I totally understand that mentality, but it's still on you to develop a play style and a sense of adaptivity. Becoming a robot is just engraining the wrong habits into your head. Learn to analyze and correct them. The ultimate goal is to be able to correct yourself mid match and clutch it out even in a bad situation. To me, that's the real difference between a good player and a great one, PP was talking about it on the stream last night (mango wasn't taking GF seriously at all LOL). Practicing by yourself is never a bad thing, and if you can put yourself on a good training regiment then it will minimize bad habits.
I do agree that too much alone practice creates repetitive habits. My brother, who only plays when other people play, plays an entirely counter style. As in, he will play counter to whatever you are doing, every time. If you play aggressive, he'll play campy, if you try to camp him he'll wait for a stupid approach. He approaches the game from an entirely mind game and psych out perspective, and there's something to be said for forming your habits around what either is effective or upsets other people to the point of it messing with their game. The problem with adaptive players is that it is entirely up to you to either execute better than them or to call them out on their ****, and that becomes increasingly difficult the better your opponents are.
Everyone should practice by themselves at some point. There is too much pressure when versing other people to get all of your technical stuff down correctly in matches. There is a certain point when you are engraining the patterns of your practicing into your play style, but it's nothing that isn't correctable.
To cope with this, I usually play several characters each solo practice session, and I try to verse one floaty, one fast faller, and one mid weight to really get a feel for how to combo each one. Also, I frequently vary the cpu level because DI varies with level IE 1 doesnt DI, 3 has decent di (supposedly human like), 5 dis in (I think), and 7 dis in HARD, so it's good to switch it up.
Adaptability is largely a learned habit. The best way to cultivate it alone is to just vary what npc/level you are versing, to never get too comfortable with your npc combos. You should constantly be trying new things. New approaches, new combos, new ledge guards, new OOS stuff. The second you can do a combo consistantly, move on. See how you can cover different recovery options against different cpus (spacy npcs are good for this). Record yourself playing matches with others when you can to analyze mistakes and bad approaches/ zoning flaws/ weak reactions/ tech flubs. One good match against an evenly matched opponent will clearly indicate where your competitive game is lacking.
Think about faking approach. This is something pp mentioned a while ago. If you take a level 7 npc, and you see how close you can dash dance in and out of it's range before they attack, you can practice one of the fundamental aspects of competitive melee, zoning and faking approach. If you get really good at looking like you are going to approach, it forces other people to doubt their intuitions, and then you can start picking them apart and forcing them to play more honestly. This HUGELY ups your competitive game, as even the best players do stupid things to intellegent fake outs (Mango vs. armada in genesis 2010 is a good example) If you need examples of good zoning, look at PP, M2K, Mango, hbox, and pretty much anyone who plays competitive smash at a high enough level to make it to semis lol.
Shield pressure. When you first start playing other competitive players, you are probably going to get shield grabbed alot. Or wavedash OOS f smashed, or usmash OOSed. All of this comes down to needing to learn what constitutes good and bad shield pressure. If someone does not respect your approach, they assume you are going to flub the timing/ spacing on a shield stab. You have to learn the safe ways to approach someone who is shielding, and learn to anticipate their OOS game based on previous occurrences. If someone has grabbed you OOS 10 times, they are going to keep trying it, and it's up to you to start punishing/ spacing your pressure better. Ideally, any shield pressure that results in either a grab/ a hit/ or an intentionally elicited reaction (that you anticipated) is a good thing. IE shield pressure peach right up until you think she will up b and then backing up.
While there is no real way to practice shield pressure against npc's, you can use practice mode and invincibility star items to get the timing of shield pressure down. I've found that this can be incredibly helpful for l cancel timing. Watch videos of shield pressure to see what is more effective than other things.
That's about all I've got in terms of practicing alone... The last thing I can think of is having a good punish game, and that really comes down to understanding what ability to punish another player your character has, and what constitutes a good punish. Common punishes are for whiffed attacks (aka not zoning, you literally just missed), sloppy/risky shield pressure, knee jerk reactions to fake approaches/ DDing, or just poor DI in general. Melee is largely a game about conditioning... You condition your opponent to anticipate something, and they either adapt or they don't. That's essentially the gist of it.
Oh yeah I live around NYC if you want to play lol. I'm up at school now but I'll be back down in around a month
