(LEGALITY) Custom Special Moves: Maybe. Modifiable Attributes: No.

[mimgrim]

I know, but when the feature has clearly been set up by the developers to be non-competitive in nature, why would we want to sit here and try to work it into the competitive structure? I feel like it's something to be ignored, just like stat modifiers and other special modes that were just meant for fun.

this this this this this

There is a clear and distinct difference between Sakurai and developers of other fighting games.

If the guy behind this game wasn't Sakurai I may be inclined to agree with you, however this is not the case. When it comes to Sakurai, it is best to be skeptical of his balance decisions. We have 3 games that prove this.

 

[Anuran]

There is a clear and distinct difference between Sakurai and developers of other fighting games.

If the guy behind this game wasn't Sakurai I may be inclined to agree with you, however this is not the case. When it comes to Sakurai, it is best to be skeptical of his balance decisions. We have 3 games that prove this.

I think it is more like wow even Sakurai thinks its a bad idea.

 

[LiteralGrill]

I'll just say this again, nothing should be banned until proven banworthy unless there is an incredibly good other reason for doing so. The only one I could think of for this circumstance would be if it somehow made tournaments take 10 extra hours (or some other ridiculous amount of time) or if it made the game insane somehow. Until it's been tested, we shouldn't be smacking around the ban hammer.

 

[Joe73191]

Is there a source for customizable stat modification? I only heard about custom special moves.

 

[RascalTheCharizard]

I'm pretty sure that Miis being banned from With Anyone was more to do with people making inappropriate Miis like Hitler and ones with a **** for a face. After all, Palutena uses the customs in much the same way the Miis do and -to my knowledge- she is still usabable online. So clearly Sakurai has other motives for banning Custom Moves from With Anyone.

 

[mimgrim]

I think it is more like wow even Sakurai thinks its a bad idea.

So then. I suppose we should ban Miis as well, play only on FD, and the like.

Face it. What Sakurai deems acceptable for random online is irrelevant and means jack squat to the competitive community. When a online competitive community arises for Smash 4 it is going to be through friend lists, not randoms, and all of those features will still be available to the community since they are allowed in those kinds of online matches.

Considering that he only has a 12 manned team even balancing this game (and how the past games have turned out), I very much so distrust any decisions that are made for balancing purposes. This includes not allowing custom movesets for random online matches.

 

[matthewmilad]

There is a clear and distinct difference between Sakurai and developers of other fighting games.

If the guy behind this game wasn't Sakurai I may be inclined to agree with you, however this is not the case. When it comes to Sakurai, it is best to be skeptical of his balance decisions. We have 3 games that prove this.

I feel like you're trying to use this as an argument against my point, when this point you have brought up is something I agree with whole-heartedly, and I feel this only serves to further augment my own argument.

Think of it this way. When this guy has enough trouble balancing the game as it is, do you really want to try and implement these added features that he has already made it clear are intended just for fun with your friends? Clearly it would require a huge leap of faith not only to trust that all of these new attacks are balanced, but then on top of that you are opening a pandora's box of ignoring the fact that you cannot use the feature while playing online, implementing the feature in the tournament scene in a way that is fair and effective, and then expecting none of these moves to break any of the characters or cause any confusion or issues, as well as expecting the entire competitive player base to just accept the fact that a non-competitive feature is being allowed for competitive use.

Maybe I'll change my mind once I see how these moves are implemented, and if they backtrack on the ability to use these moves during Wifi matches, but at this point in time, I'm just not seeing it.

 

[matthewmilad]

So then. I suppose we should ban Miis as well, play only on FD, and the like.

Face it. What Sakurai deems acceptable for random online is irrelevant and means jack squat to the competitive community. When a online competitive community arises for Smash 4 it is going to be through friend lists, not randoms, and all of those features will still be available to the community since they are allowed in those kinds of online matches.

Considering that he only has a 12 manned team even balancing this game (and how the past games have turned out), I very much so distrust any decisions that are made for balancing purposes. This includes not allowing custom movesets for random online matches.

I was expecting Miis not to be allowed for competitive play because of this, yes... are we really expecting them to be A-ok? Again, they're not even allowed on Wifi play - how is this a competitive function for us to be implementing?

