It seems like all you guys arguing over why they changed what they did are forgetting the fact the competitive scene is still a very small minority of the people who bought this game.
In-game balance is meant to create balance between both the lowest level of play and the highest level of play. I personally didn't think that it was bad, but understand that you can't yell, "stop crying and level up," to anyone outside of the competitive scene without them laughing and putting the controller down.
It's a game. To us it's a hobby, to most buying it, it's simply the next game in a very long line of games they plan on buying, and to NRS it's a business, and it's their job to make sure the people who are just buying it because it was the next big game, continue to play it long enough for them to shove DLC down their throats.
When a character has a tool that is as good as Ice Klone that they activate by pressing three buttons, it's hard to balance it between all levels of play, and I bet Subzero is still the best character at the lowest level of play because of it and his other tools: 50/50's, a slide, a projectile that wins all trades, etc.
Just be happy that they are actually interested in what the competitive community has to say and take comfort in the fact there is a discussion at all because I have seen entire franchises of competitive titles fade away due to balancing toward the casual player, because, again, at the end of the day, the competitive communities for games may be the loyal following, but they don't bring a fraction of the revenue to the table.
