Fighting game with the best (performing) online mode?

Hello everyone, I’ve always been interested in fighting games and had a desire to get good at them. My main issue is that I haven’t had anyone available to play one with since high school.

Now that I’m out of college and have some more time on my hands (and money to finally mod my SE stick), I’m trying to decide on a game. The main three I’ve been looking at are UMvC3, BlazBlue, and KOF XIII. I own SF:AE, and it’s fun enough, but I prefer the crazy style of the three games I pointed out, and I like their roster of characters better.

Of the three I’m leaning away from UMvC3, just because from the videos I’ve watched that game looks really difficult to learn.

What it really comes down to though is which one has the best online mode. I have a PS3 and an Xbox (my arcade stick is for Xbox, but I have a converter for PS3), so the system doesn’t matter much to me. I’d like to pick out a game that runs pretty stable with as little lag as possible, and a decent number of people online to play with.

I’m not sure if there’s a general consensus on which one is the best in that category. Having done some reading it looks like KOF is kind of unstable and doesn’t have many people playing, which is unfortunate because I love the roster in that game. The population issue might be changing given how much hype it got an EVO, but that could just make the lag worse.

Anyway, does anyone have enough experience with any or all of these to say how good/bad they are relative to each other?

I understand that only playing online mode won’t let me ever reach my highest potential, but I probably won’t ever go to a tournament anyway.

GGPO on PC.

Thanks for pointing that out to me - I’d never heard of it before.

Looks like I might be purchasing Skullgirls or Third Strike. Having a hard time finding a full list of supported games.

Why is it that this free tool is so great but companies actually selling fighting games can’t create a good online environment? I mean, who in their right mind releases a multiplayer game with bad online these days.

edit: It looks like the actual retail release versions of third strike and skullgirls use GGPO behind the scenes? Is it safe to say the online for those two games is quite good, or does the fact that’s it’s going through whatever Live and PSN use make it bad?

Well I don’t have Blazblue or KOXIII so I can’t comment on their netcode although the general consensus for XIII is that the netcode is pretty bad.
UMvC3 has VERY laggy netcode and input delay but is always active just because its Marvel 3.
IMO, Virtua Fighter 5, SFxT, Skullgirls have good or decent netcodes, Third Strike is good as long as you find someone with a decent connection.

pre-patch t6

I don’t have any personal experience with BlazBlue but I hear the netcode is good. UMvC3 netcode is bad though, and KoFXIII is really bad. Since you already have SSF4AE, I won’t recommend SFxT despite its great netcode. It’s a pretty bad game though, but that’s a matter of opinion.

Currently the best netcode out there is that of Skullgirls. It just blows everything else away by such a large amount as long as you have decent Internet. 95% of the matches I play are offline quality, with only a few having barely noticeable frame skips. The key is manually filtering for good connections, but post-patch those shouldn’t be hard to find.

Third Strike also runs on GGPO, but that is a lot more questionable on consoles. From my experience, you really need excellent internet so you can actually get matched up with good connections. The netcode quality itself is a lot less unstable than Skullgirls and hardly better than SSF4. Again though, this is just from my experience.

Out of the three, DEFINATELY blazblue.
Yes, I am a blazblue “fanboy” maybe, if you judge me from my avatar, but trust me.

uMVC3’s netcode is not much better from the original so I heard and that one was not good.
KOFXIII’s netcode is horrible.

Out of the 3 games you mention, I can definately say without a doubt in my mind that BB has the best netcode.

CS : EX has really good netcoding.

Blazblue easily.

Thanks for all the responses. I’m hearing BlazBlue, which sounds great to me. I loved Guilty Gear back in high school. I’ve also done some research and I see skullgirls is supposed to come out on Steam later this month, so I think I’m going to pick up both of those. May get Marvel later on just to mess around on.

For all of you saying BlazBlue, do you have an opinion on which console I should get it for? Does it run better on one or have a larger community on one?

@Tataki: Your signature is great. Pretty much the exact thought process I went through when deciding if I wanted to play SF or not.

VF5 has the best netcode ever
also BB is bigger on PS3 basically anything non capcom is bigger on ps3

IIRC aren’t SC5 and VF5 FS supposed to have pretty damn good online? If so I could see them being pretty high (near BB level).
I’m not sure where MK is (wasn’t released in Aus), or Skullgirls (I hear online is pretty good however due to GGPO) is though.

List proably looks something like this.
1.(Best) PC GGPO.
2. BlazBlue CS Extend.
3. VF5?
4. SC5?
5. SF3 3SOE.
6. SSF4 AE v.2012.
7. SFxT.
8. (Worst) UMVC3/KOF 13.

BlazBlue, Arcana Heart 3, VF5 and Skullgirls have the best netplay IMO even with bad pings it is really good

3rd Strike OE, SC5 and SF4 is alright best with good pings

KOF13 and MVC3 is probably the worst best play with 3 bars or better

I can only go buy the games I have played online.

The SC5 and Skullgirls seems to be the best, with AH3 and BB being close seconds. Almost never had a bad game with these games.

SF4 and family is ok. Have had some bad ones. UMvC3 is pretty decent…

Worst was Brawl, MvC2, and TvC, but brawl was much worse. with TvC, you had a 50/50 chance of a good or bad one. MvC2 the issue was finding people.

From best to worst…
[LIST=1]
[]Blazblue CS Extend
[
]PC GGPO
[]AH3
[
]VF5FS
[]3SOE
[
]SSFIV:AE v.2012
[]KoF XIII
[
]MK9 (after all of the “netplay improvement” patches)
[]UMvC3
[
]PC Melty Blood Actress Again: Current Code (T_T)
[/LIST]
Arc System Works has been pretty well-known for having amazing netcode since the first Blazblue, so it’s pretty safe to say that Persona 4 Arena will be somewhere near the top of the list when it launches.

the Blazblue Series, Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown, Arcana Heart 3, Soul Calibur V, Skullgirls
and in a weird case, Mortal Kombat 9, my online experience have been good with it.

Didn’t we have this exact same thread months ago?

That said, here’s the tier list from April.

S-tier:

[LIST]
[]Skullgirls
[/LIST]
A-tier:
[LIST]
[
]HDR
[]MvC2
[
]3SOE
[]SFxT
[/LIST]
B-tier
[LIST]
[
]Blazblue
[/LIST]
C-tier
[LIST]
[]SFIV
[
]MvC3
[]SCV
[/LIST]
D-tier
[LIST]
[
]MK9
[*]KoFXIII
[/LIST]
General rule is that you need to have rollback netcode to be A-tier and above.

EDIT: Matchmaking was never considered.

If this is the general rule to have rollback, why nearly everybody is saying that Blazblue got the best netcode ?

Just wondering.

Really surprised more people haven’t mentioned this more.

its dev, if its not GGPO or rollback at least he doesn’t care