Customs make the game better, period! ...But why?

[Thinkaman]

A fear that no one has mentioned lately, but was a pretty big point before the game came out, was the possibility of customs counter-picking each other. (Like, "I take Fast Fireball if you take the Fast Reflector, but you take the normal Reflector if I do, but...")

Some people think this would be an interesting state of affairs, and add more complexity to counterpicking. Others think this would be obnoxious and has no place in fighting games as a genre.

Well, for better or worse, it doesn't matter. We don't seem to have any combinations of specials that form such a relationship.

I originally theorized that the only real area at risk of this was projectile and reflectors--most special moves do not interact in such a nuanced, binary way like this. And it turns out, most projectiles and seemingly all reflectors have dominant choices, particularly on a matchup level. We have every sign that informed players are going to take their best choice for the matchup regardless of what the opponent does.

If anyone has found a combination of special options that this might not be true for, let me know! But at this point, I think we've considered everything that could interact so closely.

 

[DanGR]

@ Thinkaman

I subscribe to the character picks and then custom selection method because it rids the counter-pick phase of a lot of these polarizing matchup concerns.

And it turns out, most projectiles and seemingly all reflectors have dominant choices, particularly on a matchup level. We have every sign that informed players are going to take their best choice for the matchup regardless of what the opponent does.

If anyone has found a combination of special options that this might not be true for, let me know! But at this point, I think we've considered everything that could interact so closely.

We shouldn't form a ruleset assuming players will use the ideal, dominant choices that top players will use 95% of the time. I think most players probably won't use the dominant choices until much later. The ruleset needs to account for this. Even assuming they'll use optimal setups, I can still think of at least a few viable combinations against my current main where I'd use different customs depending on what customs my opponent used:

Greninja vs Rosalina:
They use shifting shuriken, I prefer Rosalina's default down-b.
They use stagnant shuriken, I prefer guardian luma.

Pikachu vs Rosalina:
There are a few interactions with T-jolts and thunder variants where I'd opt for guardian luma over the absorption, depending on which ones they take.

Rosalina vs anyone gimping their recovery options by picking a more powerful up/side-b:
I'm much more likely to use floaty star bit and/or guardian luma for edgeguarding purposes.

I'm sure there are others I'm missing due to inexperience.

 

[dragontamer]

@ DanGR :
I'm not convinced I'm going to like the custom game as much as vanilla, for reasons that I've outlined already.

But if counter-counter picking becomes a problem, you can always make a rulechange in the next tournament. There's really no reason to overthink it. It seems like tournament organizers have a decent communication mechanism around here, and they can message each other and share the experience.

 

[SuaveChaser]

More options are always great i'm pro customs but the grinding i can understand why people don't wanna deal with them.

 

[Thinkaman]

@ Thinkaman
I subscribe to the character picks and then custom selection method because it rids the counter-pick phase of a lot of these polarizing matchup concerns.

Right, regardless of interactions, this is the correct procedure.

We shouldn't form a ruleset assuming players will use the ideal, dominant choices that top players will use 95% of the time. I think most players probably won't use the dominant choices until much later. The ruleset needs to account for this.

Right again; the ruleset does have to account for all possible player choices, and not make any assumptions.

However, the reality of dominant movesets has a huge impact on both average set length and average player experience. Both would be radically different if there was a new set created and used in every game, instead of once every 1000.

Even assuming they'll use optimal setups, I can still think of at least a few viable combinations against my current main where I'd use different customs depending on what customs my opponent used:

Greninja vs Rosalina:
They use shifting shuriken, I prefer Rosalina's default down-b.
They use stagnant shuriken, I prefer guardian luma.

Pikachu vs Rosalina:
There are a few interactions with T-jolts and thunder variants where I'd opt for guardian luma over the absorption, depending on which ones they take.

Rosalina vs anyone gimping their recovery options by picking a more powerful up/side-b:
I'm much more likely to use floaty star bit and/or guardian luma for edgeguarding purposes.

