Just curious fairly new to the fighting game scene and I really love AE but I dont play offline so Im pretty interested in the online side of things. Sometimes it feels like I should just play games like dota where online play is pretty much the same as offline unlike fighting games where lag completely changes everything. But I love fighting games so much. Just wondering what GGPO is like. Is it really as lag free as some people say? Is it much better than AE netcode ? Will most games have GGPO type netcode in the future? Anyone think Guilty Gear XRD will have this type of netcode ? Its the next game Im hugely interested in besides USF4 which I dont think will have it.
GGPO for me is great, but certainly it’s not perfect; but, a large factor involves mainly the actual connections each person has than the netcode itself. For Neogeo games like KOF98, I can play to Japan/Korea/Taiwan without any latency and feel this way up to 160ish MS. For games like Third Strike which isn’t perfectly integrated with GGPO, my threshold for GGPO is below 100 MS, otherwise the connection is funky. The thing with SFIVAE for me is that there aren’t really hard numbers to say how much latency there is, but I have more overall “lagless” smooth connections and easier to find connections (for KOF98) on GGPO than for SFIV and its match-making. The nice thing is when I connect to a person on GGPO, I can rematch immediately rather than being sent back to a lobby or have to sit for a while until I can get another ranked game, play that person once, then they disappear forever without getting more familiar with their play style regardless if I win or lose.
In regards to newer games using GGPO, I have no clue and there doesn’t seem to be evidence to infer that these companies would use GGPO with newer games. I heard that SNKP was able to integrate GGPO into the netcode of the Steam version of Metal Slug 3, but I haven’t personally confirmed it. Even if it is true, I don’t know if that is a real indicator that their next fighting game would have GGPO.
It might not necessarily be GGPO, but it is absolutely rollback based. Unfortunately, at least the last time I played it, they didn’t seem to work out synch issues and you would get desynched often. There might have been an update that fixed it, which would be great because the online is really good besides the desynchs, but that was my last experience with the game.
Short version is, GGPO is rollback-based, and SF4 isn’t. This means that when there is lag in an SF4 match, the game and inputs start to slow down and when there’s a laggy connection in a GGPO match, it tends to skip frames, but stay closer to the original game speed.
When either one gets bad, it’s pretty bad. But IMO GGPO is way better in general, give or take some 3S issues.
BTW- wifi connections are sub-optimal. FYI.
After playing the new patch version of 3SO, going back and trying to play SF4 online is really difficult, even when the connection is decent. 
GGPO isn’t perfect… it’s pretty good, but there is no substitute for offline. Stop being a cave troll and just go out and play some games. There are many benefits from playing offline other than the lack of lag - e.g. you will most likely level up way faster if you have some people giving you advice as you play.
ggpo is good for what it is. netcode that make playing fighter a little more bearable but as other have said. its no substitute for offline.
You can play US to UK fairly well on GGPO something that’s just not possible in SF4, obviously its never going to be as good as offline but its waaaayyyy better than SF4 netcode.
having played both AE and SF3 GGPO for a very long time, i prefer the GGPO netcode much more. As long as you limit your opponents to those with under 100ms ping, there’s virtually no lag at all
The important thing to note is that what GGPO (and rollback netcode in general) does is not totally eliminate network delay. Rather, it makes it so that you can set a fixed level of delay, allowing you to, for the most part, retain your timing as if the game were offline. Compare this to delay based netcode such as SFIVs where the delay changes dynamically depending on the network condition, this has a tendency to ruin your timing because it can change mid match or even mid combo.
yes, because everyone is lining up to play gem fighters, xvsf, mvc1, msh, kof 2002, kof 98, garou, last blade, sf alpha, sf alpha 2, alpha 3, etc… at locals on a laptop (most likely). be quiet forever.
that aside, ggpo has always been great for me with friends, and is heaven sent for someone who came up in the earlier ages of fighting games.
This is EXACTLY why I bring my laptop to my local meetups.
OP specifically mentioned AE and Xrd… shouldn’t be much trouble finding locals for those. Xrd should be pretty big.
I use dreamcast for offline games. Yesterday, after 10 years, we played some soulcalibur with my brother.
game felt like new…
But for online, ggpo offer the best meams both for games and communication. If you include videochat, its even better.
I could play those games on a 5 year old netbook too with 10’- monitor. A toshiba nb100, sturdy as ever.
But those mushy tiny keyboard keys are too much for me to bear…
In comparison, GGPO is much better. Like other people said though, it’s not perfect. Sometimes when I play in the A3 room, it’ll run smoothly for the most part, then some choppiness might come out of nowhere leaving both of you like wtf? But in my experience, it doesn’t last very long and it goes back to running smoothly again in the long run.
ggpo compared to sf4 is in a different league. What sf4 does online goes back to 98-02 type of net-codes and even games from around the same time had abandoned that type of net-code use as counter strike had a roll back net-code. I wasn’t too surprised that in 2k9\2k10, Capcom released 2 games in sf4\mvc3 to use net-code styles from the previous decade.
I’m kind of sad that with all these tweaks to sf4, not one time did the casual market complain about the net-code in the game and would much rather complain about balance changes over the quality of the net-play. I had complained about it endlessly when the game first dropped but was more or less mocked for stating facts but that is what you get when you let idiots join an intelligent conversation.
combofiend\developers read the forums all the time but because of how many regular players want to express their opinion, the veteran concerns get lumped in with the casual concerns too and that ends up hurting us all.
no net-code can be ''perfect", its stupid to expect that. What the community SHOULD expect though is developers getting as close to perfect as possible which games like skull girls do an amazing job of. Say what you want about the design or game itself, the net-code is probably the best online for a fighter to date and it’s really sad a 3rd party developer can do a better job than these multi-million dollar companies. In fact, I find it extreme funny that 2 members of srk know what the community wants more than the company that supplies the actual games.
GGPO is better just coz matches are with people way further away from you.
Mexico mostly. Playing Mexicans from the northeast usa is gonna have lots of lag if you are on AE.
Im a little worried when SFUltra PC switches from GFWL to Steam. Because what I’ve seen of Steam netcode with KOFXIII I’m not impressed.
Metal Slug 3’s netcode (GGPO itself) > KOF XIII’s netcode (optimized p2p) > SF4’s netcode (p2p), but not by far in the last case.
In fairness, Capcom did start to develop their own rollback netcode with SFxT. But the game hasn’t been well accepted by the community. Also, updating the netcode for Ultra would probably not work with it being a downloadable update.
Steam isn’t netcode, it’s a content distribution and matchmaking platform.
If you don’t like KoF’s netcode, blame SNK, not valve.