You see, as I write this I'm attempting to find a ranked online match in PGR4, and I can tell you that it is an obscenely long process at times. Just now I was able to find a quick match after a few minutes of patience, but honestly, I shouldn't have to be waiting a few minutes for every game I want to join. If each one was a championship length series of races, then yes, waiting a few minutes for something that might take 30-minutes to an hour might be worth it. But for a few laps around one track and then ending it, a few minutes is a lot of overhead.
I've had similar problems in finding ranked matches for Gears Of War, where a friend of mine usually hosts a game, and I try to join it. We normally make Annex-type games (which are kind of rare, so it's easier to find his game) but 100% of the time it doesn't appear in the list. That's right, I've never participated in a ranked match with one of my own friends. The whole thing is impeded by 1) not allowing invites in ranked matches of Gears Of War (I'm not sure what other games follow suit) and 2) what looks like a poor implementation of the matchmaking or server set-up system.
There are two words that can solve the number one problem or having trouble finding games, or people hosting games without a decent connection, or even people hosting games for the sake of host advantage.
Dedicated Servers.
I can not, for the life of me, tell you why LIVE (or 360 games in general) allow for dedicated servers. From the all-powerful World Of Warcraft, to the humble days of StarCraft, Diablo, and the battle.net service. Why, now, is it okay for the user to be their own host? Yes some of us have good connections, but there are people who won't. The only games I ever play in that aren't destroyed by latency are ones hosted by my friend Robio on his adsl2+ with 1Mbit upload, or games hosted by me. Even ping indicators are broken in most games. Having started playing Vegas2, I was greeted into many games with green three-bar'd ping indications, but suffered what felt like pings in excess of 300-500ms -maybe more. Whereas if I want to play a game of TF2, I can hop on Steam and have the choice of hosting my own server, or joining a dedicated server.
Woe is me.
And the next problem is determining who on Earth (literally) is playing what game at any given time. Maybe if I threw a friend invite to every second person I played a game with I wouldn't have any trouble finding someone to play with, but I don't want to do that. Why is it that I can read statistics telling me what the top ten games played on Xbox LIVE are, but I can't go anywhere to see those numbers for myself (if there is such a place, tell me, I want to see it). As a member of MyGamerCard.net, I can see a list that's updated every 5 minutes of who is playing what. This is list is barely a few pages long, and not indicative of the entirety of LIVE players. CoD4 does it with it's list of game-types, letting you know how many players are actually playing CoD4 online games, and how many are playing in the currently highlighted game mode.
Woe is me.
And the next problem is determining who on Earth (literally) is playing what game at any given time. Maybe if I threw a friend invite to every second person I played a game with I wouldn't have any trouble finding someone to play with, but I don't want to do that. Why is it that I can read statistics telling me what the top ten games played on Xbox LIVE are, but I can't go anywhere to see those numbers for myself (if there is such a place, tell me, I want to see it). As a member of MyGamerCard.net, I can see a list that's updated every 5 minutes of who is playing what. This is list is barely a few pages long, and not indicative of the entirety of LIVE players. CoD4 does it with it's list of game-types, letting you know how many players are actually playing CoD4 online games, and how many are playing in the currently highlighted game mode.
Where is this feature for the rest of Xbox LIVE?
Honestly, if I could hop onto LIVE, check out who is playing what, and decide on what I want to play. I might have an hour to play some games, and while I've been writing this entry, PGR4 has been ticking away trying to find me a match. It has probably been 15 or so minutes now if not more, and still no game has been found. So I don't want to spend 25-50% of my game time looking for a match to get into. And when I do get into a game, I want it to be reliable. With dedicated servers, quitting or disconnecting could just be counted as a loss against that player, so that any winning streaks get broken so you can't just hax your way to getting achievements or good ratios. That and you won't get kicked by a bad host.
I know that I praise LIVE for how good it is, however it still has its flaws. They seem to be minor at first, but then they start to add up after a while.
In short: LIVE is good. Great when compared to PSN and Nintendo WFC. The best of the 3, in fact. However that isn't saying much, because Nintendo WFC is fairly crap, and PSN is a less feature packed LIVE. So although it is number one, it didn't have to work hard to get there. I might check later to see if there is some kind of feature suggestion thing, or something similar, so that I can attempt to suggest these things in the same way that I suggested ideas to YouTube.
I'm done for tonight.
I know that I praise LIVE for how good it is, however it still has its flaws. They seem to be minor at first, but then they start to add up after a while.
In short: LIVE is good. Great when compared to PSN and Nintendo WFC. The best of the 3, in fact. However that isn't saying much, because Nintendo WFC is fairly crap, and PSN is a less feature packed LIVE. So although it is number one, it didn't have to work hard to get there. I might check later to see if there is some kind of feature suggestion thing, or something similar, so that I can attempt to suggest these things in the same way that I suggested ideas to YouTube.
I'm done for tonight.
1 comment:
There are a few issues here.
1. TruSkill (or however it is spelt). All Microsoft published games, and some other developers use TruSkill to determine who they should pair you with online. This is usually why you arent given much choice, its quite crap really, but in the end it helps us out by giving us a game where we have a chance (I am very thankful for it in halo)
2. Our Timezone. Unfortunately we both live in Australia. heh. And that also presents another problem i will get to later. Usually Xbox Live will pair us with nearby people to reduce lag, that coupled with TruSkill can reduce the people we get matched with. Halo 3 has a particularly powerful tool to change how you are matched, as in 'care less about network latency' 'care less about TruSkill' type business.
3. Xbox Live shortlists people that have a good connection, and uses this to basically deligate the host for the game. Microsoft has talked before I think about dedicated servers and there are more issues here to.
a) It costs alot of money to setup for them
b) It wont reduce lag in some countries
If Microsoft were to setup dedicated servers for xbox live, they would have to do so in every country. Take a look at the TF2 server browser, it is powerful, but anything outside of NZ and its too laggy for an FPS. 500ms is fine for something like WOW, but not for Halo and COD.
The issues you bring up are valid, because you and I are PC gamers and expect things like this.
One more thing, if Microsoft were to go the way like sony and allow developers to have the dedicated servers... hahaha in 3 years time the developers would pull the plug on them just so they could make you buy the sequels.
(If you dont know already, one of the major issues EA had with xbox live was that Microsoft controlled it, so Microsoft reached an agreement with EA. ALL EA games use the EA game servers, and to that end support for older sport titles have been removed by EA and you dont have a say in that at all)
Just download or buy an EA game and check out how it plays, I can assure you its laggier and crappier than xbox live. not to mention the fact in some cases you have to create a second sign in to use the EA servers.
Well there is my rant. Good Day to you sir!
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