i'm not sure why you would even have to say this, as that was also the case in street fighter 4?
SF4 was full of moves with projectile invincibility, and many characters had an ultra that went through fireballs, meaning that, once your oponent had taken enough damage, you had to be extremely carefull.
If your first example of 'being careful" with a fireball game is fear of an ultra, I'm sorry, but you have to step back.
In SF V you have to be careful all the time, that's a good thing and that's why we said it's not stupid. You should be careful on how you spam your fireballs. You should be careful how to properly use them on pressure.
As I said before, I play Juri which her fireball game allows me to keep the pressure on my opponent. I need to charge the damn fireball and I can use it for setups, combos, keep pressure, knockdown on VT, make some of my specials safe or even frame trap my opponent. There' s plenty of uses in there, people just need to learn how to use it properly.
Your oponent could also catch you by charging focus at mid-close range and releasing it when the fireball hit them, or they could fadc through the fireball and throw you.
In SF IV those strategies were good because of the amount of gray health or damage you gained on a single fireball. He throws me once, but if he absorbs or take two fireballs (one EX for good measure and keep the opponent away) I am still on the lead.
SF V one combo, even without resources, hurts much more. That's why the fireball game is scary, because the fireball game now is properly risky at all times.
So now we are acting like characters actually have to comit to a jump in SFV to get around ryu's fireballs?
Yes, they do have to commit. Please show me a character that can jump in on a fireball on reaction.
I can punish fireballs on reaction, but they cost me an EX bar at least.
and if they want to take their chance, all they may need in SFV is to guess right once. Massive damage, corner carry, and then, unless you have meter, you're free on wake up.
This is how the game is. If they jump wrong, you can anti-air and you have meter, good damage, good positioning too and it's your turn on the offense.
I've seen ryu's v-trigger pass many times without him getting to do anything with it (in term of fireballs). Thowing fireballs is scary.
I also seen Ryu's VT hurting a lot of people. In S2 much less since he got nerfed badly, but the chip damage on his fireballs, pressure and the buff he gets on the CA (the only one in the game that increases the stun bar IIRC) is also no joke.
That's less an execution thing and more a "Capcom played it way too safe when they designed this character" thing.
SF V changed a lot even on the classics characters. You can call it good, bad, but playing it safe is straight wrong.