Is it just harder to play online than locally?

[Dr. Corndog]

I don't mean in terms of the quality of your opponents. I mean, does playing online make the game itself harder due to lag? Most of my matches aren't obviously laggy, but is there still enough lag even in the best matches to throw a person off? I seem to have the hardest time teching online, and oftentimes I activate the wrong move, or my character can't seem to react quickly enough for a punish. Of course, those things could be explained by my own lack of skill and missed inputs.

 

[Coolboy]

that's the thing i wondered at times...in some matches my reactions seems quicker then my opponents and other times it's 1 of my opponents that's faster..i personally think it got something to do with lag? i don't believe in certain controllers giving you lag all the time..people can explore it and research it all they want but it's something i just don't believe in..people saying pro controller gives more lag are probably just trying to get everyone to use the GC controller..if that really was true i would always be slower then my opponents and that is not the case >.>

 

[Dr. Corndog]

I have some games where it seems my opponent is always a step ahead of me. I'm thinking of one in particular where this Dr. Mario seemed to always be in the right place no matter what did, how I approached, or how I recovered. It'd be one thing if this were some local tourney champion, but this was just some dude with a GSP around 3.95 million (only a little higher than mine). I see the scrubbiest Clouds with that kind of GSP.

Sure, there are time I play poorly, and there are times when I don't know the matchup, and times where the matchup is just against me. And there are times I play well, and my opponent plays better. But it does seem like sometimes, the opponent just has a leg up on me somehow.

 

[~?~]

Alot of "good" ONLINE players are horrible in person because they're used to seeing everything easier with the lag slowing the gameplay down. Playing in person is a much faster and smoother experience and requires much more precise button inputs with less reaction time.

 

[Dr. Corndog]

Alot of "good" ONLINE players are horrible in person because they're used to seeing everything easier with the lag slowing the gameplay down. Playing in person is a much faster and smoother experience and requires much more precise button inputs with less reaction time.

So I guess what I'm asking is, is that always the case, or does it depend on the connection quality?

 

[Khalith]

So far the majority of my matches have had some kind of network lag and it’s really frustrating. There are times where I feel like I’m fighting against the spaghetti coding rather than the other player.

 

[Sean²]

Alot of "good" ONLINE players are horrible in person because they're used to seeing everything easier with the lag slowing the gameplay down. Playing in person is a much faster and smoother experience and requires much more precise button inputs with less reaction time.

If they're "good", then it should only take a 4-5 games of warmups to adjust to offline again. It isn't that polarizing unless you go WiFi only and refuse to get a LAN adapter.

 

[Dr. Corndog]

So far the majority of my matches have had some kind of network lag and it’s really frustrating. There are times where I feel like I’m fighting against the spaghetti coding rather than the other player.

I rarely feel that. But there has to be some difference between playing online and locally. Signals can't travel hundreds of miles instantaneously. So, is it big enough to make a difference that I simply don't notice? Or is it small enough that there genuinely is no practucal difference between playing online and off, provided both connections are good?

FWIW I have 400 mbps cable internet with 9ms ping according to Speedtest.net.

 

[Oneiros5321]

Alot of "good" ONLINE players are horrible in person because they're used to seeing everything easier with the lag slowing the gameplay down. Playing in person is a much faster and smoother experience and requires much more precise button inputs with less reaction time.

Hum the problem is that the lag doesn't slow down the gameplay. It affects your reaction time for sure, but if anything, it forces you to anticipate your opponent's action. Which is something that is crucial in local gameplay as well (a lot of moves in Smash are impossible to react to due to the fact that they are coming at frame 5 or 6...and I don't think any human brain is fast enough)

It all comes down to positioning yourself, knowing what moves are safe and which of your oponent's moves are safe or not. And also knowing how to understand your opponent's pattern and what moves he likes to use.

I don't think that someone who is really good online can be that bad offline. If you're good, you're good both online and offline.

