Questions about using online play to learn a game

[crimsonstardust]

I don't play online to often but when I do go in with a grain of salt and try to factor lag in to the equation when I'm trying to learn a match. When I play offline I know for a fact that I can react pretty well to throws and over heads, online I feel like I can't really do that even with a 3 bar connection, so often I get stuck in this odd rut about if I lost because the connection was hindering my reactions and have to make guesses instead, or if I lost cause of my own skill level. Often times I find myself in situations like where my opponent is mashing something like 2A on wakeup and I get hit by that and loose momentum, and I don't know a lot of times if A, my oki wasn't air tight, or B it wasn't air tight cause of minor delays from net play. I guess my bottom line question is how do you really distinguish loosing cause it was "online" to knowing you won/lost cause of your own skill level?

[Airk]

I don't play online to often but when I do go in with a grain of salt and try to factor lag in to the equation when I'm trying to learn a match. When I play offline I know for a fact that I can react pretty well to throws and over heads, online I feel like I can't really do that even with a 3 bar connection, so often I get stuck in this odd rut about if I lost because the connection was hindering my reactions and have to make guesses instead, or if I lost cause of my own skill level. Often times I find myself in situations like where my opponent is mashing something like 2A on wakeup and I get hit by that and loose momentum, and I don't know a lot of times if A, my oki wasn't air tight, or B it wasn't air tight cause of minor delays from net play. I guess my bottom line question is how do you really distinguish loosing cause it was "online" to knowing you won/lost cause of your own skill level?

Just blame yourself for everything; Blaming online doesn't help you get better.

[reaVer]

First of all, don't play anything over 2 frames of lag, the core nuances of the game are then being tampered with and you'll be learning bad habits or facing things that are more difficult than they were intended to be.

Meeting this demand however means you have a viable means of practice. You will learn things you can apply offline and you will be doing the one thing that is the biggest determinant in your skill level: developing game sense. I cannot stress enough how having a feel for the game and having a sense of what your opponent is going to do against you is the biggest advantage you can ever get over your opponent.

[edollarports]

fuck netplay

[crimsonstardust]

First of all, don't play anything over 2 frames of lag, the core nuances of the game are then being tampered with and you'll be learning bad habits or facing things that are more difficult than they were intended to be.

Meeting this demand however means you have a viable means of practice. You will learn things you can apply offline and you will be doing the one thing that is the biggest determinant in your skill level: developing game sense. I cannot stress enough how having a feel for the game and having a sense of what your opponent is going to do against you is the biggest advantage you can ever get over your opponent.

So using something like BB for example, what would a 2 frame delay connection be? A connection of 4?

[Delrian]

So using something like BB for example, what would a 2 frame delay connection be? A connection of 4?

Blazblue does not give you the sufficient tools to measure how much the frame delay is (it actually can change midmatch too, if it notices a lag spike). Several netplay clients on PC require you to enter the input delay based on your ping, so I'm guessing reaVer's probably telling you to only play those who have seemingly zero delay between your button press and the start of your action...

That said, I agree with you that playing online forces you to guess, and it leads to some situations that are only feasible where the opponent cannot react immediately. Rather than judging your skill level or practicing reactions online, regard netplay as a (slightly flawed) tool that may help you learn to read opponents so you can begin to predict their behaviors both online and offline.

Make sure to supplement your online training with offline matches, training mode, match videos, and other research though.

Edited December 5, 2013 by Delrian
clarifications

[crimsonstardust]

Blazblue does not give you the sufficient tools to measure how much the frame delay is (it actually can change midmatch too, if it notices a lag spike). Several netplay clients on PC require you to enter the input delay based on your ping, so I'm guessing reaVer's probably telling you to only play those who have seemingly zero delay between your button press and the start of your action...

That said, I agree with you that playing online forces you to guess, and it leads to some situations that are only feasible where the opponent cannot react immediately. Rather than judging your skill level or practicing reactions online, regard netplay as a (slightly flawed) tool that may help you learn to read opponents in order to predict them.

Make sure to supplement your online training with offline matches, training mode, match videos, and other research though.

Ok noted, I guess I'll take what I can learn from online and apply it offline as well as I can and just see if I have trouble with a specific overhead or something I can react against to practice those instances in training mode.

[reaVer]

Noone told you about fuzzy guard?

[qwerty]

Online play is a necessary evil, even if you live in an area with a decent scene.

