I wrote this to a person who showed up out of the blue on the Cody forums who was new to the community but I feel like it applies to a lot of people. Particularly, those of us who come from a home console background rather than the traditional arcade background. Just a little insight and a bit of friendly advice. I hope it helps clear things up for at least a couple of new people.
There is a large gap between beating your friends and the AI to beating people who actively try to improve their fighting game skills. What you are experiencing is something I imagine most of us here did at one time or another. We found out we had some natural talent in fighting games by beating the snot out of our friends and the computer. We assumed that since we beat them consistently we were playing the game properly, when in reality they were just mashing buttons and we were just a little bit better than that. At this point you have three options, the way I see it.
You can opt to never try to improve and believe that the people who are beating you online are just better than you or they are playing “cheap” or perhaps it’s all lag and if you met them in RL you’d kick butt.
You can find out little things and casually improve. Pick up a few combo’s, strats and tricks from SRK and other places. Then you can apply them to beat the majority of randoms online and feel good. But you’ll never really stand a chance against those people who role up on you with strong fundamentals and a serious knowledge of their character and their match ups. This may be fine for you, if you don’t want to go beyond just having casual fun with the game. Many people who come here find this option to their liking. If this is for you then you will learn quickly that you have almost no need to actually post because almost anything you want to know will be discussed between the more active members.
Your other option is to take a serious interest in improving your ability. You can read threads on fundamentals, mind games, execution, rush down, turtling and many other things core to learning how to be generally capable in the world of fighting games and more specifically, in this case, SSF4 and then practice what you learn. Once you know more about how the game works overall you’ll start to really gain more here than some info to memorize from combo and match up threads. You’ll begin to understand what people are talking about beyond the first page. You’ll know why frame data and hit box info is important. You’ll appreciate combo vids for more than just how cool they seem and you’ll eventually have some serious insight of your own to add to what goes on here. While all that happens you’ll find yourself getting better at the game in a fairly passive manner and you’ll likely enjoying it more, win or lose.
No matter what your choice you will find a home on SRK for as long as you are still remotely interested fighting games. Just be aware while you are here that there are others who have all chosen one of the above options in one way or another, whether they know it a not, and people of any option can have strong opinions and many will be ready to flame at a moments notice so always take care before you post if you wish to avoid such nonsensical conflict.
I apologize for the wall of text but I thought it’d be nice to let a new comer know what the deal is around these parts. As for specifics in your post, as others had mentioned a lot can be found in the match up thread and if not that would be a great place to ask. Welcome to SRK.