 

[DrakeekarD]

I've my own theories on what goes on behind the scenes, but with nothing to go on, they are just that. I have tested both WiFi and LAN adapter. Most of the time it's fine. Every so often though, it is just not right to put it good terms. I hate when the match is going smoothly, I press a button and get the no response from the game. So my yoshi went from recovering, to ground pound, to forward smash, to recovering with egg throw, and just falling down to the stage, followed by a punish. I can work around it sometimes, but when your at last stock, both pushing 125%, just waiting for that perfect opening, that is when it really becomes infuriating. I use a Wii LAN adapter found at a thrift store for a dollar. Switch uses it just fine, it's WiFi funny enough is faster, but only by 1-2 Mb/s, so when I am getting a constant 30-36 Mbps down, and 7-10 Mbps up, I don't believe my internet is an issue, because my bandwidth on Fiber is 100Mbps down, 10 Mbps up, which is awesome considering where I live.

I don't wish to be that guy, but sometimes I do feel there is some jank behind the scenes. It could just be my bad luck as well. However you look at it, it gives online a bad taste for sure.

 

[Oneiros5321]

I've my own theories on what goes on behind the scenes, but with nothing to go on, they are just that. I have tested both WiFi and LAN adapter. Most of the time it's fine. Every so often though, it is just not right to put it good terms. I hate when the match is going smoothly, I press a button and get the no response from the game. So my yoshi went from recovering, to ground pound, to forward smash, to recovering with egg throw, and just falling down to the stage, followed by a punish. I can work around it sometimes, but when your at last stock, both pushing 125%, just waiting for that perfect opening, that is when it really becomes infuriating. I use a Wii LAN adapter found at a thrift store for a dollar. Switch uses it just fine, it's WiFi funny enough is faster, but only by 1-2 Mb/s, so when I am getting a constant 30-36 Mbps down, and 7-10 Mbps up, I don't believe my internet is an issue, because my bandwidth on Fiber is 100Mbps down, 10 Mbps up, which is awesome considering where I live.

I don't wish to be that guy, but sometimes I do feel there is some jank behind the scenes. It could just be my bad luck as well. However you look at it, it gives online a bad taste for sure.

The WiFi / LAN issue where the WiFi is faster is a common issue. As well as the Switch not getting your full speed. It seems to be a ratio of what your connection is capable. I have around 45mbps with a 150mbps connection, people with 400mbps usually get around 100mbps on the Switch.
It is a really weird issue and sadly, as far as I know, there's no fix for it.

That being said, that connection speed is more than enough to play online. Getting your full 100mbps speed won't change anything in game. However, even though your LAN speed is slower than the WiFi, LAN is still going to be better overall. Better stability, less lag, less micro freezes.
Especially those micro freezes which are probably the reason for the game not registering your inputs. A LAN connection would definitely fix that...if everyone were using LAN. Sadly a lot of people online (most likely a huge majority) are playing with WiFi connection.

So let's say playing with LAN will give you more better matches, but not every single one of them will be perfect and if some are still a bit laggy, that probably means your opponent plays on WiFi...I still hope they're going to implement some kind of connection check before you start a match that would indicate what type of connection your opponent uses and give like 10 or 15 seconds for you to see how stable it is.

 

[strider2k]

My speed test (on my laptop with wifi) gives me 300-400+ mbps yet the switch speed test with a lan adapter dongle gives me 60mbps. I'm on Comcast paying $80/month for gigabit and never seem to get it's full potential. If laptop on wired dongle, well let's say I'm wow'ed by it.

Just want to disclose that I got the super fast internet for streaming HD movies and having to play smash online is a bonus.

