playing with customs, every player will know what to expect and then we will actually have valid data so if customs are a problem, we ban them. However, for NOW, we need to test them. I welcome any and all ARGUMENTS to this so let's get a good discussion going.
After having played this game for almost 2 months, experimented with customs, seen them in action, discussed with players, ect., I've come to the conclusion that prematurely banning them is BAD. this isn't to say in the future customs should remain legal, but for now the argument against customs are all weak: Balance: So far every custom has a weakness to accommodate for it's strength, some are definitely superior but none are gamebreaking, it's like learning a new MU, at first the strong ones are going to seem overbearing because no one knows how to deal with them, it's no different than when people encounter gimmicks, uncommon matchups, or anything really. The only difference between customs and defaults is that people use the fact that it's a "custom" move to justify it being banworthy, which by itself means nothing. Assists aren't banned in marvel vs. Capcom despite certain ones being VERY unbalanced, players aren't locked to a single ultra in street fighter despite certain ones obviously overwhelming another one.
All these players saying "DK's up-B is broken, Rosa's luma shot is too good, all these guaranteed recovery up-Bs are bad for the game" haven't put in enough time or reached a level of skill that they can justify saying we should REMOVE A MASSIVE PORTION OF THE GAME. It disgusts me so many regions have already banned customs and so many players are fine with it because they are lazy, selfish, or need an excuse to explain why they lose. Every customs so far has been beatable, it has had a weakness, imagine if we banned moves in other fighting games because the month 1 and month 2 players couldn't adapt, G&W wouldn't be allowed to use Bair, MK's nado would be banned, DDD CGs, Snake tilts, ect. It may sound like a ridiculous statement, but that's in essence what is happening by banning customs without the time or proper data needed.
Counterpicking: The more I think about the "issue" of CPing customs, the less it's an issue. When you pick a character, you pick your customs, it's an extra step but it's not a time-consuming step and if it becomes a problem, it's very easy to put a time limit on it, I remember some tournies would put a 5 minute time limit of CPing a character/ stage and there would be a penalty for going over the time limit. In theory it is possible to get extremely hard counterpicks with customs, but I have yet to see that in practice so until the data proves the theory correct, it's a non-issue. There is also another issue about knowing what customs a player is using, the simple solution: ask the player what customs they are using and make it a rule that players may request to see their opponent's customs, there we go, 30 seconds and the problem is solved.
Unlocking them: Yes, this is an issue when the WiiU version is first out. This is not going to be an issue 3 months into the WiiU version when it's actually not hard to unlock any character's customs, Ninjalink was able to have all of them unlocked in i think it was 3 week's time. I can go into 9.0 classic, use the pause trick, and on average have all of a character's custom moves + a couple for another character in an hour worth of classic playtime. That's also assuming we have to start form scratch with unlocking them on the WiiU version. It might be very possible to transfer custom move data over from multiple 3DS games to the WiiU and have a majority of them unlocked from the start permanently. If that's not possible, it's not too much to ask for players to bring their 3DS copy with a copy of the game or even borrow someone else's with the customs they use for matches on the WiiU, since even if it's temporary, that just means the responsibility is on the player to have what they need for their character available, not a big deal.
Regardless of whether customs are banned or not, the best players will still win, tournaments will still happen. Customs are good for the game, they add variety, they improve every single character, 3 months of playing with customs, every player will know what to expect and then we will actually have valid data so if customs are a problem, we ban them. However, for NOW, we need to test them. I welcome any and all ARGUMENTS to this so let's get a good discussion going.
