What are your opinions on Customs Post-Evo 2015?

[Girthquake]

This would have a strong negative impact over smash in general.

There are some people I know who play ONLY villager. It's all of a sudden saying "your character can't be in because campy".

By doing that, you're also potentially banning Sonic, since you're killing off a character JUST because of a style of play to which you don't approve of.

You would end up killing all characters that would camp ledge / fall down come back up until time out. You could do the same with Dedede if you want, I think the games mechanism allow for enough punish on the ledge to beat villager.


The game is also meant to play with 3 stocks, only, after my understanding and research, TO's use 2 stocks to win more time. That is why, characters such as villager were OK - 6 minutes of camping instead of 8, didn't make the event go 5 hours longer or anything.

Comparing DeDeDe camping to Sonic/Villager makes me throw up in my mouth. Anyone that doesn't punish D3 ledge camping is just bad.

 

[Konneh]

The game is also meant to play with 3 stocks, only, after my understanding and research, TO's use 2 stocks to win more time. That is why, characters such as villager were OK - 6 minutes of camping instead of 8, didn't make the event go 5 hours longer or anything.

That makes me extremely salty as I am very convinced that lazy players, low amount of setups and organization mistakes cost a lot more time than one more stock per game. I'd love to see a statistic for average game length for 2stock/3stock, solely considering, for example, that I am a lot more inclined to take risks to stop the camp if I know I have 3 stocks under my belt instead of 2.

 

[Electric91]

Comparing DeDeDe camping to Sonic/Villager makes me throw up in my mouth. Anyone that doesn't punish D3 ledge camping is just bad.

Sorry that the comparision is low tier - I hope you understood the point I made.

 

[Girthquake]

Sorry that the comparision is low tier - I hope you understood the point I made.

I do, it just left a really bad taste in my mouth.

 

[Electric91]

If there are genuinely people who literally just play custom Villger then consider me floored. Shoulda clarified that custom Villager has to go, not just Villager.

Where is the assessment that the game is "meant" to be played with 3 stocks coming from? o.O

Causing six minute timeouts at every round is not and will never be okay. It might not happen EVERY game they play but every game taking the max time would 100% make the bracket take hours longer... just imagine if there were multiple Villagers in top 32.

With 2 stocks, there is almost no momentum, bringing in a high pressure game from the start, this is the main argument against 2 stock, while the main argument FOR 2 stocks is that the tournament goes faster. 2 stocks is only good in regards of the TO's, if you really care for the game & your tournament, you could run 3 stocks and finish on time if monitored really well.

All our tournaments (Local & Online) run with 3 stocks, and are doing extremely well. A good ruleset and good TO's will ensure that a bracket with 3 stocks can finish earlier than usual.

The only times I experience stalling during my tournaments is when players don't show up or show up late for a game, to which there are strong measures against in our ruleset.

----


If you want to play this game correctly, and allow for the right momentum shifts to every player and MU, 3 stocks is the way to go.
I agree that causing a lot of timeouts EVERY game is not ok, only this will be very, very, improbable to happen and even less during majors.

Banning a custom for a character would be weird. This goes against the opinion i've stated earlier about banning custom moves & manipulating the meta, so no need to repeat everything here.

 

[FullMoon]

From an Oli persepctive, Sheik becomes even worse, Greninja goes to being really bad.

Wait how is Greninja even a bad MU for Olimar? Especially in customs where the limited experience I had with his customs always ended up with me getting wrecked.

 

[Skarfelt]

snip

Literally at no point did I say anything bad about 3 stock. I was asking where the "3 stock is how the game is meant to be played" came from. If you're (for some reason) referring to the game defaulting to 3 stock on startup, the game also defaults to 2 stock in Classic/For Glory and 1 stoc everywhere else so I don't get it. I assume you just mean "3 stock is better" which I totally agree with. If I was running a Sm4sh tourney alongside Street Fighter or something when Smash already takes forever in comparison I'd be a bit reluctant to do 3 stock but if it's just Sm4sh then sure.

 

[Electric91]

I'm sorry if I stated anywhere you were thinking wrong about 3 stocks. I'm only trying to perpetuate my opinion about 3 stocks, as I haven't before.

Classic is already broken, since you start with 2 stocks and all your opponents have 1 stock. It's pretty unfair to begin with - it's only at 2 stocks for the final battle against mastercore which can be done with 1 stock. At least, that's what i'm assuming.. For glory has 2 stocks, just that it's infuriating if you SD by accident your game is practically almost done for. (even top players SD by accident, it hapens)

Last event I TO'd was an e-sport festival event in belgium, I had the chance to work with Smash 4 and Melee alongside Street Fighter & MortalKombat X. I TO'd almost everything, so it was easy to monitor the progress of each. The organisation i was working with didn't want to work with 3 stocks, although after debate i assured them it would run pretty fast, they forced smash 4 to be 2 stocks.

