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MKX Netplay - What Can NRS Add To Improve Online Functionality?

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THTB

Arez | Booya | Riu48 - Rest Easy, Friends
Let's be super, super honest about NRS's track record with online play...it's subpar. I'm not saying this to get under any of the devs' skin, but it's frustrating to want to play the game online because you often are unable to play offline or have no one to play with...but then online just operates so poorly that things that you have practiced go to waste simply because things become harder to react to. Not to mention, some of the online features are so far behind (such as the lobbies/KOTHs), it just detracts from the experience even more.

With how video games are today, optimal online play for multiplayer games is pretty much a necessity. It's no longer just an option. And if NRS can really improve online functionality, it will definitely make MKX's experience that much better as a whole. Here's some ideas that we could see (feel free to add your own):


Rollback Netcode: Input delay sucks. Plain and simple. No matter how much you optimize a netcode based around input delay, it pretty much always exist. Rollback has existed for quite some time now (GGPO popularized the technology), and SFxT has proven that it is viable for more than just 2D games. For those that are unaware, what rollback does is constantly generate savestates of the game and "rolls back" the game to a previous state to properly accomodate both players, which results in latency being masked, and thus input delay being reduced on a grand scale, allowing higher pings to play relatively undisturbed in comparison to the standard netcode. The main downside is how intensive this is for consoles to do, which would mean that NRS would really need to optimize MKX in order to ensure things like slowdown don't occur. But if they can do it, this opens a ton of doors for the game as far as using it for a truly competitive environment goes, since now connection issues will be considerably less frequent, and more people can truly enjoy the game online.

Extra Lobby Features: To put it bluntly, the King of the Hill lobbies are too void of very useful features, and filled with too many extracurricular features. Things like spectator modes that allow players to just sit in the lobby and watch instead of play, the inability to skip win animations, and options to set things such as rounds, time, or even the amount of games to win before you are booted to the back, are missing. And it sucks to see, because some of these features are in just about every other fighting game released nowadays. Hopefully we see at least the spectator mode feature.

Championship Mode-Like Ranked Matches: In vanilla Street Fighter IV, they introduced a ranked system that worked somewhat like a tournament mode in ranked, where you had to win a number of matches before you "won" the tournament and gained the maximum amount of ranking points possible, while losing early on caused you to either gain little or no points or lose them. Eventually, you achieve higher ranks and play against others in the same ranking. This was amazing because, eventually, players became so separated by the system, that you truly began to play higher-skilled opponents as you progressed, and starting at the bottom didn't mean you randomly ended up against a highly ranked player for no reason. It gave you a reason to play the ranked matches because you actually got to play vs competition on your level and players actually leveled up to advance. It would be cool to see NRS do something like that. It's probably one of the best ranked match systems fighting games have ever seen, and it's a shame that even Capcom didn't expand upon it and canned the idea in Super Street Fighter IV onward.

News Feed for Competitive Happenings: Tecmo added in a ticker that would show news regarding tournaments for Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate, such as who won the latest tournament and whatnot. This would be a good idea to see NRS do, though it's not something that is totally as necessary as some of the other things I listed.


These are just a few ideas of my own. Please, please, add any more features that you would like to see NRS add to online play.

@colt
 

trufenix

bye felicia
I know everybody wants to talk about MKX shit but really, there's fucking nothing to talk about. Can everybody please just take a minute and think, is this discussion even warranted? before hitting that post button.

A) Can we please stop tagging colt on anything involving "code". The dude does character design and balance, and he probably does way more scripting and tweaking than actual coding. He probably doesn't know the first thing about packets or latency.
B) There is very little here that was not beaten to death during Injustice's pre-release. I'm sure they get by now that we want Spectactor mode.
C) Rollback is not a magical cure-all for netcode, the FGC just thinks it is because it works great for a bunch of old sprite based games. SFxT's netplay is significantly inferior to TTTs and SF4s, despite being rollback based.
D) TTT2 has without a doubt set the bar for online feature sets. If any game should be aped, that should be the one.

and most importantly, lets find out what this is before we have any netplay discussions:
The Preorder Blurb said:
a new fully-connected gameplay experience, players are launched into a persistent online contest where every fight matters in a global battle for supremacy.
 
"a new fully-connected gameplay experience, players are launched into a persistent online contest where every fight matters in a global battle for supremacy."

This really does just sound like some online pool/tournament system. What I mean is no matter in what mode you play in (koth, 1 vs 1, tag?) that all your win/loss scores are tallied up to put you in a spot to fight players/clans with a similar score and you if win best 3 out of 5 for example, then you can advance to fight the next opponent in this tournament mode. They might just be mirroring an actual offline tournament bracket system. That is my best guess anyways. Then they publish the rankings on a leaderboard.
 
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Cossner

King of the Jobbers 2015
@MisterSpyker learn to use the quote button, Jesus.

On topic:

  • Huge screen at the online menu showing the upcoming events like League of Legends and Starcraft do it.
  • Tekken-like waiting screen: it's like training mode. Instead of a "looking for opponent" screen you can actually practice a little bit.
  • Ability to search random matches according to location. Because if I want to waste some time playing online, I'd much rather have a non-laggy match with some guy in Italy.
 

VenomX-90

"On your Knees!"
Just have NRS keep the chat rooms, Street Fighter online is like you have to click quick match and just play with 5 ppl only in a lobby, which kinda sucked.
 

Rathalos

Play Monster Hunter!
Xbox One has servers.

We win.

If anyone has played Gears of War: Judgment online, the servers are flawless.

Xbox fo lyfe.
Actually unlike shooters, p2p is actually preferred for fighting games. Since they are strictly a 1v1 affair, its faster to connected to the other person directly then going through a server.

For shooters it's bad because its peer hosted, one person becomes the server and every client has to go through him, giving him an unfair advantage, and can make the game unstable depending on the hosts connection to everyone. With fighters this isn't a problem, as there is no host, you are just connected to each other directly.
 
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