Well, I have a wife, a job, and I go back to school. OH and I sometimes play games other than Mortal Kombat. *shudders*
If I was making money or otherwise moving my life forward in a meaningful way I'd spend hours in practice mode too.
I just wish that success in a game had to with outsmarting my opponent rather than just doing tedious things to overcome some lame tactic.
The madden football equivelent is that I can have way more knowledge of football than my opponent, but if my opponent runs some play scheme that just manipulates the AI, Yeah I can learn a way to counter it, but at that point I'm not playing football anymore, and I just wanted to play football.
Hold up there for a second. Any hobby you do whether it's playing a sport like Tennis or Football, learning how to do multiplication or playing fighting games requires time investment and sometimes you will need to do research and practice.
Time investment is essential for improvement and actually internalizing concepts and improving in dealing with scenarios. If you're not willing to do that then you're not serious about your hobby and that's fine, but that also means you should respect your lack of time and commitment and not try to overextend yourself or behave as though you have more knowledge on balance than you actually do.
I would say the majority of competitive players have a life outside of the game whether it be college, work, internships, friends, sports (for a great many people it's a combination of all these things) yet people make time because they're serious about improving and have chosen to manage their time properly.
Everyone else has many things going for them and still manages to hit the lab. You don't have to be there for hours or long periods of time. I found a lot of tech for Hawkgirl in Injustice and other characters being in the lab for 5-10 minutes at a time between homework or dinner. Time management is a useful skill, it's not hard to acquire, but you have to be serious.
If you're fine with just having fun and being casual, that is also fine, but then I also wouldn't comment too much on the balance aspects of a game.