The debate here can last forever because the object of our discussion hasn’t been clearly defined. First off, a shit player is someone does not know how to play the game. Someone who doesn’t know how to play the game can not get to 4k. Now, you may define a shit player as someone with sub-optimal play, someone who does not use the ideal/correct strategies for each character.
The irony is that PPs themselves area quantification of the victory ratio, which is an empirical, quantitiave evaluation of skill. This is a competitive game therefore skill=victory for the purposes of my argument.
The Honda you know might not be using this or that, but to have 4500PP he must be beating the snot out of a lot of people who in turn also beat the snot out of a lot of people to reach that level. Therefore he is NOT, by any reasonable definition, a shit player. Not even a bad player.
Yes, I have. It might happen. But that is not the issue at hand, which is why it hasn’t been mentioned thus far: it is cheating. That a booster’s PPs mean nothing is a given.
You are right in that it quantifies the victory ratio. You are incorrect in linking this to an empirical, quantitative evaluation of skill.
This is because despite the fact that we have the ratio, we do not have an established, standardized baseline of skill from which these ratios sprout.
I.e. because of the inherent variables, it is not a quantitative measure of skill.
But, what if you have person A and person B. Person A has a true skill rating of 1100. Person B has a true skill rating of 900. Person A is only paired up with other players of rating 1300 and is consistently losing. Person B is only paired up with players of rating 800, but he faces twice as many. He is consistently winning his matches. Person A can end up with a lower actual score than person B, despite having a higher true skill rating simply because of the distribution.
Obviously, if both played an infinite number of games this would even out. But in practicality that will not happen. This is not the only way this matchmaking adds inconsistencies. And so, it’s quite statistically likely that you’d end up with two people at the same skill rating who are, actually, of quite different skills.
Again, this is only evened out proportionally to the number of games played.
Well then, perhaps making emperical statements to the contrary isn’t an ideal way to present one’s argument.
I mean shit, I don’t consider myself to be all that great either but I flirted with breaking 4000 pp at one point (got to something like 3950 before I lost twice and was down 250 points lol). Anyway, the point is making definitive assertions like that is ill advised.
It is normalized since, the higher you go, the more you lose from weaker players. As Veserius himself said, he can win 19 fights and lose 1 to inferior players and end up with the same amount of PPs/BPs, since the penalty for losing far outweighs the benefits of winning against a weaker person.
Which is accurate, since a person of his skill level should win approximately 95% of his fights against much weaker opponents.
A person with 3000 that sucks, if defeated by a person of equal skill will lose around 100-150. If he loses to a person of 1000, he loses more.
Point being: if your skill level is lower than your PPs, you will lose them mighty fast to the up and comers or to those of your own skill level. If you lose 20 more fights than you win in a couple of hours, you’re down to 2000 from 3500 or so.
Therefore, once again, practically doing an airplane to feed it to you: unless a guy is a booster, high PPs are a fairly accurate representation of overall skill. Low PPs can be anything from a noob, to a pro’s new account, to an occasional venture of an endless-junkie. You can never know.
So please, pretty please with sugar on top: stop saying high PPs don’t mean shit.
It’s not normalized because of the inherent statistical innacuracies that only stack with the more players, along with how inherently skewed results are from online as certain tendencies are favored higher than other.
The point obviously went above your head. The problem is that when you are playing online, you are not playing the same frame-perfect game as when doing it locally. You can’t rely on the same skills to win, and so, it is A MATHEMATICAL IMPOSSIBILITY for it to be an accurate representation of the overall skill in street fighter. It is far more precise to say it is an indication of how good they are at online fighter.
This is the important differentiation you are missing, and why I was saying it doesn’t have a standardized baseline. The standardized baseline is a big grey-area filled with variables. Anything from turbo, to packetloss, to wireless, to just a regular +40ms connection. 40 ms means +24 frames. Bear in mind the game relies on frame-specific inputs where you need a 3-frame normal to punish a -3 move. How can you claim you are still playing that game when just the LAG adds +24 frames? It honestly is an impossibility for you to make these claims. This is without even considering all the dropped info over the line.
So, please, pretty please, stop saying online and offline are the same. It is not the same game unless you are, like, in Japan, in which case their point representation is probably more accurate towards their tendencies, but it’s still full of inconsistencies.
(Any mathematician or science person would easily be able to tell that summarizing all of that data (performance of all the different character matchups, different setups/combos, etc.) into a single number will not make that number very accurate. It is the same issue League of Legends have by using Elo for its skill distribution. A single number to represent the amassed combination of like 500 skills and how they synergize in you as a person is not going to be super precise.)
