[No Commentary] Dragon Ball FighterZ -- 23 January 2022, Belay that Delay! #2
0Are we getting tired of all these tests yet?
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(When do we actually get to go back to PLAYING games?!)
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As mentioned previously, one of the fringe benefits of playing games with delay-based netcode is that somehow Parsec MAGICALLY makes it... marginally more playable? ...SOMETIMES. Not always. It can't overcome the inherent instability between two players, so if one of the participants STILL HAD BAD INTERNET, it would've presumably been positively awful for him. (Such a shame that he doesn't have to worry about that anymore?!)
Of course, the more pressing benefit in a case like this is that... not everyone playing has to own the game... or even own the game on the same platform, I suppose is the more likely point of interest.
Let's face it, if you've NEVER played the game before, you probably won't take well to being suddenly chucked off the deep end and being made to flounder about in the face of more knowledgeable opposition... even a game as "simple" as FighterZ... because it makes up for it with its own complexity in other ways.
Let's also appreciate that literally EVERY game EVER, one of these chuckleheads will need to have re-explained from the most basic of basics. Because who even has TIME or MEMORY for ALL THESE FIGHTING GAMES?!
...on the one hand, I sympathize in theory, but the entire genre has mercifully been distancing itself from convoluted nonsense towards being easier to pick up and play, even if it's all a sweet-sounding lie to try to sucker you into spending entire lifetimes trying to master them... but literally the only "hard" part about playing this way is trying to figure out which buttons on whose arbitrarily different controller do what. (The fact that this is even POSSIBLE is some pure weapons-grade bolognium, so I see it as an incredible FEATURE, rather than some inconvenience to be overcome!)
...maybe I should draw up some mnemonic infographic cue cards for the communications and memory-challenged.
Anyway, because we still live in the era of console wars (tm!), it becomes exceedingly unlikely that anyone would see the need to buy the same game for multiple platforms.
Hey, look! This game's save data has apparently never been touched! Look at all these introductory blurbs and explanations about things I already know.
What. Full stop. You didn't even BOTHER to play some Arcade mode so you could unlock yet ANOTHER flavor of Goku and Vegeta?! Uninstalled. Uninstalled forever!
...the actual point that I'm allegedly attempting to make here is that I contend that originally playing through this game on a platform that intrigued me the most... then stalking Steam sales in the distant aftermath, once it became clear that I'd somehow become one of those... ew... PC gamers... is definitely LESS likely and MORE INSANE than even the complete sorcery that is beaming a game someone doesn't own to their screen and asking them to push buttons with you.
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A lot of the reason behind THIS test is actually seeing how difficult I can make the lives of the test subjects that somehow agreed to play things with me.
That is, there's a surprising amount of leeway amidst the myriad options available to me as the HOST of a Parsec quantum entanglement, and the end result is that I'm finding that they're all pretty much equally PLAYABLE, even if they won't look as nice to the client-side suckers.
Case in point: this session immediately followed the Pocket Dungeon one... meaning that I went from a 360p native resolution game to one that's full HD crammed full of rapidly-changing enormous areas of super saturated color materializing fullscreen.
I kept the Parsec stream at 360p, just to see what'd happen. Because I'm actually a self-regenerating cosmic supervillain.
Above all else, my concern is whether or not it's reasonable to PLAY the thing, not whether or not it looks as phenomenal to you as it looks to me, and therefore to the theoretical streaming video audience after the fact... or even during?! (I smell more tests coming on later...)
I will admit that I too am a bit surprised at the outcome, since I figured I'd have hit an actual brick wall in terms of presentation one way or another, but that doesn't seem to have proven the case... yet.
The answer to finding the harsh limits of reality is to find MORE test subjects and cram them in a room together and see when things finally break down completely!
...even though, in actual practical theory... a game like this will never need more than one client at a time, and they'll just need to queue up and beg admittance into my glorious garden of madness.
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This test would've gone on for a significantly shorter duration, but SOMEONE involved this time was a complete doof and NEEDED various tiny alterations in configuration demonstrated.
They have absolutely no impact on what you're seeing here. So. It's basically pointless. So he had to be turned into a cookie and eaten for wasting everyone's time.