Verseing the CPU : waste of time or big help?

The other day i thought i'd take to the single player mode of VF5 for the first time, only played it with mates as of yet. It seemed fine, the opposition was easy and fairly predictable and i found myself achieving various ranking matches throughout the day.. However, later that evening i decided to play a few matches with mates and suddenly, i found myself getting absolutely obliterated by people who'd barely played the game. After about 15 matches or so i was back in the swing of things, but my conclusion is that playing in 1 player seems to dull the sense of unpredictability that real opponents have. Anyone else feel the same about this?

 

It is well noted that the AI on PS3 VF5 is poor and most say it can hurt your overall game.

You can read about it here. PS3's Weak AI

 

yes, the cpu is pretty dumb in VF5, the CPU sometime just sits there waiting for you to throw it.

However, playing against the cpu is not completely useless.
I use it to practice combos, and I try to get the fastest knockouts.

Playing against inexperienced players can be much more challenging, they button mash, rush you, and plus they use the regular controller which has P+K,P+G,K+G, quick buttons.

But then they don't block and don't know anything about spacing, so all it takes is some spacing and one powerful hit and its over.