A rant

[LouisCipher]

Just gotta' vent. I'm going to step on my soapbox for a minute and scream into the void of the internet.

I had an existential moment as of late. Why do I play fighters? It's not just that I enjoy them, but I want to get to a certain level within ones that I truly love. I want to get to a 'better than average' level where I can easily defeat some retard mashing, I can defeat people just playing casually in between their sessions of COD or whatever, and if I play a pro player I can win a round or two, give 'em a decent run for their money and maybe win a few matches if I'm reading them right.

I feel like I'm at that level at 3rd Strike. So I buy it for PSN, play a friend or two, but play some high level players. I've come to the conclusion that this is unlikely for a variety of reasons: (1) High level dudes are still playing offline for the most part in which case I have to make arrangements. (2) The horde of SF4 players. (3) Lag. Still lag in this fucking game. I can't believe it. Some connections are better than others but I'm still feeling the lag in Yellow bar. So many times have my attacks not come out or I do a well-timed Meatie on their wakeup and my attack comes out and a second later their SRK bullshit comes out and hits me. I've also noticed dudes mashing Jab on wakeup and it's beating my Kara-throws and Command Grabs, this is something that never happened on even GGPO.

So where did this Million or so dollars in development costs go that Capcom claims to have invested? The vault is nice but you can go through that in less than an hour, not much of interest, and not much Developer artwork. The Challenges are okay but wildly impractical. The offline content is sparse. So I don't think a lot went into that. A sizable chunk went into the filters for sure. But compare the online to other games on GGPO and it's severely lackluster. I played Last Blade 2, Alpha 2, etc with dudes in Japan of all places and it felt like it was offline and this is without Ponder needing the source code of those games to tinker with them.

I honestly don't think they tested the online very much. did they setup a connection between the U.S. and Japan offices? And who is Floe, who supposedly helped the team out a lot? Are they referring to that large white guy by the name of Floe who's playing MVC3 and AE now? Because I never knew he played 3S. I don't think many others knew that. Why not involved Kuroda? I mean, of all people you could get involved in such a project why not the best player in the world? Not a Kuroda fanboy but if you ask around it's a pretty common consensus. I mean, there's so many other wrong decisions for the online that just creates a perfect storm of wrongness. It got me thinking about KOF13.

KOF13 looks badass, I'm with everyone else in hoping that the netcode is going to be good. But I don't know. I'm really hoping that the netcode is good enough to play the Mexicans and the rest of South America. That is where the competition is going to be. And I hope that SNKP/Atlus recognizes this and lets us see the regions of other players and that it's a good connection. Otherwise what's the point? We're just going to be playing the same horde of SF4 players and have random connections where sometimes it's good and sometimes it's complete shit.

I mean, without that high level competition than what's the point? If I'm spending my time fucking around online and trying to make impractical combo videos with human dummies than I could take that time and energy and put it into something better.

In sum: 3SOE sucks. Patching might fix the variety of problems but this is Capcom...

[Running Wild]

Yeah, I gotta kinda agree. No wonder people on GGPO are invading the Karnov room, because it was more playable on your computer than on a console lol.

Oh well, I got EGS coming up tomorrow night, finally some offline competition.

[LouisCipher]

I'm envious dude. September is pretty fucked up for me, I'm trying to save cash and get this film up and going. Maybe October? I don't know. I'm not going to let the SF4 retards put me off of my favorite fighter.

[IceWater]

Wait until the ranked mode gets patched and I think you're going to enjoy 3soe more. Once you get to a high rank and go make a player match lobby scrubs will avoid you like the plague. The downside of course is that you have to wait for someone looking for a challenge to show up, but it's worth waiting around a while to get some good matches in imo. You can hunt for lobbies with high rank players and find some good matches too. Not to say rank in this game means anything since you can just grind to get where you want, but it does require some dedication at least.

As far as connections go I had a far easier time finding good ones on ggpo, the only decent solution really is to just not settle for anything less than green. It's a pain in the ass when it already takes long enough just to find a match though. The most annoying thing that seems to happen to me frequently online is when I go to do short, short, super with dudley and even if the guy's blocking the first short will make a "hit" sound which is enough to make me go for the super usually even though I can see him blocking on screen...

Also the sf4 herd will migrate once another game comes out so we can look forward to that too.

