Recent reviews by Sybners

If you find a character you love to play with, you can get good with them. Takes a lot of played games and the understanding of basic concepts before you can play the game with a sense of competency. When I say basics I mean that you - as a player - should know what a frame trap is, should know what a meaty is, and understand what frame data is and how to use it to your advantage when learning about your character and matchups versus other characters. If you do not understand these three things, other players that do will use them against you and it will feel like you are in the dark (because you are) and can't get any better.

Once you have learned these concepts, you will begin to understand how it is a give and take relationship. If you can use this information and do these things to your opponent, they can do them right back. If you have a situation where only one person in a match has knowledge of one or multiple of these things, the player that lacks the knowledge is at a severe disadvantage and will hinder their progress.

Besides the technical stuff, there is also fundamental gameplay strategies and mechanical execution that need to be constantly trained during matches and/or in training mode. A combination of all of this stuff will lead you to the progress you seek. Most importantly of all though is the sheer amount of games you need to play in order to learn the matchups and be exposed to all types of gameplay styles and strategies.

The biggest issue with SFV is the netcode and matchmaking system. It's not crazy to expect "5" bar connections to be worse than 1 bar connections. Often you will get matched against people out of country or VERY far away from you and the game will claim that it is a "5" bar or "4" bar connection when it is obviously not. This is a problem with the matchmaking system and seems to have gotten worse since the NEW CFN was released. Also, the netcode could use some work. After watching a talk about GGPO and how they deal with rollback and "The Rift", it is clear SFV netcode does nothing about this Rift. This causes a lot of 1 sided rollback in most cases (where one player will have about 1-2 frames of rollback while the other has double or triple that amount). Capcom has even bought a license for GGPO in the past but is not using it or a similar structure for SFV's netcode at the moment. GGPO eliminates this one sidedness by evenly distributing the frames of rollback to each player.

TL;DR - Fun game if you find a character you really like playing. If you want to get good, then learn about frame traps, meaties, and frame data. On top of that make sure to practice fundamental strategies (like anti airs and footsies) and use training mode to practice your character's setups. Also # of games = improved ability over time due to experience with matchups and other people's strategies. Finally, Capcom needs to fix their matchmaking system and improve their netcode!