~Stages & Lag~

[Xivii]

We have all gone through the difficulties of playing with the horrendous limitation of Lag during online play. As far as we know there is no way to rid of this lag... But can the amount of lag we play with be reduced? Can our stage choice affect the amount of lag we receive? ...Well lets find out.

This list was designed to represent which stages affect the amount of lag you receive during online play based on your relative connection speed. This list was designed by Sucumbio, and contributed by Nysyarc, myself, and many others who assisted in testing. There are many factors to take into consideration when dealing with lag. Stage Choice obviously is not the only thing that can affect it. Where you play from, who you play with, and what type of connective device you are using can all affect this data. Therefore the purpose of this list is merely to serve as a basic model on how stage choice affects lag. The more input we can get the better we can improve the list and the more accurate it will become.

Now of course we've experienced "lag" on all stages. So... first a quick definition...

...Lag is the slow-down effect that can happen during an online match. During Lag, The literal second to second ratio is changed, i.e. 1 for 1 in normal (offline) play a game second is a real life second, during Lag, a game second is x.xxxxx seconds.

The effect of Lag on each stage may lead one to find a comparative relationship between stage choices and connection quality. In other words there are trends that are likely despite the connection quality and then there are trends that are dependent on the connection quality. Therefore this list structure takes into account the apparent connection speed between players, and the subsequent stage choices that can be expected under those conditions.

Blue [Near Flawless] Connection

Stages with Minimal Lag

Battlefield
Brinstar
Castle Siege
Corneria
Delfino Plaza
Distant Planet
Lylat Cruise
Smashville
Yoshi's Island
Yoshi's Island (Melee)

Stages with Moderate Lag

75m
Big Blue
Bridge of Eldin
Final Destination
Flat Zone 2
Frigate Orpheon
Green Greens
Green Hill Zone
Halberd
Hanenbow
Jungle Japes
Luigi's Mansion
Mario Bros.
Mario Circuit
Mushroomy Kingdom
New Pork City
Norfair
Onett
PictoChat
Pirate Ship
Pokemon Stadium
Pokemon Stadium 2
Port Town Aero Drive
Rainbow Cruise
Rumble Falls
Shadow Moses
Skyworld
Spear Pillar
The Summit
Temple
WarioWare

Stages with Massive Lag

None


Orange-Green [Average] connection

Stages with Minimal Lag

Battlefield
Castle Siege
Corneria
Delfino Plaza
Smashville

Stages with Moderate Lag

75m
Big Blue
Brinstar
Bridge of Eldin
Distant Planet
Final Destination
Frigate Orpheon
Green Greens
Green Hill Zone
Halberd
Hanenbow
Jungle Japes
Luigi's Mansion
Lylat Cruise
Norfair
Onett
Pirate Ship
Pokemon Stadium
Pokemon Stadium 2
Shadow Moses
Skyworld
Spear Pillar
The Summit
Temple
Yoshi's Island
Yoshi's Island (Melee)
WarioWare

Stages with Massive Lag

Flat Zone 2
New Pork City
Mario Bros.
Mario Circuit
Mushroomy Kingdom
PictoChat
Port Town Aero Drive
Rainbow Cruise
Rumble Falls


Red [Horrible] connection

Stages with Minimal Lag

Battlefield

Stages with Moderate Lag

Brinstar
Castle Siege
Corneria
Distant Planet
Delfino Plaza
Final Destination
Frigate Orpheon
Green Greens
Green Hill Zone
Halberd
Hanenbow
Jungle Japes
Onett
Pirate Ship
Pokemon Stadium
Pokemon Stadium 2
Rumble Falls
Skyworld
Smashville
The Summit
Yoshi's Island
Yoshi's Island (Melee)

Stages with Massive Lag

75m
Big Blue
Bridge of Eldin
Flat Zone 2
Lylat Cruise
Luigi's Mansion
New Pork City
Mario Bros.
Mario Circuit
Mushroomy Kingdom
Norfair
PictoChat
Port Town Aero Drive
Rainbow Cruise
Shadow Moses
Spear Pillar
Temple
WarioWare​

As you can see, Battlefield affects lag to a minimal in all three categories. And obviously stages with a lot of extra movement and details would cause more lag. All though, suprisingly to me, Delfino Plaza didn't affect the lag as much as I thought it would.


