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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.
Banning customs is a character ban of massive proportions and it needs be treated seriously as such. The burden of proof is always on those proposing the ban. Rulesets are not made additively. We're not starting from the ground up from "Fox only, Final Destination" and considering every element on subjective criteria.
Rulesets are made subtractively. Legal until proven broken. Otherwise you end up with exactly what you're fearing, a ruleset that's built from "mob-rule, herd mentality tragedy of commons mistake (i.e. majority rule) that appeals to popular vote (from non-attendees)".
Its important we stay objective about bans, which again is what customs off means: a blanket ban on hundreds of characters.
"We need proof they have a right to exist in the game" is scrub nonsense.
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.
So your gripes are that nobody used them and there was Dong Copter, Villager Ledge Stall, HSB, and Shooting star bits. This outweighed two Wii Fit Trainers and a Palutena making top 32 while giving many other characters reasonable viability.
Fine.
I can't help people not using them. I'm part of the problem myself. I don't use them (even though I spent a month unlocking all of them on my Wii U). It's not my fault the custom metagame basically evolved into every character with good custom moves using the best possible set they had while every good character with useless customs didn't use them. At least, based on all the custom tournaments I've partaken of and have watched on stream, that has been the impression I've gotten.
I'll admit, there are problems that need to be addressed with certain moves.
But please hear my gripe: I'm not allowed by the community to try and compromise on this problem. If I try and talk about compromise I get yelled at and told "It has to either be all or nothing, you can't have a middle ground," in spite of the fact everyone keeps telling me that in order to make a legitimate case for customs that it has to include addressing problematic. That's not fair to me. But that's been the typical response of the Smash 4 community to anything complicated. Don't deal with it or hope that a patch fixes things.
I still like customs. I liked Palutena and Wii Fit Trainer making it to top 32. Personally, my suggestion would be to just allow everyone on Dabuz's post Mewtwo tier list D tier and below access to their most optimal sets (Palutena and Miis are granted an exception for character design reasons). This solves the logistics problems since that's hardly problematic to unlock. You raise the viability of 15 characters to competitive status without any twisting Foxes, Sonic camping, Villager stalling, RosaLuma starbit shooting, and Pikachu heavily skull bashing. For all intents and purposes, this was pretty much the custom metagame that existed between APEX and EVO, so it's not like a lot changes with the exception of the disappearance of the nasty stuff.
It's probably a terrible solution, but at least I can say I tried to address the problems and come out with a deeper metagame that satisfies everyone.
Mostly speaking about the complication of the rules just including them from online documents to counterpicking process. Agreed, people not using them is not an issue in itself, but the underlying factors that lead to people not using them is. We TO's know that onerous rules is the bane of new blood.
On the TO's end of things, issues with the setups is another drawback and was a contributing factor that shifted Paragon's ruleset away from Customs being used before Evo had finished (I was there for the discussion). As responsible TO's they are more concerned about the people who are paying to attend and what they want at the event - as paying competitor who felt undermined by Evo's rules choices I give the Paragon TO's props for their efforts to connect with their patrons.
Actually, I didn't say anything of the sort. Maybe you responded to the wrong person?
I'll admit, there are problems that need to be addressed with certain moves.
But please hear my gripe: I'm not allowed by the community to try and compromise on this problem. If I try and talk about compromise I get yelled at and told "It has to either be all or nothing, you can't have a middle ground,"
I think you'll find me more of an ally than an opponent since I have been trying to find a way to meet a middle ground on this subject for a long time now. Ironically I get the same treatment as you: All or nothing - which I said was sinking the Customs ship, and looks like everything I was saying was going to happen is happening. Go figure.
I see the best future for Customs as a later-metagame development, people who are pushing a now-or-never kind of do-or-die mentality are setting everything to a disastrous end. People naturally will push back harder if something is pushed on them - good things will be welcomed, so I advocate promotion of the good qualities of Customs and not forcing it on people only to meet with blowback.
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.
What I'm trying to get at is that, for better or worse, this is the game that we play. Cheesy moves and cheesy strats exsist. It's part of the game's design. However, even the cheesiest of strats have counterplay. If a move is legitly broken enough that it makes the game unplayable by all but those who use that character, then I'll be down for a ban, but otherwise, I don't see any reason why the smash community would choose to ban customs, when worse things (Ice Climbers) were allowed in the past. I'm questioning the change in philosophy smashers seem to have made between Meele/Brawl and Smash 4. Why is it that we didn't ban jank in the past, but choose to now?
To give a more specific example, in brawl a player might complain that IC's are broken. Their Chaingrab should be banned in competetive play because it's jank, and these kinds of things should not be the deciding factor of games (they should be kept to a minimum as you mentioned). To this, most pro players would respond "don't get grabbed". This was the general mindset most people had towards the chaingrab. Yeah, few people liked it, but they accepted it, and when complaints were made, your typical response would be "dont get grabbed", which put the blame on the player rather than the strategy itself.
Lately however, smashers have had a change of heart. We get customs, which adds all kinds of strategic diversity in the game. However, with all the positives will inevitably come some negatives. Instead of facing these negatives the same way we did in the past, we choose to blame the custom rather than the person. If Mii Brawler lands an easy kill confirm off of a grab, we say "Wow, that custom is so broken". In Brawl/Meele, if a character gets a chaingrab into an easy kill confirm we say "Wow, he shouldn't have gotten grabbed there." "That was terrible spacing." "That was a good conversion by X."
