Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Pre-Match Search Issues

And now for something completely different. Well, not really, we're still going to be talking about 'Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds'. Today though it's all about the netplay. So presuming you've managed to configure your buttons and (hopefully) spent some time in training mode you may find yourself wondering how you stack up to other players. For the moment we're going to ignore the whole online vs. offline play argument. Which means it's time to hunt down some opponents online in either ranked or player matches. So...welcome to online play:

Pictured: A fairly standard menu.

It is from this menu that you will be able to explore the (somewhat limited) choices that MvC3 online play offers you. Today we're going to give focus to some of the minor nuisances of ranked mode. The 'Player Match' mode may get an article later though suffice to say its biggest issue can be summed up simply by saying that there isn't a spectator function. Anyhow, back to ranked. After clicking on 'Ranked' we are given the option between 'Quick Match' or 'Custom Match'. Even if we don't care about the theoretical relative skill of our opponents we certainly care about our connection quality which means we're selecting 'Custom Match'.

Pictured: Scylla and Charybdis

Pictured: Search "parameters"

Now we get to set our parameters. For the newer player I recommend setting both 'Skill' and 'Region' to 'Same'. For more experienced players (but without the ranking to prove it) I would say that 'Same' for 'Region' and 'Any' for 'Skill' should get the job done. Now this doesn't guarantee quality connections or quality opposition but it's the best we've got. Anyhow, with all of this set up you can go ahead and hit 'Begin Search' and play the waiting game.

Pictured: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Pictured: The light at the end of the tunnel

Since we're going to be spending a bit of time staring at this it makes sense to get to know our enemy and in this case our enemy would be the initial lack of a 'Back' function. Yup, for around fifteen to twenty seconds after we've begun our search we cannot cancel out of it. I suspect that this was implemented to keep people from spamming on the search function but it really doesn't need to be this long a wait. Which wouldn't be such a problem if...

Pictured: An old friend

Oh, what the hell? And we're back to the main online menu. This is something where I'm really not sure what they where thinking and/or programming as there really is no reason I can think of why it shouldn't just keep searching until it's found an opponent or if it fails to do so within a reasonable time why it needs to bump us up that many menu levels as opposed to just taking you back to the good old search screen. However, we're undeterred so lets give this another whirl (at least it saves our search settings; be thankful for small miracles I guess). Alright, feeling good about this one...

Pictured: An unexpected guest

What now? Well this is different. We're now all the way back at the main menu. Again I'm really not sure why this happens. I'm at least thankful that it happens significantly less often than 'Failed to join game session.' Not that there's really an excuse for either of the 'Failed to...' twins. Here though I'm particularly confused as to why it bumps you up more menu levels than the previous error. I suppose like the number of licks needed to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop the world may never know.

Either way we persist and after likely several more instances of 'Failed to join..' we're finally greeted with 'Opponent has been found...' and are now able to actually get a game underway. Hooray, we've endured a process that was way more tedious than it needed to be and are now on our way to bigger and better things. Good luck and godspeed. See you next week where we'll examine the tedium that follows the glow of victory or the bitter humiliation of defeat.

Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Button Checks

Hello and welcome to today's lesson in our ongoing series of how not to do things. Today: button configuration in fighting games. If you've ever heard the phrase “Get hype for button checks” then you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't then a button check is the process of configuring the buttons on your controller to your preferred settings then verifying both that all the buttons still work and that you've assigned the functions correctly. Well, you might be thinking, that doesn't sound so bad and you would be right. Button checking isn't some great design blunder that renders the game unplayable, rather it is a much more subtle error that simply leads to a lot of time being wasted. The issue here is that most button configuration utilities aren't implemented correctly. The word 'correctly' is used here instead of 'differently' as this is one of those rare cases where there really is only one correct way to do it.

Pictured: Button configuration done right.

Here you see a picture from 'Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix'. In this example of the correct way to do things you highlight the function you want and then press the button you want assigned to it with bonus points for being able to easily un-map unwanted buttons or functions. Sadly, only three mainstream (and I use that term loosely) titles that I am aware of have their button configurations this way. That would be our example, 'BlazBlue: Continuum Shift' and the soon to be released 'Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online'. Everyone else not so much. That would include today's subject: 'Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds'. So without further adieu here is MvC3s button configuration screen:

Pictured: The wrong way.

How this works is that you click down to the button you want and the start going through the options until you've found the function you want and then you move on to the next button. So, why is this so bad? Simply put, it wastes time and even with pre-sets it's still an issue to un-map the unwanted buttons (for example most people don't want macros enabled). Also, because it can only usually be done after the start of the match the process is select character(s), start match, configure buttons, go back to character select screen and start for real this time. As a brief aside it's worth noting that of the above 'correct' examples only BlazBlue and Third Strike Online allow for button configuration to be done before the start of the match thus avoiding the whole configure buttons then restart match issue.

Ok, so here's where I admit that if a console is only ever being used by a single person who only ever needs to configure their buttons once then none of this is an issue. However for tournaments this can be a major headache as there are going to be a lot of people using the same console and since no one wants to lose due to something as stupid as having their buttons mapped wrong they're going to be doing a button check before every match. Even playing at a friends house can be a hassle if more than two people are going to be playing for the same reason that tournaments have this issue albeit on a smaller scale. What we're looking at is a cumulative wasting of everyone’s time through a single incorrect decision.

Alright, so how do we fix this? Well, the easiest way would be to implement the correct configuration utility and make it available from the character select screen. But let's say we can't do that. We're stuck with the inferior one. Are there any easy fixes here? Yes! There are at least two that I can think of. The first is to allow for button configuration from the character select screen. This saves time due to not having to restart the match after configuration. The other possibility would be to have a option within the pause menu to restart the match without having to return to the character select screen. Either one of these options would be better than nothing and even when using the inferior configuration utility would still save a decent amount of time compared to the current process. Hopefully, the soon to be released 'Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online' is a sign that developers have finally gotten the message about this. Hopefully...

See you next week.

A (brief) Introduction

So, um, hello. This is, as you may have guessed from the article title, the introduction to an ongoing series of articles. The overall purpose of these articles is pretty simple: go at a variety of games with valid critiques in the hopes that developers catch wind of these articles and stop making certain design decisions going forward. That's not too much to ask for, right? Right? The plan right now is to give a once over to the games I've played most recently while hopefully building a large enough backlog of flawed games to fuel these articles going forward. I also hope that even though some readers may not share my taste for certain genres that the points illustrated via the design mistakes within games are something that people can appreciate as it applies to all games. If a specific design choice makes games within one genre more irritating and/or less intuitive then the odds of implementing something similar (or identical) in a game from a different genre being the correct design choice is slim to nil. There are also a few games on the docket that are a little more systemically flawed than others but that are still, in my opinion worth checking out, both for these flaws and for the other non-flawed aspects of the game. Ok, I think that's it. There should be a comments section around here somewhere if anyone is actually reading this. Also in case the Twitter thingy (Widget?) isn't working then notifications about updates to the blog and also anything blog related that comes to mind will be posted @CritDissection. Check back next week for the first of a few planned articles that take aim at Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds.