How to Moveset: Beginners and Intermediate, Part 1

#TwilightWings

#Doyaru

Welp, here we are. I’ve finally made a moveset guide. And it isn’t even the full thing. Whoopee.

I don’t really know how to write an intro for this. “SO, YOU WANT TO MAKE A MOVESET…” or something, idk

If you didn’t know, I’m rapidly approaching my 3rd-year anniversary here on Amino, and for about 2.5 of those years, I’ve been making movesets… and pretty much nothing else but movesets apart from like 3 or 4 miscellaneous blogs about music at most. And given concerns on multiple occasions in the past regarding how poorly made most movesets are, I believe it’d be a good idea to share my thoughts on the subject and post them in an all-encoming guide for as many different skill levels as I can cover. Hopefully the final product helps as intended.

Now, the whole guide will be split into two parts given how chunky this blog is going to be once I’m done, and I decided to separate them into two categories. The blog you are currently reading, as the title implies, will be focused on the “beginner” to “intermediate” levels of movesetting – I’ll give tips on what to do when starting off and how to make character kits in the first place (if you’ve either never made a moveset before or have only done a few at most), while also offering advice on how to improve your blogs to those who have already been making them for a while but would like some help. If this blog isn’t a dumpster fire, I can afterwards work on a second part focusing on “advanced” movesetters who know what they’re doing but are looking to break the mold and spice things up, but until then this should suffice.

If you know all of things I’m about to say in this blog, then great! You’re the type of audience the second part would be directed at. But for those who are less experienced, I hope my insane ramblings help you improve your work and truly show Smash Amino how awesome your ideas can be.

There isn’t much else to say that the guide itself can’t, so I’ll stop wasting your time. Let’s get moving.

HOW TO MOVESET: BEGINNERS/INTERMEDIATE

Starting off:

In general, you don’t NEED to do what I suggest in order (this applies to this entire blog), it’s more of a recommendation. Additionally, parts of this blog may be separated into categories, such as “beginners and above” or “intermediate and above”. While it’s not a bad idea to read the whole thing, if it’s for a category of movesetters that you aren’t a part of, it’s not going to be super helpful.

Regardless… everyone needs to start somewhere, and sometimes starting off on the right foot can help make the final posted result far better than you’d expect.

Picking your character:

…Parts of this blog are going to seem really obvious to most people reading, but just in case it isn’t… the very first step of finding a character to write about isn’t quite as easy as it might seem.

this beginning part is going to suck, just bear with me until the ball gets rolling

Beginner and above:

I would say everyone has different reasons for why they’d choose a character for their blog, but that would be a lie – it’s pretty much always because they just like the character and wanted to talk about them. And there’s nothing wrong with that; ion is a really important part of making movesets, and there’s no better way to be ionate about it than generally liking the character you’re writing about. However, there are some things you should consider before leaping forward with your virtual crush.

The first thing you should ask yourself is whether the character you chose has enough source material to work with. For those who are new, I am not saying that your character needs to have all 13 standards, 5 grab moves, and 4 Specials directly and perfectly useable from the games you’re pulling from; what I mean is that it’s important for your character to have good general material to work with. This includes anything between personality (how does the character act?), game mechanics/playstyle from their home games (what do you do in their game/how do you play it?), weapons/fighting style (how do they fight?), and translate. If your character doesn’t come from a game (i.e. something like an anime instead), instead of gameplay/playstyle, look at the genre/tone of the medium (what kind of anime is it?).

To give an example of what I’m talking about, think of it like this – there are characters like the Heavy from Team Fortress 2 who has a well-established personality and playstyle to work off of (big heavy brute with guns, slow but powerful), and plenty of weapons and gameplay mechanics you could put into the blog: he’s got a minigun that can rev up and fire to deal tons of damage both up close and from afar, he’s got a sandwich to heal himself with, various shotguns to cover himself in case the minigun isn’t a good idea (all three of which would be good Specials), and plenty of different melee weapons that you can use in his standard attacks… He’s a pretty good candidate for a moveset since there’s a lot of material you can use, and all of those abilities listed above can translate well to Smash; it’s not hard to describe how guns or punches would work in Smash.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, there are various characters that are far more difficult to work with, such as someone like Arle from Puyo Puyo or Karate Joe from Rhythm Heaven. These characters, while not devoid of useable material, have significantly less to work with and what’s there is a lot harder to translate to Smash; Puyo Puyo is a good game but it’s pretty difficult to translate the core playstyle of a puzzle game to a fast-paced fighting game, and Rhythm Heaven’s simplistic minigames relying on timing don’t offer too much to use without getting really creative. Something I’d like to point out is that it’s far from impossible to make blogs for characters like those, but it’s WAY harder to do anything with them, and if you aren’t experienced, trying to make a blog with a difficult character could result in a pretty low-quality post. So if you’re a beginner or not great at movesets, try avoiding characters like these.

