It seems like a lot of people are dissatisfied with this game. I don't blame them. The balancing is off. S tiers have tools that break the fundamentals of the game and give anyone who is outside of A+ range a difficult time. A+ characters are really good, but aren't unbeatable, so characters in A and maybe even B can handle them, but that doesn't matter when the meta is dominated by characters that reside at the peak of the echelon if characters.
The guessing game I see the OP mention I noticed in the wakeup mechanics in the game and not in the actual flow of the matchup like in MKX. The wakeup system is a complete guessing game and I can see why folks would be frustrated with it.
Then there is the online. It has turned into dog shit. The netplay has gotten so bad that trying to get matchup experience mimics that of pulling teeth on someone without anesthesia.
On top of that, MK11 suffers from what a lot of contemporary fighting games suffer from and that's the lack of character depth, and in turn depth overall. Fighting games over the years have been simplified so newcomers can pick up the game easier than they could 10+ years ago, which to a degree I'm thankful for, because I felt at points things were harder than they needed to be; however, a lot of newer games make it too easy to the point where the skill ceiling is dropped too low to the ground and the chances of getting randomed out in a game has increased significantly. Characters in some fighting games now lack options and are just shells of their former selves. In USFIV, Guilty Gear XX Acent Core +, Guilty Gear Xrd Revelator 2, Unight Night In-Birth: exe [st] Late, Kong of Fighters XIV, and etc., you could main a single character and get far in any competition due to the plethora of tools a character had. Even bad matchups could be conquered if one utilized their characters tools properly. The only time you see players main a single character and not worry about how matchup reliant these games have become is if they choose the best of the best. When that happens, you see competitions filled with nothing but the same 5 characters and a shit ton of mirror matches. It makes the game sterile and boring to play/watch.
I find it funny how these recent fighting games are considered e-sports games and have finally become recognized as a competitive sport, but they've become increasingly easy to play for these businesses to profit off of entries. It's the exact opposite of other professional sports which require a person to have exceptional abilities in order to compete with other with the same abilities. You don't see the NFL or NBA lower their ceilings to allow a broader audience to compete.
