Online. Soul Calibur's crown jewel of competitive play. A system so polished it has become the sole determining right of passage one must endure in order to ever be among "Calibur's" greats (Fun Fact: Soul Calibur 2 held no competitive value for this very reason. True story). But wait! You say you've already played the harsh wastelands of Player Matches before? Well unequip your mom's 8" work heels and take that testosterone shot your dad depressingly leaves next to your bed stand each night. That's right kiddies, the best players can ONLY be found on Ranked Matches. Here breeds the true masters of the game. Tasked with not only playing the game at it's highest peak, but also being required to contain and manipulate the stream of digital latency to their advantage. That's like some Keanu Reeves kung fu cyber magic shit right there. So hook in your 56K and enter Soul Calibur's purest battle grounds. America's enemies may have guerrilla tactics, but we've got lag tactics! *Que Colbert Report theme*

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Lag Tactics: The concept of lag tactics is a hotly debated topic that's split the US senate in two, preventing anything else from being accomplished since Soul Calibur 4's launch. In essence it's the skill of predicting lag and adapting. One must realize offline tactics are inferior and a crutch for the whiny "Offline Rainbow Pride Brigade". Taking this knowledge you find a balance of sacrifice in damage and punishment and intelligently select the move to best fit both the scenario and the amount of bars painted at the bottom. It's a delicate art form that takes patience, skill, and your neighbor's WiFi connection.

• LESSON 1: Now some of you have taken to the challenge and entered the fray. You stand with zen-like vigil, waiting patiently for a blue 5 bar to foolishly accept your confirmation. The moment happens and there you are in lagless 1A nirvana. You see no lag and can fully trust every move you make. Well this is an illusion, and not like the one where your convinced your girlfriend left you because "it's just her" and not the fact smacking buttons all day hasn't jiggled off all that muffin top. What I mean is lag is always present...like your cellulite. You see Soul Calibur uses input lag rather than visual lag, meaning the game is running off your console in real time while only the inputs are being simultaneous relayed. The end result is perfect visual frame rate but a delay of frames before the move executes. As well, frames shift as lag is never consistent, so even if you adapt and predict lag, it may still be fluctuating as the fight progresses. If the lag spikes become too much of an issue, kindly ask your opponent to stop downloading so much porn during the fight. Be warned that this request does promote the player to use their "free hand" to play you with and will ante up the difficulty from said point on.
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• LESSON 2: You may have spent hours in practice mode only to find some moves are useless as they're too slow to ever not be blocked. Siegfried in particular hosts a large assortment of knock down lows that are slower than a fat kid running...while being fat (Would you believe I'm not being paid for these articles? Shocking I know). Don't feel bad. Besides a lot of convoluted set ups, mind games, and other such n00b tactics used in offline, these are designed for online usage. These are part of a special move list called "Lag Lows" and "Lag Unblockables". The lows consist of not just low pokes, but particularly lows that lead to knockdowns, big damage, or ring outs. The unblockables are ones that are regularly interruptible or avoidable on reaction yet only have a small window to do so. Now the argument is these moves already have an awkward start up animation and offline are blocked at the final frames once it's clear it will be a low. So with online adding input delays, the inputted low block, dodge, or attempt to CH arrives late and results in them being hit or counter hit. The argument sounds completely valid, backed by reasonable facts, and possibly provable in a CSI style of extensive research that bypasses everything a person of the profession does...except it's not...cuz that would mean the PSN top10 are all just lag abusing scrubs...and that surely can't be fuckin true...I mean come on...pshh!
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• LESSON 3: You've gone on an epic montage of lag training within the void of online and are currently reading this 10 frames before this very sentence is even happening. You've done the impossible...you can block shit online. You enter Ranked Matches and land you a match with a Siegfried. As the match progresses he decides to pull WS AA and instantly pisses himself as you block the low. Surely he is defeated! But wait! Le gasp! He enters Chief Hold Stance and begins a can can of K taps. You try to counter hit in between the attacks with an i14 move within the i16 window, but to no avail you are counter hit yourself! How fail for our hero! You've just been pwned by online "frame abuse". Now don't fret at the "abuse" part, it's just a term, like alcohol abuse (it just means I party better than you). Since lag creates delays in input and the game has a small frame window at the end of attacks to buffer, it can become hard to find the timing needed to ensure your next attack occurs immediately at the next available frame. It will often delay a frame or two and cause you to miss a small window to counter hit a frame trap or punish a slightly unsafe move. This makes moves like Ivy's CL 214[B] amazing. Offline you'll be forced to use it only at disadvantage to avoid an attack and guarantee it hits since usually it's so unsafe it becomes an open call to your masochistic love for punishment, which doesn't flow well for a dominatrix and I suggest you watch some S/M porn to help you better understand how to play her (iCS is sadly not used by real dominatrixes). Sore losers will often send hate mail describing how they can beat your ass offline because this wont effect them, but don't worry, they're obviously online because they couldn't cope offline either. You should be filled with pride and ensure them they suck either way. This logic is infallible and will silence them upon life altering self realization of scrubiness. Record the match and post it on youtube as a trophy. It will make you look cool.
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• LESSON 4: So you and paid hobo to act as a friend for this example are playing offline. It becomes apparent you are a far superior player as you consistently destroy him. You play defensively, carefully blocking and punishing unsafe attacks. They however mindlessly spam attacks as though the block button will ask for child support if anything occurs from you tapping it (I sense double entendre!). Defying all rational reasons why a hobo has a PS3, internet connection, and HDTV, he appears online the next day and owns you harder than the Flash contracting Polio. The lag makes it impossible to counter hit slow attacks with a quick hit and interrupt strings that become online induced frame traps. In the end the damage from these instances of online altered results racks up and wins the fight. Where you should've done 50 damage, he got 70 damage causing a difference of 120 damage that would've been in your favor offline. With online, aggressive behaviors will generally go farther than turtles simply because lag will generally make it hard to defend and punish since it requires timing and thought. This accounts for all skill levels. An offline pro or scrub who fights aggressively will transition well, while a defensive and reactionary player will suffer. This is not to say, that offline, one is better, just online you get punished for being a pussy who blocks all the time rather than wanting to fight. You mad?
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• LESSON 5: Now soooooome people feel there's a need to get all ethical about use of said "Lag Tactics" and use them sparingly or avoid them all together when playing online. This creates a watered down form of the game that makes some people feel it is more fair but creates deeper character imbalance and limits many options of the game. I've literally seen Seong Mi-Na win a match because of this. Well if you have to appease these twits because your inbox is full of hate mail and you desperately need room for dirty sex messages from females you swooned with "A/S/L?", then take this advice: Avoid all lag tactics unless you would legitly use that move offline in that circumstance. Include mix ups, gauge the opponent's use of them, and observe how often attacks appear to be too successful. If it keeps landing, lag might be helping it and you should stop. There's no clear set of rules. These attacks have purpose and are part of an essential strategy and it becomes a game of determining if you're making it work or the lag is. You need to be sensitive and use them sparingly, but do not feel you need to exclude them all together. The simple goal is just don't intend to ride the tactics to win. BUT....that's if you wanna be a bitch...I mean "play to win" m'right?

