I can't count how many times I've heard that from high level players. It's not that easy. People who say that must be extraordinary or forgetful because improving can be hard as hell sometimes. It's especially hard when the community is sparse.
The problem is that I've played you guys, and you're getting caught up in the easy stuff. I haven't played you in a long time so I can't really help you, but I know for a fact that Master Milk cannot hitconfirm properly in the corner, and that's so fundamental to winning at BB that I don't really see the point in playing if you can't do that; if you can't get big damage in the corner, you need to hit your opponent at neutral like thirty times to win a match. In contrast, I need to hit closer to five times because I can convert every hit into damage. And this is totally backwards, because Platinum's damage is a lot better than Litchi's so the game's balance depends on him landing less hits than I do. Learning how to hitconfirm is straightfoward: Learn your combo thoroughly (time-consuming and frustrating, but straightforward) and then put the computer on random block and try to land your combo directly from your blockstring.
I know just as well as anyone how hard it is to improve. BB was my first real fighting game, and I've received little help along the way. But I've tried to be helpful; I've typed up numerous posts where I've given specific advice to people. What more do you want?
Also, you would be amazed at how much better you will get at the game by pressing less buttons. This isn't hard advice to implement; all you have to do is make a conscious effort about the buttons you're pressing. If you cannot justify pressing a button, then don't do it.
I was interested in Litchi and Rachel in CT, but they felt too difficult to use. She continues to baffle me even now. I have no idea where to start with that character at all.
Midscreen: 5B[m] 5C[m] 3C[m] 623D
Corner: 5B[m] 2C[m] 6D(2) (TK) Hatsu Haku Chuun Haku Hatsu Riichi A Ippatsu A Hatsu 5[D] Chuun ]D[ 6D 5B 6C(1) 4Kote j.B dj.BCD delayed falling j.C 66A (Kokushi)
I didn't know that about Litchi. I always figured she was fine since she had so many ways to get pressure her opponent. Ragna is BS though. The guy was pretty good in CS1. There was no need to go overboard with him. Tsubaki being retooled and improved is understandable. Tager was also a worthy candidate for big buffs, but not Ragna...
She is fine from a balance perspective. She is not fine from a fun perspective. The amount of effort it takes to win as Litchi is much greater than it is for some other characters.
I've never seen Hakumen as a problem in any version of BB. It seems like you really need to know the matchups if you use him unlike Ragna and Bang who can be more reckless in comparison. Valk scares me far more than Hakumen tbh.
Hakumen is brain dead in this version. You need matchup knowledge to play every character at a high level so it's irrelevant, but in mid-level play, if you can hit confirm you can deal so much damage that you only need to be smart enough to land a handful of hits anyway, and that's not all that difficult considering Hakumen has history's greatest normals.
I think at one point he was literally the highest ranked player on PSN, in the CT era.
Lieutenant had the most wins out of any US player in CS1/2, but he was never number one overall. Also, sorting by wins doesn't give you the best player; a more accurate measure of best player would be to sort by PSR and then throw out every player with less than, say, 500 games played. Lieutenant isn't all that great, though. His extremely aggressive play style is built for ranked and he gets worse if you pay attention and watch what he's doing. I beat him about half of the time that I play him, and there were a few months in the CS1 era where I beat him repeatedly.