Custom moves, like Infinites, Chain Grabs, and Easy/Safe Kill Confirms are all a part of the game. We have always had the choice to ignore or ban them if they become too problemati. Up until now, we've chosen to adapt to the changes they've had on the metagame, and figure out ways around them. I'd honestly argue that customs aren't nearly as jank as they're made out to be. Some moves are obviously good, but none of them are unbeatable. I believe that the positives that customs will bring will begin to outweigh the negatives once people begin to invest time and effort into learning what each custom is capable of and how to beat it. Even banning certain customs and not others would only stifle progress, as it'll become that much harder for counterplay to that specific custom to be found.
As annoying as some of them might be, I am and always will be pro-customs.
Banning customs is a character ban of massive proportions and it needs be treated seriously as such. The burden of proof is always on those proposing the ban. Rulesets are not made additively. We're not starting from the ground up from "Fox only, Final Destination" and considering every element on subjective criteria.
Rulesets are made subtractively. Legal until proven broken. Otherwise you end up with exactly what you're fearing, a ruleset that's built from "mob-rule, herd mentality tragedy of commons mistake (i.e. majority rule) that appeals to popular vote (from non-attendees)".
Its important we stay objective about bans, which again is what customs off means: a blanket ban on hundreds of characters.
"We need proof they have a right to exist in the game" is scrub nonsense.
This is actually a fairly interesting point that I think needs to be expanded on further. I agree with you that additively creating rulesets is not the best way to go about it. The thing is, this community is much more used to Customs Off than Customs On, so everybody automatically goes to the "additive" mindset when considering customs because we kind of are "adding" a bunch of moves into the metagame.
This raises an interesting question. Suppose that somehow from the beginning we had all custom moves on, and people were able to transfer sets so that no set was left out(I know this isn't a realistic situation considering how long it takes to unlock all the moves but just humor me). And then some seemingly crazy guy comes on Smashboards to propose that custom moves be turned off, claiming that this new ruleset would create a more balanced cast of characters, and there would be less problematic moves to deal with. What would the response be? How would the top players, who have actually practiced the game with the moves for quite a while, react? Some of those players may be using characters such as Palutena, Charizard, Mii Fighters, and Wii Fit Trainer. Do you think they'd be accepting of such a proposal?
Basically what I'm trying to get at is that I don't think the Customs On meta has been advanced far enough to warrant any reasonable bans, or just completely turning them off. "Customs On meta" meaning the strengths and weaknesses of each move, the counterplay that's possible any given scenario, etc. I don't think they're being given enough of a chance. Most people just aren't willing to figure out how to deal with this supposed "jank", so they think that just completely forgetting about them is the best solution. I personally can't stand this dismissive mindset because it's the main reason Customs are probably going to be completely shut down in the near future.
R.I.P. Palutena, Mii Fighter, Charizard, WFT, DK, Kirby, and several other characters.
it's most unlikely that 'allowing all customs' is never going to be a standard for the sm4sh community. there is alot of focus on custom Dk and custom villager as violators of ruining the neutral game and making stuff look non-competetive.
But, it's likely that 'banning all customs' could be a standard. lots of pro players are for this. by now, we're all familar with the 1111 sets of the sm4sh cast. this makes the meta competetive.
how do we get everyone to be happy then?
to reach a compromise of both worlds, a banlist for sm4sh customs is a solution. its a complicated and frustrating path to follow but finding criteria that allows or makes a custom move banned is where we should be heading. the case that most ppl make about anti customs is always the most obvious customs, sonic's, villager's, dk's. being a pro customs guy, i agree these custom moves from these charachters are jank. and I'm in favor of banning some of their customs.
I know some of these custom moves are beatable. and there are strategies against them.....but the way you have to play to fight them makes the game look non competetive. custom planking villager is a huge violator! you have no neutral here. at. all. its not fun. its not competetive. its not what sm4sh meta needs.
it's most unlikely that 'allowing all customs' is never going to be a standard for the sm4sh community. there is alot of focus on custom Dk and custom villager as violators of ruining the neutral game and making stuff look non-competetive.
But, it's likely that 'banning all customs' could be a standard. lots of pro players are for this. by now, we're all familar with the 1111 sets of the sm4sh cast. this makes the meta competetive.
how do we get everyone to be happy then?
to reach a compromise of both worlds, a banlist for sm4sh customs is a solution. its a complicated and frustrating path to follow but finding criteria that allows or makes a custom move banned is where we should be heading. the case that most ppl make about anti customs is always the most obvious customs, sonic's, villager's, dk's. being a pro customs guy, i agree these custom moves from these charachters are jank. and I'm in favor of banning some of their customs.
I know some of these custom moves are beatable. and there are strategies against them.....but the way you have to play to fight them makes the game look non competetive. custom planking villager is a huge violator! you have no neutral here. at. all. its not fun. its not competetive. its not what sm4sh meta needs.
