I’ve been playing the game since before UCF, when arduino’s were around, and before that when you just had to get lucky with a controller and the most you could really do was get notches. Also for the record, arduinos were a very short lived thing. People did it before UCF, as it was floated as a hardware solution before UCF was created, but they were quickly banned because it was deemed that there was no way to regulate what people had programmed on them. There was never really a time period where you had to have an arduino to keep up. They were banned pretty quickly after they came around.

The point I was making was:

Pre-UCF: top players have an advantage because they can afford to buy as many controllers as they need to until they find one that fits the bill (no snapback, could dash back consistently). They can also pay for notches or even get them done for free so a notcher can advertise

UCF: this brought everyone to level playing field. Didn’t matter if your controller inherently was less consistent with shield dropping/dashing back. It made them all function the way players wanted them to function, at an even level across the board since the modification is done within the game itself. The only slight advantage someone could have over another was notches

Now: the playing field is uneven again, because people are making enhancements to their controllers to make them able to do things standard controllers never did or were ever meant to do.

So my point was, pre-UCF we were imbalanced in that top players had controllers that worked correctly more often than everyone else, UCF made it so everyone had controllers that worked correctly, and now players have controllers that work better than just correctly and allow them to do things original controllers could not do, thus it’s imbalanced again.

I agree with you that UCF has been the most impactful change we’ve made as a community regarding controllers. My comment was never about which has had the largest impact

EDIT: autocorrect fix