Honestly, if you’re new to making movesets and you’re just testing the waters to see if you like it / aren’t too concerned about being featured, for now that’s about all you need to think about. If you found a character who you like and can get enough ideas for moves out of, then congrats! You’re ready to start working on your character.

just try not to do fighting game characters, fighting game movesets are kind of lame

Intermediate and above:

For beginners, it doesn’t get more difficult than that, since if you’re new and just learning how to make a decent moveset, then there isn’t a need to worry about anything else past that. But once you start getting better at these and try to get one of those fabled features, there are a couple of additional factors you’ll need to consider.

The main one is how unique your character is in the overall pile of Amino movesets out there. There are characters who have been talked about MANY times in the past, and the more movesets made for a specific character, the smaller the chance you have anything unique to say about or give to them. Characters like Waluigi, Geno, Shadow, Hollow Knight, or Doomguy are good examples – sure, they have a ton of stuff to use in your blog and nobody’s going to say you can’t do a good job with them… but odds are, if you don’t go well out of your way to make sure that you use something completely original that no one else has come up with before… your Down B Piranha Plant Special for your Waluigi kit has most likely been done already before. Multiple times. Some of them done way better than you.

So, to be on the safe side, while popular characters are never completely off the table… if you really want to interest people, try working with a character that few or zero people have talked about. This is something you can check very easily; go into the search bar for blogs and type in your character’s name, and see how many blogs pop up. If you feel like there’s too many, consider picking another character. Again, if you don’t care, there’s nothing stopping you from making a blog with them despite the possibility they’ve been done multiple times before you. Just keep in mind that you might accidentally copy someone else’s work, intentionally or not.

The other good thing to consider is how unique of a character they would be if they actually appeared in Smash. In general, uniqueness and creativity is a huge part of what makes a moveset interesting/good, and as such your blog will likely become far less interesting if the topic character is too bland or similar to another. Generic characters (ones like most console FPS characters, Monster Hunter hunters, or… I hate to say it… Shovel Knight) or characters too close to fighters already in the roster (Dixie Kong or other semi-clone-like characters) can typically fall into this problem.

They definitely have things worth talking about, but when you have a lot of moves that are close to self-explanatory (Shovel Knight shoots a fireball. It travels forward. If it hits an opponent they get hurt.) and/or their playstyle isn’t super unique (being a versatile character, is that versatility actually interesting or unique from other characters? Or are you just making another Mario, with “they’re versatile” being an excuse to make them good at everything with no weaknesses?)… are you sure readers are going to care? Are they going to care about the Fortnite default skin shooting an AK-47 in the most basic way possible? Are they going to care about your basically-a-semi-clone sharing tons of moves with pre-existing characters, and only having a couple of moves at most unique to them?

…Sorry, back on topic in a more serious tone... Making your readers care about your blog is pretty important if you ask me, and the sorts of things I’ve listed above can be difficult to care about. So keep these issues in mind.

Finally, I half-joked about it earlier, but on the topic of fighting game characters (or characters from games similar to Smash, e.x. Kirby or Rivals of Aether)… don’t do them. Stay far, far away from them.

I keep emphasizing this, but movesets need to be unique and at least slightly creative; not every game ports directly to Smash and it’s often interesting to see how a writer might translate certain aspects into a fighting game such as Smash. Source material may give you all of your character’s abilities and gameplay style, but at the absolute least you have to figure out a way to make it work as seamlessly as possible in Smash while still making it fit the source game.

