dunno if they are gonna worry about having everyone out for EVO when in last EVO nobody used the latest new people anyway
besides it is clear that S1 worked much better when they just used the production schedule of 'when it's done' than promising a certain date and then non delivering which was disastrous
imho june is not a bad date but I see them possibly taking as much as august or even september with this one
e: if the anniversary surprise is some form of second story mode...well s1 story mode was out before we got everyone from the season pass anyway? may be misremembering
I mean, who knows what will be in this added cinematic mode. Could be characters from S3 even. As for the timeline - they actually moved the timeline UP last year. Originally, we were supposed to get a character once every 2 months (original schedule had Urien coming out in December). Then when Alex dropped, we were told it'd be a character a month, roughly. They dropped Balrog & Ibuki together in late June/early July, then we got Juri in August & Urien in September.
We also know that much of the principle development on S1 had been done & completed around the time of the initial launch (Balrog had been played by members of the press behind closed doors at PSX 2015). If its true, and S2 had been in development for quite some time now, then it stands to reason that they can launch them at a steady rate between now & June.
Also, it probably pained Capcom to release a season of DLC & not have those characters be a part of the pro-circuit, thanks in large part because A) many of the DLC characters were weak compared to the original cast because they were sporting changes that would ultimately become S2 universal changes and B) Pro players were had spent too much time developing their play with the original cast to move over to any new character & still be competitive.
Them releasing Akuma in 2016 & starting the S2 in December is a big enough signal to me that they want to get as many characters out earlier in the current season than later.
Maybe fix their fucking netcode?
Their netcode isn't the biggest culprit though. Its a combination of how their matchmaking handles large quantities of players relative to how many servers they have active for that playerbase. We have seen these issues crop up whenever a large influx of players hit the players at once, and it only really goes away whenever the number of players begins to even out.
Ono did say in a recent interview that their online experience is something they are actively working on & are not happy with yet, and that it was a source of a great embarrassment for them. To me, this says they're aware of the problem & are most likely working on it. Given the amount of time that is seemingly going into developing the larger update I suspect is coming, i do think this is one of the areas the game will improve on.
