There’s nothing in this world more loathsome and repugnant than a flip-flopper. As we are reminded in every national election cycle, true leaders never change their minds, and they’re never, ever wrong. And I, of course, am a true leader, so please keep that in mind this week as we take another look at the function and implications of online play.
While I do indeed stand by everything I’ve previously said on the subject, the shockingly decent netplay afforded us by SC5 definitely warrants a new round of consideration regarding what benefits it ultimately provides us, the limits of its usefulness, and how far it can take us in our development as players.
Legitimately Playable Netcode (and Other Signs of the Apocalypse)
As we all know, when space aliens came down from on high and taught the ancient Mayans about science, mathematics, pyramid building, and online fighting games, it was with the understanding that they would closely guard these secrets until the end of days. With the end times now upon us, however—it’s 2012, after all—we finally have access to online play in a 3D game that isn’t patently terrible. In fact, it’s quite good . . . deceptively so, at times. That being the case, let’s dive back into what online play is and is not.
Despite all that, however, SCV’s enhanced netcode does allow for a nontrivial degree of reaction-based play, and tactics that are effective offline will generally work online as well. This becomes truer for semi-local matches. While I’ve had cross-country connections that would characterize as pretty damn good, I’ve had matches with people in my part of Norcal that are positively phenomenal. Whether almost-as-good-as-offline or just unexpectedly good, given the circumstances, almost any match that isn’t absolutely crippled by lag spikes and disconnects can serve as a useful training tool because the fundamental psychological elements of SCV play now remain largely intact when translated into the online realm. This becomes even truer when players enter into a gentlemen’s agreement of sorts, endeavoring to play in a manner that stays as true as possible to the sort of offline play seen in tournaments.
The Pitfalls
So we’ve established that online SCV is comparatively amazing. What’s more, the gruesomely terrible online play we had in SCIV was still enough to give rise to mutant freaks like Woahhzz. Taken together, then, shouldn’t this new online play just be taken as perfectly legitimate?
SCV online is incredibly useful for the reasons I’ve outlined above, and it’s enjoyable, too, to the point that I find myself playing quite a bit of it without ever getting so angry that I want to murder whoever thought it’d be a good idea to run games that require 1/60th of a second timing over a DSL connection that was already behind the curve in 1998. Despite that, there’s still a level of engagement and complexity that only instantaneous offline play can really provide. Just as importantly, though, there are certain elements already rising within the “online SCV culture” that we should guard against, lest they drastically interfere with our ability to become better players.
Of those elements, perhaps the most prominent comes from the game’s benignly cruel insistence on keeping track of all one’s wins and losses. While this is useful information to have, in a sense, it’s also somewhat dangerous in that it confers a significance to what should essentially be casual matches that frankly isn’t deserved. Hell, I catch myself getting entirely too worked up about these things from time to time, too. Just recently I played a ranked match against a player whose connection began fluctuating wildly from five bars to one, and back again. This shifting, pausing, stopping, and starting nearly destroyed my fragile little mind, and in the end I lost to silly stuff, dropping my overall win ratio to 93%. I was livid for almost three seconds, which was an eternity, given the circumstances, but that’s the sort of wildly irrational response that this level of stat-tracking elicits.
Taking Your Beatings
As frustrating as it is to lose, particularly when the game remembers every mistake you make for the rest of eternity, losing remains the single most effective way to become a better player, and this is true both online and offline. In fact, the best potential upside of SCV’s online play is that it affords everyone the opportunity to go out and lose to new people and new characters in varied and intriguing ways.
During the first couple of months of both SCIII and SCIV, for example, I was beaten mercilessly, often by people who I was used to dispatching with relative ease. That’s simply the nature of the beast; a new game means an extended period of learning and adjustment. Luckily for us, however, we finally have a game wherein the online component is solid enough to allow us to take meaningful losses, reflect on them, and ultimately get mo’ better, mo’ faster. By keeping the relative value of online play in perspective and remaining steadfastly unafraid to get totally shined up on occasion, all of us can speed up the learning process and have a great deal of fun in the process.
Homework:
Tell me about your online experiences thus far. Are you finding it as potentially beneficial as I am, or is it already devolving into a cesspool of lag tactics and other garbage? What are the pros and cons?
Also, find some faux pro online and send him to 8wr. I’ve managed to get a few people against whom I’ve fought to come check out the community here—online play is an excellent way to add new blood to our community.
Finally, grab me on psn and help me wring all traces of respectability out of my win/loss record: bh8ffs
@Original_Hater
While I do indeed stand by everything I’ve previously said on the subject, the shockingly decent netplay afforded us by SC5 definitely warrants a new round of consideration regarding what benefits it ultimately provides us, the limits of its usefulness, and how far it can take us in our development as players.
Legitimately Playable Netcode (and Other Signs of the Apocalypse)
As we all know, when space aliens came down from on high and taught the ancient Mayans about science, mathematics, pyramid building, and online fighting games, it was with the understanding that they would closely guard these secrets until the end of days. With the end times now upon us, however—it’s 2012, after all—we finally have access to online play in a 3D game that isn’t patently terrible. In fact, it’s quite good . . . deceptively so, at times. That being the case, let’s dive back into what online play is and is not.
In the interest of fairness, a rebuttal to the above point.
