Smash Bros. Purchase Confirmed for December, Friend Code Bitching to Start Now

As Laesperanzapaz has pointed out in the comments, Super Smash Bros. Brawl 4-player online battles have been confirmed. As expected, Smash Bros. will use Nintendo’s universally despised Friend system.

While simply taking the game online is a big selling point for me, I can’t help but feel at least slightly disappointed in what the online modes will feature. With friends, which of course you will have to laboriously enter in (and ensure all your friends have entered you in), you can send pre-made text “taunts”, have each match outcome recorded, and of course, check each other’s records. While you can play anyone worldwide as well, no stats are recorded, no “taunts” can be used, and apparently you can’t even see a player’s name. Neither mode will support any kind of voice chatting.

And once again, this basically shows why Nintendo just doesn’t “get” what online support means. Sure, playing against other people is great, but without voice, “taunts”, stats, or even the ability to possibly invite a person to be a friend within the game, the “Worldwide” mode basically becomes a glorified single player game with better (or worse) AI. No record keeping or names means you can never end up playing a player you know you’ve met before, or some player “renowned” for being great. It will probably also mean lots of unevenly matched games as there will be no matchmaking pitting you against people with similar records.

Mixing it up with friends will obviously be more fun, but there is still a lot of unrealized potential without voice chat. What makes these games so much fun to play multiplayer is not just the fast-paced gameplay, but the competitive and social aspect.

Imagine for a moment if you went to someone’s place to play some Smash Bros. and everyone was just silent while you played. After the round was over, no one talks or boasts or complains or anything. No trash talking, no shouting, nothing… just the sound of the game and maybe people’s text “taunts” appear on the screen. That would really make the multiplayer a lot less fun, no? While the online experience obviously can’t completely replicate the superior in-person experience, voice chat at least goes a long way to help mimic the fun that you have when playing people face to face. Bomberman Live is a great example. Without the chat there would be basically no difference between playing it online or playing it yourself against the computer.

Nintendo should do a couple things to enhance their online:

1) Keep Friend codes, but make them OPTIONAL. Nintendo could easily add them in as a function of “Parental Controls” in the Wii Menu. Hell, make them default to “on” for all I care, just stop assuming your entire audience are babies (aren’t you the one touting the fact that you’ve been expanding the market to even OLDER people?) and give mature players the option of not using Friends codes. At the very least, give us the option of letting us create new Friends on the fly and having “Friend Request” notifications, rather than the strange “Black Hole” of Friends now where, maybe they’ll add me, maybe they won’t… I’ll have to call/e-mail/IM them to make sure they add me… They forgot, oh, they wrote my friend code down wrong, ok, now it’s right… just a few hours until it “registers”… you get the picture.

2) Add in Voice Support. I know a lot of people don’t like listening to others… fine, it’s easy enough to have the option to Mute all incoming voices. But some of us actually really like talking to others, ESPECIALLY when we’re playing with friends. Again, don’t assume we’re all babies and are too delicate to handle voice chat. It will actually enhance both your games and your fan base.