 

[Xquirtle]

Depends on your character and the matchup. There are degenerate and abusive play styles that take advantage of the online latency. Like objectively speaking, its worse for both players since your timing is constantly changing and you're never as responsive as playing locally... but, one player can definitely suffer way more than the other based on their character choice. Generally speaking, if you want to be a dishonest player, you pick FD + some campy and overly defensive character like Link. FD is a highly abusive stage IMO (it makes certain match ups totally ridiculous) especially if you are going to play a defensive and projectile based playstyle while online. Online lag buffs projectiles quite a bit, nerfs defensive precision to punish spam, and nerfs combo characters that require precise inputs. So... being heavy with projectiles and big attacks abusing FD is very advantageous while online. See King K who is garbo competitively and on local, but does pretty well online since hes harder to work around and basically none of the lag issues affect him anywhere near as much as other characters.

 

[kirby3021]

that's the thing i wondered at times...in some matches my reactions seems quicker then my opponents and other times it's 1 of my opponents that's faster..i personally think it got something to do with lag? i don't believe in certain controllers giving you lag all the time..people can explore it and research it all they want but it's something i just don't believe in..people saying pro controller gives more lag are probably just trying to get everyone to use the GC controller..if that really was true i would always be slower then my opponents and that is not the case >.>

Just a quick point here to clear this point up a little bit, but it has been proven that certain controllers have less input lag than others. The differences in input lag are minuscule and won't cause any significant difference in performance (unless two robots with perfect reaction time were playing) or cause someone to react slower than their opponent, but they do exist. I look at it more as a "fun fact" than a "you have to use this controller because it has 2 milliseconds less input lag than that controller". I personally prefer a pro controller myself because I find I more comfortable.

On the topic at hand, I do notice more input mistakes and failures to react properly when playing online than I do when playing locally.

 

[DrakeekarD]

That being said, that connection speed is more than enough to play online. Getting your full 100mbps speed won't change anything in game. However, even though your LAN speed is slower than the WiFi, LAN is still going to be better overall. Better stability, less lag, less micro freezes.
Especially those micro freezes which are probably the reason for the game not registering your inputs. A LAN connection would definitely fix that...if everyone were using LAN. Sadly a lot of people online (most likely a huge majority) are playing with WiFi connection.

So let's say playing with LAN will give you more better matches, but not every single one of them will be perfect and if some are still a bit laggy, that probably means your opponent plays on WiFi...I still hope they're going to implement some kind of connection check before you start a match that would indicate what type of connection your opponent uses and give like 10 or 15 seconds for you to see how stable it is.

I am not worried about achieving my full bandwidth, I did test the adapter on my pc and it reaches its specified 100Mbps speed. I do play with LAN because I always trust wired connections over wireless to begin with. I posted the bandwidth speed because I do live with others, so we have more than enough internet to play with. I don't suffer when someone downloads or watches youtube/netflix. I haven't tested streaming and online yet, but I need to get a capture card first.

Thanks for the post though, that actually explains quite a bit about the speeds. I was wondering that, it is almost like the switch is put into a half duplex mode or something to that effect. It works, but I wonder if that in itself could be a bottleneck to begin with.

 

[Dr. Corndog]

On the topic at hand, I do notice more input mistakes and failures to react properly when playing online than I do when playing locally.

I feel like I kind of got sidetracked with the question of whether some people have a connection advantage over me (which I'm sure happens sometimes). This seems to address my original question.

I guess to clarify, most of the time I don't actually notice any lag. We're not talking frame drops, or obvious fractional second delays between input and action. Everything feels like it does offline. But a frame is such a short amount of time, that I was wondering whether there's always just a slight delay that I may not notice in the moment, but that does make it slightly more difficult to tech, or to react to split-second openings.

 

[Xquirtle]

I feel like I kind of got sidetracked with the question of whether some people have a connection advantage over me (which I'm sure happens sometimes). This seems to address my original question.

I guess to clarify, most of the time I don't actually notice any lag. We're not talking frame drops, or obvious fractional second delays between input and action. Everything feels like it does offline. But a frame is such a short amount of time, that I was wondering whether there's always just a slight delay that I may not notice in the moment, but that does make it slightly more difficult to tech, or to react to split-second openings.

