ARMS - Armsfulls of Joy

Confession: would play ARMS 5: Zip Lash.

I've really cooled on this since the Testpunch. Can''t see me keeping this in all honesty, certainly not by the time Splatoon rolls around.

It's far from total piss but long story short - peer 2 peer netcode is trash (and makes speed characters a mess to fight when the connection gets iffy), single player is boring, and even in fights where I'm not getting lag I hate not having a clear idea as to the range of my ARMS, nor there being any audio cue for exploding ARMS, coupled with a helping of phantom wiffs.

I know several of my problems would be solved by learning the game over time; the problem is I'm not having that much fun in the meantime.

Byte and Barq need to replace Ice Climbers in Smash though.

While I'm not in the Muss camp - I'm still enjoying this, for the most part - I just don't think I'll have the skill level to stay competitive with it for long. I'll definitely drop off after Spla2n launches. I'mma stick with it for a bit though, see if I can get somewhat competitive. There's a regional qualifier in Gloucester so I might have a go at that. . . be a laugh, wouldn't it?

I can't see me ever bothering to make it to the Ranked Matches. Like youse are saying yourselves, I just don't think I'll get good enough, and I don't think I'd ever want to put the effort in. I've found that to be a problem with taking beat-em-ups online for the last couple of console generations. Unless you fully commit to ARMS, Tekken, Street Fighter or whatever, you're going to get your arse tanned by some fud on the other side of the world who's playing it at 4am their time.

I buy and consume too many games to devote the time needed to git gud at a one-on-one fighter. Also, I am warming to ARMS as things click into place for me. Neither of us are out of the woods yet, mind you - I am flapping with the button controls more than I'd like. I'm hoping customisable controls are coming in a beat-'em-update, because pushing the left stick into the controller to block is legit bonkers.

Seems I'm not the only one having issues then, keep getting my arse handed to me on Level 4 so won't be seeing ranked any time soon. Will keep trying over the weekend but if I can't get to grips with it by Monday then it's gone. Would love to buy it again when it's cheap but for now I think I'd rather cash in on its value if I can't "git gud".

I've played enough to where I'm able to get through Level 4 arcade without too many problems now - whether that's because I'm better at exploiting the ai or am a better player at this point, who knows (Master Mummy's arms slaughter Headlok as his triple punches will all get battered by heavy arms). It's the laggy online that's the biggest problem for me.

ARMS is all about precision, and that's doubly true for the characters I like playing - Helix, Byte & Barq, Springman - who don't have the speed to keep up with the unholy trio of Ribbon Girl, Ninjara, and Kid Cobra (the latter two are outrageously popular online). You have to respect the manoeuvrability of those characters and wait for openings, which'd be fine, but time and again when I see an opening on them and punch, my fist ghosts through their faces because they weren't actually where I punched on their end. I'm then grabbed, or hit by a punch at worse, or out of position at best. It's just a total mess fighting those guys at times, as any lag gives them a massive advantage over the slower chaps for whom the jubilation of landing a patient, but well timed, blow is so often taken away. It's not like it's an auto-loss whenever I come across players using those characters, many of whom just spam, and I'm sure they have problems with the connection too, but it's very rare that I'm the one punishing a laggy speed character. Admittedly, I might not realise it when I am punishing someone for their lag, but I don't ever feel like I have the same problems against slower characters.

Just sounds like whining 'cos you're rubbish to me
(says the guy who plays almost exclusively as Min Min and Ribbon Girl)

ANYWAYS
Andrew David Murphy is doing good ARMS content on youtube, teaching the tips and tricks and techniques.
Jon Denton has done a few good vids discussing, dissecting and streaming the game, with intention of carrying on.

If anyone's interested.

It's a shame folks have cooled on this in such a big way. I'm still having a blast with it. There are definitely valid criticisms, don't get me wrong - lag sucks, although I don't think it exclusively affects slower characters like Muss was mentioning as I've had my fair share of whiffed grabs and punches playing as Ribbon Girl. Another issue I've heard and experienced firsthand (first-ARMS?) is the awkward stickiness of blocking by clicking in the left stick. It doesn't feel as responsive as it should and that's huge for such a finely tuned genre as a fighting game.

