What are your opinions on Customs Post-Evo 2015?

[GeneralLedge]

It's a shame there aren't more customs whose primary use is shutting down a different character's "OP" customs.

Or maybe there are...?

 

[MrGame&Rock]

That's fine, and it's good to get the point of view of someone who has seen more of how the specials compare in practice. As you stated Yoshi's side special is an upgrade. How do you decide which characters benefit from an improved kit with specials whereas others do not? I think customs are interesting and maybe i would even like them... But balanced?? I don't see that as a possibility in the strict way competitive needs it to be unfortunately.

Well, you take a look at the default, and the customs for that special, and compare their utilities. Then you compare any potential upgrade to what other characters get.

I'll use my main, Yoshi, as an example. And I'll use a 1/10 scale. Let's use Spinphony (the worst special move in the game) as the benchmark for a 1, and, say, default Boost Kick as the benchmark for a 10. We'll say a 5 is average.

Yoshi's up B default is a really good move. Like a 8/10 move at least. It's good for zoning, defensive play, resetting to neutral, comboing into a kill move, recovery, mixups, the works. It's quintessential Yoshi. Timed Egg Toss is almost a strict downgrade because of its loss of utility. It's probably a 5-6/10 move in practice. High Jump removes the projectile for added recovery. It's not bad for strict recovery, maybe it's like a 3-4/10 move, but that's generous. Customs don't do anything for Yoshi on the Up B front.

Now, if Timed Egg Throw was a custom option for Yoshi's side-B, instead of up-B, that would be very different, and would be a substantial upgrade.

Now for his side special. Default is a 2/10, and the fact that it can do damage and move fast in theory is the only reason why it isn't a 1. It's more like a 1.5/10/ Yoshi would be a better character if side-B did nothing, because at least then B-reversing would be easier. Heavy egg role is a 2-2.5/10. Still bad, but it won't mess your game up as much. Light Egg Roll is a 4-5/10. It's better in every way. It does more damage, doesn't put you in a **** position all the time, and gives you momentum to use in an offensive strategy. That being said, its use it situational. And the thing about 5/10 custom moves is that we don't have enough meta development to really dive into when to use it and why, like we would if it was the default. Basically, Light Egg Roll is strictly better than default, but still isn't very good. It's a marginal upgrade at best.

Overall, in customs Yoshi gets two sidegrade (one point or less difference) neutral Bs, an upgrade but still mediocre side B, up-bs that aren't worth it, and down-Bs that are probably downgrades. Yoshi benefits from customs relative to default, but since the boost is small, not relative to the meta because characters like Ganon, Mario, and Villager benefit more.

 

[DunnoBro]

Actually post patch egg roll is pretty good in some MUs imo. It's better shield pressure and not a death sentence hitting some shields.

Still bad vs disjoints, general dumb hitboxes, and projectiles unless they're dedicating too many resources to SH/Aerials though.

I'd only use light egg roll against those characters since it has better priority/invincibility/whatever. It doesn't get stuffed by sheik fair

Heavy egg roll is really bad though it does interact with kong cyclone hilariously, input it at the right time and yoshi will super armor it and the windbox will give yoshi full momentum thus max power and can kill DK around 90-110. Follows him too.

Overall default is best now I think.

 

[GeneralLedge]

Speak of the devil.

It's a shame there aren't more customs whose primary use is shutting down a different character's "OP" customs.

Or maybe there are...?

Heavy egg roll is really bad though it does interact with kong cyclone hilariously, input it at the right time and yoshi will super armor it and the windbox will give yoshi full momentum thus max power and can kill DK around 90-110. Follows him too.

Any others that interact in a strange way such as this?

 

[DunnoBro]

Just a heads up, Xanadu is now allowing Miis access to alt specials sets. (Though swordsman is still 1111 due to lack of input)

 

[MrGame&Rock]

Just a heads up, Xanadu is now allowing Miis access to alt specials sets. (Though swordsman is still 1111 due to lack of input)

so 2122 Brawler is legal? YES!

 

[GeneralLedge]

To be fair, Mii Sword's special moves aren't as important to him as the other two. Ergo, I suspect of the very few Mii Sword players who could attend Xanadu, they were just \/\/ about it.

Or maybe there just aren't any Mii Sword players around for it.

 

[DunnoBro]

so 2122 Brawler is legal? YES!

Nah, 3122 brawler and 3111 gunner I believe

It's what our players agreed to

 

[MrGame&Rock]

Nah, 3122 brawler and 3111 gunner I believe

It's what our players agreed to

what. why 3122? neutral special 3 is awful!

 

[san.]

I have no idea how a gunner with 3111 plays. Grenade doesn't have much synergy with those other specials.

 

[Charey]

That ruling makes absolutely no sense, you can only use this custom Mii, but not any custom Mii or the Default Mii.

