Is the online still alive

[Helmino]

Heya all, before buy the game i want to know if the online is still active or no. Living in Europe, with crossplay I hope it will be alive for long, can anyone enlight me on the situation nowadays? Thank you all in advance

[DarkLeafNinja]

people are always in lobbies but casual and ranked is dead at night in EU

[MobyPhallus]

has been taking forever to find a match recently

2B killed the game

[Unrighteous]

1K players on steam now. It was around 500-800 before 2B was released. These are relatively great numbers for a fighting game, but obviously nothing like SF6 or Tekken 8. I can still find matches pretty quick from NA, but it can take a few minutes sometimes.

We can expect player spikes every time new content is released, and I'm hoping a balance patch actually makes people want to play the game again.

[Unrighteous]

Also, just try out the free version to see if you can find matches lol.

[Rikuto01]

1000 on steam for normal version, plus around 200 on free edition, plus all the console players (impossible to gauge those numbers) since this is a crossplay game.

So yea, it has plenty of people. Europe has issues, but if we're being frank Europe always has issues unless its Tekken or SF.

[Optimus Tager]

After the first month the player base dropped by 50%. After the second month that was halved by another 50% of what was left. On the third it was about 15% that was still left of the original player base and it now hovers around 1000 players worldwide. On weekends you might get around 1400 players, but usually its about 400~800 players on average.

And yeah, on the subject of 2B - she kind of may have killed the casual crowd's interest in this game. When she came out, all you could fight against online was 2B - almost everyone and their grandmother seemed to be playing her. And I can see why - she was easy to play; had one of the best neutral moves from the entire cast; had longer auto-combo strings that you could mix-up between light, medium and heavy mid combo; and could perform her auto-combo regardless of the distance to her opponent. Also, I'm not 100% sure, but her auto-combos also probably have the highest damage in the game. Most experienced players could climb up from C-rank to S+ rank with her without really activating their brains while playing.

A lot of people seem to have trouble dealing with a lot of her moves and that is because she plays like she's from Guilty Gear Strive or a Blazblue; possibly a reason why none of the big fighting game news outlets or pro-players have added her into their tier lists yet - because they can't still tell how she'll fare amongst the top dog Granblue players. I can tell a good Belial player will curb stomp her 9/10. An average Nier player will eat her alive 10/10. I've seen Beelzebub players outplaying her quite often as well. They are what I'd consider to be hard counters for her, but only as far as up to S+ rank - there the 2B players that have managed to climb up there and remain, actually know how to play the game and not just spam 5M constantly.

But yeah, if you want a fighting game with bigger and more active player base, I'd suggest moving to Tekken 8 or Street Fighter 6. But if you fancy a more simpler and straightforward fighting game and dig the aesthetics of Granblue, then hop in and join the rest of us still trying to keep this thing alive. Just don't be disheartened when you fight against someone who can win a round with just two combo strings.

Another good one is DNF Duel, but I have no idea how active that game's player base is at the moment - nor have I played it in a while - but that one is very much like Granblue in terms of mechanics, but much more aggressive, in-your-face, and with much, much faster pacing.

[Helmino]

Thanks

[HunterTwoOneOne]

The player count numbers are misleading. Many matches are going to be against AFK Farming accounts if you can even find a match within a reasonable time frame. Millage may vary depending on region and time of play but generally I wouldn't say it's dead but I would not say this is a particularly active online scene either.

Player counts are misleading for games like this because it's not as simple as yep there's roughly 1000 players. No, there isn't. That's people in game at all. There's a massive unaddressed AFK Farming playerbase, there's the people doing story mode, there are the people just playing local games or against friends, and then there are the Ranked and Casual players. There's not actually 1000 players queing for matches. That's just not the case.

As much as I would like to see Fantasy Versus Rising actually survive, with the way things have turned out so shortly after launch just does not make it worth getting into even for free. Just like with DNF Duel the game is a hard sell to anyone at this point. Honestly, if you want to play a fighting game, just get Street Fighter or Tekken. If its an anime fighter you want specifically, Fighter Z is still insanely active. There just doesn't seem to be any real life left in this game if you're not seeking to play the story mode or with a friend IMO.

[Spicy Crab]

Hunter 211, are you getting paid for all this doom posting? The online is healthy in Europe across various skill levels.

[simon028]

It's pointless to play a game where you basically can't really "play" against the opponent. The way the game works, you'll systematically get desynced from your opponent and win rounds and matches both at the same time. But since the game is mostly made for farming currencies on your own it's not that big a deal for the community, like the PSP Dissidia games.

