Buy the game for your friends
I've bought this game like 8 times myself included.
The first time I got it for me and a few buddies because I wanted to get what was going to be my first fighting game. One didn't play it for too long, and the other person wouldn't stfu about vatista for months and still is difficult for me to fight to this day. It kinda spiralled from there.
There's a customer at my job and we started talking about how I had recently got dbfz so I started going to his house to play offline dbfz like lamb to the slaughter and this has been going on for months, consistently going 2-30 once a week. The trick was that the first night I went over I bought him uni2 and showed him a tiny bit and then just let it go and didn't mention it suffering from piccolo's special beam cannon in silence. Now, months later, he is playing different characters trying to find a main, and we will probably fight tomorrow. I'm excited to see who he plays and to get to maybe be able to play this game offline more often.
It is really easy to get caught up in the more mainstream titles to find players, but none of em hit for me like uni does. I try to tell myself playing them will help me improve as a competitor or something, but they won't help me stop whiffing 421b after 66c on eltnum. Might as well make my friends play if possible.