Virtua Fighter 5 Playstation 3 Version

Re: Smarter AI vs. Online Play

If sega ever adds online game play, how will you know
that you're not fighting an AI when the online opponent is a stranger?

 

Re: Smarter AI vs. Online Play

I don't think smoking something would get you here.
Anyway smoking would probably dull your reflexes and acuity, which would undoubtedly have a dramatic impact on your ability
to win VF matches. Although winning is not everything, it is a tragedy when full potential is not reached because of bad habits. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smirk.gif

 

Re: Smarter AI vs. Online Play

Cause they usually talk? Even if it's trash they speak, you can generally tell it's another human.


And I'm not going to comment on your reply to Geeseman lol.

 

Re: Smarter AI vs. Online Play

man what a moron,i bet this is a wimpy guy that can't really settle things outside playing VF, like:

*punches masterpoo in the arm*
masterpoo: HEY!!!... i'll make you pay in VF!!!

 

Re: Smarter AI vs. Online Play

Ok, I feel like I need to get my two cents in here as both a DOA player and advocite of online gaming. First of all, for serious players, online is a tool to improve your skill. Turning down a tool that helps you improve at a game is counterproductive no matter which way you look at it. Good AI would be welcome of course, but it does not make online play any less welcome.

I was mentioning this in the shoutbox earlier, but one of the great advantages of online play is that things get discovered about games that normally no one would have ever found. For instance, DOA2 had been out for years before it was rereleased in DOA Ultimate with online play. People had all the time in the world to explore the game down to the very finest detail. And yet, during the games online lifespan, people were constantly figuring out new techniques. Things even the creators of the game didn't know about.

Frankly, I call in to question anyone who thinks a game has been fully explored before it has the chance to go online. The sheer quantity of people looking for any advantage they can get lends itself to obsessive exploration on a mass scale. On the other hand, when you're just playing against AI or a friend there is not nearly as much motivation, when you're seriously training your focus is usually too narrow to trigger anything interesting by accident, and when you are playing seriously that is simply not the time for experimentation. Online play is the only thing that creates the motivation in a large enough quantity to bring out every fine detail of a game. AI can be very smart, but sometimes intelligence isn't enough. Sometimes only emotional motivation leads to progress.

Additionally, online play creates a bigger audience, and thus increases the odds of a new champion picking up the controller. When so few people in the world play a game, who is to say if you are really any good? For all you know there are tons of people in the world that could beat you, but they don't even play the game. To these people, fighting AI may seem entirely pointless, but fighing human oppenents may seem very enticing. You'll never know how many of these people there are until a game goes online. Almost all of the people currently recognised as the best DOA players started playing it online, while many of the previously recognised offline players ended up fading into obscurity. In the end, they were not that good after all, but they had no way of knowing it until better players started to appear.

Victory is not meaningful unless you know you beat someone worth beating. With online play, you may not always be playing a great opponent, but when you are you'll know it. With AI, what about it is worth beating? Perfect AI should always be able to beat a human opponent, so if you're playing an AI you can beat you automatically know you are not playing against the best. What fun could you possibly have knowing that? Only by playing another human opponent with human flaws do you get any meaning from the battle.

Online can offer that meaning, even if it can't offer a gurentee that the gameplay was so tight and precise that the outcome was 100% fair. In the end, wins and losses online average out anyway, and within 10 matches the better player is almost always at the top. In the cases where the skill difference is very close, decisiveness is a lot more problamatic, but online is not suited for matches at equal skill level to begin with. That is it's biggest flaw, the outcome of a close match online is simply not decisive. Nevertheless, if you can get over that then online has way too much to offer to be simply brushed aside.

Let's hope Sega finally sees the light and gives us an online VF, so we are not left with all these regrets about what might have been.

 

Re: Smarter AI vs. Online Play

Sorry, it's not that I don't understand what you're saying, I just really disagree. DoA online is a completely different game. The tiers even change ffs. Exploring it online really doesn't help your offline game any better unless you have no one to play with in your area, in which yeah, you could learn some stuff from fighting real players online.