The issue with fighting games is that all of the work is already done for you – tilts are weaker/quicker attacks, Smash Attacks are the heavy attacks, aerials are aerials, and Special Attacks are Specials… hell, even each move’s function is already there for you to copy/paste: if it’s a fast poking/combo tool in the source game, it’ll be a fast poking/combo tool in the moveset. But if you try to put it into a blog, as you might already be able to tell, that’s not doing much else other than copy/pasting information plenty of people already know and expecting likes + a feature for it.

that is really, really, really boring to read in a blog and honestly very disappointing to see due to how little effort you put into that

There ARE ways to do fighting game characters in movesets well, but given how outside-the-box you have to be to make it work (stuff I’ll cover in the “Advanced” guide), 99.9% of the time I see people try to make fighting game movesets, they are extremely boring and suck. Don’t be the person who makes an extremely boring and sucky moveset. Stay away from that kind of character, it’ll benefit you so much more than taking the easy route.

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Welp, that was one singular section of the blog, on simply deciding which character we’re moving forward with. We haven’t even gotten to actually writing stuff for them.

sheesh this is going to be a long blog

Strap in, ladies and gentlemen (mostly gentlemen). This will take a while.

Coming up with a kit:

Now that you have the character you want to write about in mind, it’s time to start figuring out what moves they’d have. Excited?

Drafting is important:

No matter who you are, no matter who you’re working on, one thing I recommend to absolutely everyone is making a draft of notes for the moveset first. This is good advice for just about any form of writing in general, but it is extremely helpful with movesets too and will make the process of coming up with the character’s kit SO much easier by solidifying your thoughts easier, allowing you to build the full kit without worrying about writing the blog as you go along.

By draft notes, I mean simply jotting down stuff you can think of for your characters, such as the character’s playstyle (how they fight; are they a fast, aggressive character who likes to stay close to the opponent? stuff like that) or the moves you’ll be using in the blog, along with any additional notes you can think of for them – animation (what it looks like/what the character does), power (damage and knockback, how strong it is), and speed (both startup and endlag) are good things to write initially. Regarding power and speed, you don’t need to write down the exact %s and frame data to describe them perfectly; as long as it gets the point across, you can describe them however you’d like, something as simple as “strong” or “weak” for power, or “fast”/”slow” for speed is sufficient.

Drafting can come in many different forms, and everyone does it differently. They can be as complex as you’d like (providing as much information as you can think of, however you wish to write it), or can be as bare-bones as possible. It all depends on how much information you want to keep in your head, but if it’s a simple move, there’s nothing wrong with only spending time explaining it fully in the blog itself.

Maybe examples of both sides of the spectrum might help.

The top picture is a (hopefully decent) example of a very minimal draft note for a shoulder bash-like move. Shoulder bashes as the example are inherently really simplistic: you rush forward as an active hitbox and if you hit something it’ll probably die, but you’re charging straight towards an enemy and stuck like that, meaning you can get punished pretty easily if you whiff or if the opponent hits you before you reach them (such as with a long dist or a projectile). While more complex moves should probably have more meat in the draft description (to help prepare for the full blog and make sure you don’t forget anything interesting), this sort of style can still work, you’ll just have to put more effort into the blog later. As such, if you’re confident that you can flesh it out more and describe it fuller in the blog proper, this sort of draft note is perfectly fine, for any move.

The bottom picture on the other hand describes just about everything about the move that you’d put into the final product. While some parts of it can be pointless fluff (ignore the part about Terry), it gives you just about everything not-obvious you need to know about the move right there and then – it’s a very powerful and very big attack but comes out slowly and predictably (only good as a last-ditch attack, but can work wonders if successful), the move varies depending on whether or not you have the resources to use it (without ink it’s far worse, but not useless), and there’s some additional info like how the direction you travel is limited. ittedly I did forget to mention how good it is as an actual recovery… but as long as you can that for the blog itself and describe it fine there, again, you don’t need to worry about what the draft looks like.

Now that you (hopefully) know what drafts look like and have a rough idea on how to write them/what to write in them, where do you start?

First things to think about/Writing the important parts of the kit

This section will moreso lean towards intermediate bloggers, or beginners looking to become intermediates. What I’ll be describing is rather complicated/nuanced and requires knowing what you’re doing or generally having at least a bit of experience with the format, and as such won’t be easy for some of you. If you’re a beginner or not very experienced with Smash, while I recommend giving this section a read regardless, don’t feel pressured to come up with insanely creative things or wow people right out of the gates – it’s all a learning process, and you have to start somewhere. And the most important thing at first is to have fun… if you aren’t having fun because you’re trying too hard to make it good, I recommend you relax a little, and just see what you can come up with and work from there.