Fighting game enthusiasts tend to like playing face to face with a human opponent and react to what they are actually doing, playing against "ghosts" that briefly mimic a player's behaviour is pointless especially when they stop moving halfway through a match.

I guess it makes ranking up ridiculously easy though, so at least that's a game people can effortlessly max rank online because most of the time they'll play against a dummy because the other player already beat them on their end, hence victories on both sides and two happy players.

[Optimus Tager]

Originally posted by simon028:

It's pointless to play a game where you basically can't really "play" against the opponent. The way the game works, you'll systematically get desynced from your opponent and win rounds and matches both at the same time. But since the game is mostly made for farming currencies on your own it's not that big a deal for the community, like the PSP Dissidia games.

Fighting game enthusiasts tend to like playing face to face with a human opponent and react to what they are actually doing, playing against "ghosts" that briefly mimic a player's behaviour is pointless especially when they stop moving halfway through a match.

I guess it makes ranking up ridiculously easy though, so at least that's a game people can effortlessly max rank online because most of the time they'll play against a dummy because the other player already beat them on their end, hence victories on both sides and two happy players.

What?

Have you actually played this game? The AI in this game is retarded - to put it mildly. The only fighting game ever, where I've actually met decent AI [which is a misnomer, since we've yet to develop a proper Artificial Intelligence. The closest we've come is a poor man's VI (Virtual Intelligence)] is Street Fighter 6 - and it cheats a lot by reading your inputs.

In this game? You go into the arcade mode and go up against Nightmare level AI and its like you're fighting against someone with an IQ number lower than your shoe size. The "AI" of this game on highest difficulty charges at you right from the get-go (except Ferry) and does this twice - always - even if you use the same move to slap them down. Next it usually tries to shoot a projectile or jump at you. If that fails, it tries again until it randomly picks another programmed tactic. Play a little and you can quickly learn the patterns; they really didn't try to make a good AI for this game.

The point is that you can easily pick up on any fighting game when you're fighting against an algorithm and when you're fighting against an actual human.

And you really think that people would have not noticed if this game actually used "ghosts"? Seriously? Even the "ghosts" in Tekken 7 and 8 are a poor substitute to an actual human player - even a bad one. I can understand someone trying to cope, but this is just ridiculous.

But one thing you are absolutely right about though - genuine fighting game enthusiasts do prefer to meet up with others of their kind and play face to face, because you lose half the reason you tend to play fighting games in the first place; the human interaction. You experience none of this while playing online, and it has been gnawing at me ever since I stopped being able to go to the big fighting game events and had to resort to playing online.

[simon028]

I didn't mean people are actually playing against AI, only that the game only registers each players actions for 30 seconds or so and then desyncs both players so that they both get a victory.

[simon028]

Since it's based on a grindy gacha game, it makes sense for players who only want to grind stuff while skipping ranks in online, but it's not really fun when you're looking to play with, say, friends, but social players are surprisingly few in these games, hence the possible choice to make the game "50%" online, I guess to spend less resources on maintaining servers and such.

[Unrighteous]

Originally posted by simon028:

It's pointless to play a game where you basically can't really "play" against the opponent. The way the game works, you'll systematically get desynced from your opponent and win rounds and matches both at the same time.

I've played over 400 games with a friend online, and this has literally never happened to me. I can't say it doesn't happen while playing ranked, because there's no way to know that for sure, but you definitely don't just get free wins all the time. Ranking up is really difficult.

Also, saying "systematically" is just complete nonsense. If desync occurs, it's because there was some kind of error; they're not intending for it to happen.

[Red]

Originally posted by simon028:

I didn't mean people are actually playing against AI, only that the game only registers each players actions for 30 seconds or so and then desyncs both players so that they both get a victory.

That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works.

Rollback netcode does *not* save the game's state for "30 seconds"; you're lucky if it's even a second. Usually it's typically below 10 frames because your computer needs to re-run calculations about several frames if the late inputs don't line up with the prediction, and that's expensive and needs to be done quickly. If you hit the max number of rollback frames the game can handle, it will slow down/freeze, then end the match if it doesn't get resolved within a certain time limit.

Please, do yourself a favour and go watch Core-A Gaming's video on the topic or something to know at least the basics of how rollback works (what I said was *not* the basics but it's clear you're spouting nonsense): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NLe4IpdS1w