I also don't think VF could even be played online lol. With how strict some of the combos and execution of single moves are in this game, there's no way you could play the game how you should be able to offline.

Despite what I just said however, I'd still like to see an online mode to mess around with. But I'd probably avoid it best I can just like with 3rd Strike.

 

Re: Smarter AI vs. Online Play

This is simply not true. In DOA there have been a lot of people who've become great players as a result of playing online. I can see how being a VF player would lead you to believe this wasn't possible though, because VF relies so heavily on precision command input. If VF were were online it probably would be impossible to ever reach high level play in all but the lowest pinging games. Essentially, for frame accurate play you need to ping below 16.66 ms, which doesn't happen a whole lot. At anything below 50 ms (2-3 frame lag) you could still probably have high level play in VF, but the match result would always be suspect. And any match with a ping of over 50 ms would basically be meaningless. Still, you're underestimating the practice value of online play. It is really a myth that the strategy in a fighting game completely changes from online to offline. Based on personal experience, I can say that skill transfers between the two arenas pretty easily.

Well I already explained the whole ping value to frame lag ratio, so I hope you understand that with a low enough ping there is no difference between online and offline in terms of game mechanics. An unfortunate reality is that given the speed of light is 299.8 km/ms and the diameter of the earth is 12,760 km the best ping you could get with someone on the opposite end of the world, under the absolutely ideal circumstance of a fiber optic line strung straight across the the earth from your house to his, would be 42.5. While this is still technically within the bounds of high level play (2-3 frame lag), when you factor in the fact you will never get a direct connection, and the routing process introduces a lot of lag, even getting a ping of under 100 ms is practically impossible.

However, while it's unfortunate for a lot of us that we could never get a high level game with someone across the globe, getting a high level game with anyone in the borders of your own country could be considerably more practical. Right now the main thing driving progress in the internet is increasing bandwidth, not decreasing latency. The fact is, aside from the hardcore gamers and a few academic researchers, almost no one would be willing to pay for the extra infrastructure cost of a low latency internet. Still, the switch to fiber optic connections will be greatly helpful in this regard, and I remain optimistic we may see a day within the next 10 years where anyone in LA could expect to ping 50 or less with anyone living in New York. When that happens, all this concern over the impact of lag on fighting games will be a thing of the past.

I can't speak for SF3 players, but in DOA2U we built up an excellent community of hardcore players that really made it a pleasure to play online. Then DOA4 nearly wrecked the whole thing because half the DOA community was split on whether the game was garbage. The DOA scene never really recovered from that. The VF community seems to be having a similar problem here, with the community split on whether online play is garbage. Well I can tell you for certain that it doesn't have to be. It may not always be as good as offline, but it can still be your most valuable aid to learning the game, and you can even have high level matches online every once in a while. Don't fear change guys, change is progress. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/wink.gif

 

Re: Smarter AI vs. Online Play

Fuzzy Blocking, Evading, multiple throw escapes...these are all impossible with the current online infrastructure. DOA is only playable online because it is so much less demanding. It's great that you guys built a community and discussed which moves to spam and whatnot, but since the first three skills I mentioned in particular are a big part of what sets apart VF players of different abilities, online is out for VF for the foreseeable future.

Funniest thing with DOA is when a player misses a reverse, is stuck in the aninamtion, but you hit him too early and he still catches your attack! Lame.

 

Re: Smarter AI vs. Online Play

Simply look at the clash system, where advanced players will exploit it down to the maximum allowable frame. I really doubt you can get consistent results if the game is online.

 

Re: Smarter AI vs. Online Play

Look, I played DoA4 since launch for a few months. Got all hardcore into it. Frequently played with many of those who placed top 5 at EVO, I know what the game is online, and I know many high level player in DoA agrees that Online is whack. Most will even admit that while they may participate in online tournies, online tournies mean jack, especially compared to offline. It's simply a means of being able to play people you normally wouldn't be able to, but it's something you had to settle with, not something you'd want.

"Based on personal experience, I can say that skill transfers between the two arenas pretty easily."

