Topic: ARMS

@OorWullie If you see me online and happen to join my game just wanted to let you know it could be my 4 year old. He's often better then me so don't feel bad if you lose lol.

Max Brass is coming July 12th.

@Grumblevolcano Hey, that's the day after my birthday. Nintendo is so nice to me.

Not so interested in playing Max, but I can't wait to see what else is coming in that update. They've promised a new game mode and new arms, I'm thinking they also do a little balancing, and hope for a new Grand Prix boss. What else do you.guys think is happning?

@OorWullie That was my son btw earlier today lol!

So I really thought I was stuck there at the highest difficulty of the Grand Prix. I was only able to best the first challenger after so many tries. Then I came face to face with Twintelle and after continuous defeat I gave up for a while.

Until today. I defeated her and the opponents after her with such ease. It's quite amazing that feeling when you learn new things when you thought there wasn't much else to learn.

Also, why did I only just now realize I can throw more than 2 charged punches after another when you do the long charge.

@Spoony_Tech I had a feeling it was.He gave me a right beating and taught me I should get some practise in before stepping online again haha. I'm changing my name from OorWullie,I only put that in so you'd know it was me.I've not decided what my nick name will be yet.I only used Jagger because my Mii looked like him and I'm a big Stones fan.My pals have called me Wig since primary school so I'll probably just go with that. So if ye see a Wig join your game,that's me.

Shane tho.

Geez if I hadn't played the game I'd think it was a horror one based on these hedlock tweets

Hm. The GIF could mean a lot of things. The Helix-like thing could be the new Grand Prix boss if you play as Max Brass, or the Hedlok mask is being made an item like the bombs or healing bottles. Both are cool ideas. Does anyone else have an idea?

It looks like a power up in 1 v 100. Is there anywhere else the gray Helix' appear? Obviously the warm up thing in party mode, but those don't have arms or stage select.

Continual. ARMS.

This has to be playable, right? Otherwise why put a NPC only pick up's timer on the back of the head when fighters always automatically face each other?

Man, I've just found out that parasols can counter dual hydras pretty handily.

@Haru17 I really think that it's a power-up now.

@meleebrawler
See post No. 1152 at page 58. Already explained to someone who´s helpless against the kid cobra hydra users. Against double umrellas they are useless. Thats why i always have them in my arms selection.
Another tip against offensive ninjaras, use double poppers or crackers or what they are called, then the ninjara can do nothing.

Actually there is an arms-setup against every arm-type. Every arm has its strength and weakness over another arm, thats why it´s so important to have different kinds of arms in ur 3-arms-setup

Is the update coming early or late tomorrow? I really can't wait.

It happened. In the other thread someone mentioned the endless Kid Cobras with dual Hydras. I hadn't seen this phenomenon yet. Then yesterday happened. I played about 20 ranked matches. I started (on my alt) at lv8, and by the time I was done had dropped back to lv5, and then up to mid-6. I lost most of the rounds I played, which does not normally happen. It was pretty much the opposite of fun to just loose endlessly. I did my normal hopping around characters between RG, Min, Ninjara (I didn't do Cobra because I'm now sick of his mug.) Of those 20-ish matches. SIX of them were on that stupid snakeboard map. I lost every single one. (winning a middle round here or there, by chance.) Among all the rounds I had ONE match against Ninjara (on the stupid snakeboard map), 3 against Twintelle, 5 against Min Min, and the rest were all Kid Cobra. And among all of those, only ONE match was against a character NOT playing a hydra. Every single other opponent was playing with at least one hydra. I accepted at that moment the game is now fully broken (at least until, hopefully, the update.)

The ranks are also, like happened with Splatoon, kind of broken due to the small player base and alts (a problem to which I'm contributing.) I was facing lv1s and lv2's that were devastating me 10x faster than the lv8's that I felt I had a chance against. But what also struck me was either the base skill of the player base multiplied overnight, or something was REALLY off. Sunday felt normal. yesterday every single opponent seemed to move faster, predict everything better, block every flurry, land every flurry of their own at the exact right moment and dodge almost everything.

