Taking online "seriously"

I dunno, I'm not really used to being berated for my lack of enthusiasm for online play -- anyone with steam can see as much -- nor seeing anyone else willing to go to bat for it in a fighting game as much as SDS does. Well, maybe a certain kof player that will go unnamed but he's an exceptional case.

Even the serious business PC gaming events are on LAN and they will tell you upfront it's for a very good reason -- online play is inferior for determining who's better, period, end of story.

 

I think the lag effect is overstated. The only action game better than online VF is offline VF. You can still fuzzy and throw escape and whiff punish online. I do those things and see people do them all the time. Rodney and Denkai and some others will even throw escape after taking a low punch. And yes, there are even a handful of "machi" players who take time out of playing soggy biscuit to log some VF matches. And yes, lag does buff spamming considerably. Shun and monkey girl and Brad are very powerful in the hands of good players or even good spammers. But still, it is still fun to play.

It isn't perfect, but it is still better than anything else. I mean, I can have playable connections with Plague who is in LA for chrissakes. Just play and adjust. Host games and play 3DS or read a book while waiting for someone to join. But be careful and don't beat certain people too much or they won't join your matches anymore.

 

Yeah I really only harbor rage at my ISP for most of this. Not going to budge on my read of how VF works online since it is delay-based and not GGPO which syncs clients differently and can be playable up to about 120-150ms.

I'm sure on the coasts it's much nicer. Here it's either u-verse or charter. 20-30ms higher ping (so 45ms is about the lowest it goes even inside the city vs. 45ms to NYC on charter), stable u-verse or charter's infamous d/c and downtime problems here ...I'm not sure. It's been a while.

Anyway a frame is 16.7ms, so you can get a rough idea of how much delay is going on under ideal conditions by dividing it by the ping time -- if you go through pingtest.net you can measure it to most major cities.

 

For players who rely on reactionary knowledge to win, lag even on 3 bars can be difficult to play. You often can't punish things like blocked knee or double palm etc. with anything other than pk. It's even worse for characters whose correct response involves a move with more than one direction input. A defensive player may try to reduce the number of correct reactionary guesses needed to win. Generally if I can win with 3 or 4 correct reactionary guesses, I'll choose that over initiating the attack. This type of play is far more difficult online than offline.

At a higher level, winning and losing in VF almost always has to do with that reactionary aspect with the proper foresight to guard, escape, fuzzy etc.. VF, in this version and in the past ones, has partly always been about reacting properly. Two players who know their own characters and have some defensive technique skills can still put on an ugly match by not reacting properly. Once two players can react nearly perfectly, lag does play a huge role because you can see when someone has correctly reacted, though lag prevented that choice from working out.

Little things like getting hit with an attack after escaping because your opponents attack became a delayed one through lag happen frequently online. Most people won't notice it and it's exactly those people who have a passing 70 percent knowledge of VF that claim the game can be played seriously online. They are missing some percentage of the game that they aren't able to recognize. These very same people might lose without knowing why they repeatedly lost. Just play for fun and if you want serious competition take it offline.

 

This seriously makes me laugh hearing it come from you. Ok seriously man, on a personal level I think you are one awesome fella. You are highly intelligent, seem to be enjoying life, married to a wonderful woman who is just as awesome as you are and top it all off she respects your hobby. Add all that up and on a scale of 1 to 10 I give you a 15.

But when it comes to VF5 online??? I often ask myself why are you on my friends list? And I don't mean that in a cruel way. I can understand having Talis on my list and not playing with him that much due to the lag, but still every once in a while we will try to get some games in. If the matches are playable without becoming frustrating we stick around and have fun. Once the matches become unplayable we go our separate ways and send each other a thanks for playing.

But you man... we never play, you never join my matches and I just don't bother to join yours because it's as you said ( down there )

It kills me every time I read a statement from you about players being to machi, spammers, 2P whotes, etc and these are all the same tactics that you use to win in my opinion. Is there something wrong with that... nope. At least not in my book. I actually find it fun and learn to adjust only makes me a better player overall. Actually my Lau / Pai and Lion uses your 2KK spamming tactics and fuck me man that shit works great. So despite the fact that we don't play I'm gonna end this with a big <span style="font-size: 26pt">thank you</span> for at least teaching me something during the very little amount of time that we did play.

