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Official Custom Moveset Project

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The Official Custom Moveset Project was a project based in SmashBoards to create preset custom moveset combinations for every character in Super Smash Bros. 4, in an effort to make the use of custom moves logistically viable in tournaments. It allowed players to select from a number of pre-selected custom movesets for characters, as well as providing a number of preset Mii characters.

The project was started by former Balanced Brawl developer Amazing Ampharos in 2014, and it was accepted by a large number of local and regional tournaments in March 2015, with EVO 2015 being the largest tournament that used the project. Following EVO 2015 in July 2015, it was decided by the majority of tournament organizers to place a general ban on custom moves, for a variety of different factors. As a result, the Official Custom Moveset Project was officially discontinued in late 2015, though a number of custom move side-events have continued to use the original project.

History

Adoption

One of Smash 4's selling points was the ability for characters to utilize a variety of different special moves compared to their usual moveset. This was also prominently featured in reveal trailers for the Mii Fighters and Palutena, who had completely unique special moves available as custom movesets. As a result, smashers were interested in seeing how the metagame of Smash 4 could change in response to custom movesets, though it was debated as to what the best course would be for custom movesets. The Official Custom Moveset was produced in response, as it was believed allowing only certain movesets could prevent logistics issues in tournaments regarding players wanting to select specific movesets, as well as providing "groundwork" for potential matchup analysis. The Official Custom Moveset Project later gained approval from the Smash 4 community and a number of tournament organizers, and tournaments began to use the ruleset in March 2015. In addition to a number of local and regional tournaments, EVO 2015 stated their intention to use the project's list of ideal custom moveset combinations as part of their ruleset.

Controversy

Custom movesets, however, proved a controversial topic in the timespan from their legalization to EVO 2015. While some players thought it helped to make the metagame of Smash 4 deeper, a number of players felt that the inclusion of custom movesets in tournaments hurt the integrity of the game, as it introduced far too many potential matchups, and it provided opportunities for players to use movesets that their opponents may not have had any experience with.

Some players also claimed that the extent custom movesets helped characters was unfair. A number of bottom-tiered characters, such as Zelda, Jigglypuff and King Dedede, were argued to gain little to no benefit from custom movesets, and some high-tiered characters, such as Diddy Kong and Sheik, were also argued to actually gain even further benefits from their custom movesets, leading to further imbalance in Smash 4. Some custom movesets were also argued to have created degenerate gameplay for some characters, with characters such as Sonic and Donkey Kong gaining powerful options that most players found unfun or frustrating to deal with. Villager especially became controversial for his custom movesets, with Mew2King citing him as the reason certain custom moves should be banned, specifically referencing a match where ADHD defeated Nairo with a custom Villager, despite considering Nairo the stronger player. The release of Mewtwo, the first DLC character, was also claimed to have created further imbalance, as Mewtwo and all other DLC characters lacked custom moves of any sort, preventing DLC characters from gaining any potential benefits.

Tournament organizers also felt that the need to create custom movesets, regardless if they were pre-set or not, reduced the number of potential setups players could bring to tournaments, as unlocking all the potential custom moves required considerable time and effort from players; unlike unlockable characters or unlockable stages, custom parts could only be attained through specialized methods that did not guarantee a new custom move. As the Official Custom Moveset Project also required a "master" 3DS console for each Wii U setup, this meant that players who owned a Wii U, but not a 3DS, to be unable to use their Wii U as a setup. Furthermore, the laborious process of unlocking custom moves was made slightly more efficient with the 3DS version of the game, meaning that players without the 3DS version of the game would likely have greater difficulty in unlocking all the custom movesets.

Outside of the above, there was debate over how effectively the Official Custom Moveset Project could police itself; on top of having 52 characters with 8 movesets each, it was questioned how well the staff behind the project could monitor which movesets proved too weak or strong, as well as who would get a say in what moveset combinations were too strong.

Discontinuation

Following the conclusion of EVO 2015, it was decided by the majority of tournament organizers to place a ban on custom moves entirely, starting with majors such as Low Tier City 3 and Smash Factor 4, and custom movesets have not appeared as part of a ruleset in major tournaments since then, which included EVO 2016. The Official Custom Moveset Project was discontinued in response, and thread on the project was later locked.

Despite the ban, some tournaments, such as Glitch and Glitch 2, have allowed the use of custom movesets with the original Official Custom Moveset Project, though only in separate side events. A few regions, such as the Australian scene, have also allowed the use of custom movesets in varying degrees, but this is generally only restricted to Mii Fighter and sometimes Palutena.

Format

Each character has ten preset custom moveset combinations available in addition to the default combination (except Mii Fighters, who additionally have more movesets available), transferred from a master 3DS with every custom unlocked, all without equipment and named by number of the combination's neutral special, side special, up special, and down special, respectively. The combinations were chosen with input from each character's playerbase, to be the 10 most competitively-viable move combinations possible, and thus be the moveset combinations the vast majority of players would use if given their own free reign to select. These combinations can be selected immediately via the character select screen on each Wii U that has been set up to accommodate, which not only eliminates the time that would be spent by players putting their custom moveset together manually, but also ensures players do not run into issues with their preferred custom moves not being available on a Wii U setup. Smaller tournaments may still choose to allow players to replace the last two custom moveset combinations with their own preference, which is explained further below.

Previous formats

Before the 1.0.8 update, characters only had eight custom moveset combinations, with the two empty slots always being reserved for players' preferred combinations; this was changed in order to accommodate EVO 2015 and their stance against allowing players the ability to add their own combinations. In addition, two of a character's combinations were always all of the second available options and all of the third available options; however, these combinations were no longer required and the majority removed in the update as few were considered viable sets.

List of available combinations

External links

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