TYM Kommunity Project: An Open Letter to NRS Concerning Netplay

[ShotgunInsanity]

I heard that KI had only two people working on the netcode, even if this isn't true the KI dev team has much less resources and yet they have a online experience far beyond MKX, it's a shame really. Maybe if NRS used the money we gave them to help the game rather than make those stupid Beyond Kombat videos we'd have a decent netcode.

 

[mercureXI]

Well let's see how it will go, if those questions are asked behind closed doors.

IMO, only pressure forces people to do what they don't want to, and clearly, having online being decent is not a priority atm.

Only time will tell ...

 

[Prinz]

Now this is a much better approach.

 

[I GOT HANDS]

You're right, this is getting weird (I'm doing grad work in choral conducting).

The point I was trying to make was that you can identify that something is wrong, sure. Unless you have solutions, simple identification isn't going to help anything. Relating this idea to MKX, unless someone can give hard solutions to the netcode problem, simply saying "god the netcode is bad" doesn't help at all.

"God the netcode is bad, COULD YOU PLEASE GET YOUR TEAM OF GAME DEVELOPERS WHO DESIGNED IT TO WORK ON IMPROVING IT PLEASE", is what I believe is implied as the solution when people complain about the netcode.

Nice choice of profession, I can dig it!

As for solutions, I'm afraid the ball is squarely in the NRS court. I didn't pay for this game to then be tasked with the responsibility of finding a solution for NetKode. And with the lack of response (in action, not language) to feedback regarding this issue, they can expect threads like this to exist and be packed full of responses.

Exactly.

How are we the customers meant to fix the netcode? Walk into NRS studio, sit down at a computer and get to work, while the NRS development team watch in admiration "it's about time someone started finding a solution to that damn netcode!" Ball is firmly in their court, in 5 years they cbf to fix it, I they aren't just going to one day have a change of heart, injustice 2 will have this same netcode. The issue is they've recieved no negative press and/or motivation to fix it, BECAUSE they dodge responding to letters such as this one and completely avoid acknowledging the issue and any bad PR. If we don't bring it to their doorstep, nothing will happen. Everyone will go back to grumbling on the forum, NRS will continue giving zero fucks, raking in profits from releases, and people who fought AGAINST taking action at a public event to draw public attention towards an issue simply because "I think we will look silly" made a personal decision that they would rather be too cool for school more than they would rather a fixed netcode. It's that damn simple.

The sad thing is, people like BeepBoop couldn't be more misguided, and likely do not follow gaming news and media at all. People taking stands against Developer cold shoulders and forcing them them to act, gets almost universally positive coverage and praise every single time it happens as long as the issue is legitimate. This terrible and unaknowledged netcode in a game with the aggressive DLC tactics that MKX has? More than justified and they will lap it up.

 

[Blade4693]

My main issue is the input delay, when I press a button, it doesn't actually come out until later and in order to actually play online I have to get use to this delay every time I play, and then that sort of throws off my offline timing for a little bit as well lol

Its just a huge turn off for me, and considering my schedule doesn't allow me to travel to local spots and play offline with others often, online is really my only option to play with other human players for the most part, so its kind of frustrating.

EDIT

On a smaller and pretty much unimportant note, they could also fix their leaderboards. I don't really care too much about this, but my OCD wont let me let it go haha. Here is the latest example...Today I did the Predator tower, and I noticed I got a decent global ranking (like 20 something) so I decided I would try to beat my personal best, and I didn't do anywhere near as good the next time (Like 95) No big deal, ill do it again but for some reason it wants to rank that as my personal best? It does this offline too. They should change it to "most recent score" since that's all it tracks lol like I said, I know this is something stupid to complain about, but its annoying haha

 

[I GOT HANDS]

I don't think that many of us are against making a stand against NRS for the bad netcode, I think alot of the people who are against making a show of it agree with you, I can speak only for myself but I really like this game and when I go to or watch an event, I want to hear and see the event on display, I do not want any part of the event, which is one the highlight events of the year to be watered down by this discussion of netcode, Also this is one of the big events for all the players of other games to get to see what MKX is all about, I want only gameplay to be the highlight of the event, as a unbiased unaware person, If I am seeing all these good games being played, but if one game is making a scene about the netcode(even if its justified), it could turn off the new player to the game.

