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

[Luke Stofan]

Seriously, all I really care about is fluid and lag-free online play.

I play on PC with my friends that live around the U.S. (All east coast and all with good internet) on MK and Injustice and it's just awful.

I hope they use rollback netcode because the only way I am going to get to play MKX is online and I REALLLLLLY want that to be a great experience.

 

[WAR-BLAST]

Thinking back to online play features... it would be cool if they had a crossplay feature such as in Resident Evil 6. In there it was called "agent hunt mode" and you would spawn as a random enemy in someone elses campaign, if they had that option turned on. So at any point during the game you could be fighting either an A.I enemy or a live human enemy.

What if they did the same thing for an arcade ladder? It would really be an online arcade ladder in many ways. Here you can set the option to on or off and the system would match you up with potential online opponents, based on which character is nex to fight in the ladder.

So if I'm going up against Sub Zero next, I could set a time limit option to find a random player online (or friend) that wants to play as Sub Zero. If you can't find anyone that wants to play as Sub Zero and the timer expires, you just proceed to fight the A.I. Things like difficulty setttings might be a bit difficult to keep consistent, since ever person plays at different levels of skill. They could always let you use a filter so that you meet certain criteria the player expects of you. It could be win/loss ratio, or or stats based on your rank in the game for example.

And the game could always just disclose to the player that will be in your arcade ladder, that they will get a random character to play as. This will most likely eliminate many of the problems I mentioned previously (as in not being able to find an opponent within a set time limit).

This way people could always play bosses too without really being able to use them in practice mode. Unless of course bosses are fully playable this time too. You could always take bosses out of lobby and 1vs1 play too, and just stick with that arcade ladder offline and online feature.

 

[Vagrant]

Igau and mk9 netcode were usable but pale in comparison to their competitors.

Especially KI.

Hope they step it up.

 

[Arkane Slim]

All I really want is for them to mask the character select screen so you can't see who the opponent picks. Then you confirm your choice in that character. Once both characters have been selected they show who you fight against and if you try to back out, it's considered as a quit and a loss.

In short, punish the counter pick mentality.

 

[Arkane Slim]

I imagine they are working on a better online experience with less lag.

 

[kabelfritz]

they could just add double Elimination brackets for online tournaments. also, a spectator mode for streams would be good

 

[Ashenar]

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

4 simple letters ggpo

 

[Dizzy]

@Rathalos @d3v

Host advantage can become a problem in P2P that wouldn't be in if they are hosted on dedicated servers though.

Several FGs have the host advantage issue from what i've seen, when playing KOF for steam is became really apparent. Even in KI, i'm fairly certain host advantage is present. I'm not sure if host advantage is preventable in GGPO or any other rollback code, and if so KI may be flawed in that regard, but this is just from my experience.

As a side note, I didn't see anything in that stuff you linked that would have an explanation as to why dedicated servers would be an issue for FGs.

 

[d3v]

@Rathalos @d3v

Host advantage can become a problem in P2P that wouldn't be in if they are hosted on dedicated servers though.

Several FGs have the host advantage issue from what i've seen, when playing KOF for steam is became really apparent. Even in KI, i'm fairly certain host advantage is present. I'm not sure if host advantage is preventable in GGPO or any other rollback code, and if so KI may be flawed in that regard, but this is just from my experience.

As a side note, I didn't see anything in that stuff you linked that would have an explanation as to why dedicated servers would be an issue for FGs.

Because with a server, all you're doing is adding another connection and node to the mix. I think mauve makes that pretty clear.

Fighting games are, for the most part, 1v1 affairs and therefore benefit most from having a direct connection between the two players. In a situation like this, the game can be kept in perfect synchronization, which means that all you need to do is transit inputs.

Think of a triangle.

No matter what you do, the distance from corner A to B will always be shorter than from A to C to B.

As for GGPO, I believe the system works by not having a "host" per se and treating both clients as true peers. In other words, both peers run separate copies of the game that sync to each other.

