in the next patch...

[IIIdallasIII]

take away double beat downs and please...MAKE HOST WEAPONS DO LESS DAMAGE THAN CLIENT!!!

[XtraTrstrL]

Wow, that sounds like not such a bad idea. If they can get a good average, that could actually work. Just down the Host Damage a certain %. Good idea man.

Gears 2 though, had better have dedicated servers. I'm not paying $50+ per year for this.

[GearsOfWarrer 3]

Next patch please have an option to toggle shaky cam off as well

[C. Freeman]

take away double beat downs and please...MAKE HOST WEAPONS DO LESS DAMAGE THAN CLIENT!!!

I don't host, but I think this is a terrible idea. First, what is wrong with the melee downing someone? If you don't like it, avoid it. Second, as has been pointed out a number of times, the host weapons are not more powerful and the host is not invincible.

[Tundon]

I think the melee in this game is funny for 2 reasons:

1) They're wearing all that armour yet a simple smack stuns them.
2) Most melees do more damage than the freaking bullets do!

[Cradle6]

Hosting doesn't make bullets more powerfull and the amount of bullet lag depends on the host. Some have a lot. Some don't have a lot.

[KrackerJax]

Gears 2 though, had better have dedicated servers. I'm not paying $50+ per year for this.


You will never see dedicated servers for high volume games like GoW (meaning number of players). Do you know how many servers it would take and how much Bandwidth would be needed? More than any game manufacturer is willing to spend. Not to mention maintenance costs.


And your right, your not paying $50+ per year for this......meaning the current online setup for GoW. Your paying $50 to Microsoft for your XBL membership which allows you to play hundreds of games online.....not just GoW.

Let me ask you a simple question......

Would you be willing to pay upwards of $150-$200 for a single game (lets say GoW 2) so that the game manufacturer could provide dedicated servers?

[SnipeHappy]

I don't host, but I think this is a terrible idea. First, what is wrong with the melee downing someone? If you don't like it, avoid it. Second, as has been pointed out a number of times, the host weapons are not more powerful and the host is not invincible.

the host doesn't have bullet lag, which makes them seem more powerful.

host shots > player's shots

and avoid it??? wow your smart, kinda hard when someone comes up to you and beats your to death and dance around you. and don't tell me you've never gotten frustrated when your shooting people but they still down you with the melee.

now im not complaining about host cause usually im further up on the in-game boards than they are :D, but they have ther emoments when they can be more powerful.

[Eternalnow]

You will never see dedicated servers for high volume games like GoW (meaning number of players). Do you know how many servers it would take and how much Bandwidth would be needed? More than any game manufacturer is willing to spend. Not to mention maintenance costs.


And your right, your not paying $50+ per year for this......meaning the current online setup for GoW. Your paying $50 to Microsoft for your XBL membership which allows you to play hundreds of games online.....not just GoW.

Let me ask you a simple question......

Would you be willing to pay upwards of $150-$200 for a single game (lets say GoW 2) so that the game manufacturer could provide dedicated servers?

Hmm...what about games like WoW that have millions of players playing it. Don't they have a dedicated server?
I host about as much as I don't (which is a lot) and I can honestly say that I do not like the bullet lag one bit. And its not just against the host, its against all players.

Why would I WANT to play in a laggy room with silly bullet lag when I can host and have a CLEAN connection, all silky smooth like?
Couple that with the x factor randomness and you have got strange situations!

Don't get me wrong, Gears, in my opinion, is one of the best games around.

[Tundon]

Hmm...what about games like WoW that have millions of players playing it. Don't they have a dedicated server?

They also have money coming in non-stop every month, what do you think the players are paying for?

[Davidius]

I'd like something to be patched up. Whenever both teams are equal (3v3) when a new player joins, COG will always get the new player even in cases where COG are leading by a huge margin.

[deafmute409]

You will never see dedicated servers for high volume games like GoW (meaning number of players). Do you know how many servers it would take and how much Bandwidth would be needed? More than any game manufacturer is willing to spend. Not to mention maintenance costs.


And your right, your not paying $50+ per year for this......meaning the current online setup for GoW. Your paying $50 to Microsoft for your XBL membership which allows you to play hundreds of games online.....not just GoW.

Let me ask you a simple question......

Would you be willing to pay upwards of $150-$200 for a single game (lets say GoW 2) so that the game manufacturer could provide dedicated servers?

What about COD 3? When that first came out you had millions of players, almost as much as GOW.

[redspex]

i think everyone is a little presumptuous in thinking that there even will be a NEXT patch...

[rxvcg3]

Im just curious. But has anyone noticed there bullets going through your opponent and hitting the wall behind them. one time i emptied all eight shots from my shotgun and my opponent didnt fall. which is odd cause i usually dont miss.

[VExterminateV]

Wow, that sounds like not such a bad idea. If they can get a good average, that could actually work. Just down the Host Damage a certain %. Good idea man.

Gears 2 though, had better have dedicated servers. I'm not paying $50+ per year for this.]
What? Is your mediocre job not paying you enough?

