If you love Smash, do yourself a favour, quit online

[♠Soul♠]

If you love Smash, and particularly Smash Ultimate, you should do yourself a favour and quit. It's fucking garbage. It's literally the worst thing that could happen to the game, and a death sentence to your passion and love for the game. It turns it into something completely awful and unrecognizable. I would know, because I was stuck with it for well over a year during quarantine (aka "The Wifi Era"). That alone killed any passion and confidence I ever had as a player.

Honestly, you're better off practicing by yourself or even against CPUs (who at least know how to vary a some of their options). Hell, even nothing is better. If I could go back to 2020, I'd choose nothing. Nothing is better than playing Ultimate online.

I need to get this off my chest. I suffered for too long putting up with it, if only for the sake of doing something I've loved for years and will continue to do so- but wifi isn't taking me down with it.

[Jotari]

Any more specific reasons as to what your issue is playing online? I rather enjoy playing Smash online. Though Joy Con drift has made it much more difficult for me, but that's an issue with playing the offline modes too.

[Florete]

Sounds like Soul got paired with one too many McDonald's Wifi warriors.

[♠Soul♠]

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

Any more specific reasons as to what your issue is playing online? I rather enjoy playing Smash online. Though Joy Con drift has made it much more difficult for me, but that's an issue with playing the offline modes too.

It basically exaggerates all of the game's inherent flaws to a silly degree, to the point normal interactions feel super awkward and full of guesses. Takes the reaction factor almost completely off the table, and this is where bad players thrive. They can "pressure" you for free and then mash panic options like crazy... or just anything, really. I play completely off of reaction, and I lose to players I'd never lose to offline (hell, I proved it). You can call it an ego thing, but it gets tiring. It gets really tiring losing to these god awful players. It's just common sense, and it grinds on your sanity at some point.

If you're not that serious into it, or your character, or playstyle allows it (ie playing "lame"), then wifi might be tolerable... at best. You realise the better you get at the game, the more wifi fucks you over. I used to be fine, or at least neutral to it when the game came out, but it's clear I didn't know any better.

And for the record, I use Joycons as well.

Edited March 24, 2022 by ♠Soul♠

[Lightcosmo]

4 hours ago, ♠Soul♠ said:

and then mash panic options like crazy... or just anything, really

Roy players for example always play like this, online or not, the character gets away with it for pretty much free, so no reason not to.

4 hours ago, ♠Soul♠ said:

or your character, or playstyle allows it (ie playing "lame"),

Characters like Ike fall under this category online or not, so in cases like that i don't think it really matters much.

[ciphertul]

4 hours ago, ♠Soul♠ said:

It basically exaggerates all of the game's inherent flaws to a silly degree, to the point normal interactions feel super awkward and full of guesses. Takes the reaction factor almost completely off the table, and this is where bad players thrive. They can "pressure" you for free and then mash panic options like crazy... or just anything, really. I play completely off of reaction, and I lose to players I'd never lose to offline (hell, I proved it). You can call it an ego thing, but it gets tiring. It gets really tiring losing to these god awful players. It's just common sense, and it grinds on your sanity at some point.

While not really about Smash, this is pretty common. I played a lot of For Honor and easily the worse player for a skilled player to vs is a new/very low skill player. Once you get used to how characters work and their movesets it far harder to counter someone who doesn’t know them. It’s kinda the duality of vs games.

[Perkilator]

I usually play offline against a Lv. 3 CPU in Vs. Mode. Maybe that’s something you’d enjoy?

[vanguard333]

3 hours ago, ciphertul said:

While not really about Smash, this is pretty common. I played a lot of For Honor and easily the worse player for a skilled player to vs is a new/very low skill player. Once you get used to how characters work and their movesets it far harder to counter someone who doesn’t know them. It’s kinda the duality of vs games.

That honestly also sounds a lot like real life; there's a reason that there are sayings along the lines of, "the best swordsman fears not the second-best swordsman, but the worst swordsman" and stuff like that.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

This comes across as "I don't enjoy Smash Ultimate online, so no one else is allowed to, either." Maybe that's not the intent, but why not trust people to decide whether or not they keep playing Smash online based on the kind of experience they have? If they dislike it, they can stop playing. If it's a problem with the online functionality, then it won't ruin the base game for them.

[Jotari]

9 hours ago, ♠Soul♠ said:

It basically exaggerates all of the game's inherent flaws to a silly degree, to the point normal interactions feel super awkward and full of guesses. Takes the reaction factor almost completely off the table, and this is where bad players thrive. They can "pressure" you for free and then mash panic options like crazy... or just anything, really. I play completely off of reaction, and I lose to players I'd never lose to offline (hell, I proved it). You can call it an ego thing, but it gets tiring. It gets really tiring losing to these god awful players. It's just common sense, and it grinds on your sanity at some point.

