I made the terrible mistake of reading the comments for that video.

Whiner> "Oooh, so you get 15k with no AA but 45k with AA, so what?"
Ezho> "I can get 35k with no AA, what do you want from me"
Whiner> "ooOoo 35k OH WAIT YOU HAVE ASI VH, YOU'RE PAY TO WIN"
Ezho> "dude I just farm vana for hours, it takes like 15 mins to do one run"
Whiner> "HAHAHA YOU FARM FOR 10 HOURS A DAY? I USUALLY PLAY VANA LIKE TWICE IN A ROW CAUSE IT'S BORING, YOU HAVE NO LIFE LOLOLOLOL"

There's no satisfying them.

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"Competitive" lockdown (as far as I've seen it) is community led, much like the Smash competitive community is. They organize tournaments and events and rules, most of which include no-autotarget. I participated in one of the tournaments myself, and honestly, my only complaint is how international games' matches worked (best 4/7, but 3 rounds are played in one server- so first host gets advantage). That's more of an issue of ruleset and connection (which IMO is the only valid complaint as to why Lockdown can't be competitive). If you want a ruleset with no AT, no UVs, and no trinkets, start a tournament yourself with those rulesets. The players agree to the rulesets and are disqualified if caught breaking them. That's just how actual competitions are.

The only other things I can see you complaining about are regular lockdown, which is 'casual' by nature of its random and uncontrolled state, and GVG, which also has no stated ruleset.

As far as Striker being the best class-
...it sure is the best swords class, if you're using health trinkets.

Other classes can do just fine with offense trinkets, thank you very much.

Probably because they think health trinkets (useless for recon/guardian unless you have ultimate UVs) are the only trinkets around and only play striker. Striker's "weakness" is its low health, so it only makes sense to use trinkets that cover its weakness.

Recon and Guardian's weaknesses aren't their health, so why the flying [vog] do people use health trinkets for them? If they don't have ultimate UVs, use health trinkets with the other classes, then complain about how OP striker trinkets are, they're slapping themselves in the [vitapod] with their own ignorance.

My "serious" loadout is:
No-UV Justifier set,
No-UV Umbra/Nova driver,
Undead High Valiance (first craft and first UV ever lol),
CTR low Storm driver (rolled x1).

I just use two Trueshot modules and recon, and I don't ever complain about UVs, because if I get my ASI from armor (or trinkets), it's only a matter of being skilled enough to outplay people to avoid getting hit and to hit first lol.

It takes less than one weekend to farm for CR to pay for a month's worth of slots, so I'm living cheaply in-game lol.

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Heck, offense trinkets can actually make the game really fun. If I want to play gun guardian, stack on the gun ASI trinkets. If I want to play sword recon, stack on the sword ASI trinkets. Bomb striker? I'll stack on bomb focus modules. They let you mix playstyles for all weapons of that type for different classes for cheap. AND they're useful for PVE (unlike health trinkets). They can only be good.

Just gona point out the significant difference between smash bros community and games like SK (online competitive) since I was involved in the tournament scene for quite some time.

In the smash bros community, there is a human being sitting next to you. Emotion and feeling will accompany words rather then blank text. It's a totally different experience. You can never seem to win over the internet, but good sportsmanship sure does shine more often then naught when you are competing with the person sitting next to you. You're both confident in your art/craft. If you're beaten, a humble person will take that loss and attempt to erase what his competitor exploited, then come back stronger the next time. If one person comes to win and another comes to have fun, results may vary.

That being said, Smash Bros tournaments are typically 1v1 or 2v2 with friendly fire, not 4v4 or 6v6 with team attack off. It makes for an individual having less singular and power when weighted in combat, but rewards synergy a bit more especially when playing the capping game... You know, reading your teammates as well as your opponents.

Imagine if there was actually team damage and Lockdown was actually balanced on a normal basis to the point where it could be awesomely competitive.... Like that John Lennon song :)

I would not support a game that has no benefit to people investing time in it.
There are so many competitive PvP games that reward you for playing.
League gives you spells, masteries and runes for example.
Shooters (Battlefield, cod, etc..) give you acces to better gear.

Spiral Knights has UVs.
If you want to be the best, you need to invest in it. Wether that be money or time.

