Is WiFi really that bad?

[Zolga Owns]

Outside of my one friend(the quiet one that came with me to Super DSO 2 and played Sonic and Ganondorf, Kaylo! and E) I use WiFi for ALL my practice.

I honestly think I didn't preform that bad at my first tourney. I have a lot to work on but I feel that I have a solid foundation and even some good points(stock tanking and being annoying as hell in a 2v1? Zelda goes hard on light characters in dubz).

The point is, all of this stemmed from WiFi.

I think that as long as you can adapt to the lagless, more precise, and thought provoking environment of offline you should be able to use WiFi for practice just fine.

(My thoughts coming off of this weekend...also Kaylo! and E when you read this could you comment on the things i did wrong ^^ It'd help alot.)

 

[PZ]

Outside of my one friend(the quiet one that came with me to Super DSO 2 and played Sonic and Ganondorf, Kaylo! and E) I use WiFi for ALL my practice.

I honestly think I didn't preform that bad at my first tourney. I have a lot to work on but I feel that I have a solid foundation and even some good points(stock tanking and being annoying as hell in a 2v1? Zelda goes hard on light characters in dubz).

The point is, all of this stemmed from WiFi.

I think that as long as you can adapt to the lagless, more precise, and thought provoking environment of offline you should be able to use WiFi for practice just fine.

(My thoughts coming off of this weekend...also Kaylo! and E when you read this could you comment on the things i did wrong ^^ It'd help alot.)

1. This is general discussion worthy now its just close worthy.
2. Mine is that bad cuz my lack of finding more than 10 brawls a week.
3. Its a great way of practice and finding new playstyles as I see in my 3 or 4 brawls this week.<.<

 

[Pikabunz]

WiFi is amazing. A lot of the top players like Al|y, A0HD, and At0msk use it for practice.

Don't listen to Ondore's Lies!

 

[Roller]

Wifi CAN be a decent way to practice. With a couple stipulations.

First of all, You can not get good pratice vs the ICs on wifi. It will boost your confidence in the matchup and you will have a significantly harder time vs them irl. This however isn't a huge deal.

There will ALWAYS be some degree of lag online. Even when you have the best connection in the world, there is still gonna be a couple frames of delay. M.two.kay (avoiding name searching) NEVER practices on wifi because of this. I was playing with him and a couple of other people a couple months back on a big *** hdtv at someones house which had slight lag and he was complaining the entire time about how it was unbearable to play with that kind of delay and questioning how we weren't more annoyed about it.

Wifi CAN be a good tool to help you get aquainted with matchups, and can over time make you into a better player. However it is ALWAYS better to practice with people irl. Timings for techniques such as the buffer cg as well as others change between wifi and irl. If you are doing all, or most of your practice on wifi, that could be a problem in matches if you dont get acclimated to irl play before the tournament.

In short, wifi is a good thing, and can be a huge help to those without other players around to play with. But it should not be used in lou of irl play if it can be avoided.

 

[mercy]

NO it's not, as long as you keep in mind that it's a means to an end.

 

[altairian]

NO it's not, as long as you keep in mind that it is not a means to an end.

o_O
That...really doesn't make sense, lol

But yeah you can learn a lot from wifi, but you need offline practice as well because some things work on wifi that don't work offline, and vice versa. Wifi is really good for learning to predict things, since with the delay it's a lot harder to do stuff on reaction.

 

[KayLo!]

So to keep this appropriate for the Pika boards (because at the moment, it's more of a Q&A/social thread topic):

How do you guys think Pika specifically does on wifi? Personally, I find him nearly impossible to use online..... to me, Zelda is much easier to control and do well with in even minimal lag. With Pika, I end up buffering weird crap all over the place since he plays faster and requires so many more inputs.

--

@Zolga: For coming from wifi, you did pretty well, and I'm always impressed with newer Pikas who actually adapt to my habits...... because most don't and keep running into the same stuff over and over again, lol.

Work on your spacing a bit so that you leave yourself as safe as possible, and do a little more baiting -- especially to force limited characters like Zelda into making a move you can capitalize on. This works a lot better than playing straightforward.

Also, you seem to play a bit more hesitantly with Pika than you do with Zelda...... dunno exactly why, but your playstyle felt more confident with her. There were a few times when you wouldn't jump on a guaranteed followup or opening with Pika -- maybe because of the MU (the threat of running into Zelda's moves can be scary x.x), or maybe because you're just more comfortable with Zelda, I dunno.

That's all I can really remember. =X

 

[Nicholas1024]

I'm doing okay on Wifi with pika these days... my main problem is I can't QAC or chaingrab there to save my life, and I keep my offstage game to a minimal.

 

[Syko_Lemming]

It's easier to slip in random QAs against certain characters if you take them off guard, but it's harder to punish stuff because of the lag, obviously.

I use wifi for most of my training cause I live like a 45 minute drive from the closest good player. It means I have my mindgames up to par(except for the ones that deal with punishing on reaction) but I'm often mess up simple timings offline because I'm used to constantly adjusting to different wifi lag.

I have mixed feelings about playing online. It's good to play against people and to know what pikachu can do, but you won't learn everything.

Playing wifi is better than playing cpus, but do both.

If it's an option, play people offline and play cpus.

 

[Roller]

I'm doing okay on Wifi with pika these days... my main problem is I can't QAC or chaingrab there to save my life, and I keep my offstage game to a minimal.

Umm. There goes half my gameplan..

