how exactly do you level up, especially considering most people dont live in a fgc hot spot? In a game like SF4, theres no way I can learn every matchup with my local scene because some characters just arent played.
You either learn by playing local members in your offline scene, studying matchups either through videos or thread posts, practicing setups and counters in training mode, or going online to grind out matches.
Many players often learn to play other characters at a basic level, in order to get familiar with different characters and matchups, which often lead to discovering unique strategies, or counters to common strategies.
One of the better players I’ve known lived in the middle of nowhere with no net connection and got better/amazing just grinding away mercilessly vs the CPU and training modes.
Popoblo, a CvS2 player from the game heyday, never had any comp that i remembered. He just practiced a lot on training mode, watched a lot of videos and PRACTICED even more… and he placed decent when he showed up, iirc.