Modern Warfare 2, Prestige edition, -or- hey, blow your wad on this!

[Pennilenko]

Competitive FPS games work without dedicated servers?

No, and thats the fucking point. Fuck IW with a rusty fucking lead pipe.

[jth]

Until we know more what Rage's gameplay is like in multiplayer, it's irrelevant what Id is planning on doing with it. Many games work fine without strictly dedicated servers, even on PC.

Yes, but the "dedicated servers are a thing of the past" stand is what worries me somewhat. Not that I've seriously played any shooter as multiplayer competitively after Quake (1) and Unreal Tournament (1) , but anyway.

[Amaron]

I've been reading up on this today and it's looking to be some epic fail train.

1) Apparently 9vs9 is restricted to something called ground wars mode.  All other modes are 6vs6 max  .
2) NAT is apparently screwing up hosting (wtf is this the 2002?).   Meaning a lot of potential good hosts can't even host.
3) Lag is rampant as expected.  The only speculation I could find on their "green bars" though suggested that even the best rating shown in game is like 100ms or less.  So there probably isn't even a way to see if your ping is good.

[schild]

What the hell is 6v6 Call of Duty? That's not even a little bit like what Call of Duty should be. I'd like to know, seriously, what designer thought this was a good idea.

[Tarami]

Competitive FPS games work without dedicated servers?

I didn't say that, although I agree that dedicated servers are a thing of the past. It's just that IW decided on the worst imaginable alternative (bar no multiplayer at all) and promoted it as an improvement. Dedicated servers have their place, but essentially they shouldn't be the go-to solution for multiplayer games anymore. What Quake Live, for example, is doing is working and it's working well. That's way beyond what IW is doing with MW2, however.

I'm not pro scrapping dedicated servers, they should be an alternative, they just shouldn't be the -main- alternative for playing online. For one, dedicated servers often aren't available day 1; the administrators don't get the software any earlier than the players, which would be needed. Secondly, patching of dedicated servers can slip for days or even weeks in extreme cases. Tertiary... well, piracy. It's inpractical from our perspective, but it's hard to argue against. Dedicated servers are great for tournament play and PCWs, but they aren't terribly reliable or useful otherwise. PCWs can be solved other ways, it just takes some effort from the developer.

My point is, that publishers and developers are taking on more responsibility for hosting the multiplayers servers is in concept a good thing (because it IS their job in the end), it's just that IW has completely fucked up in their effort to do so in nearly every way. Evidently they're completely clueless asto how multiplayer FPS'es work on PC and pulled core functionality without offering any kind of meaningful replacement. A less clueless developer could have done something useful and released dedicated servers some weeks/months down the line.

[caladein]

What the hell is 6v6 Call of Duty? That's not even a little bit like what Call of Duty should be. I'd like to know, seriously, what designer thought this was a good idea.

Oddly enough, that's big enough for what leagues run (3v3/5v5 mostly) but 100ms+ pings with host advantage would be a joke.

[schild]

What the hell is 6v6 Call of Duty? That's not even a little bit like what Call of Duty should be. I'd like to know, seriously, what designer thought this was a good idea.

Oddly enough, that's big enough for what leagues run (3v3/5v5 mostly) but 100ms+ pings with host advantage would be a joke.

We've been down this road, leagues are for jackoffs. I already knew that, but it's not at all what CoD should be. They AND Activision are doing it wrong. And I still want to know what designer came up with this shit, or at least greenlit it.

[tgr]

We've been down this road, leagues are for jackoffs. I already knew that, but it's not at all what CoD should be. They AND Activision are doing it wrong. And I still want to know what designer came up with this shit, or at least greenlit it.

Don't knock leagues where 40+ geeks are stowed into a single room, told to join a CoD server and just slugging it out... after consuming "a bit" of booze.

It's absolutely hilarious.

[Amaron]

What the hell is 6v6 Call of Duty? That's not even a little bit like what Call of Duty should be. I'd like to know, seriously, what designer thought this was a good idea.

I actually read that some of the 6v6 maps feel a bit too big.  They probably planned more and just couldn't have it because of lag.   I did read in that Dev chat that they thought CoD4 wasn't balanced for 32 player servers though either  .   I guess all along they felt 16 player servers were large or some shit.

[Surlyboi]

Until we know more what Rage's gameplay is like in multiplayer, it's irrelevant what Id is planning on doing with it. Many games work fine without strictly dedicated servers, even on PC.

Edit: gramah.

Well, knowing ID is pretty much a one-trick-pony. If there's multi, there will be little doubt as to what the gameplay will be like.

[Tarami]

Maybe. Rage is not all corridor shooter though. We'll see.

[Nonentity]

One of the default, newbie level 1 loadouts, is a FAMAS with iron sights, and then a fucking SPAS12 with a silencer. A silencer on a shotgun? Really?

[Trippy]

Less noise to attract zombies.

[Azazel]

I still intend to play through the SP campaign.

All 7 hours of it? 

I'm wondering where games went from providing 40+ hours of entertainment, to less than 10, and this was considered fine.

Note the emphasis is on play and not buy?
 

[tgr]

Note the emphasis is on play and not buy?
 