If you're not that serious into it, or your character, or playstyle allows it (ie playing "lame"), then wifi might be tolerable... at best. You realise the better you get at the game, the more wifi fucks you over. I used to be fine, or at least neutral to it when the game came out, but it's clear I didn't know any better.

And for the record, I use Joycons as well.

Well I play Ganondorf and Ridley so it mostly involves dominating scrubs, which is fun (Ganondorf gets shit for being low tier, but for casual play he's outright broken). At least when joy con lag isn't killing me with random Dair suicides.

Edited March 24, 2022 by Jotari

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Solo online? Haven't really tried since the launch week of both Smash 4 and Ultimate when I was checking out the (lack of) modes. 

Make a friend and Play Doubles. In my competitive smash stint of the early 2010s, every player that was weening off the game back in Melee and Project M gradually turned to Doubles. It's more chaotic and fun, less skill based so you don't feel each loss, and engenders teamwork and communication. You come up with dumb doubles combos that are even easier in Ultimate Quickplay since Team Attack is turned off. Granted, I wish we could have Team Attack On in our Preferred Rules, but we've learned not to get angry at some of the dumber team comps that only work because you can charge shot and ganondorf Fsmash cleanly through your teammate to cover their bad options. In Doubles, every character feels better, especially the low tiers and heavyweights. When it's down to you two and one stock left? It's time to freestyle. And you cook up some nutty stuff even in sheer improv. 

Also, doubles has zero regard for GSP, so the skill level of your opponents is all over the place. Even not getting your preferred stages tends to be a blast. The oldest kept secret about competitive smash is that Any seasoned Smash veteran loves items. And will often main guys like Link or Diddy Kong just to have an excuse to perform cool tech with them. 

Edited March 24, 2022 by Zapp Branniglenn

[Lightcosmo]

Wait, I still make doubles competitive. Xd

[SoulWeaver]

17 hours ago, ♠Soul♠ said:

If you love Smash, and particularly Smash Ultimate, you should do yourself a favour and quit.

Bold of you to imply I ever played the online in the first place - I am firmly entrenched in my "plays every game entirely alone because he has no friends" life and have no intention of stopping.

That said, I'm sorry for you. It's always frustrating to have to play a game that actively handicaps you for having skill unless it's a meme game like We Didn't Playtest This where you go in knowing it's all going to be random nonsense.

10 hours ago, lightcosmo said:

Roy players for example always play like this, online or not, the character gets away with it for pretty much free, so no reason not to.

I once again beat the curve, excellent. My brother finds my Roy baffling because he says it's the most anti-Roy Roy ever.

[AnonymousSpeed]

58 minutes ago, SoulWeaver said:

I once again beat the curve, excellent. My brother finds my Roy baffling because he says it's the most anti-Roy Roy ever.

Evil Roy be like

"I'm going to promote in Chapter 8."

[♠Soul♠]

11 hours ago, lightcosmo said:

Roy players for example always play like this, online or not, the character gets away with it for pretty much free, so no reason not to.

Characters like Ike fall under this category online or not, so in cases like that i don't think it really matters much.

I disagree. I know my way around a lot of these characters, even if they're overly aggressive and "mashy". The problem isn't these characters themselves, but it's how much you can get away with being bad online. If anything, dealing with these sort of characters (even online) isn't too bad. It's the defensive and campy ones who can throw out projectiles on your shield and still get away by rolling for the 20th time even if you know perfectly well it's coming.

11 hours ago, ciphertul said:

While not really about Smash, this is pretty common. I played a lot of For Honor and easily the worse player for a skilled player to vs is a new/very low skill player. Once you get used to how characters work and their movesets it far harder to counter someone who doesn’t know them. It’s kinda the duality of vs games.

This only really feels like a concern on Ultimate's wifi, because stuff like that was still pretty doable on For Glory. For Glory wasn't the best, but it genuinely helped me practice to an extent, even against worse players.

10 hours ago, Perkilator said:

I usually play offline against a Lv. 3 CPU in Vs. Mode. Maybe that’s something you’d enjoy?

That sounds awful... and still less worse than online. Do Training Mode, at least.

 

6 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

This comes across as "I don't enjoy Smash Ultimate online, so no one else is allowed to, either." Maybe that's not the intent, but why not trust people to decide whether or not they keep playing Smash online based on the kind of experience they have? If they dislike it, they can stop playing. If it's a problem with the online functionality, then it won't ruin the base game for them.

