Ultra David and Chen are both making such great points and essentanly explaining what me and others said all along. The game is just over two months old, there is a lot of stuff that need to be discovered in the game, and every time there was a character that people thought it was broken, they found ways to deal with that character. And it can very possibly happen with Aquaman right now.
These guys are very much important to the NRS community, and Ultra David doesn't enough credit for what he does for our community. He should get much more respect then he does.
Here's some other things we know. There was not a Swamp Thing, Captain Cold, Blue Beetle or Gorilla Grodd even close to the top 8.
Other characters had either 1 or 2 notable players who made it through pools only to hit a brick wall against Aqua's and Adams, characters like Braniac, Cheetah, Joker, and Firestorm.
Even in Grand Finals the most notable Flash player decided he would rather try the Aquaman mirror than try to deal with the Flash vs Aqua match up.
Certain small fixes could really improve the game's balance. Few would argue I2 needs a complete overhaul to be balanced. These changes should probably happen sooner rather than later in order to keep the game alive not just for the pros but for the online players that make up the majority of the playerbase. I tried playing Swamp Thing for a week straight and dear God I feel bad for Swamp Thing mains. I played Aquaman for 1 hour and I was already more effective than Swamp Thing in almost every match up.
I don't disagree with you. We had these same discussions during MKX's tournament life. Some really great improvements were made. Not everyone agreed with every change but I think most people would agree most characters had at least 1 tournament viable variation by the end. Those changes didn't happen because everyone playing Simply said "That's life there will always be low tiers" Thats not really a way to make a better fighting game.
Alex and FANG (easily bottom 2) are the only characters who weren't really represented much in SFV at EVO. And even then, Xian has bopped plenty of ppl with FANG in the past. That's pretty close to be fair.
As an Alex main I feel the pain when playing Akuma, Rashid, Cammy and a few of his other bad MUs. But I will say that an uphill battle in Street Fighter is NOTHING compared to a counterpick in NRS. You can legit lose to ppl walking backwards and abusing 1-2 moves in NRS games if they have decent spacing and a solid counterpick. You can legit lose to a less talented or less technical player if the MU is bad enough in NRS games if your opponent knows how to exploit it.
I have never lost to a player who is noticeably worse than I am at any Street Fighter game, no matter how bad the MU.
It won't be perfect--and I2 is a step in the right direction from IGAU and MKX--but Christ if NRS doesn't need to start hiring in the QA & balancing dept.
I won't go into another argument but I will just gave you both this one message and that's it.
IJ2 doesn't need an overhaul, you guys just overreact. Like I said above, as well as Ultra David and Chen, any character that was thought to be broken, people found ways to fight that character. And that's because NRS didn't patch the game until now. I'm not saying that back when NRS patched MKX there were no changes that could've been done, but AT LEAST some of the changes were clearly made just because the community were crying to much and for to long. At then end MKX has become the most balanced MK game to date, but the community cried to much when they shouldn't have. Now NRS haven't patched game at all, people were crying about Atro and Adam and what not, and look what happened.
Also regarding Swamp Thing and Captain Cold and such, IJ2 has over 30 characters and it's barely 2 months old with a lot of potentially undiscovered tech (like David and Chen said) and it didn't had any balance patch until now, while SFV doesn't have that many characters and of course it is a much older game that has had a few updates by now, that's not a fair comparison. And about the feeling of balance in SFV, maybe it's just because (no offense) you're just not good enough in IJ2 like you are in SFV? Just saying.
Also Honey Bee picked Aquaman not because of the balance but because Dragon got into his had in after their previous set, once HB managed to shake it off he went back to Flash and he got much better results, but Dragon's mind game have worked.
And finally, QA has nothing to do with Balance. QA is all about checking the general functionality of the game and finding bug in it, not checking the balance of the roster.
That's it. This will be my only comment on that matter in that regard.
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