 

[mimgrim]

They are only not allowed against randoms online, but you can use them against friend you have registered for WiFi.

What is decided for random online matched shouldn't affect the competitive scene in anyway. If Miis and Special Moves were only limited to a special mode, then yeah that would be a no go. But they aren't. They are simply not allowed in random online matches, but are allowed in any other kind of online match or any other multiplayer match.

 

[Smashoperatingbuddy123]

Well i know you can customize move sets in both versions.

And im 100% confident you have to unlock the moves and equipment versions.



I have as simple as it gets to unlock custom versions of moves. You use the character often enough to get more.

 

[HeroMystic]

I feel like you're trying to use this as an argument against my point, when this point you have brought up is something I agree with whole-heartedly, and I feel this only serves to further augment my own argument.

Think of it this way. When this guy has enough trouble balancing the game as it is, do you really want to try and implement these added features that he has already made it clear are intended just for fun with your friends? Clearly it would require a huge leap of faith not only to trust that all of these new attacks are balanced, but then on top of that you are opening a pandora's box of ignoring the fact that you cannot use the feature while playing online, implementing the feature in the tournament scene in a way that is fair and effective, and then expecting none of these moves to break any of the characters or cause any confusion or issues, as well as expecting the entire competitive player base to just accept the fact that a non-competitive feature is being allowed for competitive use.

Maybe I'll change my mind once I see how these moves are implemented, and if they backtrack on the ability to use these moves during Wifi matches, but at this point in time, I'm just not seeing it.

There's a fine line between being pessimistic and being conservative.

Sakurai's philosophy has never, ever, dictated nor influenced our desires in competitive gaming. If it did, Competitive Smash wouldn't have grown as immensely as it did today. We'd be doing FFA High-Item matches and we would be saying tripping is cool. Instead, we made 1v1 no items the standard, and we went as far as modding Brawl into Project: M. This wasn't done in defiance to Sakurai's philosophy, but rather because we as a community do not want to settle for less.

There is absolutely no reason why we can't give custom specials a chance to prove themselves. It won't kill Smash 4's competitive scene, because we can always ban them after testing shows they're hurtful. However, if positive results are shown, then we've just boosted the depth and competitive drive of Smash 4's metagame.

 

[DunnoBro]

I look at it like pokemon, yea there's generally going to be only 1 viable/best build for each character but being able to surprise people or innovate isn't gamebreaking or banworthy in itself.

Of course, utility and being difficult to predict is also a major role in how good a pokemon is, and in cases like Mega Lucario get them banned because they're good at so much and it's hit or miss dealing with him.

In the case of smash however, you're probably not going to lose the entire match because they changed a special or stat around. You might not be used to it, but that's your fault for not preparing. So utility is overall less powerful since games can't be decided in a single use of this surprise factor generally.

Also banning it BEFORE testing it is idiotic, preemptive bans of such subjective material never works for any game. You run it in tournaments for a while, see if it works, if it doesn't you try to tweak it to work and if it's too much then you ban.

 

[Anuran]

I feel like you're trying to use this as an argument against my point, when this point you have brought up is something I agree with whole-heartedly, and I feel this only serves to further augment my own argument.

Think of it this way. When this guy has enough trouble balancing the game as it is, do you really want to try and implement these added features that he has already made it clear are intended just for fun with your friends? Clearly it would require a huge leap of faith not only to trust that all of these new attacks are balanced, but then on top of that you are opening a pandora's box of ignoring the fact that you cannot use the feature while playing online, implementing the feature in the tournament scene in a way that is fair and effective, and then expecting none of these moves to break any of the characters or cause any confusion or issues, as well as expecting the entire competitive player base to just accept the fact that a non-competitive feature is being allowed for competitive use.

Maybe I'll change my mind once I see how these moves are implemented, and if they backtrack on the ability to use these moves during Wifi matches, but at this point in time, I'm just not seeing it.

agreed

 

[mogwaimon]

I feel like you're trying to use this as an argument against my point, when this point you have brought up is something I agree with whole-heartedly, and I feel this only serves to further augment my own argument.

