Absolver slaps on another patch but the lag remains

The martial arts brawler Absolver [official site] is a beautiful arena for skinny people who are both very polite and incredulously angry. It’s a great bruiser but isn’t without serious flaws. The sometimes-insufferable lag, for one thing, is killing the 1v1 dueling mode for many. A small patch has recently been added, bringing cross-region support and some “improvements to server connection”, say developers Sloclap, with more fixes and improvements incoming. But a lot of players, myself included, are still encountering teleporty punches, stuttering kicks, disconnections and unstable matchmaking. That means toothless frowns all round.

Here’s the patchnotes for the most recent update (1.05). The biggest change is that they’ve done away with the region lock, allowing you to invite your friend Brad from Missouri, or Thomas from Sussex, for example. This seems to be for invitations only (it doesn’t say anything about cross-region matchmaking, but given the connection issues already involved I doubt anyone is clamouring for that).

“We are aware that some players are facing big lag issues, preventing them from enjoying the online experience in Absolver,” the devs said in an update post. “We apologize for the rocky start, the team is working night and day to improve this.”

The next band-aid will be applied some time this week, they say, and will “include some goodies”. No idea what those goodies are but they’ve previously said that (in the long term) they want to add 3v3 matches, a ranked competitive mode, and new combat styles and moves. If they add more silly moves like the humiliating slap, I’ll be pleased. But connection problems should always come first. It would be sad if Absolver followed in the footsteps of For Honor, another fighting game which, despite being an axe-swinging delight, had all of its joy slowly bled away due to bad networking and garbage UI - a game which Rich says is still a bit messy. Please Absolver, don't follow the vile Vikings to videogame Valhalla.