Terrible decision with Xbox Live

" " Yes, it’s a cert requirement. You may not choose who you get to play with in a ranked match and you may not keep the session together. The theory is this prevents collaborative cheating (I kill you ten times, now you me, etc.)...The players you’ll meet aren’t random. They are the best fit for your skill level."

To some, this sounds like something Microsoft' s reprisal against Halo 2 cheaters, but we' re talking about Gears of War (GoW) here, so let' s get it straight. Gears of War, Microsoft says, will be played according to the prerequisite that all ranked matches must be based on skill. This means you won' t be able to play tactically with any of your Xbox Live friends anymore.

Those who know better argue that Microsoft' s goal is to avoid friends boosting their own rank with each other and getting achievements and so on. The TrueSkill ranking system, which matches you with other players of roughly the same ability, supposedly assures a fair game. In fact, Microsoft has now required all 360 games to come with a ranked multiplayer that picks “random” people to play against (a bit of a confusion here, since it picks the people closest to your skill, therefore not truly random at best). Epic supported it since games without such a feature won' t ship.

It may be a dealbreaker for a lot of Xbox Live gamers, others may not give a whit, but others may simply find this upsetting. GoW is supposed to be a game that exploits teamwork, and players are always looking forward to band with their buddies to win. However, Microsoft also has a ground for implementing this rule, as it prevents cheating (level-boosting) in the game. Question is, do all players actually care about ranks? Sure, Microsoft' s move is all in the best interest of the players, and we certainly appreciate it. TrueSkill ranking system has been implemented in other games such as Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, so other players aren' t bothered."


I hope this doesn' t affect COD3

The bottom line is that, as long as there is SOME way to put a game together with friends, then who cares? Ranked games SHOULD be set up like this. As long as I can go and have an un-ranked game with people who I like to game with, then it shouldn' t really matter.

The question is, then, will more players start playing un-ranked matches than ranked ones?

This really pisses me off because I like to play competively with my clan. Its just not the same when you play a casual game vs a ranked game. Humiliating Noobs can be fun for a short while but soon enough you want to be able to Pwn some " skilled" players.

When a game doesn' t support unranked gamplay, I hope that by default this new fuckup won' t take effect. Who cares about the actual ranking? its about the game itself. I really don' t like how MS is crippling Live and my clan efforts.

The way that I understand it is you can' t play AGAINST people of your choosing but you can still play on the same team as your friends/clan.

This is no change form the way Halo 2 works.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

How would that work Loco? It can be done with one game but doing it with Live that applies to all games that seems impossible.

well, if I can still party up with my friends and kick people that way I don' t care...

but as for splittin the clan up and fighting eachother...well, custom games are good for those situations.

...Random Madness, Forward...

There is only one sin in the world of videogames: Cheating
Any attempt to stop it is a righteous attempt.

GRAW already employs this system for ranked games and has from day one. It' s fine with me.

You can still set up and play custom matches however you like so it' s not going to affect anybody but the guys cheating to get their ranks up.

can you show me the link to where you got that?

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

ORIGINAL: locopuyo

can you show me the link to where you got that?

I know you asked him, but HERE

okay so the only quote from microsoft is this,

Yes, it’s a cert requirement. You may not choose who you get to play with in a ranked match and you may not keep the session together. The theory is this prevents collaborative cheating (I kill you ten times, now you me, etc.)...The players you’ll meet aren’t random. They are the best fit for your skill level.

I' m kind of hoping all of these people ar missinterpreting it.
Because the way I interpret that is that is you can' t play free for all ranked games with your friends.
I guess I would have to see the cotext to really understand the quote.

If it means you can' t play on a team with your friends in ranked games it kind of sucks, but it really isn' t all that bad if it reduces the cheating. You can always play with your friends in unranked matches and set up games against people like that.

I just hope GoW has options to create dedicated servers. For on thing it would gaurentee lag free games and it would reduce cheating a lot.
You could actually have professional leagues online with dedicated servers.

I don' t see why they don' t have the option in every online game. It is a very easy thing to do and doesn' t hurt anything by just having the option for unranked games. In fact there are HUGE benefits to doing it.

They could even be really nice and instead of needing another copy of the game you could download the file to create a dedicated server off of the market place and run it like a game.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

They could even be really nice and instead of needing another copy of the game you could download the file to create a dedicated server off of the market place and run it like a game.

