SFIV is at the point I figured it would be. A select number of people yelling and being vocal about it being better than V, but only the Japanese at a-cho and maybe another arcade are actually actively playing it week to week and still doing events. Which that meant a little bit more before they confirmed hard arcade cab for SFV. Once that launches the main environment for fighters there will have people playing that regularly and further slow what’s left of arcade SFIV.
TBF there just aren’t great conditions to continue playing SFIV week to week with tourney events outside of Japan and that is also why the most random ass shit is still played there while dead everywhere else.
I think the disconnect is:
“SFV bad” =/= “SF4 good”.
SF4 is hated for a lot of good reasons, but it still has stuff that was good that people miss (i.e. good buttons).
I definitely prefer SFV, but I don’t love SFV either. I could say how much I “hate” SFV but I still like SF in general so I still like it way more than other games if that makes sense.
I don’t miss SFIV’s buttons because they still weren’t as good as SF3/Alpha/CVS2/ST buttons. For me there’s nothing to miss since even if they were technically more nuanced than V’s, you don’t really get amazing buttons in that game. Claw’s buttons weren’t good in that game compared to his old stuff either. SFIV was the beginning of honest buttons and just got more honest over time.
Plus in SFIV that leads to easy ways to circumvent buttons or the other end of the spectrum where you have Elena type shit where one light button can dominate most of the other buttons and go into full combos. Not to mention the dive kick characters with low recovery dives that focus around making footsies whiff and forcing AA’s the entire match.
Well 4 was my first game so it’s my only point of reference. And yeah one reason I dislike 4 is how focus takes away from the poking game. Like at low level with my friends who weren’t fishing with focus every 5 seconds I enjoyed the back and forth.
SF 2 tournaments will be active even when we have SF 20 , that game is iconic and will be on the scene as long as there is one.It’s also part of the “old nostalgia” category where you can also shove 3 and Alpha,people tend to look at those with different eyes.Capcom knows these will never go away and also know the backlash will be huge if they ignore them.
SF4 is part of the modern titles, old-ish, but not as old as SF2 and still new enough to directly compare it to SF5.
Leaving it out of the tournaments is done so it won’t be a direct competitor to SF5 and to allow / force SF5 to grow as fast as possible.It’s done intentionally.
Talking on what’s best is dumb.What’s fun and isn’t is totally subjective. I prefer SF4 but still find enjoyment in 5.But i accept that 4 had tons of flaws but i will never praise SF5 just because it’s the newest thing.
The only thing it’s being technically left out of is the Pro Tour. Which is a series of events of their own type. SF4 not being played at tournaments otherwise is due to the people. In the same way that 3rd Strike died down because people simply gave up when Evo said it’s not a main game anymore. The players decided it would be more interesting to put a huge focus into SFIV than make a push to regularly play and enter anything older like 3S.
In contrast to Melee where those guys fought through hell and back despite what corporate forced on them and their reward is it’s still being a huge event that brings almost as much players as the other main pro driven game. Being regularly played on a TV format and system that are completely archaic by 2019.
I mean, if I was going to be perfectly honest SF5 isn’t my ideal SF either. In the beginning especially, it felt too slow for me (input lag meant my muscle memory was fucked).
ST, Alpha 3 are my favorite, and CvS2 is in many ways the best Street Fighter game in the 21st century.
But I can’t live in the past and I must judge Capcom by their recent efforts, and on that note SF5 is a solid attempt at giving us Street Fighter. The most solid in the modern era, and they got a lot more things right this time than wrong. I can’t whine about the shit they got wrong, because I’m happy that they managed to get so much right after the shitshow that was SF4.
And don’t get me wrong on SF4 either, we owe so much to that game, but it was simply not that fun for me after vanilla and I only got back to it during USF4 for a bit before SF5.
Sf5 on the other hand, has been part of my life since its release and it still has my interest and support.
Part of the value of a FG is whatever its current player base is like. So playing what you love most isn’t always going to give you the biggest entertainment payoff for your time investment.
That’s probably all there really is to the whole ‘dead game’ thing. You keep playing your favorite game long enough with a small enough player base, eventually it’s going to turn stale.
The only game I’ve ever played (tried to play) that I really dislike is SF4. A lot of my playing that was trying desperately to figure out what was good about it, because I assumed I had to be missing something given how many other people liked it.
In the end the game just never clicked with me at all. Im actually having some of the same issues with sf5, but the game does many other things much better so I’m chipping away st my mental blocks.
(Seriously, why is everyone so damn slow in the SF4 era games)
Edit: as some of you are aware I also dislike P4:A but I dropped that quickly.
