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
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
