If you've been in the Internet recently (and especially interacting with other of the Smash community), you've probably heard complains of the Smash Ultimate Online Service being garbage. If you're not a robot, you might've also had a reaction, which could vary between "Huh. It has worked perfectly for me. Why are people complaining?" and "You're right, this is trash! I don't know why did I pay for this!".
Or "I don't own Ultimate yet". If this is the case, then Sakurai bless you poor soul. May he guard you from spoilers
Anyways, people, of course, complain about different things, but one of the complaints that I've heard with the most frequency is this one: "The game completely disregards my preferences! I want to play 1v1, but it instead places me in a free-for-all!"
And, as much as I love the game, I have to agree with you. It sucks to be placed in a free-for-all when all you want to do is to play some 1v1. But, actually, the problem is not the Online service itself. Today, thanks to my really smart sister (do you really think I would've figured this out by myself?), I realized that you can play 1v1 very easily. It's an extremely simple method and at least somebody must have discovered it by now, but I haven't heard anyone mention it here in Amino, so here it is.
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All you have to do is to go to Preferred Rules and choose "Smash" instead of "1-on-1". You see, the buttons seem to be inverted. So, when you choose "1-on-1", the game thinks that you want to play a free-for-all, but if you choose "Smash", the game will think that you want a 1v1. As I said, it's pretty simple, but since I haven't seen anybody mentioning it... I decided to go ahead and talk about it. Hopefully, it'll get fixed with the patch, but it's something useful to know in the mean time.
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If you are, in fact, entering a 1v1 battle, you'll go to the Training place, like always, but when the second place gets filled up, the two other places will disappear and will instead show a red X that says Closed. It goes without saying, but that way, you know that no more people will enter the fight.
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And... yep. That's it. The game will respect your Preferred Rules as if nothing had happened. Now you can go into 1v1 Online battles and start stacking up some victories!
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Oops, I didn't mean to show that picture. You see, I wasn't prepared. I wasn't even using my main! Next battle, I'll use my boy Kirby and I'll start winning Global Smash Power. You just wait and see!
Actually... you know what? Nevermind. Going back to free-for-alls.
So sorry for the awful humor
Well, I know this was short and extremely simple, but I hope it was useful. Now you know that the problem is not the Online itself, but that the game is confused :)
I do think this problem will get fixed with the patch, but meanwhile, you know what to do. Bye!
Comments (24)
Good post
Thanks!
As I expected, this got fixed with the patch. So just disregard this post :)
It doesn’t seem to work for me. I still get Free-For-All’s.
Huh, that’s weird. I have no idea why would it be different for you than it is for me, but, well... I guess the patch will fix it for once and for all
The lag is much better now, but you kind of have to do Elite Smash to consistently get 1v1s 🤷
Well, to me, choosing ‘Smash’ worked, is it not working for you?
Reply to: Denizen_of_DL
What I mean is regular smash tends to ignore preferences, but Elite smash tends to follow preferences more
Reply to: Spamus
Oh, I see. Well, as Sakurai said, the game tries to pair you up with people with similar preferences and then the game randomly picks the preference of one of the players, so your own preference isn’t always chosen 🤷🏽♀ I guess that’s something we can’t ensure and it’s a problem that’ll get worse when less people play online
How consistent is this?
I didn’t play a lot of matches, but it seems to work every time
Reply to: Denizen_of_DL
I’ll try it then. Thx