I see a lotta comments that are either genuinely ill-informed or just obnoxious falsities spewed by fan boys who are incapable of being un-biased. So i’ll respond to you Tweedy. I agree completely on Inj2 and SFV (though I beg to differ on SFIV)
I know you play competitively and you played potato characters because money was on the line, heck most of the guys who show up at top 8 do just that. Rewind chose to differ, brought Displacer and even beat Sonicfox in Kombat cup last year. But, I can count the number of times he dropped the Displacer BnBs (anything with 3X F12B2) or resorted to the less optimized variants.
Since the guys who showed up at Top 8 stuck with potato Kenshi, potato Kung Jin and Kitana, the game didn’t end there. You guys laughed off leatherface. VLJV 14 today has a leatherface killer that will bury each and every one of ya. Heck, 3 years later, I am finding practical tech with MoS that I am sure will never ever show on a Top 8 tourny. His practical setups can be way swaggier than what Cyrax ever had.
However, NRS reserved 1 variation in “almost” every character in the roster for the CHARACTER LOYALIST AND ENTHUSIAST. As we both know, these variants are extremely hard in execution and have layers of depth that I feel are way beyond anything Tekken 7 has. Notable variants, Nimble (Basilisk, deliberate time alteration), MOS/Displacer, A-List, Duelist, Hat-trick, Cyrax, Bo Rai Cho, Hunter, etc, etc, come to mind.
But, here’s how Tekken adds “depth” and difficulty. Just throw in way more mindless watered down strings and make the roster large! Take away any tutorial, replays, etc and make the Noobs exclaim “oh my god, what the hell did I get myself into” Nothing innovative, no unique/thought provoking gameplay design. Just water it down and add a lot. That’s the Tekken game designer’s cop out. The hardest combo in this game, I could get it down 20/10 times in under an hour. Yes, this matters! Because a character like Displacer’s BNB will be dropped by a guy in Top 8 (like Rewind) multiple times in a tourny after 3 years of practice. You of course didn’t have these problems. But, that's very understandble, you're not a character loyalist or an enthusiast, you're a run of the mill tournament player.
Heck, all the Tekken bros seem to exclaim that I have “God like reactions”, “if I don’t have the read, I simply react”. I have to tell myself that well after 13yrs of Melee and 3 yrs of MKX, well, I am j ust a regular dude in that world, but in the special olympics slow ass world of Tekken, I am god like apparently.