And finally, here is my true jimmy rustling post:
There were two main arguments on the podcast: one, offered by Jack, is that many use the low tier character excuse to justify their shortcomings and have a go-to excuse if they lose (which has been debated to death in this thread already), and the other one, which I want to tackle, and it's that the scene isn't big enough so many of these characters are underepresented.
Now, I'm sure this will piss people off but I'll go ahead and say it anyway:
Let me preface by saying I do think the shitters are actually shitters, but the idea is, how shitty are they? Like how do we know just how much they can compete? Well, the usual argument revolves around, "the best representatives of these characters are struggling." Now, there is validity to that. But I would counter by saying, our scene is so small, that the best representatives for these characters are not necessarily the best POSSIBLE representatives for these characters.
As in, there are only so many competitive players, and only so many top level players. In a bigger scene, there are more top level players, and thus, through sheer math, it's more likely we'd see at least some of them maining shitters, and thus, almost inevtiably, have more shitter representation in top 8's, at least occasionally.
This is not a dig at anyone manining shitters, and no, I don't think I would do better myself. But excuse me for thinking if Chris G took this game seriously, we'd be seeing Green Arrow almost as frequently as we see, say, Catwoman in top 8's.
Speaking of which, and I agree Catwoman isn't low tier, but it's pretty obvious that had she not been picked up by one of the scene's best players who had the patience and dedication to be good with her, as well as the offline scene to grind out her match-ups, she'd be looked at as a complete shitter, in line with these other characters, simply because she's underepresented.
If say, Sonic Fox legit mained Ares, I think he'd be making top 8's semi-regularly. That's really not a knock on Mr. Aquaman -- he is the best with that character. But the fact is the scene is small, and there are only a select few super top players, many of which happen to main top tiers. If our scene was as big as Capcom, we'd potentially have someone close to Sonic Fox's level maining say, Joker, and doing well with the character.
It's pretty simple logic really, and again, I don't see how it's debatable. It's really not necessarily anyone's fault. It does take a lot for someone to do well with non top tier characters. You need a player with sufficient skill, an offline scene, great training partners, etc... That's not available to everyone, the scene is too small, and online sucks.
I'm really not singling him out for the purposes of a blow-up but how do we know that Grrr, who started maining Joker in 2014, is the best possible representative with that character, that his opinions on his match-ups are spot on, and nobody would do much better? To be clear, this is just a random example as I've never heard anything from Grrr and he seems like a super nice guy. I'm just highlighting a point.