Easiest character to use would be Ryu. Average defense, has a projectile so he can zone, short and easy combos and has alot of good tools at his disposal. As for whether an arcade stick is worth it, I believe it is. I use to be decent when I played SFIII on a controller, but I've become soo much better after buying my stick, in all fighting games. Definitely worth it if you're willing to pony up the cash for a good one.

Get a cheap fightstick or else you're thumbs are going to be destroyed by the d-pad.

I play just about any fighter minus MK and DOA(will dabble sometimes)its my fav genre. Your shoto characters Ryu, Ken etc. are pretty good.

As others have said Ryu variants are good to start with.

No point in the control stick, even in my arcade days I wished you could plug controllers into arcade machines, it's just easier.

Don't bother going online with it, the standard of play is ridiculously high. Unless, of course, you become incredibly good at the game.

Ryu, Guile.

As for a fighting stick, it depends.  Do you want to play competitively?  If so, yes.  If not, no.

It doesn't matter about the fight stick. If you learn one, it's hard to learn the other. I learned controller first, it took me a really long time to get even decent with a stick. I also know people who learned stick but have trouble using a controller. I've never seen a situation where someone learned a controller and went straight into a stick or vice versa. I say learn Ryu or Ken. Those down, down-foward, forward combinations are the majority of moves. Might as well learn them early.

Edit:  Just learn to use the controller.  If you bring the game to a friend's house, have people over, or play it somewhere; there probably isn't going to be an arcade stick to use anyways.

All right have spent yesterday more then 6 hours playing as Ken and Ryu and now I know the xbox360 pad sucks

I played the hell out of street fighter 2 and mortal kombat 1 & 2 then killerinstinct. Of the three Killer instinct held up the best. I could still play that all day. (arcade). The dreamcast revived the genre. I played soul calibur and Doa 2 religiously. The last Fighting game I got hooked on was Doa 3. The graffix were a generation ahead of everything.

Mortal kombat 9 for vita is the most fun I had since then. When I can afford the new killer instinct coming out I'll be a fightng game addict for a while.

AndrewWK said: All right have spent yesterday more then 6 hours playing as Ken and Ryu and now I know the xbox360 pad sucks

Yeah, 360 d-apd I'd say is the worst on any console ever. SNES d-pad was king back in the day, and that has copied over to other Nintendo controllers and a close and good version on Playstation (presumably because of their original colab.). However 360 is not good in anyway, you press left, your character will jump. You try do quarter circle and all your character does is crouch.

I played a lot of Marvel vs Capcom 3 on 360 and learned to use the analog stick quite well, if you are going to use the 360 controller, learn to use the analog stick. The fighting stick are all well and good but I can't get used to them that well. I'm mainly a tekken player and nothing beats a traditional Playstation d-pad for directions. 

If you ever get the chance, play Power Stone 1 & 2 on Dreamcast.

A totally original (I think, correct me if I'm wrong) take on the fighting game.

So much character, so much fun, best ever multiplayer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X94qRIHWKXQ