[S.IcE]

The host is not more powerful. He just doesnt have bullet lag. Which is a key factor on the shotgun. If you want to test for bullet lag, shoot the shot gun, and you will notice the bullets hit the wall about 1-2 seconds later. While the host's are instant.

[KrackerJax]

They also have money coming in non-stop every month, what do you think the players are paying for?


Exactly....If your willing to pay a monthly subsription fee....as well as your $50 dollar per year membership for XBL....I'm sure Epic would be happy to provide dedicated servers.

But Honestly.....most of you complained about 800 microsoft points for the last map pack.....do you really think anyone would pay MONTHLY just for dedicated servers?

I think not.

[Ouch Bandit]

You will never see dedicated servers for high volume games like GoW (meaning number of players). Do you know how many servers it would take and how much Bandwidth would be needed? More than any game manufacturer is willing to spend. Not to mention maintenance costs.


Would you be willing to pay upwards of $150-$200 for a single game (lets say GoW 2) so that the game manufacturer could provide dedicated servers?

I think a better answer is to do like Half-Life and other PC Games and release Free Software so that anyone can setup a Dedicated Server on a cheap PC or even an old Xbox.

[Eternalnow]

I don't know about anyone else, but I would gladly pay a year fee or monthly or whatever to have a more quality gaming experience.

Imagine if there was hardly any lag at all, or if everyone had a connection akin to host connection. Then you would see TRUE skill come out, not kills dependent on the reaction of lag.

No more "WTF, how did those 12 shots miss him? I shot him in the head!". No more sneaking up behind someone, shooting them point blank in the head with a shot gun on your screen, only to have them turn around and blast you to pieces.

Sure, the most obvious answer is "stop complaining, play and get some skill", but the truth of the matter is that there is a large percentage of Gears of War players that complain about these same issues.
The truth of the matter is that Gears takes a small amount of skill, and more reliance on the luck that you are going to connect your shot through the "lag matrix".

Don't get me wrong, I love this game to no end and I spend hours a day playing it.

[KrackerJax]

I don't know about anyone else, but I would gladly pay a year fee or monthly or whatever to have a more quality gaming experience.




I hate to break it to you....but you are in the vast minority of people who would shell out $$$ on top of their XBL membership to play ANY game.

It's a nice thought, there are advantages to dedicated servers......BUT....they are not without their own issues as well.

[KrackerJax]

Here is a thread from another forum (Bungie.net / Halo 3 Forum / Thread Creator: One One Seven). It has some useful information.

Enjoy!!


Networking Guide, Version 1.7
Last updated: 21st May 2007

Welcome to my guide on various things networking. The purpose of this topic is to explain why implementing dedicated servers for Halo 3 is not a viable solution, as well as explaining the problems with Halo 2's network model, why they occur, and what we know that has been done to fix these problems in Halo 3

Index

Before you make suggestions...
The Jargon
Misconceptions about Servers
No latency
No lag
Cost / Financing
No cheating
General Questions
What is the difference between lag and latency?
What causes lag?
What causes latency?
How does Halo 2's model work?
How does Halo 3's model work?
Why wouldn't servers work?
What causes host advantage?
What has been done to fix host advantage?
What has been done to fix standby?
Why can't I grenade jump off host in Halo 2?
Sources
Final Thoughts



Before You Make Suggestions

Ask yourself the following:

Do I understand basic networking?
Do I understand the concepts of lag, latency, host, client, and so on?
Do I understand Halo 2's network model?
Do I understand the problems in Halo 2's model, and why they occur?
Do I understand the reasoning for Halo 2's network model?

If you cannot answer yes to all these questions, you need to go out and do some research (including reading this thead). Without at least knowing these 5 things, you have no hope of suggesting anything sensible nor viable.


The Jargon

Latency - the delay between information being sent, and it arriving at it's destination.
Lag - Poor connectivity due to packet loss, in turn caused by many different factors.
Ping - A measure of latency.


Common Misconceptions About Servers

There's No Latency / No Host Advantage
Whilst no player will have a ping of zero to the server (unlike when hosting), latency will still exist nevertheless, and the xbox with the lowest ping to the server will have the biggest advantage. Depending on where the data centers are located, this advantage may well still be a severe one. Thus servers will not eliminate the problem, but merely reduce the severity.

There's No Lag
Servers can be more reliable, this is true, but this depends on a great many things. Servers can lag, disconnect, and crash, just like any other host. Packets can get lost en route. The data center could have problems. The ISP might have problems. There is still plenty of potential for lag to occur.

"Bungie/Microsoft have lots of money to pay for servers"
Yes and no. Halo 2 was the most played game on Xbox Live. The sheer amount of servers needed would be astronomical. The hardware alone would cost millions (and severely eat into Microsoft/Bungie's coffers). That's not including administration, upkeep, updates, backups, bandwidth, and so on.

Microsoft (which ultimately finances Bungie) does have a lot of cash, but it's home entertainment division is currently in the red to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. No company is going to want to spend money needlessly, especially when a division is in a lot of debt, and the performance gains from servers are pretty negligible and very expensive.

