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Have you encountered any lag switchers?

NGW

Smash Cadet
Joined
Dec 8, 2018
Messages
33
I mean, it's usually pretty obvious when it happens. You're having a great match, connection is buttery smooth and once you start pulling ahead the game starts lagging like crazy. Have had a few experiences with it and I just shake my head and sigh, especially if the match itself was pretty fun up until that point.
 

Swordmaster102

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Jul 28, 2016
Messages
96
Location
Texas
NNID
Swordmaster102
I mean, it's usually pretty obvious when it happens. You're having a great match, connection is buttery smooth and once you start pulling ahead the game starts lagging like crazy. Have had a few experiences with it and I just shake my head and sigh, especially if the match itself was pretty fun up until that point.
I wouldn’t say I have came across “lag switchers,” but I have encountered many time where I am about to land a game finishing move from a combo that they can’t get out of, the game freezes (loading screen), then smoothly continues with a CPU as the other player.
This happened a lot in Sm4sh to me and from what I know about ultimate, if the player leaves the match or turns off their console, the match doesn’t end but a low level CPU takes their place.

Kinda a long story, but no. I haven’t encountered legitimate “lag switchers.” I don’t really understand how lag switching would benefit anyone in a fighting game tbh.
 
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Uffe

Smash Hero
Joined
Jun 14, 2008
Messages
5,500
Location
Fresno
I was fighting this one Pokemon Trainer. They were racking up a lot of damage on me, but I managed to take their stock off first. Suddenly, this lag started to appear out of nowhere when they knocked me offstage and I was recovering with PKT2. I managed to somehow make it back. I won the match, but still, that lag was gross and I didn't bother with a rematch.
 

FNUStory

Smash Cadet
Joined
Sep 12, 2018
Messages
63
I had an experience where lag was screwing me and not the opponent in the slightest.

Every second, the game would update mine and the opponent's positions as if the match was continuously going on despite the lag. It was unlike any lag I have ever seen in Brawl, Sm4sh, or Ultimate. It picked up the pace if I was in the middle of a combo or had a stock advantage. What seemed to happen when the lag spike hit was whatever inputs I registered when the game froze would be held until the screen came back to reality. I would often find myself off stage because of this. As I said, this picked up the pace when I brought him down to 1 stock while still having 2 and often broke any chance I had of successfully pulling off Pichu combos.
 

Coolboy

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Aug 27, 2018
Messages
382
Location
Netherlands
lag can really work weird.. i had 1 match where i was Toon link while others were 2 Bayonettas and a Wario, for some reason the Wario and a Bayonetta player kept SDing themselves even though they were trying to do stuff..apparently they had lag while me and the other Bayonetta player did not...kinda weird right? o.o

what often happens to me is that if i am playing in a 4 or 3 players match and someone gets defeated first..the game gets real laggy for a moment..but i realized the person rage quit at that point cause i even get no GSP if i end up winning the match :l
 

Xrek

Smash Rookie
Joined
Jun 15, 2021
Messages
1
TL;DR at the bottom

In the past week I've met one player who was most certainly lagswitching (causing the game to lag badly during an online Quickplay match to the point where the framerate is so low that both players have infinite time to react to the current situation) as a Mewtwo vs my Wolf at around 8.5mil GSP:

I was fighting him quite ruthlessly as Wolf, plenty of blaster use to establish a percent and stock lead so that I can spam sideB at my leisure, after about 60% on myself and 95% on the Mewtwo, suddenly the game begins to lag and has long pauses between actions happening. I felt an immediate urge to just waste all my stocks and get out of the game as soon as possible but I tempered that idea and chose to stay in the match in the hopes that the lag would clear up.

I took this Mewtwo's first stock with upsmash out of shield, but this was when things became far too obviously contrived in regards to the lag:

Either the Mewtwo player themselves or another person in the room with them were trying to sustain the lag during moments of my advantage. It was comical, the lag would stop and start the moment I was in control of the stage, but they weren't very good at timing it right.

I lost neutral a couple of times and was on my 2nd stock by this point. As I was convinced of the lagswitching I chose to play the most frustrating game I possibly could for my opponent(s), turtling and making Mewtwo chase me back and forth over the Jungle Japes stage and punishing his attempts to evade the blaster or chase me down. Naturally I was crouching a lot between lasers.

