If you lag as bad as Brawl...

[Anakluthen]

I hate to break it to you, but its probably your fault. I've seen quite a few negative nellies on here complaining about how bad the lag is, and how its a detriment to their playing. Fighting games don't have servers, it's mainly just up to the game's netcode and your connection as an individual. I have average internet, and I only experience lag about once every ten games. If you're the kind of person who has lag every game, then its most likely your fault. Therefore you can do one of a few things. Move closer to your router (this only changes things if you were really far away to start). Or, buy better internet. If you can't do these things, then just deal with the lag or stick to offline mode. Don't come on the forums blaming Sakurai.

 

[SevenYearItch]

Lag is 100% the player's fault in this one. Peer 2 Peer connections are the basis of this online experience, so if you have terrible internet then you'll have terrible lag. I almost never have to deal with lag, and when I do I just SD twice and leave the room

 

[Anakluthen]

Lag is 100% the player's fault in this one. Peer 2 Peer connections are the basis of this online experience, so if you have terrible internet then you'll have terrible lag. I almost never have to deal with lag, and when I do I just SD twice and leave the room

This person is spot-on. You deserve a cookie.

 

[Shmoe93]

Funny how a majority of online laggy games are against noobs too

 

[Riggy Rascal]

Yeah. I've seen people come to this conclusion a few times before. Not as many times as people complain about the lag, sure, but that will never stop happening.

 

[XxBHunterxX]

Don't really think peer to peer connections work too well for free for alls and team battles, I have yet to play a team battle with out it lagging like crazy

 

[SevenYearItch]

Don't really think peer to peer connections work too well for free for alls and team battles, I have yet to play a team battle with out it lagging like crazy

Its the fact that you're relying on 4 different connections to all be good enough to handle 4 different locations. Near impossible. I agree, its not good for anything more than 1v1s

 

[SwoodGrommet]

I'm pretty sure whoever has a terrible connection knows this by now. No need to make yet another thread and rub salt in the wound.

 

[DeiSakuChris]

Why don't they do dedicated servers then ?

My Internet is great but I still experience lag, heck, I'm even lagging in LOCAL, in LOCAL.

2 days ago I was playing Smash Run with my friend in local, I was Palutena and we were at the final fight (Don't know how it's called in English but it was that fight where you have to climb the highest)

It stayed 10 seconds, and then a big, very big lag happened, it was unplayable, this **** ruined the fight for us and he shut his 3DS because it was unsupportable.

There's lag in Local, and you know very well that Internet connection isn't involved in a local match.

This says it all, they just can't do a stable fight in Smash Bros. The lag online is not only due to the Internet connection, but because they ****ed up the thing.

How can anybody defend this ?

 

[ferioku]

I barely lag, unless i'm facing someone with some terrible internet.

 

[Raijinken]

Why don't they do dedicated servers then ?

My Internet is great but I still experience lag, heck, I'm even lagging in LOCAL, in LOCAL.

2 days ago I was playing Smash Run with my friend in local, I was Palutena and we were at the final fight (Don't know how it's called in English but it was that fight where you have to climb the highest)

It stayed 10 seconds, and then a big, very big lag happened, it was unplayable, this **** ruined the fight for us and he shut his 3DS because it was unsupportable.

There's lag in Local, and you know very well that Internet connection isn't involved in a local match.

This says it all, they just can't do a stable fight in Smash Bros. The lag online is not only due to the Internet connection, but because they ****ed up the thing.

How can anybody defend this ?

Dedicated servers cost money, and even if you have a dedicated server, you don't fix someone's ping issues. You would still have pausing at best, input lag at worst, for at least one player. There isn't a good solution for a quick game like Smash or any other fighting game. For good examples, play TF2, Dota, Counterstrike, or whatever else is real-time and on dedicated servers - the game could be fine for 9/10 players but there's that one guy who can't time his spells to save his life (in Dota's case as an example), and it's because his ping just hit 700 while everyone else's is fine.

It could fix one person's experience just by costing another player theirs (for instance, keep the game going smoothly on the server, give the players updates at their internet speed. Thus, a player with good internet plays a near-perfect game in which their opponent with bad internet frequently misses button inputs, stops moving altogether, and is otherwise playing in a miserable state). It's not a win-win, but at least it teaches the other person that it's THEIR internet that is bad.

In Local, it is HEAVILY influenced by nearby wireless devices. My friends and I had a Smash party with about ten people all playing. Most weren't plugged in, but for the majority of the time, we had none or negligible lag playing. Then my friend opened his laptop to see if anyone needed help getting into the building, and 2/3 of the games we had running became nigh-unplayable.

