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Microsoft Hopes for Matchmaking in all 360 Games
Posted by
Zonk
on Tuesday February 13, @11:01AM
from the get-out-there-meet-people-and-frag-them dept.
from the get-out-there-meet-people-and-frag-them dept.
1up reports on comments from Phil Spencer, the Head of Game Development for Microsoft Game Studios. Speaking with the news organization at DICE Spencer clarified that, ideally, all 360 games should have matchmaking services ala Halo 2. Why didn't Epic's Gears of War ship with the feature? "The Epic scenario and why we don't have that code in Gears of War is really more of a scheduling issue than a 'We weren't going to share the code with them, or help them add that feature to the game' because it's clearly a great feature in online shooting play. For us, it was just 'could we get this done on time in order to get the game to come out when it needed to come out.'" Spencer does say that they have no problems sharing Halo 2's matchmaking code, and that future first-party titles should definitely offer it. Gears may even offer it one day, via a patch to the game.
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Gears of War Review 214 comments
Reaching for perfection is a funny thing. By aiming for a high mark of quality, you ensure that your end product is as good as you can possibly make it. The reality is, of course, that perfection is unattainable. Every work of art, be it book, painting, movie, or videogame, is going to be flawed in some way; this is the reality of being human, after all. Gears of War, on that note, is far from perfect. The much-hyped and highly anticipated Xbox 360 shooter from Epic suffers from some truly terrible AI, a brief single-player campaign, and some unfortunately rough storytelling. Just the same, the flaws in this particular gem make the whole gleam that much brighter. Gears may just be the best game to be released on the 360 this year, and deserves the attention of anyone who enjoys holding a controller. Read on for my impressions of CliffyB's masterpiece, spots and all.
Microsoft Hopes for Matchmaking in all 360 Games
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
What is wrong with Game Lobbies?
(Score:2)(http://mp3bat.com/)
For example, all DS games have no lobby and if you want to meet someone in specific you have to use the friend codes. Otherwise... You use the match making program and find some random person who you can't communicate with.
Re:What is wrong with Game Lobbies?
(Score:4, Funny)(http://elmuerte.com/)
The next target for Microsoft's embrace-and-extend strategy
Re:What is wrong with Game Lobbies?
(Score:5, Interesting)(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Friday January 19, @05:00PM)
The idea is to stop doing things the way they've always been done just because they've been done that way. The current server list method is a decade old, and the process of getting into a game of Gears of War is effectively no different than getting into a game of Quake.
It's about focusing on what's key to the experience, and being willing to change things. That's what Halo 2 matchmaking did - it's no longer about wading through a list of servers to find a game that you want to join, only to find that they've already started, or that the host is kicking people who aren't their friends, or that the game settings have changed. It's about saying "I want to play this type of game, with this group of friends", and letting the console do the work to find other people who want to play the same way, who have similar skill levels, and then letting the game choose host based on who has the best connection.
With Halo 2, I could load up the game, go into the Rumble Pit playlist, hit start, and be assured that within a couple minutes I was playing a free-for-all game, with enough people, people that would challenge but not horribly slaughter me, with a very slim chance of any network issues. There's no old-style server browser and lobby system that can guarantee that.
The ideal console matchmaking system duplicates that experience. The ability to play with friends as a team, against people of similar skill levels, and letting the console take care of the stuff that the players shouldn't have to worry about so players can get into games as quickly as possible and spent their time playing.
It doesn't mean completely eliminating game lobbies, it just means reworking them to fit this type of setup. Halo had brief pre-game lobbies, post-game lobbies where everyone can chat, and between games you and your friends can sit in a party lobby and chat all you want.
Meh
(Score:2)Besides, there's no amount of automated matchmaking that will help you automatically filter out insufferable asses or hyperactive children. You're better off just playing enough until you know enough good players.
Re:Meh
(Score:4, Insightful)(http://thoughthead.com/)
"Match Making" in addition to matching you in skill also filters out anyone you've previously marked as someone you'd like to avoid. Without match making, I have to continually re-encounter those "insufferable asses" or "hyperactive children" that I've already found and identified as undesirable. And while it's impossible to filter them all out, I've found that there are a limited number of them that game the same time as me, play the same games and game modes, and are of similar skill. Once you manage to get 20-30 people on that list it becomes a rare occurrence that you encounter them... of course that all goes out the window completely if the system isn't doing the match making for you.
As for making your own matches "working just fine"... sure, if you're playing unranked. I have a group of friends, we want to be on the same team and play against another group that's similar in skill. You know... like a professional clan. There is NO easy way to do that, not even close. Basically you have to message everyone on your team to search for some specific game criteria then hope the pick the right room out of the list (and hope it's not full up by the time they get there) then if by some miracle they do manage to find the room there's a high probability that you wont all be on the same team. That is not even close to acceptable for a AAA, first party, killer app that supposedly exemplifies Xbox Live's superiority. Sorry but in a straight up ease of use and requisite feature comparison Resistance blows GoW out of the water (and I loathe Sony). Not to mention that "match making" isn't some elusive code that Bungie has in a vault somewhere, it's built right into the friggin XDK, and while it wasn't there when Halo 2 was made, it's been there LONG before GoW arrived.
The features missing from GoW aren't just annoying, it's embarrassing.
Obviously
(Score:3, Interesting)Matchmaking
(Score:2)(Last Journal: Sunday October 22, @10:27PM)
Very telling quote
(Score:4, Funny)(http://evil.google.com/)
Ah, so it wasn't about releasing the game with the features they thought it should have. It was about getting it out for sale by the date the marketing people had set.
What good is matchmaking?
(Score:2)(http://www.aquadan.com/ | Last Journal: Monday May 15, @09:21PM)
Awww...
(Score:5, Funny)find me a find... catch me a catch...
Really?
(Score:2)I Hate The Smell of Fanboy in the Morning
(Score:2)Have the suddenly patched it into glorious perfection?
Re:Sony Teaching Microsoft How To Do Onlight Right
(Score:2)Re:Sony Teaching Microsoft How To Do Onlight Right
(Score:3, Insightful)(http://babelfish.alt...%2F%2Fslashdot.jp%2F)
It's only dumb if it's unsuccessful.
Re:In other news
(Score:2)(http://slashdot.org/)
With good reason, cus you're lying.
Re:Microsoft Extending monopoly to gaming
(Score:2)(http://www.positech.co.uk/)
I worked in the retail industry for 2 years on an xbox launch title, similar to speedball, financed by microsoft. After 2 years they canned it, and said "all games should have a targeting cursor, you know...like halo." I'm pretty certain if will wright was making sim city for microsoft they would can it for 'not being enough like halo'.
Fuck halo.
It's a good game, but it is not the ONLY flipping game.
If Microsoft want to rebadge their games machine "the Halo 360" then go for it, just don't kid anyone that they are supporting innovative and experimental new games, when they clearly just want lots of identikit halo clones.
Has it ever occurred to someone at microsoft that supporting a controller that the game isnt designed for might negatively impact the game design? first that, now a dictat about multiplayer interfaces. What next? an approved list of character names? maybe ever game will have to have voice-overs in the same clichéd butch style? maybe all games will have to use bump mapping? or HDR lighting?
never let marketing droids influence game design.