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Online and offline are very different and now you know and knowing is half the battle (Unless you have cancer, then it's chemo). People will continue to argue even after reading this 100% accurate article of wisdom about the ethics of lag tactics and online versus offline skill. We'll only ever know the answer when someone sends a hatemail so riddled with 1337 speak and angry uses of intelligently strung ebonics that it blows the minds of us all, ending the civil war with a clear and concise answer. Till then, offline elitists will cower to Player Matches playing Soul Calibur "Light", claiming they can detect skill by move application and intention rather than the actual outcomes altered by lag, Ranked pros will sport 90% win/lose ratios indicating their sheer testament to awesomely legit tactics, and I'll be wondering why my ethernet cable keeps jumping out of the socket when I'm not winning as much. Annoying I know!

I need to go to bed, but have enjoyed your text in the past. I look forward to reading this tomorrow. :)

Priceless lol, love the witty jokes as always, and its a fitting addition to your articles.

I love you, IFB.

This guide has changed my life. Now, just as soon as my xbox gets back from its 4 week vacation to red ring land, I plan on applying this guide's fantastically-outlined tactics to my gameplay... 95% w/l ratio, here I come.

A goofy phenomenon I've run across several times that online seems to encourage are people that rant about skill etc, and their idea of skill is to automatically GI every single time one of their strings is blocked.

Nothing wrong with doing that I suppose, but if you let yourself get that predictable, I'm probably just going to throw you every time one of your strings end. (Or start trying Maxi's unblockable, delay my attacks etc.)

Also, demanding that I GI you back... Uh, how about no? I prefer interrupts and damage.

Edited slightly...one of the jokes was irritating me.

Interesting read. -funny.

Though i still don't think I'm clear on what a lag tactic is. Are they particular tech moves, or combo chains? Are they glitches that can't be escaped? Is there a list for them?

many things can be a 'lag tactic', mostly depending on your connection speed with your opponent. theres some room for arguing that any move that hits is relying on lag, hence all the lag abuse talk is bullshit. but generally its knock down lows (1A).
if your playing a decent player on a 4+ connection, and a certain move is hitting them 9 times out of ten, its probably a lag tactic.
unless your using taki, dont worry about it, theyre just whiney fags.

Oh, so it's pretty much just seeing what advantage you have in a particular match with a particular connection? But wouldn't I also have disadvantages? Since I'm also fighting at the bottom of the fish tank too LOL. Or is it just a matter of who knows how to take advantage the most? I think then it would fall back under being a 'skill' issue.

^just dont worry about it, good players should be able to stop lag moves and spam easy enough. just win the game, if they complain, find someone better to play.

...no. and very no.

A lag tactic is generally regarded as a tactic that works specifically for online and would normally be reasonable or easily dealt with offline An example would be Siegfried's WR AA. It hits Mid then Low. You know the second part is coming but online its very common to miss the Low block because of lag. Over a fight these moves will add up and can more than compensate for lack of skill. Awkward lows are regarded as lag tactic because of the high rate you block in time and the game doesnt register it quick enough because of lag, as well you're already hesitant from lag towards all moves in general and mentally you respond slower in fear of lag screwing a normally easy punish or counter hit. Cervy 4B+K is another example. It's very easy to block and whiff punish, but online while the block is still stupid easy, getting the whiff punish can be a risk since the game may not register your sidestep in time. You're either forced to gamble or block and let them have advantage and SG damage