You're last paragraph reminded me of something else that interested me quite a bit while watching EVO. I was actually watching the Captawesum vs Larry Lurr battle, I believe. I remember reading all the ResidentSleepers and all kinds of profanity in the Twitch chat. However, the broadcaster of the stream, "skrevo1", actually had an interesting take on the match because he was an FGC player. He talked how that was actually a solid match. He respected CaptAwesum's strategy because he was playing to win like everybody else was. His strategy was just another among many others, no matter how campy or boring. He also pointed out that watching planking villager was nothing compared to watching Guile dittos in Street Fighter. Nothing.
So I would argue against this strategy making the game seem "non-competitive". It's completely competitive. It's completely beatable, as proven by several people. Just because it's boring to watch doesn't mean it has to go.
Edit: Oh yeah one more thing. Ledge grab limit. Planking villager problem solved. We did it for Brawl, why can't we do it now?
Completely disagree.
Any rules change needs reason for the change. Rules start with Custom Fighters Off and the game itself requires you to unlock them in order to even get to that point where you'd be wanting to turn them on.
Clearly and demonstrably the burden of proof is on those who are making the claim that a game setting must be changed to include these RNG farmed non-standard options.
What it seems you are saying is reduced to a simple shift of burden of proof - it's not our job to prove that rules should be changed to reflect what you want!
This raises an interesting question. Suppose that somehow from the beginning we had all custom moves on, and people were able to transfer sets so that no set was left out(I know this isn't a realistic situation considering how long it takes to unlock all the moves but just humor me). And then some seemingly crazy guy comes on Smashboards to propose that custom moves be turned off, claiming that this new ruleset would create a more balanced cast of characters, and there would be less problematic moves to deal with. What would the response be? How would the top players, who have actually practiced the game with the moves for quite a while, react?
As a competitive player who attends nationals I would be perfectly happy turning them off if there was reason to show it was competitively more valuable - and honestly, after playing in Evo and several other Customs tournaments I would be perfectly happy turning them off.
Don't think this would happen? This is exactly what happened with Items!
Are you attempting to strengthen the anti-custom argument? Just asking to be told "Because we have the Custom Fighter button we can turn Off that solves that problem and every other Custom problem out there."
So Zero's doing a Reddit AMA at the moment...ughhhhh. I just CAN'T wrap my head around why him and other top sm4sh players are so stubbornly against a feature that enriches the overall metagame for the most part. Zero's anti customs crusade is the most mind boggling to me personally as that guy literally eats, sleeps and breathes sm4sh. You would think he would make a video or two highlighting the benefits of customs using each of the non-DLC characters and then make a series of videos showing off various custom combinations with tips and tricks on how to adapt to/overcome them, but nooooo....he (and the others to varying extents too) would rather make excuses for why he's so anti customs instead of embracing them.
Completely disagree.
Any rules change needs reason for the change. Rules start with Custom Fighters Off and the game itself requires you to unlock them in order to even get to that point where you'd be wanting to turn them on.
Clearly and demonstrably the burden of proof is on those who are making the claim that a game setting must be changed to include these RNG farmed non-standard options.
What it seems you are saying is reduced to a simple shift of burden of proof - it's not our job to prove that rules should be changed to reflect what you want!
As a competitive player who attends nationals I would be perfectly happy turning them off if there was reason to show it was competitively more valuable - and honestly, after playing in Evo and several other Customs tournaments I would be perfectly happy turning them off.
Don't think this would happen? This is exactly what happened with Items!
With items, you could actually make a case that they hurt competitive play because they add elements of RNG into the game. This cannot be controlled by the player.
No amount of knowlege or skill is going to save you if a random bob-omb just so HAPPENS to spawn right in front of as you just so HAPPEN to be tossing out a hitbox and--
okay... that was an extreme example. Even if you removed the problem items, you still have the issue of items spawning at random points in the stage. You could get lucky and have an item spawn right next to you. All you have to do at that point is pick the item up, and it's basically like the game is giving you a free advantage.
Perhaps if items spawned at regular intervalts at various spawn points throughout the stage, that would be different. It would just a matter of banning out items that are flat out too strong *cough* bob-ombs.
Customs can be dealt with if a player is experienced enough. With items, you can kind of just...hope...
Evo never changed my opinion on Customs, mostly because I think they are generally good for the game as a whole. At the same time, I still think it needs to be all or nothing with them, because I'm not too sure as to how most of the "problematic" customs are customs based on slower or more campy strategies, and on that note I think people just need to learn the MU's and how to deal with it. On a more "crowd pleasing" idea, instead of auto bans, why not add it to sets + give people the ability to make their own sets.
Solves the problem because it forces players to actually know their characters (though most top/decent players do), and if you hate a certain part of the MU, you can get rid of it.
The example could be-
Double Blind Pick
Rock Paper Scissors/flip a coin, and if a character wants to they can ban a custom, both players build their sets, etc.
rest of set goes as normal.
I don't think this would add time to sets, or enough that it would be noticeable, the only downside is that then there would be a severe dependence on making sure that people have all customs on their setups.
Evo never changed my opinion on Customs, mostly because I think they are generally good for the game as a whole. At the same time, I still think it needs to be all or nothing with them, because I'm not too sure as to how most of the "problematic" customs are customs based on slower or more campy strategies, and on that note I think people just need to learn the MU's and how to deal with it. On a more "crowd pleasing" idea, instead of auto bans, why not add it to sets + give people the ability to make their own sets.