Think of it this way. When this guy has enough trouble balancing the game as it is, do you really want to try and implement these added features that he has already made it clear are intended just for fun with your friends? Clearly it would require a huge leap of faith not only to trust that all of these new attacks are balanced, but then on top of that you are opening a pandora's box of ignoring the fact that you cannot use the feature while playing online, implementing the feature in the tournament scene in a way that is fair and effective, and then expecting none of these moves to break any of the characters or cause any confusion or issues, as well as expecting the entire competitive player base to just accept the fact that a non-competitive feature is being allowed for competitive use.

Maybe I'll change my mind once I see how these moves are implemented, and if they backtrack on the ability to use these moves during Wifi matches, but at this point in time, I'm just not seeing it.

One can argue that whether or not custom moves are implemented, there's a chance of 'breaking' the game. Wobbling exists without custom moves, and there's apparently a glitch with Metaknight's Dimensional Cape (I haven't been keeping track of Brawl for the last few years, so please excuse my lack of knowledge on the subject) that makes the move broken. Yes, custom moves increase the chances of breaking the game, but they also increase the chances that more characters will be viable at high levels of play. Personally, that is far more important to me than 'balance'.

I also think you're not giving Sakurai enough credit; it was apparently his balancing alone that created 64 and Melee, whereas introducing a committee of 4 balance testers resulted in Brawl. You're not giving competitive players enough credit, either. They will learn the matchups and learn the counters for each move, and they will adapt, just like they will learn the new engine and adapt to the new mechanics and quirks inherent in Smash 4.

Finally, the community should not look to Sakurai for a competitive ruleset. The default battle in Melee is a 2 minute timed battle, I believe. Are you also saying that just because that is the default we should switch to it? As for implementing customs in a tournament setting, the main factor is time. It all depends on if they take seconds to set, or minutes. Sure, you could argue that the player is at a disadvantage if they don't know the moves their opponent selected. However, that is something that will be eliminated in time as players naturally discover what moves suit each character best, and setups become more homogenized.

 

[RascalTheCharizard]

Just watched the Roundtable. One point for the ban team. Even though @ LiteralGrill made the excellent point that we have never and likely will never formulate our rulesets based on Sakurai's desires, I think it's still notable that Sakurai feels that "to maintain the game balance, customised fighters will not be available in With Anyone mode". I seriously hope that the customisable moves aren't as unbalanced as he thinks, because it would be incredibly disappointing for custom movesets to not be utilised. If we don't include them in competitive play, I'm doubtful that I'll use them at all. See some people are worried that they'll take too long to set up, but I think that in competitive matches, preparation time is acceptable. In a casual match however, I would be even less likely to use them as my friends would be all like "Ugh, hurry up and start the match already! No-one cares what your moves are!"

 

[Hong]

Just watched the Roundtable. One point for the ban team. Even though @ LiteralGrill made the excellent point that we have never and likely will never formulate our rulesets based on Sakurai's desires, I think it's still notable that Sakurai feels that "to maintain the game balance, customised fighters will not be available in With Anyone mode". I seriously hope that the customisable moves aren't as unbalanced as he thinks, because it would be incredibly disappointing for custom movesets to not be utilised. If we don't include them in competitive play, I'm doubtful that I'll use them at all. See some people are worried that they'll take too long to set up, but I think that in competitive matches, preparation time is acceptable. In a casual match however, I would be even less likely to use them as my friends would be all like "Ugh, hurry up and start the match already! No-one cares what your moves are!"

I will give no credence to anything Sakurai claims is unbalanced, by the same virtue as I will also never have faith in anything he says is balanced. Something he could think is completely broken could be rendered a complete joke in a week of play.

Is there a source for customizable stat modification? I only heard about custom special moves.

Seen here. Believe it also might have been briefly discussed at the round table.

this this this this this

agreed

Could just "Like" the post if all you are going to do is agree with it and not add any of your own thoughts. The minimum 10 character limit is there for a reason.

 

[Joe73191]

I will give no credence to anything Sakurai claims is unbalanced, by the same virtue as I will also never have faith in anything he says is balanced. Something he could think is completely broken could be rendered a complete joke in a week of play.
Seen here. Believe it also might have been briefly discussed at the round table.

Could just "Like" the post if all you are going to do is agree with it and not add any of your own thoughts. The minimum 10 character limit is there for a reason.