Think of it this way. Imagine two players playing on separate consoles on separate rooms. Player 1's has his controller connected to the P1 slot on both his console and to the P2 slot Player 2's console. Player 2 has the same setup, with their controller connected to the P2 slot of both his console and P1's console. This is peer to peer fighting game online play in a nutshell. All that's missing is a way to keep the games in sync. This is done by either one of two methods, slowing the game down whenever there's latency detected (i.e. SFIV code) or the ideal way, which is rolling back to the last synced or fair state whenever a desync is detected.

Now with a client-server model, you're adding a third console to in the middle, the problem here is that you now have to sync three different consoles. Now some might say that ideally, you'd just sync to the server, but would you really want to sync to a game that you're not playing locally. One that might not exactly be up to date, considering that fighting games rely on frame perfect timing and inputs.

 

[dotunderscore]

Sorry but SERVERS DO NOTHING FOR FIGHTING GAMES! Even KI on the XBox One is peer-to-peer with rollback style code.

Although from what I have heard is that the Xbone has newer/better matchmaking features implemented server-side that allow for better netplay.

When KI is good - it is great. However if you get a laggy player is it the worst kind in my opinion - teleporting characters. It is far too tolerant with it as well - it often should drop the connection instead of trying to continue.

For both KI and MKX it would be awesome to be able to set a threshold on ping for matchmaking.

 

[d3v]

Although from what I have heard is that the Xbone has newer/better matchmaking features implemented server-side that allow for better netplay.

When KI is good - it is great. However if you get a laggy player is it the worst kind in my opinion - teleporting characters. It is far too tolerant with it as well - it often should drop the connection instead of trying to continue.

For both KI and MKX it would be awesome to be able to set a threshold on ping for matchmaking.

Matchmaking has nothing to do with the actual quality of the game mid match.

As for the threshold. The problem is that so far, only 4 games have implemented GGPO and it's option of allowing you to set the preferred level of delay/threshold for a match. With rollback netcode, a rollback (what you can sometimes see as a teleport) only happens when the latency makes it so that inputs come in slower than the set delay threshold. This alerts the system of a possible desync forcing it to rollback to the last fair state.

And speaking of ping, most proper GGPO implementations (Skullgirls, Darkstalkers: Resurrection, MvC: Origins and 3rd Strike Online post patch) do show ping times instead of bars.

 

[dookieagain]

rollback. Yes you get teleports but teleports are miles better than input delay.

I can only play rollback based games now that I have decent execution, I keep trying to play Ultra SFIV and it's like ugh.

Seriously SFxT, KI, Skullgirls, all the capcom collection games, they show you that rollback is the only way to go.

As for power, if KI can do it with all the stupid particle and lighting effects they have it should be a non issue for MKX which seems to be much more focused on texture resolution rather than CPU intensive stuff .

 

[Esruck Cype]

Rollback Netcode

This x1000000. I really enjoy watching NRS games, and I fully appreciate how they "do their own thing" rather than being a permutation of SF2, GG, or VF (which is virtually every fighter now). However, I never bought any of them for the simple reason is that if a multiplayer game does not have good online play, I'm not gonna buy it. I don't have free time like I used to, and it's hard enough finding local area people for the bigger competitive fighting games, let alone anything else. I did that back in the Dark Aughts, grinding practice mode, finding literally a handful people to play with, and traveling to a major every other month. That sucked then and I'm not about to do that again. It's already several games out that had great netcode. TTT2, KI, any game using GGPO. There's no reason for MKX to keep FGs in the dark ages with input delay.

The day I hear that MKX has rollback netcode is the exact same day I'm preordering it.

"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.

It sounds like arcade Soul Calibur 2's Conquest mode, to me.

For those unfamiliar, Conquest mode was an arcade-only affair with a persistent contest of 4 factions. When you start, you pick your character, your name, password, and 1 of the 4 factions. One playthrough is against eight AI opponents. 1 round each. Some of these AIs are computer-generated, some are actual AI ghosts of other players on that arcade machine. As you keep winning, your character levels up, which makes its ghost AI much harder, and your faction gains more territory on the world map. One person could have multiple characters on the same machine if they wanted. After a set amount of time, the territories would reset, but the characters and their levels would remain, and it started over again.