Well, after doing this, I'm fully convinced that smash at 3 stocks can be ran next to them.

I ran next to next a bracket of smash 4 and melee top 8 - Smash 4 had 2 stocks, and finished BEFORE melee -

Post BO5 - Since the BO5 matches were in separate matters in the end.

This weekend i'll have the chance to run next to next Top 8 smash 4 with 3 stocks & top 8 in melee, i'll see how it truly goes.

EDIT: Also, smash 4 had 3 setups, next to melee that had 6 setups -

 

[ParanoidDrone]

One of the big issues I have with customs is just having standardized sets which have to be agreed upon and ready months in advance for tournies due to how tedious it is to unlock each custom on wiius. It doesn't allow accounting for shifts in the metagame, one of my biggest complains was that none of the Olimar's realized every neutral B custom makes Olimar's dash grab lose all it's range, SIX sets had it on, NONE of the sets had his down-B that creates a whistle hitbox that functions like Mario's cape since I discovered it was really good like 2 weeks after Evo sets were made. I guarantee i'm not the only one with a similar issue.

Another issue I have with customs is even though more characters become "viable", I think it creates a lot more lopsided matchups (at least from a Rosalina and Olimar perspective). As Rosa, the WFT and Sonic MUs are like super bad when played properly with customs. From an Oli persepctive, Sheik becomes even worse, Greninja goes to being really bad. Then I look at DK's customs and it's like, he tends to either steamroll a matchup or have no chance to get his gameplan going. Certain characters can't answer a villager with % lead. Ect. Ect. Obviously this is debatable but I will make a claim that the game is less "balanced" with customs because among the tournament viable characters, more matchups are one sided.

It sounds like your issue has more to do with being limited to presets than anything else. Which is a legit complaint, but I dont think it's quite the same thing as "I don't like customs."

No comment on matchups since I know relatively little about those details.

 

[Scarlet Jile]

I'm mostly with @Shaya and @DunnoBro in that until pro-customs people (like myself) acknowledge that some moves need to be omitted from the legal rulesets as a compromise, the community will remain split down the middle.

The problem will remain that nobody wants to weaken their character, and no two people have the same idea about what constitutes a problematic move. To my mind, some of the biggest offenders in the game are normals. Sheik F-air and Rosalina's Up-Air are moves that have little to no counterplay and sometimes can't even really be realistically avoided. Falcon's JAB is honestly one of the stupidest things I've ever seen in a video game.

As for Rosalina getting bad MUs, Rosalina is a cosmic cesspool of a character, and nobody will ever shed a single tear for her.

Compromises will have to be made, but I'm not sure we need to be pointing our fingers at the lower tiers to make those compromises. The biggest problems will be Pikachu, Sonic, Rosalina, Villager. Like I've said before in the thread, separating upgrade-eligibility by tier may sound hard, but it offers a clean, easy to work with direction to start.

 

[Charey]

magine there was, for some ungodly reason, a move that came out frame 1 and killed at 0%... but had tons of endlag. It's beatable as you can bait and punish it but is that move balanced?

Why are you talking about rest? (I know it doesn't kill at 0%)

Anyways the only move I would talk about banning at this point is Exploding Balloon Trip, not because of balance it is beatable if you know how to fight it but because it is mostly being used in a toxic way. Right now it is only being used to stall and is making customs as a whole look like "jank."

The rest of the customs people are talking about are being talked about because of thier strength, even trip seed which has good on stage use. A ban on the move because it is too strong is not warranted until the move actually wins a major.

While I would prefer to not ban any moves it's clear to me that stalliager is a big problem with getting customs accepted and unfortunately I don't think customs can survive unless we do ban EBT.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

One of the big issues I have with customs is just having standardized sets which have to be agreed upon and ready months in advance for tournies due to how tedious it is to unlock each custom on wiius. It doesn't allow accounting for shifts in the metagame, one of my biggest complains was that none of the Olimar's realized every neutral B custom makes Olimar's dash grab lose all it's range, SIX sets had it on, NONE of the sets had his down-B that creates a whistle hitbox that functions like Mario's cape since I discovered it was really good like 2 weeks after Evo sets were made. I guarantee i'm not the only one with a similar issue.

