Should any specific customs be banned?

[Ulevo]

not everything needs 5 years of testing to be evident.

Once upon a time in the Melee world, according to the community consensus, Link was considered cheap, thoughts of banning Sheik were tossed around, Falco was considered bad, Ice Climbers was never a competitive character, Marth was pragmatically the best character in the game, and Jigglypuff was never going to win a major. It took years to get to where we are with Melee today, and we're still evolving.

 

[deepseadiva]

Do we want customs on or off?

If we choose on: do we want to put on a ledge grab limit or do we want to ban Timber Counter?

I believe those are the questions were going to be answering after/during EVO. For the second question, I don't think "neither" is a realistic answer. Just trying to think pragmatically about how our community is going to be behaving - without condoning or condemning.

 

[PUK]

I don't see anything wrong with speculation. With today's EVO ruleset announcement I do think it's very likely: 1) customs will become universal. And 2) we will see the banning of Timber Counter to disable planking. 3) no other custom bans beside that one. Those are my calls and you can call that nonsense, but not everything needs 5 years of testing to be evident.

I dunno I just don't think banning very very specific customs needs to be this huge ideological battle.

It's nonsense. First, if we ban something like this it WILL legitimate any futur ban in order to keep the game "healthy". I don't say it will happen, but it will be possible. And what we consider healthy is not graved in the stone.
Second: planking is a possible strategy for a lot of the cast, timber counter and EBT just make it VIABLE for villager. Not OP, not optimal, just VIABLE. And because it's not optimal, it can't be called degenerated or ban worthy. You know who is degenerated: sonic with some stages. Sonic has an easy time taking the lead (not like villager) and then an easy time keeping it for 6 min because of his mobility (not like villager). But planking is just strange for a player, and rarely used. And it don't involve custom so it's ok. Same goes with camping pika, who is far better than villager, and camping shiek. But no ban discussion, it's strange... Maybe because these strategies can be handled by sonic/pika/shiek/Diddy and some others? A strategy is impossible to fight for 40 characters, it's ok. A strategy is hard to fight with Diddy, omg ban plz.
You're saying we have to choose between custom without villager and no custom. I'm saying that we play custom or we don't, but ban anything now will just kill the game in a not so long time.
And finally don't call your personnal opinion " evident" in any debate. Evident assertions has always been the most stupid opinions. The biggest lies have been called evident. When something is evident there is no choice, no debate, no agreement. It's the only thing forbidden in a discussion.

 

[CeruleanFlow]

It's nonsense. First, if we ban something like this it WILL legitimate any futur ban in order to keep the game "healthy". I don't say it will happen, but it will be possible. And what we consider healthy is not graved in the stone.
Second: planking is a possible strategy for a lot of the cast, timber counter and EBT just make it VIABLE for villager. Not OP, not optimal, just VIABLE. And because it's not optimal, it can't be called degenerated or ban worthy. You know who is degenerated: sonic with some stages. Sonic has an easy time taking the lead (not like villager) and then an easy time keeping it for 6 min because of his mobility (not like villager). But planking is just strange for a player, and rarely used. And it don't involve custom so it's ok. Same goes with camping pika, who is far better than villager, and camping shiek. But no ban discussion, it's strange... Maybe because these strategies can be handled by sonic/pika/shiek/Diddy and some others? A strategy is impossible to fight for 40 characters, it's ok. A strategy is hard to fight with Diddy, omg ban plz.
You're saying we have to choose between custom without villager and no custom. I'm saying that we play custom or we don't, but ban anything now will just kill the game in a not so long time.
And finally don't call your personnal opinion " evident" in any debate. Evident assertions has always been the most stupid opinions. The biggest lies have been called evident. When something is evident there is no choice, no debate, no agreement. It's the only thing forbidden in a discussion.

Very true, the more I read the more I realize that we will just kill the game if we only allow strategies that are beatable with Diddy. As slow paced and campy as Villager is with those customs, he's not the only one doing it. The customs will force people to actually go out of their way to try a new play style for a match or two.

If we ban custom moves for Villager because he's campy, we need to take care of some other characters normals as well. I say leave them alone and let's learn how to deal with them as they come along, instead of being so eager to pull out the ban hammer.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

2) we will see the banning of Timber Counter to disable planking.

I'm curious how much time you spent labbing against this. AA spent some time in the lab and... well, the result is this. Supposedly, not only is this strategy not "OP", it's not even particularly hard to beat for most characters.

 

[Raijinken]

http://www.ssbwiki.com/Banned_stage

"Especially poor matchup balance by providing a rather extreme advantage for certain characters (such as allowing the character to utilise excessive, gamebreaking camping, or utilise infinite chain throws, as in the case of Fox in Temple for the former, or King Dedede in Shadow Moses Island for the latter)."

Fair enough, though I also think in those cases there's a lot more to be called degenerate than Fox running away or Dedede chaining forever. Same for your earlier reply to my own message.

And I guess, relatively speaking, it's worth noting that (rather in the case of Smash4), most stages are banned based on similarity to past-banned stages for degenerate reasons. So while I see that some stages are banned over specific matchups, I still wouldn't call it the norm.

