Single player modes are needed if you want to fidelize the userbase.
It's not a case if the most successful fighting games like Mortal Kombat or Tekken, has lots of single player content together with their online fetaures.

They can't expect to attact people just with online, especially now that the free trial has ended.

This game needs some real meat, both single player and online, and it need it NOW. otherwise when VF6 will come, the player base will shrunk again like during the "Final Showdown" era.

Hopefully VF6 will be done right and release with all the important things. Hopefully Quest Mode and Rollback and a tons of customisations for characters ala VF5FS.

VF5US has the best set of online features the Virtua Fighter series has ever had. But its not enough to grow the player base. New players and casual players are drawn to a fighter game first through Single Player features. They spread good word of mouth to other potential new players because of Single Player features and their impressions of the game based on the Single Player features. Most new players start out as casual payers and once they are into the game enough , learn the game,get comfortable with 1 or 2 characters , only then do they potentially become competitive or hard core. players

The best online netcode in the world and the online features that VF5US now has are simply not enough to grow the VF player base

I'm hoping the next update for VF5US will at the very least port the single player modes from VF5FS along with the rest of the customizations

VF6 needs to raise the bar in a major way. Currently Tekken and Soul Calibur are simply much bigger games, with more modes, and more content than VF. VF needs to build on its superior fighting engine and roster by adding Both Single Player features And Offline features that at the very least make VF competitive with Soul Calibur and Tekken.

There's no way there going to bother with single player modes for a game that's got E Sports in the title and was a PS+ free game for 2 months at release. At this stage it wouldn't even change much either. That's something for VF6 to do.

The lobbies still haven't been fixed. 4 bar rooms end up being 1 bar when you enter the room nearly all the time. That should've been one of the first things they fixed.

Also you have to push option button twice all day so it shows you only no password rooms, and you can't set your rooms preferences as defaults saved, it's kinda joke that something basic like this isn't fix.

But i agree that it was to be excepted to not see a lot of solo content in this game considering its title Esport, tho it would have been more than nice for sure, mostly Quest Mode for me. But hopefully it's something that we will see for VF6 and Sega is aware of its importance by that point.

Understood, but in many regions of the world the game does not have e-sports in the title, its known and published as "Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown"

I get the economics of it being free for the first two months etc., but the fact remains,
every single FG that has a successful, vibrant online player base also has significant "solo content" there are no exceptions. Online only fighting games fail. That's what happened initially to Sloclap's Absolver. They had to beef up the single player (offline content) for it to really get the longevity it received. That may also explain why Sloclap's newest game SIFU coming 2/2022 will be Single Player only.

If the FG has no significant "solo content" then the online will ultimately be very sparse. And the player base will be small and niche. Most of the players that only care about online don't like that assessment, but it is what it is

Yeah, that's the reality.
Unless they add a good amount of offline single player modes, VF5US risk to return a Japan only thing, and return to be ultra-niche in the rest of the world.