Cellphones etc contribute to that as well. It's a pain in this modern age of nearly everyone lugging around an always-on cellphone, but if you're able to take appropriate measures (aka you're not in some public place or other area in which you have no power or authority to tell everyone to shut their laptops and cell phones off), the majority of local lag is fixable.

 

[XxBHunterxX]

Why don't they do dedicated servers then ?

My Internet is great but I still experience lag, heck, I'm even lagging in LOCAL, in LOCAL.

2 days ago I was playing Smash Run with my friend in local, I was Palutena and we were at the final fight (Don't know how it's called in English but it was that fight where you have to climb the highest)

It stayed 10 seconds, and then a big, very big lag happened, it was unplayable, this **** ruined the fight for us and he shut his 3DS because it was unsupportable.

There's lag in Local, and you know very well that Internet connection isn't involved in a local match.

This says it all, they just can't do a stable fight in Smash Bros. The lag online is not only due to the Internet connection, but because they ****ed up the thing.

How can anybody defend this ?

You don't usually use a dedicated server for fighting games because they're usually 1v1 matches and not too profitable due to the cost and constant maintenance, dedicated servers are mainly used for games like TF2 and Battlefield 4 due to their size and the amount of people playing in the same match.

I don't know what they could do to improve 4 player modes online, it's weird it's no where near big enough to really need a dedicated server but not small enough to use a peer to peer connection well

 

[wmo_]

There's way too many reasons you could have laggy games. I'll list some

- High speed internet doesn't equal less lag. You can have a 2mbps connection and have amazing pings and low latency. It's not the size of the pipe, it's how it goes through the pipes. You can have faster internet and lag more. Why? Because going from point A to point B is the same speed, having more bandwidth (aka faster internet) just means more can go to and from, nothing goes faster.

- Other people use your internet - People who live alone only have to worry about downloading while they play, but in other homes you have to worry about other users. Someone could be watching netflix while you play, and if your router is average, it's probably not helping. Some routers will give priority to specific data, others don't care.

- Sometimes your ISP sucks - this isn't about slow speeds, it's about routing, packet loss, and jitter. During peak traffic times, sometimes your data is dropped, or router a longer way. This can result in lag and delays, the unfortunate part is there's nothing that can be done. Sometimes your connection won't be stable, sometimes ISP oversell and certain neighborhoods can have slow speeds and bad packet loss. Sometimes data that takes 10ms to get to a server will take 50ms, resulting in more delay (jitter).

There's tools you can use to help you determine issues.

Ping Test - http://www.pingtest.net/ - Try different areas, opposite side of the country, etc.
Checking Routing Problems - http://www.pingplotter.com/freeware.html - Visually shows the times between routes, can show if you're lagging locally or if it's with your ISP

Just keep in mind, speed (mbps) has nothing to do with lag. Faster internet does not mean faster packets, less lag, or less packet loss.

 

[b0nkers]

Yea i never have lag because my internet is pretty good

 

[Reila]

Indeed. I have seen plenty of people here complaining about the online and saying that their matches always lag. Well, if that is the case, then it is their connection messing up the matches and not the netcode's fault. I personally had my fair share of laggy matches, but most of them are lag free, except for 'For Fun' matches, for reason I don't think I need to mention. I am satisfied with the online, although it obviously could be improved in a way or another.

 

[YELLO]

when i play team battle, it lags almost every game
in 1vs1 it hardly ever lags

so before you go off saying its my fault, think a little first

 

[wmo_]

when i play team battle, it lags almost every game
in 1vs1 it hardly ever lags

so before you go off saying its my fault, think a little first

I don't bother with team modes much just because the nature of how it operates. Peer-to-peer can be fine but when you start adding three or four players, with bad north american internet and netflixing moms, you're gunna have a bad time. I do team smash in For GLory once in a blue moon, never had a lag-less match though.

 

[ChikoLad]

I've experienced quite a few bad matches but since I have a really good internet connection, I know it's always my opponent's fault when that happens.

However, 4 player matches are always laggy in With Anyone for me (they are fine with friends though), and for that reason, I feel the game should have had dedicated servers. This applies doubly for the Wii U version, as it may have made 8 player online possible, and at the very least, it would have made mid-game voice chat possible.

And let's not pretend that Nintendo would not have the money to implement dedicated servers for this game. They totally do.

 

[wmo_]

I've experienced quite a few bad matches but since I have a really good internet connection, I know it's always my opponent's fault when that happens.

However, 4 player matches are always laggy in With Anyone for me (they are fine with friends though), and for that reason, I feel the game should have had dedicated servers. This applies doubly for the Wii U version, as it may have made 8 player online possible, and at the very least, it would have made mid-game voice chat possible.

