SFIV - The Lag Factor...

Every once in a while you might get yourself into a laggy match. By laggy, I mean commands that you input are not executed at the same time. That is if they did get executed in the first place.
There are three different levels of lag:

Lag free, which you always want to have.
Light Lag, You will not notice a lag but for tight inputs it is going to be crucial. This one is not as bad if you play with easy combo characters.
Heavy Lag, You will not want to continue this match. It is just as irritating as irritation... IT IS ANNOYING. the game will completely stops every 1 to 2 seconds for 1 to 2 seconds! You will hate your life.

Typically you want to join rooms that has full connectivity ratio. AKA, Green Bar.
Though even if you do join a Green Bar room, you might still face lag. If there was lag, it is because either side is using the net for other purposes, such as downloading educational movies, streaming a YouTube video or you name it.

When you get yourself a connection for your PS3, try and make it exclusive for the PS3. If you can't. Beat everyone else in the zone that uses the net and tell them you're using the net! Or.... you can ask them politely.

Now that that point is done. Most Green Bars are people around your area. I think it can range from 0~500ish KM. But what happen when you find someone who's even further away?

I've noticed that 3, 4 and 5 bars are in the Lag Free Zone. while 2 and 3 bars are in the light zone. 3 Bars can sometimes be either. 1 Bar being the lowest is either in the Heavy Lag, or Light Lag zone, but mostly the Heavy Lag.

Usually if you live in the US or in Japan you would not complain about this much, since there are thousands of people playing the game around you. But not for us.
We in the Gulf Countries do not have the thousands around us that play this game. We even wish if they are in the hundreds sometimes..
What happens is that the greater the distance is, the more lag there is. If you think about it. Commands take time to get online, pass through the cables, go all the way to the host, then go back all the way to your PS3 to show you the execution.

This alone has cut off a big chunk of possible great players that we can play against. That is not the only problem though.

There are couple of modes on network challenges in SFIV. The old one which was the Rank matches. and the new mode which is the Championship mode. I don't think Rank matches is played as much nowadays since Championship mode has been introduced.

In CM (Champion Mode) the more you win, the higher your rank goes up and so is your title. But how do you challenge people in this mode? You have to search for them and select from a list which one you want to challenge. The list shows you the PSN and the connectivity bar. Now here it is. All of them have 1 Bar Connectivity!
1 Bar, 1 Bar, 1 Bar. You would literally spend 10 minutes until you find someone with 2 Bars. And if you were able to enter his room, there is a big chance that you will get kicked from it. This is going to get into you and starts getting you frustrated.

I've been playing for a long time and I did like the CM, I've reached G2-B Rank but that's it. I can't take it anymore. It's way too annoying to complete.
G2-B is around 8000 points. Now for almost every 4 players you win in a row that's 1 championship for you and 100 points.
Now imagine you have 60,000 points. How many 4 matches you have to win in a row.. Now imagine each of them is in HEAVY LAG. That's suicide.

Aside from heavy laggy matches that causes you to lose points and just gets you frustrated. There are the Player matches that does not involve any points at all. They are just friendly matches either between you and a friend, or a random guy.
The same way here. You select from a List. And guess what? 1 BAR, 1 BAR, 1 BAR. *Starts pulling hair off* in 1 hour I'd be lucky if I find a local player and I hope he's a good player as well, You do find lots of new players that would spam shoryukens on you. *With lag, it's on their favor*

That was one reason for me to hate the game at certain points. LAG, LAG, and more LAG.

There are lots of great players in the GCC but its unfortunate we can't show these skills to the world. All what we can do is play against each other and enjoy our time with some local fame and that's it.