And honestly, I can only imagine that the conversation
got worse when Bayo actually came out. Now, I think it was
Cutie Gwen
who raised the important point elsewhere that Bayo's primarily OP in Smash 4 because Sakurai went on to focus on Ultimate directly after, leaving Bayo in a permanently powerful state. Which I can absolutely see: Sakurai finalized Ultimate's project plan the day Bayo was released, indicating that Bayo had not been his focus. Likewise, if the team was shifting gears to Ultimate, I can't imagine that the Smash 4 team could test the later DLC characters that extensively.
I mean,
,
and
all have stupidly good Down Bs / mechanics for example. Still though, videos like this popped up not long after release:
And honestly, I can imagine that her post-launch reception kept the Bayonetta/Ballot conversation
going. Mind you, Bayonetta got the most ire from Smash 4's competitive environment during 2017 and 2018... when she had been nerfed
in 2 consecutive Smash 4 patches. Also, "Release Bayo" was positively insane, partly because
grabs could miss her while she was shielding (see gif in the link above). Honestly it's stuff like that which makes me believe the above: that neither Bayo nor Cloud for that matter (I mean, unlimited Limit Break and stupidly good aerials?) simply were tested enough before release. Because the Smash 4 team had likely begun moving on to Ultimate at the point the characters released and could only patch.
Well, it's difficult to say who was more hated initially. Both Corrin and Bayo released simulatenously, and Alpharad wasted no time in posting "
AFK Corrin". which probably fueled the hatred for Corrin. It did calm down a bit IIRC, but partly because Bayo and Cloud emerged as the consensus Top 2.