As for the intermediates… keep what I’m going to say in mind if you’re looking to improve.

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Once you’ve chosen your character, while there’s nothing stopping you from just writing down whatever comes to mind first then going from there, I believe it’s better if you focus on some of the more important parts of a character’s kit first, then build the rest of the kit around that. As such, there’s two starting strategies I recommend for anyone writing a moveset – either coming up with a playstyle first then coming up with Specials based around it, or coming up with one or two Specials, making a playstyle around it, then writing the rest of the Specials (note how important those two are, I’ll clarify below).

Both of these ultimately result in the same thing, it’s mostly just down to preference or character (or whichever you came up with in the first place and inspired you to do that character, idk)… so you can pick whichever one you want or even alternate between the two depending on what you feel like. Since one of them has to come first, I’ll cover the “playstyle -> Specials” strat. Just flip it around if you choose to do the other one.

Playstyle:

Let me get this out of the way and tell you that the playstyle is INCREDIBLY important to your moveset. The playstyle defines how your character plays, what kinds of moves you’ll design for them, and how unique they’ll be compared to other characters in Smash – all key things that make your moveset interesting if done well, which is absolutely something you want. It’s the backbone of your blog, and making sure it’s a good backbone will be the key to eventually making good if not fantastic movesets.

Think about your character and work around how they act, what their personality is like, what they do in their source games and how/why they do it. Take somebody like Waluigi again; he’s a sneaky, cunning bastard who often plays dirty, fully capable of playing fair if he feels like it due to being quite competent, but often resorts to cheating or foul play to win at any cost. In the games he appears in, he tends to be the “fast and agile, but kind of weak” character who relies on gimmicks, weird moves, or even things you’d consider cheating (like Bob-Ombs in anything he appears in) to scratch a win out. From there, try to come up with a rough outline of how your character would play if they were in Smash. You know how characters like Pichu or Mario prefer to be aggressive and in-your-face, while characters like Dedede or Isabelle prefer to play more defensively? How would your character play?

You COULD give him a fast-paced, aggressive “rushdown” playstyle where he constantly tries to get in his opponent’s face and outplay them, but… would that really suit him? Try to take into consideration how they act/play, and build a playstyle around that. What if you made Waluigi a character who isn’t very good on his own (weak/ineffective standards and a frail weight are good ways to do that), but specializes in forcing the opponent to deal with all sorts of nonsense while he goes to town? Stuff like abusing items, assist-like summons like Smash Flash 2’s Piranha Plant, setting other kinds of traps, projectiles… you get the idea. Waluigi is just an example; try to make sure the playstyle you come up with fits the character. Bonus points if you can make it unique compared to the rest of the roster.

Specials:

Once you have your playstyle (assuming you went playstyles first), coming up with fitting Special moves and gimmicks (“ive” or “activated” unique abilities, stuff like Inkling’s ink and K. Rool’s belly armor in the former category, and Cloud’s Limit, Little Mac’s K.O. Punch, and Joker’s Arcene in the latter) is the next key thing on your to-do list… I’ll mention this again several times later, but Specials and unique mechanics are the other most important part of your blog. While the playstyle is the skeleton of your blog and necessary for holding it up, just posting a skeleton won’t get you very far – Specials and gimmicks are the meat and organs of the blog (not in that order… collectively, they are both the meat and the organs), and it’s what you do with them and how they feed back into the playstyle that makes it all good.

idk what standards are… skin? if any of you have any idea, please tell me

Specials/gimmicks are, well, special because of how ridiculously vast their potential are… they can be anything you want them to be. Literally anything. I’d say the sky’s the limit but that’s a lie BECAUSE IT ISN’T. Specials can be anything you want. Attacks? Sure. Recoveries? Yeah. Defensive moves? Definitely. Mobility-focused moves? Yep. Status effects? Go ahead. Gimmicks? Yes. Memes? Absolutely. Anything and everything else in between? HELL YEAH. And that’s not even getting into the ways you can combine them – recoveries that attack, defensive-based memes, mobility-based status effects… anything you want. Same thing with gimmicks/unique mechanics, they have so much potential and depending on the character can be pretty much anything your imagine can produce.

