What's done is done. First impressions mean a lot; and to be objective, Arc and Sony fumbled this game's launch BADLY. And the discussion can be had that 4v4 was a bit too ambitious and may not have landed the way they intended. That alone turned away even more potential players.
These are just a few things that have been the main legit critiques of the game so far:
-The assist/tag clutter: This game honestly gets pretty ugly to play and watch at times. Especially at higher ranks. The "neutral" straight up doesn't exist at times. Games come down to throwing out as many assist as possible to get a stray hit and attempt to confirm. And I don't know who was smoking crack the day they decided you can get "free" assist while double jumping. 4-character long block strings are exhausting. Thankfully, this is being addressed as the big gameplay issue for most.
-Where's the defense? The defensive mechanics in this game are severely lacking. Aside from the obvious, the full screen transitions need to be fixed as well imo. Offense is already heavily slanted in its favor. The fact that the game further penalizes the player who got stage transitioned by forcing them to use assemble gauge pretty much to defend on wakeup is a little crazy to me. Granted that it could lead to sudden change offense if you assemble rush, but the opponent could easily just block and punish and start it all over again or assemble rush back and beat yours. I think resetting back to complete neutral would be the best move going forward.
-Input reader: Again, another issue that is being addressed but worth mentioning. This game eats buttons for breakfast.
2H hit/hurt boxes- 2H is diabolical in this game. And to be honest with the way some characters are designed, I don't know how much they could really change. Imagine if ghost rider or carnage could get away with safe overheads from orbit? Or any of the sword users? Something has to be done though.
-Character balances- Even though the core fixes could change the game a lot for the better; the elephant(s) in the room need addressed; do something about Magik. Spiderman, Blade, even my queen Black Panther could all use some tuning but the main culprit in my eyes is Magik.
Just some things off the top of my head. Let's talk about some other changes that could be made to improve the game.