DoA5 and the Split of online players

[Akumasama]

I don't know how things go for US players or for other european players, but as far as my country is concerned finding online opponents (especially in ranked matches) is preposterous.
Last week I waited more than 25 minutes with all filters completely open (connection any, zone any, max range for ranks and so on) to find a single opponent.

I gave it a deeper look and came out with the following analysys, I'd be grateful if anybody would be willing to correct it, add something to it or just discuss it.
This is done in light of the fact that DoAU still had players up to the day when XBL service for Xbox was turned down, and DoA4 still had a fair amount of available games even 1 month after the release of DoA5.

1. Multiformat - For DoA4 and DoAU the user base was concentrated on the same platform. Some fans of the series bought the console just to play DoA. With DoA5 and DoA5U the userbase is split in 2, for X360 and PS3. The overall number might be even bigger than that of DoAU/DoA4 for Xbox, but the total number for a single format is clearly smaller.
2. Ranked/Lobby - In DoAU and DoA4 there was no distinction between ranked and not ranked. Everybody was together. Whenever you were looking for a match or creating a room, you would all be going in the same place. The same "square" to meet with other people let's say. In DoA5 and DoA5U there are two "squares". Hence the player base is furtherly split in two. At any given moment you can either go to one square (Ranked) or the other (Lobby). You can't be in both at the same time. So at any given moment you have less possible opponents to fight against.
3. The room placebo - In DoAU/DoA4 you always could see rooms, kinda like with DoA5/U's lobby matches. In DoA5's quick match and DoA5U's ranked match you don't see anything. You're just left there hoping for an opponent with matching filters to arrive, and hoping for him to accept the match. This may not create any real difference on a practical level, but on a perception level it gives you the impression that less people are playing compared to the reality (where likely many more players are looking for matches just like you)
4. Tag Games - DoA5U brought in another form of split. It separated Tag ranked matches from Solo ranked matches (previously you couldn't do ranked tag matches). Since you can't be looking for "Any" but it's either one or the other it means that at any given moment if you're in queue for a Ranked match, you'll have to decide if you want to go to the first square (solo) or the second one (tag). Can't be in both. Another further split of the player base
5. Filters - There are way too many filters, especially for ranked matches where I feel the bigger side of this problem lies. It sorta makes sense in game like the original pre-patch DoA5 was, where you couldn't choose to avoid the incoming fight. But in a game where you can choose to accept or refuse the incoming fight based on some screen-given information (they could add "Region" as one of them) I feel like so many filters (and the unavoidable misuse people willingly/unwillingly do) becomes counterproductive, as it separates people even further

tl;dr
in spite of possible total player base numbers differences from past titles (which I doubt it's anything that insanely big of a gap) getting opponents into ranked matches in DoA5/DoA5U is a sore pain. Possible solutions for future patches/games?

 

[Nameless Sama]

The Xbox Live community is dead. I come from austira and I only see JPN and USA lobbys there but only a few so 4 or 6 max. I have wait for 1 hour nobody joined excat the same config like yours. Many People are still playing Dead or Alive 4 after RELEASING DOA5U. You will find a lot of lobbys in DOA4 and I am still playing DOA4 too because of the Tag Mode. The Tag Mode is balanced and better than DOA5 - 5U short said Itagaki is the best.
Of course DOA4 is not the best game but the players are the evidences. Hasashi can only copy and paste.
The reason why I bought the xbox was Ninja Gaiden Black and Ninja Gaiden 2 dump reason I know but who cares right. PSN have more players becuase of the next gen console PS4 that means more Core Fighter Players. PSN has a free online play becuase of that so many people jumps from 360 to PSN. If I am honest so many players only thinks of the next gen consoles. I cant read minds but a lot of ca.80 my friends are gone from XBL to PSN becuase of the PS4. I dont want to make Xbox one down but..... Never Mind. Akuma in PSN are more players than expected. I was new on PSN (DOAU5 CF) and there was a lot of lobbys from every country. In the past times was DOA exclusive for Xbox DOAU - DOA4 that means more XBL players than PSN but now that is total the opposite :O.

 

[Akumasama]

Considering how many people *hate* DoA4 on forums like this (and any other place attended by "pro" players) it's ironic.
They consider DoA4 as a failure of a game, and from a certain point of view it was, but from another perspective it was a huge success.
Yes it was maybe a bit of a pain (more than just a bit) against very serious player and it was hard to play it fairly in a pro environment. But if you wanted to play it more casually it was a great game.
Awesome netcode and everything around the core gameplay was much better than in 5/5U.

