I’m kinda confused, how does someone who’s not any good, get any good without playing online a lot? Because a beginner will certainly not get anywhere in a tournament.
Playing only certain people is a poor and lazy excuse I’d say. What’s the difference from a person giving it 100% all the time or a person giving it 100% only on the day of the Super Bowl, or whatever suits your fancy.
As for that friendship stuff, most gamers tend to piss each other off and they never even met each other.
I know several of us hop into training mode with the characters we wish to learn and master and don’t come out until we’ve hit that combo,cancel or link we were running for. I used to practice Soul Cal 2 3 hours a day, melee 3 hours a day and Cvs2 3 hours a day back in high school when I had that time to. 
My point is that the online experience is still rather poor and is not a good crutch to lean on soley for training. Playing online can teach you bad habits. As well, most tourney’s run casuals before the brackets, why not just pay the five bucks a few times and run casuals and see how you do?
If you only give 100% at the super bowl you’ll put forth a nice effort but without all the muscle memory and training your more likely to flop. Playing people better than you is a good way to find what you are doing incorrectly. This why over in marvel’s arthur thread we play each other to try out the new stuff we’ve found.
I don’t know what you mean with gamer’s pissing each other off. I’ve never met one in real life I couldn’t call a friend. If you mean xbl posers than yeah those are just people behind a screen poking fun at people.
Playing online is a quick way to get comfortable with bad habits.
Look at it this way - if you were able to play basketball with pros all day, and they were able to give you tips even if they were massacring you in a game, you’d get really good at basketball, really fast. This is because not only are you hearing the tips, but likely seeing them in action, and getting opportunities to utilize that advice in games. In order to keep up, you’d have to elevate yourself to their level (or at least try). On the other hand, if you asked some casual players for tips, they might be able to give them to you but the advice might not be as good, and they might not ever practice what they preach. In fact, sometimes you might even get bad advice.
It’s almost exactly the same with any other competitive activity. In SF4, if you play online against randoms, you are likely to fall into patterns because you are playing different people all the time, one match at a time, where there isn’t always enough time to adapt to your pattern of attack. Online, a lot of players also give poor advice, or think they know about something but really don’t. Whereas if you play often against good players, you are put in practical situations where you actually have to learn to adapt rather than repeating the same thing over and over. They are more likely to give you sound advice, and are more likely to actually perform that advice so you can see it in action and understand it.
Gamers piss each other off more online than offline, because they can hide behind anonymity. Plus, the guys who are the least friendly online are the least likely to actually be that good anyways. In real life, players are much friendlier.
I guess. But for some reason every time someone sends me a random invite for some reason they never type or talk which is kinda weird. Could play them for a long time and they never get better.
Though I’d have to disagree with randoms. It broke patterns for me, no one plays the same and your not playing against the same people. With a random factor a person learns how to adapt and notices patterns between players.
I suppose you could say I’m a bit skeptical but when you meet a person who acts the same way as online, you grow a fond hatred for them.
Yeah but we’re not all like that, don’t lump all of the nice players in with the petite gamers. Randoms are just that, they’re not going to type unless its a quick gg or hatemail.
As for randoms being different, well sure they are, nobody is a robot. However, they more than likely carry a higher percentage of making you fall into bad habits.
What I mean is, you could develop a certain gimmick that catches players by surprise, and it’ll work online because you’re always playing someone knew (who maybe hasn’t seen it or hasn’t learned how to block it or counter it), so you get used to using it. It doesn’t necessarily make you good, or make you better, but it gets players wins and a lot of time that’s all online players are concerned with.
Also, I definitely form bad habits when playing online, primarily because of lag. For example, relying too heavily on overheads because overheads are harder to block online (because of lag), poorer execution if you hit-confirm combos because you have to execute fast cancels before you can confirm that they’ve hit, executing reversals too early because of the lag window, all of these affect your play against a person whether you think they do or not.
Also, I think a lot of people in the SF4 community can attest to the fact that most decent players of the game are some of the friendliest guys around.
i Played SF and marvel for years but i get to a certain point where i could never improve.to put it more simple i dont know the more advanced stuff like plinking option select.but to be honest i think the only might of Gave some bad habits like mashing and Getting extremely angry at simple mess ups.
how often do you read information on matchups?
plinking and option selects wont help you one bit if you dont know how to control space and what the other character is capable of
i really dont look at the match ups but there have been some tough match ups that forced me to look (geif guile chun)
thats a massive problem right there
guess ill have to look at the match up threads 
lelezi
20
Going to tournaments is going to make you a better tournament player, but you can also learn a ton lot playing online with other people in the same vicinity or with 3 bars. You can practice execution in training mode, then when you are feeling comfortable, start doing online matches and practice your execution. After you got your execution down a bit, start learning how to zone and then footsies. A good way to get better is to lose matches and learn from your mistakes.
Honestly, I find 3 bars unplayable.
To the OP: you’re best off finding a local crew to chill with. Try regional matchmaking.
As far as execution goes you need training mode and lots of it. Muscle memory is key but you also need to apply this in real time with suitable players. You also need to focus on your punish options as well with your character. Like it’s already been said plinking and double tapping is also another skill that must be attained with in time and can only be mastered with a stick. Practice makes perfect enough said.
Yeah you need green bars and nothing less. If your on PSN your shit out of luck because everyone on there has 3 bars at the most. Invest in XBL where connectivity is supreme and GGS also.
I used to find green bars on PSN all the time when I played SFIV online - it’s not a matter of one system having better online (all of that is handled by a game’s netcode), XBL just has more players (so you’re more likely to find players nearer you -> better connections).
I’ll admit it: A fighting game scene is one of the minor criteria on my “Places I’ll move to” list. Its not high priority (like public transit and enjoyable weather), but its on the radar (just like: Pro sports team, or pretty much any other sort of entertainment). But I digress.
Meh, it’s all overrated. If someone wanted to get good, a good player could simply tell them how to get good, if that good player wanted to.
azproc
27
I disagree. Any top player could write a book on how to get good and their life’s story. You still won’t improve until it’s put into practice.
Example. Studying for a medical degree. You can buy all those books easily on the interwebs. Even video tutorials on passing licensing board exams.
But to put that into practice by seeing and managing patients makes you a doctor, not memorising and theory-fighting a heap of facts.
Well that’s kinda the point. There’s two people involved. You either fail the teacher or the teacher failed you. If you have a good teacher and fail, your just wasting time. But it’s not like anyone hires a personal trainer to tell them exactly what they are doing wrong or how they could play better on every action or move they make.
