On-line passes and Empty Servers

[LaoJim]

I loved Dead or Alive 4 when it first came out and played it a lot. But then when DoA 5 came out it got very mixed reviews and I decided not to bother with it then. A while back I bought a second hand copy for 5 pounds just to see what it was like. Generally speaking it's kinda meh, but...

Holy cow does that game nag you to get the on-line pass. You can't even play the (off-line) game until you've downloaded the update that allows you to play on line. Rather than doing this for you automatically you have to wade through the XBox store menu which has literally 50 items (mostly swimsuits and other pervy costume packs) Even when you complete arcade/survival/time trial mode, it says things like "can't upload your score to global leaderboards, buy the on-line pass". Very obnoxious.

Anyway this got me thinking, the online pass is something like 6.50 pounds. Is anyone still actually playing this game on-line? The game was hardly popular to begin with and DoA5 Ultimate came out a while back, so any diehard fans would presumably have migrated to that. So potentially I'm being asked to shell out money for a service which it might be difficult or practically impossible to use. (Which I'm not thinking of doing BTW).

So my question: is there a way to judge if there is still enough of a community to make it worth shelling out for an on-line pass for a given game? I mean apart from just asking someone you know who has the game. I know Major Neison releases statistics for the top xbox live games, but I think this is only the top 10/20? And if there isn't a way of telling, isn't this a serious issue?

 

[Ubiquitous Duck]

If they don't release the stats, then it is normally safe to assume the worst. And why not, if they refuse to help the situation by hiding the data. So don't give them the monies.

The alternative would be to see if anyone is talking about this online on forums, like you are doing now, but ones more oriented to the game itself. From a google search I can see that people are complaining about no one playing the online multiplayer, long queues and lag.

I'm afraid it doesn't sound like your prospects are good.

 

[Username Redacted]

At least DoA5:U does away with the online pass (though the online play is still terribad). I had 'Ultimate' for the PS3 and the scene (reportedly slightly worse than XBL) was pretty dead in my estimation and that's for the newer game in the series so yeah, probably not worth buying the online pass for the predecessor.

 

[go-10]

as a loser that got Platinum in Ultimate I can safely say that the online mode of DOA 5 is dead. Finding a match takes forever and if you do find one the lag makes playing online tedious at best. DOA 5 as a fighter is well made and properly balanced at high level play but as an online fighter is a horrible piece of crap, the net code is just terrible

 

[LaoJim]

Thanks for the replies,

Obviously it sounds like DoA5 is now dead on-line. I'm not that fussed either way.

My point though is that Tecmo would still happily have taken my money (and nags me constantly to do so), for a service which really I'm really not going to enjoy. Shouldn't there be a point with on-line passes where, ethically, the company should stop selling the pass, or at least there should be information available (from Sony/Microsoft maybe) about how many people are playing the game.

(I'm aware of the irony of using the words ethical and video game company in the same sentence)

 

[Username Redacted]

as a loser that got Platinum in Ultimate I can safely say that the online mode of DOA 5 is dead. Finding a match takes forever and if you do find one the lag makes playing online tedious at best. DOA 5 as a fighter is well made and properly balanced at high level play but as an online fighter is a horrible piece of crap, the net code is just terrible

It also doesn't help that Tecmo Koei allowed for people to decline matches. I had to resort to changing my "main" via my profile at one point in order to trick people into fighting me. In theory it's a good idea as if you accidentally get matched up against the same person repeatedly and/or you know the connection with a specific opponent blows then it makes sense to have a system in place to get out of that situation. In practice there are better ways of doing that and the system that they went with simply allows for people to cherry pick their opponents in what's already a pretty small community. At this point the only fighting games with particularly robust online scenes are going to be the most recent version of Street Fighter IV and the most recent Arc Systems Works game (Persona 4 Arena, BlazBlue, Guilty Gear, etc.). That's it.