Solves the problem because it forces players to actually know their characters (though most top/decent players do), and if you hate a certain part of the MU, you can get rid of it.
The example could be-
Double Blind Pick
Rock Paper Scissors/flip a coin, and if a character wants to they can ban a custom, both players build their sets, etc.
rest of set goes as normal.
I don't think this would add time to sets, or enough that it would be noticeable, the only downside is that then there would be a severe dependence on making sure that people have all customs on their setups.
I'd rather the banning of the custom be after a player loses though. At the same time as they're picking their CP stage, they also ban one of the other player's custom moves. This would be a pretty nice compromise to have, since it means that any player who is relying on his custom to carry him through a tournament is going to be in trouble if he wins game 1, forcing them to be good with their vanilla sets as well.
Doing it this way would also be kinder to those few characters who only have 1 good custom move (Bowser). If players can ban a custom from the get go, there's pretty much no reason not to deny him dash slash.
Completely disagree.
Any rules change needs reason for the change. Rules start with Custom Fighters Off and the game itself requires you to unlock them in order to even get to that point where you'd be wanting to turn them on.
Clearly and demonstrably the burden of proof is on those who are making the claim that a game setting must be changed to include these RNG farmed non-standard options.
What it seems you are saying is reduced to a simple shift of burden of proof - it's not our job to prove that rules should be changed to reflect what you want!
The rules start with timer matches all items on, no characters unlocked. That's not actually how we play.
Its funny how you point out shifting burden of proof, but thats exactly what you are doing. Your instating a blanket character ban (on grounds of popular mentality, no less) and then asking for proof to "unban".
I'm still undecided about customs, and I'm sure this is something that has already been said, but it kind of scares me that customs have, to my knowledge, never been addressed in balance patches (except in cases where changes to the default special also change the related customs, eg Ike's side B). Janky moves like Greninja's hydro pump, link's jab, etc have been removed from the default metagame in many cases, but there is basically no chance of Villager's janky customs getting nerfed. People may argue that many bull**** moves exist in the default metagame as well, but if they are that problematic, at least they have a decent chance of receiving a nerf.
Another problem I have is that customs affect the metagame much differently in reality than I imagined they would when they were first announced. I pictured customs being used more as matchup specific "sidegrades" or things you could use to mindgame an opponent who doesn't know which customs you have selected. To an extent, customs can work for mindgames this way... "Wow, didn't expect a windbox at the end of Lucina's neutral special!" However, the problem is that too many customs are just outright better or worse than their default counterpart in EVERY situation. A prime example of this can be seen in pikachu's custom sets. Heavy skull bash will always be chosen over original skull bash. Same thing can be said for thunder wave over thunder jolt. What this creates for pikachu is not an exciting metagame full of diverse pikachus with various movesets. It simply replaces pikachu's default moveset with ONE new default.
While I'm no expert on how customs change every character's game, this problem is apparent for many characters, though it's not always a completely "black or white" scenario. Kirby is in a similar boat in that he should always choose upper cutter over default cutter and (I think?) jumping inhale over default inhale. But at least he has some choices, such as stone vs meteor stone, to keep things a bit varied. It's these customs that provide real choices rather than new defaults that the custom metagame needs to be healthy, imo.
Don't get me wrong, some of these "new default" moves like upper cutter are still somewhat OK because they improve the viability of lesser seen characters like Kirby. But you can't view customs as a balance patch, because in other cases, supposed top tiers like Pikachu simply get even stronger. Whether customs improve the overall balance of the game is certainly up in the air, but my current leaning is that customs are less balanced than the default game.
Evo never changed my opinion on Customs, mostly because I think they are generally good for the game as a whole. At the same time, I still think it needs to be all or nothing with them, because I'm not too sure as to how most of the "problematic" customs are customs based on slower or more campy strategies, and on that note I think people just need to learn the MU's and how to deal with it. On a more "crowd pleasing" idea, instead of auto bans, why not add it to sets + give people the ability to make their own sets.
Solves the problem because it forces players to actually know their characters (though most top/decent players do), and if you hate a certain part of the MU, you can get rid of it.
The example could be-
Double Blind Pick
Rock Paper Scissors/flip a coin, and if a character wants to they can ban a custom, both players build their sets, etc.
rest of set goes as normal.
I don't think this would add time to sets, or enough that it would be noticeable, the only downside is that then there would be a severe dependence on making sure that people have all customs on their setups.
It would absolutely add more time between matches, which is the last thing Smash 4 needs. It's clear from your post that you haven't really familiarized yourself with the problematic customs or even the nature of the conversation taking place. "Campy strategies" is only a fraction of the problem we've been trying to address for 9 pages.
I never said that those settings were never changed - what you failed to mention was how they were properly implemented and how I am not against proper and formal rules changes.
The game did start with those settings as default and there was quite a struggle to get Items turned off (though not much of an issue with stock vs time). But it was done properly after much reasoning and introduced into competitions and allowed to be accepted if the competitive community decided it was stronger and more competitively viable.
Guess what? Items OFF won out.
Done proper - "free market" makes the demands happen.
Like I've been saying: Customs need to be honored the same way - we are a competitive community, let's act like one.
Where's your charge of hypocrisy now?
But before getting to your ad hominem you're going to have to rationalize the "character ban" argument and how at least 71 "characters" are "banned" using Evo's Customs rules by that logic.
