Hi I recently started playing SF4. After getting beaten by Cody players repeatedly I tried playing against the CPU Cody to get a feel for his moves. But after several hours I still wasn’t able to consistently beat the computer. That bingo punch just seems to go through all my moves (pokes, spirals) and I can’t figure out how to punish it. I know there must be an easy answer because the computer is so repetitive. Can someone tell me how to beat the computer Cody easily (on Hard at least) and deal with that Bingo? I tried playing Rose as Cody to see what the CPU would do, but I was able to beat Rose on Hard just by spamming the same Cody move over and over (despite never playing him before), so that wasn’t very informative.
I guess Yun is another one I always lose to, he just seems to move so fast I can’t tell what is happening. So it’s hard to google the solution to that one.
Another question I had is about battle points. I’m already rated “D+” as Rose online, but I feel I’m a D player, or whatever the worst rating is. Yet when I lose my battle points never go down. I’m worried that eventually I will have a higher grade like C+ and then everyone I play will be 10x better than me. That would be a waste of everyone’s time. So do bad players eventually end up always playing against too strong players, or am I worried for no reason?
Playing the CPU is not effective to learn how to “beat” a character. It IS effective for seeing what a character can do to counter your moves, though. The CPU basically reads your button inputs and will just counter it depending on its difficulty setting. It will not emulate any situations that would happen in an actual match, unfortunately. Cody’s zonk knuckle is a reversal move, which means it will go through untrue block strings such as Rose’s cr.mp->soul spiral. There is nothing you can do to stop a Cody from doing it, other than baiting it and punishing. The Cody, however, does need to have it charged and have meter for it to be a real reversal. It’s something to watch out for after knocking him down. You can also throw him, as it’s difficult (maybe even impossible? not sure) to throw tech while charging 2 punch buttons. Juri has this same problem with her fireballs. His zonk knuckle will beat a throw attempt if he does it before you actually throw him, though.
Yun is just an all around bad matchup for Rose. He can get in on her very easily and she doesn’t have many great answers for his dive kicks. There’s a writeup on that match in the matchup sticky at the top of the Rose forum.
You are worried for no reason. There aren’t a huge amount of players online, so you’ll be bunched with players better and worse than you, no matter how the matchmaking system tries to sort you. It’s also a lot easier to learn the game playing people better than you than people at your level/worse than you.
Followup question about punishing Cody’s zonk knuckle: after I block it, he’s pretty far away. If I’m reading the frame data right, the only moves I can use to punish are medium kicks, because I have 7-8 frames to hit him. But that means I do about 60-70 dmg to him (and I think there’s no combo that continues from a far medium kick), and he does 30-35 to me even if I block it. And if I don’t block it he does 130 dmg. So punishing doesn’t seem to be very effective?
Also I tried throwing but he still techs it. Playing as Cody it seemed really easy to tech throws while holding down a punch button to charge the bingo punch.
Anyway, I’m not trying to argue that the Cody CPU is hard to beat (I’m sure most of you could do it easily), I just get the feeling that I’m missing something about how to punish someone who overuses a move like zonk knuckle. I’ve been reading that baiting is a core strategy, but I can’t get it to work well in this case.
well most of the problem is you’re not going to learn anything from the computer since they do things to counter whatever you do. While you have to be weary of your opponents options and moves, the computer is the last place you want to try and garner anything from.