Long post incoming...
Sitting at 1642 MR. Feels good to improve. But I won't lie to you, this game is actually kinda ass. The honey moon period is over and a lot of pros seem to be waking up.
The input reader in this game is horrific. It stores inputs for too long and you misinput often. It also seems to weirdly drop inputs often, especially during screen freezes. There are instances of a buffered medium DP becoming a a standing MP due to DR screen freeze, I've gone back and watched replays to confirm. You literally cannot jump if your opponent does a close range DR. I watched a replay where I held up from 1 frame before DR all the way through the full startup and my character remained glued to the ground
I haven't heard many people talk about this, but there's also a lot of weirdness with blocking. Lost count of how many times I've been clipped by a low forward while clearly holding downback. Just saw a clip on Twitter today of someone getting hit by Kim's overhead even though they had moved from crouch to stand block on time (slow-mo replay to confirm it.) All kinds of weird shyt. This seems to be the number 1 complaint from pros as well.
I'm not gonna delve into all the system mechanics like DI, DR, Perfect Parry. I see a lot of pros complaining about that shyt. I think there're a variety of ways to fix them or make them more balanced without disrupting the game economy by changing cost (such as extending hurtboxes on DR to make it more easily checkable, or making a checked DR an automatic punish counter). I'll assume Capcom is clever enough to know this.
But imo my biggest problem with this game is just the general meta. This game feels way too reactionary. Everything is a jumpscare reaction test. It makes it extremely stressful to play. You're already thinking about jump-ins, dashes, strikes, whiff punishes, fireballs, etc. But now you also have to worry about drive rush and di. On top of the fact that the majority of the cast also has jump scare neutral skipping moves (dragon lash, Kimberley and Rashid each have like 5 diff ones, etc.) Feels like Capcom heavily tailored the design of this game around the highest level of play, where every players reactions are godlike. But the consequence of that is that it just makes it generally unfun for the other 95% of mortals out there. Even high level players, are consistently failing to react to a lot of shyt in this game.
It also punishes you for playing defensively. Blocking eats drive gauge. Drive Reversal costs 3 fukking bars and is garbage as shyt--often ending with me getting blown up for a big damage combo. Throwing out pre-emptive keep away pokes can get you blown up by DI. I'm a defensive, whiff-punish heavy kind of player but that style of play is dead in the water in this game. Many players absolutely refuse to press buttons in space (which would open them up for a whiff punish) because there are too many safer tools to get in on your opponent without having to risk yourself to a counter hit, such as DR, which also grants them plus fukking frames for a mix. Capcom added all these extra startup and recovery frames to moves to encourage more footsies and no one actually plays fukking footsies, because the system mechanics don't incentivize you to do so.
The game is also very fukking random. I think Capcom thought that having a wealth of options through 93290230942 different mechanics would make the game more hype and fun but in reality it just makes it extremely fukking random. The mental stack is too high and there's too many different ways to approach things. You combine this with the fact that most moves are negative without resources and the game basically turns into a mashfest. People mashing out of strings, mashing for perfect parry when they mistime their jabs and you try to counter punch, mashing DI, mashing super. Infinites in burnout. The game lacks an ebb and flow and is just way too chaotic and volatile.
I'd give vanilla SF6 a 7/10. Purely from a competitive standpoint. As an all around videogame it's closer to a 9 or 10. It can easily be the best competitive FG ever with some tweaks though.
Good post overall.
The biggest problem with this game is definitely the inputsas a whole, I think that bleeds into other things you mentioned, and players don't recognize it. Inputs getting eaten, the move priority system they have on place, the crazy huge buffer window all to hand and hand with the jump scare and reaction feeling. If they fixed those things alone the game would be way less stressful.
I legit panic every time I want to do a reactionary super. Ive never had this issue before in a fighter, on the opposite side when I think I'm casually tossing out a DP or special and get super or DP it's maddening in the heat of the moment.
Anyway...
As someone who has been playing fighting games competitively for decades now, I have a huge big picture kinda view of gaming, fighting games and fighting game players.
I'll just get to the meat and potatoes though and save the rest for another post.
I think this game actually delivers on everything the FGC claimed they want. For years players (specifically SF players) been saying they want to be able to express themselves. They want a game with more offensive than defensive, but defensive options that work and are good. They said they want a balance game over all.
SF6 delivers on all that plus the whole package of just being a complete and high end triple A game.
The game is very well balanced outside of like 3 characters who while strong, are probably only as strong as some of the top tiers towards the end of SF5.
The game has one of the strongest defensive mechanic with parries and PPs as well as drive reversals.
All of the cast are unique even boring old shoot Ryu. All characters have the best versions of their moves mostly with a full kit...Players expression is their at everyones fingertips too.
It's really everything we've ask for gameplay wise.
I think the fgc doesn't really know what it wants, but I do know if you give them exactly what they ask for they never appreciate it until it's either dead and gone or years later.
Also A LOT of fgc people think they understand the meta and how the game is suppose to be played already, this is mostly because of how quick tech travels, but fighting games have never ever ever been figured out in a few months time.
Even If we got no patch at all until this time next year I think the tier list would look fairly different
I like drive rush but it shouldn't fukk nikkas inputs up that shyt gotta go and certain confirms just feel strange
