Topic: Your Online Experience with Brawl

[Crimm]

Nintendo World Report is conducting a survey on the Super Smash Bros. Brawl online experience.  Have you brawled online?  Tell us your thoughts here or via the mailbag (if you don't want to register).

The more detail you can give the better, and try to focus on your own experiences.

Thank you

[Nick DiMola]

Generally speaking, it's terrible.

I rarely connect to random people on the internet. Friend matches are typically laggy, even when I play just one other person. Most of the friends on my list are still unconfirmed when I know they added me already.

Between button lag and visual lag, the game has been more or less unplayable for me online.

[DAaaMan64]

I have yet to ever plan an online match or played a friend match with conditions I would tolerate in the long run.  I have played almost all of the online Wii games out there, and never experienced anything like this.

I have given my Wii a static IP and unlocked all ports up and down.

I have actually never slide-showed but it has gotten too unreasonable slow. I would personally consider, any button lag that lasted longer than a second or two to completely invalidate a match and I am never played a match without it.

The best matchs I have ever played have been with Pro. Stage seemed to make very little difference, although items definitely seem to.

This sucks, Die Nintendo!

[Smoke39]

I've played several team matches "with anyone."  They connected okay, but were always pretty laggy once we started playing.

I played a few matches with one of my friends, which were also pretty laggy.  The last time we tried to play with each other our games wouldn't even recognize that the other was online so we couldn't connect.

I've pretty much given up on it.

[vudu]

Maybe I'm just easy to please, but I'm fairly happy with it.  Yes, the process is stupid and yes games are generally laggy.  But I'm still able to get online and play friend matches so I honestly can't complain too much.  Brawl is hella fun even if we have to put up with this crap.

In short:

Brawl:  A
Online:  D+
Brawl Online (not an average):  B

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

After tweaking my router/Wii, my 1on1 USA matches play GREAT (near negligible button lag).

My "With Anyone" matches play Almost Great (noticeable but manageable button lag).

My 3p INTERNATIONAL Pietriot matches have been Passable, surprisingly (minor slideshows or barely tolerable button lag).

My 4p Friend matches have been 5min slideshows to play a 2min Timed Match.  The game outright stops for 10sec+ at a time.

On two occasions my game locked-up during onrine brawling.  The last time my Wii locked up was during a loading sequence in Rayman Raving Rabbids during Wii's launch season.

[batmaniswatching]

I've had a great time with it.

I play every week or two with a group of people around New England. Relatively small area, but I've personally experienced little to no lag in those matches.

The 'with anyone' feature is a little tougher, with lag happening every now and then.  But it's an occasional problem, at worst. 

I've especially loved spectating matches online, and those come in nice and fast, though I wish that far fewer of those matches were at final destination or other basic levels.

On the other hand, I really wish there was more customization available for online matches.  In particular, I feel like there's no way to really ramp up the amount of items falling during these matches (though this is a problem in non-online matches as well) to make the item battling totally insane, which is sometimes fun.  All in all, the brawling feels less absurd than in previous versions of the game.  I don't know if this is because I've not been sitting with the people I'm playing with and laughing, but it just feels more like fighting and less like madness (madness being my preference). 

[Smash_Brother]

It's a total crapshoot.

Sometimes I'll connect to a player with virtually no lag. A week later, the lag to the same player will be horrendous to the point of being unplayable.

The worst part of it is the fact that you basically wind up learning two movesets for each character, the one you get with lag and the one without. It makes sense to be using certain moves in lag-filled matches where the move has a better chance of landing due to random luck or your opponent not being able to react in time whereas local matches have a completely different ruleset for when it comes to deciding what moves to use.

I would gladly pay $5 a month for hosted servers and lag-free battles. Nintendo said in the past that online wouldn't be good unless it's profitable, and I agree with that. Maybe this is their way of demonstrating to us how bad free service truly is so when they roll out "Mario-Net", we'll all be ridiculously happy to pay for decent online SSBB matches.

