This is my first post and thank you all for the awesome information here! I just got my fight stick today and I can see there is going to be quite a learning curve.
I mentioned to someone on PSN that I didn’t like how the guide made the stick kinda fit into a groove (when you might be doing a fireball motion and at diagonal it catches it a little into a grove). Do most people use the guide to help feel where they are our should the stick hit the guide as less as possible when making motions?
What you’re calling a “guide” is more commonly referred to as a gate. What you’ve noticed is that your gate is square, as all the madcatz sticks have one. There are octagonal gates you can replace them with that you might want to try out if the square is really bothering you. Check out the tech talk section of the forums for guides on how to swap gates out.
It takes some getting used to, but you definitely don’t want to be jamming is into either side or corner. Get used to how each individual direction feels, and just keep working at it.
Personally I think switching to an octagonal gate is a bad idea. Using square gates may come slightly less naturally but in the end I think the movements do work better on a square gate so do really give it a chance first, it will take several hours of play to get used to (and probably a lot more to get 100% comfortable). In the end the effort is worth it though and should help your play a lot so try not to get discouraged.
The click is the direction registering so you want to make it click, though as konkrete said, the gate is only useful for some motions, for quarter circle, half circles and 360/720’s you shouldn’t be using the gate, though for charge moves and srk’s the gate is quite useful, as it can be sometimes for double quarter circles (as :d::df::qcf: works).
There’s nothing really wrong with an octagonal gate; it mostly comes down to user preference. Personally I switched my gate to an octo pretty early on, and haven’t looked back. In fact, I’ve learned not to ride the gate even with an octo stick…so when I do play on a square gate I am not at a disadvantage, as the natural motions I have developed do not use what would be the corners of the gate very often anyway.