Rant incoming.
I’m upset. You want to know why? Because I can’t play Guilty Gear Strive. I haven’t been able to properly play the game for 2 months now. It’s bullshit, and I’m genuinely frustrated that one of my favourite games has become unenjoyable to play.
So what’s the deal? What changed?
As some of you may know, Guilty Gear Strive released on Xbox earlier this year. The very same day, crossplay for the game was extended to also include the new Xbox playerbase. Normally this would be a welcome addition – a whole host of new competitors is always great! Unfortunately, this amplified all of the existing problems with Strive’s tenuous lobbies.
Since March 7th, 2023 Guilty Gear Strive online lobbies have become a complete dumpster fire. In my own experience, I usually spend more time trying to get into a match then I do actually playing. The game regularly struggles to connect me to other players, and frequently boots me out of lobbies to the main menu. Hell – I’ll even get booted out mid-match sometimes, if Strive is having a particularly bad day. Sounds fun, doesn’t it?
And it’s not like we didn’t see this coming either. When crossplay with Playstation was added in November of last year, the quality of online play dropped significantly. All of the same issues that exist now were still present then, but they weren’t as common so it was easier to ignore them. The Xbox folks joining the fray was simply the straw that finally broke the camel’s back.
What makes this situation especially frustrating for me is the response from Arc System Works. If we pretend that prior to March 7th everything was fine, then it took Arc over 6 weeks to publicly acknowledge the problem. They issued a statement noting that were aware of the issue, but didn’t have an ETA on a solution. The second part of that statement is fair enough, but why did it take so long for y’all to acknowledge the problem? This shit has been so bad that people have been posting about it all over social media for weeks. Y’all were acting like fucking ostriches out here with your heads buried in the sand.
This acknowledgement notice was also followed up a week later with an update advising players to restart the game if they were running into issues.
NANI? You really going to hit us with the “have you tried turning it off, and then back on again” line?
I don’t even know what to say. Every couple weeks I pop into the ranked lobbies to see if things are any better, and I’m usually left disappointed. Connection issues are still rampant. Sometimes I get lucky, but more often I get disconnected constantly, and close the game in frustration.
There is one saving grace however: throughout all of this nonsense, private rooms have continued to function almost without interruption. This means that I’ve been able to play with a handful of my friends over March, and April. That’s still less than ideal – obviously they’re not always around, and that somewhat narrows the scope of the characters you’ll be playing against. Still – I guess it’s better than nothing.
It’s really disappointing. Guilty Gear Strive is such a great game – one that I’ve enjoyed sinking hundreds of hours into. However, Strive’s legacy is currently poised to be one of frustration at the hand’s of its terrible networking. I don’t expect everyone will stop playing, but I do think that many have gotten sick of dealing with the issues, and are looking at other games. Lord knows I’m just waiting for June 2nd, so I can drop Strive for Street Fighter 6.
Here’s hoping that Strive’s online eventually gets fixed. I don’t have a lot of faith given the history of online related issues that have plagued the game throughout its life, but miracles can happen. Remember that you can always drop into private lobbies while the public ones continue to be a complete gong show if you, like myself, are still jonzing to duke it out with some friends.
Frostilyte Writes 
A couple years ago Titanfall 2 online became pretty much unplayable on consoles due to hackers, a dwindling player base, and Respawn not giving a F. One of the only PvP games I actually liked playing and now I can’t really play it anymore. What makes it even worse is when Respawn says things like “Titanfall means a lot to us”. Yet they let TF2 die, and have canceled multiple projects with the IP. And don’t get me started on how I feel about Apex. Titanfall is one of my favorite IPs out there for games and it’s just constantly getting the short end of the stick in every way.
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That’s genuinely pretty unfortunate.
I was going to ask, isn’t Apex considered part of the Titanfall IP? I thought that it was given that most of the mobility systems were lifted 1 to 1 from Titanfall. Though I suppose without the titans actually being present, and the shift away from laser focused, high intensity matches to whatever the heck battle royales are then you’ve got 2 games that feel very different from one another. That’s to say, it can call itself Titanfall, but it won’t necessarily feel like it.
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Apex is part of the TF universe. It’s set like 30 years after TF2. A lot of assets and abilities and some characters are straight from Titanfall. To be honest though I’m a huge Titanfall snob when it comes to the lore, and just general style. Apex is a well made game, I’ve put in a lot of hours. But I personally hate everything about it with association to Titanfall. The lore connections I think are really dumb. All I’ve ever wanted was more of what the 2 TF games gave us. Apex just feels like a bastardization of that universe. It just made things too, idk, cartoony? Like the characters by themselves, great. But for Titanfall it just doesn’t fit imo. And the fact that they do share the same universe is what annoys the hell out of me.
There was a recently canceled crossover game apparently that was going to bridge the gap between both games and I’m genuinely glad it got canceled because it would have been the biggest middle finger to me. If you’re not going to just make more Titanfall, then don’t even think about doing anything else. I’d rather it die completely than see it get fully mixed in with Apex.
Anyways, rant over.
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Fairs fair. I get what you mean: a lot of the characters from Apex seem more bright and colourful, where Titanfall (at least the campaign in the second game) was a little more dark-grim. Kinda like the difference between Doom, and Call of Duty though that’s not exactly apples to apples.
I didn’t know any of that history surround Apex Legends, so the rant was also informative.
Given the success of Apex (player count, money, etc.) that’s likely the direction EA will continue to follow.
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Yeah I’ve already accepted that the Titanfall I love is probably gone forever. At this point there’s no way that even if they did make TF3 or whatever else that it would retain the style that the other 2 games had. It’s a guarantee Apex would have a big influence over it, and I don’t see any scenario where that’s enjoyable to me.
It’s a damn shame because idk if there’s any other IP out there that I like that’s had such a disappointing ending. TF1 came out and it immediately became one of the most enjoyable games to me. Then TF2 came out and had an actual campaign and I loved every single second of it. And I really liked the multiplayer as well, even if it often caused me a lot of frustration. But that’s every PvP for me. Difference is TF was still so engaging for me that I could never abandon it.
Then Apex came out and everything went downhill as badly as it could for me as a TF fan. A battle royal that used the IP in all the wrong ways, multiple TF games getting canceled, and the IP as we know it being abandoned. And now TF2 mp being left to die with no grace. RIP one of my favorite franchises.
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That really sucks and I’m sorry to hear that. It’s been fun following the bits and pieces of your journey learning Strive and climbing through the rankings…even if I avoid competitive games – and fighting games especially – like the plague. It’s still horrible to have something that you really enjoy be ripped away from you by something completely out of your control.
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I’m glad that sharing my journey in different bits, and pieces has been something you’ve enjoyed following.
Best case scenario it gets sorted out, but I’m sure I’ll get over it eventually. Still just…frustrating.
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Man this sounds incredibly frustrating, especially when it’s a game you would otherwise really enjoy.
I hope they sort it out… It seems very misguided to stay quiet and then suggest people reset their consoles… As if that isn’t one of the first things people do.
I’m glad you at least got to play with your friends!
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I really like that they eventually acknowledged that it was an issue because far too often these things get swept under the rug. Guessing things got so bad that the developers decided they couldn’t get away with a quiet, quick fix. Which…I mean that’s a whole other topic.
And yeah – I hadn’t even thought about how goofy it was to suggest that kind of thing on console. At least with a computer it’s pretty easy to pop out, and completely kill the process so that you get a clean reset. It’s been so long since I’ve properly played anything on console without Mir piloting the menus that I wouldn’t have thought about how awkward troubleshooting would be on them.
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