See, there's a difference between charging a person with hypocrisy (ad hominem) and shining light of rational contradiction on an argument.
But, seriously, why completely ignore every valid point I made and go off on a tangent about that... unnecessary.
You might just get me on the completely wrong topic like... arguing for the support of Smash Balls!
For real, I think they are competitively viable, they do not spawn random explosions when turned on and spawn at specific areas (above stage where even Ness' recovery should be fine). They add way more depth and balance than custom moves do and without any of the headache...
Well, see what you did there? Haha...
I don't expect it to catch on, but I like putting it out there I'm the pioneer of this suggested change of rules.
You might just get me on the completely wrong topic like... arguing for the support of Smash Balls!
For real, I think they are competitively viable, they do not spawn random explosions when turned on and spawn at specific areas (above stage where even Ness' recovery should be fine). They add way more depth and balance than custom moves do and without any of the headache...
You know, if you're going to make fun of it, at least have legitimate points. "Specific areas" here refers to the entire stage. While they don't spawn random explosions, they do spawn bombs, blast boxes, and Voltorb. And nobody would argue the depth/balance argument.
What I'm trying to get at is that, for better or worse, this is the game that we play. Cheesy moves and cheesy strats exsist. It's part of the game's design. However, even the cheesiest of strats have counterplay. If a move is legitly broken enough that it makes the game unplayable by all but those who use that character, then I'll be down for a ban, but otherwise, I don't see any reason why the smash community would choose to ban customs, when worse things (Ice Climbers) were allowed in the past. I'm questioning the change in philosophy smashers seem to have made between Meele/Brawl and Smash 4. Why is it that we didn't ban jank in the past, but choose to now?
To give a more specific example, in brawl a player might complain that IC's are broken. Their Chaingrab should be banned in competetive play because it's jank, and these kinds of things should not be the deciding factor of games (they should be kept to a minimal as you mentioned). To this, most pro players would respond "don't get grabbed". This was the general mindset most people had towards the chaingrab. Yeah, few people liked it, but they accepted it, and when complaints were made, your typical response would be "dont get grabbed", which put the blame on the player rather than the strategy itself.
Lately however, smashers have had a change of heart. We get customs, which adds all kinds of strategic diversity in the game. However, with all the positives will inevitably come some negatives. Instead of facing these negatives the same way we did in the past, we choose to blame the custom rather than the person. If Mii Brawler lands an easy kill confirm off of a grab, we say "Wow, that custom is so broken". In Brawl/Meele, if a character gets a chaingrab into an easy kill confirm we say "Wow, he shouldn't have gotten grabbed there." "That was terrible spacing." "That was a good conversion by X."
Custom moves, like Infinites, Chain Grabs, and Easy/Safe Kill Confirms are all a part of the game. We have always had the choice to ignore or ban them if they become too problemati. Up until now, we've chosen to adapt to the changes they've had on the metagame, and figure out ways around them. I'd honestly argue that customs aren't nearly as jank as they're made out to be. Some moves are obviously good, but none of them are unbeatable. I believe that the positives that customs will bring will begin to outweigh the negatives once people begin to invest time and effort into learning what each custom is capable of and how to beat it. Even banning certain customs and not others would only stifle progress, as it'll become that much harder for counterplay to that specific custom to be found.
As annoying as some of them might be, I am and always will be pro-customs.
I'm sure you also know that Brawl died. There were multiple reasons for this, but the prevalence of ICs and their crazy risk/reward (also aided by the increasingly conservative stage list) definitely played a factor. If anything, Brawl showed that allowing frustrating and tedious mechanics was detrimental to the health of the game. We should probably learn from the past instead of repeating it.
I'm sure you also know that Brawl died. There were multiple reasons for this, but the prevalence of ICs and their crazy risk/reward (also aided by the increasingly conservative stage list) definitely played a factor. If anything, Brawl showed that allowing frustrating and tedious mechanics was detrimental to the health of the game. We should probably learn from the past instead of repeating it.
ICs has the same crap in melee and melee lives on.
Sheik chain grabs threaten many characters viability.
Fox's versatility is far and away the best in the game.
Jiggly could kill at 30%.
Peach does 75% off of one Dsmash if CCed.
And every character could take a stock off easily of you're offstage.
Melee still lives on.
ICs has the same crap in melee and melee lives on.
Sheik chain grabs threaten many characters viability.
Fox's versatility is far and away the best in the game.
Jiggly could kill at 30%.
Peach does 75% off of one Dsmash if CCed.
And every character could take a stock off easily of you're offstage.
Melee still lives on.
The difference is that these issues were not created by turning on a game setting, it's just "crap", as you put it, that had to be dealt with (although technically some of it was patched in later versions of the game).
A better analogy is if you have a "crap" button you could turn on chaingrabs and tripping or whatever and had a choice to keep it off or had to find if there was some competitive value turning it on without compromising the integrity of the game.
You know, if you're going to make fun of it, at least have legitimate points. "Specific areas" here refers to the entire stage. While they don't spawn random explosions, they do spawn bombs, blast boxes, and Voltorb. And nobody would argue the depth/balance argument.