I think if we really wanted to make a stand about the netcode we shouldnt try to piggy back it to an event, we should get people to together to go to the office or at the next panel have 10+ questions specifically about the netcode, I think that making showing about the netcode and just the netcode, whether it be a gathering where we try to have an online tournament and just pinpoint all the times the lag caused problems, or we actually have people go to the offices and stay there until they make a statement

If we want answers that is a better way to do it than at EVO in my opinion

Congrats, you are literally the first person to say there is a better option and actually suggest something.

That's definitely worth trying. If it falls completely flat however, the Evo opportunity where it's GUARANTEED to get noticed is completely missed. There is no possible repercussion that come from doing it at Evo that don't also come doing it your way, I'm not seeing why this is a better idea than Evo.

Negative press towards the quality of their game is what motivates them to fix the negative aspects. Just like WB did with Arkham Knight a few weeks ago. This will always have the repercussion of making people less likely to play the game until it's fixed however, and that's exactly WHY it works to make Devs fix things.

 

[mercureXI]

Congrats, you are literally the first person to say there is a better option and actually suggest something.

That's definitely worth trying. If it falls completely flat however, the Evo opportunity where it's GUARANTEED to get noticed is completely missed. There is no possible repercussion that come from doing it at Evo that don't also come doing it your way, I'm not seeing why this is a better idea than Evo

Because Ed Boon might, you know, shed a tear.

And we don't want that.

We want more garbage games ofc !

 

[TopTierHarley]

I heard that KI had only two people working on the netcode, even if this isn't true the KI dev team has much less resources and yet they have a online experience far beyond MKX, it's a shame really. Maybe if NRS used the money we gave them to help the game rather than make those stupid Beyond Kombat videos we'd have a decent netcode.

Mike Z was in charge.

As stated before, an online beta would help and show that they are addressing the situation. I would gladly pre order for that over a character any day.

 

[Audit]

I'd like online to be smooth like offline (or like USF4's PC's online) but all of this is just pissing in the wind. If they're going to change it, they're already working on the patch that contains it, and if they aren't working on it they aren't going to fix it. No amount of threads or petitions are going to change that.

 

[beepboop]

"God the netcode is bad, COULD YOU PLEASE GET YOUR TEAM OF GAME DEVELOPERS WHO DESIGNED IT TO WORK ON IMPROVING IT PLEASE", is what I believe is implied as the solution when people complain about the netcode.


Exactly.

How are we the customers meant to fix the netcode? Walk into NRS studio, sit down at a computer and get to work, while the NRS development team watch in admiration "it's about time someone started finding a solution to that damn netcode!" Ball is firmly in their court, in 5 years they cbf to fix it, I they aren't just going to one day have a change of heart, injustice 2 will have this same netcode. The issue is they've recieved no negative press and/or motivation to fix it, BECAUSE they dodge responding to letters such as this one and completely avoid acknowledging the issue and any bad PR. If we don't bring it to their doorstep, nothing will happen. Everyone will go back to grumbling on the forum, NRS will continue giving zero fucks, raking in profits from releases, and people who fought AGAINST taking action at a public event to draw public attention towards an issue simply because "I think we will look silly" made a personal decision that they would rather be too cool for school more than they would rather a fixed netcode. It's that damn simple.

The sad thing is, people like BeepBoop couldn't be more misguided, and likely do not follow gaming news and media at all. People taking stands against Developer cold shoulders and forcing them them to act, gets almost universally positive coverage and praise every single time it happens as long as the issue is legitimate. This terrible and unaknowledged netcode in a game with the aggressive DLC tactics that MKX has? More than justified and they will lap it up.

