Block IPs Outside of Your Country

[vahnx]

Is there a way to block all IP addresses outside of your country for just your 3DS so you don't end up facing laggy players? I'm running DD-WRT on my router.

 

[Reila]

...Lag in matches have little to do with the location your opponent lives. It is about the connection/ISP.

 

[wmo_]

...Lag in matches have little to do with the location your opponent lives. It is about the connection/ISP.

This is not true. It has everything to do with location since matches are Peer-to-peer. The father someone is physically from you, the more latency there is, meaning more lag.

OP has the right idea but I do believe Smash's matchmaking will trump any connection settings you have. You're probably matched up first by a server, then connected, so best case scenario you're dropped from games until someone within the range is found. I doubt this will work since you can't really force country settings on a router, only IP subnets. And there's no way you're blocking countries by IP subnet, no way.

The only other preventative measure is changing costumes during character selection. If changing costume/color seems funky (laggy, delayed, etc) it means the match will be the same. So once you see a player connected on the bottom screen, try changing costume. That's the best measurement for preventing laggy matches

 

[Brinzy]

^ Gonna have to keep that tip in mind.

I'm not trying to be funny or anything, but... all I get are Japanese players and horrific WiFi experiences.

 

[Forever 9]

^ Gonna have to keep that tip in mind.

I'm not trying to be funny or anything, but... all I get are Japanese players and horrific WiFi experiences.

I agree with you; I do get matched up against a lot of Japanese players too I think the reason they didn't include the option to match against specific countries/your own country, was because they didn't want to split apart the Smash community. Oh well.

 

[wmo_]

^ Gonna have to keep that tip in mind.

I'm not trying to be funny or anything, but... all I get are Japanese players and horrific WiFi experiences.

I agree with you; I do get matched up against a lot of Japanese players too I think the reason they didn't include the option to match against specific countries/your own country, was because they didn't want to split apart the Smash community. Oh well.

I think I can explain this.

When you try to find a For Glory 1v1 match, you're looking for a specific pool of people. Sure Smash Bros is popular, but there's only a certain amount of players online. Out of those, there's only a certain amount of players in For Glory, and out of those, only a certain amount are playing 1v1. Out of those, there's only a certain amount of players actually looking for matches, the rest are in-game. Sakurai mentioned there's no skill based matchmaking, so we can ignore that variable. So even though there's lot of Smashers online, who you can play against is much smaller than you think.

So out of your "online, looking for for glory, 1v1" pool of players, only a certain amount are playable. If you're in North America, playing a Euro player is out of the question unless you want high delayed inputs. The networking in Smash is Peer-to-Peer, so you want someone as close to you as possible. The closer they are, the less latency it takes for your data to get to them, the better it feels. The queuing system clearly takes that into consideration, it likely creates a group of players labelled "close, not close, far away". When it comes to latency/ping, if they say "0-150ms is acceptable", then that opens up a lot of players you can play against. If you're in california, you can definitely ping less than 150ms to Japan. In addition, North America is large and has greedy corporate internet providers, so you can be in California and ping 150ms to a New York player. Personally, I'm east coast and my routing to Texas is horrible, something like 200ms+. My routing to certain areas was bad, my ping to California was usually 80ms.

I saw some players were from Texas and Cali, if you take the idea that "you can be paired against anyone who pings less than 150ms to you", then playing against a Japanese player is entirely possible. Even Europe is possible if you're east coast, I can ping a lot of European countries with 100-120ms.

The problem is we have no idea what those numbers or decisions are. We are just paired against someone online and we play. We know there's some lag consideration, they want you to play the closest person. But they can't pair you against the closest person, you can be queued up against the same people over and over. They have to give it some leniency. They likely picked a ping range and when you're queued up in an online game mode, if they're in that ping range, it's a random decision. You have to consider also that they need lots of players, otherwise you end up waiting a long time to play someone and get queued up. Ever see that Error with a weird number come up when you go try to play a 1v1 FG match online? Sometimes I get it and I think it's a matchmaking issue. I think the game is unable to find a suitable opponent, whether it be because of a lack of players online, or because of players being too far away. Instead of telling you "can't find a player, sorry" and upsetting you, they just give you a number and you try again.

