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The point being that MUs getting more polarized with customs means worse balance. Any character who rises does so on the downfall of another character and someone will always end up best or worst. Customs widen the gap is what I'm saying.
By that logic, balance patches mean worse balance lol
This makes no sense.
You're insinuating that the gap between DK and Zelda widening means less balance, but only in the context of customs causing it.
First of all one example doesn't mean the overall balance from patches is worse. In general top characters got less jank and bad characters got needed buffs. Why are we even talking about patches?
I never said the balance from patches is worse. I'm trying to convey the flaw in your logic though it seems I failed to do so.
Let me try one step at a time then.
DK and Zelda were simply an example. My point was MUs that are bad get worse with customs.
Answer the question please. Because bad MUs get worse with patches, too.
Your question makes no sense DK is already better than Zelda and if DK gets buffs but Zelda doesn't Zelda's MU vs him is worse. My point is not about characters getting bad MUs but that MUs ratios will stretch farther apart. -2 MUs will become -3s for characters who didn't get custom buffs. And the custom moves don't buff characters in a balanced way. Some bad characters get no buffs and some great characters get further buffs. Balance patches don't buff the best characters, they buff the characters who need them. Unlike customs.
Okay, let me rephrase the question then.
No characters that need buffs get customs that help them significantly? Not a single one?
The metagames are quite resultingly distinct. I posted in my random theorydraft wannabe-blog that customs on vs customs off isn't comparing apples and apples (like balance patches are, in essence), but is more like comparing apples and pears. Until such a time that we can objectively quantify certain matchups as having finite defined metrics of "better" and "worse" comparing customs on and off, and then compare the two sum values, the result of customs is not better or worse balance, but merely different balance. It's like how comparing Brawl Zamus to Smash4 Zamus, where a lot of her traits were numerically nerfed yet she is a top-five character due to other changes not covered numerically.
we have no evidence to suggest that your claim is true. We don't even have well justified theory suggesting that it is true. Please justify your claims. Don't bother trying to justify it with anecdotes either as I would then just cite examples of matchups becoming less biased with customs on, and are discussion would move no where.
You don't understand the argument. Please read all of Thinkaman's post. If you still don't understand the argument, I will do my best to explain it to you in simpler terms.
A problem I have with customs is the way they buff characters (and other things). It's not like the balance patches where characters get 3 frames less lag on dash attack. The character is the same aside from gaining a powerful exploit. Like Wii Fit trainer going from one of the perceived weakest
I get what you're saying but I didn't mean look at only Zelda vs DK in a void. They were simply one example. Of course it's about more than the difference between 2 characters.
Would you say that Bouncing Fish and Needles are exploitable special moves that carry Sheik? If so, what gives Sheik the right to have exploitable moves but not Wii Fit Trainer?A problem I have with customs is the way they buff characters (and other things). It's not like the balance patches where characters get 3 frames less lag on dash attack. The character is the same aside from gaining a powerful exploit. Like Wii Fit trainer going from one of the perceived weakest
http://smashboards.com/threads/viability-survey-v1-competitive-impressions.410551/
to winning several top 32 places at Evo. WFT was carried by the custom special moves. Jumbo hoops and sweeping saturation are really good. Customs don't buff characters in balanced ways but instead give them powerful specials to rely on. I mean you're right about the apples vs pears comparison but I'd rather have characters be ranked on their fundamentals than how exploitable their customs are. I'm fine with custom side events but don't want them to be the norm.
I've used this example before but in Brawl DDD's crazy grab and chain grab invalidated several characters even though DDD wasn't that good. Not just bad characters but borderlines like Wolf. I really don't want characters to be good just because they have exploits like this.
I get what you're saying but I didn't mean look at only Zelda vs DK in a void. They were simply one example. Of course it's about more than the difference between 2 characters.