Oh thanks. Here I was thinking changing character weight, fall speed, attack knockback, ground and air speed and things like that. This shows changing attack power, shielding and run speed. I wonder what other defense and speed options there are?

 

[HeroMystic]

and there's apparently a glitch with Metaknight's Dimensional Cape (I haven't been keeping track of Brawl for the last few years, so please excuse my lack of knowledge on the subject)

Slightly off-topic, but it's called Infinite Dimensional Cape, a glitch where Metaknight can become completely invulnerable and stall infinitely by using DC and then slamming up on the C-Stick repeatedly. It's tiring, but people have learned to do it for at least five minutes.

I think it's still notable that Sakurai feels that "to maintain the game balance, customised fighters will not be available in With Anyone mode". I seriously hope that the customisable moves aren't as unbalanced as he thinks, because it would be incredibly disappointing for custom movesets to not be utilised. If we don't include them in competitive play, I'm doubtful that I'll use them at all.

To be frank, we don't even know why he thinks they're unbalanced, and this is an incredible detail that has been neglected. This could easily mean he just feels custom moves are too confusing for "For Glory" players and just wants to promote standard competition. We shouldn't assume he banned them because they're broken.

 

[Knight Dude]

I'm not a competitive player, but I can understand some hesitance to this feature. Still it's an awesome addition to Smash 4 nonetheless. If you ask me, it should be a legal option in tournaments. Like some one said before, think of it as choosing assist in Marvel vs. Capcom. The options available for most characters are specific and limited enough to prevent it from being broken.

Another example would be the recently announced Mortal Kombat X. In that game, Each character has 3 variations of their moveset. Take Sub-Zero for example, in one form, he uses Ice Weapons, and in another Form, he can create Ice Clones and has a counter attack. They are both still Sub-Zero, but one plays more defensively than the other. Which is very similar to the Special Variants in Smash 4.

The only thing I can hope for is that Customization is accessible from the character select, or is very easy to modify, so it doesn't take too much time for others.

 

[CRASHiC]

It should be obvious that the reason Custom moves are not available on For Glory mode is that the team would have to dedicate time to balancing each variance of each character. That's an incredible amount of development time for what is already known as a series notorious for having a massive workload.

 

[Cide]

Stat items? Nope.

Custom moves? Only the ones that don't get banned.

No custom moves cause of time restraints of tourneys? Only if they streamline how you choose them. It would be very easy to select them on the select screen without hassles.

Imagine the Smash 4 select screen and you just chose Mario while this pops up for all your B moves.

To select would be tilting in the direction of the one you want and mashing A would choose defaults.

Probably takes just as long to counter pick.

---pro ms paint--

 

[infomon]

That would be awesome, but I bet it will be a totally different screen of options for each player. But I do expect it to be pretty easily accessible from the choose-your-character screen. It better be.....

 

[Lozjam]

We should ban stat modification

First off, inb4 we don't have the game yet. We basically know all we need to know about character customization when it comes to questioning the legality of it. If this game is going to be played competitively, we should go forward with little regard to this mechanic.

Reasons:

>It is blatantly counter-intuitive to vanilla character balance (probably no need to elaborate on this one, but basically it seems to exist to appeal to people who want to play their favorite nintendo character AND play their favorite style. It has a lot of potential to develop recursive strategy)

>Difficult to manage (we can't expect every console at a venue to have every item possible for customization)

>Affects set up time (Goes off point 2, if players have to customize their characters every single set or even in between matches, it is going to reduce time available to complete an event. Factor that in with a set up potentially not having the items a player needs and then we lose even more time)

What if you could keep your character set ups in your 3DS? It would be fast and efficient when coming to equipment, and we know the equipment is going to be more or less balanced, like in Kid Icarus Uprising. It would be like Pokemon where you can have different builds of the same pokemon with IV's and EV's.

 

[JoeInky]

I don't think custom moves are banned in online randoms because they think they're unbalanced, it's more likely because in online randoms the other players wouldn't get a chance to see what moves you've picked, remember that in brawl online with randoms, you're not on a menu with 3 other players, you pick your character first and then join a game.

He's just doing it to prevent casuals being surprised, I think.

