>>132412There are different degrees to it, though. Getting pulled back to a group of similar skill players is a lot easier to accept than getting pulled to the back of the pack because of something completely out of your control. In MK8 I've come close to double lapping people online and it's basically just doing a time trial at that point, which isn't a lot of fun. But then you've got MKWii where the first two laps feel totally pointless half the time because the whole race comes down to the last set of item boxes. Even when I do shoot from 12th to 1st it doesn't feel earned and the possibility that ranking manipulation might be the optimal strategy just feels wrong.
I think the goal should be to keep the tempo of the game up rather than to shuffle up the rankings. Keeping the pack together is good, but not at the expense of constantly forcing people to stop and wait for others to catch up.
I don't really see much rubberbanding in OJ, it just uses a deceptive progression system where normas get progressively harder to achieve. If you play towards the final goal, the only real redistribution mechanism is the bosses, but calculating that in is part of strategizing for each character. More of a balance thing for the retards who pick defensive characters than anything.