Seriously. If you cant pursue offstage with pika, use cg's, OR QAC (which really isn't hard even over wifi) I don't see how you are able to do "well."
I do find Pikachu a little difficult to use online, honestly, I'd only put him behind ICs in terms of online difficulty. And as I second the ICs, that kinda means bad things for me online. BUT. He isn't awful. Buffer cging through wifi takes a little getting used to, and like I said QACing isn't bad once you get the feel for it. but consistently getting the most out of your minnie combos is tough.

My biggest problem online though is utilizing my mindgames. Granted I've just started playing wifi again for the first time in about 8 months, (no wifi in my dorm) so I may just be a little wifi-rusty.

 

[Leaf.]

Heh...a few have seen my wifi pika.

It's total crap. I don't really feel motivated to even use pikachu for wifi because it messes with my skill enough to take me half a day to get back into it.
Others aren't that bad, but I PROMISE I'm better (Cept when fighting K Prime...vs. him is just a disaster for me.)

 

[King~]

i get around fine in wifi, like ive gotten used to slowly CGn and i cant QA irl so *shrug*

but the farther the timezone the worse i get cause its essentially buffering EVERYTHING with other lag so my playstyle gets simple it works occasionally but not always.

this is why i mostly do EC/MW on aib and prey on GB lol

 

[Nicholas1024]

Heh...a few have seen my wifi pika.

It's total crap. I don't really feel motivated to even use pikachu for wifi because it messes with my skill enough to take me half a day to get back into it.
Others aren't that bad, but I PROMISE I'm better (Cept when fighting K Prime...vs. him is just a disaster for me.)

It's fine. Mine's not too much better, and I think the main reason I kept winning with mario is that you didn't know the matchup.

@Rollerking
Seriously, playing offstage with a non-MK character in random lag is courting disaster. I still edgeguard with thunder and stuff, but I'm not going to push my recovery to its limits. Besides, QAC is highly punishable against a player that knows how to do so. At any rate, thunder kills become that much easier in lag, so it works both ways.

 

[M15t3R E]

I quit wifi like a year ago. In wifi, I can't do anything I normally would do in tournaments. I'm a more technical Pika than most here and I am constantly buffering and moving across the field. Wifi is more friendly towards all of my secondaries (and I have quite a few) than Pika.
BUT I will say this... do use wifi to feel comfortable with Pikachu and to understand a few combos and CG's and approaches. It will help you, to an extent.

Zolga, you actually surprised me. I was moving slowly and more or less just trying to punish your attacks during our Pika dittos. Then I had to step up my game to win. If you recall, you were in the lead in 2 of our matches, then I came from behind with a narrow win. I agree with Kaylo! that you are kind of a hesitant Pikachu. It's not a bad thing- you are great at punishing. If I let my guard down for a moment you'd grab me. There were times you could have approached with a fair or even a mid-air dair but you were a bit hesitant. I would also say you could work on your off-stage game. Thunders and nairs there are your friends. Hope we can play again soon.

 

[Roller]

@Rollerking
Seriously, playing offstage with a non-MK character in random lag is courting disaster. I still edgeguard with thunder and stuff, but I'm not going to push my recovery to its limits. Besides, QAC is highly punishable against a player that knows how to do so. At any rate, thunder kills become that much easier in lag, so it works both ways.

First of all. I wasn't trying to say that it was awful you couldn't do that on wifi. I agree it is more difficult. When I said there goes half my game plan, I was mostly agreeing with you. I just was saying that I didn't get how you could say your pika was still good on wifi minus those important aspects of pika's play. Because for me (in irl matches) jumping off the ledge and pushing the limitations of pika's recovery is essential to my gameplan. As well as QACing into aerials and ****. And cg's are what makes the difference between a lot of mu's being favorable or not. For instance. We used to think Falco v Pika was in Falco's favor. Then the buffer cg was discovered and all of the sudden we have a big advantage.

All I'm saying is that wifi takes away/makes more difficult things that are integral to virtually any decent pika's plan of attack. Which is the reason that wifi will never be AS good of training as irl.

 

[TheOriginalSmasher]

Hi Zolga and yes, WiFi is great practice. But I would prefer it with a little bit less taunt parties

 

[Zolga Owns]

With Friends Only + Skype + AiB is the best.

 

[Nicholas1024]

With Friends only + Pikachat + Smashboards is the best I've used.

 

[Today]

WiFi isn't that bad at all.

Issues are lag, picking up bad habits, turning around matchups based on which character can adapt easier to WiFi. But other than that it's a good way to learn and get better. Practice is practice no matter what. Whether you have a crutch or not. You learn matchups, what to do in certain situations, etc. Things you can apply to offline tournaments. I use to play offline a lot but then I started to WiFi a lot more often. I noticed I learnt a lot of new things that helped me for my offline play. So yus it helps!

 

[Omegapaste]

Ever since I began practicing offline alot Pika became unbearable for me online. All the timings I created fail online making my playstyle all messed-up. And no I can't learn match-ups online because I can't even get my own character under control.

Pika is all about quick reactions for me, and thats why wi-fi isn't good for my pika.
Instead I use CF online just because I used to play alot of item FFA's with him and my timings on him slowly began to fit in the wi-fi environment.

 

[Ussi]

That will happen always to first timers who go offline. Don't worry, you'll learn to switch between online and offline with practice. However there ARE side effects such as losing your offline game in the beginning making many people not go back to wifi.