Topic: SPECIALS: Super Smash Bros. Brawl Online: How is it?

[WindyMan]

This is the Talkback thread for the NWR Special Super Smash Bros. Brawl Online: How is it?  Feel free to leave any comments in this thread, and let us know what you thought of it!

[vudu]

What's going to go here?  Check the front page in a few minutes.

Roger dodger.

[Bartman3010]

I could care less about leaderboards, personally. I'd never be able to make it to the #1 on the list simply because I dont have the same free time as some other die hards. The lowest time ranking is completely different from a win/loss record. You dont have to spend countless hours to show that you have the biggest dick on the Smash Bros. leaderboards. Mario Kart is all about getting the lowest time. You DONT have to spend countless hours honing your skills to show off how you're the best. Plus, Smash Bros is a little too random to be able to get a fair win/loss ratio, in my opinion.

Plus, what about the other extra features Brawl online has? Getting stage builder levels, screenshots and replays at random or even WATCHING people fighting and betting on who you think is going to win. Even if its a crapshoot, just like real life gambling. Most of those features happen in the background, you can get messages for things like that. Obviously not for whether friends are online. But heck, I guess thats what IM programs are for these days. But people are so lazy that people would wish that their 360 systems (Or whatever they choose) played games and cooked their TV dinners while having a picture-in-picture showing of the game and some other TV program. (Maybe a reality show for the casual viewer?)

Like I said in the Mario Kart thread, Smash Bros. is about syncing the other players together. Mario Kart just interprets whats going on. In Smash Bros., you wont find turtle shells going straight through other players with no effect because all the players are seeing the action 1-1. Whereas in Mario Kart, the turtle shell appeared to have passed through a player on one screen. When in reality, the victim never got hit on his screen. If he does, theres a second delay for it to register for the shell's owner.

As for voice chat. So what? Talking in the middle of most multiplayer matches could get you killed. At least in the text based days of games like Quake, Unreal and so forth. Its not like Nintendo is up for releasing any microphones for the Wii anytime soon. And I doubt people would like to spend $130 to connect their DS for chatting. Waggling the Wii remote in a pumping fashon whilst talking on the DS (Hopefully not in the sense of the gameplay mechanic of BLOWING on the system, the combination could be something masterbatory) is not the solution I'd want to see. Sakurai doesnt work at Nintendo anymore, so he might not share the same ideals as some other divisons around or in Nintendo itself. Its possible the Wii could have voice chat, if there was a microphone.

[Shift Key]

Would a win-loss leaderboard showing your record against only your friends been so hard to implement?

This is available (but not a full leaderboard) in Mario Kart Wii. Next time you go to join a friend in an online race, you can view the win-loss record between you and your friend. Its a nice touch.

i hate seeing Mario's record against me

After seeing Striker's weekly leaderboard get ruined by a handful of people who play basically nonstop for the whole week (who aren't that great for starters), I don't see the value in a global one either. Keep it with the people you know well.

[NWR_insanolord]

I don't think voice chat would be a good idea for Brawl. I've started Brawl friend matches with friends who I was having Skype conversations with that lagged heavily until we stopped using Skype, at which point we had no lag whatsoever. Mario Strikers Charged, Mario Kart DS, and Mario Kart Wii (along with Medal of Honor Heroes 2) have all worked flawlessly for me while using Skype.

[Crimm]

doth mine eyes deceive?

[Jiggy37]

The way that Brawl's online has worked out is actually the reason I don't mind the lack of leaderboards. The value of online match results are questionable at best because of lag, so regardless of what position a person reached, there would (unfortunately) be nothing to say that the person earned that spot.

[Crimm]

It's true.  Leaderboards would make the broken thing more so

[vudu]

I don't want to sound overly critical, but what was the point of this article?

It didn't really tell us anything except some people are having problems playing online but others aren't and here's a list of online features we would have liked to see in the game.  There was no fresh perspective, no advice and/or speculation regarding how (or if) Nintendo could fix the problems and/or add the missing features, and no hard numbers to back up the claims of connectivity problems.

Brawl's a huge game, the article was posted two days ago, and there are five "serious" responses to the article (counting this one).  That should tell you something.

(Sorry, Crimm!  I really don't mean to sound like a dick.)

[UltimatePartyBear]

Mario Kart isn't less laggy.  It's just the kind of game that can frequently hide lag from the player.  It lets you keep driving while it struggles to figure out how the red shell you fired is supposed to hit the guy in front of you when according to his system he's behind you.  That wouldn't work in SSBB.

[Crimm]

Brawl's a huge game, the article was posted two days ago, and there are five "serious" responses to the article (counting this one).  That should tell you something.

(Sorry, Crimm!  I really don't mean to sound like a dick.)

Too bad.

I know. This article took a long time to get out, and would have been far more topical if it had got out when it was intended.  The current form is over a month old (maybe more than two months old).  We were waiting for comment from Nintendo, as is customary to do with such an article.  We never got one.  In retrospect we should have run without it after a week or so.

There was a piece at the start that talked about what Nintendo needed to do with MKW.  However, as the release of MKW came and went that piece became defunct.