With Anyone

The With Anyone Menu for Brawl.

The "With Anyone" Menu for Smash 4.

With Anyone is one of two modes for online play. In Super Smash Bros. Brawl's version of this mode, the player can play with people they don't know. The opponent(s) will not know their name or any information about them. There will also be no battle records kept for this mode. With Anyone contains three different options.

In Super Smash Bros. 4, "With Anyone" has been split into two modes: "For Fun" and "For Glory".

Modes

Basic Brawl

The player can battle online with players they don't know. Choosing a character is limited to 45 seconds to prevent stalling. The players can cast a vote on what stage to play on and what items to turn on or off using coins. If a player leaves in the middle of a match, the entire match ends and everyone taking part will be sent back to the Wi-Fi selection screen.

Spectator

In this mode, players can watch other people's battles. The player can bet up to 100 coins on a player/team that he/she thinks will win the match. If the player/team the player bets on wins, there is a jackpot and the player will receive roughly x3 the amount of coins bet, x2 if it is a team battle. Occasionally, there will be a bonus round in which the player can earn double the usual amount of coins received if the selected player is the victor. If the person the player bets coins on wins, they will gain more coins. Also, the player can win some stickers, even if they lose.

Team Battle

Team battle will not allow 2 players on the same Wii facing 2 other players unlike With Friends mode. Instead, the player is randomly matched with someone for their partner, and battles two other player on a team with Team Attack off. The player must have 4 players to start a With Anyone Team Brawl on Wi-Fi. A Team Battle player is unable to change their character's color, and the team colors are randomly chosen as Red or Blue. [1]

Criticisms

Brawl's With Anyone modes have received much criticism relating to its mechanics and the nature of gameplay:

• Matches can only last 2 minutes, which has been criticized for being too short and not providing enough time for thorough gameplay. Coin matches and stock matches cannot be played as well.
• Players can only have their choice of items or stage one fourth of the time, and are often forced to play on items and stages they do not wish to play on.
• Online matches are commonly filled with players of low skill level, players who run away from all combat, players who grief and fool around during matches, and players who don't make any controller inputs, usually because they are away from their controller.
• Basic Brawl matches can only have three or four players and CPUs are forced in when there are less than three players, making 1v1 matches impossible.
• Players have no way of being able to play against certain opponents in the future, and cannot prevent themselves from playing against certain players.
• Inputs have several frames of input lag, meaning that actions on screen occur later than they normally would offline, and slow connections frequently slow down or halt gameplay.

In Super Smash Bros. 4

Anonymous online play will return in Super Smash Bros. 4. Two game modes will be available: For Fun, a mode in which all items are turned on and all stages except for Final Destination are available, and For Glory, in which all items are turned off and Final Destination is the only stage allowed.. Masahiro Sakurai, the game's lead developer, has announced plans to solve many of the problems found in Brawl; the new game modes allow players to play with items off or on "fair" stages every time they play, instead of being forced to play on unwanted stages, and punishments and temporary bans will be given to players who join but don't fight or repeatedly target a single player. A ranking system will also be used to determine the opponents a player fights against. It is currently unknown if Team Battle will return to online play.

External links

• Wi-Fi Play Update.
• With Anyone/Basic Brawl Update.
• Spectator Update.

See also

• With Friends
• Spectator