So the big talk of the day is the disappointment surrounding MvC:I and how it almost seems that large chunks of our community WANT MvC:I to fail. There are people out there who can't understand why people are feeling that way. Not that I agree, but I see their point.
It's almost impossible to overstate how big a disappointment SFV was and this is coming from someone who actually liked S1 and someone who feels positive about where S2.5 is going. I don't play a lot of games anymore but SFV is one of the biggest disappointments in gaming in years. I don't really consider myself a "gamer" at this point in my life (despite what internet videos may have told you) but SFV is up there with FF13 and No Man's Sky over the past 10 years as far as missing expectations goes. It's hard for tournament players to see that because it met our needs, but the game fell so far short of casual expectations it bears repeating.
My favorite SFV story is from the week the game came out. I was deathly ill that week and wound up in a hospital waiting room watching a WSO stream on my phone. Some guy sidles up to me and sees me watching it and asks me if it was the new Street Fighter game. I said it was and tilted the phone in his direction and he waved it aside. "Nah man," he said. "I heard that game really sucks, I'm not that into it, just curious." That was the week of release. Guys like this who are aware of the IP, fans of the genre but instantly turned off by the reviews and how bad the game was at launch. Capcom lost that guy forever in the first week.
So yeah, I get what people are saying when they criticize MvC:I. With fighters you need to stick the landing. NRS has proved that appealing to the masses is worth WAY more than making the 20k tournament players and 200k frequent stream viewers happy. And that's the perspective that people are attacking this from. It doesn't matter to ME what Chun's face looks like, or Thor's hammer, or Captain America's neck. But it matters like hell to the public and if you're in e-sports, these people pay your bills. And I even get why people want Capcom to fail. People are MAD about SFV not because they wanted to hate the game but because they wanted to love it. We see where our community could have been right now if Capcom had nailed SFV from the beginning. Even people who aren't super plugged into the scene know how much better things could have been. And fans are tired of getting insulted by PR reps, told that they're "haters" who are going to be "left behind" for pointing out legitimate flaws. Tired of having hope for the future and dealing with more server downtime and more "please understand". I mean just look at what's going on right now. People are excited about Guilty Gear, Tekken 7, Injustice 2 and hyped for the future with MvC:I and Dragonball Fighter and SFV hits us with a server downtime? Really??? That's just so SFV. So I'm going to download the demo (it's should be up now, go get it). I'll probably dissect it obsessively because that's what I do. I'm going to hope for good things for MvC:I and for a company I've loved for 30 years. But if you're a little mad, then I understand. I just hope the game and the company win you over because I want to love this game and I want you to love it too.
