if you're a rob, ddd or marth main, im sure it is.
edit:
“It’s Too Good!”
Only in the most extreme, rare cases should something be banned because it is “too good.” This will be the most common type of ban requested by players, and almost all of their requests will be foolish. Banning a tactic simply because it is “the best” isn’t even warranted. That only reduces the game to all the “second best” tactics, which isn’t necessarily any better of a game than the original game. In fact, it’s often worse!
The only reasonable case to ban something because it is “too good” is when that tactic completely dominates the entire game, to the exclusion of other tactics. It is possible, though very rare, that removing an element of the game that is not only “the best” but also “ten times better than anything else in the game” results in a better game. I emphasize that is extremely rare. The most common case is that the player requesting the ban doesn’t fully grasp that the game is, in fact, not all about that one tactic. He should win several tournaments using mainly this tactic to prove his point. Another, far rarer possibility is that he’s right. The game really is shallow and centered on one thing (whether that one thing is a bug or by design is irrelevant). In that case, the best course of action is usually to abandon the game and play one of the hundreds of other readily available good games in the world.
Only in the ultra-rare case that the player is right and the game is worth saving and the game without the ultra-tactic is a ten times better game—only then is the notion even worth fighting for. And even in this case, it may take time for the game to mature enough for a great percentage of the best players and tournament organizers to realize that tactic should, indeed, be banned. Before an official ban takes place, there can also be something called “soft ban.” Let’s look at an example.
The Two Excellent Examples of “Super Turbo”
Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, or “Super Turbo,” is a wonderful example of bannings in fighting games. As of this writing, the arcade game is ten years old and still played in tournaments. In fact, there are one or two tournaments per week in this game in Tokyo alone. The game is quite mature, and there is a decade of data about the game’s balance.
Many versions of Street Fighter have “secret characters” that are only accessible through a code. Sometimes these characters are good; sometimes they’re not. Occasionally, the secret characters are the best in the game as in the game Marvel vs. Capcom 1. Big deal. That’s the way that game is. Live with it. But Super Turbo was the first version of Street Fighter to ever have a secret character: the untouchably good Akuma. Most characters in that game cannot beat Akuma. I don’t mean it’s a tough match—I mean they cannot ever, ever, ever, ever win. Akuma is “broken” in that his air fireball move is something the game simply wasn’t designed to handle. He is not merely the best character in the game, but is at least ten times better than other characters. This case is so extreme that all top players in America immediately realized that all tournaments would be Akuma vs. Akuma only, and so the character was banned with basically no debate and has been ever since. I believe this was the correct decision.
Japan, however, does not officially ban Akuma from tournaments! They have what is called a “soft ban.” This is a tacit understanding amongst all top players that Akuma is too good to be played, and that he destroys an otherwise beautiful game, so they unofficially agree not to play him. There are always a very small number of people who do play him in tournaments, but never the top players. Usually a few poor players try their hand at the god-character and lose, which is utterly humiliating and crowd-pleasing. This is an interesting alternate take on the “hard ban” we have in America.
That’s all well and good, but Japan has also shown signs of a soft-ban on another character in Super Turbo. I bring up this example because it lives on the threshold. It is just on the edge of what is reasonable to ban because it is “too good.” Anything less than this would not be reasonable, so perhaps others can use it as a benchmark to decide what is reasonable in their games.
The character in question is the mysteriously named “Old Sagat.” Old Sagat is not a secret character like Akuma (or at least he’s not as secret!). Old Sagat does not have any moves like Akuma’s air fireball that the game was not designed to handle. Old Sagat is arguably the best character in the game (Akuma, of course, doesn’t count), but even that is debated by top players! I think almost any expert player would rank him in the top three of all characters, but there isn’t even universal agreement that he is the best! Why, then, would any reasonable person even consider banning him? Surely, it must be a group of scrubs who simply don’t know how to beat him, and reflexively cry out for a ban.
But this is not the case. There seems to be a tacit agreement amongst top players in Japan—a soft ban—on playing Old Sagat. The reason is that many believe the game to have much more variety without Old Sagat. Even if he is only second best in the game by some measure, he flat out beats half the characters in the game with little effort. Half the cast can barely even fight him, let alone beat him. Other top characters in the game, good as they are, win by much more interaction and more “gameplay.” Almost every character has a chance against the other best characters in the game. The result of allowing Old Sagat in tournaments is that several other characters, such as Chun Li and Ken, become basically unviable.
If someone had made these claims in the game’s infancy, no sort of ban would be warranted. Further testing through tournaments would be warranted. But we now have ten years of testing. We don’t have all Old Sagat vs. Old Sagat matches in tournaments, but we do know which characters can’t beat him and as a result are very rarely played in America. We likewise can see that this same category of characters flourishes in Japan, where Old Sagats are rare and only played by the occasional violator of the soft ban. It seems that the added variety of viable characters might outweigh the lack of Old Sagat. Is this ban warranted then? To be honest, I am not totally convinced that it is, but it is just barely in the ballpark of reasonableness since there is a decade of data on which to base the claim.
isn't DDD as much an o. sagat as mk? He definitely has a ton of autowin matchups.
). After a MK ban he'd only have one bad matchup with snake, which is pretty even already and a skilled Marth really isn't at too much of a disadvantage there either. Lucario's, diddy's Snake's and DK's can still find ways to beat even skilled mk's, even if he's the "best" option he isn't the only game in town, other characters still place high in tournaments, but it's only natural for the best character(s) to win the most tournaments, no? 