One major step they should take is actually make the online gameplay.... actually playable. I hate being punished for ending up with someone who decides downloading the entire filmography of (insert adult film star here) while playing online with a wireless connection. Is it difficult for the game to keep track of a player's connection quality over the course of their matches? I want to open up For Glory and see "oh this person consistently has terrible connection" or "this person is using a wired connection/a connection of similar quality" in the form of a small symbol next to their name. How about someone who has been consistently reported fairly (we'll get to "fairness" later)? What if I'm facing someone who disconnects a lot? Oh, I'm not gonna be warned about this? I always make the mistake of giving this experience the benefit of the doubt, constantly ending up with some kiddo named "FNAF Foxy" or something to that nature with an anime mii sporting the tag "NO JOHNS", only to end up in the most laggy match whose speed can only be described as glacial, AT BEST. And if I wanna leave? I get punished by having to wait ten minutes before I can play again. And if not that, why can't the game detect if the game is lagging too much? Soulcalibur V did this, though it wasn't perfect; if a match was suspected to have too many lag spikes, the game just straight up said to you "screw it, it's not worth it, the game is being disconnected"; although this happened a bit too many times, it's a feature i appreciated because I don't want to be punished for just throwing my hands up and being honest with how difficult it is to simply play the game. By the way, Soulcalibur V was made by Namco-Bandai, at least a huge chunk of them, so I find it hard to believe word of features like this didn't make it to the cutting board.
Secondly, what is going on with the actual online community? I thought we were over Brawl. Taunt parties and ganging up on people who just wanna play the fighting game is way too common. Dude, it's even more messed up because For Fun is where a lot of kids wanna fight and they end up getting teamed up on. Reporting these shenanigans is also the metaphorical equivalent to taking a shower from a deep fryer, as someone has already stated, the report feature is basically nonexistent. "Report this player? Yes or no?" Um, can I explain why? No? Okay. Whatever. I'll just report everyone who does this. That's within reason, right? Whoever breaks the rules should be reported! Okay, so after reporting 5 players in total (in two separate taunt parties), I got disconnected right when I attempted to report the third person in the second taunt party. My report didn't even go through. I literally got punished for trying to do the right thing. Banland isn't even enough because with these scrubs, they don't even care for "honor" or decent fights, they just want another weirdo to mash crouch with them, because that's a good way to make friends apparently. Banland doesn't even glaze this. Meanwhile, I get banned for 10-20 minutes for reporting, then thrown into Banland. I kid you not, there are even times when I receive "error codes" that I've never heard of that FORCE ME TO SHUT MY WII U OFF. This is when I'm attempting to land a report on someone. Now, I'm not sure if this is exactly the fault of the game or my Wii U, but this just adds more to the unpleasantness. It would be really nice if 1) the report system actually allowed you to send specific reports, 2) the human resource team (yes, there is one) was more competent with handling this, and 3) the game actually gave actual punishments to taunt party peeps.
Going back to the whole For Fun and For Glory thing, again I think they screwed themselves over. The next Smash game needs to instead give player-made lobbies with the option to kick other players. that way, it's easier to look for players who wanna actually spar and go at it, and perhaps those kids who just wanna mess around can have their own lobbies. That's not necessarily wrong or anything, but it becomes problematic immediately when they team up on people.
Oh and, another thing, Time is inherently flawed. I hate the point system and how it's abusable by griefers.