"It solves cheating"
I hate to break it to you, but it doesn't. A few networking based cheats may be harder or impossible, but it doesn't remove all cheating. Secondary Standby, Modding, Dummying, Superbouncing, can or could all be done off host, and new cheats that can be performed off host may well be discovered.


General Questions

What's the difference between Lag and Latency?

As explained above, latency is the delay between information being sent and arriving at it's destination. Lag is caused by poor connectivity due to packet loss, which in turn is caused by many factors.

What causes Lag?

To put it mildly, lag, or packet loss, is caused by many things. Network problems anywhere along the lines at both ends (in a consumer's home, with their phone line, ISP, internet backbones, DNS servers, etc). Excess traffic. Routing problems. A huge variety of things, and they can all affect dedicated servers too.

Increased latency does increase the chances of lag, as there is more potential for packet loss, but the two are not synonymous.

What causes Latency?

The biggest factor is the physical distance a packet has to travel. As the fastest speed information can travel is limited to the speed of light, clearly larger distances will result in larger degrees of latency. Other things can affect it too, such as how quickly your connection taps into the main internet backbone, or certain services on phone lines, though these tend to be less of a factor.

How Does Halo 2's Model Work?

Halo 2 uses a distributed networking model, where 1 xbox hosts the game, and all the other xboxes in that game are clients. This requires a little more bandwidth from the xbox hosting the game than if it were connected to a dedicated server.

The host authorises most aspects of the game (notably, the creation and destruction of objects, as well as damage inflicted), and is constantly overruling other players' versions of the game.

How Does Halo 3's Model Work?

Halo 3 uses a similar model to Halo 2, with modifications to allow limited client trust, and to prevent various network attacks.

Why wouldn't servers work?

There is very little to be gained by implementing servers, and it causes more problems than it solves. Cheating would still occur. The costs required for both hardware and bandwidth are also impractical, and with improved netcode, many of the advantages gained can be rendered more or less redundant.

What causes Host Advantage?

Host advantage is a direct result of latency, and how Halo 2's netcode handles it. Halo 2 uses a system where only the host decides what's going on, by processing all the information coming in, to try and make a consistent version of the world. In general, with small degrees of latency, it works reasonably well. The problem is when latency is severe, or the situation is extremely latency sensitive (such as shooting through a narrow gap), which leads to conflicting versions.

When you play the game, and take any action, that gets sent to the host, who then authorises or rejects it based on whether it was possible from the host's perspective, and factoring in error tolerances. For instance it's "I think I just hit that guy in the head", "You did; here's a kill".

So if something couldn't happen on the host's xbox, that information is rejected, even if it legitimately happened on your xbox. Now when the host shoots someone, they are exactly where they appear to be, and so the shot always counts. This is why hosts have an advantage; everything is what it appears to be, and things take effect instantly.

What has been done to help solve host advantage, lag, and latency issues with Halo 3?

I'm not going to pretend in any way that I know all the details about the way things are being improved for Halo 3. What I do know however is that Halo 3 has a lot more trust in clients than Halo 2. Providing the latency is below a critical value, any action should complete successfully. Client players fulfilling this criteria will have their shots hit, even if outside the auto aim range or at a range where target leading would be necessary.

In short, providing lag and latency are reasonable, your shots will hit accurately.

In addition, there are several options when searching for a matchmade game, that allows a party to have a degree of control over who they play with.

What has been done to fix standby and bridging attacks?

The problem here is much harder. Fixing just one host-based attack is useless, as cheaters will move to other means of cheating (such as artificially adding latency or packet loss). Unfortunately, for security reasons, the kind of connectivity/network tests the xbox/360 can do are limited; the only thing that can be looked at is the connectivity between the consoles.

In plain English, this means that the most effective means of solving the problem is detecting the hosts that cheat, and prevent them from hosting in the future. Halo 3 will also include fixes to prevent manipulation of the host from occurring.

Why can't I grenade jump off host in Halo 2?

Forces not being applied to client players is simply the result of a bug in Halo 2. This has been fixed for Halo 3.


Sources:

Many sources, including but not limited to:

Bungie presentations on Halo 2's networking
Correspondance with Chris Butcher -Technical Lead (many thanks Chris!)
My own networking knowledge
Bungie Weekly Updates
Research on Bandwidth and Hardware
Common Sense!
Playing the Halo 3 Beta.


Final Thoughts

Bungie are aware of the problems that occurred with Halo 2. Unfortunately there's a lot of behind the scenes stuff that governs how they can deal with it. A lot of smart people working on reducing and solving these problems (which are no small feat) and certainly they will be better prepared for cheating next time, as well coping with latency.

There you have it, a guide to all these concepts that are so frequently misunderstood. Hopefully you found it informative and useful. All feedback on the guide itself is very welcome.


[Edited on 05.21.2007 4:23 AM PDT]

[Eternalnow]

Ok, fine, no dedicated server.

What about CSHD?
I'm not too sure on this, but Shadowrun, I think, has CSHD and there is little to NO lag at all.
Shots actually register.

[C Murder 20]

how about take away double beat down and make AR for sniper weaken you to one shot away from being downed instead of downing

[Eternalnow]

How about do something about the laggy shotgun?