This game has relied way too much on counter-picking. For a long time I have seriously believed that without people's faith in winning from using top tiers and counter-picking, most players would indeed just suck without them. Last time I checked, this game was not about counter-picking, but the skill of the players. I've made the exact same arguments about banning Marth in Melee because of his almost lack of counters, but I realized that people were actually getting better and he was essentially an actual counter to Zelda. People made fun of me for it. Well.. Now I'm gonna say EXACTLY what everyone said to me during that time.
"He's just a character!! Learn how to fight him!!"
GARY: Your argument concerning Street Fighter is completely fallacious. How do you know we had it easy? Have you ever PLAYED 3rd Strike? Yun, Chun-Li, and Ken are dominant. There is very little debate over this. Don't talk about something you have no idea about.
Counter-picking? Pfft...if that was the case I would pick Pikachu every time I saw David and never pick Kirby knowing that he plays Snake but we both know I always somehow end up as Kirby. In case you're not as active in the Kirby boards as much as me, Snake was considered to be a 30:70 match at first and is now only very recently (as in 2 days ago) being petitioned to be moved to a 60:40.
As for the SF thing, true 3rd strike may more unbalanced than previous installments (and tournaments actually tend to go Yun, Chun, Yun, Yun, Ken, Chun, Yun, Chun, Chun) but Capcom clearly realized that it wanted to make the perfect fighter, so it may have looked as if it ignored the fans by not re-releasing 3rd Strike, but instead they actually brewed up possibly on of the greatest ideas in fighting game history in SFIV. An already meticulously balanced game (though not perfect as nothing is) with DLC and balancing patches? Sounds like SF fans do have it pretty easy. Actually I was confused by that comment because my name isn't Gary but you scrutinized my SF comment >.> It's Jared btw since we haven't become acquainted.
True you may need to learn how to fight a character, but what if that doesn't work? The first time I fought David's Snake, he very comfortably 2-stocked me. When we met Kirby v Snake at the last Gware, it went to the last stock with him ~130% and me not dieing until ~140%. But as far as MK goes, when does the madness stop? He's byfar the most represented character in tournaments and still puts up numbers. Obviously it isn't as easy as you're making it out to be to just "learn how to fight them" when it comes to MK. I almost feel disgust when I fight him. Such as before the last tournament when friendlies were going on, this one guy saw me massacre this other guy with Kirby. He hops in and immediately picks MK. Me seeing some common mistakes being made, decide I need to punish him. I take him power and proceed to Kirby-nado him to ~150% and ground hammer him...without him touching me. I do the exact same thing for his next 2 lives.
This guy obviously wasn't that good at the game and admitted to not being that good. My main john is the mentality that people have when coming into the game. I'm willing to bet that the person I did that to has no idea about MK except for the fact that he's from the Kirby series. I play Kirby because I frikkin love him. Sure he may have ended up high tier in this game, but from the first time I picked up that wiimote and nunchuck at gamestop, I knew who I spend most of my time playing as. The point I'm making here is that new people aren't even trying to diversify themselves. When someone tries to get into the game, they do a little research. They find out MK is the best and work with him. The thing is that guy I fought then had very little experience in Smash at all. The main example here is how Inui who doesn't play MK, trained with him for 2 weeks and took first in a tourney in NJ over some big names. From what I hear, the whole purpose for him to do that was just to show that MK is broken.
EDIT:
As much as I hate complaining, I have to let this out, MK is broken. There is no learning to be done. I'm literally disgusted with the way that Brawl is turning out and refuse to ever use MK again. All I have to do is point at the fact that MK absolutely dominates tournament standings and there is nothing that you can say to refute this. He obviously overcentralizes the metagame and must be stopped. Everything else I said may be refuted, but trying to nullify his massive tournament results is an exercise in futility.