Yeah, I'll agree. You can spot those who are good at the game versus those who arn't, even online. That said though, the game just isn't the same online, at all, no matter the ping your room currently has.

I'm sorry if you don't have an offline scene where you live or have never experienced offline tournies or majors. But you can't truely believe that even with today's best connections that online and offline are similar.

 

Re: Smarter AI vs. Online Play

God, it's hard to know where to start here. You statements show a complete lack of understanding of DOA, and I really don't want to derail this into a DOA vs. VF thread. I'm sure there have been plenty of those already. Just let me say, if you played me in DOA you would lose. Not just once, but every time we played. I can say that with confidence because I understand DOA and how it works at the highest level. DOA is not a technical game, it is a mind game. You win by understanding and anticipating your opponent at every step.

To put it simply, you can only beat an opponent you can predict and intimidate. That's why even an experienced player will occasionally lose to an inexperienced one, because the inexperienced player's lack of understanding makes them immune to intimidation. In DOA, you can make an opponent fear you so much they will not even attempt to attack, because they believe the second they let go of block you will destroy them. Of course, this is true of VF too, but the difference is in the fact that in DOA it is the whole high level game. There is nothing else. There is no level of technical knowledge that can save your from someone who can get inside your head. Only when you understand this will you understand why DOA works on a high level, despite superficially seeming like a simple game.

Well, obviously not if the ping is too high. But as I already said, getting a good enough connection to get high level play (within the margins of 0-3 frames of lag) is already possible in some cases, and will become more and more common as time progresses. If you want to argue that even one frame lag is unacceptable, I guess you'll never be satisfied by online play. But to me it seems a bit unreasonable to insist on the gameplay being so precise when so few matches are decided by such a small margin and the handicap of lag affects both players equally.

You're right in saying online tourneys tend to be worthless, but online tourneys are really not what it's about. As I've been saying, online is primarily an arena for practice and exchange of techniques. I sense you agree with me here, so I'm not really sure what you're arguing about. Let me tell you something, when I entered the the World Cybergames Tournament last year, I lost my first online preliminary match to a complete scrub due to lag. Plus it had only been about a month since I got the game, and I didn't practice nearly enough... But either way, I came in with the assumption I could just beat up some scubs in the online round and then when I got to the offline portion I could seriously play. I lost that opportunity due to the lag, and yet here I am telling you online play has value.

Depends on what you mean by "the same", but from a technical standpoint there is little difference between an online match with 0-3 frames of lag and an offline match.

Similar enough. I mean, of course I'd rather be competing at a major offline venue. Who wouldn't? But before I found an online fighting game like DOA, I really couldn't find any motivation to practice. I mean, you nailed it, there is no scene at all where I live for hardcore gamers to get together. Everyone I know is a casual player at the most. I'm simply not going to spend hours and hours of practicing against AI, only to arrive at a tournament and get smoked by someone who had a real human opponent to practice with.

I don't think even with good AI, as this thread has been discussing the merits of, you can fully prepare for the experience of taking on a highly skilled human opponent. It just isn't the same experience. I think despite it's inherent flaws, online play comes closer to delivering that experience than AI ever could.

Incidentally, if you wondering why I'm here and not playing DOA4, well, I'm just fed up with DOA4's garbage gameplay... Oh, and if you want me to explain all the reasons why DOA4 is garbage and DOA2/3 aren't, I'd be perfectly happy to, but that's another topic for another thread. Anyway, I'm seriously considering getting into the hardcore VF scene as I'm a long time fan of the series, although I never played it seriously. But, since I have no one to compete with offline, I need online tools to help me practice and gauge my strength. Basically, I'll get into VF5 for the 360 if it at least offers downloadable ghost data, and allows you to train AI opponents and put them up for download. Although certainly no substitute for real online play, it would at least keep me interested in the game long enough for me to seriously study it and be willing to travel to compete offline.