But at least the first 6 or 7 rounds I noticed COLOSSAL lag. I've noticed that when lag is bad, players seem to move...somehow faster...than they should. Animations seem more rapid. I can't always eye it right away but I'm learning "if it looks 'off' there's lag." Most of these rounds, I landed no, or only 1 or 2 hits the whole match. Often glove contact was made, it made a "tick" sound....yet there was no damage dealt. Very often I'm seeing flurry activation yields the opponent blocking while their arms should have still been WAY out, so that landing a flurry is pretty much pot lock if it works or not. Or striking right at them, a non-ninjara character deftly evades and then attacks ME, when they shouldn't have been able to. A few times I've escaped an enemy grab that went right through me. Other times I was never grabbed, and then suddenly I snap into their grab animation. I noticed once I deftly evaded a Revolver punch, walked a few steps, and then snapped backward and took damage. A few times I saw an opponent activate a flurry after my glove went right through them, and start railing me with damage, only for it to be interrupted by their snap animation, finally taking the damage I'd dealt before they started..... I'm not sure if it returned my apparently wrongly lost health or not. it seems the benefits/harm goes both ways, but once it throws off your balance of play where you don't know what's happening and when, the game becomes a button mashing based game of luck. Attack spamming becomes more useful than careful floating like a butterfly. I've been seeing teleportation of enemies more and more frequently. And I don't mean Ninjara.

For the first time I actually cheated/scummed a few matches. I was losing bad to a few Cobra/Mins that I COULD NOT HIT no matter how many times my gloves contacted....I usually assume they're just better...somehow..even though ti doesn't make sense, but once I see them start teleporting positions, I know the game isn't letting me hit them and I don't know where they are. At that point I put the console into sleep to get out. I don't mind losing points to a better player that pummels me, but I'm not going to stand around and lose points to players that just aren't reporting their player position (And no, it wasn't me, I tested my connection via my phone (not that broken Switch test) and was 25-50mbps and <60ms latency consistently, and the Switch is right next to the AP (I've seen the same wired as well.)

One other thing I noticed is that, like with Splatoon, victory favors the lagger. IE. the game seems to benefit the person lagging by adapting the game to what the most behind person sees, making things an unpredictable chaos for the person not lagging. Another thing I noticed which might explain the popularity of grab spamming (I mentioned this earlier) grabs seem to be hitscan (like Splatoon chargers). if YOU see you grabbed them, they are grabbed, and it snaps them to your grab. Meaning it can be a stealth attack that if due to lag your opponent doesn't see your grab coming, they can't avoid it and will be grabbed. Another thing that might explain the popularity of hydras: They seem to exacerbate lag. Players with hydras seemed laggier. Players with dual hydras seemed a lot laggier. As victory favors the lagger, hydras may increase your lag and your chances of victory.

One other caution, I've seen this a few times, I suspect there are players that are trying to lag-spam, being aware of the lag bonus. This is something that happened in Splatoon as well (same awful, awful netcode base...) I will see players rapidly oscilate in position like they're either slamming the stick rapidly back and forth with their palm, or rapidly flicking the motion joycons back and forth so that their character essentially vibrates in place, rapidly. I'm not certain if this is a symptom of the lag, or an attempt to manipulate the lag, but the players that do this also seem to be the ones teleporting the most absurdly, or moving at double the normal speed of play.

Put together a lot of this looks like hacks, actually...but AFAIK the Switch has thus far not been hacked, so the "hacks" are in fact lag. The broken netcode behaving much like a hack, instead.

