That piggybacks off of what I tell people when they ask "should I pick Ken/Ryu to start with? I'm new." The problem is that while they have a quasi simple strategy and easy to execute moves they're just way too common. People know what to expect from them. While your Rufus strategy is a good one in terms of just getting wins it's not really making you better. You're just playing off of people's ignorance.

This is also why I tend to get a lot of wins with Chun-Li. I have to believe I'm singlehandedly teaching the Live! community that her ultra hits from full screen and passes through fireballs. When I get Ultra meter I can give you almost 9:1 odds that if I jump away to full screen and wait they're going to toss a fireball and they're going to eat a free ultra. Unless I feel like showing people up with that, or actually need the round I tend to not even try to land it this way because it's basically like handicapping my opponent and that isn't helping me get better... Although I wont bait it I'll definitely punish with it if someone gives me the opportunity.

The funny thing about Ken, and to a greater extent Ryu is that they aren't basic characters anymore. Unless someone's braindead or just hyper aggressive you're never going to land their ultras. The most reliable way with Ryu you need to be able to FADC into it and this is far from a beginner strategy. You can also land it after you trade a DP with a jump in, but this is situational and not 100% player dependent. A well played rushdown Ryu is very difficult to handle.

Ryu can juggle into his ultra in the same way he could in Super Turbo (Jumping Strong) and its one of the most piss easy ways to connect a ultra in the game. Just thought I would throw that out there.

That's a rather sexy trick which I never have to utilize too much. Most people can't even deal with the fact that she has huge range on her d+HK, or how her d+FP hits twice if they're smart enough to start using focus attacks somehow.

Speaking of which, Rose also has huge range on a couple of her normals, although I never have as much success punishing people with them as much as with Chunny.

Has anyone unlocked the other colors. Seems like number ten changes the overall color of clothes and hair for some characters which is pretty cool for variety.
Although to get them, you have to beat time attack and survival which gets very tedious but then they throw all these conditions at you. Like sometimes you can't see your opponents vitality, or your character is invisible, and right now I'm at an annoying one where signature moves aren't allowed whatsoever so I have to sweep the crap out of everyone.
Oh and I just don't see myself finishing the hard mode challenges for the character combos, they just require too much trial and error. I don't even know why I had a hard time on normal, I spent such a long time with chun li's last combo of LP > LK > HP

It depends on the character, but some of the earlier colour variations do that anyway. Certainly a couple of the earlier Akuma options (4/5 maybe) change his hair colour, and a couple of Cammy's change her skin tone somewhat. I still need to work my way through survival and timed to unlock more of the options.

GODDAMNFUCKYES!

I was doing the same but I was playing through it on Medium. I actually picked Crimson Viper (someone who I'm actually reasonably good with) so I could unlock whatever character she's supposed to unlock and went through all the characters without losing a single match. Then I got to Seth and it was just massacre. Match after match I was being decimated and I was never able to get more than 4-5 hits per fight because he was blocking everything and doing bullshit counters. I couldn't block his focus attacks and he'd do that retarded teleport-into-kick-in-air-piledrive move. I tried no less than 40 times and the last time I tried I actually gave in and started pulling bullshit "jump-kick-sweep-block-repeat" spam all while still getting pummeled and got him down to his last 1% and I went in for a kick and...

http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e2...%20Junk/KO.png

FUCK YEAH, BITCHES! PERSEVERANCE HAS FINALLY PAID O....

Wait... What the... It... IT CAN'T BE!

...

He still managed to teleport and EX uppercut me in the back like a punk bitch. Fuck this game. My brother in law can keep his game and that motherless fuck Seth too.

Until I get the urge to play the game again tomorrow.

honestly if your not spamming sweep kicks, your not going to beat seth. I was able to beat him with every character on medium already. With zangief being the easiest and I didn't even need to use his PPP move.
Seth almost always starts with his lower yoga punches on medium mode on the second round. You just have to start off jumping and sweeping and when he's in the ground stay midway from him (otherwise he'll piledrive you) and soon as he gets up sweep again, repeat once again and you might get lucky. After that he'll try to suck you in but stay crouched down and let him suck you in close, he'll try to kick you once (sometimes EX) and as soon as he's done just sweep him again. If he pushes you across the screen with sonic booms just keep blocking, he'll eventually jump off the wall and right to you and thats when you can perform a vertical attack quickly. Or just jump over the sonic booms and he'll try to suck you in again and just rinse and repeat the block and sweep there.
You just have to find a cheap pattern to get him with. Then just throw a few fireballs here and there if you can squeeze them in.
Theres no point playing fair with seth, he's the cheapest bastard there is.
I can honestly say I cheated all the way through to hardest mode with zangief though.

