A lot of people talk about how bad online play is but I think seven times out of ten they’re just regurgitating what they’ve they’ve heard from players who are stronger than them.
There is a difference. There is definitely a difference. However, I’m pretty sure that most people don’t notice or understand it for themselves, even if they say they do. (Note that the nature and severity of the difference depends on the game in question along with its netcode and their server and your connection and your opponent etc. etc.)
When a fighting game’s online experience is visually smooth and suffers from no obvious slowdown or jarring choppiness, inexperienced players will typically not notice anything wrong. It usually takes an excruciating amount of input delay or input drops for them to notice. There are casual fans who believe that SF4 has better netcode than HDR because rollbacks look pretty freaky and if you never heard about the imitation-GGPO algorithm then of course yjdk.
Intermediate players are much more likely to notice a difference online. Maybe it’s slightly more difficult to correctly gauge which way to block when attacked with an ambiguous cross-up. Maybe it’s a little more difficult to properly nail a very tight punish (one with a very narrow window of opportunity). Maybe your combos become less consistent, especially ones that have very strict timing. Maybe you start blocking low and it’s a tiny bit harder to switch to high block for an overhead attack. Maybe you suddenly can’t rely on late techs to break throw attempts, and you find yourself just having to mash it out from the start. It works the other way too, like maybe you can get away with slower tricks or sloppier resets or more sluggish moves and still be effective, but maybe some of your quick try-and-make-the-other-guy-twitch fakes and mixups are completely ignored. The game can just feel a little different to control…
At higher levels (offline), there are players who will counter-poke (or parry or whatever) your normals on reaction. This shit absolutely does not happen online. Online they would just have to fish and guess to try and achieve the same thing, and in many instances the potential reward is simply not worth the risk, so that aspect of the game just gets cut out entirely.
If you’re just wondering about what things will be like at a real tournament in the context of SF4, you may notice nothing, or you may notice that many things are just a hair easier than you remembered. You can expect that defense will be a little better on the whole, because people simply have more time to react to stuff. This includes countering and punishing as well. It’s only a fraction of a second but it really can make a world of difference. People may be more confident and more willing to use hard-to-execute options and maneuvers. You might even notice that people are trying more little slippery teases and baits and mindfucks too. Of course these are all maybes because it really depends on how experienced and/or sensitive you are and who you play against when you’re there.
Anyway, I hope that makes some sense and I hope that helps you and anyone else. It’s pretty tough to explain, especially since I don’t understand it all that well myself. I’m not a high-level player, so guess what? I’m just regurgitating what I’ve heard from players who are stronger than me! :lol:
(Oh, remember that this is all omitting the fact that the average player at a well-attended tournament is usually already heads above the average player online. This is because the average player who came out to a competitive gathering tends to be much more serious about the game than the average player who is sitting on his couch at home.)
Well, http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=174085