Think about what you said vs what I just said.

 

agreed.

EmX, you're quite the well-spoken individual.

 

Online or offline, ill still destroy whomever!!! Dont make no sense to cry though... Alteast online you get a handicap.. Now I fully understand why Shou be trashing this site. To think I defended this site while he was trashing it Smh!!!! Since I wont see 90% of you bums offline... I will embarass you online so you get frustated and blame it on lag.. And to think sega added online to the best of their ability for our enjoyment.

 

blah blah blah Rodney. I host all the time. Join my match if you so want to fight me and I'll break out the 12-sided dice and we can play some pen and paper VF since you are so eager to do so and so butthurt that I have been less so. It's really your aggrieved VFDC spam that is more annoying than your ultra safe waiting waiting style.

 

Online VF Tier list:

SS+: netcode, underinvestment in internet infrastructure

A: trolls, 10 frame jabs and risky property moves that are safe online

C: everyone else

D: Gokudonodan

In conclusion, we should start a petition to bring to the local office of our ISPs so they can better understand the plight of online fight mans.

 

For myself, I just have fun with it. If there is a connection problem that is not playable, then I usually just stop to let the other person win or just disconnect if the person don't decide to.

Trying to have the strong degree mindset obsession for deciding who is better, never brought satisfaction to me. However, a valuable reward for it, can be an exception. If not, I just do what I can without regrets.

 

Last I heard Shou isn't a fan of online play either. Name dropping someone who's actually placed in a major isn't going to lend you any credibility.

 

Credibility? For what? Fuck Shou. I could care less where the fuck he placed. You are a Dickhead who can admit to the fact he's just ain't shit.. I wish there was something i can do to help you but your fucking trash and there is no hope for you Brother. Go head EMX Tell your ISP Why you mad son...

 

I didn't make any claims about my skill in this thread - that's all in your mind dude.

I wish there was a mechanism in place in our society so people who can't or won't read something longer than a paragraph without getting confused and upset got remedial help at a local college free of charge. You need it pretty bad.

 

Happy I'm not complaining on whining. I'm just pointing out a fact. You are saying to me right now it's ok to join your games, but why should I join when you leave after 2-3 matches? Am I wrong? I've joined your games in the past a ton of times and if you are winning you stay. If you lose 2-3 in a row you leave every time. So I ask you, if I know this is the pattern you seem to follow why should I bother joining?

I'm sorry if I struck a nerve, but I was just pointing out a fact. And the fact is you are one of those people that if you are beating them to much they will complain, leave or find an excuse as to why the matches are not fun primarily due to lag. Come on bro me and you have like a perfect connection yet we never play. I find it disappointing because I actually consider you one of the strongest players online.

If you think I'm lying about the fact that you leave after losing a few just ask any of the other good players. I'm sure Flash, TFam, Denkai, JHow, etc can verify this fact.

 

taking online "serious" is a matter of someone's thinking and it has to do with that individual. if some people want to take it "seriously" than who are we to try to tell them different.

i personally think that its funny hearing the words "online"and "serious" in the same sentence,but thats just me.

 

I don't think that that those guys would say that. I like playing all those guys, with the exception of JHow who I don't really need to say much else about since I have even gone so far as to randomly diss him when he didn't really deserve it.

You may not believe this, but there more players who duck the HF than vice versa. One problem is that I really need to be sober when fighting you b/c it is too frustrating to play the pen and paper game with diminished faculties. And yes, your keep away poke poke shit is really annoying, as is your conservatism except when you're at large adv. It pretty much requires me to play keep away poke poke too which I don't enjoy. And I think that this ground has been covered before. We are spanking a dead horse here. But all that said, if it really is so important to you that we play some keep away poke poke then just join my match and annoy me with some hot keep away poke poke action. Or don't.

