I disagree.
Here’s my counter argument. At launch, a large majority nitpicked Street Fighter because of it’s lack of modes and various lack of fighting game essentials that should have been given in launch. One of those essentials was how to play the game. Many people who were new to the game suggest that it was too difficult to understand, and yet they could go no where in order to learn how to play the character they wanted to learn. Only until recent months, the mode is in, but wasn’t at launch and for some that was too late as the damage was done. I knew what I was doing starting in SFV since I had previous experience with USF4, but I don’t speak for everyone.
My theory is that the game was released for their competitive audience first, not both (casual and competitive), which Capcom received the criticism that we all saw.
Compared to the launch of KI where we had but 6 characters, and yet gave newcomers a way to bridge the gap into playing others with the Dojo mode, which even in S3, is still very relevant. In S2, we introduced Combo Breaker Training mode for every character in the game in order to help others understand which things to break. Combo Assist bridges the gap for players that aren’t that great with inputs and want to start somewhere without the hassle.
My point is that if you’re going to suggest that the game is too difficult to learn, if Iron Galaxy, Double Helix and Microsoft had not provided the modes that are currently in the game now, I’d agree with you. But the modes were in at the start and continued to be added, the game is free to download and try, so of course there is a learning curve to the game. But all three teams have done the work necessary to bridge the gap to a new player as much as possible within their work as it is now.
However, while these new little things were introduced, we do not have ways to describe how they work outside of training mode and each character’s command list of info. Recapture and Flip Outs being the only two that should be mentioned. I do criticize the devs on that because these are fairly new things that should be somewhere within a description based tutorial so people wouldn’t have to dig very deep to find it.