I think Blazblue is kinda making a slight finance flooper.
The hot women should be at least high tier.
Now, I know that from a competitive or a design standpoint, that just sounds silly, because it is. It also sounds very noobish and scrubish.
However, from a business standpoint, its a very wise move.
Female characters tend to be very popular. The 'hottie' of Street Fighter Chun Li is nearly always high or top tier, as well as a huge portion of the fan art. By making Chun, a fan favorite, a high tier character, players don't get discouraged by their love for a crap character. Tao and Noel's low tier placement will, in my business opinion, hurt Blazblue's tournament output to some degree.
An example of how a popular character can hurt a game: Brawl and the Captain. Captain Falcon is a VERY popular character, but in Brawl, he feels mostly a joke. In many Melee vs. Brawl threads I've seen people bring up the accidental nerfed Falcon as an argument.
But again, from a design standpoint, favoring characters that will sell better seems very, very silly, as balance is the goal, not favoritism. But on that note, spacing characters largely outplace all other kind of characters in Blazblue, so your options of playstyles are greatly limited at top level play.
Still though, amazing game.