You don't know what I do (except grad work in choral conducting from earlier this thread), you don't know my life, you don't know what I'm doing right now. How are you qualified to make that statement about me? I'll refute it with this: I've played competitive video games since the original Doom. Money'd in several Counter-Strike 1.6 tournaments. You can stop with the personal attacks on me now.

Now, to the issue at hand: if you go back through and read my posts, I have never once said anything about the CUSTOMERS needing to fix the netcode. The @kabelfritz has made the correct approach in summarizing other data points in the industry where success has been had in the online front. In the other thread, all I said was that raising ANY kind of ruckus in a group setting wouldn't work. I also never said that this letter would work either, but I did say that it would be slightly more effective if actual solutions or as close to solutions as we can get (working games like KI) were employed.

You are correct that the "cold shoulder" approach seems to work nowadays. That's simply because we have the means and visibility to do so with the internet. Unfortunately, you also make the assumption that they give zero fucks -- someone in one of these threads brought up the fact that they may not be able to elaborate why it appears that they give zero fucks. Simple minds tend to see the lack of response as zero fucks given and choose not to analyze past that. There are likely way more things in play here than just 'THEY DON'T CARE', but some people don't understand that.

 

[Temjiin]

List all the games you've played with worse netcode than MKX.

 

[mercureXI]

List all the games you've played with worse netcode than MKX.

KoF XII, most likely the worst online fighting game ever.
KoF XIII, shitty too.
SCIV.

That would be it I guess. I might miss a few though.

Lucky me you didn't ask for the list of games with better netcode than MKX

 

[WidowPuppy]

List all the games you've played with worse netcode than MKX.

...

 

[I GOT HANDS]

You don't know what I do (except grad work in choral conducting from earlier this thread), you don't know my life, you don't know what I'm doing right now. How are you qualified to make that statement about me? I'll refute it with this: I've played competitive video games since the original Doom. Money'd in several Counter-Strike 1.6 tournaments. You can stop with the personal attacks on me now.

Now, to the issue at hand: if you go back through and read my posts, I have never once said anything about the CUSTOMERS needing to fix the netcode. The @kabelfritz has made the correct approach in summarizing other data points in the industry where success has been had in the online front. In the other thread, all I said was that raising ANY kind of ruckus in a group setting wouldn't work. I also never said that this letter would work either, but I did say that it would be slightly more effective if actual solutions or as close to solutions as we can get (working games like KI) were employed.

You are correct that the "cold shoulder" approach seems to work nowadays. That's simply because we have the means and visibility to do so with the internet. Unfortunately, you also make the assumption that they give zero fucks -- someone in one of these threads brought up the fact that they may not be able to elaborate why it appears that they give zero fucks. Simple minds tend to see the lack of response as zero fucks given and choose not to analyze past that. There are likely way more things in play here than just 'THEY DON'T CARE', but some people don't understand that.

I feel confident saying that you dont follow gaming news (not that you don't play games) because I know that if you did, you would know that fighting for change like this will not have the negative backlash on our image that you seem to be thinking it will, as when in cases like this where there is a legitimate issue, protesting against the Devs is almost always jumped on by gaming media and championed in a positive light when justified, as this cause well and truly is. And even if you personally do not, I think that a lot of people who share your opinion fall into this category here and do not care / know much about gaming other than Mortal Kombat but are still speaking on the "negative image" this will give us among gaming communities when it's likely the biggest positive exposure you could get while pushing for positive change. Gamers love this shit. They fucking hate crappy Devs. People don't look at stuff like this and go "oh wow what whiners, protesting because their Devs gave them a shitty online experience" that is what Devs think. That is what gamers hate. Media knows this, and they know people lap up these stories championing people squeezing results out of their Devs, and never cast such things in a negative light at risk of completely alienating their audience and getting a rep as being a triple A lapdog, but they will run such stories in a positive light because people absolutely lap it up, Hell gamers themselves publicise this sort of shit on boards like reddit and v


I think you misread what I was saying about the cold shoulder - we are getting it from NRS , not the other way around, just as some other Devs have tried to do to their customers, and when the customers band together and force the Devs hands by giving them a choice of either bad PR or fixing their issues, these stories gain a LOT of posititive traction

 

[Farpafraf]

List all the games you've played with worse netcode than MKX.