There is always at least some delay due to your ping with your opponent. You might notice that its harder to do Inceneroars perfectly timed side B, or that you feel like you shielded or dodged something but your defensive option didn't come out. Often times its not very noticeable but its definitely a constant that i'd imagine bothers players more and more as they get into the upper echelons of skill.

 

[Steelmullet]

No one seems to be talking too much about this but when a person hosts the game online (since it's P2P) that person has an advantage. I've tested this out, it is a fact. Most ppl won't notice, but for some further away matches, or if a connection isn't too good, the person hosting has a huge advantage. What you're seeing is about a 1/2 or 1/3 of a second behind. In this case, it would appear that your opponent is one step ahead of you, and in fact they are. Online is fun but trash. GSP should not be taken seriously at all.

 

[Xquirtle]

No one seems to be talking too much about this but when a person hosts the game online (since it's P2P) that person has an advantage. I've tested this out, it is a fact. Most ppl won't notice, but for some further away matches, or if a connection isn't too good, the person hosting has a huge advantage. What you're seeing is about a 1/2 or 1/3 of a second behind. In this case, it would appear that your opponent is one step ahead of you, and in fact they are. Online is fun but trash. GSP should not be taken seriously at all.

Not sure for ultimate, but there doesn't have to be a host in p2p. The communication is going both ways, so the game can wait a certain amount of time to do anything for both players and not give one an advantage. Like player one presses A at clock time 65 seconds, player 2 also presses A at 65 seconds. if the game chooses to run at a 1/4 second delay to give the inputs time to travel over the internet, then at 65.25 seconds, both players will see their jab come out. In other words, it executes the inputs time stamped for 65 seconds at 65.25 seconds on both devices, so its not relying on one device to compile all of the game and then report that back to the other player.

 

[Steelmullet]

You are correct, but that wouldn't explain what I'm seeing in my test results in ultimate. I've even got it to phantom hit online. Which is when a move is executed on one end online, and the recipient gets hit but they're visually not in the hitbox range. One screen shows different than the other, about 1/3 a second behind. If this is not a p2p problem, I am stumped to why this is happening.

 

[Sucumbio]

You are correct, but that wouldn't explain what I'm seeing in my test results in ultimate. I've even got it to phantom hit online. Which is when a move is executed on one end online, and the recipient gets hit but they're visually not in the hitbox range. One screen shows different than the other, about 1/3 a second behind. If this is not a p2p problem, I am stumped to why this is happening.

Wait are you running 2 switches side by side on two independent networks?

 

[Xquirtle]

You are correct, but that wouldn't explain what I'm seeing in my test results in ultimate. I've even got it to phantom hit online. Which is when a move is executed on one end online, and the recipient gets hit but they're visually not in the hitbox range. One screen shows different than the other, about 1/3 a second behind. If this is not a p2p problem, I am stumped to why this is happening.

Yeah, hard to tell since the whole system is such garbage from top to bottom. Seems like there are 8 different types of lag / disruption that can occur and no way to exclude opponents with bad connections. NIntendo's approach seems to be for everybody to have a mediocre experience with rules and lag rather than allowing players to be more exclusionary to enhance their personal experience.

 

[strider2k]

I'm going to guess Steelmullet had one switch create an arena and the other switch joined it. Other switch is either his friend's or his within the same LAN / wifi but on a different tv / docking station.

 

[~?~]

So I guess what I'm asking is, is that always the case, or does it depend on the connection quality?

If one of the two players has a high ping then there will be excessive lag and bad gameplay experience. If both players use a lan device to hook a lan to their switch, then both players will play at almost real time gameplay speeds.

 

[Crazy Hand 2001]

Judging by my experience I don't get that much lag.

But Nintendo is horrendous at online so who cares what they're terrible at everything?

 

[Luigifan18]

Judging by my experience I don't get that much lag.

But Nintendo is horrendous at online so who cares what they're terrible at everything?

You've already demonstrated your raging hate-boner for Nintendo on numerous occasions. Why are you even on this website?!

