Kokonoe banned from Rebel Up tournament series

[TAI-X]

I may be overthinking this, but they probably saw Koko's strength as added "value" for the money, and decided that it wouldn't raise a significant backlash from the Japanese community for as long as her overpowered version stayed console-only. Let's remember that CP is still technically Japan-only for the moment, stuff that isn't in arcades really isn't relevant to the JPN competitive scene, and ArcSys is still apathetic towards non-Japanese markets that have no arcades anymore. Kokonoe's initial overpowered release was tailored for casual netplayers and people more interested in BB's story and characters than the game itself. It seems likely that she'll receive massive nerfs for her arcade debut, once they've finished making most of their CP money from the console audience.

Normally we would have heard about BBCPII by now, but Team Blue has been preoccupied with their contractual obligation P4U2.

Edited January 22, 2014 by TAI-X

[LegendaryRath]

AFAIK, block switching doesn't IB. Also, this whole plan of "You know, just instant block flawlessly for a while and then counter assault out" only works up until the point when the player decides to like, do a mixup. It's not like "keep you in a blockstring until until they can hit you with a black hole" is their only option or something.

Oh, and also, you're wrong Valk beating her to 50% just from guard bonus - watch the video more closely. Kokonoe is at 51% when Valk is at 48%. She probably could have gone into blackhole a couple of hits earlier, which would have rendered the CA wasted/ineffective because the black hole is invulnerable from frame 1 until like, forever. (I mean really? 218 frames of complete invulnerability?)

Regardless, being able to put the opponent into a situation where their ONLY option is "instant block and reversal or hope you build enough meter to counter assault" is just absurd with how easy it is to set up. (Because no one should ever get hit by midscreen 2A, right?)

This is the problem. It's simply not a case of "oh, hey, give people more time and they'll figure out how to beat Kokonoe." It's actually the reverse. New ways for Kokonoe to kill people are being discovered MUCH faster than ways for other people to fight back.

Great post. I was wondering how to express my feelings about the "infinite" correctly, but you just about summed it all up.

[Eternal Blaze]

Ban the hoe till they patch/fix her.

If you were playing Koko tbh you had it coming.. or did you simply not notice being Goku around nothing but Saibamen?

If you have a car that's obviously faulty you don't just keep driving it till it "proves to be broken", you fuckin park it till it gets fixed or you go fix it immediately -__-

The same discussion started with Injustice when they wanted Scorpion banned and people said "wait for results", only for him to get 3 slots in top 8 in the next tourney and make it the lamest top 8 to watch. We don't need to wait till that happens and make the game look bad for everyone watching, just put a temporary ban on her till she gets fixed which hopefully won't take too long.

[Loli Bacon]

Ban the hoe till they patch/fix her.

If you were playing Koko tbh you had it coming.. or did you simply not notice being Goku around nothing but Saibamen?

If you have a car that's obviously faulty you don't just keep driving it till it "proves to be broken", you fuckin park it till it gets fixed or you go fix it immediately -__-

The same discussion started with Injustice when they wanted Scorpion banned and people said "wait for results", only for him to get 3 slots in top 8 in the next tourney and make it the lamest top 8 to watch. We don't need to wait till that happens and make the game look bad for everyone watching, just put a temporary ban on her till she gets fixed which hopefully won't take too long.

You have too much faith in ASW. They won't fix her until BBCPII, which based on previous track records won't be for another year.

[TheRealBobMan]

My bad on the video observation.

You're still likely to build enough meter before she gets enough for the super if you just IB 2-3 moves before the auto-IB thing triggers, depending on how much she had before initiating the block string. That auto-IB thing was put in the game probably to prevent any potentially missed things like this from being too powerful, and it looks like it would do a decent enough job if she didn't have an unblockable super that's apparently really invincible (sweet merciful crap why did they think that was a good idea?). Being forced to wait around until she does a mixup and you can escape (unless she has airtight strings into high/low attacks that are safe and lead back into the block string) or gives you enough meter to CA out isn't fun game play when she can win off of 1-2 combos. Maybe if she had Millia's/Chipp's damage output it'd be a little different.