Interesting; I had investigated Guardian Luma briefly and was unimpressed. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on it.

I'm also skeptical that Floaty Star Bit would be worth it over Shooting Star Bit for any configuration of environment variables. I do like it, as a move though, and wish that wasn't so.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Interesting; I had investigated Guardian Luma briefly and was unimpressed. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on it.

I'm also skeptical that Floaty Star Bit would be worth it over Shooting Star Bit for any configuration of environment variables. I do like it, as a move though, and wish that wasn't so.

Guardian Luma still pulls in items and projectiles that count as items (Turnips, Metal Blade, probably Bonus Fruit) and it makes Luma completely invincible to boot. I can see people wanting to switch to it when the opponent isn't using a projectile worth using Gravitational Pull on.

Floaty Star Bit is a lingering hitbox which makes it useful by default IMO, it's just that Shooting Star Bit fills the role of "fast long range projectile" which Rosalina otherwise completely lacks, so it's generally superior. I want to experiment with Floaty Star Bit against, say, Peach and see if placing one at her preferred float height does anything to mess up her game. Linear characters with only one or two approach options might also be worth using it on.

 

[M15t3R E]

Forgive me if we've already had this discussion, but should TO's allow players to change their character's custom moveset in game 2 or game 3? Or should it be that you choose it before game 1 and it stays that way for the set?

 

[Thinkaman]

Forgive me if we've already had this discussion, but should TO's allow players to change their character's custom moveset in game 2 or game 3? Or should it be that you choose it before game 1 and it stays that way for the set?

Naturally; we let people change their entire character, after all.

 

[DeaDea]

After reading some more of the well-written arguments FOR custom-moves, I am much more 50/50 about whether or not they will benefit the game enough to be worth the hassle of needing to have a 3ds + unlocked sets etc. I'm 100% though that we should give it a shot at least.

Worst Case Scenario: Turns out it was too much of a hassle, and didn't affect the game in a postive-enough way. Still had fun exploring all of it though, and maybe a bit of wasted time!

Best Case Scenario: Is a bit of a hassle, but totally improves the game and makes it way better, and in a couple of years we have a powersave hack that allows to skip the grinding!

 

[M15t3R E]

After reading some more of the well-written arguments FOR custom-moves, I am much more 50/50 about whether or not they will benefit the game enough to be worth the hassle of needing to have a 3ds + unlocked sets etc. I'm 100% though that we should give it a shot at least.

Worst Case Scenario: Turns out it was too much of a hassle, and didn't affect the game in a postive-enough way. Still had fun exploring all of it though, and maybe a bit of wasted time!

Best Case Scenario: Is a bit of a hassle, but totally improves the game and makes it way better, and in a couple of years we have a powersave hack that allows to skip the grinding!

I think that day is much closer than a couple of years from now.

 

[DanGR]

Interesting; I had investigated Guardian Luma briefly and was unimpressed. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on it.

Guardian Luma sacrifices the projectile absorption for a large, lingering, frontal hitbox that makes Luma invincible. This hitbox clash-cancel's projectiles, and is still active afterwards. This projectile negation property makes up for the loss of projectile absorption in most cases, making the default only useful under special circumstances. Yeah the timing is more difficult, and you can't block things behind her, but honestly, the default was overly easy to time to begin with, and not having the absorption on the back doesn't matter. Difficulty of execution here is not worth considering.

The quality of making Luma invincible on top of having a hitbox out are the advantages. These both have a variety of uses.

• The Luma invincibility+hitbox is useful for challenging many otherwise difficult disjoints that would normally bat Luma away during Rosalina's attacks. Think Marth f-air vs the Luma hitbox on up-air. Marth f-air will knock Luma away and hit Rosalina. Guardian Luma on the other hand will power through Marth's f-air.
• The invincibility can help in situations where you Luma warp/shot to hit the enemy, but miss. They go for a hit on the sitting duck and you now have an option for saving Luma when she'd otherwise certainly be damaged/killed.
• The hitbox rises up and forward in front of Rosalina exactly where she's missing useful hitboxes in her default kit. Without it, a lot of matchups against her play like Brawl Olimar where approaching him is a matter of dealing with his anticipatory counter-approach options. Once you corner him by the ledge and get to that above-diagonal area safely, you're golden. Guardian Luma is an option for dealing with some of this pressure.
• Guardian Luma gives Rosalina a useful hitbox for recovering. It stalls Rosalina a bit in the air, while providing a hitbox that can deter attackers and mess with edgeguard timings.