 

Hmmph. I'll find vf5 competition when it comes out. I oppose online play for fighting games since I didn't get anything positive out of it. BS conncections vast majority of the time, dumb people disconnecting, bitching, and infesting their lag tactics all over the place. Adapting to lag stragedies is only going to poison my offline game like it did in the other figthers I play. No way that online helped me in any shape or form and never will.

 

Re: Smarter AI vs. Online Play

VF also has this element. It's a major part of high level play.

This exists in VF as well. But the VF system is built in such a way that solid defense will kill scrubs once they throw out something risky and have it whiff/blocked.

This shows a complete lack of understanding of VF. Many situations are made or broken by 1, 2 or 3 frames.

I hope you enjoy VF5 /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif I'm not going to argue DoA vs VF stuff, god knows that's been done. But I think you'll be surprised at how well intense mind games and technical gameplay go together. VF5 also brings some more flash to the mix.

I don't know where you're located, but I'm sure you'll be able to find players somewhere in your general vicinity. Train hard and good luck /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif

 

Re: Smarter AI vs. Online Play

Thanks for the thoughtful post -- it's pretty clear you've spent time thinking online play through. I certainly don't mind seeing it for VF5, though as Brandon pointed out online play can negatively impact offline play.

One big difference between VF and DOA is that there is actually a lot of offline play in other countries (i.e. Japan) so a lot of the strategies and techniques that could only be unearthed through intense competition have been and are being unearthed. We lucky recipients in the US can simply wait for that knowledge to filter through via mooks, BBS, online clips, etc.

In any case, I do encourage you to seek out competition in your area. Check out the Jamboree section of the site and hook up with other VFers -- we're always looking for good DOA/Tekken players.

 

Re: Smarter AI vs. Online Play

I hardly ever write anything, I usually just read anything that seems interesting on VFDC. This thread however made me finally write something.

First of all, Masterpo, I think that it is simply great that You and your friends(I hope) were able to reach some kind of higher level, even if it is while playing VF. For some people it's drawing, for some it is dancing, for You it is playing VF to settle any argument or any case that actually needs settling. To implement your day to day life philosophy into a video game community is brilliant, and that i admire.

Still I think that, while it is really good that you want to avoid any unnecessary real physical damage, the way to improve yourself lies in the real competition. And that is the real fight. Whether it is based on some rules, or just mindless slaughter (which is maybe a little exageration here ), the real fight brings all of one's emotions to the surface.

For me (and probably not only me) in fight a person shows his/her true colors. Tendency to cheat or be fair, furiosity or peace of mind, chaos or harmony, confidence or caution. It is only in true fight that you can 'know' the 'thruth' about someone.

Therefore if your dojo accepts this kind of challenges, I would be glad to meet any of You... If this truth is what you 'really' seek.

 

Re: Smarter AI vs. Online Play

I'm sorry Xzy987X, but who are you on DoAC? Same name? When did you join the DoA Community? I was there since DoA3.

There are huge incorrect statements in your posts and misconceptions. I'm not gonna attack you cause I feel you might see the light and turn to VF and offline like I have but I must correct you. Be very thankful people here on VFDC are so insanely nice, just goes to show you what a real fighting game community should act like.

First off I'm afraid VF is far deeper and as you have conceded more demanding in the technical mind frame. I've been disecting DoA for years and have yet to find a solid arguement for it coming even close to VF. The only iteration that even got near VF's perfection was DoA3 JPN version and very people have played that game to give an opinion or even care.

Most of your statements regarding new things being found online for DoA2U are incorrect, the greatest example is one of the GREATEST DOAU players of all time Offbeat Ninja. His Ein is a cookie cutter copy of the Original Bill Menoutis (aka Tom Brady) style Ein that won championships back in the Doa2 arcade days. Back then the top players played Ein, Hayabusa, Fu, and Jann. Who did the top players play in DoAU? Ein, Hayabusa, Fu, and Jann with Ayane only seeing lots of play cause of online latency and more players. Almost nobody can claim to have beaten Offbeat Ninja in an endurance match (not even Master) and his Ein is 100% old school tactics. Nothing new really was found, just stuff for low tier characters that nobody played.

