Having nothing to do while waiting for an opponent is a real long term Fighting game killer. It’s the reason I gave up on Flash Party. After hitting plat, you would wait anywhere between 5-30+ min for an opponent. And all you could do was go through your cosmetics, roster, stuff like that. You couldn’t even “buy” stuff or even look at some of the roulettes.
Being able to keep warm, work on some combos, or even fiddle on certain settings would already be huge for the game’s health.
I’m currently sitting in low bronze (EU) and I sometimes struggle finding games. Outside of prime time I can easily be waiting anywhere between 1-3 min. It’s not a lot. But when all you can do is NOTHING, those kinda pile up. A 30min session results generally in 8-10min of waittime for 20ish min of game.
This is one of the reasons that’s killing even a game as big as MK1.
Yeah Training and Watching your replays might be very good inbetween matches. Maximizing your learning even in waiting. Rivals 1 had a feature where you could practice in training mode while waiting for a match and it was incorporated in the menu. It was pretty nice. You could change your controls then, try them and repeat. You didn’t even have to wait for the loading screen. I wonder if something like that would be possible with ROA2 or if it would be too rough on the system.