Netplay 101: Prologue

As you all know, I'm hyped for the console ports of KOFXIII and Gundam: EXVS. There is one thing, however, that is eerily looming over my anticipation of both releases. You may have already guessed from the title: I am talking about netcode.

Looking at the track records of both SNKP and Bandai-Namco, I can't help but be a little scared DEATHLY AFRAID of both games having shitty netcode. The 360 ports of KOF98UM and Garou: Mark of The Wolves have some of the worst netcode of any videogame I've ever played. If you didn't know any better, you could be forgiven for thinking you were playing them on a Dreamcast via dialup. It's that bad. Tekken 6 didn't exactly set the world on fire with its netcode, either.

KOFXIII is only a little over a month away from release, and there's still no word on how good the netcode is, or even if it's rollback or delay based. I and everyone else that's buying the game are going in completely blind as to what the online experience is going to be like. While I'll be disappointed if the netcode sucks, at least I'll still have arcades to play at. But what about the rest of the non-Japanese world?

While you may be able to live without netplay in Japan, it's essential for the rest of us. It's a good way to play with local players on short notice as well as a good way to expose yourself to unfamiliar matchups. I'll go more in depth on this at a later time, but needless to say netcode matters a whole hell of a lot if you have no other way to play.

The question we should all be asking fighting game developers is this: if I can't play my friends just 20 miles away without the game turning into a slideshow, then what's the point of even including online play? 

The excuses of "Japan has the best internet in the world" and "they're making games primarily for their domestic audience" are bullshit. First and foremost, a good connection doesn't fix shitty netcode. If you've ever watched a Godsgarden SSF4 netplay stream, you know that they conduct lag tests before every match (both players are in Japan, mind you). On average, they lag anywhere between 2 and 6 frames.

Additionally, if a game's being released in the US market, it's not unreasonable to expect netcode that performs acceptably on American internet connections. While GGPO is probably too much to ask for in most situations, could we at least start to see some steps in the right direction? Can we just phase out delay based netcode already? We won't miss it. Really, we won't.

I realize that there will always be a market for bad ports because people will always buy them, but this shit has really gotten out of hand. SSF4 and MVC3 both have bad netcode (MVC3 especially) and they're the two most popular fighting games in the US right now. This may give our friends in Japan who make these wonderful games the impression that either the netcode is fine or that we just don't care if it's bad; neither is true. If KOFXIII has bad netcode, I'll be playing KOF98 on GGPO instead. If Gundam has bad netcode, I'm going to rage because I'm getting a PS3 just for that game. Also, it's going to cost $100+ to import, lol.

Bottom line: if a game is unplayable online, it's unplayable to the majority of the world. Online play doesn't have to be perfect (nor is it ever going to be), but it should be good enough that you can still learn from it. It's clear that Japan wants to sell fighting games to the West; what's unclear is whether or not they care enough to give us a decent product we can play online. Hardcore fans of fighting games will buy them no matter what, but what reason does Joe Gamer have to play SSF4 over the latest COWADOODY if he can't even play it online? Plus, isn't Joe Gamer exactly who they're trying to win over by releasing these games in the West?

To be continued...