What about really, really hard solo events instead of tournaments

imo the biggest part of the problem with tournies... isn't the tourney themselves.. but rather what happens after.

If these characters were available in some sort of ready stable form... hard node for example then players wouldn't feel so shafted for not getting a toon that will be used against them (whose counter might only be the same toon).

Right now we have no clue how exclusive these characters will be so people panic and in some cases get locked out of arena competitions just because they didn't place in the tourney.