Man, emotions that flip at the drop of a hat, lol.
I don't know about PS3 users, but for 360, the "Improved" XII netcode was pretty much equal to a 3 or lower 4 bar match in SFIV at the time. The friends I was playing in rotation with all pretty much agreed: with the right people, it was almost BETTER than SFIV, as once it settled, it didn't fluxuate, making it easier to have consistent responses. I was playing from online to offline back to back, and staying consistent with my gameplay and timing, something that really kinda sucks in Vanilla IV, as those games seemed to pause and de-sync in mid gameplay on occassion, which REALLY threw me off.
The XII improved code is a decent basis to START with, compared to what the game had beforehand (netcode that slowed down the games actual movement, in order to keep button presses consistent. Hence "Like fighting underwater!"), but yeah, I know the words we'd all like to hear involve things like "Pre-match synchronization" "Predictive buffers" and "Rollback".
But that's why it's a GOOD thing that this release is towards the end of the year, right? They have TIME to react to community expectations. I really wonder if Atlus knows what they're getting themselves into here; if they can really find a way to assist SNKP with meeting the communities demands, then that will be fantastic, and a lot of hard work!
I'l be most interested to see what becomes of our questions to Atlus, and what'll happen when they relay impressions to SNKP (again)... I truly hope things go much better than they did with Ignition...