In Tekken, one hit into a long combo string can absolutely murder you. The system encourages you to do those long combos, but on the flipside, the scaling punishes you hard for doing them. Reversals in this game also do next to no damage (relative to SF4) and so the game's in this weird place where you want to be doing short, high-damage combos to maximize damage output. Hence- Zangief/Hugo EVERYWHERE. (Or DORIYA DORIYA DORIYA if you have godlike execution)I think that the problem is it's in a weird uncomfortable place between UMVC3 and AE2012.
It doesn't quite have the wildness and craziness of something like UMVC3 but it seems to lack the tension of something like AE2012.
It may be a function of the currently low damage but even though the combos are long and somewhat interesting there are so many ultimately inconsequential hits that you have that problem that some combos have in Marvel where you feel like you're waiting for the combo to end.
I'm coming at this from a strictly spectator POV though, so if the players enjoy it as it is, more power to 'em.