The available download counter is certainly a tell-tale sign, I haven't been able to download anything for weeks. MGStage is geo-restricted, access from regions outside Japan requires proxy, and SF does exhibits perculiar behaviours working with proxies.
When SF is set to communicate with local proxy client in HTTP, proxy client retures "app/proxyman/inbound: connection ends > proxy/HTTP: failed to read http request > malformed HTTP request "\x05\x02\x00\x02"", and SF fails to make any internet connection.
When set to refer to system proxy settings, SF's ad prompts don't load properly, with only the prompt but no pictures.
It is only when set to communicate with local proxy client in SOCKS5, does SF seem to work, but in all cases, the available download counter don't load.
I fail to make sense of these loose pieces of information, I still think it's an SF problem, as I've not encountered any other programs with these issues, but if the problem cannot be resolved, I will try to proxy from a local server, set up a VPN tunnel and direct all traffic coming out of the PC to it as a last resort.