 

[CeruleanFlow]

I think the issue is people are too lazy to figure out a way to defeat it, and instead they complain about it needing to be banned. Awesome link, that should basically stop anyone from having an issue with the tactic, especially if Greninja's Down B will ultimately stop any progress.

 

[deepseadiva]

It's nonsense. First, if we ban something like this it WILL legitimate any futur ban in order to keep the game "healthy". I don't say it will happen, but it will be possible. And what we consider healthy is not graved in the stone.

In logic and critical thinking, a slippery slope is a logical device, but it is usually known under its fallacious form, in which a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another without any rational argument or demonstrable mechanism for the inevitability of the event in question.

I know the Smash community can be rather ban-happy when they have the option for it. See: stages. Good legitimate stages, such as Wuhu Island, are constantly being banned for little reason. I get that fear. But I also have trust in the community as well. Specifically because competition keeps bans at a minimum naturally. A custom move needs to be universally seen as problematic before being banned. If any region decides to be very ban happy and ban perfectly legitimate things like Kong Cylcone, or Helicopter Kick or whatever, that region puts themselves at a massive disadvantage whenever they travel to other parts of the world where those customs are probably still legal. I do not think that's the dark path we'll go down if we consider banning one single custom.

I do think there's only been one single custom move that has revealed itself as truely problematic. The one spawnable, non-removable stage hazard in the game: Timber Counter.

Second: planking is a possible strategy for a lot of the cast, timber counter and EBT just make it VIABLE for villager. Not OP, not optimal, just VIABLE. And because it's not optimal, it can't be called degenerated or ban worthy

I suppose this is where the months of results are going to come in useful. I think it's really obvious how optimal it becomes for Villager to start planking whenever he has a percent lead. My prediction for the next upcoming months is a few obnoxious players are going to take up Villager planking to advance their own agendas. For better or for worse there's going to be public outcry and TOs are going to respond in three ways: ban all customs, install a ledge grab limit, or ban Timber Counter.

Or everyone is just gonna be cool with Villager planking, appreciating its unique presence in the metagame at both low to high level tournaments. But I... don't think... that's likely...

 

[PUK]

I can understand your arguments, but i think you are overreacting. You're making prediction but it's been a week this strategie is getting some light. While it's been close to 6 month Diddy is dominating everything. We can afford some patience.
Like it has been said the villager need to get the leads and plant his sapling. Both need Time. Both are uncertain. Then he needs to be sure his stretegie is not dead at the very beginning.
Yes it's clearly the best strategie for a flawed character like the villager. But the strategie in itself is bad, it could barely go even with some top tier, and destroyed by everything else.

In logic and critical thinking, a slippery slope is a logical device, but it is usually known under its fallacious form, in which a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another without any rational argument or demonstrable mechanism for the inevitability of the event in question.

Yes and that's why i wrote: i don't say it will happen.
I was saying that s a ban will always have one purpose: keep the game healthy.
But i can't say our notion of a "healthy game" will always be the same. If we ban now, even for good reasons, the same thing could happen many times later. Maybe we will think that GaW hammer is non healthy, find good arguments and ban it. I don't know, i'm not making predictions.

 

[Ulevo]

In logic and critical thinking, a slippery slope is a logical device, but it is usually known under its fallacious form, in which a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another without any rational argument or demonstrable mechanism for the inevitability of the event in question.

I know the Smash community can be rather ban-happy when they have the option for it. See: stages. Good legitimate stages, such as Wuhu Island, are constantly being banned for little reason. I get that fear. But I also have trust in the community as well. Specifically because competition keeps bans at a minimum naturally. A custom move needs to be universally seen as problematic before being banned. If any region decides to be very ban happy and ban perfectly legitimate things like Kong Cylcone, or Helicopter Kick or whatever, that region puts themselves at a massive disadvantage whenever they travel to other parts of the world where those customs are probably still legal. I do not think that's the dark path we'll go down if we consider banning one single custom.

I do think there's only been one single custom move that has revealed itself as truely problematic. The one spawnable, non-removable stage hazard in the game: Timber Counter.



I suppose this is where the months of results are going to come in useful. I think it's really obvious how optimal it becomes for Villager to start planking whenever he has a percent lead. My prediction for the next upcoming months is a few obnoxious players are going to take up Villager planking to advance their own agendas. For better or for worse there's going to be public outcry and TOs are going to respond in three ways: ban all customs, install a ledge grab limit, or ban Timber Counter.

Or everyone is just gonna be cool with Villager planking, appreciating its unique presence in the metagame at both low to high level tournaments. But I... don't think... that's likely...

What you need to understand is that political discussion around rules or facets of the game have implications associated with them, even if those discussions do not lead anywhere. If an element of a game is highlighted as a topic for a ban, that element becomes suspect amongst the community even if there is no legitimate validity to the concern. Therefore considerations like this need to be taken lightly, especially in fighting games.

