« Marvel vs Capcom 3 Online Play: Baffling Design Choices and Omissions »

Marvel vs Capcom 3 is an amazing game.  The gameplay is everything I hoped it would be. It’s fast, fun and full of great characters with many unique playstyles.  It's a bit broken, but that's part of its charm.

Its got a lot going for it, but the online component of the game is pretty baffling.  I can understand why there is no spectator mode, so I’m not going to spend time lamenting about that here.  I don’t like it, but I can understand it.  For a game as fast as this one, lag is a huge concern.  It’s even more so than Super Street Fighter 4, as Super is a slower-paced game by comparison.  I'm also not going to mention the near-broken state of finding ranked matches outside of using fight request.  I'm hopeful that Capcom will patch this.  These two issues have been beat to death elsewhere, so we're not going to touch on those here.

But there are other design choices and omissions that just make no sense. 

Here’s a rundown of areas that I wish were done a bit differently:

LACK OF CONNECTION RATING METERS:  This one just confuses the hell out of me.  The game’s training mode has a feature where you can set a specific lag strength, using the 5-bar meter from Super Street Fighter 4, so that you can practice under simulated lag conditions.  However, this meter is only seen elsewhere in the Search Lobby menu.  If you use Player Match or Ranked Match, you have no idea what kind of connection the other person has.  Once you are inside a multi-person lobby there are again no connection ratings, so you can’t tell if one player in your lobby has a bad connection or not.

From what I've seen, outside of training mode this is the only other time you get to see connection rating meters.Once you are inside a lobby, you can't see anybody's connection rating as there is no meter.

As I said earlier, I can understand no spectator mode. Everybody hates it, but I can live with it as long as the core online code is OK.  So, we are stuck watching lifebars in lobbies. However, they could have made things so much better for those waiting there turn.

NO TIMER IN LOBBY WHILE WAITING FOR YOUR TURN: We all know that watching lifebars is nowhere near as exciting as being able to actually watch, but in the lobby they don’t even give you the clock!  The players in the lobby have no idea how much time is left in the active game, so while you can “feel” it when a match is coming down to the wire, but you really have no idea.  Would putting a clock In there, even if it wasn’t 100% in sync, have been that hard?

NO INDICATION OF WHICH CHARACTERS ARE ON POINT:  While you are watching the lifebars, you also have almost no idea which characters are currently on-point in the match.  You have to deduce it from watching which lifebars are going down.  Would it have been that hard to highlight the character that is the current on-point character in the match?

YOU CAN’T CHANGE LOBBY MUSIC:  This game is just filled with amazing music.  However, when you are in a lobby you have to listen to the same looping track over and over.  In Super SF4 the lobbies had random music.  Why doesn’t this game?  If you play in a lot of lobbies, the music that currently loops gets absolutely burned into your brain.  Hell, why not give one player the ability to change music for the rest of the lobby? Like give the person last in line, the one who has to watch the lifebars the longest, the ability to make one track change after each completed match? Heck, just let me change the music on my own console!

BOUNCING BOXES: OK someone over at Capcom thought it would be fun to have the fight cards bounce for the people in the lobby not actually in the match.  Like the music, over time it’s just maddening.  When a match is over you get that brief moment of peace when they stop, but then when the next match starts up they begin bouncing again. I know you wanted to have something moving onscreen besides lifebars to add *some* excitement, but this is what you decided upon in the board meeting?

AND NO REPLAYS: Reeeaaally?  In 2011 we can't get replay saves? I mean if I can save long matches of Black Ops or Halo, why can't this game with only six characters, a 2D perspective and a limited playfield manage it?  I don't buy for a second that this game is somehow too technologically taxing to do so, even keeping in mind how good the game does look.

IN CONCLUSION:

Not being able to spectate is bad enough, but they could have done something to make lobbies a bit more bearable as you wait.  As it stands right now, I can see why the game gives you an achievement for participating in an 8-player lobby.  If you actually do it, you deserve one.

The potential good news here is that Capcom is perfectly capable of fixing some of these issues through patches.  Will they make the resource investment to do so?  We can only hope.

But in my opinion, the current state of this game's online is so bad that I have absolutely no doubt that it is chasing away players.  Many gamers today have no tolerance for the buggy, frustrating matching system (and don't even know what fight request is to help with that) or for watching bouncing boxes and lifebars while you wait.  It's all about instant gratification today. 

I know I've sounded like I'm very down on the game in this article, so I'll end on a high note.  Despite these complaints, I'm thankful that the game itself is fantastic.  The core gameplay is pure gold and I've had nothing but a great experience with the game's online code when actually in a match (only seen any serious lag twice in hundreds of online matches).  It's still a great game and I'm thankful for that.