Juxtapose
Noob
Thanks man, and I will keep at it; I'm not a quitter . My goal is to complete a Klassic Tower run on Hard with no losses. My best is I think two or three loses, all against Corrupted Shinnok.Wow, great detail. Your success is pretty good for not playing Hard often. The AI being a scripted program gives you an advantage as a player because you can somewhat learn its tendencies. The button-reading the AI gets kind of equals the equation. Your advantage comes in things like switching up the first hit of your attacks in the second round (maybe kombos that start with 1 or 4 for round 1, kombos that start with 2,3 for round 2). You'll get more hits in to even things out, but having this trade-off allows the AI to be unpredictable. In MK9, you could use certain patterns to always win on Very Hard. In MKX, you can't even do that on Hard. If you couple in the lack of lag, instant matches and unpredictabilty, its pretty much why I play single-player more than online.
Whether or not it will help you against online opponents, it won't hurt. When playing AI, you kind of go into a "mode" that you can feel and human opponents are so different that you'll feel it right away in an online match. You'll be able to switch out of that mode.
I don't really play single matches, I'm usually trying to perfect the klassic tower for every character (8 brutalities, no losses). Every character is a different game and I get so much actually playing that I love it. I hope you continue to play it sometimes, I would love to get a match online with you though, I'm sure you'd destroy me, but maybe not.
Things I like about the Hard AI is that it can pressure you, mix-up (though based on reading you), and corner trap you nicely similar to a human player. It can also do some strong damage combos, so in a certain sense, it does feel like playing a very good opponent. My problem with it is that its input reads happen too much for my liking, making, as you mentioned much earlier in this thread, so much of a character's moves worthless 'cause they're easily punished and the AI will do so constantly, unlike a human opponent. I wish it would start doing proper "reads" after you do something a few times, as opposed to instantly, more like a human player. That would force you to adapt and try different mix ups and give said mix ups a chance. Now, can Block anything easily enough.
Make no mistake though, I'm not using this for Online training, as Online, with lag, input delay, and other factors, does not and can not function for proper competitive play. Online is a place to go to screw around with buddies or randoms, but that's it as proper fundamentals simply don't apply.
That's why I also much prefer playing the AI as opposed to Online like yourself, and once I finally unlock that Revenant Liu Kang skin (about 7 more Ranked wins to go), I likely won't touch Online much outside of, as I mentioned, screwing around with buddies. Sadly I'm not able to do much of an Offline scene, so the AI is where it needs to be for me for the most part.
I'd also love to play some matches with you. What platform are you on? I'm on PC.
I'll also continue to update this thread with my own findings through various runs. If you do have the time, I'd love for you to try some Single Matches and let me know your thoughts. There's no question the Hard AI in it is easier and seems to have more "faults" than the Tower AI, but I figured you'll be able to understand that better since you've been doing far more AI pattern crunching than I.