Nintendo Wii Fanboy

I honestly don't think everyone's "skill" level should be on screen in a lobby or any other setting because in my experience it just becomes far too much of a focal point. I got tired of people judging me based on a high or low ranking which really only told you how much I played (PGR2) or how often I raced against strong competition in an inferior car (aka fighting 355s in a Corvette on Forza). I've yet to see a ranking system that was worth the 1s and 0s it was written with.

I'd rather the game silently keep track of number of matches played and percentage won, and when doing random room selections, match them up that way.

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It will suck.
All Wii online games will suck. Badly.

They use friend codes. Nintendo shot themselves in the foot.

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@ #2


No, they don't.


Not entirely.. There is going to be a lobby, and you can randomly fight people.


It is NOT only friend codes.

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i just want rank keeping as detailed as on gamecube. like everything. flight percentage, rnning speed all that ;-)

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As long as the multiplayer is not as "intuitive" as Mario Kart DSs, then I'm all for it.

If you don't know what I mean, then I'll say that I don't want a system than only lets you randomly play with other people (or find others of your same skill level) with no central lobby or ability to create rooms or anything like that. Some sort of chat must also be included, and managing a buddy list must also be easier.

Ranks would be a great thing if they were implemented as they are in Gunbound. Winning or performing nicely in game will get you more experience, and one can rank up. Also, there should be separate worlds/servers for beginner players, veteran players, expert players, etc. based on rank. It would be cool if one could get gold from matches and spend that on cool things or equipment that could or couldn't be used in game, and if they could be used in game, then the worlds/servers would have to have separate versions for allowing these items to give power-ups and whatnot and others for not allowing these items to give power-ups and whatnot.

I hope you are reading this, Nintendo.

w00t for SSBB!

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The only ranking system that Brawl should have is for things like home run contest, break the targets, etc.

Thanks to places like www.smashboards.com everyone will know who the best players are anyway.

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Personally, I really honestly hope this game doesn't go online. It's rather hard to describe. The lag might be crazy, you never know. I couldn't stand any fighter except DOA Ultimate online, and I really am not that fond of the game. Fighting game lag is hell. Guilty Gear X2#reload has crazy lag, and it's not that button crazy as smash bros is. Super Smash Bros Melee only shows that people are willing to spend countless hours finding glitches that become tournament legal, imagine that online, the craziness of finding a "Ken" like player when you're new to this game, it's frightening

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John, It will suck! its good! :)

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Friend Codes: only used for messaging, voice chat, and "security-risk" online situations, like letting friends walk through your town in Animal Crossing.

Will be one code per player because the Wii can store the code in your user profile. Compare this to the DS, which needs one code per player per game because it does not store the friend code on the hardware.

Not having a friend code will not prevent online play; it will, however, prevent 12-year-olds from screaming four-letter words while you kick their asses in SSBB.

The friend code system, if correctly adjusted to the console setup, is genious. It also prevents Nintendo from having to monitor for "obscene" gamertags.


I don't understand why "stock count, time, locale, as well as the variants such as Coin Battle...are really going to be tough to bring online". It should act just like Halo.

The player should be given a choice as to which battle type to play: Stock, Time, Coin, etc. When the player enters the lobby for their game type, he/she should be given the choice to join a group about to start a game or to make his/her own game. Each game about to start has a "rulemaster" of sorts. Just like in Halo, this person selects the specific rules of the game: how many stock to use, how long the game should go, etc. At the end of the battle, you can leave the group or stay with them. No player can be the rulemaster twice in a one, so everyone would get a shot at choosing the specific rules.

Rankings should be graduated. You shouldn't increase in ranking simply by how many games you win, because like Keith said, you shouldn't be ranked by, essentially, how much time you play the game. Rankings should be based on your win/lose percentage, as well as what types of games you play and against how many players.

Just like in Halo, there should be ranked games and unranked games. You can only up your ranking in ranked games, but you have to compete against players of the same or similar ranks.

In unranked games, there could be a handicap applied to even out players of high and low ranks.

A few things that would make SSBB better than Halo online:
Don't allow players to leave the game. SS games usually take less than 5 minutes, so this shouldn't be an inconvience for most gamers. Players leaving the game always ruins Halo battles.
Create a dynamic player-matching system, but don't make it so complicated that it takes 5 minutes for me to find a game.


The point is, if you think for a few minutes, there's going to be a way to implement all of Super Smash Bros Brawl's features online. Lag ruins online games, but because the games will be taking place on Nintendo's servers (as far as I know), all they have to do is provided enough bandwidth. If a player still experiences lag, the problem is on his/her side, not Nintendo's. Compare this to games that are served from a gamer's machine: if that machine has a lagging connection, everyone in the game lags.

Anyway, if Nintendo as a whole thinks through these things, online should be everything, and more, that we expect it to be.

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VidGuy should get an editorial slot on this site. Keep up the great comments man. You are constantly beating me to the punch.

As far as online match-styled play, Halo 2 has set the bar. From the way that parties are implemented to ranked- vs. non-ranked, it's a great online experience.

The one issue I have to disagree with is preventing people from quiting the game. Yeah, it does suck, but can you really prevent someone from turning off the console? If you quit out of a rank game, you lose, so that should be enough motivation to play it out.

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Thanks for the support, Adrocknaphobia.

No, you can't prevent them from turning off the console. But that would be the only way to quit a match if the game didn't allowed you to quit, and that's quite a drastic move. People wouldn't be doing that constantly, unlike gamers that I see on Halo join a game and instantly quit if they are losing by a few kills.

I could see it being implemented like SSBM has the option to turn off the ability to pause. The "rulemaster" or whatever would select to allow or prevent quits from within the players' pause menu.

You're right about ranked games. But unranked games in Halo are almost unplayable because people quit before the game is over 9 times out of 10, at least in my experience. I'd hate for that to be true in SSBB as well.

SSBB online has the potential to be the best out there. Let's hope Nintendo sees this and does what needs to be done to make it happen.

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Speaking of Halo (ranked vs unranked) matches. What almost made Halo completely unplayable was the vast amount of cheating in ranked matches. So bad that everyone pretty much just plays unranked matches these days.

But I agree quiting sucks, lets hope Nintendo considers it when coming up with online play. I'm expecting big things from Nintendo WiFi because the company had a tradition of really thinkin things out before they implement them.

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