Another issue I have with customs is even though more characters become "viable", I think it creates a lot more lopsided matchups (at least from a Rosalina and Olimar perspective). As Rosa, the WFT and Sonic MUs are like super bad when played properly with customs. From an Oli persepctive, Sheik becomes even worse, Greninja goes to being really bad. Then I look at DK's customs and it's like, he tends to either steamroll a matchup or have no chance to get his gameplan going. Certain characters can't answer a villager with % lead. Ect. Ect. Obviously this is debatable but I will make a claim that the game is less "balanced" with customs because among the tournament viable characters, more matchups are one sided.

What if those so called more lopsided MUs only appear that way because not enough people are willing to seriously try customs out?

Initial reactions to MUs can be very wrong and slowly change over time as people get used to it and figure things out. Happened in Brawl with Ike: we initially though Falco, D3, and Olimar were all 3-7 MUs for us. By the end of Brawl's lifespan the only 3-7 MU Ike has was MK. All three of those were dropped to a 4-6 MU because we slowly figured them out, what we could and couldn't do, and what tools we could effectively combat.

And then for more current, custom related examples: DK Cyclone. Seemed super amazing and a MU dictator. And then it was discovered that "Hey, you can take the first 3% hit, airdodge afterwards, and always avoid the strong hit afterwards. And ya know, its kinda obvious where DK has to land so its actually pretty punishable." And hey, not a single DK in the top 32 of EVO.

Could also use Little Mac and Bowser during SSB4 3DS as examples. Looked so amazing at first right? Not so much now. Because we figured them out.

And there are situations like Ally vs Manny. If Ally wasn't so stubborn and refusing to use customs, he could have used the multiple customs Mario has that works really well against custom Sonic. By refusing to do so, he made custom Sonic appear more powerful than he actually is. It made it appear that somebody below Ally's level of skill could challenge him strictly because of customs, when in reality Ally was frankly handicapping himself and not really playing to win at the same extent as Manny was. Ally also flat out hurt his changes of advancing by refusing to use custom Marth against Sheik: several times he landed a grab. With customs, those grabs would have been kills. At a minimum he would have forced game 3.

So I say it again: many if not most of those more lopsided MUs that seem to appear in customs because a) people aren't used to those MUs existing that way because of limit regions actually willing to use customs, so we're nowhere near close to fully understanding those MUs b) pros being too stubborn to try to use them, which makes the customs look stronger than they actually are when those same pros are forced to fight them because they suddenly have no clue what to do

Not always going to Smashville would also help a number of those MUs as well. Seriously, the number of people at EVO who shot themselves in the foot because they refused to play on any other stage... this is not MvC. Stages will always influence MUs, and actually to a rather high degree. Even on Smashville. Use the stage striking and counterpicking systems to your advantage, otherwise you're not fully playing to win.

 

[Dabuz]

Wait how is Greninja even a bad MU for Olimar? Especially in customs where the limited experience I had with his customs always ended up with me getting wrecked.

Custom shuriken can go through pikmin completely IIRC.

Snip

"Adapt"

 

[FullMoon]

Custom shuriken can go through pikmin completely IIRC.

Well yes, but often I didn't see it make that much of a difference. Granted, that might be just me not knowing how to fight Olimar since he's kinda rare.

Do you think the MU is bad for Olimar even in defaults though?

 

[Dabuz]

Well yes, but often I didn't see it make that much of a difference. Granted, that might be just me not knowing how to fight Olimar since he's kinda rare.

Do you think the MU is bad for Olimar even in defaults though?

Basically that means if I throw out any pikmin attack, you can use a shuriken and punish me for it with followups. Whiffed fsmash, shorthop side-B, any aerial, ect. Pretty much the same reason that Sheik piercing needles are REALLY bad for Oli. In non-customs it's probably evenish.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

"Adapt"

Come on, you can respond better than that.

Where any of those points incorrect? Or are you only saying "adapt" because all of those points were correct, but admitting as much would hurt your stance without a way to rebuttal?

I'm not trying to be "in your face" about this, but seriously. I brought up serious points, I want a serious response and not a one word dismissal. Because frankly a one word dismissal just looks like admitting defeat without wanting to actually say as much and I doubt that's your intention.

 

[Scarlet Jile]

Come on, you can respond better than that.

Where any of those points incorrect? Or are you only saying "adapt" because all of those points were correct, but admitting as much would hurt your stance without a way to rebuttal?

I'm not trying to be "in your face" about this, but seriously. I brought up serious points, I want a serious response and not a one word dismissal. Because frankly a one word dismissal just looks like admitting defeat without wanting to actually say as much.

To me it, it just looked like he was summarizing.