You're gonna be spending quite a bit of time if you even want the gear to begin with. I had probably spent a few hundred hours on this game before I had even gotten my first full 5* set and I'm sure others are in the same boat.

LoL does indeed give people who have played more advantages but they aren't even close to the time you'll need to spend on the game to gain top tier UVs. Then you have DotA. I don't play it but I'm pretty sure there are no paid advantages in it.

As for CoD and Battlefield, those aren't even competitive, imo. Yes, they're multiplayer focused, but they're also primarily console games and console games can't reach higher competitive levels. If we are to look at other shooters, we could take Counter Strike and Team Fortress, for example. Team Fortress is pretty centered around cosmetic upgrades. A good player's items are three weapons at most, which go for about $0.03 or so each.

We could also take Starcraft, the national sport of Korea. No time or money investment rewards there, either.

Don't get me wrong, though. I think investment in games should reward itself. However, only to a certain extent. LoL does it kind of well, I guess, but SK requires way much effort if you want the top stuff. I doubt there's a single Knight very good UVs who has not spent money or more than 1k hours on this game.

Additionally, I don't think being able to spend real life money on a game to gain an advantage over others is okay, either. That's a no-brainer in game design and it's what makes so many f2p games flawed. SK has this flaw, however. Luckily, it's not PvP centered so such things will often just be of benefit to all players in a group.

It's a "broken mess" because people take it more seriously than it should be.
Lockdown is hardly like SSB. It's supposed to be a team-oriented game focused on controlling points, not beating the snot out of other people. Also, SK has horrible lag/latency management, and the class/equipment balances make skill only a small factor.

With a given set of equipment and a given connection a person can only perform so well. Once you've peaked (with each class), there's little you can gain from playing more Lockdown other than having fun.

Ironically people are too focused on winning and being the best to enjoy themselves. If you want to hone your skills, play speed chess. Lockdown isn't the game for it.

Disagreeing on skill being only a small factor.

Numerous people have proven they can play at a high level with latency, and without UVs.
Good players will stick out regardless of the situation.
The classes being unbalanced is imo more an issue that very few people take the time to master all of them.
You can't judge them equally on the score at the end, as they each fill a different role.

Ask Seiran for the details, he has explained it more times than I have.

1. The main point is Lockdown is not suitable to be highly competitive. People are butthurt because they think it is. They aren't playing to enjoy themselves; they are playing to be better than everyone else.

2. If you think skill in Lockdown matters as much as skill in competitive SSB, fine. I disagree.

3. The only way you have proof of people with bad ping is if those people made videos of themselves playing. What does that say about the computer they are running on? Try playing Spiral Knights on a laptop with less than 4G RAM with integrated GPU. Then switch to a desktop with 8G+ RAM, and dedicated GPU. Your performance will rise even if you use the same internet.
Also, low jitter is far more important than low ping in Lockdown. A person can adapt to consistent high ping, while jitter makes any amount of latency tricky to play with.

Example demonstrating why jitter is more important

Player A shoots a bullet at Player B (with lead) and it arrived too late due to latency. In the next shot, Player A increased the lead distance to adjust for the latency of the previous shot. It arrived too early. Player A does this adjustment for every shot, but cannot find a lead distance that consistently works.
Player B shoots at player A (with a lead) and it misses. He increased his lead and the second bullet hit. He then follows Player A with the same lead and consistently land more hits.

Note that as far as a LD spectator knows, Player B is more skilled. He missed one shot, then figured out how to adjust the rest of his shots. Player A can't seem to find the right amount of lead.
However, someone who sees both monitors will realize Player A is equally good at adapting as player B. It's just that they are not tackling the same problem.

Thanks for the snark in your title Auto.
Makes me almost not want to point out the hypocrisy in the player advocating use of AT commenting on how SK can't be competitive.
Oops.

Your point focuses solely on it being competitive for literally everyone.
It won't be if your playing on a potato from a remote village in the mountains, but for most regular people it's fine.
You won't be playing competitive football with one leg either..
Not claiming it's ideal, but it's manageable.

I play the game on one of those 4GB integrated GPU laptops btw, while running java 6 'cause Apple.