You don't talk about banning something, and then when the evidence presents itself, follow through with the ban. You wait for the evidence to present itself, then you talk about whether or not the ban is appropriate. Doing this backwards has consequences. You need look no further than the debates around Meta Knight and the mess that created to see what I mean.

 

[Ben Holt]

Absolutely not. Ever since Dragon Rush and Power Bow were nerfed, there aren't any broken customs.

 

[Unknownkid]

Power Bow got Nerf?

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Power Bow got Nerf?

I think maybe its startup got nerfed? Can't actually remember.

 

[ItsRainingGravy]

Speaking of Customs getting nerfed, because Customs are going to be allowed at Evo, they are going to be getting a lot more exposure.

Which also raises the chances of Nintendo balancing them, should they take notice of anything they deem to be unbalanced.

Not sure how many people thought of this, but I wanted to bring this possibility up.

 

[PUK]

Please no balance patch

 

[COLINBG]

We can not ban specific customs. Either we ban them entirely, or we don't ban them at all.

How do you decide what is ban-worthy or not?
​

There's no clear ruleset. Every player has a different opinion on the matter. Do we only let a small, experienced group of players decide for everyone what moves we will all play with? Do we make a general vote, and let the majority decide? Unless the vast majority (almost every one, universally) agrees as to what moves to ban, we won't get anywhere, and this is not going to happen, seeing how divided the opinions on customs are. And even then;

​

How do you get the majority to decide exactly that Pikachu's X move is broken, along with Villager's Y move, DK's Z move and nothing else?
​

How do we get the majority to decide that we only ban these three moves, and that the others are fine? Banning specific moves would be a complex ban, and while great in theory or casually with friends, it would be too dificult to do in practice. It would be too complicated to ban several moves from each character to arrive to the best, most neutral and balanced metagame possible, because we don't know and probably never will agree on what is it. Why would we ban Villager's Timber Counter, but let Pikachu have his Heavy Skull Bash? Might as well ban the Skull Bash too. But then, why would we let DK have his Kong Cyclone? When do we decide that the meta is fine and when do we stop banning moves? We can't simply ban a ton of moves to balance out the meta. Also, all this is assuming the meta needs to be balanced, and to be honest, it probably doesn't. Some characters are indeed better than others, but that's part of "what makes smash smash", and even low tier characters can perform well, while high tier characters stay managable. The only reason to ban moves is if they are already breaking the meta, which is not happening.

​

It's harder to decide if a move is broken than it is to decide if a character/stage is broken, which is already hard itself.​

Character bans only depend on MUs. If a character has a huge MU advantage against a large majority of the cast, he MIGHT get suspected for a ban. Usually, a character will do well against another character no matter what. If you repeat the same MU over and over again, you can generally see a pattern as to what character is better, if there is one, independently of who's playing.​

Moves are much more situational, so it's harder to tell if they're broken or not. It does depend on the MU, but also on the situation. A lot of the time, there's ways to avoid getting hit by a move no matter how good it is. Yes Diddy's grab is dangerous, but if you keep your distance or throw hitboxes, it can't touch you. Yes Pac's key is dangerous, but if you're not on the same level as him it won't hit you. You have an additional criteria for what makes it broken, it's not solely dependent on MU. A move being good against a certain character doesn't mean it will always work against him/her.





For a move to be considered ban worthy, it has to be efficient in the majority of situations, and work against the majority of the characters. It needs to be a very high reward/no risk move that you can easily spam and get a lot of benefits from. With all the testing we've done so far, nothing even comes close to this. Even Diddy's Grab (to Dthrow to Uair) doesn't come close to this. You can't simply ban a move because ''it's annoying'' or ''it works relatively well against some characters sometimes''. It has to be game-breaking. It has to render competitive play impossible or extremely limit the choice of characters you can make.

Because of this, while it is a good idea, and while you can do that if you're playing casually, it's simply not possible or very very unlikely to happen in a competitive environment as big and as diverse as the smash scene is. At least, not now. I'm against the idea of banning specific moves as a whole.

- We cannot ban specific moves because they are broken, since there are no broken moves.
- We cannot ban specific moves to balance the meta, because it would be too difficult to arrive to a concensus.



Concerning the Timber Counter (because that's what OP mentionned), there are ways to deal with it. It doesn't make approaches impossible, it only forces you to approach by air. Pac's trampoline does the exact same thing, and no one is calling it broken. You can simply wait until it disappears, or throw projectiles. You can try to approach by air. It is a good move, and the sapling does make Villager safer, but it's not as broken as everyone claims. As for the tree: it has less HP than the other trees. You can kill it easily. Just be sure not to attack it if you're too close. Remember that Villager can Fair it if you're close to it to deal you damage. Also, with Timber Counter, Villager loses a kill move in the axe, and the tree deals less knockback. So yeah, it is a cool move, but it also has downsides.

 

[Shaya]

Okay because people don't get the slippery slope fallacy.
If something is legitimately deemed ban-worthy then it's ban-worthy (every case being for it's own merits not others). The amount or it being a prelude to widespread banning is a waste of an argument.

