Tekken 7 threw a wrench in many people's plans, including mine.
Hell, just look at NYC Fab, guy has been in like 6 Tekken 7 tournaments and has competed in every one of them with a different character, sometimes not even cracking top 8.
P Ling lost to Josie at the last tournament and Speedkicks lost to a Josie player two times in a row. These two players were killing it in Tag 2 and now things are different because there is new stuff in a game from new characters that people are just now learning about.
I got Destroyer in Tag 2 in 2016, that's 4 years after the game came out, so imagine how well a person could learn all of the new characters come 2018. Once the character familiarity kicks in you'll find a lot less bumps in the road.
Because a lot of the characters are different, the way we play them are different, the way I play them are different. I'm not interested in playing with Miguel in a solo game. My Lee is weak, Bryan is a tank and frustrating for me to try to open people up with and Law is simply bland.
Eventually though through persistence we all find our groove, but more importantly the character we don't feel like we're limiting ourselves to play as.