But we're going a bit off topic. I didn't want to make a comparison about these two games. In a way, despite all odds, I loved DoA4, but I love DoA5 too and I would never go back.

I'm just trying to see if my analysys is correct, if I missed something, if I'm completely wrong on some of those points and if anybody can provide any sort of constructive feedback on the whole system (maybe it will get back to Tecmo in time for the next patch/game)


On a side note: yes, there are way more players on PS3. Wether this depends on a higher overall playerbase or on DoA5 Core Fighters (or both?) I don't know, but the result is that there are way more players on PS3 than on Xbox 360.
This doesn't mean the situation on PS3 is exactely "fantastic" either though.

 

[P1naatt1ke1tt0]

The situation on XBOX Live is really sad. I'm actually buying PS3 today (for cheap) just to be able to access that much larger playerbase.

 

[Akumasama]

Don't want to get your expectations too high P1naa.
It IS bigger, undoubtely.
Is it that MUCH bigger? It depends on the value you give to the word "much". According to this it may turn out being higher than you expect or... the other way around.

I think PS3 is the way to go without a doubt, but even on PS3 the situation is not particularly bright either when you compare it to DoAU on Xbox and DoA4 on Xbox360.
I also get a feeling (but I might be wrong here) that DoA5U's situation is worse than DoA5's (on both X360 and PS3)

 

[tokiopewpew]

Well, I can only talk about DOA5/DOA5U since it is my first FG in general, but ...

The Xbox Live community is dead. I come from austira and I only see JPN and USA lobbys there but only a few so 4 or 6 max. I have wait for 1 hour nobody joined excat the same config like yours. Many People are still playing Dead or Alive 4 after RELEASING DOA5U.

...

Akuma in PSN are more players than expected. I was new on PSN (DOAU5 CF) and there was a lot of lobbys from every country.

I wouldn't describe the XBL community as "dead", but it's true, there are less players/lobbies in general. In addition, they are mostly filled with players who have been playing the doa series for years and beat out new players without any problems (especially those who get salty fast). Therefore, it is not the best place for newcomers to get in, because they mostly lose or won't find adequate opponents.

I've bought a PS3 last week too, because I was curious if there are really more players on PSN (bought it beside other facts too of course) and as far as what I've seen for now, the differentiation between tag and solo lobbies is really a decisive reason for splitting the community there as well as the connection restriction for lobbies/matches. Of course, if the connection between both players is bad and it's lagging hard, a match cannot be finished serious, but the negative thing about these restrictions is that it everyone got in his head now that every "red bar" has a bad connection and makes the game lag.

I've played some people from FSD on PSN who are from the USA, and even that I got a "red bar/1 point connection" to them, we were able to fight without any lag/delays. (You can ask DestructionBomb or RenderingStar for example) The end of this story is, that nearly every lobby cannot be entered by people from different regions and vice versa, because it is locked by the connection restriction, even if it could be that there wouldn't be any problems.

Opportunities like being able to chose between playing tag or solo and get used of filters might split the community, but they always also satisfy the wishes of a part of this community and help to keep people playing the game, so it is a mixed blessing.

I don't know what can be done to bring people together more, things like the Core Fighters might be a good point if someone is thinking about changing the platform he is playing on but for the future, I think it would be better if TN would focus on one platform (negative fact: less sale figures/loosing a market)

 

[MuMuGuy]

The Ranked matchmaking system in DOA5U is broken. Whenever I search for a match, I always leave the search parameters at the default 4+ bar connection, but when the match starts, the connection goes all vanilla on me and becomes a 1-bar lag fest.

Lobbies suck because a lot of people will kick you if you win or are perceived as being "too good." The other day, some jack hat talked smack because I tried to use Rig to vet him as a choice for an alt. When it was time for our re-match, I used Bayman and bopped him pretty easily because he kept doing standing wake-ups. He of course kicked me soon afterwards.

The only way to find games reliably is to create a lobby and wait patiently. I'm used to waiting to find games because my main game is VF5FS, which tends to have almost double the wait time on average for matches since many people will create private Lobbies (hiding the room completely when searching) and many upper echelon Ranked players will avoid each other and prey on lower ranking players to farm wins and points.

If you find someone that was fun to play, it usually helps if you register them in your Fighter List or whatever it's called and send a nice message beyond the boilerplate "GG." I receive invites to rooms a lot because I personalize my messages.

 

[Hoya Destroyer]

The XBL community would probably be bigger if it had the free to play version of DoA5.
I would imagine TN wanted it on XBL, but Microsoft either wouldn't allow it or wanted to charge TN too much to do it. That is a real pity for the XBL DoA community and will only encourage fighting game fan to look to Sony in the future.