It sounds like a large combination of factors are making her really strong... and going by TAI-X's post, I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't care since she's a console-only character (something I didn't know). Most of their competitive scene is based around arcades anyway, and there's a precedent of banning anything that's not in the arcade version of games.

Oh well. *Fart sound*

[Sophisticat]

TRB and CEO are specifically allowing Koko for tourney play to see what comes out of it and whether she's really ban worthy or not. I guess we'll know in a couple weeks, eh?

As for me, who gives a shit? This thing has been blown way out of proportion.

More playing, less whining.

[Wonderswan]

TRB and CEO are specifically allowing Koko for tourney play to see what comes out of it and whether she's really ban worthy or not. I guess we'll know in a couple weeks, eh?

As for me, who gives a shit? This thing has been blown way out of proportion.

More playing, less whining.

While there is a lot of whining going on, I think for the most part people want to know what they are going to be doing with their time. It's also not exactly blown out of proportion, as she is legit OD in a big way.

We can start grinding on the important stuff once we know if she's in or out, since she'll basically be the character to beat at any tourney.

As for the Injustice finals, that was great for a mainly US game, but with BB the JP need to brought into consideration as well. Not in favor of a ban, but an EVO top 8 with like 6 Kokonoe in it will be some truly lame shit. =/

[TAI-X]

As we saw with Metaknight in SSBB, these things snowball quickly once someone takes the initiative to ban. If Kokonoe is not rebalanced before EVO (very likely at this point), it's practically a given that she will be banned from the event and every other tourney that matters.

[YukiBlue]

You say that as if it's a bad thing.

Koko mirrors for EVO grand finals, kill me now.

[Angel-tastic]

Greetings all.

So this Kokonoe ban kind of rubs me the wrong way, and I really think that there's a better solution, so I made an account pretty much just to make this post. Please take a moment to consider this option and hopefully it will resolve this issue in a way that's fair to everyone. I put my idea in boldface below in case you don't want to read all the way through my wall of text.

To start off, I absolute agree that Kokonoe is broken and that something should be done, but I don't like banning her as the solution. That's just not really fair to all the Kokonoe mains for a variety of reasons. Firstly, it's sort of a waste of the considerable amount of time it no doubt took them to learn the character. Now I don't play Kokonoe (I main Izayoi), so I don't know how difficult she is execution-wise, but for Izayoi, it took me months to learn all her tricky combos like the j.BAC stuff, and the setups you need to know for a character that doesn't have a lot of mix-up to her name, memorizing all the match-up specific combos and tactics, etc., and if Kokonoe is anything like that, I'd be really demotivating to lose all that invested time. Secondly, even when Arcsys eventually re-balances her probably next year or something and she gets un-banned, the Kokonoe mains are still going to be way behind. Honestly, I don't expect Kokonoe's gameplay style to change much if at all. Really, all that needs to be done probably is stuff like reducing her character combo rate, some proration and blockstun values, and removing Jamming Dark for instance, so she'll probably play pretty similarly. This means that Kokonoe mains will miss out on a year's worth of matchup and tournament experience that will still be viable even after she's fixed, so Kokonoe mains will have tons of catching up to do. Lastly, some people are just really interested in particular characters. I was so in love with Izayoi's play-style that I pretty much bought a PS3 and imported the game just to main her (I played the other BBs on the other systems, so I didn't have a PS3 yet). If the character I bought the game and console just to play got banned, that would make me just want to quite the game. I'd probably end up playing Mu or Nu instead, but I wouldn't enjoy that game as much as I do with Izayoi.

