What novaroad pilot said is right. You throw out actions in neutral to illicit a response, or a lack thereof. Now is the question, why would you throw out actions in neutral in the first place, why do you want to illicit a response?
It’s to gather information about the opponent. How will they respond to the action of me walking forward, will they throw out a button based on me walking forward, if so, with which timing and what buttons.
You see this dance of back and forth between higher level players, this is because they are currently waiting eachother out trying to force a response from the opponent. It’s a little game of chicken, they are entering the opponent their space and then quickly back out to try and whiff punish a normal attack. Whiff punishing slower normals can be done on reaction if you use the right normals, against a lot of medium attacks you have to somewhat do it pre-emptively.
People will try to whiff punish, counterpoke or even get a surprise dash after the opponent whiffs a normal. Tendency of people whiffing a normal attack, especially slower ones is to block. The next level here is that you can BAIT these type of responses. I mentioned above already the simple act of walking in and out of the opponent their range, another way is to throw out a fast light attack so you bait a counterpoke for which you aready have answer ready. You throw out the light attack, opponent counterpokes or tries to whiff punish or even dash in, at that point you’ll throw out a button that is for instance cancellable into aspecial attack.
They opponent their counterpoke will get whiff punished(or even catch the startup) or you punish them for dashing.
Using normals in neutral can backfire if you are too predictable, especially against high level opponents who are willing to play these type of mindgames. You also have opponents that like to wait specifically for certain buttons, buttons or actions they can react to. Take that exhange i described above. first the light attack was pressed to bait a counterpoke, the counterpoke was in turn punished. Now with that scenario in mind he’ll take a more “waiting and see” approach. You can in this type of situation get up a “free” dash(unless they were looking for that ofcourse), or you can simply walk forward more than you could before. You want to use actions that exploit the fact the opponent is just doing “nothing”
Which brings me to playing reactively. Playing reactively is probably the “safest” way to play, you are not overcommiting, this combined with a wait and see approach. Especially if you have the lifelead and you are staying outside of their max range normals/specials. You wil only have to look for few specific things like them walking, dashing, jumping or their “get in” special(Cammy ex divekick, balrog ex dash punch)and you will respond accordingly by throwing out a normal to cover the horizontal space and v-reversals their “get in” specials.
To make the circle complete, what do you do agains opponents that take on this reactive approach? You use pre-emptive actions to bait them. They can’t simply let you walk forward into their space and thus they press a button. you know the timing and you know the button with which they press it. It requires having knowledge of their and your own buttons their hitboxes and knowledge of the spacing of where to stand so their button will whiff but you cans till whiff punish or do whatever else you want. You don’t have to just look to counterpoke, you can do other things like dashing in after their whiffed normals like i said or enter their space and then jump and they’ll either get punished for whiffing their normal or atleast have to block.
If you notice an opponent constantly standing, walking back and forth, holds back even during your pressure strings, you can walk or even dash forward and do a low attack. When playing footsies against Karin and you try to stand right outside her cr.hl range and try to bait it, the only thing she has to do is walk forward and press cr.hk to be in range. In turn you can walk back and forward outside her range and then pre-emptively hold block.
Another common situation is when people pre-empively throw out buttons which are special cancellable, they buffer the input in neutral and intentionally whiff these buttons, only hitting anythign if you decided to dash, walk forward or extend your hurtbox by pressing a button. You can deal with this by doing:
[list]
[] Trying to whiff punish(obvious answer)
[] Walking into their range and blocking so they cancel into their (unsafe) special and you punish
[*] By jumping(pre-emptively throwing out buttons in neutral is always going to be a commitment, you either punish their whiffed normal or they most likely have to just block, some characters can still anti air at the last second but it takes a certain amount of experience, or mental preperation to do)
[/list]
*How i described footsies in the paragraphs above takes a lot of mental focus, especially if your opponent is willing to play this type of game with you. Focusing this hard on playing neutral will leave you open for things such as surprise/random actions. They are so focused on the ground game can get away with jumps more easily. Switching between playing this type of neutral and still having the anti-airs ready is the mark of a very fundamentally sound player.
*Projectiles are an extension of this mindgame in neutral.
A few days ago i’ve read an interesting article from Guilty Gear player “Machaboo” who concisely described what it means to play neutral. It was written for GG but i feel majority of it still aplies to SFV on a fundamental level. The way he described it was this:
[list]
[] (1) Pre-emptive actions
[] (2) Actions done on waiting opponents
[*] (3) Reactionary actions
[/list]
Pre-emptive actions
You pre-emptively do an action based on the information you’ve gathered earlier on in the round. These actions are done based on assumptions.
As Machaboo described so elegantly 1>2>3>1…etc
TLDR: You use pokes to control the horizontal space and try to illicit a response or lack thereof, you can do these reactively(if opponent is walking or dashing(use lights attacks on reaction to the forward dash) into your horizontal space) or pre-emptively(you know the timing with which they press the buttons and what buttons they press, you can counter these by BAITING these buttons/actions. Do they always counterpoke, then you use a feint with a light attack and whiff punish their counterpoke(pre-emptive or reactionary, both require a certain level of anticipation) or walking inside their range and back out to bait a response. You can dahs in after a whiffed normal, do they useslower normal then you can whiff punish reactively or do a pre-emptive jump when you walk inside their range. Do they not press anything? Then walk forward further next time or even dash in).
There are PLENTY more answers than i described.
Your pokes/normals shouldn’t be thrown out there without clear intend. You can ofcourse hope to stuff/whiff punish their normals pre-emptively but doing it without actually thinking about WHY you did that normal at that specific time is just you relying on luck. You won’t learn anything from it and you will only improve marginally. Constantly thinking and analyzing the situation, thinking about the opponent and their habits and patterns will help not just in neutral but also when you are on offense and defense.