What's degenerate play? I don't think it has anything to do with being "overpowered" or viability. The best player is going to win the tournament, heck win the set even. That so much is being shown and will likely continue to be shown.
There's a precedent in a rule we have from Melee (Ulevo is forgetful), the "no stalling rule". We looked at wobbling and immediately felt we had to curtail this, otherwise a wobble to 999% and however many seconds left of the match afterwards would be all you'd see from said technique. In Brawl this was more prevalent, Dedede or other "cgs" against a wall or whatever. The decision was made that any "inescapable chain" must be immediately ended at 300%.
Dedede chain grabbing Donkey Kong until 999% was never a problem, heck not even 300%, although the option was there, no tournament player EVER chose to abuse it like this. "playing to win" or playing "optimally" would mean they would have.
The LGL was a rule brought in to curtail degenerative play. Planking is an issue in melee too yet the best players refuse to use the tactic, that's the only reason it isn't there. Will RandomFo20xx planking beat Mango? No. Will Mew2King beat 99% of high/top Melee players if he chose to adopt that tactic? You can do some research yourself if you want to, Mew2King's been to a lot of tournaments over the years, pre-Documentary era he had little shame in abusing it at quiet locals.

Basically one of the biggest issues with degenerative play is defining it and enforcing it. The LGL wasn't completely effective (didn't stop you stalling the last X minutes of the clock well under limit). What's an "inescapable chain"? What if someone accidentally goes over 300%, are you going to pause the match and call over a TO?
Things like these require a lot of resources. Meta Knight's dimension cape could turn himself invisible/invincible indefinitely (although better be ready to pay the RSI doctor bill afterwards) and was also what allowed MK to "perfectly plank" (something research on later came to the conclusion of), so so so so soooo many issues could've been resolved by banning Down-B over the 500 other rules we implemented, but then we go with the "accidental use" issue, or "fair use" of it. MK players would sneak in extensions of their cape with impunity as it was nearly impossible to catch, but M2K has been caught doing it.

If a custom special is banned, that definitely automatically enforces dealing with it.
One of our biggest dramas in Brawl was defining what's bannable. We still don't have one. The heavily tried and failed rhetoric of "Lalala [not] overpowered lalala" hasn't done anything but hurt the game in the past, one way or another. I'd rather not see players representing the game regionally and nationally being tortured because of an "infallible" logic adopted by those outside it.

The point to my arguments is to not ban Timber Counter. My point is to stop being obstinate in your perspectives. A middle ground is required to move forward. The middle ground right now isn't about banning anything, it's realising there are straining additions to the meta brought in by customs, acknowledging and overcoming them (in whatever way is fit for it).
Logic and precedence already tells me that Timber Counter isn't wobbling nor Brawl Dimension Cape (at the moment), but the paradigm always shifts in relation to the context it's in.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

In logic and critical thinking, a slippery slope is a logical device, but it is usually known under its fallacious form, in which a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another without any rational argument or demonstrable mechanism for the inevitability of the event in question.

I know the Smash community can be rather ban-happy when they have the option for it. See: stages. Good legitimate stages, such as Wuhu Island, are constantly being banned for little reason. I get that fear. But I also have trust in the community as well. Specifically because competition keeps bans at a minimum naturally. A custom move needs to be universally seen as problematic before being banned. If any region decides to be very ban happy and ban perfectly legitimate things like Kong Cylcone, or Helicopter Kick or whatever, that region puts themselves at a massive disadvantage whenever they travel to other parts of the world where those customs are probably still legal. I do not think that's the dark path we'll go down if we consider banning one single custom.

I do think there's only been one single custom move that has revealed itself as truely problematic. The one spawnable, non-removable stage hazard in the game: Timber Counter.



I suppose this is where the months of results are going to come in useful. I think it's really obvious how optimal it becomes for Villager to start planking whenever he has a percent lead. My prediction for the next upcoming months is a few obnoxious players are going to take up Villager planking to advance their own agendas. For better or for worse there's going to be public outcry and TOs are going to respond in three ways: ban all customs, install a ledge grab limit, or ban Timber Counter.

Or everyone is just gonna be cool with Villager planking, appreciating its unique presence in the metagame at both low to high level tournaments. But I... don't think... that's likely...

I don't understand this argument at all. Several people have made it, and I am just honestly confused by it. In what way does Timber Counter significantly enable Villager to ledge stall? We saw ADHD abuse Villager ledge stalling tactics at one tournament, and the strategy mostly relied on Explosive Balloon Trip with only occasional help from the sapling. The thing is that you can't plant saplings from the ledge; you have to go on the stage to do that. Planting a sapling takes a non-trivial amount of time during which you can be hit; unless your opponent's strategy to counter your ledge stalling is to stand on the opposite end of the stage and hope you give up, how do you possibly do this? Even if Villager's ledge stalling were actually a good tactic, the problem move would seem to clearly be Explosive Balloon Trip, not Timber Counter. I don't see any way whatsoever Timber Counter makes itself into a problematic move in fact; it would appear to be a novel but completely fair and well balanced move that has never at any point caused anything particularly undesirable to occur. What am I missing that leads people to believe the move is a problem?