First and foremost, online play is still not actual SCV, despite the fact that it approximates the actual (read: offline) gameplay experience far more faithfully than its predecessor ever could. The distinctions are, of course, subtle, but they’re nonetheless important. A multitude of online “lag tactics” still exist. Certain lows become much more difficult to block on reaction, some setups which require precision timing to defeat become entirely more solid than in fact they are in offline play, and numerous other small yet significant discrepancies come into play.Despite all that, however, SCV’s enhanced netcode does allow for a nontrivial degree of reaction-based play, and tactics that are effective offline will generally work online as well. This becomes truer for semi-local matches. While I’ve had cross-country connections that would characterize as pretty damn good, I’ve had matches with people in my part of Norcal that are positively phenomenal. Whether almost-as-good-as-offline or just unexpectedly good, given the circumstances, almost any match that isn’t absolutely crippled by lag spikes and disconnects can serve as a useful training tool because the fundamental psychological elements of SCV play now remain largely intact when translated into the online realm. This becomes even truer when players enter into a gentlemen’s agreement of sorts, endeavoring to play in a manner that stays as true as possible to the sort of offline play seen in tournaments.
Neither Pyrrha nor Pyrrha Omega (above) will be spamming out 1A in this match!
Even when that isn’t the case—against someone hell-bent on laming you out with moves and setups of dubious offline legitimacy, let’s say—simply playing online in all sorts of matches definitely increases the number of characters and strategies to which you are exposed. This can be hugely beneficial to players whose regions lack representatives for popular characters. For example, it’s prohibitively unlikely that anyone will be winning a major tournament without going through at least a few Pyrrhas, Pyrrha Omegas, and Natsus, but what if nobody in your local scene plays those characters? SCV’s improved netcode allows us to seek out those characters online and actually begin getting a rudimentary sense of what their moves look like, what their general playstyle might be, and how to counter those things. While imperfect, it’s a hell of a lot better than going in totally blind, and we would be fools not to make use of that.The Pitfalls
So we’ve established that online SCV is comparatively amazing. What’s more, the gruesomely terrible online play we had in SCIV was still enough to give rise to mutant freaks like Woahhzz. Taken together, then, shouldn’t this new online play just be taken as perfectly legitimate?
Of course not.
SCV online is incredibly useful for the reasons I’ve outlined above, and it’s enjoyable, too, to the point that I find myself playing quite a bit of it without ever getting so angry that I want to murder whoever thought it’d be a good idea to run games that require 1/60th of a second timing over a DSL connection that was already behind the curve in 1998. Despite that, there’s still a level of engagement and complexity that only instantaneous offline play can really provide. Just as importantly, though, there are certain elements already rising within the “online SCV culture” that we should guard against, lest they drastically interfere with our ability to become better players.
Of those elements, perhaps the most prominent comes from the game’s benignly cruel insistence on keeping track of all one’s wins and losses. While this is useful information to have, in a sense, it’s also somewhat dangerous in that it confers a significance to what should essentially be casual matches that frankly isn’t deserved. Hell, I catch myself getting entirely too worked up about these things from time to time, too. Just recently I played a ranked match against a player whose connection began fluctuating wildly from five bars to one, and back again. This shifting, pausing, stopping, and starting nearly destroyed my fragile little mind, and in the end I lost to silly stuff, dropping my overall win ratio to 93%. I was livid for almost three seconds, which was an eternity, given the circumstances, but that’s the sort of wildly irrational response that this level of stat-tracking elicits.
Numbers never lie.
If any of us, myself most certainly included, make the mistake of lending too much credence to these sorts of numbers, we run the quite real risk of failing to push ourselves. If every win and loss is tracked forever, then every win and loss somehow matters, effectively erasing the concept of casual play. Unfortunately, casual play is absolutely essential to improvement. Without a no-stakes environment, it’s impossible to test out new characters, try new things, and so on, all of which is the key to getting the most out of online play. The only solution to this is to really embrace the notion that online play, while certainly good enough to help us improve, remains subordinate to offline play. Also, and more importantly, all online play is by definition casual play. This mindset is necessary in order to avoid both picking up online habits that will get you killed offline, and also as a general means to learn and improve.Taking Your Beatings
As frustrating as it is to lose, particularly when the game remembers every mistake you make for the rest of eternity, losing remains the single most effective way to become a better player, and this is true both online and offline. In fact, the best potential upside of SCV’s online play is that it affords everyone the opportunity to go out and lose to new people and new characters in varied and intriguing ways.
During the first couple of months of both SCIII and SCIV, for example, I was beaten mercilessly, often by people who I was used to dispatching with relative ease. That’s simply the nature of the beast; a new game means an extended period of learning and adjustment. Luckily for us, however, we finally have a game wherein the online component is solid enough to allow us to take meaningful losses, reflect on them, and ultimately get mo’ better, mo’ faster. By keeping the relative value of online play in perspective and remaining steadfastly unafraid to get totally shined up on occasion, all of us can speed up the learning process and have a great deal of fun in the process.
Homework:
Tell me about your online experiences thus far. Are you finding it as potentially beneficial as I am, or is it already devolving into a cesspool of lag tactics and other garbage? What are the pros and cons?
Also, find some faux pro online and send him to 8wr. I’ve managed to get a few people against whom I’ve fought to come check out the community here—online play is an excellent way to add new blood to our community.
Finally, grab me on psn and help me wring all traces of respectability out of my win/loss record: bh8ffs
@Original_Hater
