As you might already be aware, the mode we're playing in the beta is a public arcade lobby similar to Arc's last few fighting games. Players make avatars and walk around in a virtual arcade. To start a match you either sit down at a virtual cabinet and wait for someone to join you, or you walk up to another player at a cabinet and challenge them.
(Players will be able to play completely alone in the full game, but the online beta is specifically to test the online multiplayer component, so that's what we get.)
It's just like the arcades of the old days, except these days this kind of arcade only really exists in Japan or in a retro collector's apartment. So it's fair to say the vast majority of players playing SF6 right now have never actually experienced this environment in real life.
As such, players have different ideas about how people should use the cabinets than, probably, the people who designed and implemented this mode. I find this very interesting.
In particular, players are divided on the informal etiquette of challenging another player. I saw one player loudly proclaim on the chat "TIP: cabinets are for players who want to practice! if you want to fight other players go into the matchmaking menu! don't interrupt players who are practicing!". By "players" the person here means "me"; there is no rule or etiquette like this, the person just wanted to practice alone in a beta that does not yet allow that. Another player asked if it was polite to challenge without asking first.
By the laws of the old arcade days, if you were in the building, you were there to fight. Players would often politely ask "hey, mind if I play?" but the understood answer in the early 2000s was "yes, sure, I'm so happy to have someone else to play this game against, I welcome this challenge gladly". You could say "no thanks", and maybe the other player would respect your wishes, but people kind of hated you for it. After all, you were probably hogging one of the only competition setups for many miles around. People made the trip, and they wanted to play.
(Big exception was Soul Calibur 2's single-player Conquest mode, which was extremely popular with players who grinded it out for hours on end like an MMORPG, placing umbrellas and coats on the second player joystick so nobody would interrupt them. Everyone hated these guys.)
Japanese arcade setups are doubles cabinets where you don't get to see the other player unless you peek across: in this and many other aspects, the design actually invites direct challenges. Japanese arcades will sometimes have designated single-player cabinets for certain fighting games, but it's uncommon.
It's fair to say that the designers of SF6's Battle Hub didn't even consider the idea that a player would want to just play alone. It's not a part of the environment that they were trying to simulate. But they're creating a simulacrum of that environment for home users who've never experienced that space, and for whom it probably isn't even relevant. They have totally different expectations.
This is a lot of words to say that SF6 probably should, along the way, add a Do Not Disturb option to Battle Hub. It is a feature I would personally never use, but it's clearly called for. There are going to be players who want to hang out, chat, and not actually fight other players. That's really weird, in arcade culture, but in a digital space there's really no reason not to accommodate.
Back in the day we had two Third Strike cabinets. Now we have infinity.