Anyway, I feel like there's a more fair way to go about this. Instead of banning Kokonoe outright, why not just give Kokonoe mains a sort of handicap instead? Let's say something like no Jamming Dark and no Banishing Ray. If a Kokonoe main uses either of these specials in a match, it counts the same as pausing the game and they forfeit the match. I feel like something really simple like that would address most of major issues people have with her. Without using those two moves she has no unblockable reset, no infinite blockstring, no touch-of-death. The Kokonoe mains wont really lose a whole lot like this either since these thing will most certainly be nerfed out of her anyway, but this way they can still use the character that they like and whom they've invested a lot of time into while practicing combos that they'll need in BBCP2. Sure, she's still a strong character without these, but I feel like that would bring her down the the "S Tier" level and give people more time to practice and flesh out the matchup and learn how to handle her without her completely warping the metagame, and besides this benefits everyone else as well because everyone can still get valuable match-up experience against Kokonoe without getting pwned by her more questionable tactics.

So what does everyone think about this idea?

I feel like that's really a viable solution and I'd like to see some TOs at least give it a shot before banning Kokonoe outright.

I don't know if this is a good place to share this or not. If it isn't, please inform me of where I should post this so I can take it up with the relevant people.

Thanks.

[Dark Ranger88]

Don't ban Kokonoe, but handicap her instead.

An interesting suggestion, but it could create some really tragic situations. At this point Kokonoe mains have been grinding that stuff out for months now. In a tense tournament it could be really easy for someone to accidentally input one of the banned moves and get disqualified, even if they were trying to play "fair and square."

Now that would cause one hell of a controversy. Especially if they are about to win when they get DQ'd.

[reaVer]

Instead of banning Kokonoe outright, why not just give Kokonoe mains a sort of handicap instead? Let's say something like no Jamming Dark and no Banishing Ray. If a Kokonoe main uses either of these specials in a match, it counts the same as pausing the game and they forfeit the match. I feel like something really simple like that would address most of major issues people have with her. Without using those two moves she has no unblockable reset, no infinite blockstring, no touch-of-death.

The problem is that people play this game using their instincts and will use these things even by accident. It's also absurd to have players lose games because they did a move. This essentially comes down to the no-sweep rule. The major problems with kokonoe are:

1. She's paid DLC

2. She's OP

Even if she was OP, it wouldn't be as bad as it is now as noone (except those willing to pay) can obtain her moveset and play her to get a feel for it. So it means that unlike for example Eddie in AC (who was rather absurd) where people had time to find counters and what not, for BBCP this simply does not apply. This means that she is part of a pay 2 win DLC package and this is why she should be banned.

[Ctrlaltwtf]

It's not like the character came out 4 years ago. The most anyone's ever invested is like 2.5 months which isn't very long at all.

[bakahyl]

It's not like the character came out 4 years ago. The most anyone's ever invested is like 2.5 months which isn't very long at all.

I am not sticking up for Kokonoe but i have some problems to what you said:

- Characters had changes from CSE and some of them were so major that they have become almost different characters (like Nu) and "the most anyone have invested in CP is like 2.5 months" can be said for many people

- and like addressed earlier in this thread, there are new people who have started playig BB with CP

[Blade]

It's my experience that ARC handles things in this way:

Phase One: Character is Broken

Phase Two: Character is beaten with Nerf Stick

Phase Three: Character is Weak as all hell.

Phase Four: Character gets reasonable buffs but nothing too substantial...balance complete!

It takes a while to get to Phase Four, in fact you'd be lucky to make it that far. Justice and Kliff haven't.

[Dark Ranger88]

Phase One: Character is Broken

Phase Two: Character is beaten with Nerf Stick

Mind if I sig this?

[Airk]

I am not sticking up for Kokonoe but i have some problems to what you said:

- Characters had changes from CSE and some of them were so major that they have become almost different characters (like Nu) and "the most anyone have invested in CP is like 2.5 months" can be said for many people

So what? Just because other people have the same small amount of time invested doesn't magically make it a lot of time.