That’s why Specials and that other thing are so important. They are your chance for you and your character concept to shine, since there is an endless amount of potential for you to work with. You do have to keep it confined to your character’s personality, abilities in the source game, and playstyle (doesn’t really make much sense for Waluigi to whip out an AK-47 unless you’re deliberately meming), but that’s part of the joy of picking different characters. If you know how to put the source material to best use and work with the playstyles and limits of the character, you can create some truly unique stuff that will wow anyone who reads it. And if there isn’t enough source material to work with… see if you can come up with your own moves or mechanics. Smash has PLENTY of moves on PLENTY of different characters that are entirely unique to Smash, so there’s nothing stopping you from doing the same.

…Unfortunately, while I can give you a rough idea of how to come up with a playstyle… Specials and gimmicks are entirely based on you as an author, the character you’ve picked, and the playstyle you decide to stick with. I can spend a decent chunk of this blog telling you to look for important/iconic things your character does, but what you choose and how you decide to implement it is up to you, and knowing what to use and how to use it is kind of what separates a good movesetter from a bad one. And given how much characters, playstyles, and authors can vary, what any of you decide to work with and why you do so is completely beyond me.

Best I can recommend if you’re struggling to come up with moves is to experiment – think about what a character does in their source series and how it’d work if you put it in Smash. If a character is well known for having an air dash in a platformer, as an example, how would that work as a Special or unique mechanic? How similar would it be to the source material (how effective it is, how limited it is, etc.)? How would you balance it if you think it’d be too good/too weak in Smash (additionally, do you want it to be kind of meh, or should it be really good)?

Going off of that example, if you want it to be a good and often-used move, lean towards deg it to be a helpful tool and important to the character: perhaps it’s easy to use, pretty quick to come out and act again afterwards, and not too limited – while you can only use it once in the air without landing, it’s good for both approaching and retreating when needed, and the low risk of using it (you aren’t too vulnerable before and afterwards, only during the short duration of the dash) combined with the effectiveness makes it a pretty valuable move. Yet it isn’t broken – it doesn’t attack in any way and you’re completely vulnerable during the dash, so if you do nothing but dash around or get predictable when using it, you’re going to be punished. That’s a good move!

And if you want it to be a situational move you can’t rely on too often, play around with restricting it a bit more without making it useless. Perhaps it’s limited to only be useable every now and then, with a cooldown similar to something like Wario’s Bike when it’s destroyed taking 6 or so seconds to be useable again. Perhaps the character can’t act out of it, leaving them a sitting duck if the opponent knows where they went. Stuff like that.

And that example just shows you how to balance it. You should also keep in mind how it plays into the character’s playstyle and what they can do in the source material – does it fit the character in the first place, let alone if it’s good or meh? Is this the kind of move you want on your character? Let’s say you were working with Waluigi again and you wanted to give him a shoulder bash move similar to the one I was talking about above. If you’re giving him a playstyle centered around traps and being physically weak on his own, does it fit if you give him a move that’s good both up close and at range, along with being powerful and super versatile? Probably not, so you might want to lean towards other ideas.

(And even then, there are exceptions – what if your character is supposed to be bad at one thing but you intentionally give them a single move that’s good at that to throw opponents off / at least give them something to use in that scenario? See what I mean when I say how varied Specials can get and how the author can play around with them?)

So… yeah. The double-edged sword of Specials and gimmicks is that while the sky is the limit on them (apart from the limits of the character you choose), allowing you to go nuts with your own creativity and come up with some insanely cool things, there isn’t any real way to for people to learn how to make good ones or for people to teach them other than just saying “get more creative lol”. All I can recommend is to keep trying and gather more experience with the format, along with listening to any criticism people give you. If you’re creative, once you get used to the format, good ideas should come to mind easily when you’ve found good inspiration with a character.

By the way… if you’re reading this and you don’t write movesets… if you read a moveset and it’s not good in some shape or form, please tell the author kindly. None of us learn without failing and being told that we’ve failed, and any sort of is EXTREMELY helpful. Thanks.

Being good/knowledgeable about Smash also helps. Knowing how the game works, how characters are balanced/how they play, what sorts of playstyles and mechanics Sakurai gave them based on their source material and personality… all of that can help you get better at deg moves, since having a baseline to go off of can really improve your sense of balancing (what’s okay to put in and what isn’t). It’s partially a self-explanatory thing, getting better at Smash will part-directly-part-indirectly help you get better at movesets, although not quite so vice-versa. So if you really want to get good at movesets, try getting better at Smash, that might help in some ways.

