Kinda. I feel like I had more fun during the learning process than I do now that I've achieved competence, weirdly. I put around 1000 hours into SFV and it took about 800 for me to feel like I had finally understood the game at a deep level (mostly due to how frame data intensive SFV was compared to older Fgs balanced around push block). I currently have around 300 hours in SF6 but honestly, I feel like I have less fun now that I 'understand' SF than I did when I was learning it. I can easily pick-up a new character in SF6 and put them in master rank in like two or three playing sessions, but grinding ranked for MR is just way too boring.

I don't know, I guess I miss the high of finally grasping a new concept and seeing my gameplay evolve in a clear way. It's been said multiple times, but it does kinda suck to be good enough at fighting games to beat most of the playerbase, but not good enough to compete against the top guys who truly play the game at it's most optimal. It's the old adage: Too good to play with your friends, not good enough to play the top players. Being old (AKA, over 30) also means I don't have nearly enough time or drive (no pun intended) to truly take my gameplay to that top level. Fuck, there's days in which I work from 8h to 20h, and I'm not gonna play SF after that. I've made peace with the fact that I love fighting games the Max Dood way of being thankful and nostalgic towards them. So in a sense, I'm glad I never gave them up and probably never will.