I understand ranked is not character specific because it is meant to emulate the tournament experience. Therefor you should be locked in to a character if you win a round so that you can actually counterpick your opponent and not have to play a guessing game if they will switch off their initial character.
agreed - this should probably also just be a staple of offline tourney mode
They shouldn’t be locked because they are allowed to switch in tournament. Plus forcing someone to play a character they might not be wanting to play for another game isn’t good for game health. BUT, the loser should be about to see what character the winner picked before the loser needs to ready up. Tournament rules go “winner picks character > loser picks character > winner bans stages > loser picks next stage” So maybe just let the loser see the winners character rather than hiding it and give the loser 5 more seconds to ready up to guarantee they can counter pick if they want to.