News IW responds to Modern Warfare 2 server snafu

[hardski]

I shall pirate it for both 360 and PC, both just as easy, even more so on 360.
Single player will do, as its free.
My kids will enjoy it with a joypad and ill play it properly with mouse and keyboard!
Simples
Why do people thinks consoles are hard to pirate?

[bradders2125]

I don't think its the fact people think its hard as such. I feel it seems more illegal if you pirate console games than pc games.

[Rocket_Knight64]

They wont overturn this, ever. Not when this guys in charge:

http://www.geeks.co.uk/7282-activisi...heap-games-you

Wonder why Starcraft 2 is now £90 with no LAN and a 'map store'?

[Mentai]

One thing that concerns me is this sudden requirement for people to be equal in skill level to have a good game. Absolute rubbish.

The first PC game I ever took online was UT2k3 (that was what I was playing in my transition from dial up to broadband). What a learning curve! That game was so fast paced and had so many tricks to it. The community here was so small that I was playing in a ctf server with players that had actually competed in WCG for UT and 50yo women using a tracking ball instead of a mouse. And it was great.

The team based gameplay meant that there was always a chance the pro player would be distracted and I would finish him off (satisfying as hell) and the community was usually mature enough to balance teams equally with good and bad players. This meant that the bad players always had someone on an equal level to play against, yet could learn a significant amount off their superior team mates.

That 16 player server was full from the moment I got home from school to the moment I went to bed, until the day ut2k4 came out, and everyone knew each other.

Matchmaking will always be a laughable load of crap compared to that experience, and that's not even bringing up the horrors of P2P lag.

[knuck]

Originally Posted by Rocket_Knight64

They wont overturn this, ever. Not when this guys in charge:

http://www.geeks.co.uk/7282-activisi...heap-games-you

Wonder why Starcraft 2 is now £90 with no LAN and a 'map store'?

there is no way this will last. This company will tank with this kind of attitude

Originally Posted by Mentai

One thing that concerns me is this sudden requirement for people to be equal in skill level to have a good game. Absolute rubbish.

The first PC game I ever took online was UT2k3 (that was what I was playing in my transition from dial up to broadband). What a learning curve! That game was so fast paced and had so many tricks to it. The community here was so small that I was playing in a ctf server with players that had actually competed in WCG for UT and 50yo women using a tracking ball instead of a mouse. And it was great.

The team based gameplay meant that there was always a chance the pro player would be distracted and I would finish him off (satisfying as hell) and the community was usually mature enough to balance teams equally with good and bad players. This meant that the bad players always had someone on an equal level to play against, yet could learn a significant amount off their superior team mates.

That 16 player server was full from the moment I got home from school to the moment I went to bed, until the day ut2k4 came out, and everyone knew each other.

Matchmaking will always be a laughable load of crap compared to that experience, and that's not even bringing up the horrors of P2P lag.

these days were the best of PC gaming

[AltruiSisu]

Originally Posted by Hustler

Because they want more money....its not complicated.

and by how much, exactly, is valve kicking the rest of their asses in the monetary department?

(ya, i'll give you the fact that steam is helping quite a bit, but still...)

[Mentai]

Originally Posted by Ghys

these days were the best of PC gaming

Well not necessarily. Any multiplayer game can foster a small community just like this (although I haven't yet enjoyed a game as much as UT) as long as they have DEDICATED SERVERS. I still live in hope that I'll find another great game/community, it just won't be MW2.

[docodine]

How about the equivalent to Diablo II's official B.Net servers and the option for open play? Could work?

[b5k]

Originally Posted by Er-El

I recommend everyone to read Rob Bowling's blog on this.

Why bother?

Here's the fundamental problem:-
Most computers don't make very good servers and will never even be remotely as good at it as a dedicated. This is because A) It's full of viruses B) You're running the CoD4MW client + All your background **** C) You've got a crap connection and D) By offloading the host process onto the clients machine, you've practically countered all the "hacking" and "cheating" you've prevented by using VAC (VAC is better than PB tbh, so this is good).

As far as I'm aware this is how it'll work:
You join lobby/matchmake.
Player A is host.
All the other 7 players, B,C,D,E,F,G and H, are connected to him.
Player A is running the host process.

Some downsides to this:
Player A is on a home grade UK connection. 8mbit. He probably has a maximum upload speed of 50kbps, and that might be pushing it. I'm on 8mbit and I only get around 25kbps at full upload and with that going I can't do ANYTHING else on the internet.

