Why is online in this game so bad?

[meleebrawler]

TheBeastHimself absolutely nailed it when he said that you can't play the way you want 100% of the time, but kind of contradicted himself: our options are quickplay and battle arenas. The problem with battle arenas is that whenever I host a 2-player lobby to my preference, no one joins. The problem with joining someone else's arena is that it's a crapshoot whether they have items on and how much time or stocks there are, and then it's a mad rush to join the lobby before you get beat out by someone else and have to sit there and watch two icons bang up against each other for 5 minutes.

The problem with quickplay is that it seems to prioritize 4 players over 2 even when I prefer 2; we got our 2 players, so why are we still spending 30 more seconds searching for more?

All we are asking for is a For Glory option; we're not expecting it to be perfect upon launch since it only exists for the fans. For example: 1v1, 3 stocks, 7 minutes, items off and this brings up another issue... the stage restrictions. There should be an option for both Battlefield and Omega forms; I understand asking for legal hazard and hazard-less is a tall order, but why would you segregate Battlefield and Omega when you made them both for legality reasons?

Do you use the name of your arenas to communicate settings?

Also, I'm not blindly defending Nintendo (not even 100% sure they called the shots here). It's just that when I look at all the complaints around the Internet about this game's online, very few of them seem like legitimate gripes to me. Stuff like no quick character changing in quickplay or no host transfer are indeed annoying with no good workarounds and could definitely stand to be addressed. But everything else won't stop me from enjoying it. Quickplay is unreliable for getting specific matches? Well I have arenas to take care of that, so why don't I just embrace the chaos there to blow off a little steam? Waiting in line inside arenas is boring? I'll just make sure the lines or matches are short enough to keep things moving.

It's also part realism: I know that the online in Nintendo games is seldom great initially, for any number of reasons, and I also know having the ability to set matches the way you precisely want them comes at the cost of wait times. But perhaps most of all, at the end of the day, gaming is a hobby for me and I refuse to get to wound up in always wanting more. It doesn't take much to please me: as long as I can consistently play Smash online, without much significant lag (and I have a good feeling that will be the case, judging by the rest of Nintendo's online games I've played), I'm happy. And I won't angst about squeezing every last bit of value from Switch Online. Either it breaks my bank or it doesn't.

 

[Dan]

Do you use the name of your arenas to communicate settings?

Yes, and no one even does this. It picks 20 random arenas to give to you, and half of them are password protected, so it's really like 10.

 

[CadenLisa]

One thing I would like to point out, all this finger pointing at Nintendo for the lag in ffas is kinda silly.

The biggest chunk of lag comes from players who have crap connections but don’t want to accept it.

This would be the same, if not possibly slightly worse with dedicated servers.

What Nintendo could and should have done is have a stricter criteria for how good your connection has to be to play online. Splatoon 2 kinda has this, where you can be barred from playing for awhile if your connection isn’t good enough.

Of course they’re never gonna do this because too many people would be furiously calling nintendo angry that Nintendo is telling them point blank that they have a crap connection and/or isp.

(when you own a lan adapter but are still walking in molasses (lag))

 

[Deleted member]

That's an impossibility with how many types of matches can be set up, you'd be saddled with huge wait times instead for all but defaults. Also you're contradicting yourself, arenas do in fact let you play with the rules you want 100% of the time if you set it up.

Your point of how it is very difficult to satisfy everyone with one ruleset is also another reason things are the way they are. It's easy to say For Glory was great, but think of how many wished they didn't always have to play with it's restrictions.

Yes yes a hundred times yes. People stuck on For Glory seem like they're just afraid of change and can't think outside their little world. I would say if we didn't have anything like Arenas, I would understand the complaints a bit more. But we DO have arenas, so if all you want to do is 1v1 online then go online, make your 1v1 arena and set the rules, and you can have that experience.

And if you don't want to put in the time to make a ruleset that suits you, then you can do quickplay which still has preferences, just won't use them 100% of the time so you can get into a match faster.

As for not being able to change your character between matches in quickplay, it's maybe not ideal but I can also see why they did it (streamlining, less waiting between matches). If you're taking the time to choose a character or whatnot, you're not ready to fight, and you're just holding up matches. I'm sure the developers thought about all of this longer than the two days we've had the game anyway.

 

[Trueshinobi]

They don't even exist; as far as I'm aware, there's no stat-keeping for online.

