Topic: Wi-Fi Battles Re-Confirmed for SSB Brawl

[planetidiot]

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Originally posted by: darknight06

As far as FC go, at this point if you're still aching over it you've got two other alternatives.  Either use them or pipe down.  Nobody ever said this was gonna be X-Box Live on the Wii to begin with and you know damn well a company like Nintendo ain't footing the bill for something like it.

Or continue to complain about it.  If Nintendo listens to the community at all, "piping down" isn't going to change anything.  And if they don't, making noise will let people know what they're in for.  I'm not going to pretend to be happy about it.  

I don't expect them to build live in a day, and they don't even have to build 10% of it.  But I already have a friend list on my Wii, I already entered everyone's codes.  There's no reason not to let me see a list of my friends who have the game, and check who I want to play with.  It's just like entering friend codes except it's one click and I don't have to email everyone I know asking if they bought the game or not, write down a 16 digit number and punch it in and hope they get around to doing the same. It's an unnecessary hassle and nobody is "happy" with it.  Maybe it doesn't bother everyone, but typing in a 16 digit number is not on anyone's list of things they want to do with their time.

Or how about doing both?  Enter friend codes for the potential weirdo internet pedos and just use the system friend list for people you actually know?  

There's any number of solutions.  Nintendo is rolling in cash.  They claim to want to continue to provide new things.  Everyone is screaming for decent online.  And then there's this:

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Satoru Iwata:

"I believe my most important role right now is to prevent Nintendo from being in a company where people say, 'Oh, Nintendo is arrogant', 'Nintendo has let its guard down', or 'Nintendo has lost its challenging spirit'. We want to avoid all of the pitfalls that can come from losing one's momentum."

"...we have no intention of abandoning our core players and the people who have been Nintendo fans over the course of our history... we really believe that part of our mission is to make traditional games for our traditional audience."

I'd like to read this with some degree of hope for a decent online setup in the future, among other things.  Anything less would be letting their guard down, backing away from a challenge and losing momentum.  I have a lot of reasons why I don't want a 360, but HD graphics and kick ass online are extremely tempting.

[miedo]

I'm kind of hoping that friend list import feature from Corruption is used in Brawl.  That would save me time.

[Neodymium]

Friend codes. No communication.

Like a monkey without a cowboy suit.

Edit: All these people who actually thik friend codes "save teh kids lives" would be well-advised to consider the existence of Xbox Live and the lack of communication that those 18-and-under "enjoy" by default unless parental controls change that situation. Wii should, very simply, utilize the same parental controls and universal username setup. No, friend codes are not a dealbreaker, but that does not mean they do not suck. They most assuredly do. This is the end of it. Nintendo dictates we'll have our friend codes and (kind of) like it. This does not make them necessary or wise.

[MaryJane]

Why must people always nitpick? The big story here is that SSB is going to be online!

Nintendo's online policy is different then Microsoft's and Sony's, get over it. Despite what we want Nintendo to be they are a family company who would like to avoid lawsuits for endagering minors with their online system. I've been wanting online play since the 64 for SSB now that we got it, I see no reason to complain. If Nintendo said that to help pay server bills SSB is going to cost $100 I'd be like o.k, I'll pay that, but no, all they ask instead is that we take 1 - 3 minutes out of our lives to register friend codes, for the small privelege of seeing your opponents name, and sending them taunts. If you don't like friend codes don't use them, the option is there to just have random battles, you just can't send taunts or see the name... is that really all that important?? I don't think it is personally, although I would have liked rankings for the random battles, perhaps seperate from friend codes rankings, but it should still be there, but the fact that it isn't, isn't going to affect my decision to buy the game, neither is using friend codes going to affect anyone elses decisions, it sucks but when you think of the game you get to play the fact that it FINALLY has online capabilities, really what does it matter? This is a dream come true for so many, but it isn't perfect, hell what in life is perfect?

Anyway, using friend codes will build up online communities for this game, unintentionally(perhaps not) social networking has also been added to SSB. For us on these boards we can set up matches, tournaments, and (if NWR is as cool as they are ) possibly have prize oriented tournaments. Then we can easily talk smack on the boards here and do so many other things that I can't even think of right now.

This a great announcement, don't mar it by disparaging about the friend code system, which we already know sucks from using the DS and the few other online Wii games.