Player A is running the host process meaning he has access and control over the "server" you guys are playing on. This means he can use a technique called "lagswitching" (hooking the orange cable of cat5 upto a lightswitch to enable/disable the connection) to cause you to freeze for maybe 3 or 4 seconds whilst he blows your brains out, then can resume. Or he can just generally use it to annoy you by lagging all over the place.

Player A is running the host process meaning he's directly connected to it. This means this player has an inate advantage over every other player. He has 0 ping. Lush, eh?

Lets say Player A leaves, In Cod4 on Playstation, you'd get dumped out the game. Anyone connected to him would just drop. Sucks. Hopefully MW2 will offload the host process onto another player, meaning the server stays up.

Another note is how demanding it is to run the game AND the server process at once. Some CPUs, older dual cores mainly, may have issues with running both of these side by side which could lead to glitches in playing, unstable play, etc, etc.

What if the player has crap hardware or a hardware fault? If their memory throws back an incorrect set of whatevers for the host process...boom goes your dynamite.

The only way I can think that this would work and allow large battles as before (You wont be able to have like 8v8. I'd imagine 5v5 would be a push on the above system) is to have some sort of "shared" host process that runs on every client who connects to the server. The problem with this is that then every client has access to some part of the data controlling the server. This would make it feasible to do stupid things like JUST CRASH THE SERVER. Why? Why not! Griefers will do anything for a laugh.

And on the note of cheaters....I couldn't afford MW1 when it came out so I staved off playing it. With MW2 announced I borrowed my friends copy but had to crack it and play on cracked server. Playing daily for a month now, I've not seen a single cheater on any CRACKED server I've played on. If there aren't that many cheaters on CRACKED servers...Surely it can't be that bad on legal ones?!

IW should realise that a DEDICATED server is better for delivering a stable customer experience because it's DEDICATED TO A SINGLE TASK. The only way this matchmaking system will work is if dedicated servers are included. L4D runs a similar system. You can still have dedicated servers for private use, but there's also the public lobby system. All they have to do is have "Ranked" and "Unranked" servers and any lobby games get automatically put onto "Ranked" servers which conform to a strict ruleset defined by the code.

But the game is gold, no chance of additions like this before release. We're going to have to wait for a patch I guess.

[Bazz]

CoD = Good
CoD-UO = Great (even with lag)
CoD2 = Pile of crap
CoD-MW = Decent enjoyable game
CoD-WaW = See CoD2
MW2 = Not even gonna try

Slightly unimpressed with what I have been hearing and reading with regards to this.
I was hoping for a nice suprise, but with all the lack of this and that (no demo etc.) I am no longer interested in the CoD series.
I will continue to play on CoD-MW servers, only because with the mods and established community, there is nothing that can beat it for fun.
MW2 is not on my wants list, another developer needs to step in, and create a game for the community, something which MW2 isn't.

I pass......................next!

[leexgx]

IW.net is dedicated host system, thats how it reads, not p2p based from what it reads

not likely going to buy it (may do thought) the new battlefield is what i want, i want my old game back (hate dice for not fixing the server crashing bug for 6-8 months 1 month after 2142 came out as they Had to fix the bug as it used BF2 code that the beta had the same server crash )

[stonedsurd]

Originally Posted by johnnyx

http://www.game-monitor.com/search.p...r&public=&pg=1

Amazing!

I bet IW is thinking "Why did we do this?!"

Originally Posted by Dragunover

"lol, I find it amusing how much people can flip. Possibly the most anticipated game of the year suddenly is hated upon...

We can't judge or hate upon a new formula before we've really tested it"

Sure, like this system hasn't been used before?
I've experienced many good quality p2p games such as war rock, combat arms, halo 2, and cross fire.
For your information, those games are ****ing awful just because of how much lag there is. If one player lags at all, you lag, and everyone lags. P2P is for South Korea and Japan, not Americans on Comcast and Cox, Europeans on Virgin and Orange.
Good luck with that bullshit.

Indeed. Dedicated > matchmaking, any damn day of the week.

[AshT]

Assuming IW's lobby system will compare to Valves system in L4D (ie, consolised, no real choice of servers based on numerical ping, location, players in the server) - Then I don't see how a community will build up. I've played L4D since its release and not added one player to my friends list because the game doesn't make me believe anyone is worth adding. It's got to the point where I won't play unless it's with my clan mates because I hate joining servers to find its full of yanks or russians - that's not me saying I hate yanks or russians, it's jus that when they start warping all over the map or running into a wall for 2 minutes straight, the game is no longer fun. Not forgetting the skill aspect ... little Johnny being raped by the infected 24/7 and needing constant protection makes life so friggin tedious.