Besides those minor gripes, the core game is still amazing. I've almost rattled through the Grand Prix with every character on Level 4 now - Mechanica, Byte and Barq, and Helix remain - which has resulted in me struggling with the mode on my first attempt to finding Level 4 pretty easy. The rush of feeling yourself get better at this is exhilarating. Taking said skills online and battering fools is even more fun. I hope ARMS has legs, I really do.

On that note, we should try and arrange a GNamer Fight Club at some point! I've sparred with Muss and Drunka on a few occasions, but we've not brought the whole gang together yet.

It's not so much that fast characters don't wiff punches, rather they're less likely to be punished for doing so. For example, if I'm Springman and throw a punch against a Ribbon Girl who has just "landed" - which I read as, oh the player has mistimed their jump/it's safe for me to throw a jab here, but is in fact lag, then when the game reconnects I'm rooted to the spot where I was, and Spring Girl has pinged across the stage so far to my left or right (whatever direction she was actually heading on her end) that my camera won't reposition fast enough to even see the start of her attack animations depending on which arm (inside or outside) she is punching with. Even in the situation where Springman doesn't punch, because my game has lost track of the faster Ribbon Girl, my camera will have further to re-position itself if Ribbon Girl has double jumped a few times (or Kid Cobra has dashed about) on their end. Springman being limited to a single dash gives the other player much less distance to potentially have to re-position to. The slower the opposing character, the easier it is for a player (and the game) to re-position the camera onto them. This is why I don't detect lag to the same extent with slower characters even though it obviously still happens. Because whereas it can happen multiple times in a fight that Ribbon Girl is suddenly off my camera, Master Mummy, Springman, Byte & Bark et. al, can't move fast enough to have the same problem unless the lag spike is so substantial that neither player is going to benefit from it.

Faster characters also have a much easier time dictating the flow of a match, so when a lag spike does happen, they're usually going to be in a much better position to recover. A character like Helix is all about reacting to your opponent's movements, wiggling about like a weird goo boy, but there's not much you can do when the game doesn't know where your opponent actually is.

I mean, that's an inherent problem with fighting games that's exacerbated through lag - quicker character tend to be stronger than big slow boys. SFV has Karin ruling the roost. Melee is Fox's turf. Smash 4 is all about Bayonetta. And ARMS, at least in its early days is dominated by Ribbon Girl and Kid Cobra. I see your point with lag spikes being tricker to punish for the big boys, but a hit or grab you've nailed might genuinely have been a consequence of the other player's punches whiffing. Of course, it's easier for those characters to avoid the punish attempt, but that's more down to the strength of those characters as opposed to lag. It's why I've always enjoyed zippier movement-based characters like Ribbon Girl or Captain Falcon in fighting games. It's fun flying around the screen, and they're generally better for it.

Fighting games and lag is a far less pretty combination than in other genres, and it's not helped by the majority of fighting games running off peer-to-peer connection rather than with dedicated servers.

Yeah but it's one thing for quick characters to generally be better than slower ones in most fighting games, and another when they're benefiting much more tangibly from how a game reacts to lag through its camera. In Street Fighter you're limited to a two dimensional plane, so there's no sudden camera trickery that's going to befuddle one player more than another. It's the extra dimension of ARMS that makes it particularly bad for slower characters. Again, I'm sure slower characters do sometimes benefit from lag, even against faster ones, but it's much less tangible (probably on both ends), and it being less tangible is enough to make it feel like the game is against you when something off screen hits you as a slower character. In my own experience, when I play faster characters I'm normally unscathed from moments that are noticeably laggy (at least, my opponent isn't normally borderline off screen) but I haven't played them as much.

Unless they roll out dedicated servers, I think it's always going to feel like there's something more to a faster character hitting me than the other player's skill at times, and it's that which makes ARMS more frustrating than something like Street Fighter. I don't mind if the best player wins, I don't even mind if the faster characters in a fighter are a higher tier, but I do mind when characters ping about and the camera is such that a slower character won't quickly "snap" to a facing position such that they can react to something they couldn't otherwise detect. At least in the case of a slower character landing a punch due to lag, it'll feel weird to the opponent but not quite like an RKO out of nowhere.