That’s unfortunate...I did try out quick play for the first time today and it was a distaster. The lag was unreal and killed my motivation to try another online match

 

[Dan]

People stuck on For Glory seem like they're just afraid of change and can't think outside their little world.

Can't the same be said about people who player 4-player Smash with items? There's nothing wrong with either, but when I go online, most of the time I'm trying to play a skill-based competitive match, whereas the other option is good if your playing local with friends.

I would say if we didn't have anything like Arenas, I would understand the complaints a bit more. But we DO have arenas, so if all you want to do is 1v1 online then go online, make your 1v1 arena and set the rules, and you can have that experience.

But you can't have that experience because people don't join your lobbies, and if you join someone else's lobby there's potentially a 30-minute wait.

 

[Idon]

Seriously, no matter how you try to twist it, this game's online functionity is a trash-fire and all the options it offers all come with their own unique brand of terrible traits.
It's especially disheartening considering every other fighting game has had this simple feature down pat for twenty years and even some other online Nintendo games have followed suit.

 

[KingBroly]

Namco needs to stop using delay-based netcode and develop a rollback style netcode or license GGPO already. This would 100% alleviate this problem in not only Smash, but their other fighting games as well.

 

[crackl1ng]

Hey guys. I just got this "Elite"-mode by just reaching like 700k points online. I don't have any information how well it works, but i kinda unlocked it. Click here for image.

 

[meleebrawler]

Yes yes a hundred times yes. People stuck on For Glory seem like they're just afraid of change and can't think outside their little world. I would say if we didn't have anything like Arenas, I would understand the complaints a bit more. But we DO have arenas, so if all you want to do is 1v1 online then go online, make your 1v1 arena and set the rules, and you can have that experience.

And if you don't want to put in the time to make a ruleset that suits you, then you can do quickplay which still has preferences, just won't use them 100% of the time so you can get into a match faster.

As for not being able to change your character between matches in quickplay, it's maybe not ideal but I can also see why they did it (streamlining, less waiting between matches). If you're taking the time to choose a character or whatnot, you're not ready to fight, and you're just holding up matches. I'm sure the developers thought about all of this longer than the two days we've had the game anyway.

After taking everything in, I realize the complaints are coming mainly from competitive players, and how they can't reliably "rank up". Maybe in the future we can have such a lobby exclusively for that kind of game, with higher stakes for your GSP (with the normal Quickplay having low stakes). But as I said before, right now it's far too early to know what the standard ruleset for competitive play should be, and the devs will need solid consistent feedback from many reputable sources to make it happen. Even if there were such a mode right now, the playerbase for that certainly wouldn't be.

Bottom line: this system is only bad if you care about your GSP and increasing it as high as you can.

 

[1FC0]

Why do I feel this dreadful new online system is a Nintendo move and not a Sakurai move?

Why do you ask here? How should we know?

 

[lucasla]

Yes yes a hundred times yes. People stuck on For Glory seem like they're just afraid of change and can't think outside their little world. I would say if we didn't have anything like Arenas, I would understand the complaints a bit more. But we DO have arenas, so if all you want to do is 1v1 online then go online, make your 1v1 arena and set the rules, and you can have that experience.

Firstly, you can't say how someone will have fun. If a person preffers to play 1v1, who are you to say they should play anything else because they are having difficulties to play the game the way they wanted? specially when the option was there easily on the previous WiiU game. Everyone knows all the game modes Smash has, and if someone preffers 1v1, there's no reason to not support every people's choice. There's also the problem that Arenas have a far bigger process to find and join matches that never existed on the WiiU game that you just pressed a buttoon and the game just started. 1-v-1 matches is just a pattern that should have a quick play without any worry about spliting the players because of the many configurations, even because people that play with the rule sets can enter the specific game mode too, cause the specific game mode is some kind of ruleset.

 

[Arymle Roseanne]

Sigh why am I not surprised how bad online would be? Geez there's that one thing that keeps a Smash game from being perfect...

 

[OmegaLurker]

I am the only one who have a huge input lag online ?

 

[ZaneHitsurugi]

This is what we need: problem solving and seeing what you can do with what the game offers, not immediate finger-pointing at Nintendo for an initial bad experience. That way we can narrow down the issues that really do need fixing on their part.

When I get the game I'll be thinking of posting a PSA thread on how to get the most out of Ultimate's online, assuming no one beats me to it in the meantime...

This is a failure of the developers. You should be matched with what you look for, period.

 

[Wyoming]

Bottom line: this system is only bad if you care about your GSP and increasing it as high as you can.