Weaknesses of guardian Luma?

• During the move, Luma rises up and there's a spot underneath her where projectiles can slip in. This is important to consider against someone like Mario, whose fireballs can bounce underneath Luma and hit Rosalina. However, to get around this you can just time/space guardian Luma better. The hitbox doesn't cover above Rosalina either, so against DDD I go with the default to more consistently deal with the different gordo toss angles.
• Perhaps the biggest weakness of guardian Luma: Any projectiles with trapping/frame advantage properties are easier to deal with by using the absorption down-b. With the default, you can begin the move earlier to deal with an oncoming threat during the ending absorption frames. If you take the time to space guardian Luma and block the hitbox, you have less time afterwards to deal with a followup. I don't think gaining ground by being able to activate down-b earlier makes as big a difference as having the hitbox and Luma invincibility.

Illustration of that second point:

Projectile is launched: P
Timing where projectile would normally hit Rosalina if she didn't use down-b: T

Proper timing for executing default down-b: D
End of default down-b: E

Proper timing for executing Guardian Luma blocking hitbox: G
End of Guardian Luma: EG

P...................D.............E..........T.............

P...........................................G..T........EG

 

[OoohShiny]

i dont play something else than the vs mode and have like 2 or 3 customs unlocked. To force people to play something they dont want to stay competetive is just not e-sports viable. Just imagine games like SC2 or counterstrike would force you to play 200 hours offline to be competetive - nope, that idea is not good.
People would just figure out whats the best set against what champ and stick with it. Theres no "new bigger meta with new choices" - just new "best" movesets for every brawler, and people will stick with it.
Counterpicking in itself is already a pretty sensible thing - you want both player to be equal, and not one player countering the other out and only wins that way. Blind pick of character and moveset would be the only possible way, and as said, that would lead to the "one-moveset-is-best"-meta.

edit: Improved attitude

 

[digiholic]

If you want to be competitively viable, you need to spend time training. If you want to be competitively strong with custom moves, you need to spend time unlocking them. It's unfortunate, but it's only until someone comes up with a way to transfer saves or to mod the customs in.

There's certainly some characters with a "dominant set", but that dominant set still makes the character more viable in competitive play, so that's an improvement of the metagame with more viable options. There are a lot of characters, though, that have many viable move pools. Mega Man can do some pretty techy things with Crash Bomb that he can't do with Danger Wrap, but Danger Wrap is a really strong move against opponents with predictable recoveries or who tend to take to the air, and Ice Slasher is a great spacing tool against characters that try to stay in his face, and even then, there's the option of using a self-inflicted crash bomb blast instead.

Counterpicking works fine with characters, there are characters that outright shut others down, and moves are a lot less polarizing than character choice in terms of matchup strength, so there's not a problem there. Blind pick won't be necessary outside of possibly the first round. There aren't customs that will suddenly make Ganondorf a hard counter to Sheik, but he does have options that might help him get in so he can try to do his Ganondorfy things that he otherwise wouldn't be able to do, making the matchup actually more fair, rather than imbalancing it.

 

[Trifroze]

Customs shouldn't be legal if they change the metagame in a way that increases the gap between good and mediocre/bad characters. If someone already good has customs that make them better and someone mediocre doesn't have any beneficial ones, this already decreases the latter's viability. Customs will make more characters viable but at the same time they'll make more characters unviable.

