Aquapazza: Aqua+ Dream Match

[Luis]

It would have been best if you had check to see how active is the online before buying it. The online is dead due to the bad netcode where playing with Japaese players is a bad idea. It's gonna have lag and you can't do your combos. Another reason is the game is niche so some people only buy it for trophies.

[deadfrog]

What is this defeatist attitude?? I thought you guys were poverty! Hahah.

I would deffffinitely not describe this game's current level of online activity as dead. Sparse, yes. Small, absolutely. But certainly not dead.

I've been playing this game online for just the past couple of months now, just sort of on-and-off, here-and-there, at a wide variety of times of day, as well as on a the full variety of days of the week, and I've found matches almost every single time I've been on. I have only had two occasions ever where there was nobody else available.

The only real qualifier here is that most of my matches are bad connections against good players (that Japanese heat!!!) or good connections against bad players (I guess this is the North American visual novel fanbase?). Even when those are the only kinds of matches I'm getting, though, I've still been improving my play and enjoying myself a lot in the process.

Player Match is almost always empty. Occasionally you'll see Asian rooms but they're usually restricted by connection quality. I always check Player Match first but there's pretty much never anything in there for me.

Ranked Match is where it's at. Almost all of my games come from here. The trick is that you need to set a mode to idle in while you wait for opponents. I haven't heard aaaanyone else ever talk about this, and I'm honestly not sure why. I know that most other modern fighting games offer this same feature, and it's not like it's rocket science to puzzle it out for yourself, but Aquapazza does not at any point make the existence of this option at all obvious to you, and its menu implementation is somewhat unintuitive and slightly hidden. Mercifully, you only need to set this once because game will save your preferences as you would hope.

*** Deadfrog's foolproof fail-proof super cool super helpful assistance instructions tutorial guide on setting an idle mode for Ranked Match in Aquapazzaaa ***

- Beginning from the main menu...

- Select [PlayStation®Network].

- Select [RANKED MATCH].

- The screen/window that appears is titled "RANKED MATCH SETTINGS"; this is the one where you set your characters, colours, and stage.

- Now select [sETTINGS] from this menu. Yes, that's right, settings for settings.

- This new window is titled "RANKED MATCH CUSTOM SEARCH SETTINGS" because hey whatever, right?

- In this new window, go down to the "Waiting" option; the default setting is "None"; change it to whatever you want: "Story" (single-player), "Another Story" (more single-player), "Training" (training mode), or "Room" (a lobby screen).

- Do NOT press the circle button to go back to the previous window! Doing so will take you back, but it won't save any of the changes you've just made. Hhhhhh

- Select the [sEARCH] button to save the changes and return to the previous screen. (As is completely apparent when you do so, this does not actually start a search.)

- Now that you are back on the "RANKED MATCH SETTINGS" screen, you can select [sTART] (just as you normally would) to begin idling while the game searches for an opponent for you in the background.

- Finally! Now you are all ready to start waiting to actually get to play this game!

(Special note: If you are waiting in story or training mode, be aware that the game does not search for opponents during character select screens or loading screens. It only searches while you're playing in-game.)

If you haven't gotten a game within 5 minutes of waiting, you can be sure that no one else is on at the time. Like I said, this has only happened to me two times ever. There has virtually always been at least one other person on for me to play against.

That default idle option, "None", is what causes what is the equivalent of the "quick match" option in other games: an instantaneous matchmaking search attempt where it looks for 5 seconds and then gives up. The problem is that if most people are only doing this, then most people are simply missing each other, and subsequently logging off for that day, and eventually quitting for good.

I strongly suspect that most people go on ranked, try that quick search a half-a-dozen times, don't get a match, and figure the game must be dead. And I honestly can't blame them.

I think I've had a lot of experience (and patience and frustration and desperation and depression and elation) trying to get matches in games with extremely tiny and elusive active online playerbases. And this is without a doubt the first game I've ever run into where the game's menu itself could possibly be killing its online community. I had allllmost given up on this one completely by the time I discovered the big secret setting.

