Maybe ignorance is bliss but I disagree. I'm having no problems with the d-pad, it works well.
I went through a few more dojo tutorials this morning and I understand the combo system much better. My problems right now is doing enders to get the max damage possible, otherwise the combo is somewhat wasted.
Question about combos in general. During the normal parts of the fight, you really don't have much of a combo bar to fit moves into, so you have to end it fairly early. How are you able to pull off 50+ ultras? Does it give you more time to fit in moves towards the end of the match?
if you can play with the dpad then good for you heh. i'm using the analog for everyone except sabrewulf. when using the analog though i'm jumping randomly because i hit an angle up when going left/right sometimes. i also miss a ton of special moves.
i got to dojo 32 and i just could not finish the combos with the controller so i stopped. ill finish it when i have my joystick tomorrow.
as far as the combos being long, there are some concepts that you have to understand to make em longer, which they go over in the dojo a bit but you may not have gotten to those yet.
when you use a heavy auto-double, it fills up less kv meter. heavy's are riskier to use because they are easier to react to and break, but they do the most (potential) damage and make the kv meter go up less. if you use a light autodouble, they are harder to break because they are so fast, but they do less damage and make the kv meter go up much quicker.
then you have linkers. same concept kind of except i'm the kv meter doesn't go up. i know for shadow linkers it doesn't go up at least, can't really remember for normal linkers but i don't think it does either. but if you do a light linker, it is only 1 hit and harder to break, doing least amount of damage. if you do the heavy linker (by pressing the medium button and holding it), you get 3 hits in the linker, doing more damage but easier to break.
so basically, you get the most damage and most hits out of using all heavy attacks in the combo. you should mess aroudn in training mode to see how it works and you can see how many more hits you can get comparing a heavy and light combo, using the same linkers and enders.
but yeah, the whole "cash in" thing is how you get the damage. it really adds to the risk/reward of combos. the longer you go and heavier you go, the more likely you are to get broken and lose the potential damage. that is why whenever you see someone in lockout, it's best to start using shadow linkers and heavy auto doubles because they have no chance of breaking them at that point.