I can understand having 1111 only or only being allowed one Mii set per player to use. But using an arbitrary custom set only (voted on in this case) has no logical justification.

 

[ZarroTsu]

I can understand having 1111 only or only being allowed one Mii set per player to use. But using an arbitrary custom set only (voted on in this case) has no logical justification.

Yes it does. It's "one set". Just like every other character in the game has access to "one set".

 

[Raijinken]

Yes it does. It's "one set". Just like every other character in the game has access to "one set".

But is being "one set" in a game where characters can have access to up to 11 sets actually make it a logical justification?

 

[ZarroTsu]

It does if you talk to all the wrong people. (Not really, but that's the logical conclusion reached)

 

[DunnoBro]

I have no idea how a gunner with 3111 plays. Grenade doesn't have much synergy with those other specials.

Our gunners just spam grenade and fair for neutral. Other specials rarely for ledgeplay mostly.

 

[san.]

Our gunners just spam grenade and fair for neutral. Other specials rarely for ledgeplay mostly.

I see, thanks for the explanation. They are sorely missing out on quite a few of their options in that case.

 

[Vinzan]

BRING THEM BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK

 

[Magik0722]

I see, thanks for the explanation. They are sorely missing out on quite a few of their options in that case.

Yeah there is the rocket uppercut that gives him a KO option. It also allows for spikes on the 2 frames of ledgeguards.

 

[Strider755]

OK so a lot of players worldwide hate customs. What I want to know is why. Why do they not like the variety added by customs? Why are these people unwilling to adapt to customs? Why the hell did Sakurai make you unlock them?

 

[GeneralLedge]

Nobody wants free wins.

 

[Raijinken]

OK so a lot of players worldwide hate customs. What I want to know is why. Why do they not like the variety added by customs? Why are these people unwilling to adapt to customs? Why the hell did Sakurai make you unlock them?

Opposition to change (common, unjustified)
Personal preference, i.e. a personal dislike of the meta expansion offered (uncommon, justified)
Laziness (Overwhelmingly common, unjustified)
Either a lack of character benefit (i.e. DLC character mains) or perceived imbalance (common, justification depends on your own competitive theory and how heavily you weigh the game for its own sake versus your personal fun)
Because he could.

Nobody wants free wins.

We all know that's a false statement. But even if it were true, it doesn't apply to Customs uniquely.

 

[Terotrous]

Personal preference, i.e. a personal dislike of the meta expansion offered (uncommon, justified)

This is my position on customs. I simply don't find the game to be as interesting with Customs on. The reason I feel this way is pretty simple - rather than helping flesh out characters who need more options, customs tend to centralize the game around a small handful of extremely powerful moves. Let's look at Pikachu, for example. Customs off Pikachu is an exciting, dynamic character who has all sorts of good buttons and mobility options and will use almost all of them to build damage and hopefully land a kill someday. As ESAM taught us, Customs On Pikachu is basically Thunder Wave and Heavy Skull Bash and that's it. Many of Pikachu's other moves become redundant in the face of those ludicrously powerful options, and he becomes a much less interesting character when he has access to them.

There are a couple characters who gain access to a tool that they really need through Customs (Kirby's Upper Cutter is one such example, IMO), but there are at least as many Pikachu-like cases where they either give an already good character even more powerful options (Hammer Spin Dash is another obnoxious example), or they give a super good tool to a bad character that doesn't make them any less one-dimensional. And then of course there's DLC characters not having customs at all. I'd much rather see people work with the tools they have and try to find a way to succeed with those characters than just giving everyone Kong Cyclone and going "look, the game is balanced now!"

I do draw one exception of sorts for the Mii fighters. Unlike the rest of the cast, in the case of the Miis they don't just gain stronger options through their customs, but legitimately very different ones. This is really what custom moves OUGHT to have been, rather than simply tweaking the properties of moves and usually having one that's very obviously the best in all cases, you can craft many totally different characters out of the Mii fighter sets. You simply can't remove the ability to choose moves from the Miis and have them make any sort of sense as characters. You could also raise the question of Palutena, but the problem with her is that even though her moves are different, they aren't anywhere near equally good. There is literally no situation in which you won't take Super Speed and Lightweight, which also completely changes and defines her as a character, so it basically falls under the same overcentralization umbrella as above.

 

[Raijinken]

There is literally no situation in which you won't take Super Speed and Lightweight, which also completely changes and defines her as a character, so it basically falls under the same overcentralization umbrella as above.

Overcentralization around two vital moves, neither of which actually work on their own, is no different from most top-tier default characters. She relies on those moves to have parameters which make her workable at a high level.

 

[Terotrous]

Overcentralization around two vital moves, neither of which actually work on their own, is no different from most top-tier default characters. She relies on those moves to have parameters which make her workable at a high level.