So customs make a trash, unplayable character viable and your response is "More viable characters is unfair." This logic really confuses me. WFT is a perfect example of a character that moved up the rankings with no one moving out. WFT caught up to the rest of the characters. No (viable) characters were made worse by the addition of WFT's customs.A problem I have with customs is the way they buff characters (and other things). It's not like the balance patches where characters get 3 frames less lag on dash attack. The character is the same aside from gaining a powerful exploit. Like Wii Fit trainer going from one of the perceived weakest
http://smashboards.com/threads/viability-survey-v1-competitive-impressions.410551/
to winning several top 32 places at Evo. WFT was carried by the custom special moves. Jumbo hoops and sweeping saturation are really good. Customs don't buff characters in balanced ways but instead give them powerful specials to rely on. I mean you're right about the apples vs pears comparison but I'd rather have characters be ranked on their fundamentals than how exploitable their customs are. I'm fine with custom side events but don't want them to be the norm.
I've used this example before but in Brawl DDD's crazy grab and chain grab invalidated several characters even though DDD wasn't that good. Not just bad characters but borderlines like Wolf. I really don't want characters to be good just because they have exploits like this.
Rizen
brings up a good point; all of the characters who would become significantly better through customs will be almost entirely dependent on their special moves. This is part of the reason why a lot of people didn't like Brawl, which is that a lot of characters were primarily based around a single option. Regardless of whether or not it's more balanced, it's a meta that a lot of people (myself included) simply do not want to play in.Dedede had a lot of great tools at his disposal, and his chain grab wasn't really that good (his bair was definitely his best move), the main reason being that he can't actually do it against most of the viable cast. It's impossible on MK, Olimar, Falco, Pikachu and ZSS, and extremely unlikely against ICs and Diddy (for obvious reasons). That only leaves Snake and Marth, and even with Snake you have to worry about grenades and mines.
I don't understand your argument. Why can't a character be dependent on their specials. Shiek gets most of her kills from upB and bouncing fish. Pikachu would be crap without quick attack. Luigi's specials make the character. Knock out any of his B moves and he would easily drop a tier. I don't see why we should be resistant to characters having good specials.@
Needles and BF are good but Sheik is an all around great character. Her frame data is very quick, her disjoints are surprisingly good *coughFaircough*, her recovery is top tier, she doesn't have to commit when zoning and is very hard to punish.
Maybe actually try to understand it before making a post? It's not hard, it is literally right here:
Simply put, people don't like it. And if people don't like it, they won't have any motivation to practice every day to be as good at it as possible so they can play it at tournaments every weekend. Which, obviously, benefits no one.
^You put my name in that quote but nodle said it.
^This is exactly why I value pro players' opinions over just anyone. I completely understand the 'with 3 sets, 1 is bound to be better' theory but it's flawed in practice. Let me put it this way:
Not all customs are equal. The higher the number the better a custom is.
DK's wind upB = 9, it's really good.
Zelda's everything gets no higher than her standard moves because her customs are crud. 2 tops. The gap between DK and Zelda widens for a more polarized MU.
DK just gained a huge advantage and Zelda got the raw deal. Not all characters benefit from customs and many that do are top tier anyway. This is buffing already top tier characters like Rosalina and Pikachu (meaning characters who don't get custom buffs or minor buffs have an even worse MU vs them). The tiers get mixed up a bit from default but the cream always rises to the top leaving the rest with coffee grounds.
Plus what matters is how custom moves are exploited. DK can upB to safely counter most moves and bad characters don't have a good answer to it. DK becomes 'upB the character' because it's better than solid fundamentals. Matches go like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yynXqx03VY
Same in Spain. Any set, default size, customs OFF.
The actual argument is that you are incorrect. People are fine with a character's best move being a special move. No one is complaining about Luigi. Every one is fine with shiek being the best character as long as some other characters have decent matchups against her. The only thing people complain about with Pikachu is HSB, even though Quick attack is and always has been Pikachu's best special. No one cares if a character is spamming/abusing a (default) move, they just learn to beat it. Once they do the opponent stops spamming the move. Knock DK out of Kong cyclone a couple times (its not that hard) and the DK player will seriously consider whether they want to go back to upB-1.
