Topic: ARMS

G E E S U S

The genelab is sick. And the winning pic of helix makes me really sad. Hhis honest smile makes it even worse.

@meleebrawler how do you deal with a good twintelle? Almost worse than a good rg, i can NOT hit twintelle more often than not if it's a good one. Every punch is like hitting air. I play not to win but to merely deny them a perfect. And often fail.

@NEStalgia Pretty much the same strategy I outlined for Ribbon Girl: wait for her throw punches in the air before countering with your own. If they're being really defensive and not giving you that chance, keep throwing punches from long range to build your flurry. You'll want fast arms like crackers or hydras to exploit small openings, with possibly a heavier one to protect you from her punches.

I main twintelle myself and I´ve realized that those who thinks they can read twintelles players moves you should just play the opposite tactics. You should stay more on the ground, alternatively changing ure tactics during the fight. Twintelle is a good offensive character but can aswell be as good as defensive. Many better opponents try to use the hydras against twintelle´s, often playing as kid cobra and being very offensive spamming attacks. The best way is to keep the umbrellas in your arms choise and use them as doubles, didn´t lose a single fight at rank 9. Playing offensive as twintelle i enjoy double fire crackers or allround double ice or 1 ice and 1 umbrella.
As a very unpredicting character to play i also enjoy using ninjara incase my opponent wants a revanche. I hope they will patch some world-ranking any time so u know how u are doing at ranked.

So I started the Final Trial in Zelda, but paused at the first oasis and wanted to show my brother Arms. But I couldn't turn it off.

So I took the Switch out of the dock and put in my other Switch, and loaded up Arms. Had no save data, so just threw it on the Lv 1 difficulty Grand Prix in case he wanted to try a round.

And I actually had a lot of fun again! That's what has been missing since getting myself stuck in the middle of the level 3 difficulty Grand Prix. I think whenever I managed to finally beat it I'm going back to level two difficulty and never changing it again. 1 is definitely too easy but 3 is too hard. It just made me fall in love with the game again though. I'd forgotten how much fun this game is when you're not playing on a difficulty that's way above your skill level. And as embarrassing as it may seem to be stuck on such a low level this game is just not a game I'm very good at... and I'm OK with that.

After reading into the description for Seekies a bit more, I now have disturbing imagery of Byte running around tasing people for stealing beach balls and other beach mischief.

I've been thinking about @nintendoer's list of character placement. I'm still not seeing Kid Cobra is speed. I've been feeling that even though I should like Ninjara, I seem to do better with Kid Cobra.....a few cases where I could repeatedly go against the same player, I lost against him both times as Ninjara, but won each time as RG, Min Min, and Cobra. But! I realized it's the weapons, not the character I was liking of Cobra. His either-or charge or quick dash isn't working so well for me. I put a popper on Ninjara, and I'm starting to think I do much better with him. KC almost seems more "all around" but with the speed burst gimmick. Ninjara doesn't really seem speed to me either....more evasive than speedy. KC seems more about waiting around defensively before striking. Ninjara seems more about evading before striking. RG and Min Min seem more about constant aggression combined with speed. To me Min Min is all speed, if not moreso than RG...BUT, mostly if she's built on Ram Rams and *manders. I think RG is still my "main" but Min Min is co-main. It took me longer to adapt to her, but once I got into how to really use her, she strikes like lightening. My third was going to be Cobra...he almost seems like a technical character like Twintelle and Helix. Ninjara seems to be earning a spot again maybe. Ninjara's a little technical too though.

I'm a little scared of Splatoon, as this game is really showing Switch's Wifi weaknesses. So many players disconnecting, even in party mode. And continued really crazy lag. Arms does NOT handle lag well. Not that splatoon does. It should freeze, not guess. More and more I'm seeing characters that punches physically pass through with no effect, and/or they get affected at a later time. out of nowhere. Sometimes its to my benefit. Grabs that go right through me but do nothing....but when the rhythm of punches is skewed, the game plays like Thumper more than ARMS and it's about not getting thrown off by off rhythms....it makes you mess up a lot when you don't know what hits are hitting or not, or where their arms actually are.

Weirdest one yet: Party mode Skillshot against Master Mummy with dual ice dragons. He walks over to the far right side of the screen (his left), stays there permanently firing lasers into the corner of the room. Hits not a single target until the last set or two of targets pop up at the end and he finally moves over and starts getting some. I assumed it was a young child or such playing that didn't know how. Until the match ended and he won. With several THOUSAND points, to my few hundred. While he spent the entire match in the corner punching at nothing and I was clearing targets. Apparently what he saw on his screen wasn't even slightly related to what I saw on mine. The completely broken Splatoon netcode lives on in Arms....I'm guessing Nintendo thinks it's fine since Japan is fiber everywhere.