 

[FullMoon]

Basically that means if I throw out any pikmin attack, you can use a shuriken and punish me for it with followups. Whiffed fsmash, shorthop side-B, any aerial, ect. Pretty much the same reason that Sheik piercing needles are REALLY bad for Oli. In non-customs it's probably evenish.

Olimar has that custom that makes all Pikmin act like purple Pikmin though, which means that if I throw a shuriken and you throw a pikmin, we are going to trade often. The pikmin are also a lot more spammable than shurikens too. Dunno how useful that custom is for the most part but at least against Greninja it looks really good since it makes getting follow ups from Shifting Shuriken a lot harder.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

I didn't even know that Shifting Shuriken (or any shuriken for that matter other than fully charged default) went through Pikmin. Does it go through Luma, Lloid, item projectiles like Bonus Fruit, or even players?

 

[FullMoon]

I didn't even know that Shifting Shuriken (or any shuriken for that matter other than fully charged default) went through Pikmin. Does it go through Luma, Lloid, item projectiles like Bonus Fruit, or even players?

It's transcedent, it goes through everything just like a normal fully charged shuriken.

 

[Dabuz]

Come on, you can respond better than that.

Where any of those points incorrect? Or are you only saying "adapt" because all of those points were correct, but admitting as much would hurt your stance without a way to rebuttal?

I'm not trying to be "in your face" about this, but seriously. I brought up serious points, I want a serious response and not a one word dismissal. Because frankly a one word dismissal just looks like admitting defeat without wanting to actually say as much and I doubt that's your intention.

To me it, it just looked like he was summarizing.

There isn't really much I can respond with. Who knows, yes these customs could be overcome with time (Brawl DDD), but they could also end up not being as simple to defeat or even become more powerful (Brawl MK). That's pretty much meta in a nutshell, I won't argue a "what if" scenario of the future when we have current results to base discussions on. Ally not using customs to his advantage was foolish on his part but I would say he is the exception and there are a load of good players who still lost to customs even though they had their own customs on. Speaking of custom DK, Will lost to staticmanny and a wii fit trainer, both matchups I saw first hand and were heavily decided by the interaction of both character's customs.

As an unrelated note, the prominence of SV was heavily a result of full list stage striking, when you have to prioritize striking halberd, castle, delfino, and duck hunt against certain characters, striking SV is very rarely worth it or it's just simple to agree to SV because otherwise striking down to one stage is tedious.

Olimar has that custom that makes all Pikmin act like purple Pikmin though, which means that if I throw a shuriken and you throw a pikmin, we are going to trade often. The pikmin are also a lot more spammable than shurikens too. Dunno how useful that custom is for the most part but at least against Greninja it looks really good since it makes getting follow ups from Shifting Shuriken a lot harder.

That customs is bad because it has significant cooldown compared to normal pikmin throw, I wouldn't be surprised if greninja could run up and punish on reaction.

 

[T0MMY]

Having attended Evo from what I observed most of the almost 2000 randoms/newbs/I-play-Mahvel-what's-Smash? players who entered never saw a Custom move in their life. It's more of an argument that Customs failed not because they didn't ruin the game but because hardly anyone used them despite all the trouble it took to set them up.

Was that trouble to set up the systems and the process that was confusing to the players worth it?
It's up to our personal interpretation, those favoring customs are going to ignore the jank and other issues, of course, but the TO's and top-players who were there did not: I personally talked with many of the important players of their respective regions and they were anti-customs.

Why are so many of us heads of our regions so anti-customs?

Here's a major reason:
The competitive value they could provide is nowhere near the issues surrounding them for both players and TO's.

Customs rode on the hype train promising a more balanced game with more depth and all it delivered was a salty taste in my mouth. It's logically impossible to be pro-custom with the only straw left to grasp onto is to say that they didn't "ruin" the event.
Am I really going to try to argue that the requirement for a major rules change should be "it doesn't outright ruin an event?" Sounds good!! where do we sign up for the event that uses Items?! (right... that was EVO 2008)

No. This is the foundation for a change in rules (simple Burden of Proof): Any proposed change of rules MUST have sound reasoning.

It is not enough to say we need a reason to NOT use customs.
It is not a sound argument to say we should use them because they don't "ruin" events.
And definitely not a mob-rule, herd mentality tragedy of commons mistake (i.e. majority rule) that appeals to popular vote (from non-attendees) to dictate how the competitors who invest so much into the event should play the game.
We need a clear, concise, and obvious proof that they improve competition without sacrificing more than it gives.

My vote: was pro-customs, now against customs.

 

[Dabuz]

^This times 1000

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

I'm probably within 1-5% difference of opinion to DunnoBro.. perhaps we're both centre aligned with him slightly left and me slightly right.
My long-term analogy of "customs can be good, look how much better these characters are in a great way", "wait... they add a pseudo brawl dedede? uhhhh not interested" is probably the most simplified base logic or perspective that active tournament players are aligning themselves with.