"Stage" is defined by the game as the entire play field, so I take that to mean that Smash Balls could spawn anywhere on the screen or off and I do not believe that is true. If you were talking about specifically the stage under the character's feet and including the platforms I have to point out the Smash Balll always appears above the ground and I have never seen it appear away from the stage (like near the blast zones).
Also I will point out they do NOT spawn bombs, boxes, capsules, etc. in Smash Wii U!
Additionally the Final Smashes were balanced! (see differences between Best Buy demon/Invite and current build, specifically ZSS's "broken" Final Smash).
This actually shows the developers were more concerned with balancing Final Smashes than they were with Custom Moves!
I am not going to paint a target on myself as the guy who is pushing for scrubby Final Smashes, but I will state I have yet to reasonably see why they should be toggled Off (other than they are just absentmindedly lumped in with "Items" without much thought).
I'm sure you also know that Brawl died. There were multiple reasons for this, but the prevalence of ICs and their crazy risk/reward (also aided by the increasingly conservative stage list) definitely played a factor. If anything, Brawl showed that allowing frustrating and tedious mechanics was detrimental to the health of the game. We should probably learn from the past instead of repeating it.
Note, I did say Brawl/Meele. Chain Grabs and 0-deaths exsist in Meele as well, however I didn't give any examples from Meele because I am not too familair with the game.
Brawl died because of the much more numerous fundamental flaws with the game. It was slow, campy, floaty... and it had random tripping! People felt like it was a downgrade from the fast paced, technical gameplay of meele. However, it was still the newest smash game with improved graphics and a bigger roster, so people played it.
Enter Smash 4, a newer game with more improved graphics and an even bigger roster, and thing that kept brawl afloat no longer exsists. So it dies.
"Stage" is defined by the game as the entire play field, so I take that to mean that Smash Balls could spawn anywhere on the screen or off and I do not believe that is true. If you were talking about specifically the stage under the character's feet and including the platforms I have to point out the Smash Balll always appears above the ground and I have never seen it appear away from the stage (like near the blast zones).
Also I will point out they do NOT spawn bombs, boxes, capsules, etc. in Smash Wii U!
Additionally the Final Smashes were balanced! (see differences between Best Buy demon/Invite and current build, specifically ZSS's "broken" Final Smash).
This actually shows the developers were more concerned with balancing Final Smashes than they were with Custom Moves!
I am not going to paint a target on myself as the guy who is pushing for scrubby Final Smashes, but I will state I have yet to reasonably see why they should be toggled Off (other than they are just absentmindedly lumped in with "Items" without much thought).
Smash Wii U still spawns explosives. Bob-ombs, motion censor bombs, sticky bombs, deku nuts, ect. still exsist, and spawn at random times at random points across the stage. If you happen to be tossing out an attack at the same time that an explosive item spawns near you, you're screwed. There is no way to predict this, it is purely RNG.
Even if explosive items didn't exsist, you still have the problem of random spawning.
Imagine you and your opponent are engaging in typical smash neutral game shenanigans. You're both on opposite sides of the stage, neither has the advtanage.
Until all of a sudden... A ROUGE BEAM SWORD APPEARS!
What's this? The beam sword spawned right next to me? Great! I can pick it up for free, and my opponent has no chance of taking it from me! The RNGods are truly on my side! Now I have the advantage! I will use this beam sword and crush mine enemy!
...that's the problem with items. Most people would choose to avoid RNG in a competetive game. When you're playing with money on the line, the last thing you want to happen is to lose a match, and hundreds (possibly thousands) of dollars because your opponent got lucky!
The biggest issue with even this discussion is that we don't have enough information. Evo was great, and it was a fantastic beginning in terms of compiling that information regarding customs, but it just isn't enough. Nobody can point to Evo and say for certain that the usage of customs at Evo proves one way or another that customs are good or bad. Nobody can point to any real example and say "this example is the reason why customs are good or bad."
Sadly, we'll likely never have information. Anti-customs people want pro-customs people to PROVE TO THEM that customs are worth it, that they're not jank, that they're beatable, not broken, etc. Unfortunately, they also seek to ban customs from all future tournaments so that such proof is impossible to come by, and they choose not to give any reasoning for their decisions besides "it's jank" or "it's centralizing."
I honestly don't understand why anyone is anti-custom. They don't add a random element to the game, and they don't make the game any slower. Characters like Sonic and Villager do that already, and without customs. They make characters like Palutena significantly better, and most top-tiers don't utilize their customs anyway (though that doesn't mean they're bad options). If anything, it adds more variety to an already diverse game, and that's amazing.
People keep saying that customs are what allowed Capt. Awesum to make it as far as he did, but he executed his strategy extremely well. Match-up knowledge will always play a factor in whether or not one person is able to defeat another; that's the nature of the game. Nobody would make this argument against any of the top players. "ZeRo only won 41 tournaments in a row because he uses top tier characters," "Mr. R. only got second place at Evo because he didn't use Zelda." Nobody would make that argument, not one person. I don't understand why that argument is made in this one instance.
It's a losing battle, to be honest. I can't see TO's supporting the customs movement when there's such a heavy division between pro-customs and anti-customs.