It hurts in ranked though. I had a match against a springman. I was losing badly. I didn't understand why, he didn't seem very good. I realized most of my punches where hitting him with his shield down but doing nothing. Then I noticed he'd block my flurries even though I activated while both his arms were out. Then I noticed him jump, then descend....then descend again. Like the joyful splatoon teleporting. Wherever I was punching wasn't where he really was. Internet games suck.

@meleebrawler Thanks, I honestly approached twintelle differently than RG, but your advice made her seem almost easy to deal with....it wouldn't work against the really good players, but they seemed to be presenting so many opportunities to counter with the float-attacks that I had never seen before.

Also, ****** that stupid skateboard map! I've come to the point that when I get that map, I'm not even going to try fighting anymore, I'm just going to let them kill me. It's not worth the effort for random luck and ruins my concentration and finger strength for subsequent matches. Yesterday in ranked I got that map 4 out of 6 rounds. I lost every one of them. Worse, was the one I lost to a grab spammer that managed to always grab me even on the disc! Whoever has the dual *manders is almost certain to win. (I did win one against a *mander RG in party mode, but that was a lucky break.) Awful, awful map.

@JaxonH Did you try playing with standard controls yet? I know it's "meant" for motion, and it's "more fun" with motion, but you don't have anything to lose by trying. For a lot of players the game really clicked for them with the normal controls. Yabuki proved that the game CAN be dominated via motion, but it's a lot more difficult to get there (it's been his day job for years, remember). For me personally I play motion just for amusement to mess around in party mode for giggles, but serious play means sticks. I wouldn't have fun in ranked with motion....at all.... Plus I've been playing handheld 90% of the time so there's not much choice anyway, I had to hone it with sticks.

@NEStalgia I've seen my fair share of disconnects as well, but rarely major lag... which makes the disconnects all the more baffling. Regardless, I can usually play online without much issue, but on certain occasions when the connection errors crop up I just move a little closer to the router in my house and that seems to largely fix the issue.

I feel that there's still something of a disclaimer on Switch's online at the moment. Mainly that it is still free like previous systems, and Nintendo can't or isn't willing to invest in improving it until we start paying them for it. That isn't to say it is bad currently, it certainly works... there just seems to be some issue with the hardware getting wireless signal.

What you say about Min-Min is really a testament to her well-roundedness. Like Spring Man, the arms you put on her largely dictate the way you play (her default loadout is actually rather defensive in nature), and her tools lend benefits to both playstyle spectrums. Her kicks and special dragon arm can just as easily be used for defending or attacking.

@meleebrawler I've actually been playing a lot on a hotspot (under a cell tower with faster bandwidth and lower latency than the DSL lines! )...it's inches from my Switch. So I definitely have strong signal myself. (I've seen the same issues at home, wired, as well.)

As much as I've argued back and forth with Yorumi and others here about there indeed being costs to Nintendo running online infrastructure and thus justifying the price, I do have to agree with him in terms of game performance: The gameplay is P2P. Nintendo's servers have nothing to do with the quality of the gameplay online, they exist purely for matchmaking and stat tracking. So if you're in a match and see issues with lag and such, no amount of infrastructure improvements will fix it, because it's not actually using Nintendo's infrastructure (and there's no reason to believe they will provide dedicated hosting...the games are clearly working without it, so they're not going to add it. Just as PSN doesn't, and, XBL does occasionally, but even there it's rare.) So, yeah...I wouldn't wait for paid improvements on that part. The improvements are more about "don't crash during splatfest"

But yeah, the antenna in the hardware is awful. To be fair, so is PS4's. But as a portable, it's going to be worse on Switch as people are apt to roam around with it. That probably can't be fixed either (I've had my share of tablets/laptops with poor wifi antennas as well...)

Hmm, I suppose that's a good point about Min Min. Which makes her an attractive main. Cobra though....it's still hard to see him as speed. If his speed is based on the charged speed burst that seems much more a technical than speed character. You have to master using that well, which seems fairly tricky to do. After I realized my like of him involved his weapons....I realized I was really not using his sole main ability much at all.

Ninjara OTOH, getting rid of his crummy stock weapons made him play much much better to me. Dual chakrams don't work as well for him as dual ram rams on min min IMO. and Triblast doesn't seem to accentuate his strengths so much. I lose more with him than with Cobra, but changing him up... that might be different. HOWEVER...evading flurries STILL remains a problem for him. OFten I try dashing around to avoid the incoming flurry and they seem to realign their attack wherever I am oddly fast and get me anyway. But if I don't use the charge-dash on cobra much, he seems like a poorer choice.