It does sound like that, but then it's not like people have to agree or go with what I say. They're free to choose. I just know people that keep playing in spite of how awful it is, and they know that, but it's like they keep going because it's "better than nothing".

6 hours ago, Jotari said:

Well I play Ganondorf and Ridley so it mostly involves dominating scrubs, which is fun (Ganondorf gets shit for being low tier, but for casual play he's outright broken). At least when joy con lag isn't killing me with random Dair suicides.

yeh he definitely gets away with random smash attacks on wifi. You can still be good with him, and he really has better moves than that.

And I don't know what you mean about "joycon lag", because I've played offline pretty consistently, and the issue was never that. It could just easily be lag coming from wifi.

5 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

When it's down to you two and one stock left? It's time to freestyle. And you cook up some nutty stuff even in sheer improv.

Well, that doesn't seem to bad (doubles). Good stuff.

Quote

Also, doubles has zero regard for GSP, so the skill level of your opponents is all over the place. Even not getting your preferred stages tends to be a blast. The oldest kept secret about competitive smash is that Any seasoned Smash veteran loves items. And will often main guys like Link or Diddy Kong just to have an excuse to perform cool tech with them

Oh, yeah- GSP is the biggest lie ever when it comes to deciding "skill". I've played a Pyra player literally did 90% Side B the entire match, as well as Samus players who play the exact same cookie cutter Charge Shot roll spam and grab when they're by the ledge. This is in Elite Smash. The actual good players are either not there, or very few in between.

2 hours ago, SoulWeaver said:

That said, I'm sorry for you. It's always frustrating to have to play a game that actively handicaps you for having skill unless it's a meme game like We Didn't Playtest This where you go in knowing it's all going to be random nonsense.

Thank you, I appreciate that. See, someone that doesn't know how these games work, from the outside, it wouldn't make any sense to them. The logical rule is "better player > win", but wifi really is that fucked up.

Quote

I once again beat the curve, excellent. My brother finds my Roy baffling because he says it's the most anti-Roy Roy ever.

What does that even mean. Do you, like, sit still and randomly FSmash or something?

Edited March 24, 2022 by ♠Soul♠

[Jotari]

34 minutes ago, ♠Soul♠ said:

I disagree. I know my way around a lot of these characters, even if they're overly aggressive and "mashy". The problem isn't these characters themselves, but it's how much you can get away with being bad online. If anything, dealing with these sort of characters (even online) isn't too bad. It's the defensive and campy ones who can throw out projectiles on your shield and still get away by rolling for the 20th time even if you know perfectly well it's coming.

This only really feels like a concern on Ultimate's wifi, because stuff like that was still pretty doable on For Glory. For Glory wasn't the best, but it genuinely helped me practice to an extent, even against worse players.

That sounds awful... and still less worse than online. Do Training Mode, at least.

 

It does sound like that, but then it's not like people have to agree or go with what I say. They're free to choose. I just know people that keep playing in spite of how awful it is, and they know that, but it's like they keep going because it's "better than nothing".

yeh he definitely gets away with random smash attacks on wifi. You can still be good with him, and he really has better moves than that.

And I don't know what you mean about "joycon lag", because I've played offline pretty consistently, and the issue was never that. It could just easily be lag coming from wifi.

Well, that doesn't seem to bad (doubles). Good stuff.

Oh, yeah- GSP is the biggest lie ever when it comes to deciding "skill". I've played a Pyra player literally did 90% Side B the entire match, as well as Samus players who play the exact same cookie cutter Charge Shot roll spam and grab when they're by the ledge. This is in Elite Smash. The actual good players are either not there, or very few in between.

Thank you, I appreciate that. See, someone that doesn't know how these games work, from the outside, it wouldn't make any sense to them. The logical rule is "better player > win", but wifi really is that fucked up.

What does that even mean. Do you, like, sit still and randomly FSmash or something?

Sorry, Joy Con drift. Don't know how it came out of lag in the process of thought to brain instruction to fingers to keys.

[♠Soul♠]

I fixed my Joycon drift in a number of ocassions, and still use my 3 year old Joycons since the game came out. If anything, the wear might've made them feel more fluid.

Just spray an electric contact cleaner under the rubber of the stick, and and then wiggle it in circles for around 20 seconds.

[♠Soul♠]

I feel I was too harsh in saying all it gave me was misery. I can at least thank wifi for giving me the opportunity to get so many awesome clips, and it's literally the only thing it's "good" for.

[SoulWeaver]

23 hours ago, ♠Soul♠ said:

Thank you, I appreciate that. See, someone that doesn't know how these games work, from the outside, it wouldn't make any sense to them. The logical rule is "better player > win", but wifi really is that fucked up.

