Slashdot Mirror
Smash Bros. Online Mode Confirmed
FiringSquad confirms the best news a Wii owner could hope for: online play is a go for Smash Bros. Brawl . This is the news from the official website for the game, and the site discusses the various modes the game will support. You can (of course) play with friends, and you'll be able to use cute little pre-entered taunts on each other. You can also play with strangers, but the game has some serious restrictions on that kind of play: "You can also battle with people you don't know who are looking for brawls. The most important point here is that you will not know each other's names. Your opponent will not know your name or any information about you, and neither of you can send short messages. There will also be no battle records kept for this mode, so whether you win or lose, it doesn't matter. Just sit back and play."
Makes sense.
Just a thought on top of that though...why wouldn't they track quit games as a stat? That would really fix those 'perfect record' lamers when their stats show up as win:11, loss:0, quit:999.
No Comment.
Well said. Smash Bros has always been about playing with friends, anyway. There's definitely something to be said for privileging gameplay on a more personal level.
Besides, if matches were to be "ranked," then there would have to be a standard setup. And that might be fine with some people, but it wouldn't be with others. There's no scenario where I could see Nintendo pleasing *everyone* without making a highly complex setup. Many Smash tourneys use the MLG rules, but even those evolve over time.
This way people will play against strangers for the simple reasons of testing their skill and/or increasing it. There will be no incentive to abuse the system.
I like basketball!!1!
Why no IP-to-IP action? Technical concerns? The system could try to do this (check to see if there's a NAT in the way, check to see if we've got exposed ports anyway, try to ask the gateway to give us some ports via UPnP, etc), and then fall back on hosted if it has to. Privacy concerns? Possibly, though getting a random user's IP address isn't that useful these days since botnets are powerful enough to sweep large chunks of IP space anyway. Cheating concerns? There's a possibility. "Never trust the client" doesn't work if there's no server.
But that's all for online play. DS games that allow online play usually also allow LAN play (wireless, of course). I can see something similar being available for Wii games. Detect another Wii in wireless range? Let's play! Would be nice to include "advanced setup" to allow direct IP-to-IP play using your wireless network or the 10baseT adapter, but that's getting further from likelihood.
I just wish Nintendo didn't have to compensate for the fact that people aren't good sports. In any game, ranked or not, I haven't dropped out unless there was something I needed to attend to right away. To do otherwise is just tacky. I understand Nintendo's decision, and I'm not mad at them. I'm mad at the people who made this decision necessary.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
- Random Play Matching
- Lack of Communication in Random
- Small Friend Roster
- Lack of random communication
As I said, we only have preliminary information, so hopefully these will be taken care of before the game's release (though, with but three months to go, I doubt these would make it into the game if they're not already, even if there was a large outcry).I love the idea that random play isn't about stats or ranking. This makes it easier to get into a game just for fun. However, one large problem I see with it right now is uneven matches. Without a ranking system, you could walk into a match and either have your ass handed to you very quickly, or get a complete newbie and have no challenge what so ever (some will delight in this, I don't find it that useful).
I hope that there is a ranking system, but that's it's invisible, and used merely to have good match ups between users. The ranking would likely work the same that it did in Multiplayer for Melee- everyone starts with five stars or so (out of 10), and as you win or lose your star level goes up or down, respectively. Then you only fight with people within one star level of yourself (so someone with eight stars won't be matched to someone with two).
The lack of communication means I won't have to deal with some 12 year old calling me a "fag" when I toss them off a cliff. While being free of annoying idiots during play is great, I'd really love some way to meet up with people after a match, if only to tell them congratulations. Perhaps a system where one person says "I want to contact this player, and these two can contact me", and if two people request/give contact permission the system can hook them up.
Take a look at one of the screenshots that lists "you" and three of your friends. Note the "3/64" in the screenshot. While we can't be sure, some discussion has lead to the idea that you are limited to only 64 friend codes for the game, out of the 250 or so allowed in the Wii system itself.
Another concern that springs to mind is the Law of Kevin Bacon- if your friend invites you and two of his friends, who are not on your machine as friends, to a battle, will the system disallow the match because you are not their "friends" too? That is, can you only battle with people who you have one degree of separation with, regardless of who sets up the match? This seems crazy, but Nintendo can be overzealous about online stuff. ("Think of the children", etc.)
As I said, I like the idea of silent battles, but there are times when it's fun to just bullshit with people. I would think that the ability to "hear" other people could be a user or system preference. Perhaps tie it in with the Wii's Parental Controls.
The problem is, what exactly are people going to be ranked *in*? Smash Bros has so many ways to be played that many people switch the settings up match after match, and every unique setup has an effect on what player performs better.
Competitive SSBM matches tend to be 1v1 or 2v2 (team attack on), with rather specific settings (that change over time as the community decides what levels are and aren't well-balanced, etc.). Should ranking be limited to setups of this sort? What if you're interested in being matched against a player who is a veteran of *this setup* as opposed to 4-man free-for-all using only bob-ombs on max frequency? What if you're interested in a less common setup? Would you be able to find someone at all if they need to be "ranked" in it?
Basically Smash doesn't lend itself well to the online multiplayer model that Halo, War3 and DOA have, mostly due to the major customization that you can do. Perhaps a new multiplayer model is in order, but I don't know what it would be and I think it would be quite complex if it involves some sort of reliable/usable ranking system.
I used to be a pretty hardcore Smasher so I can imagine what sort of setup the Smash community might want...
One possible [partial] solution is to have no ranking except in certain set "formats" that Nintendo creates and updates from time-to-time using feedback from the community. They can start off using MLG's Smash rules for a 1v1 and 2v2 setup. The "hardcore" players would probably play that and be fine getting ranked in it.
I like basketball!!1!