[sycomonkey]

Haven't sucsessfully had one yet.  Don't know many people with the game, online exchanges haven't resulted in anything, and random matchup is still broken.

Thankfully I didn't buy the game for online play.  Honestly, I only ever even attempted it out of a sense of mild curiosity.  The level editor is a more compelling feature than online play.

Now, if this was an action-RPG or RTS or something, yes, I would be pissed about the ghettoriffic online experiance.  But for smash, this is only a mild dissapointment.  Considering how late Nintendo is on the internet bandwagon, I'm surprised it ever works at all.

[Another_Mortal]

My Online experience has been great for the most part. I usually spend half of the time playing with Friends then I switch to With Anyone. When I battle against Friends, the match only lags at the beginning of the battle then it establishes itself and we play with almost no button lag. It really doesn't matter with how many people I play because it all ends up the same. Also, I have friends who live far away and we play with almost no lag, and the quality of connection I have with these people is colored Orange. With Anyone is somewhat different. Sometimes it takes time to find players to fight against and it's somewhat frustrating. There are times where I play a match with no lag, and there are times where I play with lag. The worst thing that has happened to me Online is that in the middle of the match, my connection is disconnected from the match and I have to search for players to fight against. Overall I enjoy Online battling and hope that Nintendo manages to fix some of the issues we are encountering.

[LOL] This is my frist post.

[Halbred]

Editor RESPONSE!

Horrifying. Out of the eighteen or twenty people on my friends list, only four have registered. The rest are "awaiting registration." That includes ALL of my fellow NWR editors. Unbelievable. On the other hand, it's pretty easy to get "With Anyone" matches going, and I've never experienced crippling lag.

What pisses me off the most is that you can't play solo games while your Wii is online in the background. That is, you can't be playing through Subspace, and then a message pops up saying "Hey, So-and-So is online! He wants to play!" No, there's none of that. It sucks ballz.

It's a good thing that Smash is so good outside of the online shenanigans.

[stevey]

Varies depend how crappy the other player is but for the most part

25% perfect
67% specs of lag usually at the beginning of a match and goes away quickly after
7% choppy
1% horrific

Out of 12 Hours and a couple hundred matches. 

I'm pleased at it, and give it an A-

(BTW, I'm not using a static IP, port forwarding, or Lan cable. )

[Plugabugz]

Terrible. Every time i try to switch it on i realise i'm playing red steel again.

[Shecky]

I've played about 30+ matches with local friends (local to the area, not NWR members) and have had zero problems, and those matches were spread over time, were not talking a single session.

Matches against NWR folks have been good overall, however I've had times where the lag got really bad... so like S_B said, it can be hit or miss.

With anyone, never works for me... ever.   Ok, I've had 7 matches in about the 30+ attempts, and those were also hit or miss.  Spectator mode always works, but the folks I spectate are total losers of a match 80% of the time.

[TAYREL713]

I play pretty much nightly. Never random, always friend codes. Only when a particular buddy in Boston (I am in Cleveland, OH) gets on does it bog down, he thinks it's because he uses Comcast as his ISP. I can't call it. I have played now hundreds of matches on line from people as far away as California, and as close as a county away (my night job coworkers). I use Cox Cable as my ISP. Before I got the game I moved my wireless router around and took the high gain antenna off my desktop and placed it on the router itself. The router is set to channel 1. Hm mm, what else can I tell you, I have had great fun playing this game on line, it's only the second game after Madden that I have played on-line with the Wii. I understand people having issue with the Wii's on line offerings. Like I have never had issue with the Shop Channel while I read all the time about peoples downloads taking forever. I use a Zyxel router if that matters.

[jllr30]

Smash Brothers is a great game, but not on line.  I wish they had added an on line feature like Medal of Honor Heroes where you can find people or rooms with good connections.  The anyone feature rarely connects to others and when it does, it is mostly laggy. I have been disconnected a lot and other on line games I have played have ran pretty well. Will Nintendo rectify this situation or are we pretty much screwed as far as on line goes. Makes me worry about Mario Kart Wii.

