Topic: ARMS

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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)