- and like addressed earlier in this thread, there are new people who have started playig BB with CP

Again, so what? They still don't have that much time logged. The sooner we ban, the better.

Phase One: Character is Broken

Phase Two: Character is beaten with Nerf Stick

Phase Three: Character is Weak as all hell.

Phase Four: Character gets reasonable buffs but nothing too substantial...balance complete!

Or, if you are Tsubaki:

Phase one: Character is awful

Phase two: Character gets moderate buffs

Phase three: Character is halfway decent

Phase four: Character gets nerfed again? o.o (Thanks, CSExtend!)

Phase five: Character still competing for low tier!

[bakahyl]

So what? Just because other people have the same small amount of time invested doesn't magically make it a lot of time.

It was an answer to this

It's not like the character came out 4 years ago. The most anyone's ever invested is like 2.5 months which isn't very long at all.

Meaning even if i played *(insert character from CT) , that doesn't playing that older character who has been around since CT is the same as investing time in it for 4 years

Edited January 28, 2014 by bakahyl

[Airk]

It was an answer to this

Meaning even if i played *(insert character from CT) , that doesn't playing that the older character that has been around since CT is the same as investing time in it for 4 years

Er, yes, that's true, but it's supporting his argument, not refuting it.

Basically: "We'd feel bad if you'd been working on this character for two years and now all your work is for nothing. We don't feel bad if you've been working on this character for two months. Sorry."

[bakahyl]

Er, yes, that's true, but it's supporting his argument, not refuting it.

Basically: "We'd feel bad if you'd been working on this character for two years and now all your work is for nothing. We don't feel bad if you've been working on this character for two months. Sorry."

I supported his argument , but didn't agree with his reason :p

[Eshi]

To start off, I absolute agree that Kokonoe is broken and that something should be done, but I don't like banning her as the solution. That's just not really fair to all the Kokonoe mains for a variety of reasons. Firstly, it's sort of a waste of the considerable amount of time it no doubt took them to learn the character.

I spent a considerable amount of time learning Amane, who previously had no unwinnable match-ups and was tournament viable. The Kokonoe match-up is practically unwinnable and Amane is no longer viable. I'm already picking up Kokonoe in case she doesn't get banned and I am /far/ from the only player doing it. Why does only the effort of Kokonoe players matter and mine does not?

Secondly, even when Arcsys eventually re-balances her probably next year or something and she gets un-banned, the Kokonoe mains are still going to be way behind. Honestly, I don't expect Kokonoe's gameplay style to change much if at all. Really, all that needs to be done probably is stuff like reducing her character combo rate, some proration and blockstun values, and removing Jamming Dark for instance, so she'll probably play pretty similarly. This means that Kokonoe mains will miss out on a year's worth of matchup and tournament experience that will still be viable even after she's fixed, so Kokonoe mains will have tons of catching up to do.

I've mained a new character literally every new iteration, it's not a big deal. Many characters change vastly in every iteration (Litchi, Noel) while others barely change at all (Ragna). A lot of knowledge transfers between games regardless of one's chosen character. This reasoning is incredibly flimsy.

Lastly, some people are just really interested in particular characters. I was so in love with Izayoi's play-style that I pretty much bought a PS3 and imported the game just to main her (I played the other BBs on the other systems, so I didn't have a PS3 yet). If the character I bought the game and console just to play got banned, that would make me just want to quite the game. I'd probably end up playing Mu or Nu instead, but I wouldn't enjoy that game as much as I do with Izayoi.

There are plenty of people that have or will quit because they can't take the game seriously with Kokonoe allowed. There are plenty of people who have switched characters and adapted. I hardly see this as support for or against a ban.

Instead of banning Kokonoe outright, why not just give Kokonoe mains a sort of handicap instead? Let's say something like no Jamming Dark and no Banishing Ray. If a Kokonoe main uses either of these specials in a match, it counts the same as pausing the game and they forfeit the match.

