How to improve without online?

[SuperSaska]

My experience with online has been, like everyone says it, all around ****. I don't have any plans to use Smash Online even if a few is fixed in 9.0. As a person who literally has no IRL friends and just uses CPUs that are damn easy to fight against and where everything feels safe.

How can I train myself to get better without feeling like the gameplay is too safe? I've seen many people adapt in Ultimate's offline and they've had a blast but for little me, I can't even improve snice CPUs have really campy feel to their gameplay. Do I need people who actually don't play in a cheesy or campy way? Or just get Online again so I have to play with the many internet friends I have that actually play Smash.

With the state of both online and offline (by my standards of possibly improving) I feel like there is barely anything to improve. Any tips, guys?

 

[rlwrgh]

My experience with online has been, like everyone says it, all around ****. I don't have any plans to use Smash Online even if a few is fixed in 9.0. As a person who literally has no IRL friends and just uses CPUs that are damn easy to fight against and where everything feels safe.

How can I train myself to get better without feeling like the gameplay is too safe? I've seen many people adapt in Ultimate's offline and they've had a blast but for little me, I can't even improve snice CPUs have really campy feel to their gameplay. Do I need people who actually don't play in a cheesy or campy way? Or just get Online again so I have to play with the many internet friends I have that actually play Smash.

With the state of both online and offline (by my standards of possibly improving) I feel like there is barely anything to improve. Any tips, guys?

I definitely think you need to find a way to play against real people as no cpu can accurately account for the unpredictable nature of humanity. Online is pretty bad as you mentioned. If we weren't in pandemic I would say look for local groups of players like at local highschool or college idk what to say given covid though.

 

[Janx_uwu]

Finding a smallish general Smash Discord server with people around your skill level can work wonders, as it has for me. If you don't want to play online at all...not sure. 70% of my play time, I would guess, came from online, because I wasn't always able to go to tournaments. Thanks to that, pandemic doesn't affect me all that much in terms of Smash. I guess find a practice buddy here on Smashboards who lives relatively close to you, make sure they're negative for COVID, sanitize, and play Smash. Even if they're well below or way above your skill level, they should at least give you a better experience than fighting CPUs.
If all else fails, I have a good connection and I'm pretty good at this game if you ever want to PM me.