I'm actually hard-pressed to think of that many really good characters whose approach is so one-dimensional. The most obvious example is Sonic, but I'm not sure many people would consider Sonic to be "desirable character design". I also think she's quite clearly much less interesting than she is in customs off, someone else did a good write up on default Palutena being a very unique character design earlier in this thread. I'd much rather see her original moveset get some buffs (which it slowly has been getting over time) rather than just turning her into another character that goes in super hard and does down throw up air and you die.

 

[Raijinken]

Some archetypes simply don't work well in Smash, historically. We'll see if Palutena is one of them when the final balance patch hits some time in the future. But I'm not personally interested in sacrificing her chance to fit a successful archetype right now, just because others are fine with their characters as they are. Not that she's one of my decent characters, I have no personal investment in her success. I just can't relate to any anti-customs argument, no matter how founded they may be.

 

[Terotrous]

See, that's where I heavily disagree, I'd rather have a character who is interesting and different but maybe a little on the weak side then another good character who really isn't anything we haven't seen before. Unfortunately, balance often comes at the cost of homogeneity. If you look at Marvel 3 for example, sure, almost all of the characters are viable, but almost all of them are also fairly interchangeable. Their solution to the imbalance of Marvel 2 was to fit pretty much everyone to the same general mold of what made for a successful character, but in so doing they managed to create a roster which was less diverse even than Marvel 2's tiny handful of viable characters.

Plus, I actually don't totally believe that Palutena is total garbage with Customs Off. Sure, I'll buy that she has some pretty bad matchups, but Aerolink has done some pretty impressive things with her, I would tend to argue moreso in customs off than he has in customs on. You have to remember that although she gets better with customs, so do some other top tier threats, and possibly in ways where they gain even more tools to deal with her. And she's someone who benefits a ton from customs, imagine how those weak characters who get little to no benefit from customs (like poor Jigglypuff for example) are going to fare.

 

[Dinoman96]

I don't understand the argument of "Well, Palutena's customs go against her intended design!" when her intended design in the first place was customization.

From her trophy description:

In Kid Icarus: Uprising, the goddess of light uses telepathy to communicate and grants miracles to support Pit on his adventure. In Smash Bros., she has special moves like Warp and Heavenly Light at her disposal. She's very adaptable—you can customize her into a long- or close-range fighter!

 

[SherrdreamZ]

Customs simply do not have remotely enough balance to be viable in competitive. When any move is strictly superior to it's default you have no chance of them being an option in a competitive scenario. We have more than 10 characters that have Customs far better than their defaults. Some customs are ok like the Mario Bros, and other characters have customs that amount to lesser counterparts to their defaults EX: Zelda/Jiggly. without nearly an entire overhaul on balancing customs to be somewhat in tune with one another they will all remain permanently banned. I agree the Mii's are balanced quite well...

Aswell as characters woth borderline broken good Customs, DK, Villager, etc.. i don't know about many more as i never played with them..

 

[Raijinken]

Customs simply do not have remotely enough balance to be viable in competitive. When any move is strictly superior to it's default you have no chance of them being an option in a competitive scenario. We have more than 10 characters that have Customs far better than their defaults. Some customs are ok like the Mario Bros, and other characters have customs that amount to lesser counterparts to their defaults EX: Zelda/Jiggly. without nearly an entire overhaul on balancing customs to be somewhat in tune with one another they will all remain permanently banned.

Is there something about them being Custom that makes this (being the best choice) criminal for them but not for Default specials? That reasoning never made sense to me.

 

[Dinoman96]

Is there something about them being Custom that makes this criminal for them but not for Default specials? That reasoning never made sense to me.

I guess you can argue that customs can be turned off. Things like Rosalina's Luma and Sheik's frame data can't.

 

[SherrdreamZ]

Is there something about them being Custom that makes this (being the best choice) criminal for them but not for Default specials? That reasoning never made sense to me.

Only when considering them for anything competitive, Yes... minimizing factors outside of skill is why Smash 64 only has 1 legal map etc. Customs add a cluster**** more factors and when some are borderline broken then it's not even a question to consider them in the tournament community

 

[Raijinken]

Only when considering them for anything competitive, Yes... minimizing factors outside of skill is why Smash 64 only has 1 legal map etc. Customs add a cluster**** more factors and when some are borderline broken then it's not even a question to consider them in the tournament community

Except when that idea of "borderline broken" is, itself, a question.

 

[ZarroTsu]

So I had the stupidest idea right now, and it may or may not be amazing. This would be a subset of the already narrow subset of the game we call customs, but bare with me.

What if, we deliberately set every character up with their absolute "worst" custom moves, and make a competition out of that?

What happens to the tier list if everyone is running their worst customs? What happens to the dynamic of the game itself?

If Best Customs = "braindead", what does Worst Customs = ?