[SixthAngel]

I swear I am going to reach through the internet and strangle the next person who tries to tell me xbox live is better then a free service.  Go bitch about having to type in numbers for 1 minute all you want but stop trying to pretend xbox live is special because it is not.  You say "they don't have to build 10% of it."  Nintendo offers FREE online play and somehow they aren't even 10% of p2p service that costs $50?  The only advantage that is even worth bringing up is voice chat.  How about everybody complains about that instead?

[Pale]

There's really no issue with the friend codes.  I will only have fun playing against people i really know anyway.

I do hope that they are holding back voice chat (at least between matches) for a future update though.

[planetidiot]

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Originally posted by: SixthAngel
I swear I am going to reach through the internet and strangle the next person who tries to tell me xbox live is better then a free service.  Go bitch about having to type in numbers for 1 minute all you want but stop trying to pretend xbox live is special because it is not.  You say "they don't have to build 10% of it."  Nintendo offers FREE online play and somehow they aren't even 10% of p2p service that costs $50?  The only advantage that is even worth bringing up is voice chat.  How about everybody complains about that instead?

Sure thing.  Why can't we have voice chat and one universal friend list?  No they aren't 10% of xbox live.  It's the most bare-bones lazy online system they could have possibly come up with.  Great, it's free.  I'll keep that in mind while I don't use it.  Don't get me wrong, I really like Nintendo.  And I really dislike Microsoft and the 360 for a number of reasons.  But anyone who tries to act like Live isn't the gold standard in online play is delusional or ignorant of what it can do.  Yeah, it's $50 a year and all reports point to it being worth every penny.  If Nintendo came out with a $50 a year service that did everything live does no one would be complaining.  I'd settle for a $5 service with one friend list and voice chat.  

[Gylldas]

"We’re planning a number of services that make use of Wi-Fi, but we’ll reveal them gradually with the other modes."

Keep in mind that we haven't heard everything quite yet
I hope this still means there's hope for online tournaments.

[Ian Sane]

Hey Nintendo didn't f*ck this up.  That's great!  Yeah there's friend codes but there's also a "play anyone" mode.  Sure a universal friend list is better but this is still way better than I expected from Nintendo.  Brawl seems to be very un-Nintendo-like in it's flexibility and I like it.  All controller options are included, four player online and it's more flexible than Nintendo usually is.  We're allowed to play against people in Japan with the risk of lag.  Do you realize how un-Nintendo-like that is?  Usually they would use an excuse like lag to prevent an option but here they're allowing us to deal with lag if we choose to.  The last time I saw that kind of flexibility in a Nintendo game was when Perfect Dark let you use 8 bots with four player multiplayer regardless of framerate problems.  Usually Nintendo limits things like that, even before they went non-gamer.

Now I just need some of my friends to actually, you know, buy Wii's.  Right now they all have to come to my house anyway so I don't have much use for this feature.

The best thing is online justifies the sequel.  I was worried Brawl would just be "more SSBM" as that game added so much that online play was the only thing I could think of to add to a sequel.

[shammack]

If Nintendo charged for online gaming, even if the service were as sophisticated as XBox Live, I'd never use it, because I just don't care enough about online for it to be worth paying for.  But if I can do it for free, sure I'll give it a shot.  Obviously the best thing would be a service as sophisticated as Live, for free, but that's probably not going to happen, and given the choice I'd rather go with the simpler, free option.  And in the long run that kind of accessibility is a good thing for advancing online gaming overall, because you're going to get more people into it.  Sure, it would be nice if it had a few more features, but I'm not going to complain about this service that I'm getting for nothing.

[planetidiot]

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Originally posted by: Gylldas
"We’re planning a number of services that make use of Wi-Fi, but we’ll reveal them gradually with the other modes."

Keep in mind that we haven't heard everything quite yet
I hope this still means there's hope for online tournaments.

Yeah, there's still hope for the future.  With such a huge title like this though I had hoped we'd see some of these new services.  Metroid Prime 3's auto detect friends thing really had me thinking that's where they were going with it.  

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Originally posted by: shammack
If Nintendo charged for online gaming, even if the service were as sophisticated as XBox Live, I'd never use it, because I just don't care enough about online for it to be worth paying for.  But if I can do it for free, sure I'll give it a shot.  Obviously the best thing would be a service as sophisticated as Live, for free, but that's probably not going to happen, and given the choice I'd rather go with the simpler, free option.  And in the long run that kind of accessibility is a good thing for advancing online gaming overall, because you're going to get more people into it.  Sure, it would be nice if it had a few more features, but I'm not going to complain about this service that I'm getting for nothing.