…Is that it? Is that all I need to talk about in this section?

Cool, because finalizing the kit is next.

…we’re not even halfway done, are we? hope you guys like seeing anna

Finalizing the kit + draft

I promise this section won’t be as chunky as the last. I promise.

By this point, I highly recommend you have the playstyle, at least 3 Specials (Up Special is optional and doesn’t entirely count), and whatever gimmicks/unique mechanics you have (or don’t have) for the character written down and checked to see if they fit. While it’s not completely necessary (if you come up with standards and such while thinking of the above, that’s perfectly fine to write down), it’s best to finish the essentials before you focus on the other things.

…oh crap forgot to talk about Up Specials… and that section is long enough… give me a sec.

A “quick” note about Up Specials is that, while Specials are your top priority… Up Specials are usually the exception. 99% of the time, their job is to be the character’s recovery; there are exceptions if you feel like the character either doesn’t need one or it’d fit their playstyle better to lack one (even in Smash itself, look at Jigglypuff), but the vast majority of the time, they’re all going to do the same thing: send the character upwards and sometimes other directions too.

While there are absolutely ways to be creative about it, they shouldn’t be quite as high priority as the other Specials. While other Special slots should never be wasted given how few limits they have + how much better it makes your moveset overall, the fact that the Up Special nearly universally always does the same job as any other moveset or official characters means that you are completely allowed to slack on it a bit, even if you’re an intermediate blogger, even if you’re an ADVANCED blogger. So don’t worry too much if you can’t come up with a good Up Special, or even one at all – you can put it aside and work on it whenever you want. Hell, as long as the rest of the blog is good enough, you can even skip it if you want and tell your audience that you couldn’t come up with one.

the rest of the blog better be good though

…Now, for the rest of the kit.

Standards:

Standards are still important. Not nearly as important as the things I’ve covered earlier, but still important if you’re looking to make a full, fleshed-out kit.

The thing about standards is that they’re far more limited than any of the other parts of a moveset. Unless you COMPLETELY shatter the mold and make them weird as hell because your character demands it, they all fall into the same typical/expected functionality and uses.

Let me sum up like 95% of the official cast, if not more: Jabs are for getting people off of you quickly without much reward (sometimes used for misc. stuff, but only rarely), tilts are for spacing or combos (F-Tilt has range, U-Tilt combos, D-Tilt either has range or combos, sometimes both), Dash Attacks are for getting close to the opponent quickly while attacking and either combo or kill (or both), Smash Attacks are for killing (F-Smash has the most reach and usually kills the earliest, U-Smash is an anti-air and sometimes comes out the fastest, D-Smash hits on both sides and is either the fastest and weakest or the slowest and strongest), aerials are tilts but in the air (varies, but most commonly, N-Air is a combo tool/get-off-me move/both, F-Air is either fast and spaces/combos or is really slow and kills, B-Air is typically for both spacing and killing but is worse for combos if F-Air is faster, U-Air combos and/or kills, and D-Air is almost always a killing spike), and grabs are whatever (pummel for damage, typically F-Throw or B-Throw for killing/damage/resetting neutral, U-Throw sometimes kills and sometimes combos, D-Throw either combos or deals a lot of damage).

There is definitely room for creativity and variance; there are characters out there with weird and unusual standards that almost act like Specials in ways. There are characters in Smash official like G&W, Villager, Mega Man, and Min Min who have a varying number of weird and unique standards for different reasons, and a bunch of those even come with unique mechanics (such as G&W F-Air being a powerful explosion but you can destroy the bomb with a hitbox, Mega Man’s pellets being fireable while moving or shooting 3 in a row, or… pretty much anything involving Min Min’s ARMS). And then there are other characters who have unique standards that have unique properties based on their gimmicks and/or playstyles – K. Rool’s belly armor, Inkling’s Ink, Robin’s two different swords, and there’s even Joker who pretty much has two different sets of standards due to how much they change once Arcene comes out. But there is a system in place because that system works.

When it comes to standard attacks, IF there’s potential for you to go nuts with different abilities or gimmicks, take that opportunity – if you’re making a moveset for Waluigi and you want things like allowing him to charge his F-Tilt like a Smash Attack, making his Up Air send him high like a miniature Up B, or having one of his moves make absolutely zero sense because you can… go ham! People love that kind of stuff, and if the character’s limits allow it, creative standards can really help your blog stand out.

