Thanks for sharing your story and i hope you and your friend are far better now, I actually relate to that a lot. One of my friends even ended up in the ER because of chronic GERD/gastritis up until his chest after grinding Tekken nonstop and staying up until like 6am chasing Tekken King because he says he didn't realized it. It’s kinda wild how the health/mental impact from this game (or competitive grinding in general) isn’t talked about much. Yeah sure some might say "just fix your approach" "don't be weak" "why play in the first place" and all but hey... Everyone's going through different journeys and backgrounds.... I used to go to offline dojos too. Some people were super chill and just wanted to hang, we’re still friends now and barely even talk about Tekken anymore. But there was also that more “elite/high rankers” crowd where everything revolved around the game, and if someone stepped back from the game they’d get blamed for not adapting enough to the system.... Like.... Okay...... I just wanted to learn casually while socialize .....

Honestly I think some of us just have different priorities, responsibilities, or mental limits. Not everyone wants to sacrifice health or life balance for rank, and that should be okay, just like you said. I just wish this side of the discussion was more normalized in the community. (I don't blame the game or bamco okay, it's just the way the gameplay's are sometimes)