Shenanigans for the most part, always work on Seth. His pattern basically comes down to yoga punch/spam fireballs if you're at a distance with teleports thrown in. Up close he's going to DP and Teleport SPD the shit out of you so be ready for that. If you're quick you can actually punish him if he teleports behind you.

http://i39.tinypic.com/vfct4n.jpg

So any ps3 users hitting up online play. I'm pretty much done with arcade mode so I turned on the arcade join in option so I can play some people. Problem is that they're kids who apparently think that doing kens or ryu shoryuken over and over again qualifies as a combo and for some reason they like to be grabbed by my zangief every time.
Oh and I just learned about the EX canceling and was able to pull it off on some kids online finally got a few perfect matches off =p That actually felt rewarding

Sadly, I havent unlocked any characters yet... Seth is so damned frustrating I'm always near the point where Id throw the controller onto the screen... but its expensive, hence, I just keep it in... lmao

Dunno if this tactic has been hinted at or not, but this is what I used on Seth when barreling through Arcade Mode purely for the unlockable characters:

If you're like me, you're gonna want to unlock the full roster as fast as possible, so 1 Round on Easiest is the way to go. When you reach Seth, the first thing you're going to want to do is knock him on the floor. I usually try to land a descending kick to sweeping kick combo to get him on his back, being careful of being caught in a Shoryuken.

The moment you see him hit the ground, you're going to want to get within a distance that your character's Focus Attack can connect. Once he's on the ground, start charging your Focus Attack.

The moment Seth reaches his feet, let the Focus Attack fly, regardless of how charged it is. Try to avoid going for a fully charged Focus Attack, as you usually won't have enough time, Seth follows up with a hit. For some reason, Seth doesn't block the repeated LV1/LV2 Focus Attacks you're throwing as well as he should, so spam the shit outta 'em. If your Focus Attack connects, he'll hit the floor again. Rinse and repeat! ^-^

So anybody else keeps fighting the Ken users. Thanks to them I got a 70% win rate and 18 wins in a row.
I also fought someone who actually knew how to use El Fuerte, that bastard was tricky

Yeah sure. I like using Chunny and lesser used characters, so you won't have to worry about boring shoto spam too much. I just need to unlock Gouken, then I'm done with Arcade mode and focusing on all the hard trials afterwards.

Yeah, Ken is like one in every 3 people you'll play. It's complete bullshit especially since there's a wealth of Shoto characters to pick from (even Ryu doesn't get much of a look in these days).

But I'll tell you the one thing that is actually pissing me off with this game is how shitty the matchmaking is. I've just tried to play for about an hour and a half, and I'll be lucky if 20 minutes of that was actual game time. Between the ridiculous amount of time it takes for the searching to complete, the number of 'Unable to play' and 'Game is full' errors, and then the number of gimps who don't ready up or kick people (I swear, I had 4 people who sat there alternating icons and then closed the session or kicked me). I was about ready to fucking smash something.

This is why I stopped searching for rooms.
Tip of advice Omagnus, turn on player or ranked match for arcade Mode by pressing R1 in the main menu. Then just play arcade mode, chances are you'll get a "New Challenger" Within seconds. Then if for some reason you can't connect, you'll be taken back to arcade mode to waste time, chances are, you'll get a new challenger within another few seconds.

That's fine, and it works, but then it matches me up with people with whom I have terrible connections, and I don't know about you but horrific lag-fests just aren't my cup of tea.

stick with 4 bar connections, it seems if its less than 4 you will get lag or really bad input delay. As for the kens and ryus... bait them all day. Knock them down after they shoryuken then stay right outside of their range and throw out something before they wake up making them think you did a bad recovery move. Then punish them again...repeat xN. Btw winning vs them with rufus is very easy since you can just abuse his ex flip kick if they try to attack you. If they jump you just use his air handslaps but make sure its a ex version... or you can use his jumping roundhouse right into ultra. You just have to convince those types that you're wide open when they're getting up from a knockdown and once you do they will immediately shoryuken, giving you a free combo or super/ultra.

Well that's complete bullshit. Sorry dude, but I've had 1 bar games that have played out fine (though they are rare). I've found at least 2 bars is enough to have no trouble. However, for some reason when I create rooms (or do the requests thing in arcade mode) I seem to get really bad connection people joining.

Seconded. I've played games with one bars that were not lagged at all... while some one bars are... omg... slow :(

OK... Apparently if you fail at beating Seth enough times, the game unlocks an "Easiest" difficulty setting that basically makes your opponents practice dummies. I'm sad to report that only on this setting was I able to beat the game with Crimson Viper. :(

Really? Easiest was unlocked from the start for me. Unless there's an even easier version O_o?.

Either way, I'm really enjoying this game a lot. I'm not the greatest at it yet, but it has that nice classic feel to it. Abel and I are best friends while Balrog can just die for all I care. Same goes for Vega too...

Maybe I didn't notice it then. I know there was Very Easy, Easy, Medium, Hard and Very Hard. I never saw "Easiest" available from the start but, then again, I plowed through the game with Ken on the Very Hard difficulty setting the day I got it. It was the first achievement I got.

Ugh, that probably means that you hate Blanka and Honda as well. :|

Haven't had much time to play this at all... For those of who you actually still go on the Backloggery, I have on there that my system has broken due to a video error.

But I haven't had the chance to play it on Hardest yet... So gotta do that when I get my system back.

I'm not the biggest fan of Honda. Blanka's not bad, but still not one of my favorites. I'm working on Medium now, considering I rarely play fighting and was sorely lacking any type of skill.

I really like using Rose. Actually managed to beat Hard difficulty with her.

I tried online a bit, but all I got was someone playing Ken or Akuma. Not to mention if I join a game it's all laggy as shit.