User:Nyargleblargle/Who benefits from customs

As those who have been keeping track of the young Smash 4 meta know, a growing number of people have been pushing for custom specials in tournament play, most notably the Official Custom Moveset Project. One of the biggest arguments made for this push is that custom specials balance the meta by allowing otherwise unviable characters to have better versions of their specials, balancing the meta. This statistical analysis seeks to determine how character viability is affected by the meta.

Method

The method was based on two fundamental concepts:

1. The more times a custom special is used in the Official Custom Moveset Project, the more viable it is.
2. Special moves, while important, only account for approximately a fifth of a character's viability.

As a base point to compare a customs-on meta to, we decided to use the Reddit June 2015 tier list. While imperfect, it simply serves as a comparison point. Characters in this list were given a score of up to 14, so we allotted a maximum of 2.8 additional points for custom specials to give each character. Due to the difference of the minimum (10) and maximum (38) usages of custom specials in the project being 28, each usage of a custom special after the tenth in the Official Custom Moveset Project gave the character one tenth of a point.

Results

Without Customs

Super Smash Bros. 4 Tier List (No customs)
S		A+			A							A-
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14
13.7	13.2	12.55	12.45	12.38	11.96	11.89	11.73	11.13	11.12	11.1	11.08	10.88	10.79
			B+
			15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23
			9.95	9.82	9.78	9.68	9.64	9.32	9.31	9.18	9.12
				B
				24	25	26	27	28	29	30
				8.85	8.81	8.75	8.62	8.47	8.12	8.01
			B-
			31	32	33	34	35	36	37	38
			7.89	7.73	7.56	7.54	7.53	7.4	7.32	7.11
C+										C			C-
39	40	41	42	43	44	45	46	47	48	49	50	51	52
6.87	6.8	6.72	6.62	6.59	6.31	6.24	6.23	6.2	6.04	5.93	5.86	5.74	4.86

With Customs

Super Smash Bros. 4 Tier List (With customs)
S		A+		A								A-
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14
14.8	14.6	13.65	13.55	12.92	12.89	12.88	12.78	12.76	12.48	12.33	12.3	11.73	11.45
			B+
			15-16		17	18	19	20	21	22	23
			10.98	10.98	10.79	10.71	10.55	10.42	10.28	10.04	10.02
		B
		24	25	26	27	28	29	30	31	32	33
		9.95	9.81	9.87	9.72	9.41	9.26	9.22	9.12	9.1	9.03
			B-
			34	35	36	37	38	39	40	41	42
			8.69	8.51	8.44	8.31	8.29	8.23	8.22	8.04	8
		C+							C	C-
		43	44	45-46		47	48	49	50	51	52
		7.84	7.67	7.62	7.62	7.53	7.46	7.13	6.2	5.74	5.66

Conclusion

Generally, while the lower tiers were reduced in size, the size of the higher ones stayed fairly consistent, with most of the characters commonly cited as thriving in a customs-on meta (Donkey Kong, Palutena) becoming average characters. While this theoretically improves the game's balance, it appears that very few characters reached the viability of customs-off high-tier characters, which is further limited considering that everyone else improved (except the Miis and Mewtwo). Overall, customs fail to balance characters as sweepingly as expected.