And if customs want to survive they need to realise that some moves, even if they aren't "broken", have to go. If Nintendo starts to actually put real effort into balancing customs (they haven't thus far, #pettyshaya, but this is OBJECTIVE) then we'll have a workable future that may start to turn anti opinions back towards pro. Otherwise it's "removing" various customs from the pool, which the average pro-custom person has been staunchly against even humoring the idea (which has gone to alienate the indifferent and anti players from pro-players in communities NOTICEABLY); the pride that can only be verbalised as "if they aren't broken/single handedly winning tournaments it's OKAY" is killing pro-customs chances by the day.

I have to strongly agree with this.

I am interested to see what a community smogon like ban list for customs would look like if it was attempted, then a tested end result.

 

[Charey]

Going to smashville was players being lazy with stage selection, not FLSS. Players even in top 8 counter picked Smashville against Sheik, that is a failure to CP to hand Sheik players their best stage.

Until people realize that Smashville isn't always the most nuteral in every match up people are going to continue to give Sheiks free advantages.

 

[KeithTheGeek]

Smogon gets a lot of crap for the way they are set-up (I'm certainly not above taking shots at them myself) but it's designed that way for the community to play the game they want to play. I mentioned earlier I'm pro-customs, but if there are elements of the game that are deemed unnecessary for competitive play, whether it's fair to those elements or not, well...maybe we should consider excising them?

There's no real reason we MUST push for just vanilla, or just customs. A regulated list of customs in its own meta may seem less objectively competitive than the all or nothing route, but it would (likely) receive more support and maintenance in response to a changing meta and ultimately be more enjoyable for players and spectators alike. Although, personally speaking, I would rather the needs of the player be considered before the needs of the viewers, but that's another discussion...

Either way, the biggest test for customs surviving or not is going to be if the players support them, in whatever form they may take on in the future. And I think it would be disappointing to see an interesting and engaging alternative die simply because people stubbornly cling to their opinions, on both sides.

 

[Unknownkid]

What about Blue Pikmin? I thought they are immune to water?

I find it interesting that the Default Setting where someone complains about a basic move like Luigi Nair coming out at frame 3 or Pikachu Down B at frame 1... player is told to adapt. However, when it comes to custom moves - we need to straight off ban them. Meh... whatever.

Also Dabuz complaining about lopsided fights after what he did to FOW and his Ness (or Luma Uair shenanigan)? You never cease to amaze me. That why you are one of my favorite Smash 4 players.

Anyways... @DunnoBro How does Mario's Cape beat Tripping Sapling? Are you saying that Mario can reverse the tripping sapling effect into his Favor? Holy crap! Swordfighter can counter tripping sapling if this is true.

just imagine if there were multiple Villagers in top 32.

There were 3 Villager players at top 32 in EVO. Only CaptAwesum plays the ledge stall game. The other two (SS and MJD) do not (Remember D1 stated that K9's brother plays Custom Villager but didn't know what to do against CaptAwesum). Apparently, Custom Villager counter a LedgeStalling Villager as SS was the one to finally kick CaptAwesum out.

 

[Dabuz]

Also Dabuz complaining about lopsided fights after what he did to FOW and his Ness (or Luma Uair shenanigan)? You never cease to amaze me. That why you are one of my favorite Smash 4 players.

Kappa

Real talk though that was just FOW getting read super hard for airdodging at the ledge TWICE. He's ness, shouldn't be letting himself get put in that position in the first place.

 

[Electric91]

If honestly people will lean towards banning certain movesets, i must say we are probably better placed to work on that list since we've been running customs on tournaments since November (Day 1 of 3DS, practically).

I must say, the meta must not suffer because we start banning moves or not.

I honestly have thought a lot of times if customs would have to exist with certain moves banned, and I have no opposition if it came to this for customs to exist in the competitive scene.

A lot of you make fair points, what I really ,REALLY want to avoid is for the meta to suffer because of what we do. So far, it's the meta is completely free.

Camp or not, that's how the game is played. If people and top players want to use 6 minutes to their advantage, it's their right. In no world should a TO or someone rob that from a player. It's not unbeatable, it's not unfair. That's the game.

 

[FullMoon]

What about Blue Pikmin? I thought they are immune to water?

Water Shuriken isn't considered a water move.

Yup.

 

[Unknownkid]

Water Shuriken isn't considered a water move.

Yup.

.....I see....