I'm gonna say from experience looking on the community of DoA before DoAU and after I will say ONLINE PLAY DID NOT HELP. At all. Period. EVO finals is the greatest example of that. It was a 63 man turn out, the lowest in the HISTORY of EVO. The sad part was MORE THAN HALF were not DoA players but capcom/tekken players looking for extra cash, you know how I know? I PLAYED A POOL OF CAPCOM/TEKKEN PLAYERS AND WON USING LEON. So basically it was really a 25 man turn out, which DoA3.1 did better a year ago at DiD1 with a 28 man turn out back then 100% offline. I know everyone from SRK to TZ hypes up online play but they have no damn idea of what they are talking about. So far NO GAME has gained a scene from online play, I just showed you why DoA didn't get a scene so tell me you know of a game that did? VF community would be better off if stupid Sega would just let US arcades get a hold of VF5 cabinets.


I'm glad your not one of the blind people at DoAC who honestly think DoA4 is the greatest thing since slice bread but I'm sorry to say but this community understands pretty much every situation in DoA (probably even in Doa3.1). All you have to do is give it in VF terms or show the slight difference (like Fuzzy guard frames or slowed down stagger escape which we call SE).

All I can say is online is not the way to go especially for a game like VF. If VF community has go through the same BS that the DoA community had to go through just for online play then frankly, as a long time supporter and advocate of offline DoA (which is pretty much dead outside of some EC spots and TX) I say NO to online play. Keep it moral.

 

Re: Smarter AI vs. Online Play

I didn't play DOA a lot, but as I see, You did. So, could You please explain to me, why DOA4 isn't the best of all DOA's?
I played it for some time on X360, but the only other DOA game I had is DOA2, so there is not much comparison to do /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smirk.gif

 

Re: Smarter AI vs. Online Play

Hmm... well be that as it may, lag still affects both players equally. Any inconsistencies that would crop up as a result of such a small amount of lag usually even out. I'm not saying online is perfect, but I still think you can achieve high level play online.

Know any decent players in Minnesota? I really can't travel out of state to just to get a few decent matches...

I started with DOAU, purely based on the presence of online play. With no decent local scene to play in I never would've been interested in seriously playing a fighter before that.

Well, for the most part I'd agree the folks here seem a bit nicer than the DOAC crowd. However, as for making hugely incorrect statements, I'm going to have to contest that.

First of all, you are aware Tom Brady was somewhat a joke online right? I wasn't there when it happened, but apparently he completely flew off the handle after losing a match to lag, and from then on never played online again. Well, that's not completely true... I did have a chance to meet him online once. He seemed like a nice enough guy, not quite deserving of how much people made fun of him. But, his Ein was nothing exceptional, and I beat him more than half the games we played (albeit they were casual matches).

As for Offbeat Ninja, he was good, but he was also the original lag abuser. And he lagged a lot more than most. I have a limited amount of respect for his ability, but I can't ever say I played a match with him that was lag free enough for me to really judge his ability. Plus I used to beat him all the time before he got good, and that was when I back when I played Ayane (poorly).

After I picked up Lei Fang I really became good, but that was after most of the good players had already left, which is why no one has probably ever heard of me. The only real achievements I have to my name, are unseating Majin Kimimaro as the number one Lei Fang player, and coming in second in the last official ranking tournament for DOAU. Both matches I lost in that tournament (one put me into the losers bracket, the other cost me the number one spot) were heavily affected by lag.

At any rate, if Offbeat Ninja had ever played my Lei Fang at the height of my skill, I'm fairly confident I would've won. And I say that as someone who played him in nearly 50 online matches.