Of course, upon hitting the lab, I discovered that every character has several good, reliable counters to Explosive Balloon Trip. I don't fault players at KTAR XII for failing to figure it out day of tournament and having to rely on more difficult solutions (though three players did, in fact, figure out something good enough to beat ADHD's Villager anyway!); it's not intuitive and requires a bit of a shift in your thinking since your goal isn't to "beat" the planking by not getting hit you just do damage favorable trades with balloons all day (unless you're a lucky character like Greninja who just beats it for free). If it is something that would grow in prominence and become obnoxious like the more abusive things in Brawl, I'd understand, but why is that taken as a likely outcome? The evidence to me suggests this was a one time event that caught people by surprise, and if anyone tries it again they'll likely fail badly as players will be more prepared to counter it. I expect at smaller events in pools of uninformed players this will see some use since it is something you have to have prior knowledge to handle optimally, but no one will ever again make top 8 at a large tournament using this as a primary tactic. Luckily, if I'm wrong and you're right, the results will quickly prove your point, and if that happens, we can figure out what to do.

---

@ Shaya isn't really wrong about a lot of what he's saying, but I think we are blessed with a game that happens to be far better made than the previous smash games and simply has far fewer problematic dynamics. I'm not entirely convinced that healthy ban discussion can happen in this community, but I take significant solace in my related belief that I do not think anything in smash 4 is actually particularly problematic. The dev team fixed such a ridiculous litany of abusive things that were present in Brawl (and yes Melee too); it's my belief that the fruit of that good work is us being spared from having to make these kinds of difficult decisions and that any attempt to be horribly abusive as was so common in Brawl will be at best a "flash in the pan" and won't see repeated or sustained success. If we had Brawl to do over again we'd definitely want to do several things differently (and honestly not just in how we made the rulesets, though that was extremely dysfunctional), but this game isn't Brawl and it makes itself much easier to handle. If a real problem comes up we should definitely be pro-active, but so far I believe simply collectively getting better at the game has been enough of a solution to everything we've found and I do not believe it is a common player experience at this time to go to a tournament dreading some particular stupid thing that will likely occur.

I was also thinking about what we could have done differently to "save Brawl" and I realized as I thought about it that it would have been... very hard. We could have done stuff differently so things went better, but in light of the existence of smash 4, I'm not sure there's any realistic outcome that would have Brawl still played today. We could have had things go better in some ways and had an effect on the relative strength of the "competing" smash games (Melee and PM), but I am unconvinced there's any world in which we all could have been smarter and more agreeable and taken actions that would result in Brawl as a major tournament game in the year 2015. I'm not sure there's a great point behind this thought other than that perhaps we're not as in control of how things turn out as we usually like to imagine. Again, I'm just so thankful smash 4 is as good of a game as it is; that probably helps us a lot more than anything we say or do here could ever hope to matter.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

We can not ban specific customs. Either we ban them entirely, or we don't ban them at all.

How do you decide what is ban-worthy or not?
​

There's no clear ruleset. Every player has a different opinion on the matter. Do we only let a small, experienced group of players decide for everyone what moves we will all play with? Do we make a general vote, and let the majority decide? Unless the vast majority (almost every one, universally) agrees as to what moves to ban, we won't get anywhere, and this is not going to happen, seeing how divided the opinions on customs are.

Welcome to the problem with every discussion on rulesets in Smash. Seriously. Every one. You could make this same argument about stages, Diddy Kong, or any number of other things. It's not unique to customs and has nothing to do with the problem.

How do you get the majority to decide exactly that Pikachu's X move is broken, along with Villager's Y move, DK's Z move and nothing else?
​

How do we get the majority to decide that we only ban these three moves, and that the others are fine? Banning specific moves would be a complex ban, and while great in theory or casually with friends, it would be too dificult to do in practice. It would be too complicated to ban several moves from each character to arrive to the best, most neutral and balanced metagame possible, because we don't know and probably never will agree on what is it. Why would we ban Villager's Timber Counter, but let Pikachu have his Heavy Skull Bash? Might as well ban the Skull Bash too. But then, why would we let DK have his Kong Cyclone? When do we decide that the meta is fine and when do we stop banning moves? We can't simply ban a ton of moves to balance out the meta. Also, all this is assuming the meta needs to be balanced, and to be honest, it probably doesn't. Some characters are indeed better than others, but that's part of "what makes smash smash", and even low tier characters can perform well, while high tier characters stay managable. The only reason to ban moves is if they are already breaking the meta, which is not happening.​

Yes, we don't have a discrete way of determining what is and is not banworthy. We never have, and it might be that we never will. Why is this a custom-specific problem?
​

- We cannot ban specific moves because they are broken, since there are no broken moves.

This is not a given. It's entirely possible that some moves are simply that good. Like, say, Brawl Metaknight's dimensional cape. That move was fundamentally broken, and in smash 4, if we had similar problems, we'd be justified in removing the problem. I agree we don't have any moves that are known to be broken now, but it is something to think about.