Like others here have said, you have to supplement what you learn from playing online with offline matches and training mode (more accurately, you should be supplementing offline play with netplay and training mode, but I digress). Specifically, you want to make sure that anything that seems particularly difficult to deal with isn't due to lag; if something seems wrong to you, chances are it is. That's why whenever you're done playing online, you should spend a few minutes in training mode to make sure that whatever you were losing to wasn't bullshit (though, again, it probably is). It'll also help you retain your offline sense of timing, which you should never consciously change in order to be able to play better online, but will sometimes subconsciously happen, anyways.

[Justice7541]

If you can't play offline with people reasonably close to your skill level, then play online. Netplay gives you some really bad habits though. I was trained to mash/jump/dp out of every pressure string because you can't block mixups online. Then when I went back to playing offline I found myself seeing obvious mixups that I could totally block and still ignoring them in favour of mashing.

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[Osuna]

Never assume things are going well because you're doing well online. The trap of online is that you start feeling like some things become good ideas when they aren't offline. Everyone always talks about this.

What they don't talk about as much is that you can learn a lot about what characters can do online way faster than offline unless you happen to live with someone who plays that character. Learn what people can do and how things interact with each other try to play legit even if it doesn't work right and never assume you are awesome.

It has been my experience that people who play online in addition to meet ups in BB are much much stronger than people who just go to meet ups (unless they can play against strong players like all the damn time). My home TV lags by about 2 frames, so online is always worse than that for me, and stupid stuff happens. I also talk to people I play as much as possible to get feedback on what was online weirdness/missed inputs and what wasn't.

Checking stuff in training mode is excellent. I also check frame data if something new I'm trying is oddly successful online to see how plausible it actually is. You don't have to go That far and I know I'm echoing some stuff a bit, but I just want to stress how good all this stuff is when you use it right.

Back in my day I had to spend 3 hours each way (on a bus waiting in the winter cold and then on another bus) if I wanted to play Guilty Gear with someone and those someones were crazy strong and I basically lost constantly for years. I would get seriously sick and it became impossible to do for long stretches of time because it took all day for a few hours of GG and I didn't have the time.

And after all that I only had experience with 3 of the 23 characters in GG. All of that experience losing.

[Ctrlaltwtf]

Difference in Online vs Local in my opinion:

-overheads and throws are stronger online. They require reaction which is harder

-IB'ing is less reliable because there's a good chance it'll cause you fail a block instead

-Gimmicks are usually better. Some gimmicks are pretty much equal across both types of play due to their nature, but if it relies on an opponent not reacting in time it's usually stronger online.

[Krackatoa]

Some numbers.

16.6ms is one frame of gameplay.

A local ping is going to be roughly 32-50ms.

Cross-country could be anywhere between 80 and 120ms... or worse, depending on the torrents/home network load/router.

People can generally successfully react in 20 frames to a distinct animation. This varies based on the player, the display they're using, and other forms of lag. Unfortunately (Or fortunately), many characters have options balanced around the magic "reaction" number. Characters have moves that may just be barely reactable, and could be reacted to every time if the defender is paying attention. You may see instances where these moves have bigger payoffs than quicker "invisible" options. Lag makes these reactable options unreactable. Don't crutch on them if you know they're not good. :|

Throw setups have a problem where, if done as a tick throw, may have a huge windup to get within throw range (Or you opponent could react to you not following through with your gatling). The effective range for a invisible throw grows substantially when there's lag. You may find certain setups, when not accompanied by a throw-tech frame trap, lose all effectiveness offline.

The same goes for overhead setups. Reliance of certain High/Low setups that seem solid online, or get you a lot of damage, may actually not be mixups at all offline.

The key is looking at the speed of your mixup. Seeing where in the animation a defending player may "identify" your chosen mixup option is coming, then checking to make sure it hits before they'd feasibly be able to react. Try to keep a mixup under twenty frames, or heavily obscured with razzle-dazzle in order to keep the opponent guessing if the mixup is technically reactable.

When on the defensive side of things, make sure to look at what you got hit by and identify whether or not the mixup was merely a lag gimmick or a true, solid, invisible mixup. Simply remember what's legit so that you can mentally adjust when facing offline competition.

Don't fall for the precarious human trap yourself. Being able to tell whether or not something is truly invisible, by eye, is very hard. Many things, such as airborn momentum and the X-axis on certain characters in crossup situations may mean that seemingly "reactable gimmicks" are actually really good.

Edited December 29, 2013 by Krackatoa