Anyway, I hope this helps someone. I'm sure this would have been more useful if I had posted it two years ago.

[ehuangsan]

Another part of it was that lag was really bad when the game came out.

However I think the connectivity has improved to a point where it's even better than GG.

I'll see if I can get NorCal to play more online. There's only one other person from NorCal that plays regularly.

[redsilversnake]

However I think the connectivity has improved to a point where it's even better than GG.

It really hasn't. Even on the best connections I've played, the lag is very noticeable, whereas GG usually just feels like normal lag.

[ehuangsan]

AP lulz of the day - if both sides call Yuki on the same frame, both Yuki snowflakes come out, but only one Yuki shows up, and the snowflakes stay on even after Yuki goes away. What a broken game.

[Luis]

@deadfrog: I already know about those ranked match options. Took me a while to figure out though. I have moved on from this game since I don't like waiting in that lobby. If anyone wants to fight me, name the date and time. Anytime will do. This way I won't have to wait.

[Grimsley-San]

@deadfrog: I already know about those ranked match options. Took me a while to figure out though. I have moved on from this game since I don't like waiting in that lobby. If anyone wants to fight me, name the date and time. Anytime will do. This way I won't have to wait.

I probably can, maybe on one of my day offs, I probably don't know shit about this game anymore.

[MastaToken]

What's up guys?

I'm thinking about hosting a Aquapazza netplay tournament. Just trying to gather interest right now on who would be interested in playing. Once I get a solid number, we'll decide on a date to host this.

[ehuangsan]

Depends on the date and time, but sure.

[purify]

Interesting how this game is still kicking, somewhat. Mostly on LM now, but I'd be down to play in a tournament.

[Elochai]

What's up guys?

I'm thinking about hosting a Aquapazza netplay tournament. Just trying to gather interest right now on who would be interested in playing. Once I get a solid number, we'll decide on a date to host this.

 

I'm 100% down for this. Sucks that I saw this post like a week late.

[Luis]

A tournament with lag? That will be terrible.

[Grimsley-San]

A tournament with lag? That will be terrible.

 

 

It is terrible period.

[TAI-X]

I went as far as to buy this game for a friend when it hit $20 so we could play together, and it was a total waste on my end. Even though we're in the same state, the lag was unbearable.

[Luis]

Did you and your friend tried using a wired connection with nobody else in the house using the Internet? If so then yeah that was a waste. I remember playing against someone in my state that had unbearable lag. It was worst than playing with a Japanese.

[TAI-X]

Yup, wide open ethernet on both sides. Guess the netcode just sucks.

[Daverost]

It does. It's some of the worst netcode I've ever played on.

 

Thank God Examu isn't handling the netcode for AH3LM.

[Grimsley-San]

It does. It's some of the worst netcode I've ever played on.

 

Thank God Examu isn't handling the netcode for AH3LM.

AquaPazza's netcode is worst than BattleFantasia's. imo

[MastaToken]

I'll just grab those who said yes along with the few in the skype groups that I'm in and roll with that since I believe it's 8 or higher.

[Luis]

Are you gonna record the match?

[ehuangsan]

NorCal vs uk vs jp Aquapazza at 10:30 in the British anime room 4-112 north tower 4th floor

[Kaori Manabe]

ggs to those that played at evo.

[sibladeko]

Despite being the best/worst AP streammonster good stuff to all who went to Evo. Especially lark, for being an American hero and for not becoming JOBoro vs Brent. Tone however, is fired.

[Kaori Manabe]

:o lark got noticed by sibladeko senpai

 

rip tone

[purify]

Lark MVP. I was getting desperate at the end for sure, didn't know how to stop him. I have some ideas what to do now, but at the moment he definitely had me flustered. Very good matches.

I was cool with all of my losses at Evo because I didn't so much feel that I lost matches I should have won - everybody that beat me I definitely respect, and all of the matches were close. Lark (twice in AP), Mabushin's Mei-Fang, Luffy, Cross (JP Slayer), etc etc..yeah. It was all good stuff. See you all next year.