Not at all. People are concerned that their preferred rules are completely ignored for the other extreme on a consistent basis.
The word "preferred" doesn't define a guaranteed thing, but at worst it should be 9/10 you get the ruleset you desire.

I agree that the countless variable rulesets are an issue: people are playing stocks but with different numbers, times, and etc. That's an issue, but eventually we'll come to a compromise. (3 stocks, 7 mins seems the way forward) but if the system still doesn't function despite that, that's on the developers.

I'll defend this model: the concept is good and in the long run will prove better than FG/FF, but they executed it weirdly an it doesn't work as intended right now. Should have known an online Namco game would be bizarre.

 

[Dan]

After taking everything in, I realize the complaints are coming mainly from competitive players, and how they can't reliably "rank up". Maybe in the future we can have such a lobby exclusively for that kind of game, with higher stakes for your GSP (with the normal Quickplay having low stakes). But as I said before, right now it's far too early to know what the standard ruleset for competitive play should be, and the devs will need solid consistent feedback from many reputable sources to make it happen. Even if there were such a mode right now, the playerbase for that certainly wouldn't be.

Bottom line: this system is only bad if you care about your GSP and increasing it as high as you can.

This could not be further from the truth; I don't privy myself as a "competitive" player. I actually agree that at it's core, Smash is not supposed to be serious, but played with items and potentially as reckless as possible. I don't give a single **** about rank; no records are kept in this game. I just care about this because online gaming is more compelling being skill-based and competitive. I literally didn't hear one person complain about "ranking up", but that we just want a surefire 1v1 option without jumping through hoops.

I will fight you tooth and nail over being a Nintendo white knight about this because they put all this stuff in the game like directional air dodge, speed increase, Battlefield stage forms (clearly catering to a competitive audience), but removed For Glory... what? You could really tell that two different companies worked on this.

 

[meleebrawler]

This could not be further from the truth; I don't privy myself as a "competitive" player. I actually agree that at it's core, Smash is not supposed to be serious, but played with items and potentially as reckless as possible. I don't give a single **** about rank; no records are kept in this game. I just care about this because online gaming is more compelling being skill-based and competitive. I literally didn't hear one person complain about "ranking up", but that we just want a surefire 1v1 option without jumping through hoops.

I will fight you tooth and nail over being a Nintendo white knight about this because they put all this stuff in the game like directional air dodge, speed increase, Battlefield stage forms (clearly catering to a competitive audience), but removed For Glory... what? You could really tell that two different companies worked on this.

And if you're going to threaten me over what I believe in, you're going on my ignore list.

 

[Dan]

And if you're going to threaten me over what I believe in, you're going on my ignore list.

It's a figure of speech. Don't take yourself so seriously.

 

[Mogisthelioma]

You may not have saved your preferred rules. The game will default to free for all if you forget to save.

Just to battle arenas. They're more fun.

 

[GhostYB]

Join some Discord servers and find games that way, that should increase your chances of finding good games.

Maybe they're laggy because you don't have a LAN adapter? Wireless is very risky, after all.

We shouldn't have to get a LAN adapter to have stable matches... I paid for this smh

You may not have saved your preferred rules. The game will default to free for all if you forget to save.

Just to battle arenas. They're more fun.

Wait how do I know that my rules are saved?

 

[Mogisthelioma]

We shouldn't have to get a LAN adapter to have stable matches... I paid for this smh

The purpose of the LAN adapter is to help those with naturally bad internet connections.

 

[Frihetsanka]

We shouldn't have to get a LAN adapter to have stable matches... I paid for this smh

Doesn't matter if you paid if you're using wireless, wireless connections tend to be unstable in general. Nintendo can't magically fix that, just get a LAN adapter (they're not very expensive) if you can.

 

[Deleted member]

I hit 1 on 1, I got free for all 5 games in a row. I guess I can't play online for this game, that sucks.

Just something to note. Getting Elite Smash changes nothing. I've gotten FFAs in Elite Smash as well. It just increases the likelihood you'll get a 1v1 since it's supposed that most people who are "good" will wanna do 1v1. That said, I've come across a lot of campy fighters who abuse the rulesets to their advantage. Most vicious one is K.Rool mains playing Omega Stages on 1 stock. K.Rool can be crazy hard to kill, especially on FD, so some people have caught on, and used this as a way to get their GSP up by gimping people, quitting, and then fighting someone new.

Oh yeah, Elite Smash is also limited to that one specific character, AND you still can't switch characters between rounds without backing out, AND you can actually lose your "Elite" status if your GSP drops below a certain threshold. Really, Elite Smash is more of a badge of honor than an actual mode. It replaces your normal ranked mode basically, and just says "hey you're elite now."

Needless to say, there needs to be a Ranked mode with a standardized ruleset:
[1v1, Battlefield Stages, 3 stock, 7 mins, no items]

Overall an awful matchmaking system. Idk how they managed to **** that up. But it needs a patch, BAD. Split it into casual/ranked again, like EVERY OTHER FIGHTING GAME EVER, including Smash 4. And then give us an option to accept or decline matches before they start. Mostly to weed out bad connections. Obviously, this means giving us a preview of our opponents' connection as well, and a frame count up top would also be much appreciated. But ofc, this will all likely never happen.

 

[1FC0]

Wrong thread, sorry!

 

[Idon]

The online experience in a nutshell.
https://clips.twitch.tv/YummyYawningSnoodPastaThat

 

[TheBeastHimself]

Don't know if this has happened to anyone else but sometimes when I join quick match my character is changed back to the default skin even tho I chose an alt skin. Weird.

 

[Dan]

The online experience in a nutshell.
https://clips.twitch.tv/YummyYawningSnoodPastaThat

This is still happening to me; preferred rules are in check. I just got in a match as K. Rool with Mewtwo, Ganondorf and Ridley (and people said Smash needed villains), all on Port Town Aero Drive ; Battle Arenas are the only surefire way, though it's a mad rush not to get beat out by another player and a risk to change characters if you can't find a 2-person lobby or if no one joins yours.

 

[meleebrawler]

Don't know if this has happened to anyone else but sometimes when I join quick match my character is changed back to the default skin even tho I chose an alt skin. Weird.

Is someone else using the same character and alt you wanted?

 

[TheBeastHimself]

Is someone else using the same character and alt you wanted?

Nope. I chose the Masked Man skin for Lucas and nobody else was Lucas.

 

[John Dylan Smith]

To answer your question!

It's because the game was rushed out for Christmas! That's why it's so horrible (I tried to warn you all)!

 

[lucasla]

Doesn't matter if you paid if you're using wireless, wireless connections tend to be unstable in general. Nintendo can't magically fix that, just get a LAN adapter (they're not very expensive) if you can.

So, I play:
1. Overwatch
2. PUBG
3. Rainbow Six Siege
4. Counter-Strike GO
5. GTA Online
6. Call of Duty Black Ops IIII
7. And others....

With a Wireless Adapter connected to my PC that is in my room that has 2 walls of distance from my router. And my Switch that stays literaly at the side, less than 20 cm of distance, of my modem on my TV room, can't run Smash online with a good quality because a "connection" problem, and not because the design of the structure of the online system of the game is poor?

All the other games in the world, specially the shooters I play that requires as much precision as Smash, that I play in my room with two walls of distance of the modem, they do Magic to work without any problem then? All them work great on Wifi, but Smash that is the only game that doesnt work well running at the side of my modem, is right, and is not the problem of the game?

All games with tons of more players than Smash, that only has to work properly with 4 people in the worst case, all running perfectly fine for everybody, and Smash is right on their online system and is the internet of everybody that sucks and creates laggy matches for a lot of people that no one can leaves because they receive penalties if they do it, all this after the game auto select a match they had not choosed.

 

[meleebrawler]

So, I play:
1. Overwatch
2. PUBG
3. Rainbow Six Siege
4. Counter-Strike GO
5. GTA Online
6. Call of Duty Black Ops IIII
7. And others....

With a Wireless Adapter connected to my PC that is in my room that has 2 walls of distance from my router. And my Switch that literaly at the side, less than 20 cm of distance, of my modem on my TV room, can't run Smash online with a good quality because a "connection" problem, and not because the design of the structure of the online system of the game is poor?

All the other games in the world, specially the shooters I play that requires as much precision as Smash, they do Magic to work then? All them work great on Wifi, but Smash that is the only game that doesnt work well running at the side of my modem, is right, and is not the problem of the game?

Are any of those fighting games?

 

[lucasla]

Are any of those fighting games?

Is that an excuse for not work how it should?

 

[Frihetsanka]

So, I play:
1. Overwatch
2. PUBG
3. Rainbow Six Siege
4. Counter-Strike GO
5. GTA Online
6. Call of Duty Black Ops IIII
7. And others....

