***TL;DR; INCOMING!***
This is a vent piece - not a full-on rage piece, but it still says some things that need to be said and I figure
\n\t\t\t\t\tdragga's comical art was the best way to do it without being TOO serious about it.Smash 4 is a wonderful game. There's enough there for single-player and multiplayer to entertain for a long time. But the game has a major, major flaw - its custom drop system. There are just so many things that could have been done better that are absolutely aggaravating to competitive and casual players alike.
*Why is it possible to get the same custom move you've already earned?
*Why is it possible to get the same Mii outfit you've alrady earned?
*Why is it possible to get the same Mii headgear you've already earned?
(In the 3DS version, why is it possible to get the same Smash Run power?)
They had this figured out with CDs! Once you got a specific CD, that same one never dropped again. For comeptitive players, they would want all the custom moves available on their tournament consoles so that they can allow those setups for their events. Having to grind for a character and end up getting the same move you've already seen drop five times before is absolutely aggravating - to say nothing of having 53 or 54 out of the 55 Mii headgear pieces and trying to win the last one or two!
*Why do custom moves, headgear pieces, outfits, or trophies drop AT ALL once you have 100% collected in any of those categories? They serve no further benefit to the player. I can almost see trophies as the game does keep tally of how many times you've earned a certain one, even if it doesn't mean anything, but not for any of the other ones. All of those drops should be replaced by more equipment, gold, and Crazy Orders Passes at that point. Trophy Rush should morph into a mode where instead of trophies, each fever rush drops 1-2 equipment pieces along with gold in place of trophies. (And in 3DS, Smash Run should eliminate Smash Run power drops once you have them all and replace them with gold/equips.)
*Why do equipment drops in Classic mode tilt so heavily towards the stage you're playing on, rather than the character you're playing as? It's great if you want, say, a Mario item since thre are so many stages relating to that, or robotic boosts like Zappers and Boosters which drop in the last two stages of Classic, but if you want to equip a character whose stages rarely show up you have to depend on other options. One would think if you are looking to improve on a character you're going to play as that character so the drops should fall accordingly.
*In Crazy Orders, why is there no "mark for sale" system on your equipment stash as you're doing the run? A player most likely knows what effects will benefit them and what ones won't (If you have a Sixfold X Speed, you don't ever need a Threefold X Speed...and a Trade-Off Defender X Attack most likely wouldn't see use since the equpiment is dropping your base deense stat, negating the bonus for the most part.) There should be a way to tell the game to sell that equipment so you don't get stuck going through 2,000 pieces of it later.
*Also in Crazy Orders, why is it that when you look at the series icon on a ticket, clear that ticket, and then get the reward, the part of the reward with the series icon is often NOT the strongest part of what dropped? I've had many times where I got a Pokeball icon ticket cleared, hoping for a great piece of say X Attack equipment, and then I get a Threefold X Attack and a Vampire Protein or something. The best effect/highest stat boost should be tied to the hinted icon - otherwise why would we be going for it?
*Why is there no equipment purchase system? Or custom move purchase system? It's ironic that trophies are something you usually get as an achievement in real life, and better equipment is something you buy in real life to be able to play better, yet in Smash you buy trophies and hope for the right equipment. Players should be able to spend their Smash Gold on custom moves they do not yet have unlocked if they want to focus on that, or on randomly generated equipment that changes about as often as the trophies in trophy shop do. This function could easily replace the Trophy Shop, or run alongside it.
*Why is there no PREMIUM equipment purchase system - not microtransactions or anything, but something where you can specify the type of equipment, and the bonus effect you want on it, and the game calculates a price for it? Crafting a perfect piece of equipment should be expensive - like 100,000-200,000G expensive - but what else are you going to do with the 2,000,000G that you get from clearing the challenge board?
*Finally...why is there no transfer/trade system for individual pieces of equipment? Sure, you can take a character you set up on your WiiU and transfer it to your 3DS with the equipment carrying over and vice versa but you can't re-transfer. The custom drops are FAR better on the WiiU, but you can't take your WiiU character, transfer it to your 3DS, and then transfer that character on someone else's WiiU for use during a tournament. Pokemon games have both the Global Trade System and Wonder Trade, where you either seek out specific Pokemon or throw a random Pokemon into trade and get a random one from someone else...how hard would that be to set up for equipment? Smash GTS - "Hey, I got a Critical Hitter Cape I don't need, any Ganondorf mains want to trade me a Vampire X Attack I'm looking for?" Smash Wonder Trade - throw your decent equips that you just have no use for in and see if someone else happened to throw what you need your way!
The biggest reason that equipment should be tradable between your OWN systems though, above all else...tournament legality. Right now, TOs can hide behind "it'd be impossible to get the same equipment set up on every console, so we're not going to make custom equipment legal." But if players could earn their own equipment on their home WiiUs, take that equipment, transfer it to your 3DS, and then use it at your local events and major tournaments! If every player has the same opportunity to earn every equip, and customize their character exactly to their liking, then there would be nothing unfair. Want to set yourself up with Smooth Lander and Moon Launcher and focus on your quick recovery and aerials? Awesome! Want to roll the dice with Triple Critical Hitter and forego any of your other bonuses? That's cool too! Want to force the other player to go aggressive by using healing equipment knowing you'd win out on ties? Or hell, healing equipment plus Sudden Death Gambler (to force SD on as a legit part of the game rather than damage percentage tiebreaks) so that if your opponent isn't up by a full stock you have a great chance of winning the game that way? That option should be available to you.
**TL;DR; end**
So much potential was missed with the equipment setup. I can only hope that this would either be remedied in an update or kept in mind for any future Smash titles. And for all of the above reasons the custom drop system developer deserves the Home-Run Bat in his ass.
Thank you, Dragga, for letting me speak my piece on this through you.
(Submission matured for exposed ass with Home-Run Bat shoved in it.)