On Injustice's life:
I agree with Coolwhip...it was never allowed to live. We all live in bubbles within bubbles when it comes to niche scenes like ours. People quitting or dropping the game more recently due to various reasons is one thing but I think a lot of people here really don't get just how much damage was done to this game competitive life in the first few months.
To put it in perspective:
A couple weeks ago Maximillion posted a new video of his Batgirl against some of his subscribers and reading through the comments actually lends some insight into fighting game players/viewers outside our scene and what they think of the game. Some have issues (fair or otherwise) with the games art style and presentation as well as the netcode....but there's a *LOT* of comments about how the game used to be a lot of fun before super OP scorpion ruined it, and a ton of people still complaining to this day about Supes and Adam. I tried having a conversation/arguing with a number of them and a lot of them don't even believe me when I tell them that Supes is arguably not top 5, and that Bane arguably is.
The people who insinuate that our communities negative attitude is somehow responsible for the death of our games are generally completely full of crap IMO....but in a roundabout way they may actually have a point ironically. I don't think the impression our community gives off really means anything....but the impression that we project about our game very well might.
On the subject of variation lock and tournament standards:
Here's the thing, I think I may have made a bigger case then anyone here in favor of not having variation lock but I'm partially arguing devils advocate. When you get right down to it I don't really strongly believe either direction. I only know what I want from the end result...but I can see the pitfalls of both sides. Here is my concern about MKX:
I
very strongly believe that if we have variation lock this game will devolve into counterpicking faster than we have ever seen before. You can say that I'm talking out of my ass and there's no way I can possibly know that for sure when the game hasn't come out....and you're right...but just take a moment and consider this: throughout the history of fighting games has there even been a fighter with a roster that massive which has been even remotely close to well balanced? When you have this many conflicting tools and designs to consider I honestly don't think its possible to avoid the fact that some characters are just plain going to overwhelm other ones.
Also, its tempting to talk about this game and its roster as if there are 90 characters in it, but its important to remember IMO that while that may be technically true from a certain point of view its also possible that they may not be complete characters in a sense.
I do not believe this is a 90 character game. I believe this is a 30 character game with multiple variations of each character to give them the tools to handle matchups that would be too overpowering for others. I think allowing variation change may force us to consider a characters entire toolset in matchups and counterpicking rather than just simplifying it to variation. Maybe that's too radical of an idea to employ for a game thats not even out yet, but if it doesn't work out I also think it would probably be much easier for our community to change to variation lock rather than the other way around.
Finally, on the subject of acidglow: I'd like to take this time to call out everyone on this site for not buying enough of my shirts and forcing me to work full time.
If anything, still allowing the winner to pick variant strongly deemphasizes counterpicking. Because you know that, regardless if you switch character, the other player still has a chance to adjust to keep things level.
