I would argue there’s a lot of overlap between how and why you should play a game. Anyways…choosing a character is something that is very personal. If you want to play the easiest, then Blaughable is right on the money. I’m going to share how I ended up choosing Makoto and the characters I played before I switched to her. I’m gonna get especially long-winded here, so do forgive me! My hope is that by sharing my experience with you Prey, you will see that your situation is not uncommon (hell, just check out the rage thread) 
[details=Spoiler]When I first started playing often was when PC SSIV AE first came out, but I had been reading and watching videos long before that. I played a little bit on friends’ consoles before that, but it was usually not for very long stretches.
I’ve been playing fighting games casually all my life, since learning how to do fireballs and SRKs in sf2 on snes. I played Ryu like everyone else. Then I became attached to Akuma’s bad guy feel in alpha 2. I continued playing akuma in 3rd strike, although I only really ever played with my brother. That said…I was bad. Like really bad. Like use nothing but fierce attacks and specials kinda bad. So, when SFIV came out, I actually decided I’d take the game seriously. So I did research, despite not being able to play it regularly. I stuck with Akuma in vanilla cause I liked him, but I lost frequently with him. He was fairly difficult for me to play well. So for the first time, I considered character choice seriously. I decided on Guile, because he was simple.
Guile was weak in vanilla, but I won with him more often that I did with Akuma since his execution requirements were much, much lower. Fast-forward a bit to when SSFIV hit and Guile became a beast. I bought myself a TE fight stick so I could start p-linking, and my execution drastically improved over the course of a few months. But…I would win, and feel bad about winning! This was both online and offline. My brother stopped playing with me because he just didn’t like fighting Guile. So, I decided it was time for another character switch. I narrowed it down to Ken or Guy, simply because Ken was solid and I liked Guy’s style.
Then, I read V-Ryu’s interview here on the forums, so I thought I’d check out Yogaflame’s The Magic of Vryu Sensei. Makoto was a character I had never even considered…all I knew was that she was in 3rd strike and looked like a female version of Ryu. I didn’t know her specials, or how she played. And holy shit man, I liked what I saw. I started doing more research on Makoto and found some sets of Flash Metroid tearing up with her. So, I found it interesting that this supposedly low-tier character could do so well if played right. After all, every time I had played a makoto online in super with my guile, I didn’t even have to try to win. I could literally do nothing but hold down-back, throw booms, anti-air, and throw out a few back knuckles and I’d win.
So I switched to Mak. Oddly enough this was shortly before AE hit. I knew nothing about the change log, so I was happy to hear that she was getting buffed. So I started doing endless with her…and man was I terrible. I knew more about the game than I did in vanilla with Akuma, but I did much worse. I would lose 20+ matches in a row. But I didn’t care, Mak was fun to play. Fast-forward to when AE PC hit. This was the first time I was ever able to play consistently, so I started training hard. I’m think I just hit 6500 matches played, for almost all of them I used Makoto. I still lose to players who don’t play smart. When I play Ken I marvel at how much easier SRK is to use than fukiage. But I still love playing Makoto the most.[/details]
There’s also the, how should I be thinking while playing this game side of things. Cause let me tell you, saltiness really is very dependent on your mindset.
I find myself, too often, getting into the mindset of, “Okay, I have to win this match,” or “I shouldn’t lose to this guy.” It’s when I start thinking like that that I get the most frustrated, well outside of network of performance related lag. This mindset contrasts heavily to how I thought when I first started playing AE on PC.
I just didn’t have the opportunity to play often because I don’t own a 360 or a ps3, so when AE hit PC, I was just happy to be playing. Back then, I hadn’t invested that much time in actually playing, so my mindset was different…better I would argue. I would think, “Alright, LET’S GO” before a match, instead of “aww, not T. Hawk!” Or, instead of “why is this scrub getting rounds on me?” I’d think, “how can I do better?” In fact, my microphone was on for the first day of matches and I didn’t realize it…until I got a message about my “GET HYPE!” pre-match pep talk to myself
Don’t be discouraged though Prey, we’ve all had our frustrating losses. The important thing is to not lose sight of the spirit of the game, which means different things to different people, but to me…it’s about choking people.
but ya the crouching characters thing is turning out to be a pain and thought it might just be my execution cause I can’t seem to land it on ryu. Lk tc doesn’t connect on him either