I had a lot more normal matches after a while with fewer laggy players (at first EVERY player was laggy, but after a while it was 50/50 or better.) Yet the players at this point still seemed to be far superior than a few days ago at the same or lesser levels (unless the lag nightmare was bouncing a lot of other people down-rank too.) It's TERRIFYING this is only half way up the ladder! What the heck does the top look like? I'd say I'm just sucking more, but I can now do the lv4 AI with both hands tied behind my back, one pass straight through to the end...I've definitely improved a lot....thus these folks improved a lot more.

@dev Great posts from the interview. I'm glad to see they're aware of the problematic meta forming and intending to break it this week. It's becoming a significant problem in the game. If every game is just endless Cobra and Min Min with endless hydras, I think I'd be done with the game in a week. It actually wouldn't be so bad if it weren't a stupid lottery to get the weapons you want. All I want is a popper on Ninjara, is that too much to ask? If I keep losing like yesterday that's going to be a long way away

"Preventing lag in an online fighting game about stretching fists was a challenge, but they used a method to make it impossible to detect latency"

I think he needs to try harder on that one....he's clearly missed the mark

"For seeing who are the most played characters, Nintendo gets all the data through online gambling. Min Min is the most used character followed by Kid Cobra"

I hope the patch changes it. As is, I'm done with cobra....waaay too OU. And I was really liking Min Min, but she's too OU at this point. Back to RG and NJ I guess.....RG's been my main main since the testpunch so I'm good with that.

@meleebrawler I do still hate the weapon lottery. Looking at how the ranked meta is developing, even if they do balance a fix in there, the kinds of strategies you're mentioning are kind of pointless if your character doesn't have that "proper counter" weapon (nor doesn't have it mapped.) To get the parasols on Ninjara, how many hours do I have to play and how many wins against this crushing difficulties do I have to make to get them? And what if I play 4 characters and need them on all 4 simply because the meta has everyone playing hydra? It just doesn't work if I can't just select them from the start. It also makes the hydra meta that much more popular since they know not everyone has a means to counter.

Ugh....I hate online gaming...why am I playing this game?!
(Less that 2 weeks for Splatoon 2...hype!.....groan)

@NEStalgia ...Not that I'm defending how this game handles lag or anything, but maybe you should try testing your connection speed. That appears to cause lag, whereas weak signals cause disconnects. I said it before, I seldom run into serious lagging. My Switch reads download speed at approximately 3.2 Mbps and uploads at 1.0 Mbps when not actively commnicating (though of course fluctuates based on Internet usage).

@meleebrawler Well, I was very familiar with Nintendo's bad netcode from Splatoon. I was just hoping Arms and Splatoon 2 would IMPROVE it. They're using that "predictive AI" to make the game appear to play smooth no matter your connection, at the cost of actual accuracy. I'm certain they pulled that from Kart, as that's a common practice in racing games, and works there, and that was their only online netcode at the time. But it shouldn't be used in any other game type. Shooters and fighters shouldn't have to deal with rubberbanding.

As far as what the Switch sees my connection speed as, it's variously around 9.5 down and 4.2 up (which doesn't display latency.) Though that's just Switch's weird WiFi. If I test it with my phone (both next to the same AP), it's 25-50 down, 10-30 up and <60MS latency (yesterday around 55, some days around 25.) Yesterday I happened to be using Switch's Wifi, and that happened to be the worst lag I've seen, but I've seem the same effects in laggy matches previously on wifi and wired.

I've seen really bad lag weekend afternoons....which I recall was the same effect in Splatoon. Not sure why that time of day/week has that issue, but it seems to. Might be the world regions playing at that time. But not sure why a Monday night was so bad.

Also of note, yesterday I was playing on my alt, which is my Japanese account for Japan eShop purchases. Yet I seemed to be playing all Western players still and the language in the game is still in English. I only saw my usual smattering of a handful of Japanese players, so it's either keeping me regional based on host IP rather than account nation, or there are NOT a lot of Japanese players of this game.

Edit: I recall a disclaimer saying tested speeds may be reported slower if suspended software is running in the background. Arms was running so that could account partly for why switch seems the connection speeds lower than every other device even when running wired....