You're training a usf4 disciple from scratch: which character do you teach them first and why

Newbie Saikyo Dojo
21

Rose

22

Anyone with strong normals at mid-range (ryu, rose, cammy, decapre, guile, rolento etc) and preferably a usable 1 button AA. Then I don’t teach them anything but buttons and neutral until they’re looking solid with it. If they’re really lucky I might have them practice special inputs after a few days. Yea, I’m boring… but it works.

23

Dan, so I can always say and prove that I’m better than him.

24

I would say Cody, because everyone plays Ryu and he’s boring the crap out of me.

For real though, Cody doesn’t have difficult motions or links and easy relatively easy anti-airs. He’s also forced to block more often than not, which can both be a good and a bad thing. Good because it teaches players to deal with pressure honestly and it’ll improve their defenses rapidly. Bad because you are forced to block a lot and you can’t block everything, eventually you’ll slip up.

Like others have mentioned his links go from very easy to gradually very very difficult, and they are all viable. Shoryuken motions are though for beginners, Cody desn’t have SRK motion. Holding a button is easy for zonk, however it takes a while to get comfortable with when to hold buttons, they are almost never used for combos though so they is no need to learn that.

However the biggest problem for beginners is excecution, so i say almost any character is fine except for ones which require a certain amount of excecution or have an unorthodox gameplay style.

Learning the game goes fastest and is most enjoyable when you play a character you LIKE and isn’t too excecution intensive.
I started with Cody and i really liked the character so it was a perfect fit. I did waste a few months with Ibuki, that didn’t go so well at the time.

I would go over the specials, anti-airs and some notable normals with a *complete beginner. *
As far as combos go, dumb it down to a simple cancel from a normal attack. For Cody i say do cr.lk or cr.hp xx hp Criminal upper, nothing more.
The player needs to experience the flow of the game as soon as possible, to get ove that hurdle of “need to practice in taining before fighting other people”.