Unless you pack up your fight stick and head to tournaments every couple weeks you probably feel a lack of connection with your fellow FGC brethren. Sure… you can post and reply on SRK all day long, perhaps you even have banter with a few people, but for the majority of players SFV dissolves to a lonesome grind. You probably spend your days and nights staring at the training room screen while you hope and pray for a solid connection that will allow you to stretch your wings. Sadly the reality of this scenario is often met with frustratingly laggy matches, resulting in losses you should never take. These experiences teach you nothing, and leave players feeling confused about what went wrong.
Do you ever walk away from your console or PC feeling cheated?.. do you get triggered when you loose to little Jimmy in Iowa mashing out DP’s like they can’t be punished? Do you ever sit back and wonder why you’re wasting time perfecting a game that’s so terribly executed it’s hard to fathom how it will stay afloat? Of course you do… because behind all the b.s. is a beautiful… simple… addictive game. I’ve spent 384hrs since launch playing SFV, a modest hour count when compared to those who have a limited social life or minimal responsibilities, but that’s 16 days of my time on this planet… 16 full days I’ve spent getting better. I’ve got very little to show for it… a limited knowledge of match ups, one main and one secondary character. If I’d spent 384hrs learning to play the piano, reading books, or teaching myself to cook, I’d like to think I could feel better about the way I spent my time. But what the heck am I getting at you ask?.. Well it goes back to spreading your wings. Unless there’s a reliable arena to test my skills I simply can’t get excited for this game. The online play is so bad it doesn’t accurately reflect the offline experience at all.
I simply don’t see a future for SFV when Capcom fails to meet the needs of their single player audience while simultaneously backhanding their online community. But we all watch the CPT right?.. we see how good the pros are… we feel inspired to fire up our rigs and perfect our skills. Sadly you are probably part of the 99% of people that will never have an experience even remotely close to what you’re watching on Twitch.
So why do we buy this stuff?.. why do we support games that are half baked?.. for each of us that paid blindly for SFV Capcom has been reinforced to believe they’ve succeeded. I don’t care what Ono or whomever you want to quote said… they aren’t listening, it’s not going to get better…
As a consumer why do we fall for this stuff?
I’ve personally stopped playing SFV… I simply can’t justify it anymore. With so many great games out there I can’t bear to waste my time on one that’s broken.
How do you feel about the current state and future of SFV?.. Will it survive?.. Will the netcode improve? I’m always interested to hear cries and arguments from the brainwashed army that is the FGC.