As long as there are any good characters that get better with customs and any mediocre characters that don't benefit from them, the gap between presumable high and low tier increases. Same with very high and mid high, etc. Customs don't fix anything, they just make some characters randomly better. Saying that worse characters tend to have better customs is bias, it's more that people focusing on worse characters are more inclined to search for redemption in custom moves and thus more likely to find something useful and bring it up. There are plenty of amazing characters who get even better with customs, no one just talks about them because they're already content at the top.

In addition Sakurai said that custom moves will not receive balance patches because "it's okay to be able to 'cheat' with customs". Granted more than 50% of the time Sakurai has no idea what he's talking about, but if the director himself thinks customs are competitively imbalanced and won't be addressed no matter how ugly things get, I don't think we should be considering their legality.

 

[Pazx]

Customs shouldn't be legal if they change the metagame in a way that increases the gap between good and mediocre/bad characters. If someone already good has customs that make them better and someone mediocre doesn't have any beneficial ones, this already decreases the latter's viability. Customs will make more characters viable but at the same time they'll make more characters unviable.

As long as there are any good characters that get better with customs and any mediocre characters that don't benefit from them, the gap between presumable high and low tier increases. Same with very high and mid high, etc. Customs don't fix anything, they just make some characters randomly better. Saying that worse characters tend to have better customs is bias, it's more that people focusing on worse characters are more inclined to search for redemption in custom moves and thus more likely to find something useful and bring it up. There are plenty of amazing characters who get even better with customs, no one just talks about them because they're already content at the top.

In addition Sakurai said that custom moves will not receive balance patches because "it's okay to be able to 'cheat' with customs". Granted more than 50% of the time Sakurai has no idea what he's talking about, but if the director himself thinks customs are competitively imbalanced and won't be addressed no matter how ugly things get, I don't think we should be considering their legality.

You should re-read the first 4 posts in this thread.

 

[Trifroze]

You should re-read the first 4 posts in this thread.

Reading those posts was what initially made me want to reply despite not having any plans to do so, as I didn't think everyone here would be so unified on customs being good for the metagame.

"A good move is not likely to have even better custom options available"

There are as many as there are for bad moves. DK's up b and punch, Robin's thoron+ and speed thoron, Lucario's snaring aura sphere and Shulk's hyper monado arts to list a few.

 

[Space thing]

In addition Sakurai said that custom moves will not receive balance patches because "it's okay to be able to 'cheat' with customs". Granted more than 50% of the time Sakurai has no idea what he's talking about, but if the director himself thinks customs are competitively imbalanced and won't be addressed no matter how ugly things get, I don't think we should be considering their legality.

Slightly off-topic, but this is NOT what he said. You're mixing up two mostly unrelated statements that he made in the same interview. He said that there would be no end in sight if he started trying to make balance patches for custom moves (meaning that it's just waaay too much stuff to deal with). As far as I can tell, he didn't say it in anyway that seemed to imply that he thinks custom moves are imbalanced right now.

He then later said the thing about cheating with customs in reference to not being able to use customs in normal online play, but he referred to customs in general and not custom moves specifically.

 

[LunarWingCloud]

Besides, based on my MvC2 experience, customized movesets only differentiates the top tier even more. Choosing between alpha, beta, and gamma assists, along with two helper characters only improved the best characters above and beyond everyone else.

MvC2 was a far less balanced game than Sm4sh 1.0.4 of course. But it is the height of naivete to believe that custom movesets automatically make a game more balanced. MvC2 really is a strong counter-example to that fallacy.

You're also comparing a mechanic that is in itself a very strong move in its respective game, to something that only affects 25% of your moveset and nothing gamebreaking is customizable at all on a tournament level. Like, compare the power of the special customs to assists. They're very different.

 

[EmblemCrossing]

I feel customs offer a lot of options that make the game much more interesting overall, through variety. I always wanted to play Wii Fit Trainer, but her default move set just wasn't cutting it. Using customs, I've actually gone from using her as a joke, to being semi competitive with her. She's actually fun for me now. A lot of characters are like this. I dread playing normal Ganondorf, but with a 2322 set, it opens up a lot of options that makes him an actual threat.

