I’ve said this a few times in the past, but one of the three primary pillars of KI has always been: Getting players to the “chess match” of high level fighting game play sooner.
Where any fighting game truly shines is in the psychological game of wits that gets you an opener / combo, leverages emotional pressure(s), and allows you to out-think and outmaneuver your opponent in order to win.
You don’t hear commentators on fighting games saying “wow, great fireball input there from Bob”. You hear them talk about when and how moves are used and strung together and when and how they’re deployed based on health, time, charcter choices, meters, and the millions of other factors that moment-to-moment make fighting game competitors make choices that result in wins or losses.
Combo Assist exists to do just what we’ve been pushing towards since day zero of KI’s rebirth - let more players have fun and (hopefully) see why fighting games are fun at high-level a lot sooner than they ever would without it. It also exists to highlight some of the very unique properties that KI offers over other fighting games, namely linkers, enders, breakers and counterbreakers and let players experience them earlier than they would in any other game.
If you don’t want to use it, just turn it off. However, as @TheKeits said, we didn’t build it to divide our player base, so options to disable it from any mode won’t be going in – that’s not good for the health of our game.
Oh, and I had to add:
If that’s the case, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED