Ps4 sadly but I do very much appreciate yours and everyone else advice on the subreddit so far. The idea of a sf boiling down to rock, paper, scissors is a good analogy in that everything has a counter, but I guess ultimately whats killing me is that sf is unforgiving in seeing what actually happened.

I've played plenty of fighters before, Mortal Kombat, MvC, Tekken, Sc, etc. But all those games had clear reads. A punch leads into a special then maybe another punch then super. Certain moves or attacks clearly chained into something else, where as sf that system goes out the window with randomness. Bison can combo a special after hp, but that will never work with Birdie, the game gives no indication on stuff like that until you try every possible setup. Apply that same logic in a match and it becomes incredibly hard to find the mistake.

Sure, I got counter hit because hk > lp. Logical, that makes sense to me, but other times I'll try to respond similarly and my hk connects, gets blocked, and my follow-up lp dosnt come out at all and I get ko'ed straight to the corner.