Is there any water element moves or are they just wind boxes? For example, can Blue Pikmin ignore Mario's FLUDD, Hydrant and Greninja's Up B? (I guess this is a tangent but I am curious)

 

[A_Kae]

.....I see....

Is there any water element moves or are they just wind boxes? For example, can Blue Pikmin ignore Mario's FLUDD, Hydrant and Greninja's Up B? (I guess this is a tangent but I am curious)

Here's the data for greninja's up-specials:

BEGIN gekkouga_water
**********
Hydro Pump (first hit)
Frame 1- 2: 2% 65b/100g (KO@ 514%) 58° 2.0-Hitlag Water Push
Max Damage: 2%

High-Capacity Pump (first hit)
Frame 1- 2: 0% 130f/90w 58° 2.0-Hitlag Water Push

Single-Shot Pump (first hit)
Frame 1- 2: 5% 55b/85g (KO@ 292%) 40° Water Push
Max Damage: 5%

Hydro Pump (second hit)
Frame 1- 2: 2% 65b/100g (KO@ 514%) 58° 2.0-Hitlag Water Push
Max Damage: 2%

High-Capacity Pump (second hit)
Frame 1- 2: 0% 130f/90w 58° 2.0-Hitlag Water Push

Single-Shot Pump (second hit)
Frame 1- 2: 5% 55b/85g (KO@ 292%) 40° Water Push
Max Damage: 5%

**********
END gekkouga_water

F.L.U.D.D has the same sort of thing.

So, yes. There is a unique water element.

 

[FullMoon]

.....I see....

Is there any water element moves or are they just wind boxes? For example, can Blue Pikmin ignore Mario's FLUDD, Hydrant and Greninja's Up B? (I guess this is a tangent but I am curious)

Greninja's N-Air, Pummel, Hydro Pump and Down Taunt (lol) are considered water moves and yes, blue Pikmin are immune to N-Air, which is annoying since that's Greninja's main way of killing Pikmin grabbing onto him.

Greninja's Smashes, F-Air and Water Shuriken are classified as Slash/Sword moves instead of water, so they still kill blue pikmin.

Even if the shuriken didn't, Shifting Shuriken is, again, transcedent, so it would go through the blue pikmin without causing damage to it and still be able to hit Olimar.

 

[Grizzlpaw]

I still don't understand all this "customs jank" nonsense.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I'm seeing, there are two main reasons why people don't want customs in smash.

1. They promote sloppy play. (e.g. ESAM playing sloppy, but winning thanks to TW+HSB)

and

2. They allow players to cheese their way to victory (also e.g. ESAM winning thanks to TW+HSB)




If you're agaisnt customs becasue of point 1, that's... illogical isn't it? Customs promote sloppy play, which is bad for competetive smash, so we ban it. Problem fixed... except it isn't. You've just swept the problem under the rug and chosen to forget about it. Customs haven't gotten a ton of high-level play yet. Some customs drastically change how characters are palyed, what their win conditions are, what strats they may use, ect. These sorts of things take time to get used to, and if we want to get used to them, we should allow them to be used by players capable of showing off what each move is capable of.

A good example of this is bowser's dash slash. An amazing custom, but easy to get sloppy with, especially if you try to pull off some of the technical things that custom can do (waveslashing, momentum shifting) and plain suck at it. like i do *cough*


Point 2 is just hypocritical. There will always be strats that allow you to cheese your way to victory in smash. These have exsisted in smash 4 before customs. What makes TW+HSB any more problematic than, say... Fox Jab infinite into a guaranteed Usmash confirm? Rosalina's jab infinite on sheik and falcon? Ryu's utilt and Down B infinites?

It just happens to be a safe and easy kill confirm, which characters like Luigi and Ness have been dominating the metagame with already. Yeah, Mii Brawler can Dthrow to Up B for a cheeky kill. But what about Luigi? He not only has kill setups off of grabs, but a postive on shield fireball to set up into them.

Ness doens't even need a setup. He'll just Bthrow you. Gone.



But okay, maybe the examples I mentioned weren't jank enough. Customs are still far worse. What about the many infinites and jank strats that exsisted in Brawl and Meele?

(No meele examples here because I don't know anything about Meele)

Ness and Lucas flat out couldn't be used in competetive becasue of the dumb and easy infinites that could be done to them. Ice Climbers had a chaingrab that could 0-death any character in the game, D3 could dthrow infinite certain characters, making DK near-unplayable. Falco could Dthrow --> Spike --> Edgehog certain characters and get net quick and easy stocks (RIP Ivysaur). Despite the fact that many of these strats had massive impacts on the game, we allowed them. We adapted and learned how to beat them.