Because

A) The specials you've listed could easily be executed by mistake (EX: combo with jC > j2C fastfall > 2B and sometimes I input 22B instead)

B) The most commonly use example, banning Black Hole, would only barely reduce her power (infinite block strings, extremely powerful setplay, Gravitons and Activate alone skewing certain match-ups)

C) The fighting game community has a huge stigma against limiting certain aspects of play as if the players were the game's designer. The only exception to this has always been SSB which has a completely different approach. Regardless, the FGC would reject it far more than a ban.

Edited January 28, 2014 by Eshi

[mAc Chaos]

Yeah, handicapping only certain moves set a precedent that could be applied to many more characters than just outright banning them. Every single time someone is moderately OP you would have a discussion about which moves to tweak, and if you think it's hard to reach a consensus over a simply yes/no decision then just wait until you introduce all the separate factors that involve one characters moveset.

[TheArm05]

Handicapping moves is out of the question in a fighting game. You going to say they lose the round if they accidentally use it?

Also saying it is unfair to Kokonoe players if she is banned is ridiculous. Kokonoe alone invalidates well over half the cast competitively. It is far more unfair for someone to have to switch to one of the ~5 characters that can fight her (or Koko herself). Or they can just continue to get bopped in 7-3 or 8-2 matchups all day.

It just comes to character variety and game health at this point.

[Angel-tastic]

EDIT: Oh man, look at this wall of text. This ended up being much longer than I thought. I guess just read if you find the topic interesting.

An interesting suggestion, but it could create some really tragic situations. At this point Kokonoe mains have been grinding that stuff out for months now. In a tense tournament it could be really easy for someone to accidentally input one of the banned moves and get disqualified, even if they were trying to play "fair and square."

You're right. I don't think that would be an issue with Jamming Dark since the input is kind of hard to do by accident and you have to make a conscious decision as to when to use it anyway. Nevertheless, I can see where Banishing Ray can be an issue since a lot of people would probably auto-pilot into it out of force of habit, and your fingers could also slip so you use it instead of a crouching normal, or even hit the wrong button when you're trying to teleport. Maybe something like you can't put out Banishing Ray and Flame Cage at the same time would be more reasonable and prevent the same exploit. In any case, if people decide that they want to give this sort of approach a try, these details can always be hammered out in an in-depth discussion. Those specific things were more just examples to get the discussion going, and I feel that the idea of a handicap is nevertheless very applicable here with appropriate considerations.

The problem is that people play this game using their instincts and will use these things even by accident. It's also absurd to have players lose games because they did a move. This essentially comes down to the no-sweep rule. The major problems with kokonoe are:

1. She's paid DLC

2. She's OP

Even if she was OP, it wouldn't be as bad as it is now as noone (except those willing to pay) can obtain her moveset and play her to get a feel for it. So it means that unlike for example Eddie in AC (who was rather absurd) where people had time to find counters and what not, for BBCP this simply does not apply. This means that she is part of a pay 2 win DLC package and this is why she should be banned.

I can't really argue against that. Besides the obvious exploits mentioned in support of her ban, I feel like she's otherwise a solid, yet reasonable character, certainty not that much worse than the CT zoners, and I feel that with more time people could discover reasonably consistent ways to deal with her; but as you say, the fact that many people can't practice against her except in real matches means that most people can't get in the necessary training against her, while Kokonoe mains can practice all they want against the rest of the cast. If there's any reason in support of her ban, I feel that this is probably the one. The Kokonoe mains definitely have an advantage in terms of learning the match-ups.

I spent a considerable amount of time learning Amane, who previously had no unwinnable match-ups and was tournament viable. The Kokonoe match-up is practically unwinnable and Amane is no longer viable. I'm already picking up Kokonoe in case she doesn't get banned and I am /far/ from the only player doing it. Why does only the effort of Kokonoe players matter and mine does not?

