Ditto. The netcode was/is very good (not sure whether it was better or worse than GGPO), and the overall implementation is WAY better (number of games supported, stats tracking, UI, tournaments, etc.)
I’ve played GGPO and both HDR platforms extensively (as well as semi-frequent offline play on arcade and DC versions) and GGPO is much more accurate for me. 2DF’s netcode (to say nothing of the superior interface) is a bit worse than GGPO’s but certainly better than HDR’s.
GGPO surprisingly isn’t stable either (crashes just as often and sometimes doesn’t connect right) but when it gets going, it’s a whole generation smoother. On HDR, it’s laggy when I play someone from the WC. On GGPO, I normally don’t feel a noticeable difference between coasts as long as the other player isn’t on a shoddy connection. On GGPO, I can play Japan with lag. On HDR, everybody in Japan semi-teleports and it’s pretty much unplayable. GGPO netcode isn’t perfect (I wouldn’t ever trust it to provide more than an approximation of overall skill) but it’s a lot closer to real life.
In addition to the lag, a lot of the difference depends on the tactics you use and how much precision it requires. For instance (one example I’ve mentioned a few times here before), I depend on claw’s wall dives against Zangief. I need a few frames to react to what the Zangief player does. On HDR, it’s almost all anticipation; I can’t respond at all to what the other player does and I’m blindly throwing out wall dives. On GGPO/2DF, I can normally react in time to throw out a wall dive at the right moment but if there’s a bit of extraneous lag, my strategy doesn’t work. In real life, I can almost always react in time and have proven this in real matches.
Now, claw doesn’t have to use wall dives in that matchup but that’s my defining strategy and it’s worked effectively against all the best Zangief players in the US (hence why they all have backup characters). And it works most of the time on GGPO. But it really doesn’t work well at all against good Zangief players on HDR. I have a quite a bit more trouble against them on HDR that doesn’t occur on GGPO (nothing to do with knockdowns or c.HP hitboxes).
I wouldn’t mind proving this to anybody who wants to see for themselves but really, it’s very noticeable. Just ask someone who plays on HDR and GGPO to try both one after another and the difference in overall lag and execution should immediately stand out. And that’s how I can ignore ponder’s politically-oriented sales pitch (sure, relative to the very poor netcode found in most previous fighters, GGPO is “only slightly better” than HDR) and easily determine for myself which netcode is better than another and by how much.
^^^ Agreed. GGPO net code is better than HDRs. It deosn’t mean much, considering t the move to HDR, but I have noticed it. My Xbox started flashing the ROD and I sent it off to get fixed. In the mean time I hoped on GGPO, and wow… You can see the improvement in net play.
I never played on 2d, are there still ppl playing ST there?
Not as much as there used to be, but there’s still people. Its probably why I never saw any of you because I always played on that before HDR.