None of these are 1v1 fighting games. Other games deal with lag by frame rollbacks (or something, I'm not 100% sure), so that's why you sometimes can get killed in an fps when it looked like you were behind a wall, etc etc. This wouldn't really work well in a fighting game though, and adding dedicated servers would mean that you first connect to them and then connect to the other player. That might make 4 player FFAs less laggy but might actually make 1v1 more laggy.

What's the main reasons for lag in Smash? Generally, either distance, unstable connection (such as someone downloading something while playing), or someone using WiFi instead of a wired connection. If it's always laggy, then the issue might be you.

 

[Idon]

With a Wireless Adapter connected to my PC that is in my room that has 2 walls of distance from my router. And my Switch that stays literaly at the side, less than 20 cm of distance, of my modem on my TV room, can't run Smash online with a good quality because a "connection" problem, and not because the design of the structure of the online system of the game is poor?

All the other games in the world, specially the shooters I play that requires as much precision as Smash, that I play in my room with two walls of distance of the modem, they do Magic to work without any problem then? All them work great on Wifi, but Smash that is the only game that doesnt work well running at the side of my modem, is right, and is not the problem of the game?

No one's saying that it's possible to have good wireless connections.

What we are saying that at a fundamental level, a wired connection will beat out a wireless connection every single time in terms of both speed and stability especially in a peer-to-peer system that fighting games like Smash have. Smash's netcode is bad, but if your or the opponent's connection is terrible, zero amount of good networking is going to fix the lag.

 

[lucasla]

None of these are 1v1 fighting games. Other games deal with lag by frame rollbacks (or something, I'm not 100% sure), so that's why you sometimes can get killed in an fps when it looked like you were behind a wall, etc etc. This wouldn't really work well in a fighting game though, and adding dedicated servers would mean that you first connect to them and then connect to the other player. That might make 4 player FFAs less laggy but might actually make 1v1 more laggy.

What's the main reasons for lag in Smash? Generally, either distance, unstable connection (such as someone downloading something while playing), or someone using WiFi instead of a wired connection. If it's always laggy, then the issue might be you.

The problem of the game is not input lag, is general lag that makes the entire matches unplayable. It happens since the WiiU game. I know it's because the P2P system. I will not defend it anyway, cause no other game I have is unplayble if anyone has a bad connection. If this happens in a game, only the person with bad connection has lag, not everyone as it happens in smash. It's not an ok trade, to make all other game modes that are not 1-1 worse because 1-1 matches can possibly run better (we are assuming that), with the p2p system, this because they always says that the focus of smash is not the competitive side for them, so 1-1 matches shoudnt be priority. And if it was, there should be a button to 1-1 there that doesnt insert you in any other mode you dont want to play. They could even make 1-1 matches run in p2p mode and other modes in a server mode if that's the problem.

 

[meleebrawler]

I see a lot of issues getting better with time. Even if the devs don't make any direct changes. Casuals will thin out, making for more balanced rulesets in general. Commonly accepted competitive rulesets will gain traction and thus be easier to find. And the more matches you play, the more consistent your GSP becomes, as it's true purpose is to track how many people you have a better win/loss ratio than with a given character.

 

[Frihetsanka]

[...]this because they always says that the focus of smash is not the competitive side for them, so 1-1 matches shoudnt be priority.

1v1 matches absolutely should be prioritized.

Read the article linked here on why dedicated servers wouldn't help: https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/a4oby2/psa_dedicated_servers_would_not_improve_this/

 

[lucasla]

[QUOTE="lucasla, post: 22820402, member: 402398"[...]]this because they always says that the focus of smash is not the competitive side for them, so 1-1 matches shoudnt be priority.

1v1 matches absolutely should be prioritized.

Read the article linked here on why dedicated servers wouldn't help: https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/a4oby2/psa_dedicated_servers_would_not_improve_this/[/QUOTE]

1-v-1 matches are fine (when you are really inserted into one). The problem are the other matches. The game has a lot of game modes, 1-v-1 is just one of them, and the only one that will run smoothly for most people. All the others are at big risk of being a mess because the connection of 1 person. God, even Zero is facing problems of lagging matches in the video posted by someone above. Even if the connection of some player is bad, it should lag only for that player, not for all the players in the match. This is not acceptable... And matches that are not 1v1 could run in dedicated servers and keep the p2p (if needed) for the 1v1. Theory means nothing when reality is there to everyone see.