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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."
I hope that for random online play with strangers they at least include some sort of skill matchup like Tetris DS did. It was fantastic, depending on your score, 1-1000, you'd be matched up against someone with that same score - and it worked well, my matchups were regularly against people who were just as good as I was. Totally random play would get frustrating for newbies and boring for the more hardcore players if bad matchups occur frequently.
I foresee some whining about the fact that it won't build up ranking data from anonymous battles, but after playing several DS games online, this setup actually sounds like a good thing to me. Hear me out. :^)
In Mario Kart, random, non-friend battles are ranked. So, when some lamer is losing, he quits. Wouldn't want to blemish his record. Game over, no getting to finish, no closure. In Planet Puzzle League, the Smash Bros approach is taken, and random battles are "free". Not ONCE has somebody dropped out mid-game on me, no matter how badly I was pounding them. And no matter how badly I was being pounded, the little devil on my right shoulder never even suggested dropping out.
Take away the stats in anonymous mode, and suddenly the incentive to be a prick for the sake of some arbitrary numbers, dissolves. If you still want the bragging rights, play within a known circle of friends, which should also reduce the prick incentive. This way we can concentrate on having fun playing a kickass game, instead of worrying about the metadata. That might seem wussy to the frat boy Halo crowd, but to me, it's what gaming has always been about.
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.
It's a good idea to make online battles non-ranked. A huge reason is that Smash battles are so customizeable. Item frequency (if any), the items available for the match, the number of lives per player (or maybe HP, or maybe coins collected? etc), the levels allowed via random select, team attack on/off, handicap on/off, etc.
There is so much to bother with that it would be nigh-impossible to implement a reliable ranking system that actually reflects any sort of skill. If all you want to be ranked in is no-item 4-stock 10-minute-timer 1v1 on a subset of stages (typical of SSBM singles tourneys), you'd have seek out opponents willing to play that particular setup. Across what setups would they by chance be ranked, and would some care?
It's basically a pointless and overly complicated system as a result.
If rankings were to matter, they'd have to be on some common terms (e.g. MLG rules), and in Smash coming up with those common terms is far from easy, nor is it reasonable to expect everyone who wants to play a ranked match online to want to observe them in the first place. Considering that even MLG Smash tournament rules evolve over time, this system would have to be updated semi-regularly.
With all this in mind, given that there IS no standard "setup" for online matches, a matchmaking system based on wins-losses would be very unreliable (and possibly fragment the online playerbase).
I like basketball!!1!
- 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.
Depends on the player if rankings is a plus or a minus (though at Slashdot plus is probably in the majority). Just as an example, amoungst a group of friends I used to play GC games with was one player who despite gaming as much as we did was never very good at any games. In games that either didn't keep detailed ongoing stats, or at least didn't make them highly visible during game play(like SSBM), he could go all night without winning a match without a care in the world; in games that constantly reminded you of who has won the most (like MK Double Dash), he would start getting really depressed after about an hour.
4) Competitiveness. You will find many players just goofing off since the game has no impact on anything. If you are a competitive player, it is no fun to play someone who isn't. The opposite is also true.I totally agree with you, its just that I happen to see this as a plus for SSBB, not a minus. If the ultra-competitive players are going to go off and play Halo 3, rather than matching up against me, I won't shed a tear.