Discuss.

 

[Nysyarc]

I like Battlefield and Delfino. They're pretty cool. Ike does well on those stages.

-end discussion-

 

[★Malik★™]

i've always thought about that .if the lag depends on the stage.

 

[Dragoomba]

Lol @ a bunch of people telling me FD lags the most.

 

[Nysyarc]

Lol @ a bunch of people telling me FD lags the most.

Yah they're wrong, it has pretty minimal lag. The shifting background adds to the lag but otherwise it's a static stage. Battlefield is the only static stage that also has a static background, thus it has the least lag online.

 

[Sucumbio]

Lol @ a bunch of people telling me FD lags the most.

I know you don't mean us? We placed it moderately but not the worst, though in "worst" connection status well even battlefield can lag and if you have a near flawless connection FD may not be laggy at all...

something I've noticed tho like, on large spanning stages such as FD I've noticed the lag lessen a bit the closer the two characters got in battle o.o

 

[Dark 3nergy]

jungle japes in lag is SCARY HOLY CRAP

 

[Sucumbio]

battlefield is good? That can't be right. Input lag is bad there and people with less than good recoveries like Wolf, Captain Falcon, Ganondorf ect SD when trying to get back to the stage all the time. I agree with Smashville being good and Final Destination kinda sucking tho.

Define if you would, input lag, cause lag over wifi is indiscriminate, normally, in other words Lag is lag, the "input delay" you experience should be an exact co-variant to a comparable offline connection, ergo "hey I pressed A but nothing happened until 1 second later than normal" is because the whole match is off by 1 second, not just you.

That said, BF -seems- to be the least laggy stage. With 4 participants in a With Friends match each with varying degrees of connection quality, BF lags the least, but that's pure observation, the only way to quantify it is to experience it yourself. If you actually get laggy matches on BF a lot we should look at connection quality (region) and see if there's any correlation.

 

[rED023b]

Lag is good, one of the best things one could have in a Wi-Fi match.

 

[BSP]

Lag is good, one of the best things one could have in a Wi-Fi match.

how do you figure that?

So battlefield has least lag. On the plus side, the stages with massive lag are mostly banned.

 

[rED023b]

how do you figure that?

So battlefield has least lag. On the plus side, the stages with massive lag are mostly banned.

Example 1. Your opponent is D3 and you are DK, playing on Battlefield. Both players know about the dreaded infinite CG on DK. D3 CGs you and succeeds in beating you.

Now, your opponent is D3 and you are DK, but this time your on WarioWare (stage with the most lag.) Your opponent tries to grab you, but the lag is making his grab slower and more punishable. You roll behind him and punish him with a ftilt.

Example 2. Your opponent is Bowser and you are Jigglypuff, playing on Battlefield. You're at 200%, and Bowser charges a surprise fsmash at you. You aren't prepared for it, and you die.

Now, your opponent is Bowser and you are Jigglypuff, but this time you're on WarioWare. Your opponent catches you off guard again with a fsmash at 200%, but this time lag slows down his attack, and you have just enough time to Perfect Shield it.

See where I'm going with this? Lag helps you predict your foe much better than offline matches. Lag is awesome for defensive players to predict aggressive players, and aggressive players find defensive players' patterns. Sure, lag makes your match go slower, but it's well worth it in the end.

 

[Ugg]

Example 1. Your opponent is D3 and you are DK, playing on Battlefield. Both players know about the dreaded infinite CG on DK. D3 CGs you and succeeds in beating you.

Now, your opponent is D3 and you are DK, but this time your on WarioWare (stage with the most lag.) Your opponent tries to grab you, but the lag is making his grab slower and more punishable. You roll behind him and punish him with a ftilt.

Example 2. Your opponent is Bowser and you are Jigglypuff, playing on Battlefield. You're at 200%, and Bowser charges a surprise fsmash at you. You aren't prepared for it, and you die.

