"Fate of Kabal", King of the Roster?

[Temp]

This "Kabal levels up our community" logic falls into a bit of a regress. Sure, people will get better fighting Kabal. You know who's also gonna get better? Kabal players. Fighting games are ALWAYS better with more balance. The logic of "we need Kabal" implies that if there wasn't an OP character in the game, NRS would need to put one in. I don't think anyone really believes that.

Hell, you think some of the MvC2 guys didn't have this logic? You think Sentinel's OP'ness made Ruby players better? No, it made them OBSOLETE. They didn't level up enough, and they never will. At the end of the day, Sentinel has more tools. Is Kabal as good as Sentinel? Probably not. Can Kabal be beaten? Sure... for now. Kabal isn't fully developed yet, though. For all we know, these 7-3 match-ups could be 8-2 match-ups in a year.

For the record, I'm against the ban because farming out Kabal is going to help develop a better MK10. MK9 is great, but it's had its run. Let the "Kabal experiment" continue so when the next installment comes, NRS will have a roadmap on how to create/balance a game where we never have to deal with this shit again.

 

[Pig Of The Hut]

Noob online is God. 6-12 frames of lag? NO PROBLEM!!

As for your "3-7." Do more specials? I thought that's all you do anyways. Silly Kenshi players downplaying their character's viability. Seriously though, it can't be that bad if Noob can some what hold his own. Noob/Kabal is 4-6 imo. It is a shitty match up of cat and mouse, but I've been saying this for awhile now. Kabal's biggest weakness is being in the corner. Guess who can end a match easily in the corner? Noob can easily advance under IaGB with dash d3's. And portals make Kabal wanna jump, jump... or Nomad dash, which I'm cool with. Drop the portal in front of ya bro, you just ran into it, GG. If Kabal has more than one meter, then it's time to pump the brakes. EN ND and cancels are a bitch to deal with. If he doesn't have that meter though, I'm coming at him hard.

Regardless, that's not the issue. Kabal is braindead. Low Risk/ High Reward, tools that cover all weaknesses. An hour of learning ND cancels and you're on your way to being a Kabal player. Kabal players lose because the majority flow chart too much with him instead of adapting to their opponent. Smarter players learn to mix it up and take advantage of the brokeness he has, which is why we see him at the top all the time in majors, used by the same people.

Stay free

 

[Rathalos]

The list goes on. It takes a lot to ban a character in a fighting game if its not a 1) boss character and 2) system exclusive. Matter of fact I can't name a single character off the top of my head that is banned and a normal character that isn't system exclusive.

The SC community banned Hilde in 4, which I actually agree with, in fact they probably should have banned her from the very start. She is way more fucked up then Kabal.

They also banned all those "anime" characters in 4, which is fine I guess.

In 5 they banned Devil Jin, which I do not agree with, that was just them being lazy and ban happy.

 

[AREZ God of War]

REO himself said that he attributes most of his Majors wins to Kabal. He tried Kung Lao at Evo and didn't make top 8.

Not taking away from REO as he is the definitive Kabal.

Yea and REO playing Kabal for 2 years as opposed to REO playing Kung Lao for 2 weeks, just like CDjr did w/ Kabal at EVO. How can u compare them? Never say that REO can't do something cuz he'll turn around and do it just to prove you wrong.

 

[Skkra]

I don't agree that having Kabal as some overpowered "final boss" motivating factor is a good thing. A ton of people have said that beating Kabal is a big reason they strive to improve... shouldn't the purpose of a fighting game be that you're striving to improve overall? I don't hear a lot of people worried about Sindel and Kano and wanting to grind those matchups out.

MK9 more than a lot of other fighting games out now (KOF, MVC, TTT, SF4 in particular) has glaring balance issues that prevent a good portion of the cast from standing a serious competitive chance. NRS nerfed some characters (Kano's knives?) way too early, and left others to sit in bottom tier land by doling out what feels like sometimes random frame data (@Ninj and I have discussed this at length) and selective armor.

And even with all that said, it's still an incredibly fucking fun game. If the online hadn't been garbage, I'd have been able to take it seriously, and I think a lot of others would've as well. It just makes me sad to see such a clear low-tier echelon of cool characters that feel wasted. SF4 underwent several iterations and has evolved into a very balanced game where almost no character is uncompetitive. You're seeing viable top level players with nearly every character at this point, including Hakan/Gen/Blanka/you name it.

 

[VOR]

Kabal's not too good it's just that too many other characters suck.