MK9

 

[IKizzLE]

i case i cant put all on the list, which of these are outsanding?

edit: nevermind, ill put all of them on, i said i dont wanna be too tame

Virtua Fighter 5 FS, Tekken Tag 2 and Killer Instinct are all probably A+.
Closely followed by Skullgirls which is B+/A- and then GGXrd which is B+ and Street fighter which is B-.

MKX is probably a C-/D+
Very curious to see how this Street Fighter V Beta coming out soon will play out.

 

[buyacushun]

List all the games you've played with worse netcode than MKX.

KoF 13 (on consoles) is bad. On PC is the way to play
UMvC3.
That's about it for me

The only game I played with the ability to set your own frame delay with GGPO is Skullgirls. But here is my interpretation of how it's done.

The reason I prefer input delay over rollback is simply because it keeps your offline timing. With input delay the game takes more frames to register your input, so now everything is messed up. With rollback netcodes (like GGPO), you set the frame delay for YOUR actions and GGPO makes save states to fix any discrepancies during gameplay. So you can set it to 0 frames and get a nice offline experience but there will be constant rollbacks, or "teleporting" and flickering, if the connection can't keep up with that. With ok connections I'll set mine between 2-4 frames which isn't a big difference for skullgirls and do my combos with near the same timing as when I'm in training mode. There are less rollbacks because GGPO has more time to check the save states of both players and match up what should be happening on screen. If you want to play without any graphical oddities you would just set a high frame delay like 8 or so but then you'd have your classic "underwater" gameplay. Which is also a big problem with how some companies approach online. They'd rather it look pretty than be functional.

Say the netcode NRS uses now has an input delay of 6 frames for online matches. Everything I do will take 6 frames to even start which would make dealing with mixups incredibly hard or getting through zoning a nightmare. I press punch it doesn't come out until 6 frames later and to block I need to be 6 frames quicker. With a rollback netcode, if you set yours to 0 than everything you do will happen instantly on your screen. But if I have mine set to 4 than the game won't know what I was doing until 4 frames later. So if you see a hit then it stutters and now i'm blocking, that's because on the frame you saw a hit I was actually blocking and GGPO realizes this and sets the game back to show me blocking and then proceeds as normal.

So NRS can implement a set delay, a variable system and I think they can do a mixture of both by having a set delay but make it slight and also use rollbacks for discrepancies. I think the variable system works fine as long as people realize what it's doing. It allows for everyone to set the experience they want to have. I can tell you my experience with Skullgirls has been a much happier one compared to MKx.

I typed all this out and then realized I'm sure someone explained it way better than I did. Without a doubt here is Mike_Z explaining GGPO. http://skullgirls.com/2011/09/skullgirls-ggpo-and-you/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=skullgirls-ggpo-and-you

 

[beepboop]

I feel confident saying that you dont follow gaming news (not that you don't play games) because I know that if you did, you would know that fighting for change like this will not have the negative backlash on our image that you seem to be thinking it will, as when in cases like this where there is a legitimate issue, protesting against the Devs is almost always jumped on by gaming media and championed in a positive light when justified, as this cause well and truly is. And even if you personally do not, I think that a lot of people who share your opinion fall into this category here and do not care / know much about gaming other than Mortal Kombat but are still speaking on the "negative image" this will give us among gaming communities when it's likely the biggest positive exposure you could get while pushing for positive change. Gamers love this shit. They fucking hate crappy Devs. People don't look at stuff like this and go "oh wow what whiners, protesting because their Devs gave them a shitty online experience" that is what Devs think. That is what gamers hate. Media knows this, and they know people lap up these stories championing people squeezing results out of their Devs, and never cast such things in a negative light at risk of completely alienating their audience and getting a rep as being a triple A lapdog, but they will run such stories in a positive light because people absolutely lap it up, Hell gamers themselves publicise this sort of shit on boards like reddit and v