The thing that sucked about Conquest was that there was never any direct competition. The top player in blue faction could never fight the top player in red faction for territory in an actual fight; only player vs AI fights counted. The thing that was good about Conquest, though, is that casuals played it like nobody's business. I'd see people play multiple times in one sitting just because they were that hooked on leveling up their fighter and trying to get their faction the lead. It made arcade SCII ridiculously popular, and even got a few of the casuals to actually learn and play the game against real competition rather than just grinding AI.

I always said that Conquest mode would've been cool as hell if the mode was focused on actual direct competition between factions instead of dumb AI battles. Now, 10 years later, I hear Boon talking about a persistent online contest....

 

[SZSR]

Aside from all that was said, i'd like to just see the "Ready" system that they have in SF lobbies so that if you don't want to play you can just not select and be timed out to the back of the KOTH line but still can spectate.

 

[caliagent#3]

This needs to be number one priority. Everyone needs to make this complaint loud and clear. Get GGPO netcode or something similar for MKX....seriously.

 

[Scoot Magee]

@Rathalos @d3v

Host advantage can become a problem in P2P that wouldn't be in if they are hosted on dedicated servers though.

Several FGs have the host advantage issue from what i've seen, when playing KOF for steam is became really apparent. Even in KI, i'm fairly certain host advantage is present. I'm not sure if host advantage is preventable in GGPO or any other rollback code, and if so KI may be flawed in that regard, but this is just from my experience.

As a side note, I didn't see anything in that stuff you linked that would have an explanation as to why dedicated servers would be an issue for FGs.

Host advantage doesn't exist in p2p. It's like speaking on the phone, one person doesn't receive voice faster than the other. P1's info gets sent to p2 and vice versa. If p1 was acting as a non dedicated server then P1 would experience no lag at all and p2 will experience lag. That's the only way I think a host advantage would exist but then that wouldn't be p2p.

I don't agree with dedicated servers. It works for shooters with many players but not fighting games. It will just add more places for data to go and ultimately cause more lag.

I think netcode should be #1 priority for mkx online.

 

[Awsumpossm]

Based on my experience with Xbone games online thus far, I expect a very good connection to my opponents online

 

[dribirut]

If killer instinct was able to do it then there are absolutely no excuses for a shitty netcode.

 

[IrishMantis]

It annoys me how they are not saying it, Ed just saids yeah then switches the subject

But since they are putting emphasis on Online i hope it goes without saying.

 

[aj1701]

It should require a 2bar MINIMUM to log on to online period. Can't meet it, goodbye

To who though? The game direct connects to each player and while my connection to you is one bar to someone else its four.

 

[aj1701]

Rollback netcode would be awesome going forward and really should be standard with fighting games. KOTH absolutely needs to have a spectator mode so we can run and stream tournaments way easier online. Online should also have a record/replay function so you can play the game back with training mode type overlays on to help you learn what you did right and wrong.

Why are you worried about netcode anyway? Not like Smoke's in MKX.

 

[RexyWrecks]

Xbox One has servers.

We win.

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

Xbox fo lyfe.

1 vs 1 is dependent on the connection of both parties right? How would servers help in FG's? I think P2P would be the way to go.

 

[RexyWrecks]

1 vs 1 is dependent on the connection of both parties right? How would servers help in FG's? I think P2P would be the way to go.

A spectator mode in KOTH would be cool. Sometimes, I like to just watch other people play.

 

[BillStickers]

This isn't a real thing. MK may have been using model rigged boxes (not confirmed) but Injustice has more than proven that it does not (f+2,3, oh tele, etc). The problem is just that NRS sucks at collision boxes.

Hmm is there confirmation on that? I'm almost positive based on the game's TweakVars (the file that gets modified when a hotfix goes live) that Injustice still uses the same collision system as MK9 (basically invisible spheres attached various parts of the skeleton of each model), that way when they want to tweak the range of a certain attack, they can simply modify one constant (the sphere's radius).

I suspect that NRS masked the shortcomings of their collision detection by making the models much smaller in Injustice than they were in MK9; with lower effective detail, it's much easier to fudge the numbers on hitboxes and still make collisions look realistic.

 

[Compbros]

Seriously, all I really care about is fluid and lag-free online play.

Oxymoron.