So what makes cutoms in this game any worse than what we've expereinced in the past? It baffles me.

 

[kackamee]

Having attended Evo from what I observed most of the almost 2000 randoms/newbs/I-play-Mahvel-what's-Smash? players who entered never saw a Custom move in their life. It's more of an argument that Customs failed not because they didn't ruin the game but because hardly anyone used them despite all the trouble it took to set them up.

Was that trouble to set up the systems and the process that was confusing to the players worth it?
It's up to our personal interpretation, those favoring customs are going to ignore the jank and other issues, of course, but the TO's and top-players who were there did not: I personally talked with many of the important players of their respective regions and they were anti-customs.

Why are so many of us heads of our regions so anti-customs?

Here's a major reason:
The competitive value they could provide is nowhere near the issues surrounding them for both players and TO's.

Customs rode on the hype train promising a more balanced game with more depth and all it delivered was a salty taste in my mouth. It's logically impossible to be pro-custom with the only straw left to grasp onto is to say that they didn't "ruin" the event.
Am I really going to try to argue that the requirement for a major rules change should be "it doesn't outright ruin an event?" Sounds good!! where do we sign up for the event that uses Items?! (right... that was EVO 2008)

No. This is the foundation for a change in rules (simple Burden of Proof): Any proposed change of rules MUST have sound reasoning.

It is not enough to say we need a reason to NOT use customs.
It is not a sound argument to say we should use them because they don't "ruin" events.
And definitely not a mob-rule, herd mentality tragedy of commons mistake (i.e. majority rule) that appeals to popular vote (from non-attendees) to dictate how the competitors who invest so much into the event should play the game.
We need a clear, concise, and obvious proof that they improve competition without sacrificing more than it gives.

My vote: was pro-customs, now against customs.

What drawbacks were there? People not using them isn't a fault of customs, so it makes no sense to try and use that as a point against them. From what I saw on stream, customs seemed to add diversity and depth without much cost, so I'm curious as to what other issues there were.

Not allowing people to change the sets, as Dabuz stated, seems to be a fault of the ruleset. I don't get why taking a couple seconds to create a set wasn't allowed. The purpose of having 10 preset custom load outs was to save time by having what were thought to be the most probable sets (many of which were designed by the individual character boards communities). The fact that there were issues with the presets is a problem we could have easily avoided with more effort by us, the community.

 

[Deleted member]

I still don't understand all this "customs jank" nonsense.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I'm seeing, there are two main reasons why people don't want customs in smash.

1. They promote sloppy play. (e.g. ESAM playing sloppy, but winning thanks to TW+HSB)

and

2. They allow players to cheese their way to victory (also e.g. ESAM winning thanks to TW+HSB)




If you're agaisnt customs becasue of point 1, that's... illogical isn't it? Customs promote sloppy play, which is bad for competetive smash, so we ban it. Problem fixed... except it isn't. You've just swept the problem under the rug and chosen to forget about it. Customs haven't gotten a ton of high-level play yet. Some customs drastically change how characters are palyed, what their win conditions are, what strats they may use, ect. These sorts of things take time to get used to, and if we want to get used to them, we should allow them to be used by players capable of showing off what each move is capable of.

A good example of this is bowser's dash slash. An amazing custom, but easy to get sloppy with, especially if you try to pull off some of the technical things that custom can do (waveslashing, momentum shifting) and plain suck at it. like i do *cough*


Point 2 is just hypocritical. There will always be strats that allow you to cheese your way to victory in smash. These have exsisted in smash 4 before customs. What makes TW+HSB any more problematic than, say... Fox Jab infinite into a guaranteed Usmash confirm? Rosalina's jab infinite on sheik and falcon? Ryu's utilt and Down B infinites?

It just happens to be a safe and easy kill confirm, which characters like Luigi and Ness have been dominating the metagame with already. Yeah, Mii Brawler can Dthrow to Up B for a cheeky kill. But what about Luigi? He not only has kill setups off of grabs, but a postive on shield fireball to set up into them.

Ness doens't even need a setup. He'll just Bthrow you. Gone.



But okay, maybe the examples I mentioned weren't jank enough. Customs are still far worse. What about the many infinites and jank strats that exsisted in Brawl and Meele?

(No meele examples here because I don't know anything about Meele)

Ness and Lucas flat out couldn't be used in competetive becasue of the dumb and easy infinites that could be done to them. Ice Climbers had a chaingrab that could 0-death any character in the game, D3 could dthrow infinite certain characters, making DK near-unplayable. Falco could Dthrow --> Spike --> Edgehog certain characters and get net quick and easy stocks (RIP Ivysaur). Despite the fact that many of these strats had massive impacts on the game, we allowed them. We adapted and learned how to beat them.

