But there's absolutely no denying that the lack of an Arcade Mode hurt it HARD at launch and is STILL hurting it. My own anecdotal evidence is three of my best friends who I play fighting games with have refrained from a purchase for the lack of an Arcade Mode, and my own personal style of playing offline, mostly against AI, caused me to lapse from this game faster than any other Street Fighter I've played in nearly 30 years.
That's what a lot of these people don't get. 9 of my friends didn't pick it up purely due to that. I can tell you how it went.
"Ok, so how do I beat the game?"
"Eh, either play Suvival-"
"That's not Arcade Mode man."
"Ok wait for Story Mode."
"Yeah, I'm waiting for Arcade Mode."
And when Story Mode came out.
"Yeah, I caught some video of it, shit looked easy and boring as hell. Tell me when Arcade Mode hits."
Shit, I can tell you what I do with each and every SF game.
- Pick Arcade Mode
- Pick a character I love playing
- Beat Arcade Mode, get ending
- Decide if I like the character, if not I pick a new character
- Pick Arcade Mode with new character
I'm getting an ending as a reward along with knowledge given it's difficulty and I'm given a decent challenge. I can also say "well I beat the game with Balrog" as well. It's also a great test for me to decide if I want to go further with the character. If I hit a roadblock, I can just switch off and never play them again.
Survival isn't like that at all, it's a busted mode.
Even this isn't exactly true...
For example, fans of Ibuki going back to SFIII and 1997 were shafted when Capcom gutted her move set.
She's essentially a new character.
I mean, did they take away Ryu's Hadouken or Dragon Punch?
No. No they didn't....
So why take away Ibuki's signature moves and replace them with horseshit?
WHY CAPCOM?
Yeah but she's still Ibuki the character at the end of the day which is what I'm saying. A lot of the concerns with why people won't get a character or get used to new characters isn't based around movesets, it's based around who the characters are. Like Ono himself said before SFV came out, he found out that people were attached to the characters' stories, personalities and the lore as a whole which is one reason why they even brought the Cinematic Story Mode into play.
Ibuki, even if she plays differently she's still the same character that a kid played in their first fighting game coming home from school as they eat Lunchables. That former kid with those memories is going to get a flashback of playing Ibuki in the old days even if she plays differently based on the fact that it's Ibuki.
But yeah that was dumb on Capcom's part to change her moves like that.