I decided to come back to Super Street Fighter 4 after a long absence from the game and realized that I am now in a learning hole that is tough to get out of. I am not that big of a fighting game fan but with the recent resurgence of fighting games, I decided to give them a second try and though I don’t like them, I do enjoy playing them. When Super Street Fighter 4 came out, I played it for roughly a month with most of my play coming from the arcade mode and not online play (though I did play some online matches) but after a while found that I didn't enjoy playing the game anymore so I stopped playing it. 1 year and a couple of months after its initial release I decided to go back to it because I was bored and found that after not playing the game for a long time, I came back with the same joy that I once had for the game. This time around I decided to get more information on how to get better at SSFIV, learning how to use charge characters and general strategies about SSFIV. After feeling good about defeating higher levels of computers in the arcade mode, I decided to jump online to test my new found strengths against human players. Turns out that after a year of the game being out, the only people who are playing the game online are people who are really good. I knew this fact when I jumped online and now I have a lot of examples of good players that I can learn from but I was just wondering if there were anything I should do to get better at SSFIV or fighting games in general? Practice makes perfect is one that I know all too well now but like should I just focus on one character or learn to use them generally before sticking with one character? Any type of advice would help. 

I decided to come back to Super Street Fighter 4 after a long absence from the game and realized that I am now in a learning hole that is tough to get out of. I am not that big of a fighting game fan but with the recent resurgence of fighting games, I decided to give them a second try and though I don’t like them, I do enjoy playing them. When Super Street Fighter 4 came out, I played it for roughly a month with most of my play coming from the arcade mode and not online play (though I did play some online matches) but after a while found that I didn't enjoy playing the game anymore so I stopped playing it. 1 year and a couple of months after its initial release I decided to go back to it because I was bored and found that after not playing the game for a long time, I came back with the same joy that I once had for the game. This time around I decided to get more information on how to get better at SSFIV, learning how to use charge characters and general strategies about SSFIV. After feeling good about defeating higher levels of computers in the arcade mode, I decided to jump online to test my new found strengths against human players. Turns out that after a year of the game being out, the only people who are playing the game online are people who are really good. I knew this fact when I jumped online and now I have a lot of examples of good players that I can learn from but I was just wondering if there were anything I should do to get better at SSFIV or fighting games in general? Practice makes perfect is one that I know all too well now but like should I just focus on one character or learn to use them generally before sticking with one character? Any type of advice would help. 

Stop jumping
Start turtling

Read your opponents. Learn their patterns. The truly good players won't have a readable one, but those are so rare online that when you meet one you might as well just forfeit.

" Stop jumping Start turtling Read your opponents. Learn their patterns. The truly good players won't have a readable one, but those are so rare online that when you meet one you might as well just forfeit. "

  I know it sound dumb but the thing you need to get better initially is to pick a character you like (don't mind if he is looked upon as scrubby) and play a lot. Go into training mode and do all of that characters special moves until you feel comfortable doing them. Arcade is not a good substitute for online, so when you are sick and tired of training mode and want to play a few rounds, don't even bother with arcade mode, it is better to lose online. After either a loss of a win you can resonate what you did either correct or wrong, and then practice doing the thing you did wrong until it sticks.
Another thing I found helping for me was to not bother with combos and links until my execution was at a decent level. Another thing you can do is go to pages like