So what makes cutoms in this game any worse than what we've expereinced in the past? It baffles me.

None of the combos you listed are infinites outside of training mode CPUs who can't DI and/or jump. Some of them can be annoying to get out of without a jump, but they aren't infinites, just combo starters. You can roll out of Focus Attack as well.

~~~

I don't get your argument at all. From what I'm getting, you seem to think because default and Brawl have dumb things in them, its fine for customs to have them. Why is adding more unhealthy things into the game fine? Nobody thought that Ice Climbers grab -> death was fine, nobody liked Dedede infinites, and nobody likes "jank" in general, whatever they want to label it as. Introducing more unhealthy moves into the meta, whether it be HSB+Thunder Wave, planking Villager, the LFK infinite, or other complained about customs like Shooting Star Bit and Kong Cyclone, is not ok. Adding more "jank", for lack of a better word, is not good for the game. If anything, that should be kept to a minimum.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

@ Dabuz would you be more open to customs of people pulled a smogon with them? Of is it mostly just all of them in general?

 

[kackamee]

None of the combos you listed are infinites outside of training mode CPUs who can't DI and/or jump. Some of them can be annoying to get out of without a jump, but they aren't infinites, just combo starters. You can roll out of Focus Attack as well.

~~~

I don't get your argument at all. From what I'm getting, you seem to think because default and Brawl have dumb things in them, its fine for customs to have them. Why is adding more unhealthy things into the game fine? Nobody thought that Ice Climbers grab -> death was fine, nobody liked Dedede infinites, and nobody likes "jank" in general, whatever they want to label it as. Introducing more unhealthy moves into the meta, whether it be HSB+Thunder Wave, planking Villager, the LFK infinite, or other complained about customs like Shooting Star Bit and Kong Cyclone, is not ok. Adding more "jank", for lack of a better word, is not good for the game. If anything, that should be kept to a minimum.

I agree with what you're saying, but in my opinion customs add more good than bad, at least from what we know. And I don't think we know all that much.

 

[Dabuz]

@ Dabuz would you be more open to customs of people pulled a smogon with them? Of is it mostly just all of them in general?

No, i'm not dealing with all that debate when I just want to actually play.

 

[ToadsterOven]

I'd like to make some points about the future of customs since I'm seeing lots of positive reactions, but also a few anti-customs posts and tweets here and there.

• About unlocking them: Yes we can all agree its frustratingly annoying to make a run through Classic, Smash Run, Master/Crazy Orders and receive some custom parts only to see custom moves that you've already unlocked be a part of your loot! Why Sakurai hasn't bothered to tweak a few lines of code in the RNG yet to eliminate this problem is beyond me. With that said, it seems that most anti-custom arguments assume that if you don't have close to every custom move or better yet every custom move unlocked on your 3DS or Wii U, its not worth turning Customs on out of fear that the unknown could possibly cost someone a tournament.

• I'd say let the normal player go up against a customs player and let the former adapt to the latter as best as possible. If they win, that's good. If they lose, that's also good. By prohibiting the use of customs due to fear of the unknown, you're not letting your players have a chance to get used to certain custom combinations which as EVO proved can be trumped with good fundamentals. In addition, I feel its up to the players themselves to practice with a buddy at home or over Online mode with Friends and train to overcome any custom moves/combinations they struggle against along with any play styles or characters they aren't good against. If you aren't willing to put in the hours to adapt to whatever is currently the state of the metagame, then you really shouldn't complain about (X) imo.

• About using them and possible bans: This...is going to be a fun topic to discuss. First off, bans that aren't stage related don't tend to stick in our community. i.e the universal MK ban in Brawl didn't stick due to at least one stubborn region flat out refusing to implement the rule. If you literally have not even a sliver of a chance against a custom move and so does everyone else including top players, then it becomes more feasible to consider banning it. However, not one move was proven to be that way at EVO as Kong Cyclones, Skull Bashes and that Custom Villager either drowned in pools or was trumped by good fundamentals in the case of Captain Awsume's Villager. Players who also attempted to camp or time out a match generally didn't get away with it and in some cases that was without customs. *cough* regular Sonic *cough* Implementing or trying to implement a Smogon ban on any moves that appear to be "jank" but really aren't with practice and matchup familiarty will ultimately end up hurting the customs side of the meta more than it will help as I feel some region TO's will carelessly abuse this rule anytime a player gripes about a custom character or move they lost to. As I said in the above point, if you aren't willing to put in the hours to adapt to any custom moves/combinations or playstyles that you are personally struggling against, you really have no business crying about supposed "jank".