Kinda like how CS:S works.

That' d actually be really cool but i' m not sure whether Microsoft have the balls. They' re happy giving publishers the option to use their own servers, but end users?!

It wouldn' t work for every game though, but can you imagine having your own Huxley server, populated by 2 hundred people?! That' d be badass!

I just hope GoW has options to create dedicated servers. For on thing it would gaurentee lag free games

See, some people experience lag in 360 games and complain about it, but i haven' t. The only time i did was playing Tiz at DoA4, but it wasn' t his fault, some muppet joined with his dumbass 56k connection and f**ked the whole thing up.

When we' re playing GRAW, either Quez or i host and there' s zero lag, although when i' m downloading sh!t too on my PC i only use half of my 8MB connection for GRAW and there is sometimes some echoing in the lobby.



May main problem with MS at the moment is the total lack of proper mouse and keyboard support for games. It' s starting to piss me off, and when cross platform (with Vista) games roll around i don' t want to be playing specific cross platform modes designed around making it fair for both PC and console players. I want to be playing with a mouse!

May main problem with MS at the moment is the total lack of proper mouse and keyboard support for games. It' s starting to piss me off, and when cross platform (with Vista) games roll around i don' t want to be playing specific cross platform modes designed around making it fair for both PC and console players. I want to be playing with a mouse!

They said they' d never do that, i hope they will, but thats what they said

ORIGINAL: Vx Chemical

May main problem with MS at the moment is the total lack of proper mouse and keyboard support for games. It' s starting to piss me off, and when cross platform (with Vista) games roll around i don' t want to be playing specific cross platform modes designed around making it fair for both PC and console players. I want to be playing with a mouse!

They said they' d never do that, i hope they will, but thats what they said

[image]http://forum.teamxbox.com/image.php?u=76607&dateline=1158990880[/image]

There' s not really much need for M&K on consoles, especially since the FAD of FPS' s are usually really slow-paced games such as Halo' s, Graw, COD.. Not as if u need a to aim with a flick of a turn, pin point precision, IE quake III.

These late FPS require much less skill and have little pace, they are well suited to Joypads..

Abviously it would be great to have the option of M$K on 360..

Saying that, ive still yet to see any online console FPS to top the almost ' matrix-skill-level' Fraggin clashes i had online. With the M&K enabled, Dreamcast Quake III.

Man i miss those days

I cant belive i hear people talk abouit lagg,i have no whaatsoever lagg over XBL.

Even if you break 2 legs from a crab it still runs!
What you gotta do is find its weak spot and do massive damage at it.

See you guys don' t expereince what normal people call " lag" and I don' t experience it much either.

But 150 ms ping is unaceptable for very competetive players.
And when the host has a 0 ping and the other players have 150 ms it isn' t fair at all. In order to kill the host you have to be able to react 150 ms faster than him. That is a long friggn' time. Typical games of COD2 end up 150+ ms pings and there really isn' t noticable lag for the casual player. But I easily notice it. I can easily notice anything above 50 ms.
With dedicated servers you can have the server located in the middle of everyone so you all have equal pings.

You don' t seem to totally understand what I' m getting at. The only difference with a dedicated server is you create the game but you don' t get to play in it, you just have a screen showing people in the game and controls to start the game and whatnot. They had this in Return to Castle Wolfenstein and many other xbox live games. You still connect through xbox live and everything. It is just like joining a custom game. For massively multiplayer games you can' t do it because that requrires special hardware. You can only do it for smaller games where one player is the host anyways.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

You play on a 20" SDTV from the 1980' s and are on a dialup connection - you don' t notice anything, stfu kid.

http://onthexbox.com/news655.aspx

I should have gave the link before, sorry

I would have gave it sooner but I was away, yeah I do that sometimes...

The bottom line is that, as long as there is SOME way to put a game together with friends, then who cares? Ranked games SHOULD be set up like this. As long as I can go and have an un-ranked game with people who I like to game with, then it shouldn' t really matter.

The question is, then, will more players start playing un-ranked matches than ranked ones?

Yeah, so that way you get unreliable team mates that get on your neves and run around screaming racial things and then when you start losing they either kill themselves, kill their teammates, or quit the game.