Raijinken
I'm just going to ignore the part about how balancing the game through exclusion of content is the foundation of competitive Smash Bros. and focus this part:As I've already said multiple times, no, we can't. We tried to ban Meta Knight, a character that is almost unanimously considered to be overcentralizing and who single-handedly invalidates the vast majority of the cast, twice. Both times it failed. How, then, are we going to convince the entire community to manually stop people from using two or three specific moves?
I'm going to come back to the claim that the only reason people spam customs is because their competition doesn't know how to beat them. Once you've knocked a DK out of Kong Cyclone a couple of times, they change their strategy. I also question the claim that custom boosted characters would be reliant on their specials. Do you honestly think Custom Kirby is abusing any of its moves? That custom Ganon becomes centralized. I also don't understand why a character being dependent on their specials is a bad thing. Some characters can be said to be dependent on their throws, some on tilts, some on aerials. In reality, there is no move in Smash that is so powerful that a character is totally reliant on it. Even the spammiest of Wind Kongs still mixes up their attacks with throws for stage control, Aerials for edge guards, smashes for hard-read kills, etc. The idea that custom characters become entirely dependent on their specials seems like a myth to me.
N nodle
The exact reason for it is irrelevant. The important thing isn't why people don't like it, it's just the fact that people don't like it. Telling someone that their preferences are illogical is never going to change them. Frankly, people just feel how they feel, and for a very large portion of the community, characters based entirely around their specials are insufferable and make them not want to play the game.
That part was more in reference to the "it's unfair to turn off customs, because some characters have OP defaults" argument. Yes, it does suck that certain characters get to have BS specials just because they're default, but it's even more unfair to force people to foster a metagame they hate just because default bans are realistically impossible.
I might've come off a bit harsh. Like I said, I try not to judge people by join date or post count, but there are two exceptions; 1. when people make accounts just to post placebo-induced changes with no evidence in patch notes threads, and 2. when people immediately start trying to change or dictate things. You haven't really shown that you know how the game or the community really works, but you act like your opinions should have as much, if not more pull than other people's.
Once again, I don't disagree with you. I acknowledge that many players don't like customs. I hope you can acknowledge that many players like customs, even if that group is smaller than the group who doesn't like customs. Ultimately the question of whether or not players like or dislike customs isn't important to me. I'm interested only in whether or not customs 'should' be used. That is to say that I'm more interested in whether or not customs would produce a more balanced, diverse, and deep metagame. Player opinions just don't matter much to me for the purposes of that discussion. I'm not a TO. I have no power to enforce my opinions on other players. Ultimately, I'll play the game regardless of whether or not customs are legal.
Here is a major point were we differ. I don't think quick attack is BS. I don't think Shiek's bouncing fish is breaking the game. Sm4sh seems pretty well balanced to me. It's because the game is pretty well balanced that customs are such a big deal. Bad characters are only a good move or two away from being as good as top tier characters. DK is a perfect example of this. Kirby gets a couple good customs and goes from being total trash to being somewhere in B or A tier. Its also hilarious how hard custom Kirby ****s on planking villager strategies.
Competitively speaking, we CAN ban things like that. We shouldn't, and obviously the outcry would be outrageous, but we CAN. We CAN make a ruleset saying "Every character has one allowed loadout. For <Characters>, this is 1111. For <Characters> this is 2122. For Sheik, this is 3111. This is done to give <Characters> a valid chance against the rest of the cast, and to bring Sheik under control without resorting to a character ban." Our rulesets already include several non-game-set rules.
Coming from someone who used to main Kirby. His approach option are ****. He has to get a read to kill in non custom setting. He's pretty good in customs though. Has a kill move in Upper Cutter, a super armor in one of his Hammer customs and Jumping Inhale shenanigans.
Would you say your character becomes centralized around or dependent on those moves with Customs On?
I wouldn't say he's centralized around those moves as he's still good once he gets in. With Dair and the newly buffed F-throw being good combo starters. You can theoretically make a combo that can lead to a kill with Upper Cutter. But yeah, he clearly becomes dependent on those moves with Customs on. Not to the level with Airbender Dong but close.
