Great theory.
I agree about Fight Req. being stupid as well.
Last night was bucket. 
Despite lag being visibly low, spikes and slowdown made shit unplayable.
Explain.
When I first got SFIV, what I did was I would actually go and actively search for my matches. I’m really picky so I only go for connections that show four bar or more so needless to say, I didn’t find that many fights for a good 20-30 minutes sometimes with the same old, “Unable to Play” or “Game is Currently Full” crap. If they can’t play or they’re already full, why do they even bother listing them? They need to make a list that actively refreshes itself or something.
Awhile later, I started doing matches via arcade requests. You definitely find a ton more people really fast. Sometimes I get challenges before the arcade match even begins. It was good, for awhile. But that was also short-lived when I started noticing that over 50% of the people who challenge me are 1-bar connections.
What I do now is I simply go onto the mode I want and I search using Quick Matches, then start challenging people with blank connections. The blanks actually aren’t all that bad. After doing it for awhile, I’ve come to realize that blank != bad connection, it just means it can’t be displayed. Sometimes I run into a couple of bad ones, but other times I’ve stumbled upon 5-bars and lagless 3-bars
So in light of the heavily rumored SF4 Dash I will take all of the suggestions we all want for the next SF online experience and place it in the first post. Maybe someone on the dev team will eventually hear us. Thank you all for your input, and keep the great posts coming.
If I’m unable to play someone why show it? If I’m unable to play someone why do they keep reappearing in my search. You guys are right, the match making (or lack thereof) was not thought out. I love how we call it match making when in reality we are the ones doing the match making and the sf4 online system just gets in the way lol.
Speak of the Devil. Posted recently on DSP’s youtube channel.
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BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE!
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Ken’s jumping jab beats a DP from Ryu?
ppl need to portforward properly - or put ps3/xbox on a dmz - use wired connections and stop brwosing, downloading while playing
that will fix a lot of things
You guys are doing it wrong.
Just go to arcade mode and select challenge. The most you will ever wait is 1 match vs. the CPU. And while your waiting you can practice your execution.
When you go to find matches it’s hard because by the time the server has refreshed those dudes are already being set up in matches. Playing arcade mode bypasses this bull shat.
It’s a nice bonus to be able to practice execution on the CPU in between fights. Set it to easiest and you basically have a training mode dummy in between rounds.
Or just host for crying out loud.
I wish more people would realize this.
People think you need 5mbps up/down to get perfect connections and avoid lag spikes. You don’t.
Lobbies, where are they? Wow capcom 
facepalm
Why are you bashing fight request? It is BY FAR the easiest and quickest way to get a match. The most I have EVER waited was 2 rounds against an easy computer.
All fight request does is create a lobby for you and search for other open lobbies that would work for you. I just pick a character I’m trying to get better with and toy around in arcade until I get challenged.
Btw, there is no time that “NEW CHALLENGER” cannot pop up. I’ve had it pop on transitions, during the match, during the KO animation. If anything, there’s mere seconds that the game cannot accept a challenge just because it’s loading.
Stop complaining and go search for matches the correct way: fight request. Maybe you’ll have more luck.
I know most of you know this, but I am gonna mention it because I didn’t realize it at first.
When you select quick match, etc. You get 3 results. The little white antennae icons will blink until the connection bars appear. So you might get 2 blinkers and one that isn’t blinking. Never click on one that isn’t /didn’t blink. Sometimes none of them blink, then you can immediately exit and search again.
Again, don’t click on the ones that don’t blink. This saves you from quite a lot of “unable to play”.
I get that message time to time, obviously the PSN’s fault, nothing you can do about it. >_>
This is mainly why I just do create a match and kick people who dare try and challenge me with one bar connections. I love the guys with crap connections who try to challenge you multiple times and you have to keep kicking em. I wish the game would remember which people you kick so you don’t have to kick them over and over. I know other Xbox Live games are able to do this.
Yup it’s a bitch trynna find a game, so annoying.
My main concern with online is the way ranked matches work.
I’m fine with the idea of gaining less points for winning against someone with low BP, and risking losing a lot by losing to that person. However, the amounts that are at stake here are incredibly unbalanced.
If I’m at 1500+, and I play someone who is in the 200-500 range, I’m risking losing around 100 BP, while if I win I would only gain 5-8.
I’d be mostly okay with this except for the fact that there’s no way to determine out of the players who are listed for games, WHO YOU’RE MAKING THOSE RISKS AGAINST. You go into a game not having any idea if the person you’re playing has 0, 500, 1000, 4000, or 10,000 BP, and you won’t know until the game is over.
This may not be as true on consoles, but on PC, potentially because it’s newer, this leads to a lot of “Wow, this guy is obviously good and has been playing for a while, but just started so he only has 300 BP.” But then they have the potential to own you due to prior experience, while the system says “Sorry you just lost to a player who is far below your skill level, you lose 115 BP”.
This mostly annoyed me the other day, where I played for a few hours, and my record was somewhere in the range of 25-7. At the start of the day I was at 1800. Midway I was at 2050. Then 4-5 losses later I’m at 1600.
I never play people with 2 or 3 bar connections. 1 bar connections are fine for the most part, my friends always end up as red 1 bar connections even when the game turns out to be totally lag free. Just watch out for people with weird names since they might actually be from far away and actually deserve that red bar. Names like bonjong or Aeegil1333 are big nonoes.
Also, requesting games is the shit. As some people have mentioned before you just start a new arcade mode game (I often choose very hard) and get in there. Championship requests will give you a game almost instantly (at least on PC). And if you lost the game you just played or just had a real tense fight it’s nice to just go pick on some computerized guy that really can’t defend himself against your scrubby jumpins (we all love to do them, don’t we?). Great way to get that frustration away and prepare for a new loss.
Impossible to block online. and last week I played a match against an akuma. and he had about 20% life left. It was final round we each had one round. I had a good 60% life and sitting on my lead. He went to demon flip and I fierce DP’d. So I think ok, FADC, ultra for the win. I FADC. input my ultra motion. but no. WAIT. LAG? So my ultra comes out a second late and akuma hits the floor before my ultra can juggle him back up. I’m in the air doing a shinryuken and the akuma calmly backs up a bit, waits for me to land, and I eat a full Demon for the loss. <3 Online.
I feel the need to vent as well. PS3 network is total crap and day by day I wish I had gone 360. I really do hope Sony fails and gets bombed or something just because of my frustrations with SF4. I can only see 1 or 2 games per screen, the connection is crap, I almost always get lag, so I have to just create my own games and hope for the best.
I think the angriest I get is when I play on my PS3. I already broke my right trigger from a mild throw. One day I will chuck that fucking controller against the fridge and be done with it.
Arcade > *
that to me is the most painful part of looking for matches.
I actually have a powerdrill next to me while looking for online matches and everyday I contemplate “How bad do I really hate this music?” while looking at said drill.
The thing that really pisses me off is when people are “away” for several minutes/hours they keep popping up with decent connections and there’s no way to get rid of them.
Some dickhead was away for 23 hours yesterday