It's useless to the competitive community, for people who just play, it's a cool looking move. Everyone who's not competitive doesn't care you can poke between a string.
Yeah and those casuals would be pissed if we couldn't poke between the string.
Oh wait nope. That's wrong. They're casuals. They don't care either way, so whats the harm in trying to make sure the strings you include actually have a purpose. Strings with no unique advantage that can be poked out of, and moves with no unique advantage that are negative on HIT really shouldn't exist. Both can be designed for (the first would exist for combo's or maybe trap situations, and the second for juggles or because of good on block data), but just having them as they were in 9 means they basically wasted time even animating them.
And for what it's worth, i feel like injustice was....kinda better about this(at least on the characters who felt finished). Hopefully it means they're learning. I don't expect everything to work(even games that are better about this tend to have a few), but there really were too many in 9 and injustice.
edit- i'm shocked on some of the responses on this. Seriously guys?
What we want them to do-
String 1- good block pressure, weak damage
String 2- risky but a good punish/read tool
String 3- great on block but almost no damage potential outside of chip
string 4- space creator
with some of them comboing better than others and some giving up damage for hard knockdown or better position or whatever.
What we're afraid they'll actually do-
String 1- good block pressure, can't be punished, high damage, leads to combos, great combo finish with hard knockdown and good damage, all while curing world hunger.
Strings2-4: autoposts embarrassing childhood videos of you on youtube.
Now granted obvious hyperbole, and I don't expect them to get it right the first time, but this is what it boils down to. Which of those situations has more variety? It's sure as hell not the second one.
I don't expect them to be psychic, so yeah the launch is going to be meh, but continued support means that they can assess the meta as it's developed(3 or even 6 months to start, and then maybe more frequent after that), and make changes based on that.
As for casuals vs competitive people, there's very viable ways to do this sort of thing. While we'll never have the purchasing power of the casual community, and tie in DLC will reign supreme because of that, they can still do balance updates because frame data is in some ways the least work intensive thing to change.
The real issue is the amount of money it takes to get patches approved, so if you just do what SF has been doing, and maybe do an expansion pack for 10-20 every year and a half or so, with decent patches in between, you can absolutely see a real profit, as one or two characters can draw in casuals, and the comp community will eat it up, for SUBSTANTIALLY less work, and if you don't like that model it sure as hell seems like KI is doing something right.
I get why these business plans don't change, but honestly, with just a few decent frame data changes in MK9, you could essentially add characters to the roster for the competitive crowd, or really just add new moves(because barka up 4 might as well not be a thing, and with just some mild changes it could be). I really think the over focus on DLC winds up on them missing out on easy money from the competitive crowd.