Thank you all for the tips, very much appreciated.
[quote name='depascal22']I'm not the best person to talk but not many answered.
1. Find someone else to play with. The computer even at the highest level of difficulty can be predictable. Also, the computer rarely uses every weapon or technique at it's disposal. There aren't any people that play fighting games around me so I've been teaching my girl how to play. We play Arcana Heart because it's an all chick game and pretty easy to pick up.
2. Start simple. Play a version of Street Fighter II (seriously, every console has a port of this game so it shouldn't be hard to practice) before you mess around with Guilty Gear or the other stuff.
3. Learn every move for ONE character and what the properties for those moves are. Some moves duck high attacks without blocking and put you at an advantage. Some attacks are good anti-airs. Play around and see what happens. I say one character because too many people just play around with all the characters. That's good when you're new to a game but will kill you when you want to go to tourneys or anything like that. Once you master one character you can work on a secondary character. Most people I know work on a counter character. For example, my main in Street Fighter II is Ken. His counter character is Sagat. And HIS counter is Dhalsim. So, I play a little with Dhalsim so I can effectively beat Sagat everytime.
4. To help with execution, my tip is to calm down. People get behind in a match and they just start going crazy. Once you lose your cool, you've lost your match. This applies to anything in life.
5. Go to shoryuken.com. I love the boards over there even though I just lurk. There's helpful tips for every Capcom game known to man over there. Also, most of the people are pretty helpful if you know how to ask.
Hope this helps a little. Feel free to shoot me a friend request on XBL if you want to play really laggy matches. The real fighting game heads on this thread are MarkMan, JimboSlice(winner of the Third Strike Tournament last year), asianxcore, KainZero, Chacrana, and a bunch of other guys that post here. Sorry if you weren't named but I was just listing from the top of my head.[/quote]
1. I agree it's important to find someone to play with. When I played Melee, I had access to a neighbor who was pretty much on the same level as I, and improvement was evident.
2. I'm probably biting off more than I can chew trying to play Guilty Gear, let alone Melty Blood. However, Akatsuki Blitzkampf is much simpler than those two and is starting to grow on me. But I'll go back to the roots and train on SFII.
3. I agree with your point yet again. Once more, this held true for me in Melee. I mastered one char, and seconded another. But as I tried to learn other characters, I could barely keep up with the guys I usually would easily win against.
4. That is something I really need to work on. It just seems like all the practice I do goes out the window whenever I play against a real person (in my case, my baby brother). My playing just turns into button mashing.
5. I really want to get good at ABK, but there seems to be barely any community on it. The community for Smash was a big part in my growth back then. However, there seems to be a nice decent community for Melty Blood (Melty Bread).
[quote name='kainzero']Here's what I do when I find a game I want to play.
1 - Familiarize myself with the game.
I play. Play against the CPU probably, get used to moving my character, the speed of the game, mess around and discover moves.
2 - Online research
I watch videos and read forum posts to get a feel of my character's basic tactics and combos.
3 - Practice mode, practice CPU
I practice the tactics and combos in practice mode, then I play against the CPU to be able to hit the tactics and combos in a match consistently and without really thinking.
4 - Game time
Play against real people, preferably slightly better than me. If they're way better than me, it gets depressing losing 30 in a row and I forget what it feels like to win. If I can steal a game every once in a while it's good.
5 - Extracurricular studies
Take the time to learn other character's and how to punish them and learn not to fall for their traps. For example I lost a scrubtastic match online in SC4 with Mitsu who just did 1A, 1AB, 66BB, and throw. I didn't wanna get caught against it offline so I learned how to block and punish 1A (with Cass 236B), GI 1AB, and punish 66BB (236:B into either 2B+G or 236:B, 236B). If any new combos or setups come out on the internet, practice them.
6 - Play more, watch less
You're gonna hit a point where watching videos doesn't really make you any better, or at least, there's diminishing returns compared to just playing and experiencing more. Things like execution and spacing and all that other crap is all instinct and built in, you never think about it, it just happens.
7. ????
8. Profit![/quote]
Time to spend more quality time with 2D fighters. I guess I better scour the internet for documentation and videos of matches. I also agree there was a point in my Melee days where videos were not as helpful as actual playing experience.
[quote name='Jimbo Slice']If you have 3s and a Mic for Xbox, Option.iv, I'd be glad to help you learn the game. Any of the basics you learn in 3s can pretty much be carried over to other 2D fighters.
and Troy, you'll have to post when you get back from University Pinball and let me (and everyone in the thread) know how Street Fighter IV plays.[/quote]
Sorry, I have neither. However, I did check into that GGPO application someone suggested earlier, and I believe 3s is currently supported (though unsure for how long).
At the moment, my only real source of fighting games is my small Asus 901 Eee PC. Surprisingly it can play 2D Doujin fighters and shooters smoothly, even connected to the big screen TV. Though I do have a PS2 Hori Tekken stick with a USB adapter to compensate for lack of a console.
Also, I'm really into the doujin fighter scene, as lackluster the competitive community is. I'm unfortunately stuck with the 90s mentality and haven't innvested in anything next-gen.
Thanks again guys for all the help. Now it's time for me to take it to heart and actually exert some effort here and there.
ing wait to play this sumbitch. 
