I get the nostalgia for simpler times, but fighting games have benefited so much from the fact that they can now be patched and updated over the internet.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 had 56 characters, but ~6 of them were so strong that they rendered the rest of the roster nearly unplayable in comparison. And this is one of the games that was most fondly remembered! For every hit like that there were a dozen more that were so much worse they were quickly abandoned and forgotten.

For all the backlash to season 2, Tekken 8 is arguably still in a better place than the vast majority of pre-online fighting games. People are mad because standards have gotten so much higher, now that games do get patched we expect those patches to be better.

I would normally agree with you. But a fighting game is completely about the balance. You're assuming the team under crunch, aiming for a financially-beneficial release date magically got it 100% right the first time, under pressure. In reality, they're responsible for balance. They got it wrong, but it sounds like they'll fix it.

Game seasons are not really the same thing as live service games though.

I'm really not into Tekken but there are games I play that have setup. Of course probably the most famous of all been Foxhole.

Anyway the point is that without "seasons" (simply called that because it harkens back to TV not because there are necessarily four in a year) there isn't really any natural conclusion to the game, so you have short tournaments and people rank up within those tournaments, but obviously you don't want the tournaments to go on for too long because otherwise there's no way in for new players as they'll start way down the rankings and not be able to compete. The solution for this is to reset everything every season, but then you've got the problem that people learn the meta and are able to rank up to high ranks almost immediately, whereas newer players don't stand a chance so you haven't really fixed the problem, the solution to that is to change the meta every season. That way everyone has an equal chance of working it out for themselves and ranking up.

I'm pretty sure they even did this with OverWatch back in the day.

There has been one constantly updated game that I loved, I think because it wasn’t actually live service.

Dead Cells! They were always putting out balance passes but also included a new weapon occasionally, then would release a true DLC that added new levels, new enemies and new weapons. Would spend some time balancing that drop and eventually release a new one.

I miss games like that, I’m happy to buy an expansion of a game I love, not going to buy a new battlepass or skins or whatever though.

Yeah, this is not applicable to fighting games, not in the past, not now.

In the past: they didn't do live updates because the technology didn't allow it, but they re-released the same game 100 times (See how many versions of Street Fighter 2 exist as an example)

Now: we get one version + balance patches and DLCs, and decent publishers do repackages after every season to make sure the price of the base game + DLC doesn't exceed the initial price mark: typically $60.

Investors demand recurring revenue.

Game balance is so easy, you fonit once and then it's perfect forever. No new characters, just buy a new game, just like in the street fighter 2 days. What a braindead take.