 

[Steelmullet]

Sometimes if you're lucky, you can even save a replay and re-watch it later. Take a look at what you're doing in the match that you suspect was laggy on your end only. You'll see that your character runs into attacks a fair bit. In a lag free match, you would have seen the attacks and most likely avoided them, but in a one sided laggy match, the approach seems safe so you go for it only to get hit. You can start to see where the lag is affecting your online matches.

 

[Crazy Hand 2001]

You've already demonstrated your raging hate-boner for Nintendo on numerous occasions. Why are you even on this website?!

So... how about that lack of unranked quickplay?

lol lets be honest and realistic

Because Nintendo is a ****ty company in general as they don't really listen to their customers

 

[~?~]

Because Nintendo is a ****ty company in general as they don't really listen to their customers

They're not a bad company. They cater to a younger audience, you need to keep this in mind. They also in press releases have brought up their interest in improving their online functionality due to the increasing demands of online gaming sweeping over the market. You need to keep in mind, companies like Microsoft own things like Xbox, and Sony own things like well... Playstation, Microsoft and Sony both ALREADY had prioritized their network abilities before they even started packing consoles with the capability. I mean, it's kind of what Microsoft is known for outside of the OS. Nintendo didn't have this as a company because nintendo is a game company, not a PC software and network holding company.

EDIT: I do also want to note that nintendo is trying to do things that other consoles don't. Their console is also a handheld. I think Nintendo with its weaknesses is still competent and still sells units to the intended audiences, children under 18.

 

[Crazy Hand 2001]

They also in press releases have brought up their interest in improving their online functionality due to the increasing demands of online gaming sweeping over the market

I'm pretty sure they said things like that in the past but they didn't happen.

I do also want to note that nintendo is trying to do things that other consoles don't.

Like not having voice chat? Voice chat might be useless for competitive games such as mario kart but people still want it

 

[Steelmullet]

Lastly, there's a thing called "snap hit" It's when your opponent appears further from you on your screen, but suddenly hits you and "snaps" to your location. This is the game suddenly catching up and showing on your screen. This type of lag can't been seen very well in replay, but is very noticeable live online.

The "behind 1/2 a second thing" is so bad, you can now see players trying to minipulate it in their favour in arenas by exiting out of an arena and coming back in, going to character select, not changing character and coming back in the ring, anything to "switch up" the lag advantage. I would believe it's futile, but I have seen the lag switch to the other players advantage by doing random things before a match. So...hm.

 

[Vika]

Short answer: Yes absolutely

 

[Sean²]

Lastly, there's a thing called "snap hit" It's when your opponent appears further from you on your screen, but suddenly hits you and "snaps" to your location. This is the game suddenly catching up and showing on your screen. This type of lag can't been seen very well in replay, but is very noticeable live online.

I think I know what you're talking about, because something like this used to happen in the older Halo games all the time when the host was a lagger. You'd suddenly stop moving and any action you use doesn't effect the other player, but when it subsides, the other player moves at high speed to where their intended location was (like a bungee cord yanks them there). And sometimes have already killed you by the time you can actually move again.

But I've never seen anything like this in Ultimate. I'm pretty picky on who I play in terms of connection quality, but when I do experience lag, nothing like this has happened.

 

[TheDuke54]

Yeah this happens on Splatoon to. You'll see the others zapping around or staying still and not dying when you ink them a bunch. I never noticed this on Smash though. You're the first to actually bring it up without it just being hypothesized. Not like I'm saying it doesn't happen, cause people online have always tried to exploit games.

I know some people undock their switch and go as far away from their router as they can to cause lag. And I have heard of people online deliberately causing lag on Smash4 to give them the advantage.

 

[Steelmullet]

I know some people undock their switch and go as far away from their router as they can to cause lag. And I have heard of people online deliberately causing lag on Smash4 to give them the advantage.