About 2: Yes, I've never heard about broken characters and mechanics in SSB. Oh wait.

egh..
tl;dr
- Before comparing LD to a fighting game, think about what the goals are in both games and think about how important each aspect is to the goal in each game.
- Despite all the non-competitive aspects, there's enough value in the gameplay for people to be allowed to treat this in as a skill-based game.

_______
@Smash comparison:
First off, both games have completely different rulesets and goals, so think of these relative to them.

However, I don't think there's a character who can kill anyone in fewer than 5 blows, assuming the person is actually trying not to lose.
As far as the <5 hits thing, Ganondorf is the DA/GF of Smash - slower, but play sloppily against one and you're in for an embarrassingly short life.

Also, it's virtually impossible to ambush anyone in SSB.
In Lockdown, an off-screen ambush essentially removes the 'entertaining' duel/'honorable fight' encounter. While things like off-screen 'ambushes' don't really exist in Smash, there are 'gimps' - ways to completely screw someone's recovery in a way that 'skips' most of the action (ex: in Brawl, if you jump on top of a Yoshi while he's doing his recovery 2nd jump, he is pretty much dead).

In Smash, if they're not prepared to guard against gimps (/avoiding the situation in the first place), they can easily get a stock disadvantage.
In Lockdown, if you're not prepared to deal with an off-screen attack from below, you can easily lose control of a point.

Finally, you get to completely heal after killing someone
Different values.

In a fighting game, if you can retreat and heal, that's undoing your opponent's work with no tradeoff aside from a situational reset (nobody is being pressured and nobody is approaching).

In [goal-based] lockdown, if someone retreats and heals, that means their team is down one man for at least 5 seconds (longer, if you want to take into account how long it takes for them to get back to where they were before healing). They lose capping/defending/offensive ability for that time, which provides value to the other team.

@Competitive value:
It would be more akin to TF2. You run in, do massive damage, die, repeat. Is there some strategy and skill? Of course, but you don't play the game for it. You play the game to have fun.

So says you. However, the competitive values are there enough for people to do ladders/host tf2 tournaments.

Sure, Lockdown's gameplay is closer to TF2. Or any of the Halos' capture-the-zone game types. And while I don't really subscribe to watching those game types, the strategies are still about the same. In Halo, if you chase an experienced player, you take hits (cue in horrible memories of MLG-wannabe friends taunting "don't chase~ don't chase~"); in LD, if you chase an experienced player, you take hits or you get kited for a long time (--> your team loses a fighter for some time). You combine your combat skills with value judgments (is it worth it for the rest of the team if I stay in this area fighting? Do I keep fighting here or do I retreat because they're going to respawn soon?) for your team.

You know what else wasn't meant to be competitive? Smash Brawl. In a "competitive" game, you reduce random elements as much as possible to highlight the skill-based factors, but Brawl included a random chance to trip (aka lose momentum and possibly a life), among other things. People decided to (despite those elements) still hold tournaments. Have people lost rounds due to tripping? Yes. But regardless, there was enough competitive value for players to keep trying.

People play Brawl competitively? Now that's just begging for trouble. Project M all the way! Until Smash 4, of course.
Also that Zero-Suit Samus player from the Sm4sh tourney is a filthy staller

Seiran,
I think you kind of missed my point.
I listed three elements of Lockdown combat, not present in SSB, that made it less competitive. You said those three elements are not present in SSB because SSB is centered around a different goal. That is perfectly true, but has no bearing whatsoever on the competitive nature of combat.
Last time I checked, nobody cared about scores in Lockdown. The competition is all about fighting each other.

You said people are competitive about Lockdown because they have tournaments (I'm assuming 1v1s). I agree. In fact, the only way to be competitive about Lockdown is to have 1v1s. This is because it eliminates two of the three elements I listed (no ambush, restriction on healing), so it effectively made combat more skill-based.
It's rather like stamina mode in SSB.

But that's not the problem. All these ragers are not getting mad in 1v1 tourneys. They are getting mad in normal matches. These people apparently think there's competitive value in combat during random matches.

ex. "Using AT is not being a good sport, because it gives you a a slight advantage in a fight."
ex. "Combo spamming shows you lack skill."
ex. "Pff, You're nothing without your ASI"

They say those things as if Lockdown isn't inherently less competitive.

Yeah..it ' s strange .. I ve always thought that "slight" meaned "a bit" or " not much" :o