So as the Mewtwo is recovering, he's used his 2nd jump and is ready to teleport, lag starts up again and teleports backwards away from stage and loses his 2nd stock. He disconnects fully right after he teleports away, a victory to be savoured.

Second
Today during Elite Smash on my ZSS, fighting a Ness player. He's got some mad control of Ness' double jump movement and aerials but also seems to be lackluster defensively and quite easy to hit. I can't claim I would've won the match without any lag, nor am I 100% certain (in hindsight) that this was a lagswitch deliberately, but I was up a stock when a more mild but very consistent input-eating series of lag spikes would occur until my opponent took the lead, and then they stopped.

It was the kind of lag where I would attempt to dash attack quickly but get an ftilt as the lag had eaten my dash input and I was still holding forwards.

I took the Ness' first stock quite convincingly and the lag started. The Ness takes me to my last stock and the lag vanishes again. I start making a comeback, taking his 2nd stock but still at a fair damage deficit and the moment he respawns, the lag returns.

Eventually we end up last stocks each, 100%+ each, he caught me with an aerial and took the match.

I wanted to match against someone else so declined to rematch but that just brought me into another game with the same Ness.

It was the Hanenbow stage and I was picking up my controller a little late, so I just avoided the Ness player and kept hitting the leaves with him; as if he had accepted my percived lack of morale to mean I wasn't going to try to beat him. I started taking potshots at him, he started to chase me, I started to punish his chase attempts and took a stock, he took a stock, I took another, 2-1 to me. I think he didn't notice the timer until it was at 45sec remaining. There was no lag this game.

As I was sure he was lagswitching, again I relentlessly crouched at him as the 5 second timer was announced. He didn't want to rematch me.

Regarding this Ness player I encountered (9.6mil GSP), there are a few reasons I'm not sure he was lagswitching (may have been a legitimate player)
1- He didn't rush me down and take any stocks while I was away at the start of the match
2- He moved extremely well during his offense
3- If he was a legitimate player and I'd just cheesed a timeout game from him with some hefty squatting thrown on top, I wouldn't rematch me either

Reasons I think he was lagswitching
1- The lag worked very consistently in his favour during the first match we played
2- He didn't seem defensively conscious enough for a 9.6mil GSP Ness player? I'm speculating at this point
3- The second match, he may have thought he didn't need his lagswitch to beat me until it was too late

If that Ness wasn't lagswitching I may have made a poor judgement call...

TL;DR - Fought a definite lagswitcher who's lagswitching backfired and caused him to ragequit, fought a suspected lagswitcher and lost, then timed him out in the rematch

Finally if you do meet with a suspiciously laggy situation online, don't throw the match! Instead accept what may be a loss and fight it out. Players who artifically inflate their GSP beyond their actual skill level can be caught by some of the oldest tricks in the book. For the first kind of (definite) lagswitch I encountered, having so much time to react and make the right choices with my gameplay enabled me to still outplay the cheater, which was hugely satisfying.

If you do encounter a match that's too laggy to continue, or if you've just had enough of a certain player and their rulesets matching with you and wasting your valuable gameplay time, you can block them from your profile screen on the home menu.

The reason I'm making such a big deal about the second type of lag I encountered, it was different. It was still stopping and starting relative to my opponent needing the help, but it wasn't severe enough to slow the game down to the point where the framerate was non-existant. It was like being hit by the beehive item, just annoying little jabs to drop my inputs.
 

Blackwolf666

Smash Ace
Joined
Feb 22, 2014
Messages
662
3DS FC
5000-4278-5177
Only time when I've ever suspected someone of using lag switches ever in my life was back in the PS3 days. Lag Switchers ran rampant in MGS4.
 

IzukuXYang4Life

Banned via Warnings
Joined
Jul 3, 2021
Messages
77
Speaking of lag.

Is Sakurai ever gonna be bothered to actually fix the online multiplayer for Ultimate as opposed to it being the garbage fire that it is?

That really needs to be fixed up straight away if you ask me.
 
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