And with mii's being banned, it's not because 12 unique specials is broken or anything, otherwise palutena would be banned, it's so you don't have people going online with a mii that has a **** on it's face.


Custom moves should be tournament legal until it's proven that they detract from the game.

Also, in terms of the time it takes to set them up, they could do it so that once everyone has selected their characters and presses start, if custom moves are set to on it could go to a secondary screen before the stage select that could look like this crude mockup:

 

[Hong]

@ JoeInky
EXACTLY what I had in mind, only I figured the cards would be a pop-up that goes over the portrait, so other players still have the full character selection space.

And yeah, just another reason that I never gave Sakurai's statement about balance any mind. I won't pretend the community will be any wiser for the first six months or so when it comes to balance, but I still rather decide on whether or not something is balanced or not for myself. The saying in game design goes something like "Okay, people will be saying this needs to be buffed when it comes out, then asking for a nerf about a year from now.". It's not that I'm pining Sakurai to the stake here, so much as saying the metagame is so volatile and he has some rather interesting design philosophies.

As long as the choices are diverse, interesting, and have REALISTIC, applicable weakness, it's not hard to get specials that at least don't break the game. Of course some choices will be better than others, but as long as we don't end up in some rock/paper/scissors scenario where people have to blindpick specials, we'll be fine.

 

[JoeInky]

The best thing about customisable moves is that it just gives characters a bit of extra help in certain matchups or facilitates certain player styles.

Against a combo heavy character as DK? Switch his side B to the much slower version with super armour to give you a tool for getting out of pressure if you use it right.
Against a character that likes to control the stage as Mario? Switch your fireball to the fire orb and you have a projectile that travels much shorter, but stays on screen longer, now you have your own tool to control the stage.
Against a character that will try to outzone you and play keepaway as Marth? Switch your shield breaker to the version that gives it a gap-closer utility (maybe this one won't be great if there's considerable endlag, but it's a nice thought atleast).

Feel confident enough that you want to use your super jump punch as a finisher instead of a recovery? Switch to the explosion jump punch instead of having the one that goes higher.
Want to use your cape as part of combos instead of a gimp tool? Go for the shocking cape.
Never use Kirby's inhale? Switch to ice breath instead.

The custom moves are great, they're like 90% of the reason why I'm still excited for smash. We've had a fast technical smash, we've had a slower paced smash, there aren't many places we can go inbetween there that would make the new game feel unique, but custom moves? They have the potential to really make the game feel different compared to past installments, it's just more options for players to really express their style with a character and help in certain matchups that may have been unfavourable, they shouldn't make the matchup an easy win, just give your character a tool to make it more favourable so you don't necessarily have to change your favourite character just because he's bad against who the other player has picked.

Of course if they're completely broken or take way too long to set up, then they have no place in tournaments, but I'm hopeful that - if they're anything like what we've seen with mario so far - they won't be broken and that sakurai will have some elegant solution for choosing which moves you want to use.

 

[Nstinct]

I honestly wanted character customization just so I could customize my main into a way that even more supports my style. I suppose I'd try to change things up if I knew it would be a hard match, but I'd mostly like to have "my own" Mario and then make that Mario my own. (If you did get that, it's like in melee people play the same characters but their own style, well those same characters would also be somewhat different.

 

[Galespark]

This is how Mario's Fast Fireball, Electro Cape and Scalding FLUDD look in action:

I really want to use this stuff on tournaments tbh.

 

[Beats]

This is how Mario's Fast Fireball, Electro Cape and Scalding FLUDD look in action:

View attachment 16592

I really want to use this stuff on tournaments tbh.

Where'd the original video come from? The last part with the FLUDD is cut off so you can't really see what it does.

I also very much support custom moves in tournaments, and really hope it is implemented well. It allows for more creative ways to play match ups, and keeps the meta-game fresh.

 

[Nstinct]

Where'd the original video come from? The last part with the FLUDD is cut off so you can't really see what it does.

I also very much support custom moves in tournaments, and really hope it is implemented well. It allows for more creative ways to play match ups, and keeps the meta-game fresh.