And let's not pretend that Nintendo would not have the money to implement dedicated servers for this game. They totally do.

If two smashers in NYC want to play online, having dedicated servers would give them more lag than a P2P connection. With P2P, you can play low lag matches if they're close to you. With dedicated servers, it doesn't matter how close you are, it's up to where the server is.

So now think about smash on a global level, you can't just have two servers in North America for reliable play, you'd need at least four major locations. Europe the same, multiple servers. What about China? Japan? They're going to start sinking literally thousands of dollars in server maintenance for what? Potentially less lag? The truth is as long as both connections are stable and they're relatively close (under 80ms delay ideally) then the game should be fine. The problem is letting people with choppy connections queue up into matchmaking, but telling a player they can't play online because of internet problems will only lead to massive anger from players.

Think about a big city, especially in Japan. They have a huge internet infrastructure, lots of people, and relatively small country. P2P is perfect, players are close to each other especially in bigger cites, they will have very low latency because they are close physically to each other, and it costed Nintendo nothing. Fighting games are different too, dedicated servers make sense when you need to house 4+ players in one environment with minimal lag.

 

[ChikoLad]

Fighting games are different too, dedicated servers make sense when you need to house 4+ players in one environment with minimal lag.

"However, 4 player matches are always laggy in With Anyone for me (they are fine with friends though), and for that reason, I feel the game should have had dedicated servers. This applies doubly for the Wii U version, as it may have made 8 player online possible, and at the very least, it would have made mid-game voice chat possible."

Not only did you not properly read my post, you also ignored what sets Smash apart from other fighters.

 

[wmo_]

"However, 4 player matches are always laggy in With Anyone for me (they are fine with friends though), and for that reason, I feel the game should have had dedicated servers. This applies doubly for the Wii U version, as it may have made 8 player online possible, and at the very least, it would have made mid-game voice chat possible."

Not only did you not properly read my post, you also ignored what sets Smash apart from other fighters.

My reply still stands, the cost of dedicated servers doesn't justify the gain. Yes it could of made 8 player smash possible, but it's still 100% unrealistic to provide dediciated servers for a fighting game all over the world. Right out of the gate lots of countries wouldn't be supported or couldn't play because of latency. Think of Australia. Barely anyone Game developer that pays for dedicated servers puts a dedicated server in Australia. Other countries would have problems too. In addition, North America would make a 4 player smash game laggier than other areas of the world since we have a very large land mass and we're spread out. Europe is small with a lot of people, same with Japan. When you run a business, there's something called cost justification, there's gotta be a good valid reason to spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on something. Saying "4 player smash will be a little better online" doesn't justify the cost. Servers are a nightmare. It's the last thing any company wants to deal with. Maintenance, upgrades, downtime, and for what? A bit better 4 player smash and 8 player smash? It wouldn't work anyways, you can't have an 8 player fighting game with dedicated servers and not have **** visually look messed up. At least with P2P the inputs are delayed, so the game just stops. With dedicated servers, you'd be hitting characters that weren't even near you because of netcode issues. It's going to be equally as frustrating, and costing Nintendo money they don't have to spend.

 

[SS-bros14]

Yeah, it is the player's fault. Whenever online lags for me, it mostly is very small and only happens once or twice.

 

[YELLO]

sometimes the lag is so bad it literally makes me sick to watch it, i have to set down my 3DS and breath for a moment or two to keep myself from vomitting

 

[LunarWingCloud]

Considering it's been 6 and a half years since Brawl came out, and the fact that internet connection for games has greatly improved since then, with hardware better suited for handling those online connections, yes, yes the online is better and it's not as laggy and when it is, that's your connection or theirs and it doesn't have much to do with the game itself.

Despite my poop tier internet which I haven't gotten around to upgrading yet, I don't lag too much at all when online.

 

[Ampetrix]

I rarely lag, but I keep getting errors when matchmaking begins (Errors 018-[0512 up to 0521]). Tried fixing it by enabling uPnP and Port forwarded the 3DS' ip address, I still have to go through at least 3 errors before getting a match.

 

[chib-SAMUS]

Normally, I don't Lag. I've played MK7 and Pokemon Y just fine and dandy, but when I hop on Smash.... Lag costed me so many games ;~;

 

[Eternal phoenix Fire]

Sorry for only being able to afford a decent internet speed to accommodate a family who needs to constantly use our 1 router to do work and school assignments.

Again, I apologize.