This is exactly the point of my suggestion. An outright ban is just a question of who is more important: Kokonoe mains or everyone else (obviously everyone else is more important), whereas if this sort of solution can be effectively implemented to make Kokonoe's match-ups less lopsided, then nobody's time matters more or less than anyone else's.

I've mained a new character literally every new iteration, it's not a big deal. Many characters change vastly in every iteration (Litchi, Noel) while others barely change at all (Ragna). A lot of knowledge transfers between games regardless of one's chosen character.

Agreed. The fundamental mechanics in fighting games are definitely transferable between characters and that someone who excels at a particular character is a good player generally. In all honestly, I feel that most of the successful Izayoi players that I've followed win more from better fighting game fundamentals than character specific knowledge. Nevertheless, especially at the higher levels, knowledge of the metagame is definitely very important. As new tech is discovered, conventional play-styles change and new defenses have to be learned that are often at least mildly character-specific, and new combo paths in your own character have to be learned as well. Even if they're not that difficult to learn, it still takes time, which is of course the whole reason people have mains since they can't practice everything with everyone. This means Kokonoe mains can't practice in the evolving meta except in casuals, whereas the tournament experience is very helpful in improving in the metagame with your main. Of course, it's not like they can't catch up; it would probably only take a couple months at most, so not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things. Likewise, this is contingent on her play-style remaining relatively similar, and I see no reason to believe otherwise at the moment, but if she changes as much as Nu did than ofc this doesn't apply. Nevertheless, I feel that this is in general an avoidable dilemma that can be addressed with a more creative approach.

There are plenty of people that have or will quit because they can't take the game seriously with Kokonoe allowed. There are plenty of people who have switched characters and adapted. I hardly see this as support for or against a ban.

You're right. This isn't an argument for or against a ban in a competitive sense. I brought that up because I feel that the characters are really what bring life to these sorts of games, and I just find it disappointing that one of the most highly anticipated characters is being considered for banning within three months. I assume you play Amane even though he's "low tier" because you like the character's play-style, and it would be a shame if you had to switch to another character. My point is the same from the opposite side of the fence, in that the player's who really enjoy Kokonoe's play-style regardless of tier will be out of luck, so really it's same point as above where I hope that a solution can be found that doesn't boil down to: "Who is more important? Kokonoe mains or everyone else.".

A) The specials you've listed could easily be executed by mistake (EX: combo with jC > j2C fastfall > 2B and sometimes I input 22B instead)

Addressed above in response to Dark Ranger

B) The most commonly use example, banning Black Hole, would only barely reduce her power (infinite block strings, extremely powerful setplay, Gravitons and Activate alone skewing certain match-ups)

Addressed below in response to The Arm

C) The fighting game community has a huge stigma against limiting certain aspects of play as if the players were the game's designer. The only exception to this has always been SSB which has a completely different approach. Regardless, the FGC would reject it far more than a ban.

Yeah, I agree that this is definitely going against the grain and that there would be a lot of push-back, but if this works out, I definitely think that it would be an innovative solution to a big issue, and honestly the main reason that a ban is less controversial is just because there's already a precedent for it, not necessarily because it's a better option. Of course the Smash players have more reason to do this sort of thing since their game wasn't designed to be competitive, and they had to mold it into that form, but I definitely feel this the perfect opportunity to take a page from their book. If you can impose house rules to re-balance a game that was never meant to be competitive, it seems reasonable that this mentality could be adapted even to things that were meant to be competitive, but didn't come out that way for whatever reason.

Yeah, handicapping only certain moves set a precedent that could be applied to many more characters than just outright banning them. Every single time someone is moderately OP you would have a discussion about which moves to tweak, and if you think it's hard to reach a consensus over a simply yes/no decision then just wait until you introduce all the separate factors that involve one characters moveset.

