test running some ideas before I publish an article - RE, Hero and his legality.
It's difficult to converse about this this character, as I'm sure many have noticed by now, but I have progressively shifted into the viewpoint that a ban is unlikely at this point.
Results are especially hard to discuss in the context of a ban. When they're brought up, the immediate counter is that "We're not looking for another Bayonetta... we're banning based on principle," but this ignores the fact that high profile examples of degenerative gameplay are what cause changes to happen. This was certainly the case with items in a less demonstrable way since their banning took place in the mid-2000s, but comparing hero to items is difficult for reasons BSD covered in their video - he's not random in the same way items are random. You still have to engage and enact his RNG in order for it to effect the game.
This makes it way more comparable to typical degenerative tactics like wobbling, extreme ledge camping, and so on, in that it has the capacity to be very powerful, very unfriendly to spectators & players, but will only be acted upon when some set of circumstances happens that allows a match to be lit over Hero's poor character design (in a competitive sense.)
Basically, if a character is invisible, people's incentive to care about an issue drops, and the subject becomes silent. Several players have attempted to keep this subject in the competitive spotlight, but vocal antagonism towards the character isn't enough. Leffen & Puppeh have fished for examples of how the character is hypothetically broken, but we're left with skill-disparity examples that can't really be submitted as evidence.
Puppeh using Thwack to kill at early % could be seen as an issue, but the concerns brought forth about how this could negatively effect the game are from a perspective that worse players could undeservedly steal games via RNG. Examples shared are simply top 30-75 players beating down people who, in an international context, are not even top 150.
The end result is preemptive requests to ban a character based on RNG before they can even define what "too much RNG" even is. Hero could be seen as an example of it, but there is no objective barrier, which is why he's often compared to lesser examples of RNG since those are the only places to refer too.
There is no objective line and without results to keep Hero visible, the pro-ban movement risks fatigue and eventual backlash if they can't show examples of their concerns occurring beyond theorycrafting. People will stop caring and eventually the ability to ban the character will phase out entirely. The counterargument is to say that results don't matter, but simply saying this repeatedly, ad nauseum, does not change how optics or social media work. You can't escape this, and the last month has been a grinder crunching down would-be Hero mains.
This can obviously change - but initial prospects aren't positive, and the character does not have the very consistent theory say, Joker does, to have sustained meta impact. Trela, Salem, Zackray, & more have seemingly failed with this character.
So, the first issue is no results = bad optics for the pro-ban movement, because clip quantity begin to wane, interest wanes, and necessity wanes. Nobody will care if Leffen & other prominent pro-ban players want the character banned if everybody else has moved on to talking about other facets of the metagame or other new characters that have taken over the "news cycle". In this respect, an oncoming Banjo release would probably annihilate any traction a pro-ban movement has, because the ability to spread clips of Hero's degenerative aspects is choked to death by other facets of the game.
This could change in the advent of Hero getting good results soon, but Leffen & others rightfully point out that not banning early will only make it unfair to people months down the line for grinding the character, putting another major constraint on the movement. These are all default issues without a lot of hypotheticals: Hero WILL fall out of the news cycle once Banjo is released. Interest in Hero WILL wane if he continues relative radio silence at even popular weeklies with lots of eyes, like MSM, let alone must-watch major events.
If you can see why I think this movement is doomed to fail already, here's the second - and even worse - issue. This character's status as controversial isn't ubiquitous. It's highly contested, and this means if bans were to go into effect, they would not necessarily be universal. This applies within countries, let alone internationally.
My example of why this ban is totally unworkable is Japan. The character does not seem to have generated the same heated discussion in Japan, itself a very relevant super-region. What if they refused to comply with a broad USA ban? This is assuming a USA ban would be universal (it wouldn't - see Wobbling in Melee.)
The logistics would be nightmarish if, let's say, Tsu mained Hero and was "locked" out of USA events. Because the PGR is USA-based, the end result is that the North American scene is dictating how the international scene is run, which would likely cause backlash from both Japan and Europe, the latter of which is already not happy at their treatment in an international context. I do not think Leffen or other pro-ban activists have even considered how bad this could turn out if Japan's players decided to boycott USA events, as they threatened to do in the event of a MK ban in the Brawl-era.
It would technically punish Japan for failing to comply with an NA ban by them being less prominent on the rankings, but with many top players not supporting a ban at all who have just as much (if not more reach) than the pro-ban collective, it seems like the ban would either fail to even be under the threat of severe scene divide, or it would quickly fizzle out to avoid scene conflicts.
This is just one scenario involving JPN and the USA. There are many combinations that are possible, international and within countries, all of which result in fragmenting and backlash. While my scenario was specific, it's one of about a thousand ways that a non-compliant region conflict would damage the scene as a whole. South Australia was allowed to get away with a ban (and thus far has been the only place do so) because it is not a very large scene. It is one of nine Oceanic regions and not typically considered AUS' best region, making it a very easy, painless testing ground.
The pro-ban movement thus has two issues:
1: It cannot sustain itself without optics, which are on a death timer as the Smash cycle threatens to overtake all discussion of Hero - Banjo discussion, and newcomer discussion are inevitable and will take up people's interest in the game, which is finite, leaving less time to be mad about Hero. It must find a way to avoid these issues.
2: It must figure out how to get everybody to agree to a ban, otherwise it's unlikely one is even sustainable due to the damage it could do through potential boycotts that could affect rankings & scene credibility. As things stand, it seems like the majority don't support a ban, going by a video-based VGBC poll. I've been running reddit polls, and while there is support for a ban, it's a scarce edge and only a plurality, meaning there is nothing even remotely close to the universal agreement needed to avoid serious conflict.
Even now, after Switchfest, Shulk has become the major talking point since it's the first signs of the character's top tier potential. This is what people are talking about now - not Hero. What chance does Hero's controversy have as a discussion topic when new characters hit the scene? He's invisible.
I respect the anti-Hero movement since I agree his design is atrocious, but I don't think they really have any realistic chance of achieving their goals at this point because the scene moves very fast and the same scene that has wildly varying stage lists has no real chance of universally agreeing to a principle-based character ban. They have respectable figures on board, some of which I've spoken to (Kurogane and Captain L come to mind,) but I don't think the goal is realistic, unless they can figure out an answer to the second issue I raised.
That's all I have left to say until I may or may not publish an article going more in depth with this.
Big victory for Luigi, as Elegant wins Standoff 2019 in rather dominant fashion, defeating DeluxeMenu, Ismon, yeti, and Goblin. And there is still people who think he is lower mid tier at best...
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