I really don't think people realize just how much work/money would've have to gone into a new revision of the game to at least be considerably serviceable. The majority of gripes everyone had are hardcoded into the game and wouldn't have been remediable via a patch.
And even those that were, it usually went something like this:
"KUNG LAO'S UNSAFE MOVES AREN'T UNSAFE ENOUGH"
"YOU MADE KANO TOO GOOD"
"PATCH THIS MOVE CAUSE ITS USELESS RIGHT NOW.. WAIT WTF WHY U GIVE IT ARMOR"
Not to mention CD Jr's (yeah, Mr. "Cage and Kenshi are braindead nikka"), infamous try-hard sugar coat of "we want one more patch just to nerf Kabal... JUST KABAL. Juuuuuust Kabal."
Amongst other mechanical oversights like.. Cyrax in general. Can you imagine the big "I give up" on NRS's faces when exploit after exploit was discovered? I don't know where people get the $40k figure from either, fixing all of this in absolutes.. would've spilled well over into six figures. Let's be serious here, Warner Bros aren't going to make that kind of investment for an IP that relatively speaking, they don't care about, to appease 200-300 people for a hot minute.
So yeah, let's "balance" the game and start complaining about some other character's day 1 tech. Honestly, all the shit we witnessed/discovered in 2013 alone goes to show how much there may yet be to decipher in the game.
I agree with Slayer personally. Id still rather play and watch mk9 than IGAU and I found the matches much more exciting in mk9. I love the movement speed especially. Its a shame the game had stuff like the input bug, meter drain glitch and p1 advantage (and kabal) because if not I think it may have been viewed by the fgc masses in a more positive light and may still be alive and well.
Still my favorite game though.
By definition, this wasn't a glitch. Just sayin'.
Because the balance is completely broken.
Evo 2013 ended with two broken characters fighting each other. It wasn't hype for me to watch at all.
I saw ridiculously overpowered Cyrax reset combos, and ridiculously overpowered NDC block strings.
All those Kabal players were trying to stay the fuck away from Cyrax, what grand finals were you watching?