Actually the character balance is nearly as good as it gets in my opinion. The old SF games stick with the tradition of having characters that are good against some, and bad against others. When I play Street Fighter II on XBLA, players always wait for me to pick a character first so they can pick someone who best counters my attacks. Sure E. Honda can just bash B for his rapid punch, but who gives a **** about that if you're doing a Hadoken or using Bison's dive attack which cancels it? It's all about knowing which characters works best against your opponent, however that may change in this new Street Fighter.
Thats what some people may look for in a fighting game, but I don't. I want a game where the characters are equal, say DoA I use Ayane with fast moves and the british kid, whatever his name is again, the different styles don't counter each other making each character equal in the game. As you said if I played on DoA, chose my character and then the other dude chose a character that countered me, that'd give him a huge advantage and tbh that'd suck. Fighters should have characters that are different, but not so that one can kick the crap out of the other, this isn't Pokemon with water > fire.