I mean, there's always going to be people who want to play to this or that style that someone else perceives as irritating. You can always expect someone to employ whatever game designers make available. Just like there's kids in the world and you know that there's always somebody out there who wants to molest them.

That's hyperbole by the way. I don't really think you're a Virtua Molester.

 

So, wise online sage of VF online, where exactly does Lau fall into your "broken online" list of characters?

You're a funny dude. I mean, here you are complaining about other people's fighting styles and their characters but you've got one of the most annoying, spamriffic, abare styles online. And you're a Lau player! ... for a Lau player to complain about Brad being hard to deal with online (lol)... for shame, Mr. S tier, for shame.

Edit: Helpful tips on dealing with Brad ~
Brad has to go into stances to do all of the "magical" shit that characters like Lau, Lei, Eileen, Shun and Vanessa do on the regular. During this stance pause, you can hit Brad. If Brad goes into stance from disadvantage, unlike chars like Lei/Shun/Vane, Brad can get launched for a lot of damage. Also try blocking or evading when Brad goes into stance.

Happy, I like you man, but can you do me a favor and never put a B tier character in the same category as S tier characters like Shun and Eileen all while leaving out your own? Thanks

 

Lau players are not allowed to complain about online play.

Vanessa players are not allowed to complain about anything.

 

There's a very easy way to deal with Rodney's poke and run style. This style isn't unique to Rodney and in fact was a classic NY style of play. We even gave it a name of bastardized NY style VF. We all used to like playing to annoy the opponent. Repeated 2p, backdashing, just waiting around to get a counter hit launcher were all abused to annoy the opponent. Rodney used to hate chasing everyone in VF and preferred to play a close and fast game. You're probably somewhere in the middle of that thought process as Rodney seems to say you also play a keep away poking game when needed. After a while you'll probably figure out the easiest way to win is to psychologically break down your opponent. You may find it frustrating that you can't keep a consistent advantage or condition Rodney to respond the way you want. This is simply because he is a better player now, having played many years against that style of VF vs some people who know how to use that style of VF, but don't know how to fight against it, as most people online just don't play that way. Taking your own techniques, especially when nasty, sometimes sucks.

From the handful of clips I've seen of your Lau, you have the basic setups and routines down. I hope you add one attack to your repertoire that all Lau's will use when fighting against mid distance opponents, which is 33p. When I play competitively, I'll keep a long range distance and chuck out 33p from a distance. If 33p hits, 33ppk will all hit guaranteed. You can hit check from the second p and you don't even have to enter at the fastest timing, you can delay the last k and it still hits guaranteed. To this day arguably the strongest Lau player ever, Yutennji, still relies on this as his bread and butter, the way an Akira relies on DE. Stay at a mid range and keep throwing this out. Since you never finish the string with the last K unless the first P hits, you can easily and slowly hit check the whole thing. This is the best hit checking practice attack for Lau. The first p on guard is -2 and the second P on guard is +1. You can spam this against certain characters all day. I think you can see why this is so strong. It's totally 1/4 life damage if I remember correctly. Rodney is only benefitting you in thinking of additional tactics and ways, ones where you don't need to be intensely focused for example, to beat this annoying style of play.

 

Yeah, Lau is super powerful. I don't personally think Lau's ppp strings are so awesome though. I think his toughness comes from moves like 66p+k 9p 2k+g 6pp->kokei 8kk 1kk...

Maybe I'm wrong. I personally think that for spamming purposes, the characters that are the most difficult to deal with even if the first one or two (or three) hits from their strings miss are Shun, monkey, Brad, Vanessa and Lei. I think that I have said this forever, so there is no cause to get all excited and start posting wacky pictures of owls. Strings are buffed in VF5 and even moreso online. So what?

Of course I am not objective, but Lau seems very straight forward to me. I don't think people can get too far with his strings against decent players. As I've told you before, if you hate my Lau so much, just fight my Jeffrey. I pick him a lot. Anyway I don't see why you wanna take offense out because I mention the character that you play but people are sensitive, I know. I just provided my analysis of the characters and online play. No need to take it personally.