 

[Jyakotu]

The free Core Fighters version of DOA5U is the only reason why PSN seems more active, but by contrast, the skill level is far less greater (or so they say). I'm sure there are people playing on XBL, because DOA has been with Xbox for two games now exclusively. I feel the only reason why PSN got the free Core Fighters version was because many people who played DOA exclusively on PlayStation haven't done so since DOA2: Hardcore. They needed something to get these players back while also getting new players.

 

[Nameless Sama]

Jyakotu has you made it to degrade your rank to F ?

Tommrow I am online on PSN. Maybe we can play ( I mean you all ) :O

 

[Black Dragon]

I feel the only reason why PSN got the free Core Fighters version was because many people who played DOA exclusively on PlayStation haven't done so since DOA2: Hardcore. They needed something to get these players back while also getting new players.

No. PSN got the Core Fighters version because Microsoft doesn't fuck with free-to-play games being on Xbox. At all.

Otherwise Tekken Revolution would've been on XBL as well.

 

[Nameless Sama]

Yeah I agree with your first post.

 

[Jyakotu]

Jyakotu has you made it to degrade your rank to F ?

Tommrow I am online on PSN. Maybe we can play ( I mean you all ) :O

See, what had happen was, that my deranking mission turned into a farm CP for Ayane mission. I had like a 14 game win stream with Ayane last night, so as a result, I deranked from B to C+ back to B-. Lol

 

[Akumasama]

The problem with ranking is not winning/losing, rather finding opponents to fight against
I think I have like... I dunno, less than 900 online fights in Ranked on X360 for Ultimate, and over 100 hrs of online play (most of which have been spent in Ranked mode).
Do some calculation if you wanna know an average amount of wait time for each fight lol


And yeah Jyakotu, what Black Dragon said is absolutely right, concerning Core Fighters not being present on XBL. It exclusively has to do with Xbox Live Developers' policies.
We have no clue what KIND of policies, but I imagine it's gonna have something to do with the costs that TecmoKoei has to sustain to keep Core Fighters (a "free" title) on the XBL Store.
It's probably free or very cheap for PSN, whereas it's likely expensive for XBL.
They failed to find a satisfying agreement with Microsoft (likely because of their lack of interest for FTP titles) so far.

At least that's the hypothesys I made. I'm pretty confident the truth is not very far from this.

 

[ScattereDreams]

Like already said DOA5 online on XBL is pretty dead with the exception of Japanese lobbies. Online on PSN it's just lively because of F2P but lacking in skill, although you will find a handful of players who are good. I can name some off the top of my head. Most of the PSN competitive community players or good players play in private lobbies hence the new comers/scrubs/F2P players have no idea what skill looks like so they don't set goals/standards for themselves and end up with button mashers who just delete the game off their hard drives once they're bored

 

[Tenryuga]

Like already said DOA5 online on XBL is pretty dead with the exception of Japanese lobbies. Online on PSN it's just lively because of F2P but lacking in skill, although you will find a handful of players who are good. I can name some off the top of my head. Most of the PSN competitive community players or good players play in private lobbies hence the new comers/scrubs/F2P players have no idea what skill looks like so they don't set goals/standards for themselves and end up with button mashers who just delete the game off their hard drives once they're bored

This is so true. That's why whenever I run into players that don't boot me for being a high rank or allow me to stay in the lobby I offer them some tips or if I see they use a character I have a little experience in I'll offer to show them a few things with that char. I'll also point them to FSD if they are interested in learning more.

 

[Awesmic]

This is so true. That's why whenever I run into players that don't boot me for being a high rank or allow me to stay in the lobby I offer them some tips or if I see they use a character I have a little experience in I'll offer to show them a few things with that char. I'll also point them to FSD if they are interested in learning more.

It's a lot better than bragging about how many haters you got.

 

[Jyakotu]

This is so true. That's why whenever I run into players that don't boot me for being a high rank or allow me to stay in the lobby I offer them some tips or if I see they use a character I have a little experience in I'll offer to show them a few things with that char. I'll also point them to FSD if they are interested in learning more.

I noticed that as a B rank, people seem to boot me too. I always tell new players that rank doesn't really matter and to just have fun with the game.

 

[Jack]

A PC version is all we need, the whole community in one unique platform.

 

[tokiopewpew]

A PC version is all we need, the whole community in one unique platform.

Good point. Since almost everyone has a PC these days, it would be accessible for a lot more people. The differences in used operating systems can be disregarded imo, because the split-effect would not be as crucial as the dispute which console might be better, especially since that next-gen stuff.