Strike 1: 3S had 4 Street Fighter characters. Everyone else was new to the SF franchise. To the public view, this was not a Street Fighter game. Imagine if they stuck with the plan and didn't include Ryu and Ken in SF3. Why play this for your Street Fighter fix over Alpha 3 or Super Turbo which has everyone you know?
Strike 2: Arcades were dying and 3S home console port was on the now dying Dreamcast
Strike 3: 3D fighters were at their peak, 2D fighters had oversaturated the market and 2D art in general was "cheap" looking to the public.
Balance has little to do with which games are being played, that's some new era complaining that developers will pretend to fix in patches. No one has the foresight, tiers get shuffled and the game is refreshed.
SF4 getting played for so long is weird. This is the only SF game where people completely ignore the name. No one says SF2 is played forever, they say ST. No one says SF3 is played for 15 years, they say 3S. No one says Versus series, they say MvC2 or Marvel 2. And these were the same game unchanged since release. Waiting for the they had no choice it was this or nothing as if Namco, Sega, ASW and SNK wasn't making titles. SF Country no care or am I going to see a "if they were any good, they would've been played".
SF4 has not been played for 5 years. The longest a SF4 title was at EVO was 2 years (AE2012), people were getting bored even though that might've been the best looking play of any SF4 at EVO.
US 3S was terrible, I blame no one thinking 3S was boring or unbalanced if all they know is 3S EVO and the stuff non-3S players would say.
Whatever fighting game you enjoy is great, even the ones not out yet but sadly, the scene will be small which has nothing to do with how good the game is, it's just not a Street Fighter.
Play it, stop caring about the competitive scene size or eSports potential because waiting for it to get big before jumping into it is just means you're not having fun with a good game or you end up playing something you don't like.
