Burnout is a very real thing in any game but especially fighting games. There’s nothing wrong with feeling tired with a game and needing a solid few months away. I suspect many of our top players have had that feeling. I dunno how top level SF4/SF5 players do it (although I suspect the answer very clearly starts with “M” and ends with “oney”). I suspect that’s probably why so much of the FGC is looking forward to Marvel Infinite, so they can have a change of pace from the insanely intense focus on SFV.
The difference is, I don’t think our top players realize that they would have had this same feeling of burnout no matter what fighting game they were playing, even if it was their favorite iteration of KI, or their favorite non-KI fighting game. They instead interpreted the burnout as “KI sucks, I’m not having fun anymore” and proceeded to spend months (and in some cases years) planting poison at the very root of the KI tree. Then when KI dies, they’re like “see? I was right, the game sucks.”
But no, they just have to be held accountable for planting poison at the base of the tree. And maybe in a few years they’ll realize what they were doing (or maybe not), but it’ll probably be too late to save the tree at that point.
Again, I want to be very clear; I am less involved in the KI scene today exclusively because of the negative attitudes of many (but not all) of our top players and regular stream viewers. The game has had some missteps here and there, and some rather sad missed opportunities which I have been more than happy to take the KI decision makers to task over, but gameplay-wise it is still the same game I’ve liked since it launched, just with a slightly different (and many would say improved) flavor. When people with the same priorities as me (that is, enjoying following the tournament scene and/or talking about the highest level play) ask me “what happened to KI?” in a year, I know what I will be telling them.