Originally Posted by fortunzfavor  Presently, it Blows chunks. There are very few games that bother including the service, and all but one include the hated Friend Code system (12 and 16 digit codes)--requiring you to provide DNA evidence that you actually know someone before playing with them. Of course, FCs actually provide less safety for kiddos than a system that encourages parental monitoring. And they're mandatory for everyone, even if you were cussing blue streaks before most of Nintendo's execs were born. Kids get around the system by trading codes with friends online (gee, I wonder when predators will figure out how to use that to their advantage?). Adults get faced with the notion of coming home from a long days work, and then having to put in several more hours mining the net for codes before they can friggin play a video game.
When you are allowed to play random, non-FC matches, they get even more limited. If there's any means of communication (there's usually none--Brawl comes with a few user editable "taunts"), it's cut off. Any type of ID gets removed, so you don't know who you're humiliating. Even Nintendo's Marquee game of the Generation, Brawl, doesn't have leaderboards. On Brawl, when you play a random match, you don't get to alter game settings, you get stuck with a match style you may well hate.
Of course, to date, there is no voice com of any kind. Nintendo is presently developing an unconventional (and yet unseen) headset that will allow parents to listen in on their kid's conversations. 3rd parties will likely provide a normal headset shortly thereafter. What use it will get and what hoops we'll have to jump to actually be able to use it remain to be seen.
DLC isn't used in games for the most part, though you can download custom stages for Brawl. You can make them too, but without IGN's stage sharing service, you would only be able to trade yours with people whose friend code you have. One reason DLC has been rare (GHIII Wii didn't have it) is because 512mbs is pretty limited, and Nintendo has insisted for more than a year that we won't get any more (when all that's required is a driver so people can plug thumb drives in the back--at this point, most people would be thrilled if the Wii would play from the SD card), and when we run out of space for VC games and WiiWare titles, we should (Nintendo's words) delete the ones we're not playing and Redownload them later (they said this without cracking a smile). Despite being told how idiotic that is, they stand by it. Developers haven't wanted to invest in making such content if people aren't going to be able to use it, since it won't really function as a selling point in that instance and it's money down the drain.
A few weeks ago however, a new subscription flavor (previously, we got this crap for free, and it was still over-priced) of "Nintendo WiFi" was announced, so on a per-game basis, developers will be able to charge for access to online content as well as charge for extras in games. A announcement of DLC was also made, and most suspect it will be tied mainly to the subscription service or to transactions in game.
Medal of Honor Heroes 2 is the single best online experience on Wii. That's saying something very bad about Wii. They skipped Nintendo's online service and used their own EA Nation service. No friend codes, which is nice, but no comm except useless quickchats (in game, and a slightly longer list of quickchats between games in EA Messenger). 32 player limit per server would make for some great tactical games (actually it does, lots of clans use PC VC like TS, skype, and gamestreet to compensate--IGN sometimes jokes about using Live! for VC during Wii games), but the lack of comm makes it hard to get that outside of clans. The messenger and Friend List is so worthless, you can message someone to come to your game, but you can't tell them which game you're in. The only way they can find you is to go to the lobby, and one-by-one go through dozens of server's players lists looking for your name. By the time they'd find you, you'd be done and gone. People of course use the net to get their friends in the same game, but it's pretty bloody simple feature not to have in game. Server performance was super smooth at the beginning. You could play cross continent 20+ player games with no noticeable lag. More recently, people are noticing more and more lag, so I'm guessing EA decided we didn't deserve so much bandwidth and server space.
Brawl, despite having been delayed multiple times for months, and despite everyone expecting to be the best selling game of the Wii lifespan, debuted to serious lag issues--the unplayable game kind. People were suggesting for a while that they only play people in their own city (because that's not inconvenient at all). |