[Monteblanco]

None of my friends have the game and I wasn't able to connect to a single match so far. My sole online experience with the game was limited to watching a few matches.

[Djunknown]

Mine's been fairly positive. When people in my house aren't actively sucking my bandwidth, I've gotten in some decent matches with 2-4 people. Some of the NWR regulars and staff can vouch for this. Its not really the distance, but just the quality of the connection.

Strangely, I cannot get basic brawl to work. I host a game time and time again wait for 15-30 minutes but no one comes in. I have not done anything to my router (port fowarding), so that could be the culprit.

[Kairon]

Not being able to play Brawl online (excepty for one or two very laggy miracles with only very specific people) is debilitating. I want more than anything in the world right now to play my brother, my best friends, maxi,m GP, and other people from the forums. I feel like I'm dead when I repeatedly try to play matches with other people and it disconnects me.

All I can do online is send and receive stage/replay data and watch spectator mode.

[Sonuis]

I'm able to play incredibly laggy matches with the Brawl service and rarely connect using the "With Anyone" service for brawls.  I can watch matches though.

Then again, I am using a -Satellite- ISP, so it may be a bit off on what really goes on for me.

[pSYCO-gAMER321]

Not great at all. I'm quite puzzled that even the fastest connection speed lags. Hell, there are plenty of people playing games from Live or PSN, but they hardly lag compared to Brawl. Online structure is simple to start out, but then you'll notice it gets bad. Once in a while I get a good connection, but out of no where, chugs chugs chugs! Sorry, but Nintendo, you really need to work on the online connectivity. I play Resistance with 16 people online and does not lag as bad compared to 4 random online play on Brawl.

[Sundoulos]

I've mostly been playing the "Play With Anyone" matches, as I haven't been fortunate enough to be brawling online to play with friends, for the most part.  Unfortunately, those time that I have been on, those on my friends list are usually in other matches already.  I wish that Nintendo allowed a simple ping or an invite so that you could get the attention of those on your friends list.

Anyway, I've probably played somewhere around 200 matches online at this point.  Of those, I've only had two instances where the lag was severe, and probably 10 - 15 matches where lag was noticeable but not game-breaking.  Normally, when I have experienced lag, the problem seems to lessen if I play multiple matches within the same group. 

The biggest problem I have had is during the match-making.  Sometimes, it's taken my Wii FOREVER to actually connect with people, and on occassion I've lost my Wii online connection during the waiting room sequence.  This may be due to my ISP being flaky during peak use hours, though.  I've experienced this problem with other games in the past.

[Deguello]

My online experiences with Brawl have actually mostly been great.  Only once did I get the "slideshow" lag, but I just rolled with it until it just stopped.  Playing with Djunknown was relativley lag free and lovely, and I've even had random people fights be lag free.

[Gylldas]

I actually had my first friend battle yesterday with Djunk. We did have some lag but we also had four players for most of the time. Of course when that number narrowed it smoothed out. I'm no pro at the game but I found it quite playable.

With anyone has been hit or miss for me. Most of my games have been pretty good except for the rare occasion I get kicked. I've only had it slideshow on me about three times out of many many brawls. As already mentioned above most of my friend list is still awaiting registration so the matchmaking process is my main gripe right now.

[SeaBass]

lol well my online experience has been pretty satisfying. i believe the online will gradually get better, actually. probably because the servers were overloaded, and since brawl is such a popular title, the servers will still be full for quite some time.

anyways, my "with friends" connection is practically flawless and there is no button lag. "with anyone" is a little bit slower and there is occassional button lag. when i first got the game on launch, the lag was unbearable (server overlaods i tell you!) but now its great

oh and for all you saying that your friends are marked as "awaiting registration", they're just not adding you lol. and if they said they did, THEY LIED!