 

[Raijinken]

So I had the stupidest idea right now, and it may or may not be amazing. This would be a subset of the already narrow subset of the game we call customs, but bare with me.

What if, we deliberately set every character up with their absolute "worst" custom moves, and make a competition out of that?

What happens to the tier list if everyone is running their worst customs? What happens to the dynamic of the game itself?

If Best Customs = "braindead", what does Worst Customs = ?

A free ticket for characters with good normals, already generally good, to be even better.

 

[ZarroTsu]

Can't teach an old dog new tricks, I guess.

 

[ぱみゅ]

What is wrong with a Custom being "strictly superior" to the Default counterpart?
If both Customs are bad, isn't the default "strictly superior" as well, and the only viable option (see: Meta Knight)?
:196;

 

[Terotrous]

Thinkaman made a really good argument about Custom Moves back when we first started talking about this. He noted that since every character retains access to their default moves, no one gets weaker in absolute terms with customs on, therefore turning on customs raises the overall "power level" of the cast. This is clearly true.

What we didn't question so much at the time is whether or not this is actually a good thing. As I mentioned before, making characters stronger often involves making them fit more closely into preexisting strong archetypes. For example, Customs Off Palutena is a kind of mid-range footsies / zone denial character. This is a fairly unique playstyle as far as the Smash series goes, but unfortunately it has trouble keeping up with the Diddys and Shieks of the world. Turning Customs on makes her a better character, by turning her into a far more conventional rushdown / big combos character. The balance is improved, but the diversity is reduced. It's also the case that only the B move portion of the characters becomes more powerful, inherently shifting focus from normals and grabs towards specials, sometimes drastically.

Granted, I could probably tolerate this if it wasn't for the numerous instances of already strong characters getting even better moves that make them even more significantly abusive towards lower tiers. Sonic, Rosalina, and Pikachu are already hard for many characters to deal with, and they become vastly stronger when they have access to their customs. Their customs on advantages significantly exceed what many other characters get, so a lot of lower tier characters are actually worse off even if they improve to some degree.

And let's not even get into Custom Villager. He's a lame and campy character to begin with, but with the addition of Counter Timber and Extreme Balloon Trip? Forget about it.

 

[ZarroTsu]

Was Extreme Balloon Trip not nerfed enough, or...?

I wonder if, when all the balance patches are done and custom moves improve in utility while also dropping in abusability, we'll see them tried again. Or if the community is scarred for life and will refuse.

 

[Raijinken]

Was Extreme Balloon Trip not nerfed enough, or...?

I wonder if, when all the balance patches are done and custom moves improve in utility while also dropping in abusability, we'll see them tried again. Or if the community is scarred for life and will refuse.

EBT is laughable now against any disjoint or strong spike.

Thinkaman made a really good argument about Custom Moves back when we first started talking about this. He noted that since every character retains access to their default moves, no one gets weaker in absolute terms with customs on, therefore turning on customs raises the overall "power level" of the cast. This is clearly true.

What we didn't question so much at the time is whether or not this is actually a good thing. As I mentioned before, making characters stronger often involves making them fit more closely into preexisting strong archetypes. For example, Customs Off Palutena is a kind of mid-range footsies / zone denial character. This is a fairly unique playstyle as far as the Smash series goes, but unfortunately it has trouble keeping up with the Diddys and Shieks of the world. Turning Customs on makes her a better character, by turning her into a far more conventional rushdown / big combos character. The balance is improved, but the diversity is reduced. It's also the case that only the B move portion of the characters becomes more powerful, inherently shifting focus from normals and grabs towards specials, sometimes drastically.

Granted, I could probably tolerate this if it wasn't for the numerous instances of already strong characters getting even better moves that make them even more significantly abusive towards lower tiers. Sonic, Rosalina, and Pikachu are already hard for many characters to deal with, and they become vastly stronger when they have access to their customs. Their customs on advantages significantly exceed what many other characters get, so a lot of lower tier characters are actually worse off even if they improve to some degree.

And let's not even get into Custom Villager. He's a lame and campy character to begin with, but with the addition of Counter Timber and Extreme Balloon Trip? Forget about it.

I guess that's a different take on it. I'd consider Palutena being viable enough to appear in competition to be an increase in variety. You would consider making her playstyle similar to the rest to be a reduction in variety. I can see where you're coming from, but if she never appears due to having an ineffective archetype, then the variety can't manifest at higher skill levels where it's needed. Even then, her flavor of rushdown combos is quite different from that of Sheik and Diddy.

 

[McDizzle!]

Personally I'm OK with customs but I believe that they should have their own tournaments seperate from default Smash tournaments. If you try to integrate customs into default Smash then you are basically getting rid of default Smash in tournaments and if we exclude customs then fans of customs won't be pleased. I think it's a good compromise.