But even beyond that, we can, to a certain degree, look at characters and ask, "Okay, what makes this character so good?" Like, we know default Pikachu is not broken. But if customs Pikachu turns out to be busted, we can go back and look to see what caused that. Is it his Skull Bash? Is it his Thunder Jolt? It's not perfect, but it gives us options.

 

[COLINBG]

Welcome to the problem with every discussion on rulesets in Smash. Seriously. Every one. You could make this same argument about stages, Diddy Kong, or any number of other things. It's not unique to customs and has nothing to do with the problem.

True. My bad.

Yes, we don't have a discrete way of determining what is and is not banworthy. We never have, and it might be that we never will. Why is this a custom-specific problem?

My point was that if we do decide to ban customs, we need to ban moves only if they are broken, and we cannot ban several moves from every character to try to get to the most balanced game possible. I don't think this was ever an option, but I still wanted to make it clear.

I don't know if you've ever played Pokémon competitively, but it's kind of the same thing. You can ban a move entirely because it's broken, but you can't really ban 10/20/whatever you think is the right amount of moves from every Pokémon's movesets to balance things.
​

This is not a given. It's entirely possible that some moves are simply that good. Like, say, Brawl Metaknight's dimensional cape. That move was fundamentally broken, and in smash 4, if we had similar problems, we'd be justified in removing the problem. I agree we don't have any moves that are known to be broken now, but it is something to think about.

But even beyond that, we can, to a certain degree, look at characters and ask, "Okay, what makes this character so good?" Like, we know default Pikachu is not broken. But if customs Pikachu turns out to be busted, we can go back and look to see what caused that. Is it his Skull Bash? Is it his Thunder Jolt? It's not perfect, but it gives us options.

By ''there are no broken moves'', I was saying that at the moment, from what we've tested, no move appears to be ban-worthy in smash 4. I was not saying that a move cannot be too broken to be banned. I should have made that clearer.

 

[deepseadiva]

I don't understand this argument at all. Several people have made it, and I am just honestly confused by it. In what way does Timber Counter significantly enable Villager to ledge stall?

The game already has built-in planking mechanics (no invincibility on the second regrab), but from what I see Timber Counter is the only move that blocks access to those mechanics. That's what makes Villager's ledge stall unique. Explosive Balloon Trip is the power behind the stall, but without the Sapling acting as the "wall", it has the same holes the rest of the cast has when they attempt to ledge stall.

I'm really sad about it being abused this way because I LOVE Timber Counter when it's used "nobly". But now whenever I see a custom Villager get ahead in percent, unless their playing against certain counter characters, they optimal play-to-win move is to begin ledge stalling.

If it is something that would grow in prominence and become obnoxious like the more abusive things in Brawl, I'd understand, but why is that taken as a likely outcome? The evidence to me suggests this was a one time event that caught people by surprise, and if anyone tries it again they'll likely fail badly as players will be more prepared to counter it. I expect at smaller events in pools of uninformed players this will see some use since it is something you have to have prior knowledge to handle optimally, but no one will ever again make top 8 at a large tournament using this as a primary tactic. Luckily, if I'm wrong and you're right, the results will quickly prove your point, and if that happens, we can figure out what to do.

"No one will ever again make top 8 at a large tournament using this as a primary tactic"

I hope so. I guess we'll see.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

The game already has built-in planking mechanics (no invincibility on the second regrab), but from what I see Timber Counter is the only move that blocks access to those mechanics. That's what makes Villager's ledge stall unique. Explosive Balloon Trip is the power behind the stall, but without the Sapling acting as the "wall", it has the same holes the rest of the cast has when they attempt to ledge stall.

I'm really sad about it being abused this way because I LOVE Timber Counter when it's used "nobly". But now whenever I see a custom Villager get ahead in percent, unless their playing against certain counter characters, they optimal play-to-win move is to begin ledge stalling.



"No one will ever again make top 8 at a large tournament using this as a primary tactic"

I hope so. I guess we'll see.

I suppose it's the broader strategy with this Timber Counter I don't get. It's clear that if one is in front of the ledge it temporarily forms quite the wall (though Villager has to put it very deep near the ledge; if he gets greedy and puts it too far forward, it will be jumped over and prove ineffective). The thing is that Timber Counter wears off and Villager seemingly has no way to put a new one up. It's really slow, committed, and unsafe to move off the ledge, plant the tree, and go back to the ledge. When I was watching ADHD execute his strategy, I honestly didn't even consider Timber Counter a particularly significant part of it since it just wasn't critical to what he was doing (he would use it if his opponent messed up but it wasn't the core of his success). What was helping him was that it's non-obvious how to beat balloons (they persist after a ledge grab, unique among up specials), but of course, we have now studied that situation and know how to deal with the balloons. That's why I make my claim that this won't happen again, and I honestly can't see this as a particularly effective Villager strategy.

 

[Ben Holt]

I think maybe its startup got nerfed? Can't actually remember.

It used to charge as quickly as the regular bow. Now it takes longer to charge. But it's one of the best gimping moves in the game, so it's still great.