CSS on the other hand works as it should and enables me to pick and choose servers that I want to revisit. Add players to my list, build friendships, clans, mixes, socialise ...

Forget these consolised lobby systems and server selecting, they are for the very casual gamer who doesn't take gaming as seriously as PC gamers always have.

On a side note, I love my PS3 for what it is, a pick-up-and-put-down-quick-fix-toy with no social aspects what-so-ever.

It's all about cost saving with the publishers. I'm hopeful that the devs don't really think these changes in PC gaming are a good idea. If they do then it's obvious they have lost their direction and need to rethink these strategies. If we wanted our PC games to play like console games then we'd have sold the PC and be sitting in front of our TV's annoying our girlfriends/fiances/wives screaming down useless USB headsets at n00b children griefing.

[frontline]

Lets say Player A leaves, In Cod4 on Playstation, you'd get dumped out the game. Anyone connected to him would just drop. Sucks. Hopefully MW2 will offload the host process onto another player, meaning the server stays up

If you check out the multiplayer trailer on play.com, near the end there is an indication of what probably happens when the host drops, the game pauses for a few seconds whilst a new host is allocated

http://www.play.com/Games/PC/4-/1010...2/Product.html

Hilarious

[Comet]

Originally Posted by cjoyce1980

OMG.... so what, it will play like the 360/PS3 version which is better if you want to play a fair match without cheating and hacks, but as long as mod support is there, i cant see there being a problem.

fair matches against similiar skill level of players, so if you haven't had time to play the game every waking moment like some, you still have a good chance of enjoying a fair game.

to many pc fanboys stuck in the past if you ask me. if you don't like it then don't play it.

Err ..that's the thing. It's not just about community dedicated server support. Modding is gone. There won't be a mod SDK thus no servers with any mods other than the ones IW runs.

[Jokkocze]

What's next? They'll release that they've skipped the support for keyboards and mice? "Playing with gamepads is better, the fans say so".

This is all a load of crap. They're ruining the game and then they charge more for it? I really cant see the logic there. All PC-users should just boycott IW and go spend their hard earned money on something else than their crappy games. Sure, SP might be good, but I ain't paying full price for a 5 hour long game with no MP. My money goes to Borderlands, just like several others have already said.
Loads of people are skipping their preorders, I sincerely hope that IW can understand why, and stops doing crap like this. I also hope that other devs see what IW's doing wrong, and avoid doing it themselves.

Btw, this has to be the longest comment-thread I've seen here on BT in years. Good going guys!

[shanky887614]

how long do you think it will take to patch the game to use your own servers?
i dont think it will be very long

[tejas]

Originally Posted by Hustler

Not surprising that an American company finds a new way to screw consumers is it though...

All because they want 2 Ferraris, 2 houses etc...etc...etc....just pure greed.

screw the lot of them.

If they climb down and reinstate servers i will gladly reinstate my pre order, if not i will happily turn to certain sites on release day without a moments guilt or hesitation.

Once the single player campaign is done and dusted i will discard it......with no multiplayer component worth a damn if bought legitimately, im not missing out on anything.


Take note IW, this is what happens when greed runs your company...

I'd rather deal with positive American people and or companies than skint jealous negative moaning Brits like you any day of the week. In case you did not realise, games are made to make money. Not to make you happy. I for one will support superior US products over British crap every time.

I am not buying MW2 as frankly it is uninteresting. Borderlands on the other hand....

[smc8788]

Originally Posted by shanky887614

how long do you think it will take to patch the game to use your own servers?
i dont think it will be very long

Think again. If it does ever come, it almost certainly won't be until after any DLC content has been released and they have made their money from that.

Originally Posted by tejas

In case you did not realise, games are made to make money. Not to make you happy.

Erm, in case you didn't realise, you can't acheive the former without the latter. Games that don't make you happy invariably don't sell well.

And aside from the fact you seem to have missed all the excellent British game development studios, this isn't a superior American product at all, this is an inferior one ruined by the greed of corporate executives.

[bradders2125]

Originally Posted by tejas

I for one will support superior US products over British crap every time.

If America made a superior product, I would support that over other crap everytime, no matter where its from. As most people want the better product instead of a piece of crap.