Regarding nothing new being learned in online, there were at least two original Ayane techniques discovered online I know about. One is to escape her /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/b.gif + /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/p.gif + /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/g.gif throw's /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/b.gif + /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/p.gif follow up by tapping /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/db.gif repeatedly. It only works if you are also playing Ayane, but this is a surprisingly useful technique. Even experienced players are caught off guard by it occasionally. Then there is Ayane's /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/db.gif + /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/p.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/p.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/d_.gif + /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/p.gif. I discovered that the /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/p.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/p.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/d_.gif + /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/p.gif part could be repeated infinitely, and it was virtually impossible to interrupt. It was counterable of course, but it made for easy counter bait once your opponent realized they had to counter it. It could also be mixed up to /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/db.gif + /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/p.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/n.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/d.gif + /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/p.gif for an instant launch, which was usually even more useful. A few people disputed me that I was the first to discover this, but I never saw anyone use this online before I did.

Then there was what I refer to as Lei Fang's perfect wall rape technique. It's difficult to descibe, because it's just as much an art as a science, but let me just say I absolutely destroyed some of the best online players with it. And in case you were wondering, no it was not less effective offline. But that was my technique, and I discovered it online.

Eh, it sucks that EVO ended up being so bad, but I can sorta see why it would happen. A large amount of the good online players in DOAU refused to travel to compete. As unfourtunate as that may be, many of those same players wouldn't have been worth fighting in the first place if the online mode hadn't pulled them into the game, so it works both ways. Anyway, just look at how active DOAC became after DOA went online. You're telling me that doesn't constitute the emergence of a scene?

Yea, that's slow escaping for DOA players, but it's got the same abbreviation anyway. Why do you think I would be sorry the VF community can understand DOA? In fact I'm happy to hear some of them get it. That doesn't change the fact that until they reach a high level in DOA, any opinion they have about DOA being worthless means nothing to me. There are parts of DOA that simply can't be understood until they are experienced.

In the final analysis I'd have to agree to anyone who says that VF is less suitable for online than DOA. VF required a lot more precision and consistency for high level play. I still say you can't write off online play in VF until it's been tried. I really doubt it will turn out as badly as some people seem to think.

It's hard to explain this to someone who doesn't have a good grasp of high level play in DOA. There are a lot of little problems, and a few big problems that really plague DOA4. I could go into a five page essay if I included all of them, so I'll just explain a few. First and most obvious, the game is horribly unbalanced. The mid tier is practically non-existent, and the ninja characters might as well be gods. Hayabusa has a whole set of moves that allow him to win a whole match without even getting close enough to be attackable... The damage ratios are even more unbalanced than usual for DOA. The stun system is totally broken. Unlike DOAU countering out of a stun is usually just dumb luck, because many of the advanced stun escape techniques like low countering out of it no longer work. Things are safe that really shouldn't be, making it easy for an attacker to continue indefinitely without you being able to interrupt them with all but the fastest characters (yet another balance issue). The ground game allows you to force a wake-up in a situation where your only options are block or counter, which can be exploited continuously. And that's just the tip of the iceberg...

The only reasons why I am even still playing DOA4 is because no one worth playing still plays DOAU, and I'm still interested in the next Cybergames tournament. Huge ass prize money kinda has that effect on you...

 

Re: Smarter AI vs. Online Play

I just want to keep you on track with what unsafedan was pointing out:

He was referring to Offbeat and Tom's offline skill. Not online. The mere fact that you mention these guys struggling online doesn't mean anything, and it really isn't fair of you to judge whether you could have "taken" them in their prime. They made moves when it mattered - where were you? Unfortunately timing was not on your side - that's life man. Don't make assumptions on things you weren't a part of... let me give you a perfect example:

During VF3 I was 16/17 years too young to travel and participate in a strong scene at the time. I played locally and developed a mean mean OB Jacky. (low kick, trip/elbow, shot knee mix ups) Very tough, very annoying. I would easily streak over 30 wins per play eventually up to 100 wins. Although I was a good player and managed a 48 win streak vs higer lvl players during a boston gathering at Jillians - in no way did I ever take what I did seriously. There were excellent players that I hadn't met due to travel constraints and it would've been outright arrogant to assume that I was the "best".

 

Re: Smarter AI vs. Online Play

You are correct, certain matters we settle in VF. The goal is to avoid tangible injury where possible. On the other hand, if it cannot be avoided then the necessary steps are taken..

/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smirk.gif