 

[S_B]

The only customs I could HYPOTHETICALLY see getting banned (purely hypothetical, of course) are the ones with insane windboxes.

For example, it's clear that certain characters' recoveries were never designed with the idea that they'd have an opponent who is able to push them THAT far back off the stage as they attempt to recover.

Basically, you'd be looking at a situation where a small % of the cast suddenly invalidates a large % of the cast, and that's never good for meta diversity.

Doesn't mean these moves will ever actually get banned and I could EASILY be wrong about how effective they are, but I've already seen Mario's powerful fludd completely invalidate some recoveries.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

The only customs I could HYPOTHETICALLY see getting banned (purely hypothetical, of course) are the ones with insane windboxes.

For example, it's clear that certain characters' recoveries were never designed with the idea that they'd have an opponent who is able to push them THAT far back off the stage as they attempt to recover.

Basically, you'd be looking at a situation where a small % of the cast suddenly invalidates a large % of the cast, and that's never good for meta diversity.

Doesn't mean these moves will ever actually get banned and I could EASILY be wrong about how effective they are, but I've already seen Mario's powerful fludd completely invalidate some recoveries.

Well, a lot of people think that the new ledge mechanics let basically the entire cast minus Little Mac recover from nearly anywhere. Now that we can gimp with windboxes...we suddenly want the good recoveries to stay?

I'll admit to some confusion.

 

[S_B]

Well, a lot of people think that the new ledge mechanics let basically the entire cast minus Little Mac recover from nearly anywhere. Now that we can gimp with windboxes...we suddenly want the good recoveries to stay?.

A lot of people are wrong, then.

There are fewer ungimpable characters than gimpable ones. If most get B-aired while off the ledge, they're not coming back.

I haven't looked much into it, but I know that Ness players are saying strong fludd completely invalidates Ness' recovery, and I'm sure there are others.

As I said, I could easily be wrong about this. We'll have to wait and see what happens with customs...

EDIT: Let me be clear: I'm FULLY behind customs being on for major tournaments, but I can't help but suspect that we're going to see some salt surrounding the use of strong windboxes.

 

[Judo777]

Rainbow Cruise, Delfino Plaza, Brinstar, and Frigate Orpheon (I don't understand this one though) were all banned because of Meta Knight. Many places didn't follow the Delfino Plaza ban though, and at Apex 2015, they just banned Meta Knight on Delfino Plaza and Halberd. In Melee, quite a few stages were banned because of Fox, specifically all the ones with walls like Peach's Castle (would've likely ended up being banned anyways) and quite a few stages were banned because Peach and Puff were too good on them (Mute City, Brinstar, Congo Jungle, and Rainbow Cruise). If a character is too good on a certain stage, to the point where it is basically impossible to win unless you chose them, then the stage should be banned for being too good for that character. It's a much harder ban to determine though and definitely isn't one that should be thrown around. It's much more of a problem when multiple stages are an insta-win for a character rather than one stage.

Apex 2015, was after smash 4s release right? I really don't consider rulesets made that late into the games life (or death however you want to look at it). Nowadays most people would probably agree that MK is a problem (he always was but people did anything to keep him legal) so current rulesets don't reflect the common opinion throughout the games life. But that's neither here nor there.

Specific character imbalance can never be a reason for a banned stage by itself, otherwise FD would have been banned long ago, as IC's are nigh unbeatable on that stage. Sources may say, that's why they were banned (in the case of shadow moses), but that's not why they were banned, I explained why Shadow Moses was banned, D3 is just an easy thing to bring up when people discuss the stage.

Granted some stages may have been banned for characters (late in the game like halberd and delfino if what you say is true) but then those stages were banned under very incorrect pretenses, which was probably overlooked due to the game being at the end of its life when people no longer care to argue rulesets.

Again, there is not a single stage in the game (bar MAYBE RC and Brinstar but again MK was the problem not the stages) that creates such one sided MU's on most of the cast then IC's on FD.

 

[FooltheFlames]

Can someone explain to me whats so bad about moves like kong cyclone and timber counter?
Alot of players are complaining that the metagame is already showing signs of being too defensive oriented like brawl was-
so to counter the defensive metagame we ban the most offensive special moves? This makes no sense to me

 

[S_B]

Can someone explain to me whats so bad about moves like kong cyclone and timber counter?
Alot of players are complaining that the metagame is already showing signs of being too defensive oriented like brawl was-
so to counter the defensive metagame we ban the most offensive special moves? This makes no sense to me

Timber counter's sapling causes people to trip when they get near it, which allows villagers to zone like crazy because they can control parts of the stage with it. Timber counter is also very defensive because it discourages players from attacking near it.

Cyclone, however, is purely offensive so not sure why anyone would dislike it...

Customs also give a number of characters some REALLY GREAT offensive options. Bowser's dash slash, Gdorf's dropkick and Ike and Marth got some nice buffs from them, too.

 

[FooltheFlames]

Timber counter's sapling causes people to trip when they get near it, which allows villagers to zone like crazy because they can control parts of the stage with it. Timber counter is also very defensive because it discourages players from attacking near it.

