Thoughts on Transitioning to Playing Humans in Fighters

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gradualmeltdown
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Re: Thoughts on Transitioning to Playing Humans in Fighters

Post by gradualmeltdown »

The thrill is fighting for a win. Yeah I have tons of fun losing to good players. The point is as long as you learn from these matches they lead to more winning. Play to win at all costs. Competition is fun for many people, there is nothing wrong with it.
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Re: Thoughts on Transitioning to Playing Humans in Fighters

Post by fast »

Back when my friends and I use to play alot of fighters we opted for a loser stays mechanic when playing friendlies. It made everyone get better, slowly. This works alot better if you have a group of like minded friends and not everyone is eyeing strategy guides between game nights.
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J T
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Re: Thoughts on Transitioning to Playing Humans in Fighters

Post by J T »

Fighting to win is fun, but fighting to embarass your opponent is a blast. Play with the weakest character. Only use the weak jab punch button. Never block. Bet them you can get a perfect each round. Encourage them to play cheap and beat them anyway. When you're good enough to be a cocky, obnoxious ass, that's when fighters are the most fun. :lol:
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J T
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Re: Thoughts on Transitioning to Playing Humans in Fighters

Post by J T »

fast wrote:Back when my friends and I use to play alot of fighters we opted for a loser stays mechanic when playing friendlies. It made everyone get better, slowly. This works alot better if you have a group of like minded friends and not everyone is eyeing strategy guides between game nights.


We did this too once SFII and MKII were on SNES. When you only have a small group of contenders and not an arcade full, you need your weaker players to get stronger.
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Re: Thoughts on Transitioning to Playing Humans in Fighters

Post by BogusMeatFactory »

I am in incredibly intrigued on the concept of those shifts between playing an AI versus a real person. One of the few games, that I feel, captured a more realistic player feeling was the virtua fighter series, especially virtua fighter IV on. They took al the player data from the arcades (which was tracked by cards) and imported them into the game, simulating play style. It wasn't perfect, but did a decent job of capturing real people.

Nothing compares though to the real thing. I have been a competitive fighter player for a long time now with my roots in the arcades with the Street Fighter and Virtua Fighter Series. Playing people in the arcades really brought out a different level of competition, but, like all things, becomes stunted in time. With the death of arcades here in the U.S. left arcade players fighting the same people and, until the mainstream popularity of on-line play at home, console fighters left you playing your friends and family to the point where they just refused to play.

When on-line gaming came I was elated and spent so much time playing Capcom Vs. SNK 2 on the original xbox, finding players who were equally skilled and more so and having a blast. I only really hit a wall when playing the Dead or Alive series on-line, for whatever reason I couldn't play that game properly.

On-line play opened up a world of challenge and, in reality the point of fighting games. There is no point to playing a single player fighting game, even to learn the move sets. Playing AI made you get into a groove that simply exploited the AI and never translated remotely into the player vs player combat.

There really is no point in playing by yourself.
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J T
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Re: Thoughts on Transitioning to Playing Humans in Fighters

Post by J T »

It seems that two of the consistent differences between AI and humans are that humans make errors and humans learn.

Your AI opponent has no problems in executing special moves. They can do them every time at just the right time. Humans are a little more hit and miss. When you are fighting the computer, you know there are certain things you just can't do... ever. They will always counter you correctly. On the other hand, if the computer is NOT programmed to handle a certain strategy, it doesn't learn either and it will get it wrong consistently every time.

This is fundamentally why it eventually gets boring to challenge AI. Your goal is to never do the moves that the computer can always counter and to always do the moves that it never can block. Sometimes, fighter AI is more of a puzzle. You're just playing around until you find the correct strategy that exploits the AI's limitations, then you repeat.

Many humans fight like robots (for example, see Flowchart Ken). These people really aren't much different from AI. However, most humans will see when their weaknesses are being exploited and do something about it. You can't rely on the same strategy on repeat like you can with AI. You have to adapt and you have to realize when your opponent has adapted to you. You can also occassionally role the dice and try a move that you really "shouldn't" because humans make errors. You can even try to predict when they will make errors based on how complicated their last set of moves was or how disoriented they might be from something you just did. This allows you to sneak in combos that would never fly against an AI fighter. Sometimes our errors play to our favor as well. There have been several times when I have been embarrassingly beaten by a n00b or a button masher simply because I assumed more intelligence in my opponent than was there and got caught off guard by some random jab or kick that just threw off my game out of dumb luck.

And of course, there is always emotion. Computers don't care if you taunt. Humans, on the other hand can lose their cool and either play worse or better depending on how angry and flustered they get.

So, as it usually is in the humans vs. robots debate, it is errors, adaptation, and emotion that set us apart from out digital counterparts. I think AI can probably learn to model those things more accurately as programmers get smarter about it, but it's not there yet.
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