I think the KOF series predominantly being a team game is one of the many things that makes it a unique and great series.
This
If KOF were a 1 vs 1 game it will not had that much appeal IMO
Still, I don't get why some SNK fans bash SF IV with being noob friendly while treating to sale KOF XIII as a game that only more hardcore players could appreciate
I mean, top players of SF IV beat the crap out on me, and noobs play like noobs, so they are not hard to beat. The same could be applied with KOF, both series are games that are not hard to pick but that if you put lot of effort in learning it you will be rewarded. That being said SF IV is more noob friendly than KOF XIII, but still, the difference is not that much like some snobs try to sell it
At least I saw both games to be very noob friendly, if we really want to talk about games that are more hard to learn we should be talking about Guilty Gear, Blazblue, or Samurai Shodown
We should stop to think and mention it every single time that we try to justify the things that are not working with SNK, we shouldn't care to see KOF became a popular from one day to another, we should accept that at the moment we're a niche community who should be growing slowly but at least growing, and be glad that at least there still people who you could play, and hope for a better future with the promise from SNKP to be a more active player with the community