Edit: Also, here's the other thing. Normally lag spikes in ARMS aren't enough for a better player to lose to a worse one (although obviously if they're benefiting, or perceived by one player as benefiting the other more -even if the other player isn't benefiting -, then it's going to change said player's psychology). But it's in those close matches, the sort where you both seem evenly matched - the type where the tension and thrill of fighting games is at its zenith, that the bigger lag spikes with camera chicanery spoil one way or the other. It's the loss of those matches that's the single biggest problem I've got with ARMS.

I stop playing games for a week and some of you lose the plot.

----

Joking aside in my short time of playing ARMS online I have noticed the lag that Muss mentions but it's never properly bothered me to the point where I don't find the game fun to play maybe there's a chance of this changing when I try my hand (arms?) at ranked matches as I often care too much about my overall rank/winning in online pvp games.

If that turns out to be the case I can see me being fine with just playing party mode every once in a while.

All these posts about ARMS made me get back into ARMS. I rattled through the rest of the Level 2 Grand Prix with my main woman Ribbon Girl (light! Agile! Has eyebrow holes in her domino mask!), with the only fighters giving me real trouble being Twintelle (difficult to move around her arena freely with my range game) and Byte & Barq (three arms to dodge at once?! Ruff!). Filled with new-found confidence, I embarqed on the Level 3 Grand Prix... and got wiped out by Byte & Barq. On my home turf, too! I'm going to put Spanners & Sparq in the repair shop next time I see them, you marq my words!

Treesmurf wrote:

Seems I'm not the only one having issues then, keep getting my arse handed to me on Level 4 so won't be seeing ranked any time soon. Will keep trying over the weekend but if I can't get to grips with it by Monday then it's gone. Would love to buy it again when it's cheap but for now I think I'd rather cash in on its value if I can't "git gud".

I've always shifted mine, ARMS feels like one of those games you have fun playing but don't really need to own.

But... if you enjoy playing it, why wouldn't you hold onto your copy for a session with the GNamer boys every now and then?

Zero: For the dog and bot pair, take out the dog first. Byte's nowhere near as powerful without his doggo about.

JayMoyles wrote:

Zero: For the dog and bot pair, take out the dog first. Byte's nowhere near as powerful without his doggo about.

Doggo? More like 'coggo', amirite?



No, seriously, thanks for the advice. Will try to put into action.

masofdas wrote:

I've always shifted mine, ARMS feels like one of those games you have fun playing but don't really need to own.

JayMoyles wrote:

But... if you enjoy playing it, why wouldn't you hold onto your copy for a session with the GNamer boys every now and then?

Oh, you mean arcade games, I get it.



Or (srs), did you mean that you had fun playing it, but wouldn't keep it for repeat play after the initial go?

Pretty much spot on Jim with a arcade feel or even just a casual multiplayer sessions round EofGiz's but nothing more.

Like Smurf said I may pick up again when cheap cheap but when it trades in for £42 (making £5) and you see a few people planning to get rid for Splatoon 2 which I know is a month away but that £42 could be £30 by then.

That Jay's point about playing with lads will almost be over anyway as some won't own it and others be playing Splat 2 instead.

masofdas wrote:

That Jay's point about playing with lads will almost be over anyway as some won't own it and others be playing Splat 2 instead.

Exactly, so you should have kept it to get at least one in

Sooner have the £42 trade

Running scared I see.

All these tweets about his supposed infamous Twintelle, can't back them up.

I can see ARMS being a game that'll keep around for a brief session every now and then. I managed to get 400 hours out of Smash 3DS and whilst I don't think I'll manage that much from ARMS, it'll be a game I can see myself getting a fair bit of mileage from.

One day I'll pluck up the courage to venture online. I can see it being a substantially different game between humans.

The single player continues to challenge Old Man Zero: the last game I played that demanded you 'git gud'

DIGRESSION ALERT: Actually typed 'git gus' originally. Poor cat.

so loudly was Wario Woods. I'm learning, though, and am determined to enjoy it.

In addition to the vids Drunka linked to above, NintyLife has produced this, a guide on the ARMS characters' abilities. My entire Ribbon Girl is grounded: it looks like I'm missing out!