But if there isn’t… don’t worry. Standards are “standard” for a reason – they’re supposed to be the moves your character relies on the most, whereas the stuff like their gimmicks and Specials are, well, gimmicky and special. 99% of characters out there benefit greatly from having simple, reliable standard attacks to fall back on when they can’t spam Specials all day, and people understand that. So if they’re going to have some basic/generic standard, roll with it and make them the best you can.

Take somebody like Lucina, for example. Her entire kit is just her swinging a sword in various ways, and the type of character to lack a gimmick and rely on her standards far more than any of her Specials combined, yet she’s beloved by the community because of how polished her kit of standards is. Being based off of Marth without his space-reliant gimmick, her kit focuses on being basic yet effective; some moves space and combo, some do one better than the other, some moves are slower and riskier yet pack a greater punch, and the rest of her moves cover any weaknesses those moves have. Honestly, as long as you can describe them well, the standards can be any level of quality, and any level of creative.

Pretty much the only rule in place regarding standards in movesets is a very obvious one that applies to pretty much anything in general: try not to copy any moves, and if you have to copy something, copy as few things as possible. There’s only so much you can do when you’re making a moveset for a hand-to-hand brawler-type character and a bunch of their standards have to be punches, but even that is far more interesting to read than a blog where the author just stole moves from various official characters (nobody likes it when most of the moves can be described as “(whatever character this move is stolen from)’s F-Tilt” or something along those lines.

If it fits too well for their F-Air to be an overhead swipe like nearly every swordfighter’s F-Air, that’s fine, just try to describe it like it’s a unique move. Saying “well it’s basically X’s move” is instantly going to turn people away, so don’t do that. As long as you put effort into it and to the readers it at least seems like you put effort in, it’ll be fine.

You guys get the idea? Similar to Specials, what standards you should give to your character is entirely something you should come up with and there’s only so much I can tell you regarding it… obviously you should try to include any signature weapons, magic/spells, or any signature iconic attacks they have that wouldn’t be unique enough for a Special (look at characters like Banjo & Kazooie, Inkling, Mega Man again, or Ness for really good examples). Additionally, always keep in mind their source material’s playstyle and personality – a character like Little Mac only throws punches because he’s a boxer and it doesn’t make sense for him to kick, someone like Wii Fit Trainer has a moveset almost exclusively made of yoga poses because 1) it’s funny and 2) she comes from a series entirely about getting exercise in healthy ways, and fighters like Isabelle come from series that don’t have combat, and as such have moves that reflect the tone of their games (so because Animal Crossing is a lighthearted game about cartoony anthropomorphic animals, her moves are lightheartedly silly and involve various things you’d probably find in her house, like brooms, buckets, and occasional stuff like party poppers or pom poms).

And never forget to make sure the moves overall fit in their Smash-intended playstyle: it’s fine for a few moves to be outliers, but if you’re trying to make a speedy, combo-y character and most of their moves are sluggish finishing blows, you might have to go back to the drawing board.

…See? Less words than the previous section. And this next section is going to be even shorter!

this is not going to continue happening, don’t get your hopes up

Stats:

almost forgot about stats ngl

Stats are both important and not really at the same time, it’s weird.

When I say stats, I mean the core attributes of a character – their relative size (how big they are), their weight, their various speeds (running, walking, air speed, both regular falling and fast-falling), and the jumps they have (how many, how high). They seem like they’re really important in the moveset since they heavily influence a character’s playstyle and how they’re balanced (mobility is key in Smash, being fast or being slow can completely change how good your character is competitively), and they’re important enough that I’d still consider including them mandatory in a full moveset… yet at the same time, few people care about the exact numbers, and you kind of already cover the essentials when you describe the character’s playstyle.

This might be more of a thing for the later section about writing your blog, but the thing about the playstyle section is that you’ll basically be describing your character’s stats in a far more interesting and memorable way than the later stat section that tells you that their dash is the exact same as Rosalina’s (which people aren’t really going to off the top of their head). I guarantee you that every single good playstyle description includes the following information: whether or not the character can take a beating and how hard it is to hit them (weight and size), how fast they are (speed), and how good they are at recovering (partially air jumps). Suddenly, the job of describing stats was done in a far more natural and readable way.

