Anyone else have trouble finding a match?  Player matches were ok because when I finally found a game, we'd keep playing over and over.  In ranked there is a ton of downtime because it is too hard to find a match, let alone a fair one.  Either it says "unable to play", or it's full, or I get disconnected mid-game, or my opponent has around 1000 BP and will steal the few points I have.  Heck, my very first ranked match was against someone with just over 1k BP.  It's addicting, but I spend more time server browsing than I do fighting.

Nope. I don't look for matches. I just turn on the join in-game and jump into arcade. You usually get into a fight almost instantly.

Hmm, I tried that a few times but all that ended up happening was I'd get pulled out of my arcade fight, and then the person would quit once I loaded the lobby, or maybe they got disconnected.  I'll be sure to try it more though, didn't think of actually hosting a match.  Thanks.

Today I've been hosting games and it works good, except I've only played one person who had 500 points, the rest had 1000 - 2000.  I had like 60, now have probably 0.

This is my first SF game and I took some pretty bad beatings when I started out too. After a week or so of playing online I managed to start beating people lol. Now I can beat most people I meet with under 2K battle points. You just gotta stick in there and practice :)

Oh yeah and I agree with PureRok: having ppl jump in while you play in arcade mode is probably the simplest way to play against someone online.

You should try doing player matches some. I only did ranked matches at first but have recently started doing player matches and I think they're more fun because you can play people multiple times in a row so less time waiting for matches, plus most people actually choose different characters if you fight them multiple times so you get more experience playing against non-kens.

think of a ranked match as a money match, since you are literally taking their points away if you win. As broken as the system is, that is what it represents and not a general exp counter where if you play long enough, you'll still get ahead. I'd say stick to player matches for now til you get a main character down to the point where you feel confident enough to put your points on the line. I know with zero points you can only go up from there but realistically everybody including me that plays ranked matches go super serious since our own points are on the line.