Definitely true, and I agree that this sort of approach doesn't work in general. I don't think it would work to apply this sort of solution to e.g. Valkenhayn or Tao because all their moves are too integral to their play-style. However, Kokonoe seems to be an interesting case where this just might work, more through coincidence than anything, because her most questionable stuff is isolated to a couple of moves that are only usable in certain situations. For instance, if you had to ban Broken Bunker to make Kokonoe fair, then you might as well just ban her since that would break all her combos, but as far as I know, Jamming Dark isn't used for anything other than the unblockable reset, and Banishing Ray isn't used for anything other than oki (and ofc you can put it out anytime in neutral, but you get the point here). This means that with these limits Kokonoe mains could pretty much use all their usual combos verbatim, except with normal resets and normal blockstrings. There don't need to be any "intrusive" (ofc a subjective term) changes to her play-style. She's still a very strong character, but I feel like banning her in and of itself is setting a bad precedent too. As was mentioned already, some people were already taking this as an opportunity to lobby for Valkenhayn to be banned as well, and if he gets banned, then you know Tao is next on the list and so on. I guess I just feel that 2.5 months is too early to be banning characters. It takes longer than that to even figure out how to play a new character "correctly", and probably more to learn how to play against new characters competently. I guess I just feel like a lot of this ban hype is a knee-jerk reaction to this being discovered, and that it would be better just to ban that than the entire character. Of course, what ReaVer said about pay-to-win could invalidate this argument, but I think that it would at least be useful to organize some casual tournaments with some handicaps in place to see how it works out. While it would be more of a nuisance to plan this out than to just ban her, it could also be a very elegant solution to this situation that would avoid a ban.

Handicapping moves is out of the question in a fighting game. You going to say they lose the round if they accidentally use it?

Also saying it is unfair to Kokonoe players if she is banned is ridiculous. Kokonoe alone invalidates well over half the cast competitively. It is far more unfair for someone to have to switch to one of the ~5 characters that can fight her (or Koko herself). Or they can just continue to get bopped in 7-3 or 8-2 matchups all day.

It just comes to character variety and game health at this point.

Fair enough, but while Kokonoe is clearly a very strong character, I feel that it's too early for us to throw our hands up and say she's unbeatable. This seems to me just like how new players think that Tager is unstoppable, but he's actually very manageable once you learn the technicalities behind his character. People can just as well argue that the other "S Tier" characters invalidate everyone else, but we just have to learn to deal with them. This ban just seems like too scrubby of a reaction to me. Of course, if you're a TO and your clients stop attending your tournaments, it kind of forces your hand, but I feel like there are alternative solutions to maintain the health of the game other than banning the offending characters, and banning just the clearly OP tactics (OP meaning unblockable and infinite for the purposes of this argument) is a good start I think. Again, the pay-to-win issue could make alternatives problematic since many people can't train this match-up like they can with Tager, but I do feel that the match-up still needs more development in general before coming to conclusions with big implications.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to have a candid discussion. I know everyone's already probably tired of talking about Kokonoe, but I felt that this was an interesting alternative to propose that might work if people can get behind it.

Edited January 30, 2014 by Angel-tastic

[Loli Bacon]

This horse has been beaten to death, but I still want one more whack at it.

1) Just because a single character in top tier has an amazing matchup against your character doesn't make your character unviable. It makes you unwilling to deal with a single character, or unwilling to learn an alt to cover your holes. 7-3 is not unwinnable. 8-2 is not unwinnable. These are bad matchups, yes, but they sure as hell can be won. Outplay your opponent. Be 4x better than them or pick a better character.

2) Banning single moves with Kokonoe won't fix the problem, but perhaps something else within this realm can be thought up.

3) We as a community have never banned characters simply to increase character variety at a tournament level. There's a difference between tournament and casuals and if somebody is upset that they can't win a tournament with their low tier waifu, you had best pick a better character, step it up, or go back to just playing casuals. We have never banned a character simply to draw in more of a crowd. Have any of the top players stated they would drop the game if she isn't banned? Why do we care about casuals?

That's all.