I believe the big problem with online in SSF4 may have to do with the way the matching is done when you search for lobbies. When you seek people from Region/Same, does it search for people all over North America or it search people based on the geographical info you submitted to your XBOX / PS account (like people from your state or states close to yours)? It should be the second one, but I don’t think it is.
Maybe Capcom should include a map divided by big regions (it may go across country borders) in the game. Before playing online for the first time you should pick a region (where you live) that will be assigned a number. When you search lobbies Region/Same, you’ll be looking for people of that number. You could also make some custom selections if other regions work just fine.
Even staying within regions, you’re going to get pings that add input lag to games with netcode that does that. I remember playing a game with a friend who is just down the street and getting a ping of 23. I’ve never seen anyone online with a ping less than 37, and I’ve got the fastest cable connection available in the area. So, that’s 1 frame for a case that was artificially good (with someone who will never play me in a fighting game), and 2 frames for the best case I’ve ever seen. It’s kind of sad, since I was watching the video of Japanese players playing HDR and they were getting pings of 15.
But still, regions help a lot. Newbie question: can GGPO, for example, support lagless gameplay all across North America? Because it won’t help if a guy in Tijuana keeps getting lobbies of people from faraway places like Quebec or the East Coast if they lag.
regions do not help ssf4. I live in Pensacola, FL and I have friends that live in Jacksonville, FL. When sf4 first dropped, I did play quite hard for a few months and I would routinely play my friends from there a few times a week. we’re only 350 ish miles apart. That is still the same region and I noticed some pretty bad input lag. This is playing @ least 5-6 different people via xbl so it got more than 1 test
However, I can go from Pensacola to Miami on GGPO and its pretty good even though its double the distance from Jacksonville FL.
You can’t expect someone from Miami to have a great connection to Japan. That won’t probably happen in our life times however, GGPO can go 3-4x the distance than ssf4 can online and still remain playable w\o ANY input lag becoming a factor. You can’t even go 10miles in the USA for ssf4 before it starts adding 2-5+frames of input lag, its fucking trash.
For those wanting to know how well GGPO runs online, I can ALMOST player anyone in the USA. I’m about 400 miles from the atlantic ocean so my area so I’m really close to the East coast. I can ALMOST play Cali from where I live. The game rolls back and there are some dropped input but you’re talking like what, 2000+ miles? maybe more? but on ssf4, I can’t even go fucking 350?
look how VAST the difference is. Its fucking HUGE!!! 1 net code almost allows a 2000+ miles connection to be playable where as the other, it gets unstable once you pass 250-300 miles.
The problem is that Capcom is still making these games in the arcade mindset, with the added detriment of only thinking about Japan. Good netcode is an afterthought, since virtually any netcode is good enough for Japan.
And, TBH, netcode might just keep me from playing this game. If the game is shitty online, I’m seriously considering not playing it, considering that ONLINE IS A HUGE FUCKING DEAL FOR A MULTIPLAYER GAME.
Warning: Personal rant ahead.
I love(d) the arcade experience. Playing against your friends, against regulars that were your “rivals,” coming across the “new guy” you’ve never seen before but he’s really good, playing against newbies that want to learn the game, playing scrubs and mashers that don’t know what they’re doing but you don’t mind them adding to your winstreak anyway, traveling to nearby arcades for more comp and more experience, etc. And it wasn’t about leveling up to play in some tourney. Most of my die-hard arcade rat friends never even thought about tourneys, even though we could’ve (and probably should’ve) played in a lot more than we did. No, it was all about the fun. The experience. And it was awesome.
In the console era, going over and playing with a few friends at someone’s house is cool, but it’s just not the same. You miss the new competition and the chance to play against new strats. You don’t have the same rivalry among regulars. In my earnest opinion, the only thing that comes close to that old experience is online play. It’s not “in person”, which sucks, but you have the same wide pool of competition. You still have your friends that you can play whenever they’re on. You still have those regulars that you see constantly and can’t stand their lame-ass play. You still run into those promising newbies. You still have a sea of scrubs. And I see this online in all games of varying populations. The obvious problem is the games that are supposed to benefit most from this new environment (popular fighters) have such awful, unreliable netcode that they stifle true competitive improvement AND hinder general enjoyment. And after doing the console get-together for years to level up for some monthly or quarterly tourney, I want that simple old arcade experience back. SFII wasn’t huge because people wanted to play in tourneys; it was huge partly because of the arcade experience. It would behoove these Japanese devs to realize that “online” is the new arcade in this Western world.
All I know is if MvC3 would’ve had the GGPO that’s available now, I wouldn’t be able to connect to people who live 15 miles away from me, but be able to connect to people from across the country with 120 ping :tdown: