MAJOR ISSUE: No All-Stars Online!

[Gunloc Moriym]

I would like to see the all star moves at least have an option. Also what about the other multiplayer modes? My fingers hurt so bad from playing this game the last 3 days and I really enjoy the hell out of it, so thanks SUMO! But after playing 4 player splitscreen and having the ASM happening during those races I really miss them when I play online. I can wait till you feel you get it right so take your time. Just please give us the option someday.

[Bigball123]

Finally an answer! This game is going back soon, after I 1000 out the Achievements. It's a good game, but just not fun enough online.

[SuperCarl]

lol you mean u suk?

[S0L]

Right I'm back.

I was down in London for two days, attending a Microsoft Dev conference. Only access I had to the web was my iPhone. Have you tried posting a long and complicated forum post on one of those? Trust me, it's not easy

Also remember I do this in my free time, I don't get paid for it, I don't get thanked for it, and I do have to spend time with my family now and again!

Anyway, on this topic. As with all decisions, don't think we made this one lightly.

The first point is that all the All-Star moves work differently, so we'd effectively have to code each one with specific network code. With all the differences in characters, that's 23 different bits of code to write there.

Then lets look at what we have to work with. Whilst most of you have super fast download speed, what you don't realise if you don't have superfast upload speed. Our target for game communications is 64 kilobits. Note bits not bytes. In that very small amount of data we have to send everyones current position, projected vector, all weapon fire as well as voice chat. Not everyone is on fiber optic broadband you know!

So we're already sending lots of data, and the ASM's mean that we'd have to compress this down even further for extra weapon fire.

Of course a lot of the All-Star moves also include increased speed, so in cases with high latency where we've already got to be sure we're not jumping cars around all over the place, we then would have even more extremes of movement -which under high lag would result in false positives for ASM hits. I.e. you maybe nowhere near Super Sonic - but you get blatted off the track as someone has dropped packets and the dead reckoning *thinks* you might have been hit.

Finally, when it comes to network games, you have to be sure that all the systems are deterministic. Basically that if you fire a weapon on one machine, it will fire the same way on another. If this isn't the case you wind up with synchronisation issues, quite simply what you see on your screen, won't be what other player see on theres. Not all the ASM are deteministic as they're all different, the best example is length of use. Depending on where you are in the pack, they last for varying amounts of time. So if we've got any latency causing the positions to be out of sync - even for a millisecond - on one machine it may last for 4 seconds, on the other 10. That happens, and oh oh, we're really out of sync. Cue everyone gets booted back to the lobby.

So with much reluctance, we conceeded that rather than ship it with things that could go wrong down to latency, especially with cross continent play, it would be a better experience to ship it with the ASM disabled during on-line play.

So that is why it's not available, as we didn't want to ruin the online experience with All-Star moves that didn't work consistantly and fairly. I think when you understand this - the decision makes a lot more sense.

Will we add it back in the future? I think it's unlikely. In the future when everyone has an internet connection that runs at LAN speeds, it'll be doable, but not for a few years.

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S0L
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[Wonchop]

tl;dr, No All Star Moves online cos the internet just ain't good enough yet.

[KMetalmind]

I applaud all of you for the decission if that´s the case Other developers woudn´t have done that (and would have a laggy online game with more things, instead a good online game with less things).

Is there any hope for battle modes in online gameplay? I suppose they wouldn´t be played really much and could take so much work.

And just the last question: Would you like us to give any ideas or those kind of things are actually sealed? (Like putting random character pick on a patch or what dlc character or music we would like)

[SuperCarl]

Hey SOL, thanks

i appreciate the REAL reason rather than "its to make it more skill based.."

[Thorn]

I saw Amy's All-Star in play today online.

[SuperCarl]

proof or lies, unless its some hacked wii version

[Shadzter]

Thanks S0L for the explanation and I think the decision is definitely for the best. I've played online games where like you said the same things dont appear on the other players screen, the best example I can think of right now is GTA 4. I've played online with friends and if I see a trash can and kick it about my friend will ask "What are you doing?" to which I reply "I'm kicking a trash can about" then my friend will say "I cant see it".