Well strictly looking at what Prime 3 already does, I don't see why they would need to charge for just looking at your friend list.  

[Caliban]

ONLINE B!TCHES WOOHOO!

This morning in class I was waiting for break just to see what the blog had today, when I read that it had online battles I looked at my class buddy and said "and the interwebs explodes".

OWNED!
HAHA!
NOOB!
MASSIVE DAMAGE!

[bubicus]

Whenever I play on Xbox Live, at least one 11-year-old with his mommy's credit card starts using swear words and racial epithets over the voice chat. I wouldn't want to play a fighting game like Smash Brothers Brawl in which I'd always hear people going, "Uhhh! Take that! And that, bitch! And THAT, sucka! Mmmm! Smackdown! In your face! C'mon ho, how do you like that, f**ker ass c*m sucker gong splitz forkle dip!!"

And please don't say, "Just mute the voice chat in the options." EVERYBODY is going to mute voice chat after experiencing a few rounds of that crap, so why even bother implementing it? Besides, voice chat is really only useful in team games. It's useless in deathmatch games, and SSBM is pretty much all deathmatch. Games like SSBM, when combined with taunting, are only fun when everybody is in the same room, because at least you can smack your friend in the face if he or she is getting too annoying.

[shammack]

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Originally posted by: planetidiot

Yeah, there's still hope for the future.  With such a huge title like this though I had hoped we'd see some of these new services.  Metroid Prime 3's auto detect friends thing really had me thinking that's where they were going with it.  

Agreed.  I have no idea why that's not how all online Wii games work.

[Pale]

Quote
Originally posted by: bubicus
Whenever I play on Xbox Live, at least one 11-year-old with his mommy's credit card starts using swear words and racial epithets over the voice chat. I wouldn't want to play a fighting game like Smash Brothers Brawl in which I'd always hear people going, "Uhhh! Take that! And that, bitch! And THAT, sucka! Mmmm! Smackdown! In your face! C'mon ho, how do you like that, f**ker ass c*m sucker gong splitz forkle dip!!"

And please don't say, "Just mute the voice chat in the options." EVERYBODY is going to mute voice chat after experiencing a few rounds of that crap, so why even bother implementing it? Besides, voice chat is really only useful in team games. It's useless in deathmatch games, and SSBM is pretty much all deathmatch. Games like SSBM, when combined with taunting, are only fun when everybody is in the same room, because at least you can smack your friend in the face if he or she is getting too annoying.

Because it's more fun to play with people you know when you can talk to them?

[UERD]

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But anyone who tries to act like Live isn't the gold standard in online play is delusional or ignorant of what it can do.

lawl. PC gamers have had free online play for years. Hopefully the fact that neither Sony nor Nintendo are charging for their online services will bring Live closer in line to what MS should be doing when they release the next XBox.

[MaryJane]

Xbla is the gold standard of console gaming online. There's no question to that. They've had it since the original Xbox and it's always been a great service though slightly costly for some people. (Although people who play MMORPG's pay more)

While voice chat is more fun, it isn't "necessary" in a game like SSB. A game like Battalion Wars better F**KING have voice chat or I will personally lead a revolt on Nintendo's new place in NYC. (I live in Jersey so it's not that big a deal )

There is still the hope of an external harddrive(that will likely also include DVD playback like the dongle we were promised (yet most america doesn't need) way back when it was still called Revolution (I miss that name). The harddrive would allow for much deeper firmware upgrades like allowing games we already own to support voice chat.

There's still time, be patient my young padawans.

Edit: Just read this interesting tidbit from IGN's report of the same story:

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Finally, Nintendo also revealed that while you're waiting for matches to load you can practice your moves against the Sandbag.

Not too important but cool nonetheless, particularly with the announcement to expect lag across great geographical distances. Speaking of which shouldn't people in California be able to play with people in Japan easily, the divide isn't that great. For us east coasters that would be understandable, but we should be able to connect with our Euro pals well no??

[WPack911]

This game just keeps getting more and more awesome!  I can hardly wait for it! So happy right now.

[planetidiot]

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Originally posted by: UERD

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But anyone who tries to act like Live isn't the gold standard in online play is delusional or ignorant of what it can do.

lawl. PC gamers have had free online play for years. Hopefully the fact that neither Sony nor Nintendo are charging for their online services will bring Live closer in line to what MS should be doing when they release the next XBox.

Yeah, it's free on the PC, but it's all over the place.  I see the value in Live.  You have one big integrated online network that all the games on it support, with integrated IM and friends lists, voice chat, etc etc.  You of course get it all on windows in any assortment of programs, but it isn't all integrated into one interface and linked up with all your games.

