Well yeah it is the first one, but it is more about how it is bad for the competitive scene as a whole. I already said that it is bad for the scene before that, but everyone just kind of ignored that.
Quite simply, I don't believe that statement is justified or anything near accurate. I apologize for not saying so sooner, but I don't think such a claim to be anything near true or relevant.
This post?
Unlocking customs is a huge pain, so that is one thing that is probably going to keep customs from becoming the new meta. Sure a lot of people will probably have every custom in the game at some point, if they already don't have them all, but if someone decides to buy Smash 4 now and get into competitive they would have to go through the process of unlocking all those customs. The other big problem about customs is that there is way too much cheese. Playing against things like custom Villager and all those windbox customs that almost every character has is just not fun. The only way that we could avoid that is if they ban specific customs, but a lot of people are against the idea of banning certain moves and it would probably be a pain to have to remember exactly which customs are allowed and which aren't. I know that "fun" isn't exactly the most important thing when it comes to high level competition, but if a competitive game isn't fun enough it won't attract as many new people to the scene and could lead to the death of the game. Personally, I wouldn't really even bother continuing playing this game competitively if every tournament out there is using customs.
Or this one?
The thing about customs is that even if it might be good for the meta, it won't be good for the competitive scene as a whole. Like I said before, the grind of collecting customs would be one of the biggest things keeping people from wanting to play the game competitively. Personally, I have things like school and playing other video games besides Smash and if customs were the meta and I didn't already have the 3DS version since the day it was released (still don't have all the customs, though I never really went out of my way to grind for customs unless it was for characters I used) I am pretty sure I wouldn't be the only one who would just pass on trying to get into the competitive scene. If all customs were unlocked from the start I would still be against customs, but maybe my mind could be changed much easier than it would with all the grinding involved. I highly doubt I am the only one who thinks this way.
To you guys who are pro customs here: In a world where customs are the meta for this game and you just got the game yesterday already wanting to get into the competitive scene, would you really want to bother grinding for what could end up being either a short or a very long amount of time (thanks to RNG) just to get all the custom moves?
From seeing other people arguing against customs here, a lot of the responses they get make it look like arguing with some of you guys is like arguing with a wall. It isn't like the "status quo" really needs to be changed by customs, since it is already changing on it's own due to players discovering new things about the game and sharing it with others, and patches. My justification is that customs will ultimately stunt the competitive scene's growth and that whether or not customs will make the game more balanced, a lot of people (including me) just won't find playing against certain custom sets fun, even if they can be beaten and are not as unbalanced as some of us say. There are a lot of people who hate to play against or watch Rosalina. Whether or not she is a balanced character, there will be a lot of people don't enjoy playing against her or watching people play her. Outside of for glory I think she is the only character that a very large amount of people that dislike her, with customs on there are a lot more characters that people just don't like to play against or watch. If enough people find competitive Smash 4 with customs on to not be fun it will definitely effect the growth of the scene. With customs on the competitive scene is far more likely to die from a lack of people supporting than in vanilla.
The point about the game being fun is subjective, and I don't think I need to restate that I find everything about the customs on meta more fun than off. Personally, I think the appeal of extra viability for more characters (if not all, depending on how patches and things go in the longer run), as well as the basic extra variety and choice offered, would outweigh the frustration/unfun people have with windboxes or tripping (both components of defaults, I add yet again). For every friend I have in real life who refuses to use customs or thinks they're broken, I have at least one other who thinks the game is more interesting and enjoyable with them on.
Now for the grind:
The grind sucks. No doubt about it, only a completionist stands a chance of actually enjoying the process of unlocking all the customs. I'm a completionist and eventually told a friend of mine that I'd, at most, unlock him a character worth of customs every now and then (I got him through about half the roster and then graduated and moved away). It's just a boring process.
But, I'm not convinced this sort of grind is a competitive deterrent, for a few reasons.
1) On the larger scale, especially given the current logistical implementation (moveset project), most players do not have to go through the grind. Of my group, I'm the only person who has unlocked all customs on
either system, but between our play sessions and set transfers, they've all had plenty of practice with and against various sets, including non-project sets. I find it hard to believe that a scene would be so self-hostile as to deliberately deny a player the chance to transfer moves to their system (though I could see the struggle if a scene had several players whose sole system was the 3DS and nobody with a U had repeated the grind), and I don't think the scenario of a newbie training in their secret non-unlocked dojo and showing up at a major tournament as a dominant force is realistic in either a customs on or customs off meta.
2) About fun in the second post. This is a problem that essentially all competitive games face. I will again draw parallel to Dota, though not for the previously used reasons. People hate Dota (and League). They perceive imbalanced heroes, imbalanced strategies, silly decisions by the developers, matchmaking, lack of region lock, surrender, lack of surrender, whatever. They don't like it, and find those things to be un-fun. Some people quit, others contribute to the fact that these widely-hated games (in one aspect or another) are some of the most-played games on the planet. People like that sort of challenge, and especially if the prize is big enough (see Dota's International which sets a new esports prize pool record every year), people will play something they enjoy less simply for the sake of competing in it. Smash as a series is no different. Melee is hard, and its technical difficulty and low top-end variety turn numerous players off from it competitively, myself included. But those same things draw more and more players to it by the year.
I could see point 1 getting shut down by the one thing most customs players dream of: piecemeal selection upon character select. If that dream patch happens but requires customs to be unlocked on the system (and transfers don't actually result in an unlock), I would completely agree with Customs being logistically infeasible and slain by grind. I hope it doesn't happen, and even if it does, I'll continue to enjoy playing customs with my friends on my individual console (how most of my play happens anyway).
But in the current state of the game, I just can't see customs killing the game's competitive future. There are a lot of things I'd expect to kill it sooner, not the least of which would be any potentially critical bug or balance mistake coinciding with the last patch for the game.
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