What I'm trying to get at is that, for better or worse, this is the game that we play. Cheesy moves and cheesy strats exsist. It's part of the game's design. However, even the cheesiest of strats have counterplay. If a move is legitly broken enough that it makes the game unplayable by all but those who use that character, then I'll be down for a ban, but otherwise, I don't see any reason why the smash community would choose to ban customs, when worse things (Ice Climbers) were allowed in the past. I'm questioning the change in philosophy smashers seem to have made between Meele/Brawl and Smash 4. Why is it that we didn't ban jank in the past, but choose to now?
To give a more specific example, in brawl a player might complain that IC's are broken. Their Chaingrab should be banned in competetive play because it's jank, and these kinds of things should not be the deciding factor of games (they should be kept to a minimal as you mentioned). To this, most pro players would respond "don't get grabbed". This was the general mindset most people had towards the chaingrab. Yeah, few people liked it, but they accepted it, and when complaints were made, your typical response would be "dont get grabbed", which put the blame on the player rather than the strategy itself.
Besides the issues that comes with actually unlocking every move (I've been trying for months on and off to get penetrating needles and distant nosferatu, still no luck) just to be able to actually practice against them or attain understanding of how to use them correctly, there is a far easier, less complicated and more enforceable solution to ban customs "jank" than IC chaingrabs: not toggling customs to on. Against Ice Climbers you had to have the mindset of "Don't get hit grabbed" because that was always going to be apart of the game. With customs, it is reasonable to actually ban them because of it being a toggle like items eventually being banned in Melee.
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I don't necessarily think customs add enough to the game, flame/nitpick shield up:
Custom moves aren't balanced because they essentially give characters options that they were never designed to have in default, what the development team clearly focuses on when patching. For example, Greninja's Shadow Sneak was patched so it no longer drops like a rock, but Shadow Strike and Shadow Dash function the same as the original version. Characters are all designed with strengths and weaknesses that have to be balanced out, but a lot of customs skew this delicate balance or are straight downgrades.
For example, Heavy Skull Bash gives Pikachu an extremely powerful KO move that can be used in the air or on the ground which also happens to have true setups into it off of grab or a projectile. One of Pikachu's inherent weaknesses is that he is not loaded with KO power, and HSB essentially removes that weakness, which is why ESAM believes Pikachu to be the best in the game with customs. Looking back at Regi vs. ESAM, the only reason ESAM won was because of Twave into HSB patching up his sloppy play. Otherwise this no name Game and Watch would've eliminated a top Pikachu, which is the opposite of the supposed "balance" customs bring.
More examples of customs mitigating weaknesses and amplifying strengths include:
Rocketbarrel Attack allowing Diddy easy 70-80% kills even after the patches that purposefully nerfed Diddy's KO power.
Luma Warp letting Rosalina apply instant Luma pressure from a distance, even comboing into KO moves.
Shooting Star Bit giving Rosalina another way to camp and force approaches with no risk.
Counter Timber limiting approach options even more and lets Villager camp far more effectively.
Exploding Balloon Trip letting Villager recover with a hitbox and camp the ledge.
Penetrating Needles, because needles needed to do a ton of shield damage.
Double Spring giving Sonic a much easier time landing.
Hammer Spin Dash setting up for/aiding vertical chases, helps recovery, combos into Usmash, and comes in at a weird angle that can be hard to react to while avoiding projectiles.
Lightning Falcon Kick giving the Captain 0 to death combos, sometimes without the need of the infinite. The setups for a footstool are relatively easy for Falcon, since he only needs a Dthrow, Uair, or the 1st hit of Nair.
Twisting Fox kills absurdly early off of an air dodge read without sacrificing much recovery, and it is much more intimidating to challenge.
Notice how none of the characters listed are considered bad, yet they get much better with customs. As for low tiers improving with customs, they still have inherent flaws in their design that prevent them from being high tier, and if they do become viable with customs, they rely on the custom that makes them good. Donkey Kong is a perfect example of this, as his neutral and disadvantaged state is patched up with the help of one move, Kong Cyclone. The flaws of his character are still there, but with customs he heavily relies on one move. Palutena is another example, a bad character who needs the mobility and strong Hoo-Hah that (Infinite-removing-an-intentional-drawback-of-the-move) Lightweight and Superspeed give her to be viable. Moves like these make characters viable, but also one dimensional.
And then you have the plethora of (near) complete upgrades that take away the counterpicking depth customs supposedly offers:
Dark Fists
Wizard Dropkick
Power Vision
Gravity Grenade
Zig Zag Can
Upper Cutter
Jumping Inhale
Dragon Rush
Fast Fire Bird
Gust Cape/Breezy Sheet
Dash Slash
Boomerang
Plant Barrier
Danger Wrap
Etc.
On top of that, some characters don't even benefit enough or at all from customs, such as and future DLC characters.
And somewhat off topic, but coming from a Pokemon player, banning specific customs ala Smogon is not good for the community. If you do that then the next best custom will get banned, and so on and so forth.
tl;dr Customs make top tiers stronger just as much as everybody else, and the lack of polished normals still keeps worse characters worse or overly reliant on a custom. The lack of side-grade matchup specific customs takes away from the game, and customs at best shuffle the mid tier around. The benefits of customs aren't enough to keep them over hassle for TOs and players, especially players who live in regions which disallow customs.
