Apologies, this one's a little long lol.
The reason why i brought up MK 9 was to illustrate why Top 32 doesn't matter. No one remembers who placed top 32 at those tournaments, but they remember the top 8. They remember who won.
Speaking of Chris G, what was the last major he WON after year one of Injustice's life?
Is it far fetched to think that if he had played a better character at the level of his GA, he could have won? No.
Raiden has won a major and the other characters have placed. What was the last MAJOR tournament that Kano placed in?
If EVO is supposed to be indicative of the World's best players, and all of the BEST Kano mains were there, and the best they could manage was top 32, that's mediocre. It's indicative of Kano not being nearly as tournament viable as you say. This is a knock on the character, not the players.
Shinnok has placed at more Majors than Kano.
And no, i don't count nor care about locals. Sorry, but they're not representative of the talent pool that you get at a major.
Why do you think there is so little representation for Kano?
Give me five, tournament viable reasons why I would choose Kano over:
Quan Chi
Tanya
Tempest Lao
Erron Black
D'Vorah
What is my incentive to choose Kano over them if my goal is to win?
Who cares about remembering who made top 32?! What has this got to do with Kano being good or bad? Lol
Actually Chris G played Batgirl and couldn't win, he had to switch back to GA to win.
Ah but you said Kano ISN'T winning, present tense. Don't just switch so it suits your argument.
EVO is the competition with the most players, but not everyone ends up playing their best on that day. Look at DJT, he got 5th because he wasn't playing as well as he usually does. Please stop with the horrible argument of "tournament placings = character tier" because it is not as good an argument as everyone on this forum seems to think it is. The Commando Kanos were clearly not playing optimally at EVO, do not try and insinuate everything means it's Kanos fault and he's bad instead of the player. Bone Shaper Shinnok didn't even make top 8 over Reptile so that argument is void.
So what if Shinnok has placed at more majors than Kano? Bone Shaper Shinnok's obviously better than Kano anyway so what's your point? Again this has nothing to do with how good or bad Kano is.
For the love of god...(EVERY KANO READING THIS BURN THE FOLLOWING SENTENCES INTO YOUR MIND, THIS IS THE STUPIDEST ARGUMENT YOU CAN USE TO TRY AND SAY KANO IS BAD) if you think that the sole reason for a lack of representation of Kanos in tournament is because he's not viable or a bad character then you're an idiot. (Not a knock on you Rude, I'm just saying)
Here are reasons why a character is underrepresented in no particular order of importance:
1. The character is too technical for players to pick up and play
2. People want easy wins so they pick a top tier character
3. People cannot afford to travel to all the tournaments (or at least majors) across America
4. They are loyal to another character and will not play more than that one character
5. The character does not fit the archetype a player wants to play, ie someone who plays rushdown won't play a zoner
6. A counterpicker may decide to play a different character because the matchup then becomes advantageous for them
7. Or of course there is the slim possibility that the character is just not going to win any matches, but even then in the case of Kano that's not true because then Showtime wouldn't have made top 32 at EVO. So please do not try and say that the reason Kano is not seen so much is only because of his tier placement because I'm tired of hearing that frankly ignorant argument. (Again this isn't just a shot at you Rude but I'm not in a great mood lol)
An arbitrary number of reasons to counter a specific argument selected solely to emphasise that Kano isn't top tier is not going to change anything about how good or bad Kano is. We all know Kano isn't top tier so that's really not worth discussing.
You know what? If you want to win easy peasy straight away by only needing 5 minutes to learn a character then you
can just go and play a top tier character (which is what most of the community seems to have gone and done anyway) and you'll have an easier time winning, but what does that achieve for you as a player? Your fundamentals aren't going to improve, in fact they might even lessen if the character's easy enough, but you will find it easier to win. If Kano were easy to win with he'd be rated better than he is but he's not so he isn't, that's just something we have to accept (or at least thought others might accept but clearly didn't). If you want to win and have the wins be more satisfying however then playing a character like Kano is for you. Kano is not an unviable character, he can clearly contend with some of the higher tier characters in the game, but don't expect to learn him in 5 minutes and win. You need to have a solid neutral and great footsies to accentuate what this character excels at, and in the end isn't it a better thing for you as a player to have won with a character that might not have all the same tools the top tiers have but still has the tools to compete? I mean you saw the Tanya mirrors at CEO, they were boring as shit. But Coach Steve vs DJT at EVO? That was hype.
So if you want to summarise both sides in one go it'd look a little like this:
If you want to win...but you want easy wins then spend 5 minutes in practice with a top tier.
If you want to win...but also want to improve as a player then play characters that reward you for having great fundamentals, like Kano.
People like you will do more damage to the Kano Community with your over-blown tournament viability talk than myself, Saltshaker, or m2dave will ever do in being realistic about the character.
That's a horrible attitude to have. How will deciding I don't want a character that doesn't take much effort to win with "damage" the Kano community? The only damage being done is the abhorrent pessimism intoxicating this community since the idea of doing what the Kenshi and Kitana communities did by crying out for buffs (
which we were openly criticising might I add) took hold of everyone who isn't actually out at majors. Why do you think it is that Noobe, Showtime, Coach Steve, myself, Royale, I$AAC, FlappyDaniel, and the rest I'm forgetting that I would list are sticking with Kano and think he's pretty much fine (besides fixes obviously)? It's because we are dedicated enough to approaching the character the right way and are dedicated to not only optimising our playstyle with him but also don't mind improving our fundamentals in the process. Also note how most of these people are the only ones in the Kano community
actually going to majors and competing and are STILL sticking with the character yet the ones that post online more are the ones that are dropping him.
PS. Don't get me wrong, I don't think there's anyone who's opposed to getting a buff or two but it's the constant dreary whining (and arguable downplaying) that's ebbing from the majority of the Kano community that post on TYM often that's really destroying what the Kano community at least started off being about. If people really need an overhead to make the character work it's not the character that's the problem.