The current iteration has had a number of missteps and almost every level of appeal from casual to hardcore and time has not progressed far enough for Capcom to be able to deliver a follow-up to try and rectify it. So the realities of SFV are all we're stuck with right now, and most people have fair grievances.
Casuals had a game design that was completely devoid of any appeal and skimmed compared to previous entries, launching with really just a Survival Mode and character trials, giving the impression that it was intended for serious competitive players only at the outset with the most replayable mdoe being the versus modes. I mean, the last part of that statement sounds a bit absurd when discussing a fighting game, but it was still hard to fathom a marquee fighting game from the genre's most iconic series lacking even an Arcade Mode to breeze through at launch. The late delivery of Story Mode and Arcade mode were good at expanding it, but that initial impression stuck (and the timing of delivery of Arcade/Story was a bit late to be honest), so casuals felt like they were not included in the grand plan from the word go, and the eventual addition of some of the single-player content was outclassed on arrival by other competitors in the market.
Pro players seem to have a lot of issues with the game's design, often citing that it just isn't consistent enough in maintaining a solid, reliable meta to employ any dynamic tactics -- I often see that people feel like the game's roster largely plays the same regardless of which player is at the helm, where they felt like a certain level of dynamic thinking and tools were available to them in past games that really kept competitive matches on their toes. I admit, I do not play at this level, I just kinda get this impression every time I see a big criticism of SFV.
SFV is not a complete and comprehensive failure, though. The cash support of the competitive scene is some of the highest I think the genre's ever seen, and there's a genuinely passionate core playerbase that keeps the competitive circuit alive, but I do think it's clear that it ultimately does lack the same spark and audience retention that its predecessors managed to foster, even if games like Street Fighter III initially launched to a big downturn in interest.
I have no doubt that SFVI has been in development for a while now and trying to learn from how SFV went, but Capcom is gonna need time to make it the game it needs to be and it hasn't had quite the amount of time required to pull that off just yet. Until then, we're stuck with SFV and all its problems, but it still manages to have staying power... Just not nearly as much as its predecessors.