I suspect ppl are doing that with Ultimate too. It also could be that the 1/2 second lag advantage is just random and set at 50/50 so that non-pro players would have an edge over competitive players. You know, like a "balance quality" or "BRAWL mode" sort of Nintendo like thing. Kinda like how they added virtual lag to all their controllers so that one wouldn't be better than any other. Imagine if Nintendo ran the Olympics? "That guy is faster than that other guy, gimp him so they both run the same! It's not a competition!" :0

 

[Xquirtle]

I suspect ppl are doing that with Ultimate too. It also could be that the 1/2 second lag advantage is just random and set at 50/50 so that non-pro players would have an edge over competitive players. You know, like a "balance quality" or "BRAWL mode" sort of Nintendo like thing. Kinda like how they added virtual lag to all their controllers so that one wouldn't be better than any other. Imagine if Nintendo ran the Olympics? "That guy is faster than that other guy, gimp him so they both run the same! It's not a competition!" :0

Yeah idk why they do ridiculously specific things like the controller input (only impacts competitive play) but then turn around and have the most asinine and ambiguous online ranking system / no ladder. Theres infinite examples of how to make a competitive ladder with the traditional bronze silve gold etc. They don't seem to have a clear focus on what they are going for. If they ran the Olympics, it would be Rio all over again

 

[TheDuke54]

Wait, Nintendo has deliberately added controller lag into the game? Is there an article about this somewhere that I can read up on?

 

[Naov]

Ok I admit that my network connection is not the best, but my game is still fairly playable and fun for casual and some competitive matchups.

However as GSP reaches elite levels, the reflexes become much more important as a fraction of a second of lag makes all the difference on getting the hit, dodging or teching .

Lately, my connection hasn't been the best (.5 seconds of input delay), and sometimes it seems as if the other players were not experiencing the same lag as I do, which in turn makes me feel very handicapped, especially against fast characters.

So , either everyone became much better reading moves, or I really need to invest on better hardware.

I ask this because I thought that the game was lowered to the worst player lag in a way that we would both have the same input delay. But it seems that it also depends on the lag between the players (switch) and the server, as in other popular shooter games. So the one with good connection will have some fractions of a second of advantage.

 

[Sucumbio]

Ok I admit that my network connection is not the best, but my game is still fairly playable and fun for casual and some competitive matchups.

However as GSP reaches elite levels, the reflexes become much more important as a fraction of a second of lag makes all the difference on getting the hit, dodging or teching .

Lately, my connection hasn't been the best (.5 seconds of input delay), and sometimes it seems as if the other players were not experiencing the same lag as I do, which in turn makes me feel very handicapped, especially against fast characters.

So , either everyone became much better reading moves, or I really need to invest on better hardware.

I ask this because I thought that the game was lowered to the worst player lag in a way that we would both have the same input delay. But it seems that it also depends on the lag between the players (switch) and the server, as in other popular shooter games. So the one with good connection will have some fractions of a second of advantage.

It's worse than you think. There are no servers it's p2p.

 

[Sean²]

Ok I admit that my network connection is not the best, but my game is still fairly playable and fun for casual and some competitive matchups.

However as GSP reaches elite levels, the reflexes become much more important as a fraction of a second of lag makes all the difference on getting the hit, dodging or teching .

Lately, my connection hasn't been the best (.5 seconds of input delay), and sometimes it seems as if the other players were not experiencing the same lag as I do, which in turn makes me feel very handicapped, especially against fast characters.

So , either everyone became much better reading moves, or I really need to invest on better hardware.

I ask this because I thought that the game was lowered to the worst player lag in a way that we would both have the same input delay. But it seems that it also depends on the lag between the players (switch) and the server, as in other popular shooter games. So the one with good connection will have some fractions of a second of advantage.

Some people generally garbage connections and get used to playing their best in more than optimal amounts of input delay. My friend refuses to buy an ethernet adapter and isn't that fun to play against because he always has more input delay than anyone else I play with. But he plays well in it because that's all he plays in.