You also have to consider time of day, Japan is usually 12 hours behind for the east coast, so midnight for me is lunch time for Japan. When I played Tetris DS online a lot, I always got Japanese players when I played late at night, but during the day I always got North American players. More people are online during the day and evening, so trying to find a match at 4am will likely be tough since there won't be many players online around your vicinity.

Hopefully this helps understand why it happens. I don't think Nintendo messed up or created a bad system, it likely needs tweaking maybe. Stuff like this is always tricky. If you make the matchmaking focus too much on close range players, you make the available players pool a lot smaller, leading to longer waiting times and less players to play against.

 

[Brinzy]

Your explanation is astounding, and it makes a lot of sense. The time difference I figured out already, but I never thought much on how the game decides who to put you against when it relates to ping. It could be that I should theoretically have decent ping against anyone I am playing against. It doesn't seem to always work that way and I get some pretty awful matches sometimes, but every now and then I get one player from Japan who I can somewhat play with.

Thanks for the post, good sir.

 

[Forever 9]

I think I can explain this.

When you try to find a For Glory 1v1 match, you're looking for a specific pool of people. Sure Smash Bros is popular, but there's only a certain amount of players online. Out of those, there's only a certain amount of players in For Glory, and out of those, only a certain amount are playing 1v1. Out of those, there's only a certain amount of players actually looking for matches, the rest are in-game. Sakurai mentioned there's no skill based matchmaking, so we can ignore that variable. So even though there's lot of Smashers online, who you can play against is much smaller than you think.

So out of your "online, looking for for glory, 1v1" pool of players, only a certain amount are playable. If you're in North America, playing a Euro player is out of the question unless you want high delayed inputs. The networking in Smash is Peer-to-Peer, so you want someone as close to you as possible. The closer they are, the less latency it takes for your data to get to them, the better it feels. The queuing system clearly takes that into consideration, it likely creates a group of players labelled "close, not close, far away". When it comes to latency/ping, if they say "0-150ms is acceptable", then that opens up a lot of players you can play against. If you're in california, you can definitely ping less than 150ms to Japan. In addition, North America is large and has greedy corporate internet providers, so you can be in California and ping 150ms to a New York player. Personally, I'm east coast and my routing to Texas is horrible, something like 200ms+. My routing to certain areas was bad, my ping to California was usually 80ms.

I saw some players were from Texas and Cali, if you take the idea that "you can be paired against anyone who pings less than 150ms to you", then playing against a Japanese player is entirely possible. Even Europe is possible if you're east coast, I can ping a lot of European countries with 100-120ms.

The problem is we have no idea what those numbers or decisions are. We are just paired against someone online and we play. We know there's some lag consideration, they want you to play the closest person. But they can't pair you against the closest person, you can be queued up against the same people over and over. They have to give it some leniency. They likely picked a ping range and when you're queued up in an online game mode, if they're in that ping range, it's a random decision. You have to consider also that they need lots of players, otherwise you end up waiting a long time to play someone and get queued up. Ever see that Error with a weird number come up when you go try to play a 1v1 FG match online? Sometimes I get it and I think it's a matchmaking issue. I think the game is unable to find a suitable opponent, whether it be because of a lack of players online, or because of players being too far away. Instead of telling you "can't find a player, sorry" and upsetting you, they just give you a number and you try again.

You also have to consider time of day, Japan is usually 12 hours behind for the east coast, so midnight for me is lunch time for Japan. When I played Tetris DS online a lot, I always got Japanese players when I played late at night, but during the day I always got North American players. More people are online during the day and evening, so trying to find a match at 4am will likely be tough since there won't be many players online around your vicinity.

Hopefully this helps understand why it happens. I don't think Nintendo messed up or created a bad system, it likely needs tweaking maybe. Stuff like this is always tricky. If you make the matchmaking focus too much on close range players, you make the available players pool a lot smaller, leading to longer waiting times and less players to play against.

Your explanation alone could be a thread on matchmaking basics for smash. Good information! ^_^