I do have to say I still hate the weapons system. I like the ability to change weapons, what I don't like is the random unlock that means you can't get a weapon you intend to use without playing for many hours to rack up enough gold to blow in the minigame to get enough chances to get it. It means, for example, if *manders exploit the snakeboards, a character that doesn't come with them has a distinct disadvantage in that map until they play long enough to get it. If nothing else it means you have to hone and practice a set of weapons you don't like just to unlock the one you do, and then have to re-learn. That (and the snakeboards) are my only real complaints in the game.

@NEStalgia Kid Cobra's dashes are only half of his speed. His long jump is a big part of it as well, and mixing them together is how he makes himself difficult to pin down and predict.

In general, getting too focused on using your character's unique traits at the expense of fundamentals is something of a major pitfall. It's how we get things like Ninjaras doing nothing but air-poof -> grab.

To counter flurries effectively, you need to be very aware of your situation and opponent's arm selection. As Ninjara, if you dodge a flurry at close range you'll likely get a chance to counterattack. At very long range you just keep dodging. This often works at mid-range too, but if the opponent is canny enough to stop swinging and realign with something like the fist attack, THAT may be the time to block. There likely won't be enough juice left in the flurry at that point to punish the guard warp hard, if at all.

@meleebrawler Maybe, but that's still more of a technical player than a speed player to me. The long jump is no more difficult to predict the landing than a short jump in a lot of ways. I use the jump a lot....but I don't feel any more unpredictable with it than with any other character, or especially Ninjara's warp jump. And you can't stay in motion like the other 3, because you really need the long charge. But then there's the catch that if you dash, you don't have elemental weapons anymore, and if you use your elemental weapons you don't have your quick dash anymore, and either way you have to charge up again to use them. That definitely seems like more technical play.

Good point, but then if you're not focusing on your character's traits, what does character choice matter beyond aesthetics? Though of all the characters the only one that IMO relies entirely on the unique trait is Ninjara, since it affects every air-dash and every block that's one character you can't escape the uniqueness even if you try. I haven't actually seen many air-poof->grab Ninjaras. The AI does that like crazy, but after the testpunch most of my opponents playing Ninjara have been very tactical. Frustratingly so And the Ribbon Grannies tend to spam the multi-jumps.

As for Ninjara flurry avoidance, I don't aim to counter/punish....though if I see the chance I do take it. It's mostly an issue with actually avoiding it. At first just dashing in a strafing pattern around them worked...but many seem to realign and somehow get me while dashing like they just snapped in a different direction and fired. Maybe that's lag induced? If so, though, it still presents a Ninjara specific problem...everyone else just guards. I'm only in the lv7 ranked range, so it's not like I should be up against very exceptional players....average ranked players I should think. I get a lot of 8s as opponents, but only one or two 9s. If it goes up to 15 that should be plain old average I'd assume.

RE: Snake park. Really cool map without the hover boards. Had a really interesting fight against byte and barq where barq was in the little dips and my punches flew over him. Made for some interesting strategy. I'd like it if they kept it but got rid of the hover boards or made them slower.

My strat for twintelle is as other's said - time some punches for when her time freeze ends. I'd be interested to play against a Twintelle that uses a different strat.

Question - I'm a little scared of ranked. I've beaten GP level five with my main and can hold my own in party. Time to dive in you think?

So am I the only one who thinks the snakeboards are fun? I know they are kind of cheesy for serious competitive play, but I just have a great time whooshing around on them.

@JasmineDragon They are great for fun. In fact, Snake Park is probably the most fun map for free-for-alls since there is only one snakeboard that everyone has to fight for, and can result in king of the hill styled battles... assuming people know how to change targets.

One good compromise I could think of is to treat them like items, thus disabling them for ranked and giving the option to play without them locally. Perhaps they could be modified to be something like rideable bombs, being dropped into battle by the item robot and giving merely a temporary advantage to the rider instead of an abusable tool.

@Spennymoor Definitely. Ranked has gone up in difficulty, but I'd say it's easier than the A.I. at times.

Every single time i play ranked..... it's the stupid snakeboard map. Every. SINGLE. TIME.

So then i get frustrated after losing after 3 rounds and play on tilt, losing the next 2. Then i win one. Then the next one when I'm about to win my opponent disconnects. Them the next one when I'm about to win three next opponent disconnects. Then i lose 1, then win 3 them quit while I'm ahead

I wish there was a fight - only non ranked mode to practice and wind down without worrying about ranks.

Maybe i should start disconnecting when the snakeboards show up

@Spennymoor lv5 is a nightmare of input - reading cheaters. Can't imagine lv6 and 7. Not sure i want to. Ranked is a cake walk in contrast for at least the first 6 levels.

@NEStalgia I actually quite like the snakeboard map.

I haven't picked up ARMS yet. I want to, but my family hasn't planned a trip to town yet.