[Xxenace]

i haven't touched the online myself since release and i too am still waiting for a fix or a patch or whatever ive played on ggpo a few times and have never had as much problems before

[DarKaoZ]

@LouisCipher:
There won't be a lagless fighter in Consoles for these reasons:

1. Companies need to use the Sony/MS servers.
2. GGPO PC is P2P, the servers serve for the chat and others details for what I know.
3. The game needs to be programmed with lag in mind, hence BB doing wonders online, but the frame specific stuff won't work that well online.
4. GGPO can't grab as much resources as it needs in consoles like it does in PCs.
5. Lots of Console users, mostly PS3 and new 360 model owners, play wireless, which will cause lag.

All these reasons might be the cause or they might not, I'm not sure, but for a while now I was just waiting for a game to use GGPO in consoles to know if "GGPO" was the "save it all" netcode. And it seems it isn't the case, for X or Y reasons, which can be argued.

@IceWater: Ranks means nothing IMO, I have fought guys who are rank 15 and I managed to beat them with no problem. And my Makoto is bad IMO, since I can't do Kara-Karakusa and other more technical Makoto stuff. But the main problem is that Capcom did a shitty job on the online menus, here are some things they were missing:

1. Select criteria before searching for Ranking matches, like Connection type, rank, etc etc. (This was in SF4 vanilla!)
2. The option to Make or search for Ranked matches.
3. Ones the search is done, let you select your opponent.
4. Put a damn tip or hint to tell people "if you want to avoid lag, play against yellow or green PING opponents".
5. Give NUMBER PING and SYMBOL PING, why can't we have both? Is not like it takes too much space.

Anyways, Capcom didn't do a good job IMO, but can't say any developers has done it too. The closest must be BBCT, but that is my opinion.

[sibarraz]

We demand too much on online play for fighting games, but the thing, is still on diapers and darkaoz made the best points

Plus, I can't see why everybody bitch about scrubs, I'm one on 33, but some players who know how to play this game, and that's a better attitude that just wanting to go straight to the best ones

Sometimes you need to beat the shit out of those guys to turn them off, or to make them better

[Mr Bakaboy]

For all intensive purposes online fighting games are still in it's infancy. Consoles only started in 2003 (CVS2 god that was a headache), and before then on computers it was even worse. Compared to then the matches are above and beyond better then what we started with.

The companies have only really gotten serious about putting out a decent online match since Street Fighter IV came out and the market exploded. Before then we were such a small deomgraphic that we needed to shut up and accept whatever we got.

The technology needs to catch up enough to get the connections we all want. If you're asking for a flawless match with someone who had shit for internet speed then good luck, but as the technology advances and everyone can use an internet that can handle that demands of a fighting game then we can be more serious about matches.

It annoys me cause of family issues and health problems, I can really no longer get out and play offline. Online is my only solstice, so I understand the frustration. However I feel hopefully we are probably only 5 years or so away from it IMO. Just hope the fighting market holds up till then.

[LouisCipher]

Even though I didn't buy that Color Pack DLC (waste of money) I'm still seeing those colors online, which I was under the impression that you couldn't see them in any capacity unless you paid for them. So yeah, my eyes are just being continiously tortured with Wario-Colored Dudley's.

And still no patch. GJ Capcom, give us hideously ugly DLC and no patch. Classy.

[LouisCipher]

I should say one thing: If you manage to get a good connection with someone decent, the connection is DAMN good and better than GGPO. But man when you get a bad connection you sure as fuck feel it harder than on GGPO.

[Mr Bakaboy]

Yeah noticed that. Was really surprised the good connection stayed pretty stable. Played a good connection on Supercade and never felt comfortable parrying in a match. It would be nice though if you didn't have to wait 10-30 seconds to find out if the opponent has a good connection.

[LouisCipher]

Patch is out on PSN. Online still sucks. Urge to kill rising.

[Xxenace]

Patch is out on PSN. Online still sucks. Urge to kill rising.

i have a sword that i can let you borrow

[DarKaoZ]

Patch is out on PSN. Online still sucks. Urge to kill rising.

I was about to come here and say "Online is still the same to me".

I have yet to play someone with Green bars, seriously, that is weird.

[LouisCipher]

It gets weirder. I'm on East Coast, I've completed the Grinder achievement and have played over 2500 Matches and do you know how many Green Connections I found? Three. Two of which were at more than one point Yellow and were still laggy.