I think you misread what I was saying about the cold shoulder - we are getting it from NRS , not the other way around, just as some other Devs have tried to do to their customers, and when the customers band together and force the Devs hands by giving them a choice of either bad PR or fixing their issues, these stories gain a LOT of posititive traction

Your confidence is misplaced; I follow almost all of the major gaming news outlets. My experience in tournament play (even if it's another game) should be enough to calm your fears a little bit that I don't know what I'm talking about.

Frankly, my concern is not about the image of the community, it's about getting the results that we want. All I've been saying is that the means that have been suggested won't get you the results you want and told you exactly why. I'm well aware that gamers hate crappy devs -- all I've said is that crappy devs do not only a game make.

 

[Marbledecker]

KoF XIII

Oh word? I was seriously considering picking this up. Glad I saw this first.

EDIT: Didn't see this one prior to posting either. Thank you both:

KoF 13 (on consoles) is bad.

 

[Shark Tank]

Whoever has been in charge of their network features for the past 5 games needs to be fired because they're literally bottom of the barrel in terms of talent if MKX is what they have to show for it after so many years. Please...hire...new...people...

 

[mercureXI]

Oh word? I was seriously considering picking this up. Glad I saw this first.

EDIT: Didn't see this one prior to posting either. Thank you both:

Yeah on consoles, lagfest.

On PC it's better, but there's like ... no one playing this game online (they tried to fix online way too late)

Great game though. But forget about online.

Reminds me about some other game, Mortal Something X.

 

[Harry Otter]

Well let's see how it will go, if those questions are asked behind closed doors.

IMO, only pressure forces people to do what they don't want to, and clearly, having online being decent is not a priority atm.

Only time will tell ...

Well you've said what you needed to say. All that came about was arguing in circles and obnoxious reaction images.

I think a few here just are far too immature to realize how being outspoken can get you results, yes you might look like a tard but it's been done before. Also the fact no one probably read anything you were saying and just assumed you are encouraging people to act like assshats at evo. But if no one wants to do anything that's fine, hopefully in the long run NRS will realize that something is wrong and will take action (I don't agree but whatevs this shits just a hobby).

Any way I want to see how things go after evo, if I'm not satisfied with what route nrs goes I'll just drop this game. It's meaningless in the long run but that's my decision, I'll move on to SF V I suppose that looks fun. =)

And yeah I know one player means nothing and it shouldn't, I just don't care for this kind of treatment. I'll try somewhere more supportive and mature.

 

[Clark L.]

I have a major in Sarcasm. And I'm telling you....

Nrs is all..

 

[00001]

Chanting at EVO could harm MKX's reputation. Writing a letter could be ignored. Asking questions at panels could be sidestepped. This is all true... but SOMETHING needs to be done and I think that at the very least we can all agree with that. If chanting after Grand Finals is the only way we think our voices will be heard, then let's do it. If we think we can capture their attention with a letter from all of us, then someone should get to writing. The focus shouldn't be on how this gets done, but that it gets done somehow. And I know that sounds a bit foolish and I'm aware that it might not work, but for fuck's sake this is 2015. AAA titles that receive as much support and attention as Mortal Kombat X should not feature such a poor netcode, and should not continue to offer such a terrible online experience.

 

[dribirut]

This isn't going to help. You guys really think they haven't seen the million of threads we've made. Stop discouraging the chanting because IMO it will def embarrass nrs and it might be the kick in the ass they need to Bering about real change.

Also who gives a fuck about what other communities think about ours.