Why are bots bad for practice?

[shogungari]

From what I can tell the general consensus is level 9 AIs are bad to use as practice for the real thing. Why? I get the psychic behavior and perfect timing might not match players, but wouldn't being able to outperform something that can literally read your every move make your reactions faster and therefore better when fighting against someone who has slower reaction speeds? I remember having the worst time fighting level 9 Marth because it felt like all of his moves had priority, were executed insanely fast, and he had a counterattack on top of that, so I fought him nonstop to suck less. When I battled my friend (who always destroyed me with Sonic in Brawl) when he decided to main with Marth I trounced him because I knew what to expect. Wouldn't that be the same concept for everyone?

 

[Rainiris]

You end up learning to respond to the AI's, instead of to actual players whose strategies do evolve. You would eventually have this problem with your friend if he got enough practice off marth. Maybe even some new combos the AI doesn't execute (or combos the AI executes that a player wouldn't because they get more advantage this way).

 

[meleebrawler]

I wouldn't say that practicing vs. cpus is bad per se, but they can promote
bad habits when facing real players. Surely you've noticed how they'll
never do anything other than air dodge after using it once? Or how
they never pursue you into the air after launching you up, instead just walking
to where they think you'll land? Real players don't always act like this.

Cpus may be faster than us, but they certainly aren't the smartest.

 

[Archimedes]

Its more about the mind games, human players can be easily tricked into thinking you are going to do one thing when you are doing another. Practicing against computers is still good practice for the basic stuff like reaction timing and what not but human players can think in ways computers cant. Which can sometimes be their downfall.

 

[shogungari]

I actually noticed the AI seems to change their attack patterns a bit. It might be just me, but a level 9 character (Marth in this case) tended to hold off with any rushing on his first stock, but after I get a few hits in they start to get more aggressive after they've gauged what I can do (or I ticked them off). After countering them they wise up and actually dodge away from me when they should normally smash me (thus hitting my counter again) or hesitating to attack thinking I'll block it somehow. They tend to only counter when it's obvious I've forgotten they can do that and other times dodge around me until I whiff. I'm probably giving the AI more credit than they deserve, but if I didn't get pounded on by Marth and learned to deal with him I wouldn't have been able to handle my friend, even after he wised up to my initial fighting techniques.

 

[meleebrawler]

I wouldn't say that practicing vs. cpus is bad per se, but they can promote
bad habits when facing real players. Surely you've noticed how they'll
never do anything other than air dodge after using it once? Or how
they never pursue you into the air after launching you up, instead just walking
to where they think you'll land? Real players don't always act like this.

Cpus may be faster than us, but they certainly aren't the smartest.

I actually noticed the AI seems to change their attack patterns a bit. It might be just me, but a level 9 character (Marth in this case) tended to hold off with any rushing on his first stock, but after I get a few hits in they start to get more aggressive after they've gauged what I can do (or I ticked them off). After countering them they wise up and actually dodge away from me when they should normally smash me (thus hitting my counter again) or hesitating to attack thinking I'll block it somehow. They tend to only counter when it's obvious I've forgotten they can do that and other times dodge around me until I whiff. I'm probably giving the AI more credit than they deserve, but if I didn't get pounded on by Marth and learned to deal with him I wouldn't have been able to handle my friend.

Oh yeah, CPUs can counter things no normal human would be able to react to.
Use Palutena's Explosive Flame on a character with a counter to see what I mean.

 

[Roukiske]

Its more about the mind games, human players can be easily tricked into thinking you are going to do one thing when you are doing another. Practicing against computers is still good practice for the basic stuff like reaction timing and what not but human players can think in ways computers cant. Which can sometimes be their downfall.

This.

This game is heavily reliant on reading your opponent and anticipating their moves so you can take the offensive. I only played melee competitively, but I would say through my own experience that this iteration of smash requires the most opponent reads compared to other smash games since being too offensive can leave yourself open.

When the demo was out all I did was play against level 9 CPU's. You end up learning how to fight a CPU but not a human. Every time I went for a jab the CPU ALWAYS rolled behind my first jab so eventually I would jab once and then turn around for a grab. Smart players will adjust this.

 

[Shiliski]

I wouldn't say that playing against CPUs is actively bad, but I wouldn't consider it real practice unless all you were trying to do was see if you could hit a moving opponent.

It's just that playing against CPUs is completely different than playing against humans, and so you don't really get to see what works against humans and what doesn't. The human player isn't always going to know exactly when to counter, but the computer player can know this, so you can end up thinking that certain moves suck when they really don't. Also, the CPU tends to approach the stage in predictable ways, while humans tend to be more varied in whether they double jump, use a recovery, air dodge, fast fall, and so on.

A lot of times when you're practicing, you're often practicing strategies, but the strategies that work on humans don't necessarily work on CPUs, and vice-versa.

 

[Deleted member 245254]

I wouldn't say that practicing vs. cpus is bad per se, but they can promote
bad habits when facing real players. Surely you've noticed how they'll
never do anything other than air dodge after using it once? Or how
they never pursue you into the air after launching you up, instead just walking
to where they think you'll land? Real players don't always act like this.

Cpus may be faster than us, but they certainly aren't the smartest.

This isn't particularly true, to be a stickler. CPUs do follow with aerials in Smash 4 all of the time.

@OP

The issue with CPU characters is they never change up their game or adapt. They are basically 100% reactionary, with a very default agenda otherwise. Try starting a match and just standing there, and you'll likely witness some of the strangest behavior you'd never see from a player.

While it's not like defensive acting players don't exist, what pushes the issue further is that they generally do not adapt or attempt to outplay you. You can repeat the same sure fire combo/technique ad nauseam and they will never be the wiser, especially when it comes to being off the edge. Many players like to be extremely aggressive, and CPUs generally across the board do not prepare you for that type of player behavior.

Now, does that make CPUs bad to practice with? Not at all, but at the end of the day if you had to make the comparison, a lvl 9 character could be equated to a player at a pretty low end of the average spectrum, so you're not really prepping yourself for much, and it makes a lot less sense if you have the ability to fight online in continuous battles with other real players (given you're not plagued with a terrible connection or anything else that leads to you online experience not being optimal).

CPU's essentially do not prepare you to think for yourself, they train you to develop a habitual approach that in the end will fail you against a player using a real brain. So it's not necessarily that they are bad to train with, but it is bad to treat them like a real player and use that to gauge your skill. They don't cover all the truly necessary bases for fighting against humans. Because of this, I recommend when fighting CPUs to ignore the part about beating them, and just go for combos. You know that if what you're doing is escapable, a 9 will escape it (better than anyone). So use them sort of as punching bags, per se. Just as you wouldn't consider a punching bag a formidable boxing opponent, you shouldn't also consider a lvl 9 CPU a person. You wouldn't crush a punching bags stuffing out and then think you're ready to box with a real guy, right? Don't aim to beat them. Aim to practice your skills on them (this is different from trying to beat them).

If you treat a CPU as such, and take that with you in to local player with actual players it could only help you. People who cry out that any sort of gameplay with a CPU just "creates bad habits" are parroting, it only does that if you let it.

I'm actually really curious to see Amiibos in action.

 

[the8thark]

Does this advice change with the Amiibo which are supposedly able to learn from our play style?

 

[Raijinken]

They're predictable to an extreme most humans aren't.