I'm not saying I want to pay $50 a month, but it's really slick what they've put together.  The idea of playing a single player game with no plan to go online, and having my friend just jump right in and join the game out of nowhere is pretty freaking awesome.

Quote
Originally posted by: MaryJane

Edit: Just read this interesting tidbit from IGN's report of the same story:

Quote
Finally, Nintendo also revealed that while you're waiting for matches to load you can practice your moves against the Sandbag.

Not too important but cool nonetheless, particularly with the announcement to expect lag across great geographical distances. Speaking of which shouldn't people in California be able to play with people in Japan easily, the divide isn't that great. For us east coasters that would be understandable, but we should be able to connect with our Euro pals well no??

Eh... I think it has more to do with the connection bandwidth between geographic regions.  I mean, they gotta go through a cable in the ocean.  My guess is there's more bandwidth between east coast and west coast US than west coast US and japan.

[therat]

yeah, lag is a physical fact.... do you know how lonnng it takes light to travel from one part of the earth to the other? year!!!

[Kairon]

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Originally posted by: shammack

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Originally posted by: planetidiot

Yeah, there's still hope for the future.  With such a huge title like this though I had hoped we'd see some of these new services.  Metroid Prime 3's auto detect friends thing really had me thinking that's where they were going with it.  

Agreed.  I have no idea why that's not how all online Wii games work.

But in MP3 you don't PLAY with your friends, you just exchange tokens. Is it the same way in Big Brain Academy? You merely compare high scores, so it also auto-populates your friends list, and the same with Elebits?

However, we're seeing that with games in which you CAN play with people, interact, and especially in the case of SSBB, exchange your own messages... these games have their own independent friend codes as an extra layer of protection against the vulgarities of online communication/rage/predation.

[shammack]

Quote
Originally posted by: Kairon
But in MP3 you don't PLAY with your friends, you just exchange tokens. Is it the same way in Big Brain Academy? You merely compare high scores, so it also auto-populates your friends list, and the same with Elebits?

However, we're seeing that with games in which you CAN play with people, interact, and especially in the case of SSBB, exchange your own messages... these games have their own independent friend codes as an extra layer of protection against the vulgarities of online communication/rage/predation.

But if you're worried about that, why would you add them to your Wii system registry in the first place?  Once you've done that, they can already communicate with you through the Wii message board.  I don't see how allowing them to play a game with you is any more dangerous.  But even if they do want an extra layer of protection for some reason, it would be easy enough to just import the Wii friend list and then let you pick and choose which ones you want to allow for that particular game.

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Originally posted by: therat
do you know how lonnng it takes light to travel from one part of the earth to the other? year!!!

Well, assuming the person you're playing with is directly across the world from you, that's about 20,000 km over the surface, and light travels at 300,000 km/s, so if you had a direct, speed-of-light connection, it would take about 0.067 seconds for a signal to travel between you.  But in reality it wouldn't be a straight line, there'd be a bottleneck at each routing point, and at least some parts of the path would be slower than the speed of light, so you should probably add a few milliseconds for that.

[Ceric]

Were also assuming full fiber?
Anyways.  Isn't it more dangerous to force someone to go on a message boards to find friends?  Especially since Nintendo does not have an official one they can monitor?  It be easier to meet a Pedo online through a forum or online chat than it would be to meet them on a chat enabled Wii.  The barrier to entry is lower.

So let this be a lesson to you kids.  Don't be Stupid.  Don't Invite your l33t Interw3b friends home.

[stevey]

"do you know how lonnng it takes light to travel from one part of the earth to the other? year!!!"

a beam of light can travel around the earth 15 times in a second(lol physic) *but that speed is in a vacuum* In air/water/glass(fiber optics) It can be much more slower than in a vacuum.... But that doesn't really matter much, The bottle neck come from all the rerouting the signal need to go through

Your US wii --> Your router--> your Isp---> Nintendo US sever ------------------------> Nintendo japan sever -> router --> Miyamoto Japanese wii and back  

[Kairon]

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Originally posted by: Ceric
Anyways.  Isn't it more dangerous to force someone to go on a message boards to find friends?  Especially since Nintendo does not have an official one they can monitor?

Ahah. At least that way, Nintendo isn't going to be the one getting sued!

But yeah, I agree, games should give you the option for streamlining populating a game's friendslist via the system wii friend codes as a starter.