Connection Issues?

It's no secret that the best part of the Pokémon games is being able to interact with other human players to trade and battle with others' Pokémon, and that this can be done even when human players aren't physically present, through connections over the Internet. It's also no secret that I currently reside in Indonesia, which is still considered a developing country, which means that Internet connections may still be iffy at best and lacking at worst. This can and does wreak havoc when it comes to playing Pokémon or other games on the 3DS over the Internet.

Now, it should be said that high-speed Internet has gained popularity in the country; a decade ago there was really only one accessible provider, and now there are a handful to choose from. However, not everyone has this, and the people that do have this are mostly on the lower end of the spectrum of speed. Fortunately, the age of smartphones have given another option to the people: accessing the Internet through cellular networks, which has vastly improved in speed. Further, with the aid of tether functions and portable wireless routers, this connection can be enjoyed by devices other than smartphones, which includes things like the 3DS, wherein the current Pokémon main series games are played.

Yet here lies the rub: even with these options, sometimes not all is well when playing games on the 3DS over Internet connections in the country. Sure, those who have high-speed Internet are blessed to have good facilities for playing with others, unless these are plagued by problems. One provider had frequent problems when using the 3DS to access online services, and this by my experience forced me to use the tether function on my phone - and my phone's network - to play (in particular for the daily check-in of Shuffle). By others' experiences, a different cell network, which a good deal of people use on their phones and sometimes to play with, is very unreliable when dealing with 3DS connections. Yet another high-speed provider seemingly times out at random times, which could potentially cause problems if the time is wrong. So the experience can be either reliably mediocre or quite hit-or-miss, no matter which approach is chosen; this might become problematic for connection-critical games such as Pokémon.

I love playing the Pokémon games to a great extent, but what I don't love is having problems each time I wish to go to play the games over the Internet. And I'm not the only one; others have complained and attempted to seek solutions, but have found none, other than to have multiple approaches on hand. It's still a miracle that we're able to play Pokémon and other games over these iffy-or-lacking connections, and that is quite appreciable on the basis of interaction as well as passion.