Also, and I swear Ill try to keep this short..
Injustice 2 has footsies.. and a huge emphasis on them.. if you have the right character and the right MU, and that's not a bad thing necessarily.
Inj2 has a very broad range of styles and archetypes, where-as SFV doesn't. This isn't a criticism of V though. V takes a specific type of gameplay/style and kind of goes all-in on that gameplay/style. There are characters that play a little differently, and some wrinkles here and there, but by and large, its a similar style across all characters. Inj doesnt do this.. It has a huge array of styles and types, so footsies are a huge part of certain characters. Catwoman jumps to mind as an immediate example. She lives and dies by her spacing and whiff punishes and superior neutral.. But then you get a character like, say, Fate.. He isnt too concerned with that shit. He's a keep out and setup machine though.
Footsies are at the core of almost any fighting game if you back up off the concept enough. Footies are basically spacing, timing and understanding when/where/how your shit interacts with your opponents and you can apply this to shooting a wrist shot with Deadshot or a b2 with Catwoman.
Advancing mids do somewhat kill footsies, but then again, you can look at it as a very very long ranged normal, advancing or not it has a space it occupies. Im not trying to argue this concept cause I dont agree with it, just giving a counterpoint. What was Jason's string.. B22? I cant remember, but that shit was fucking half screen. THAT kills footsies.
Inj feels clunky and kind of awkward, I agree, but that goes away after a while. Part of NRS games in general seems to be understanding how to move and act fluidly in a game with canned strings and the odd startups of walks, etc etc.