What does that even mean. Do you, like, sit still and randomly FSmash or something?

I remember I really enjoyed Sm4sh online, even though I only ever had bad connection. I got to dunk on some Ryu tryhards right after he came out, I set up and dueled this girl from Google+ back when that was a thing who showed me Palu was way better than I gave her credit for...good times. I watched my cousin play one match of Ultimate online and was like welp, glad I saved myself $20+, this looks mindless and not particularly enjoyable at all. It's a shame because Ultimate could have had a really phenomenal online scene.

Nah, it's more of a meme between me and him. Roy is of course stereotypically a very button-mashy character, but my Roy tends to be very cautious and patient, and I very rarely use Double Edge Dance, so it drives my brother up the wall because he's like oh duh Roy jumps in and Side-B's here so I'll shield to parry and punish, then I proceed to roll in and grab him or some other random nonsense.

Meanwhile 90% of my Marth gameplan is FAir-FAir-FAir-FTilt-FSmash, so my brother and I are well aware that I am absolutely capable of playing like a braindead masher, so he finds it bizarre that my Roy and Marth's gameplans are switched from the stereotype of each.

[♠Soul♠]

10 hours ago, SoulWeaver said:

I remember I really enjoyed Sm4sh online, even though I only ever had bad connection. I got to dunk on some Ryu tryhards right after he came out, I set up and dueled this girl from Google+ back when that was a thing who showed me Palu was way better than I gave her credit for...good times.

Oh no, I'd actually say that I actually managed to enjoy For Glory decently overall. Ruleset wasn't perfect, and there's always bad players, but it still felt really doable, and like those janky stuff didn't really happen nearly as much as Ultimate's online. Did I lose to bad players? Yeah, like once in a while, but that's about it. I even withstood the silly nametagging messaging system players used, and they could talk shit using that.

I've won one tournament in 2016, and a guy asked me how I practiced, and I unironically told him I just played For Glory a lot. Wish I could've said the same about Quickplay in helping me improve, but it only made me more annoyed...

10 hours ago, SoulWeaver said:

I watched my cousin play one match of Ultimate online and was like welp, glad I saved myself $20+, this looks mindless and not particularly enjoyable at all. It's a shame because Ultimate could have had a really phenomenal online scene.

Then you're definitely smarter than me, and you made the right call.

10 hours ago, SoulWeaver said:

Meanwhile 90% of my Marth gameplan is FAir-FAir-FAir-FTilt-FSmash, so my brother and I are well aware that I am absolutely capable of playing like a braindead masher, so he finds it bizarre that my Roy and Marth's gameplans are switched from the stereotype of each.

Marth can definitely be played "mashy", since he has the framedata for it. His only real issue is trouble killing if you can't land tippers.

[Jotari]

On 3/25/2022 at 2:38 AM, ♠Soul♠ said:

I fixed my Joycon drift in a number of ocassions, and still use my 3 year old Joycons since the game came out. If anything, the wear might've made them feel more fluid.

Just spray an electric contact cleaner under the rubber of the stick, and and then wiggle it in circles for around 20 seconds.

Yo, thanks for telling me about this. Took a while to find some, but it ended up working like a charm. Really wish someone had told me a year and a half ago before I shelled out for another Joy Con.

[♠Soul♠]

On 5/15/2022 at 6:00 PM, Jotari said:

Yo, thanks for telling me about this. Took a while to find some, but it ended up working like a charm. Really wish someone had told me a year and a half ago before I shelled out for another Joy Con.

Well, it's great that it worked out for someone else, but your timing is also ironic. Lately, my Joycons have been working irregularly, and earlier today, I outright can't dash or crouch in Smash. They lasted very long, so it makes sense at least.

[DaveCozy]

I formed a lot of bad habits playing online, if that's where you're getting at. I get it.

Any little net lag drops whatever buffered inputs you put beforehand, which really messes up combos and before you know it you're madly mashing the button to ensure your next attack registers.

Even something as simple as Snake's d-throw -> up-tilt, buffering an up-tilt online sucks sometimes because it just won't register that you were holding up and A (or up C-stick if you play with tilt stick like me) while doing the d-throw. Such a simple KO combo to do off-line and yet online it sometimes just doesn't work because lag decided to happen and drop your buffered input.

Personally though, I wouldn't encourage anybody to quit online just cuz of that, just that I wouldn't say to take it seriously. I only play Smash Ultimate locally now with friends.

EDIT: Aside Snake I also play Fox and ooooh boy, that is not a fun character to play as online. Not only are his combos much easier to do with buffered inputs, he is also very reaction heavy to get the most out of his punishes. Online just doesn't lend well to him at all.

Edited May 19, 2022 by DaveCozy