Smash is a game that people love to watch others play. If you introduce customs, matches will be more unpredictable for the viewer, making it much more fun for them as well.

 

[warriorman222]

After reading some more of the well-written arguments FOR custom-moves, I am much more 50/50 about whether or not they will benefit the game enough to be worth the hassle of needing to have a 3ds + unlocked sets etc. I'm 100% though that we should give it a shot at least.

Worst Case Scenario: Turns out it was too much of a hassle, and didn't affect the game in a postive-enough way. Still had fun exploring all of it though, and maybe a bit of wasted time!

Best Case Scenario: Is a bit of a hassle, but totally improves the game and makes it way better, and in a couple of years we have a powersave hack that allows to skip the grinding!

Yeah, a few years? Datel took like a few weeks to get a billion(719) powersave codes on 3DS. Including unlocking heads, customs and outfits, infinite money. +200 for attack speed and defense brawn badges, +21-14 badges...

You know what, check here. And it took like what, a month?

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Yeah, a few years? Datel took like a few weeks to get a billion(719) powersave codes on 3DS. Including unlocking heads, customs and outfits, infinite money. +200 for attack speed and defense brawn badges, +21-14 badges...

You know what, check here. And it took like what, a month?

I'd be more interested in a powersave for the Wii U version since that's what everyone will be using.

 

[Cheezy23]

I think the most interesting part about Custom Moves is the variety it allows for.

If every character has 12 moves to choose from, and there are 52 characters, there are about 624 different variations of matchups that are possible. Obviously, people will choose one over the other (that's why we have tier lists ad such) but I've found it interesting to watch a match and the commentators to be talking about the movesets of the characters as if they aren't already determined. That's FASCINATING to me, simply because in smash bros it's always been one moveset, and so everyone knows how the character will play. But that isn't true with custom moves.

 

[GSM_Dren]

Custom moves simply allow for more dynamic interaction among the two opponents duking it out. Rather than counterpicking a different character, the player can simply change their custom set to better fit their needs against the matchup. The metagame is ever evolving, so why limit characters to their default special moveset?

Custom moves can be highly beneficial or of no use to specific members of the cast. They add an element of surprise, where the opponent must learn to adapt on the go, keeping the match from being so stagnant and predictable. While yes they can make better characters even more viable, they can also do the same for characters lower on that list (i.e. Ike, Ganon, etc.) and give them a fighting chance.

If you eliminate customs from the get-go, then you will never get to see the potential they may give to a player/character. The default movesets have been around since 64 through brawl days. By giving players a chance to change that to better fit their playstyle, you allow them to really get the most potential out of that character. Customs should be allowed for tournaments (based on TO) at least for several more months to see how "overpowered" or "unnatural" that people seem to think they are, and then make a decision from there.

 

[warriorman222]

I'd be more interested in a powersave for the Wii U version since that's what everyone will be using.

I meant that it took them not long to make a plethora of codes for the Wii U, despite it being hard to hack.

 

[Finding Waldo]

I think the most interesting part about Custom Moves is the variety it allows for.

If every character has 12 moves to choose from, and there are 52 characters, there are about 624 different variations of matchups that are possible. Obviously, people will choose one over the other (that's why we have tier lists ad such) but I've found it interesting to watch a match and the commentators to be talking about the movesets of the characters as if they aren't already determined. That's FASCINATING to me, simply because in smash bros it's always been one moveset, and so everyone knows how the character will play. But that isn't true with custom moves.

It's even more matchups than that. While they each have 12 moves, those 12 moves can be recombined into different combinations. I'm a little rusty on the math, but someone on here said it was around 80 combinations per character, and then multiply that by 52 and there's over 4000 potential matchups.
Of course, not every combination will be used and some will be used heavily, but there sure are a lot of choices.

 

[Finding Waldo]

I meant that it took them not long to make a plethora of codes for the Wii U, despite it being hard to hack.

I was thinking the same thing. If it's important to unlock all the moves quickly, this will do it. And it will work for people that only play multiplayer too