What's funny is how you're just accepting that the anti-ban vs anti-ban would be good arguments - that means that at least one side of the anti-ban is being so stupid that someone else who agrees with their final view on this matter is smacking them down. Personally, I gave up arguing against the stupid anti-banners ages ago due to the sheer volume of them present.
For a different view on things:
It has been said that MK has at worst even matchups, which hasn't been disproven.
How do you attempt to disprove that? It's been said by many notable mains of characters of Snake, Wario, Falco, and MK that their match-ups against MK are even to the point where at top levels of play, the better player wins. In a match-up that even, how do you attempt to really know the match-up based on subjective things like, "How much does his gimp game mess up the match-up," or, "how well does camping work against him?"
People have been saying forever that at top levels of play, matchups aren't concrete and matchup numbers at best give a general point of where the matchup lies. Hylian said it early on in the thread, I've been saying it multiple times, and it hasn't been directly addressed.
Plus, at worst even matchups don't make a character broken, nor do they make everybody flock to said character. Look at Sagat in SFIV; at worst even matchups, but the metagame is still thriving well.
Before someone says, "DON'T COMPARE MK TO OTHER GAMES!" I'm not comparing MK himself to other game characters, I'm comparing the situations. People are saying that diversity is going to deteriorate and everyone is just going to flock to the best character, yet it's been shown multiple times that characters in games that are just like MK, if not worse, exist just fine in said games and still have healthy communities.
It has been said that MK has no bad stages, which hasn't been disproven.
MK having no bad stages hasn't been disproven, but it's shown to be completely irrelevant because many other high tiers also don't have bad stages, just stages that are worse for them. For MK, this is FD. For Snake, this is RC. For Diddy, this is Brinstar. For Wario, this is Mansion, if it's even legal. None of these are BAD stages, just stages that they're worse on.
It has been said that MK is counterpick resistant in a way no other character in the game is, which hasn't been disproven.
He has the best matchups. Woo. A character is GOING to have the best matchups no matter what. Even with MK gone, despite the fact that there are clear-cut disadvantageous matchups for the rest of the cast, there's still going to be a character with the best overall matchups.
Plus, as aforementioned, arguably Snake, Wario, Falco, and Diddy could all have advantages on MK, but this links with the whole matchup subjectivity thing.
It has been said that MK can be beaten if you just "practice more", which is a gross generalization.
This is a horrible argument anyway.
It has been said that Snake beating MK shows MK is not broken, when it shows nothing more than that the accepted matchup is at least close to accurate.
It has been said that Ally (and Lain) beating M2K shows that MK is not broken? Is that what you mean? If so, it shows that the best MK in the world is still able to be beaten by another top player. AKA, MK doesn't get this automatic clean sweep in large tournaments. Plus, the fact that the next sole MK main without a secondary was ranked 9th (or 13th, can't exactly remember) with representation from essentially all top MKs with the exception of DSF, who mains other characters also.
APEX tournament results DO mean a lot. People have been saying that they'll wait for APEX and Genesis, now that APEX has come and gone, some people from the pro-ban side have been writing off the results as unimportant.
It has been said that if MK is banned Snake would be banned next, when obviously he wouldn't be.
Obviously he wouldn't be. This is another horrible argument.
It has been said that if MK is temporarily banned everyone will forget how to fight him and then will perma-ban him, when they obviously wouldn't (For that reason, at the least).
What do you mean obviously wouldn't?
MK is temporarily banned=MK can't be used in tournaments. This means that there's no point for any of these other characters to learn the matchup if they aren't ever going to fight him in a serious situation. This also means that there's no point for anyone playing MK if they can't play him in tournament. With the exception of some random people playing friendlied with top MKs, no one is getting the matchup experience.
He comes back, it's the same matchup that people don't know, and the matchup is relatively unchanged. The only different thing is that now, a bunch of people will whine and say, "I like it better without MK, he's cheap and not fun to play against!" or some other variant of that, and now there's even more pressure to ban him.
There is no point of a temp ban. It gets nothing accomplished; you can predict what the metagame would be like without MK with the tournament results of the no MK tournaments scattered around. All a temp ban does is make the situation worse. And there's no point in temporarily banning something if it's not banworthy in the first place.
It has been said that MK's been partially soft banned due to community dislike for people playing him, which hasn't been disproven or proven to be immaterial.
You pulled up the partial soft-banned thing right after the APEX results to counter the MK-not-placing-well thing, and it was said that all the good MKs were there, and then you changed it to the general statement, which was STILL disproven many times the next like 10 pages on. People don't bend into community pressure, and the people who do aren't good and don't affect high level of play tournament results. But those people are few and far between.
No notable MK main or notable main of anyone is going to drop or not consider using him because of community pressure. How many (good) competitive players don't play Sagat in SFIV, Marth/Fox in Melee, Xianghua in SCII, for the reason that, "They're cheap! I don't want to use them because of the peer-pressure."
ohrightlol. Plus, do you think in a tournament somebody's going to walk up to an MK main and say, "I hate your character, he needs to be banned, pick someone else." People aren't going to do that. And if they did, then the MK main isn't going to buckle into the pressure.
Besides all of that, what point are you trying to make about the MK "soft-banned" thing? Even if it was true (which it isn't) then it's completely irrelevant. Saying that more people WOULD use MK is irrelevant, because you aren't looking at that and you can't tell how many people would. You have to take data from how many people ARE using him.
With that logic, more people WOULD use ICs if they didn't find the CGs hard to do/cheap, more people WOULD use Pit if they didn't find his voice annoying, more people WOULD use Falco if people didn't complain about laser camping and CGs, more people WOULD use D3 if the community didn't complain about infinites, etc.
It's all irrelevant.
