So what’s the scrub version to keep someone in a corner (for a character without a fireball)? I know this is oversimplified, but it seems at some level if I approach they can jump over me and get out. Or do I fake coming in, and then dash backwards or something so I can anti-air if they jump forward? When I see good players play they never do wacky stuff like that so I’m not sure how they would react.
Point losses are halved under 500PP
Depending on your character, there’s usually a range where you can anti-air jump-out attempts and still pressure with pokes/fireballs. When you get them in the corner, stand at that range and do stuff (again, depends on the character.)
Spend an entire session with no jump (unless they spam balls), an the only goal to predict and anti air theirs.
Wining these matches is optional and not in the goal at all. But you have to lose only to something that not in the goals. Whiffing stupid slow pokes because “you can” isn’t gona help for sure. So stop pushing buttons.
Should bring you to 1000pp tomorrow.
I tried what Shabrout suggested and also thought about jumping while I was playing. Here’s what I think is true of people at my level:
[list][]Jumping is one of the main sources of damage in the game, if not the main source. A basic jump-in gives you big damage compared to a successful anti-air.
[]Jump-ins are even better because each jump-in gives you a mixup. My opponents will jump from ambiguous crossup ranges, sometimes empty jump into throw/low, or alter their jump arc with tatsus or other tricks. This kind of thing is especially important for my character Cammy.
[]Because of the above, anti-airing is really hard. It’s not a reasonable goal for a new person to get “good at anti-airing”. I recently watched FT7 that Alioune won over Infiltration. Alioune jumped a lot and Infiltration anti-aired him maybe 25% of the time.
[] Jumping at people randomly can be good even if you get anti-aired. If you never jump then your gameplay becomes monotonous and predictable, which can make your opponent seem much better at footsies than they really are.
[] Related to the above, your anti-airs will get worse if you don’t jump because you will be forced to do more predictable ground-attacks that your opponent can jump over and punish you for.
[] Even backwards jumping can be good against me. The move itself doesn’t do much good, but I have to think about reacting to more possibilities, and it slows my reflexes to a forwards or neutral jump. So random jumping is a smart tactic at my level.
[*] Backwards jumping into the corner isn’t great, but it’s not hard for most characters to get out of the corner against me. I was watching the finals of a tournament this weekend, and Snake Eyes had just walked a Ken into the corner. Ken just tatsu’d out.
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Anyway, just my 2c on jumping. I know it’s probably 50% wrong and 50% obvious to advanced people, but it’s too late now for you if you read it 
A lot of that is just Cammy being evil. Watch Poongko vs. Infiltration or Naruo vs. Poongo and you’ll see someone absolutely murdered pretty much on the strength of antiairing.
This is the set, I think:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVNE6BnoT_M
Even against Cammy you can get a lot better at dealing with her jumps just through paying attention to spacing and player tendencies. Players tend of try jump-in mixups from a certain range, and once you look for that it’s easier to put yourself out of that range, prepare for your anti-airs on the ground, or get ready to air-to-air them with your own jump before they can change their trajectory. Sure, it’s not easy when they’re right next to you and could threaten throw or DP, but I think the rest of the time it’s doable.
Your point of view is heavily flawed by your lack of knowledge. So your conclusions brings you back to your main issues. Once you’ll understand what you’re missing everything will make perfect sens.
No jumping isn’t a good thing by itself. And in general doing stuff not resulting from a conscious calculation of factors happening right now, aka playing random / automatic is wrong.
Anti airing isn’t meant to deal damage, it’s meant to stay in control. It wont kill you.
A random jump will result in you dealing damage only if the opponent is as random as you and miss his own anti air. In every other possibilities, you lose : health, mind game (looking scrub), experience in ground control, space control, and momentum.
Not jumping doesn’t mean whiffing stupid slow poke on the ground like I said before. You have to read this as “there’s plenty of better poke you can use for footsies that are not jump-able” thus keeping your anti air capabilities.
You can keep thinking the opposite, and keep playing random. You’ll keep losing to things you saw in every other game you played, but can’t deal with still. And prolly keep wining some without much clue about why.
it doesn’t take a post in a forum you’ll read to become good or understand something new. You’ll read a lot of stuff this month, you’ll understand fully next year. But not trying to do them right now, will certainly not bring you to get these concepts down ever. It’s a hard learning curve, but a shit ton of stuff work like that in life.
Another way to think about jump ins.
aerial attacks strength comes from your ground work. Getting opponents worried about what’s going on down on the ground opens up air options. Because they’re focused elsewhere.
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Also it’s an exercise gave you, not how you should play the game when playing for real. But as you’re learning, you need to focus on something to learn. You wont get it by doing your thing. You have to create the situations, and practice it several time so your brain can acquire these automatism. Then you go back to playing normally but with new tools ready in your muscle memory.
Hi again guys, thanks for all your help. I have tried to do what everyone’s been telling me. I got to 1000 today, with about 3 weeks to spare! Here’s my first fight at 1000PP:
not good playing obviously, but at least I didn’t jump randomly that much. I can see plenty wrong here (I don’t know the dudley ranges, I’m using the wrong normals often, I’m not buffering the pokes I should etc.), but if anyone wants to give me any overall comments that would be appreciated.
I switched back to Rose after I got perfected as Cammy by a Rose who didn’t even seem that good. I was never able to get Cammy’s offense going without jumping a lot or using EX cannon strikes. I think when I was thinking that Cammy was easier than Rose I must have been thinking back to a couple years ago—it’s great to see Rose so strong now, because I think she’s a much more stylish character and I also like her playstyle better.
I’m not sure where to go from here. Maybe I should try out another character to make myself more well rounded, or maybe I should go to endless and work on certain matchups. Since there’s a lot of basic stuff I still don’t have, I can keep derping it out in ranked too.
Anyway, thanks again for everyone’s help. This is a great community.
Oh, in case other new players are reading, I just checked my stats. I had played USF4 for about 180 hours, and played about 1700 matches online, of which I won 32%. I hadn’t played any fighting games for about 2 years prior to that, but I had played SF4 vanilla for a bit.
Just thinking these numbers might help because people post here once in a while saying “I’ve played 100 games and still lose 90% of the time, what’s wrong with me?”