Now, your opponent is Bowser and you are Jigglypuff, but this time you're on WarioWare. Your opponent catches you off guard again with a fsmash at 200%, but this time lag slows down his attack, and you have just enough time to Perfect Shield it.

See where I'm going with this? Lag helps you predict your foe much better than offline matches. Lag is awesome for defensive players to predict aggressive players, and aggressive players find defensive players' patterns. Sure, lag makes your match go slower, but it's well worth it in the end.

LOL. I'm sorry, but those are horrible examples. You don't have NEAR enough time to punish a grab with a roll and DK FTilt, and no kind of charged Bowser FSmash is a "surprise." You can even SDI out of it.

For these examples to work, you have to have someone with a connection like you're watching a slideshow, and someone with the reaction time of a pile of rocks. Seriously.

 

[rED023b]

For these examples to work, you have to have someone with a connection like you're watching a slideshow, and someone with the reaction time of a pile of rocks. Seriously.

I was talking about Basic Brawl

 

[★Malik★™]

a lot of big stages lag. the wii&online,have to load the stage so that the players can play on it.

i read that your wii sends data to the other player(s) wii so you both see the same thing. it slows down to the slower connection to do it so there's lag. people with Ethernet (me) should have the good connection, and shouldn't have a problem. i always get blamed for lag.

 

[Sonic4Ever]

I do believe it's just about physics.

Like the items in the Pikmin stage. Items are props which have physical interaction with stage and players ruled by Havok engine. This is another information (after controller inputs) that must match between the online players so in this case there is even more information sent over the network.

Just saying that to point out that your list may be incorrect. For exemple, Final Destination doesn't interact with anything. What you see behind is just graphics, not physics. Just as Battlefield. Therefore, I do believe that your list is incorrect.

But I may be wrong.

Who knows.

 

[Ugg]

I was talking about Basic Brawl

I was actually being generous. Simply put, your examples are impossible unless you're talking about the WiFi waiting room sandbag.

 

[Xivii]

Hey I remember this. Goood times. So hey we should get some testing going on this again.

 

[:downs:]

If graphics are clientside, how do stages affect the connection?

 

[FRiSKruns]

good to know that some stages I thought might be laggy are not so much :D
also, I suddenly have a new found fondness for Battlefield, usually I hate it because platforms tend screw me into getting KO'd unnecessarily but I'll manage :D

Example 1. Your opponent is D3 and you are DK, playing on Battlefield. Both players know about the dreaded infinite CG on DK. D3 CGs you and succeeds in beating you.

Now, your opponent is D3 and you are DK, but this time your on WarioWare (stage with the most lag.) Your opponent tries to grab you, but the lag is making his grab slower and more punishable. You roll behind him and punish him with a ftilt.

Example 2. Your opponent is Bowser and you are Jigglypuff, playing on Battlefield. You're at 200%, and Bowser charges a surprise fsmash at you. You aren't prepared for it, and you die.

Now, your opponent is Bowser and you are Jigglypuff, but this time you're on WarioWare. Your opponent catches you off guard again with a fsmash at 200%, but this time lag slows down his attack, and you have just enough time to Perfect Shield it.

See where I'm going with this? Lag helps you predict your foe much better than offline matches. Lag is awesome for defensive players to predict aggressive players, and aggressive players find defensive players' patterns. Sure, lag makes your match go slower, but it's well worth it in the end.

it does a bit, if it's massive lag, help you predict your foe that is, but it's not something anyone should ever have to rely on, besides that, even though you predict what you're opponent is doing/will do, that doesn't change the fact that chances are you've already given the video game an input to initiate which due to lag has yet to occur and will unfortunately most likely be something that isn't a good response to your new found information ie. prediction

at the same time, lag is also bad because Smash Bros has always been a party game, a game that you should play with a group of friends, playing online with lag all the time will definitely screw with your offline play capabilities such as timing, spacing, etc.
That's putting it simply, dealing with lag for competitive players is always bad, anyone who actually wants to get better and be able to compete and do well in tournaments would do well to get used to offline play, which would make minimal to no lag play much more preferable