Nintendo's Amiibo video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGHahndbEck#t=2m42s

 

[RascalTheCharizard]

I don't think custom moves are banned in online randoms because they think they're unbalanced, it's more likely because in online randoms the other players wouldn't get a chance to see what moves you've picked, remember that in brawl online with randoms, you're not on a menu with 3 other players, you pick your character first and then join a game.

He's just doing it to prevent casuals being surprised, I think.

This is a really good point. Why didn't I think of this before?

I guess this plays into blindpicking, too. Whilst I think that some moves like Mario's fireballs don't effect the game much if they aren't used, we know that some customs can change a move to be a KO move (like the Explosive Punch). A different fireball shouldn't surprise someone, but a recovery move suddenly KOing someone very well could be a gamechanger if the opponent doesn't expect you to have chosen that custom. Or you know, we could actually use our brains and consider all customs the opponent might have equipped mid-match. That'd work too. Like @ Hong said, hopefully we won't have to blindpick at all though.

 

[PizzaWenisaur]

I am kinda neutral.

But...I don't think the only potential problem with custom moves is time. I can really see it being like the Wild West.

What I'm cautious about isn't particular moves, but rather how certain move-sets could be overpowered. A move by itself could be fair but when paired with move X and used with strategy Y - it could become the cheapest thing on the planet.

Also, if custom moves beef up low-mid tier characters, wouldn't it also do the same for high-god tier characters?

Over-regulation could stem from custom moves. With possible long list of particular moves and move-setups that are deemed unfair for competition, which may over convolute things in the long run.

Edit: So Sonic is gonna have 6 different spindash attacks...that's so stupid.

 

[Hong]

I am kinda neutral.

But...I don't think the only potential problem with custom moves is time. I can really see it being like the Wild West.

What I'm cautious about isn't particular moves, but rather how certain move-sets could be overpowered. A move by itself could be fair but when paired with move X and used with strategy Y - it could become the cheapest thing on the planet.

Also, if custom moves beef up low-mid tier characters, wouldn't it also do the same for high-god tier characters?

Does that really change anything? If we have no custom special moves, characters will be broken. If we have special moves, characters will be broken.

No one really thinks the roster will be balanced regardless, right?

 

[Jiggy37]

Also, if custom moves beef up low-mid tier characters, wouldn't it also do the same for high-god tier characters?

Not as significantly. Any high-tier character already has all the tools to succeed, so adding more options only makes the great better. Low-tier characters are low-tier because they're lacking something, such as a way to beat camping, a safe approach, or a good aerial move, so giving them more options has potential to make them any good at all.

The difference between a worthless character and a viable character is bigger than the gap between "one of the best" and "the best." There are diminishing returns on adding good moves to a character, as it were.

 

[Zekersaurus]

... Screw you guys. http://smashboards.com/threads/customizable-characters.333320/#post-15288071

Spoiler

Edit - Collapsed image.

 

[Hong]

... Screw you guys. http://smashboards.com/threads/customizable-characters.333320/#post-15288071

Spoiler

To be fair, a year ago we had no idea what customization meant, so of course we wouldn't be in a near-majority agreement of it. Even now, a lot of the disagreement only exists because of uncertainty.

 

[Moon Monkey]

This vid pretty much sums up my thoughts

 

[Zekersaurus]

To be fair, a year ago we had no idea what customization meant, so of course we wouldn't be in a near-majority agreement of it. Even now, a lot of the disagreement only exists because of uncertainty.

Be that as it may, people could have used their imagination... A storm is coming I tell you. If Custom Special moves see competitive play I will rain down a salty monsoon.

 

[FlynnCL]

This is how Mario's Fast Fireball, Electro Cape and Scalding FLUDD look in action:

View attachment 16592

I really want to use this stuff on tournaments tbh.

The idea that every single special has a variation is really exciting for me; the depth will be amazing.

That Shocking Cape not only seems like a great combo-finisher but Mario will also have an aerial finisher! That's awesome.

 

[mogwaimon]

Be that as it may, people could have used their imagination... A storm is coming I tell you. If Custom Special moves see competitive play I will rain down a salty monsoon.

Don't get any of that salt on me, friend, I wasn't even around for that discussion! If I were, I'd likely be on your side anyways, I'm all for more interesting subsystems in Smash.

EDIT: Fixed quote tags