[Guitar Woman]

That's why the AI exists and has varying levels of difficulty! Or, you could, you know, practice on people who are at your level, since they're who you're going to be employing these strategies against anyway. Using novice players trying to get into the game as essentially practice dummies is insulting, alienating, unnecessary, and, in fact, a pretty massive dick move. It's like using 5-year-olds as target practice; it's not gonna make you any better at tactical firearm combat, they can't even fight back. They're not mannequins, they're people trying to enjoy the game like you, but you don't give a shit because they're "just noobs" from where you're standing.

Maybe I'm not at the same HIGH LEVEL PRO LEVEL as you are, but when I want to try out new shit in Third Strike I wail on a training dummy until I've got the motions down, then get into a ranked match and start doing it for real, learn by trial and error. Sure, I'll get my ass kicked for a while, but that shit builds character and you'll sure as fuck know what not to do when it's over.

I think I'm probably doing something fundamentally wrong by playing to have fun though. This game is really fun and I don't really care whether I win or lose as long as my fights are close as shit; when either of us has an equal possibility of winning a fight, when we're both learning each other's strategies on the fly and adapting to circumvent them, that's what makes it exciting. Getting shut out by some tourney prick who's just looking for someone to practice his infinites on, or doing likewise to someone who downloaded the game an hour ago, that's just boring and frustrating to me.