We're talking about custom move sets, not a single custom move. This raises even more issues:
- What's the rubric for banning a single ability?
- How many custom abilities should we allow to a single character?
- What if it has large implications for the character's net strength? For example, what if there is a move so significantly powerful that it would single-handedly place the character into much higher tiers, but because of its abusive power it was banned, leaving the otherwise strong character very underplayed? How do you make that kind of judgement call?
- What if a character has at least two strong abilities that are individually acceptable, but together make the character too powerful?
- What if the alternative versions of abilities are just more useful and that there are the only meaningful abilities to keep? What kind of depth does that add when there is only one meaningful choice?
- If we are banning to prevent abuse, should we be forcing strong characters to use weaker abilities?
These are not simple issues. Allowing abilities opens up very broad avenues of discussions that may not see resolution because it not only based largely on a preference for them, but it also leads to even further debate based on whatever else you might prefer, such as using the abilities as a means for keeping the cast as balanced as possible. It's a ruleset nightmare. It's okay to want custom abilities purely because you like the, but if you want to allow abilities because you believe they add competitive depth,
the onus is on you to show it that it would be meaningful and, just as importantly, manageable.
I'm not against even innately against custom moves, but while there may be reasons to including them, there are still compelling reasons not to yet.
The meaningful depth in a competitive game is partially gauged by the players options for play and counterplay. The way I see that custom moves could add meaning is as part of the counterpick system, where the defeated player is allowed to forego picking a counterpick stage and instead allowed to choose a custom ability and deferring the stage pick or picking a second starter stage. I think that would be a fairly interesting way to handle the custom abilities,
Obviously? What makes it so obvious? Should we obviously automatically include items until we remember why we banned them in the first place?