Cyclone, however, is purely offensive so not sure why anyone would dislike it...

Customs also give a number of characters some REALLY GREAT offensive options. Bowser's dash slash, Gdorf's dropkick and Ike and Marth got some nice buffs from them, too.

So let's allow everything except for Timber Counter then~
I really like the Link's and their Quick Fire Arrows-
It makes them almost like Falco and his sh-laser cancels in Melee; it would really help Link/T.Link players out !

 

[S_B]

So let's allow everything except for Timber Counter then~
I really like the Link's and their Quick Fire Arrows-
It makes them almost like Falco and his sh-laser cancels in Melee; it would really help Link/T.Link players out !

Honestly, there's no reason to ban anything until it wins multiple high profile tournaments.

It's annoying, sure, but we've seen jankier stuff in vanilla fighters already and we haven't banned that.

 

[Gawain]

Something being "problematic" is in no way grounds for considering a ban. Theres a difference between problematic and broken.

Anyway if Timber Counter were Villagers default while Timber were a custom, we probably wouldnt even be having this discussion. Why is there such an aversion to mixing up a characters moveset?

People are allowed to be against something if they think it will be boring OR broken. What is there to not understand about that?

 

[S_B]

People are allowed to be against something if they think it will be boring OR broken. What is there to not understand about that?

In that case, ban Diddy and Shiek, please.

I think I've seen no fewer than 10,000,000,000+ D-throw > U-airs and bouncing fishes and the game hasn't even been out for a full year yet...

That **** got old what feels like years ago...

 

[Indigo Jeans]

People are allowed to be against something if they think it will be boring OR broken. What is there to not understand about that?

When did I ever say people weren't allowed that? I have however said that being against something because you think it is boring is not and should not be valid grounds for banning it.

And again I reiterate my point. If these "boring, broken" moves were Villager's defaults, people would probably shut up and just accept it because... I dunno honestly, if you challenge the legitimacy of defaults you look like a scrub? As a Villager main, Extreme Balloons/Counter Timber advocate, and general customs proponent since day one, that is honestly what it feels like.

 

[Gawain]

When did I ever say people weren't allowed that? I have however said that being against something because you think it is boring is not and should not be valid grounds for banning it.

And again I reiterate my point. If these "boring, broken" moves were Villager's defaults, people would probably shut up and just accept it because... I dunno honestly, if you challenge the legitimacy of defaults you look like a scrub? As a Villager main, Extreme Balloons/Counter Timber advocate, and general customs proponent since day one, that is honestly what it feels like.

It's more of a general retort. A lot of people in these custom move discussions immediately try to toss out arguments against something that use similar reasoning, or they flat out strawman the reason in. They try to shut down discussion based around merits like "boring" when that's honestly a perfectly valid reason to not want something if you ask me. That said, I have no stock either way, I think that matchups involving Villager or similar characters are a lost cause either way: they're going to be slow, single hit trades 90% of the time, regardless of custom moves. I'm just pointing out when I see something off (hint: that's quite often in the custom move discussion).

 

[Teshie U]

Really no one else is at all entertained by Custom Villager? I enjoy the contrast in styles in any game. We have plenty of characters that have a gameplan of getting in and grabbing you, characters that zone mostly by running away and staying mobile and far from their opponent. And then we have Villager, who just fortifies a position and says "come get me".

Its sad that people have given up on calling it broken and now just complain that its boring.

 

[thehard]

An involved crowd and enthusiastic commentary is all you need to make something not boring to the masses TBH. I like watching Stalliger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e-RRjvyiYY This match in particular was great fun. Something new showing up on a major stream, every hit counting, etc.

 

[Gawain]

Really no one else is at all entertained by Custom Villager? I enjoy the contrast in styles in any game. We have plenty of characters that have a gameplan of getting in and grabbing you, characters that zone mostly by running away and staying mobile and far from their opponent. And then we have Villager, who just fortifies a position and says "come get me".

Its sad that people have given up on calling it broken and now just complain that its boring.

Part of it is certainly because some characters have no answer to it. It just makes an already bad matchup even worse for some characters, and nobody wants to see that. Having a game where counterpicking characters is extremely prominent isn't good game design to most people. You really should be able to stand a decent chance of winning with any character. It's not a perfect world and so matchups are never going to be perfectly even across the board, but purposefully having something that is under our control (IE custom stuff) that gives some people massive advantages over others that they shouldn't have is going to be perceived as wrong. When it makes the pace of the game extraordinarily slow, it just makes the reaction worse.

 

[Teshie U]

I don't believe this hard counters anyone. There is pretty universal counterplay and since he isn't invincible, anyone can just go make a trade with the 6 damage balloons.

 

[Doruge]

An involved crowd and enthusiastic commentary is all you need to make something not boring to the masses TBH. I like watching Stalliger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e-RRjvyiYY This match in particular was great fun. Something new showing up on a major stream, every hit counting, etc.

It's entertaining when it's the first time you've seen it. If every other match featured this tactic, I think you'd be singing a different tune.

...That said, ledge-stalling villager really isn't a problem and probably never will be.