 

[wmo_]

I rarely lag, but I keep getting errors when matchmaking begins (Errors 018-[0512 up to 0521]). Tried fixing it by enabling uPnP and Port forwarded the 3DS' ip address, I still have to go through at least 3 errors before getting a match.

im 99% sure that error is a matchmaking error and nothing else. I heard about people telling others to change their DMZ settings, but that doesn't make sense, because it's either going to connect or not. DMZ settings wouldn't matter if it still works, it would only matter if it couldn't ever connect. the same with other settings on your router, if you get in once it means the connection is fine

I think it's basically telling you there's no suitable opponents to play, but instead of telling you that and making you upset, it gives you an arbitrary error number.

 

[StarBot]

when i play team battle, it lags almost every game
in 1vs1 it hardly ever lags

so before you go off saying its my fault, think a little first

I really don't lag when I play team battle...
So... eh?

 

[CharZane]

Why don't they do dedicated servers then ?

My Internet is great but I still experience lag, heck, I'm even lagging in LOCAL, in LOCAL.

2 days ago I was playing Smash Run with my friend in local, I was Palutena and we were at the final fight (Don't know how it's called in English but it was that fight where you have to climb the highest)

It stayed 10 seconds, and then a big, very big lag happened, it was unplayable, this **** ruined the fight for us and he shut his 3DS because it was unsupportable.

There's lag in Local, and you know very well that Internet connection isn't involved in a local match.

This says it all, they just can't do a stable fight in Smash Bros. The lag online is not only due to the Internet connection, but because they ****ed up the thing.

How can anybody defend this ?

Servers cost money to maintain. That money would need to come from somewhere, which would inevitably lead to our pockets in one way or another. Lag in local is typically a result of interference, distance, or other sorts of obstacles to line-of-sight. If smash's local lag was a result of the code rather than something external, that lag would exist in single-player as well.

Honestly, the problem is that wireless tech, as a medium, is just inferior to wired in terms of stability. It's an unfortunate trade-off for the convenience.

 

[Conda]

Lag is 100% the player's fault in this one. Peer 2 Peer connections are the basis of this online experience, so if you have terrible internet then you'll have terrible lag. I almost never have to deal with lag, and when I do I just SD twice and leave the room

Being limited to wifi, however, is a bummer. And Nintendo insisting on connecting you with players from all over the world - instead of your regional timezone - is a ridiculous oversight.

 

[SevenYearItch]

Being limited to wifi, however, is a bummer. And Nintendo insisting on connecting you with players from all over the world - instead of your regional timezone - is a ridiculous oversight.

Works out fine for me about 90% of the time, even with *** players. Being limited to Wifi.....is the standard of today's world. So not an issue tbh. Just get good wifi and there won't be a problem. I'm making minimum wage, paying for my wedding, and still going out to do things all while having high speed internet. Unless you live somewhere where it just isn't possible, you should have it if you're going to game online

 

[Conda]

Works out fine for me about 90% of the time, even with *** players. Being limited to Wifi.....is the standard of today's world. So not an issue tbh. Just get good wifi and there won't be a problem. I'm making minimum wage, paying for my wedding, and still going out to do things all while having high speed internet. Unless you live somewhere where it just isn't possible, you should have it if you're going to game online

Wifi varies heavily by modem, router, country/province/state, building type (rural home, city apartment, old townhouse converted to apartments with crappy wiring), city/rural, and more.

People have a right to complain, as Nintendo must have known that wifi connectivity is an issue outside of peoples' control, and the need for regional ping-based matchmaking would be a necessity for the Western market due to sprawl (North America is not Japan geographically).

Many people are meeting the requirements in every way they are personally in control. There are factors outside of peoples' control that will negatively affect their experience, and thus it's not a good connectivity to limit players to. Of course Nintendo had no choice with the 3ds, but that does not mean they couldn't have at least made regional ping-based matchmaking an option, instead of clearly having a "if it works in Japan, it'll work in North America" mindset per-usual. People have been tired of this for years, yet Nintendo continues to design online features with this lazy mentality.


As for wifi itself, and why it isn't a good connectivity type to have a game exclusively depend on for the whole world:

Wifi is unstable, even if you have a good connection, as it is designed to average data with missed packets and variable ping and to wade through the other wireless signals in your living vicinity (including hundreds of other wifi signals). It can be fast, yes, but not as stable as wired offering in ways that are most important for online gaming - latency and ping, not bandwidth.

Not to mention the nightmares the majority of routers have with gaming-level wifi - quick-frequency packets of tiny amounts of data that need to travel without ping or latency are not router friendly in many different ways, and I'm sure anyone reading this has had nightmares with routers and online wireless gaming.

Ethernet is direct and accurate and has no ping stability issues that wifi has by design and necessity. I'm not going to further discuss ethernet vs wifi for gaming.