Fans cheer ‘smooth’ Smash Bros. Wii U online experience while Microsoft and Sony games struggle - Anyone finding this to be true?

[Mnementh]

Barkley said:

Mnementh said:

Barkley said:

Well lets be honest here, they're very different experiences. Smash Bros surely doesn't require as much server power as something like DriveClub or MCC.

What? Do you know what you're talking about? There is no need for much server power in most online games, it is about data-transfer between all parties. Not much data is transferred for all of these games. A racer only needs all the info on current position and momentum of cars transferred, a shooter again current position, weaponry and shoots fired, a fighter needs again position and moves executed. That is all not much of data. Everything else is rendered on the client from these data. The server doesn't prerender something or so. More importantly though, for all three genres you need quick reactions, so latency is very important. That doesn't change, despite how much data is transferred. This is key to smooth gameplay. Latency is impacted mainly through the following: network latency (how long takes the data from player A to player B) and netcode latency (how fast can the game decode the data). That seems to be well enough for Smash, if people experience smooth gameplay. I can't judge, Smash isn't out here yet in europe.

Urm yes I know all this. The difference being that Smash is a 4 player multiplayer game, Driveclub and MCC have more players in a match not to mention i'm sure they store all sorts of statistics for every player on the server. Driveclub presumably has a ton of social features.

(Incase you haven't noticed I haven't played any of these three games)

But you're also not entirely correct and are simplifying it a bit far. For example a shooter doesn't just need the position, weapon and where they shoot. It also needs to know what character model/cosmetics they are using. There models animation is synchronized and ofcourse there's killcams aswell so it sends data for where your opponent was looking etc.

Netcode is a lot more complicated then you've posted there.

Isn't Smash 8 player? There was something in the last direct. Maybe 8 player is only local, but that would be just stupid. Also I remember something said about online comparing stuff, although Sakurai didn't like classical leaderboards - still it takes statistics. Anyways, the data isn't much for any of these games, despite the number of players or statistics. If you have Teamspeak while gaming it transfer 1000-10000 times as much data. And that works too and also is very dependant on lag. If a game doesn't run smooth online, it is probably because of bad netcode or too much load.

Yes, I simplified a bit, but the character-models (or car models) are transferred before the match once, as you don't switch character/car mid-fight or mid-race. The direction you look is another vector, like position or momentum. That are just three numbers. Again, teamspeak is transferring a lot more data. And I don't downplay the stuff - it is not much data transferred for any of these genres, but it is incredibly hard to program smooth synchronisation between the clients right. Still I don't understand why you brought in server power in your initial post, as rendering and netcode is done in the clients.