…Simply put, stats are weird. You absolutely should do your research and come up with their stats in the draft – it’ll help you mentally solidify their core attributes far easier if you know their stats relative to the main Smash cast (even better if some are similar to characters you play often). But when it comes to the actual blog… they can stay as simply draft notes, as long as you cover the things I listed above in the playstyle section.

Weird.

Final Smashes + miscellaneous things:

Pro tip: You know all of those additional things that come with most movesets like alternate costumes, animations (entrances, taunts, idles, victory stuff, etc.), and other odd gimmicks like music, unique conversations, spirits, or whatever else random people add?

None of that matters.

I don’t intend to say that those people need to stop doing those things, in fact there’s nothing wrong with that and to a lot of people on this app those things matter. Who am I to tell them to stop doing what they and their audience like?

…But at the same time, and this is something I’m not going to stop saying… movesets are different from actual characters appearing in Smash; stuff like that is definitely interesting when a character comes out and everyone’s seeing what sort of references they make to their source series, but when all of this is on paper… a lot of people don’t care. And it very rarely matters in the grand scheme of things.

The main thing that makes a moveset good is how the author comes up with a kit that’s interesting both casually and competitively (unless they’re specifically gearing it towards one category, but that’s a different story). Good movesets take an idea, big or small, and describe it to the fullest extent – how it’d be used, why it’s used like that, how it fits the character, how it fits into their playstyle, when is a good idea to use it, when is a good idea to not use it, etc… all of that stuff varies not just by author, but by character, by individual input for each move. There’s so much to talk about for so many different ideas out there, and there’s so much potential regarding how somebody can implement a move in their dream character for Smash.

Think of all of the things that make a moveset good, and apply that to adding things like alts or animations. Sure, they’re there and usually kind of cool (if you’re a fan of the topic character, it’s interesting to see what the author pulls from to create all of the cosmetic things)… but once you’re done reading it, that’s it. They did a silly dance for their taunt, their 6th alt is a specific colour because it’s a reference to a specific character or costume in their source, and they get angry during their idles because they’re impatient. This is all character-relevant stuff… but it’s not very interesting, nor is it hard to make… and combining those factors together means that it’s only so interesting to read, and it only took so much effort from the author to write 2 at most sentences about something that, in hindsight, was a pretty obvious choice.

Final Smashes are also part of this category because they all essentially do the same thing, and aren’t considered part of a character’s competitive kit – it’s an all-out attack that gives the character their shining moment to do something completely unique to them (signature attacks abound), but overall they all do the same thing: they’re hard to avoid, hit extremely hard, and look cool. And while you can certainly make them interesting in the same way a standard can be (maybe it damages them when using it, or depends on their gimmick, or gives them a boost in utility rather than acting as a strong attack in the moment… stuff like that)… in the end, Final Smashes are flashy kill moves, and pretty much nothing else. It’s really hard to spice them up.

Again, not to shit on people who put effort into making the character emote perfectly like their source material, or take time out of their day to make legitimately convincing and good-looking alternate costumes for their blog. But when it comes to showing your skill as a writer, all of that is simply presentation, style, a nice cosmetic garnish on the five-star multi-course meal.

It’s good stuff, but never make that the focus of your blog, because it’s not even necessary – most of the good movesets I see nowadays completely skip that stuff and it doesn’t hamper the quality of the b the slightest. I’ve even seen a couple of top movesetters shun them completely, calling them pointless and a waste of time… and sometimes I agree with them. Not always, but sometimes.

If you want to include these things, go ahead. Doing so often helps show your ion for the topic character and can please fans of them. But ultimately, they aren’t very important, and can easily be skipped without issue.

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If you’ve reached this point in your draft notes.. guess what? You’ve completed your draft, and you’re now ready to work on the blog proper!

There are still things to be done, and actually writing the blog is harder than it sounds, but I find the draft is the brunt of the work your creativity needs to do. From here, all we’re doing is optimizing and polishing your presentation of your ideas, describing what you’ve come up with in the best way possible to your readers.

And for those who are getting sick of this blog’s length… good news; we’re at the very least past the halfway point.

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The blog got too long

Unfortunately, the blog got too long. The full product is something like 13+K words long and there’s no way it’ll fit into one blog given Amino’s limits, and it’ll probably be for the best that this behemoth is split into two parts anyways.

Both parts are ed at the same time so you can just tap the link to keep reading.

ON TO THE NEXT PART

ezpz link