Well there’s a lot of reasons why Japan wouldn’t care about Marvel and it goes past the gameplay (Marvel characters for example aren’t as hype for them as say Jojo’s or Hokuto No Ken characters would be).
I feel it’s only really shitty for people who are looking for “fair” mechanics in a Marvel game. Which that’s the whole point of Marvel…it’s a fighting game version of being out on the streets, anything goes. Of course that allows the game to present a lot of oppressive, near inescapable situations but it wouldn’t be Marvel if it didn’t have that.
It’s a double edged sword because it allows you to be extremely creative with your character and attack/defensive options. The other end of the sword is that as people get more creative with those options…just like in older Marvel games it will start to shut out viability of some of the characters and force a lot of having to study the game religiously to deal with those oppressive situations. Forcing the guy who just wants to get in and play to eventually give up because he knows to consistently win against Morrigan + Missiles he has to win within 10 seconds or else. Then it just starts not being the type of game for everybody anymore.
XF3 characters are considered scrubby or whatever but once people learn to snap them in or generally deal with them they won’t be that much issue either. Dark Wesker is one of the most complained about amongst any average player but it will get to the point where if you lose 2 characters and your last guy is Dark Wesker, you’re probably not going to survive against Zero no matter what XF you’re in. That’s if your Dark Wesker doesn’t get snapped in and killed first. That’s also if they don’t nerf Zero.
Yet, despite all of that still only the top top players actually win consistently at the game. There’s a lot of crazy stuff like extremely fast left/right mix ups, assists that lock you down into multiple near unseeable high/low mix ups, TAC’s, and a mechanic that basically makes your damage and frame data better for a set amount of seconds. Even with all of that they still come through on top. Meaning the best players still know how to force you to play around their rules even if the game itself doesn’t have many.
If PR Rog can win with a team that is basically 3 point characters and sometimes has Dante on it…the game isn’t really that shitty to me any way. If it was that bad PR Rog woudl be using some real end game team like Zero/Dante/Strider and get top 64 at best instead of 2nd place.
In general I think if XF2 and 3 lasted shorter and characters that are near untouchable without using distance options that can TOD you by themselves like Zero were further toned…the game would be pretty fine at that point. I think the biggest thing for a lot of people is just it’s obvious they intended to make the game as accessible for players as possible despite how badly they’re getting beat through the XF mechanic. We’ll see if Capcom throws in one more balance patch or so but I’m kinda doubting it. Just gonna have to fight the power I think.