Okay I've seen a lot of people fucking bitching all day that they're getting destroyed by people online and originally I'd planned a big fancy formatted guide to playing melty/fighting games in general but to be perfectly honest it's pretty fucking simple and I can probably cover the majority of issues in a paragraph or two so let's do that.
First of all, Melty is a very offense-based game, because an opponent rushing someone down has an absolute shitload of tools to make you block wrong, poke when you shouldn't, or eat a throw. Some of these are very hard to block on reaction (wara j.C fakeout, arcueid 5B mixups), some are incredibly hard to block on reaction (ciel 2CC mixups, sp00ky) and some are literally impossible to block on reaction (kohaku and akiha's instant overheads, fuzzy guard setups). Although this is balanced by a large range of defensive options (dodge, shield, jump) you will need to have a decent "read" on your opponents (some weeaboo fags call this "yomi") and you won't have that at the beginning of a match. Thusly, you do not ever want to be hanging back. You want to be the guy on offense, because being on defense is very bad VS many characters (against some it's not a massive problem though, lol kouma), however there are times when you need to suck it up and accept that you've been pinned down and the opponent is going to run down his offensive game on you. Which brings me to the main point of this section:
tl;dr: FUCKING BLOCK ON WAKEUP, STOP ASSUMING YOU ALWAYS HAVE AN ESCAPE OR COUNTERATTACK ROUTE ON WAKEUP, YOU FUCKING DON'T.
Block, let them run whatever shit they want to, and look for a hole to poke out. If you can't spot one, look for a pattern to shield. Certain characters like Nanaya and V.Sion thrive on putting you in the corner and keeping you there. If Nanaya is keeping you locked in the corner for 30 seconds at a time, don't assume you're doing something wrong. Nanayas do this at the top level of play also. Just be patient, eat his pathetic 500dmg throws (lol nanaya) and wait for your escape route. Being able to detect that will only come with experience.
NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOUR ARC DRIVE FINISH. Yeah Nanaya's arc drive looks pretty fucking cool and does nice damage and WILL GET YOU KILLED VERSUS ANYONE WHO HAS A DECENT IDEA OF WHAT THEY'RE DOING. The same goes for last arcs. If you're dicking around in casuals feel free to throw arc drives and last arcs everywhere with abandon but if you're seriously interested in graduating past the "might as well be playing MUGEN" stage then you need to accept that the vast majority of arc drives, and all last arcs, are useless in competitive play. At US level you might get away with throwing out arc drives like arcueid's or kohaku's every now and again but you need to accept that these are punishable on reaction by many better players and would practically never work in Japan (although if you're reading this you're probably in the US or EU and will never graduate past hurf blurf mashy blood)
CASUALS DON'T MEAN SHIT. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not shitting on netplay, I actually think it's reasonable to hold tournaments or even play for lower sums of money on very low delay netplay. But any match where you are not putting something on the line, does not matter. If you lose it does not matter. You didn't lose anything. There are only 2 reasons to play casuals, whether IRL or on netplay. To get better, to have fun, or (almost always) both. When you're playing in casuals, don't try to win. Try to play well, because that's the only thing that matters. If you're playing well, you're getting better. And if you're playing well, you're having fun. I've had hundreds of "fun" matches, and by no means did I win anywhere near all of them. Every loss you suffer on netplay or IRL casuals brings you one step closer to not losing when you're actually putting something on the line, whether it be a money match or a tournament or a league. SO don't get fucking bent out of shape because some guy beat you 20 times in a row, some of the best players I know only got where they are by losing 20-0 to people like sp00ky all day long.
YOU HAVE MORE THAN ONE BLOCKSTRING. I am really sick of seeing this. Warakia players doing 2ABC 5C 22B constantly, Nanaya players doing 2ABC 5A over and over again (lol), just to name a few. What I do is break all my moves, and "techniques", into "blocks". Take Nanaya. Let's say his "blocks" are all his ground normals, 236A, IAD j.B, empty IAD, 22C, dash, and throw. There's probably more but that's just an example. Using these blocks, select several of them entirely at random and do them. Let's say I picked at random 5C 2C 5B IAD j.B dash throw. That's a perfectly acceptable blockstring for Nanaya. Obviously after making up these random strings you have to test them (2C 5C 5B would not work, for example) but the general idea is to learn all your move ranges and be making up new strings on the go constantly. Melty is an incredibly psychological game, this isn't super turbo where you can do the same shit over and over and some chars simply can't escape it, melty has several universal defence systems that let people fuck your shit up if they have a very strong suspicion of what you're going to do.
IF YOUR ENEMY IS ON THE DEFENSIVE AND DOES NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO DO, HE CANNOT COUNTER IT UNLESS HE GETS VERY LUCKY. BE UNPREDICTABLE.
That's pretty much the major points that I see most newbies messing up on. If anyone else wants to contribute newbie tips to this horrible idea of a thread please do so, there are plenty of people more qualified than me to do this.