13/06/2017
There has been a lot of discussion in the community recently about whether or not controllers that are modded to work with an Arduino should be allowed in tournament. The UO Smash club has decided to not to allow them, for a couple of reasons.
First, while some of the uses of an Arduino might be acceptable (making any controller able to have perfect dashback, shield drops, etc), it is also possible to use the Arduino to create an infinite number of macros, letting you simplify complicated button strings into one set of inputs (which greatly reduces the technical skill requirements of the game). Even if you were to ban macro's specifically, it is basically impossible to enforce allowing one type of controller modification (which still would allow for things such as making it trivial to moonwalk), while banning another.
Second, there have been reports of incorrectly done Arduino mods damaging consoles the controller is plugged into. Our setups are almost entirely provided by the community, and we don't want to open up the risk of someone's personal console getting damaged.
This is our stance for now, although we will listen to the community at large and will look at the rule again once we see what the larger tournament series do.