I accounted for gimmicky online characters. That does not change the fact that even if there is a lag, both players are under the same circumstances. All the variables apply for both players in a fight, and a winner comes out.
Regardless, I did not say PPs are an absolute measure of skill. I said they are fairly reasonable and that someone with 4000PPs can not be a shit player.
That these simple facts stretched this far because of nitpicking and arguing for the sake of arguing, is regrettable. What a waste.
If you -really- want to sit there and tell me that there is no correlation between PPs and skill, then enjoy your tinfoil hat.
A lot of people say PP doesn’t mean nothing just do not want to chase PP / Know that you can’t judge a player by their points.
However PP holds a value to the one actually earning it. It is not to show off, the players who earn it past about 2.5k know what I am talking about.
Maintaining your PP and progressing is evidence of yourself getting better and better. Losing your PP (by losing to someone way under it) doesn’t mean that person is better than you. PP still has value, the question is can one get it back and pass what he had? If he can get it back that proves his worth to himself where on the other hand the other guy might not even get that high up because it was a one-two time thing. Like how beating a 5k player doesn’t mean you are 5k too. in that regard PP doesn’t mean anything.
I have a way to get 4000pp and not be very good. Say I’m a Blanka player. I only challenge T-Hawk players…when I find one, I keep re challenging them building up ton of points. There ya go.
I think it is a somewhat general indication, in that a higher percentage of good players will be 5000pp over 4000pp, 4000pp over 3000pp and so on. However there are so many exceptions that pp can’t be a real accurate indicator of anything.
Who cares if they are under the same circumstances? When you’re both playing under lag, the threshold for what you can react to and what you can punish becomes skewed. So the rules have been modified, moves that are clearly unsafe offline become safe online, and winning takes a higher amount of guessing your way out of situations.
Let’s take one extreme example - a primarily offline player with good anti airs, and a players who likes to jump in all day. Does the guy jumping in care that they’re both playing under the same conditions? No, if anything it benefits him. What would be a clean anti air offline becomes into a trade of successful jump in online. So now the rules of the matchup have changed, since you have to respect and account for an option they don’t even have offline.
Online is like this across the board, and in pretty much every game I can think of. Even games running on GGPO netcode. “Just go nuts” works way better online than offline. And most of the time the people playing this way don’t even know they are doing it. If you primarily play online, how are you supposed to know that you should be getting punished every time for the moves you’re throwing out there?
PP is a great measure of online player skill. High PP denotes skill at a version of SF where you can’t react to things or punish things as easily.
If you’re in an environment where there is a good local competition and you train exclusively offline you are going to level up 10x faster than online. Especially if you’re playing on PSN, this shouldn’t even be a debate, PSN is utter shit. Unfortunately not many people have to chance to compete offline, I mean I gave up playing online cuz at this point i’m just waisting my time amd playing offline is the only way to break my plateau at this game.
How does a shit player get to 4000PP, I wonder. You can not possibly get there unless you consistently beat others of similar PP levels all the way up.
There are some characters who get better with lag. Characters with easy execution, large amounts of health, or require quick reactions to deal with their tactics instantly become better online. Especially the last bit.
If I have a move that offline is barely at the edge of reactiability, then online that move becomes significant better than it should be with the additional delay.
They can very easily be a shit player who has found how to exploit lag. As I have said I’ve found more than several of these players.
A skilled player can get high PP, but a high PP player is not necessarily skilled. That’s where the flaw in your logic is.
Online has a minimum of 2 frames of lag even if you were playing someone directly in the next room from you. Then you add on the actual lag of the response time which even on a good connection is another frame or two.
Online is not just like offline no matter what you tell yourself. Especially in the US there is a fundamental difference.
PP does have some value - in general you won’t be completely crap with your main character if you are over 4000+ PP. PP is based off your total win percentage, so it is not necessarily indicative of your skill with a given character unless you only use one character.
For example, I may be at 4600PP, but playing with a character I probably wouldn’t be able to get more than 3000PP with. The other guy will think I suck, since frankly I do with a lot of characters I mess around with and get the impression that 4000+PP players are trash. Or you may not have played in a good while, like a lot of us probably do. I know I go months between games and I usually go directly online w/o training mode.
If you consistently play though and play mainly with your main character, PP is a decent indication of your skill level. There is no perfect formula, but if two players both play 1000 games with just their best character, and one player has 1000PP and the other 5000PP, suffice to say that the 5000PP player has more skill.