While I don't like it and think all Customs should be legal, it seems like the only chance of them staying are banning quite a few. I don't like it as I don't think any are bannable, but I rather ban some than ban all. I'm having a hard time thinking of good criteria to justify banning certain moves though. Regardless there's going to need to be a generally agreed upon list of Customs that are worth banning. It shouldn't be too long, but it should cover major complaints. I wanna say just banning Explosive Balloon Trip and Heavy Skull Bash should be enough, but some much less bannable ones like Kong Cyclone, Hammer Spin Dash, and Counter Sapling might have to get banned too. But when we ban whichever moves get banned, we are going to need concrete objective reasoning to avoid banning moves that don't at all need to be banned. It needs to be like "Explosive Balloon Trip is extremely difficult to combat, invalidates a lot of characters and options, marginalizes player skill to a degree, ect." except said even better rather than "It's annoying to fight against, it's jank, and I don't like it."
There is literally no reason not to use customs since logistical problems have been solved. Saying they're "jank" or "OP" is a load of crap, deal with it. Besides, if that's really your problem, banning customs shouldn't be your goal at all. Your goal should be to find the worst possible custom set for each character and make only that set allowed to minimize any possible jank. Zero Suit default up B? That can carry you right off the top! Banned! Bouncing Fish? Sheik shouldn't have such a good kill move! Banned!
There is literally no reason not to use customs since logistical problems have been solved. Saying they're "jank" or "OP" is a load of crap, deal with it. Besides, if that's really your problem, banning customs shouldn't be your goal at all. Your goal should be to find the worst possible custom set for each character and make only that set allowed to minimize any possible jank. Zero Suit default up B? That can carry you right off the top! Banned! Bouncing Fish? Sheik shouldn't have such a good kill move! Banned!
For people struggling to unlock one last custom for a specific character, use them in any 1P mode of your choice (Classic 0.0 or something) then take Ganondorf to that target blast stage he can win by holding B. Alternately, take that character to All Star on the highest difficulty you're comfortable with.
On a different note, I find it kind of odd that Luma Warp is one of the contentious customs. AFAIK, one of the chief complaints about Rosalina, Dabuz's in particular, is that she can just stand there with Luma and attack the air to put up a large wall of hitboxes that isn't particularly easy to get around as long as she isn't stupid about it. Luma Warp lets her be offensive and put on some pressure, which at first blush would appear to be exactly what people want -- a more aggressive Rosalina. Thus my confusion at the hate.
I stand by the only move that "needs" banning is Timber Counter. And that's really just a way to ban planking.
IMO all the jank is the same, and any attempt to regulate who's jank is more deserving to exist is just a way of artificially buffing/nerfing characters. Which is Bias Brothers brought to you by Loud Whiny People the game.......
ICs has the same crap in melee and melee lives on.
Sheik chain grabs threaten many characters viability.
Fox's versatility is far and away the best in the game.
Jiggly could kill at 30%.
Peach does 75% off of one Dsmash if CCed.
And every character could take a stock off easily of you're offstage.
Melee still lives on.
Fair point. I just don't believe Brawl ICs infinites were a good example.
On a different note, I feel like there's a significant difference between how people feel about customs locally and how people feel about customs on Smashboards. Based on my knowledge, most local scenes seems to be shying away from customs after EVO, but a large majority supports them on Smashboards. Is there any particular reason? Is there just very little overlap between the Smashboards and local communities? I might be wrong about local scenes generally rejecting customs, as my knowledge of different local scenes is limited.
I didn't like customs for a long time because I was too lazy to unlock them. But then I saw how cool they were... They opened so many new options and they looked so much fun. And once I unlocked them I really liked them. Not because I think they're "OP'ed" (I don't, I think they're reasonably balanced...to an extent) but because it expands the meta so much and makes many low tier vanilla characters viable.
I stand by the only move that "needs" banning is Timber Counter. And that's really just a way to ban planking.
IMO all the jank is the same, and any attempt to regulate who's jank is more deserving to exist is just a way of artificially buffing/nerfing characters. Which is Bias Brothers brought to you by Loud Whiny People the game.......
I'm mildly curious if Timber Counter or Extreme Balloon Trip is more central to Villager ledgestall. The trip sapling makes it hard to approach the ledge, but the exploding balloons are what prevent you from smacking him for free whenever he goes for a regrab.
Fair point. I just don't believe Brawl ICs infinites were a good example.
On a different note, I feel like there's a significant difference between how people feel about customs locally and how people feel about customs on Smashboards. Based on my knowledge, most local scenes seems to be shying away from customs after EVO, but a large majority supports them on Smashboards. Is there any particular reason? Is there just very little overlap between the Smashboards and local communities? I might be wrong about local scenes generally rejecting customs, as my knowledge of different local scenes is limited.
I'm mildly curious if Timber Counter or Extreme Balloon Trip is more central to Villager ledgestall. The trip sapling makes it hard to approach the ledge, but the exploding balloons are what prevent you from smacking him for free whenever he goes for a regrab.
I call Timber Counter as the "game breaking" variable. The game has built in anti-planking mechanics. And while a planking Villager in any form is a hassle, not being able to use the openings you get against literally every other character/custom is a good enough reason for a house rule ban.
15 seconds you literally can't do ANYTHING about.
I dunno, it's just one form of dealing with planking. Honestly a ledge grab limit is probably more ideal. Second banning Timber Counter with Extreme Balloons. Third, banning Timber Counter. In order to touch the game the least.