Of course I did, I just didn't make a big deal out of it. I was just poking fun at how ridiculously short the SP campaign sounds like it'll be.

5-7 hours of SP, MP which sucks, and it's more expensive than most games released today. I'm still wondering when that became okay and accepted, particularly the length of gameplay. I seem to remember that 20-30 hours was the accepted minimum from most games not even 5 years ago. Are console gamers really that ADHD, or are they just ripping off everyone?

[01101010]

and then a fucking SPAS12 with a silencer. A silencer on a shotgun? Really?

Well it did work for Anton.

[ahoythematey]

Note the emphasis is on play and not buy?
 

Of course I did, I just didn't make a big deal out of it. I was just poking fun at how ridiculously short the SP campaign sounds like it'll be.

5-7 hours of SP, MP which sucks, and it's more expensive than most games released today. I'm still wondering when that became okay and accepted, particularly the length of gameplay. I seem to remember that 20-30 hours was the accepted minimum from most games not even 5 years ago. Are console gamers really that ADHD, or are they just ripping off everyone?

Single-player length has never been a huge issue for me, as long as the price is right and the experience is enjoyable without a lot of bullshit.  Portal is the oft-mentioned example, but one I'm thinking of right now actually is Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force.  The single-player was decent star trek-flavored FPS for the time, and the unmodified multiplayer was, in my opinion, even better than Quake3:Arena(this was before the Team Arena xpac).  I was able to get all that for $40, brand new day-1, and not once have I looked back on it with a lesser opinion.  Imagine how much better of a generic FPS Halo 1 would have been if they didn't decide to mirror the levels to double the game length.  Imagine Diablo 2 without Act3.

Not that I am in any way defending MW2, mind you, since...well, you know.

[Azazel]

I was just poking fun at how ridiculously short the SP campaign sounds like it'll be.

5-7 hours of SP, MP which sucks, and it's more expensive than most games released today. I'm still wondering when that became okay and accepted, particularly the length of gameplay. I seem to remember that 20-30 hours was the accepted minimum from most games not even 5 years ago. Are console gamers really that ADHD, or are they just ripping off everyone?

It depends to an extent on how good the SP for a game is, and also the type of game. I often play games for an hour or less in a sitting. Most of the time, really. If something is a 10-hour experience for the person who sits down and just grinds it to finish it, it might take me, dunno? 14 hours taking my time to see it all properly, and then that 14 hours might be an hour a day for 2 weeks.

A game has to be really fucking good or deep/broad in content to keep it going for a lot longer and keep it interesting. Like that Wolverine movie game. It's decent fun, and I'm probably halfway(??) through it. If It turned out I was 1/10th of the way through I would probably not ever finish it unless I forced myself to grind it, because you can have games which are a bit of fun but just go on for too long and the repetitiveness kicks in bigtime until you wish it would just finish already (Far Cry 2, Assassins Creed). OTOH, I've put something like 90 hours into Saints Row 2, and am on my second playthrough (co-op the whole way this time).

Basically, I'd rather have 10 great hours than 20 bland hours. I'd also rather have 10 great hours then the game is over than 10 great with 10 more bland. Ever Play Doom 3? That game goes for about a thousand hours. Or it felt like it. The first could were fun, and then it just dragged on forever. CoD4 SP was short, and not a great game (more like an amusement ride on rails) but it was a hell of a lot better than D3.

Of course, 20 great hours is a better solution, but we can't always have that...

[LK]

I got home at midnight and finished the campaign in one sitting at 6 am. I'm thankful it was as long as it was. The game was a ride from start to finish and I'm off to multiplayer.

Dedicated servers not a huge deal for me since I'm on console. Right now I'm having a helluva lot of fun; their target audience, I guess.

Maps will take some getting used to... there is a lot of ambush points all over the maps but nothing really strikes me as "AW JESUS FUCK NOT CREEK".

[Falwell]

I've never read these guys before, but this review appears to affirm every PC owner's fears..

[NiX]

A silencer on a shotgun? Really?

You can dual wield shotguns. That alone is all kinds of retarded.

[SurfD]

So, did anyone actually get their Night Vision Goggles?

[Venkman]

I've never read these guys before, but this review appears to affirm every PC owner's fears..

Seems spot on, but I don't like the sense of entitlement mentioned there. Really sort of a pet peeve for this topic. I'm right there with all the other PC gamers in being aggravated with the changes, and I won't be buying this as a result. But in no way do I think the PC users "deserve" some sort of special treatment for having propel this franchise to success. IW doesn't care. Acti doesn't care. Their PC dev team probably does, but they don't drive the business, just execute against the directives. So in the end, anyone who ascribes emotional entitlement to their ranting is, well, just another MMO troll I guess.

The only time "in this day and age" actually works is when talking about the fact that PC is not the lead launch platform for any mega title. It's an incremental sales tick for anything with a console launch, at best. Bending over backwards for PCs only makes sense if you're an MMO.

[Jimbo]

Xbox 360 is sweeeeeeet!  

I played CoD4 1st on the xbox, then later on on the PC, I'll have to admit I enjoy the smaller games on CoD, plus I get to play all the maps and not the same map over and over and over, like some servers like to do.

I'm not sure why they went with a 9v9 max on the xbox and ps3, xbox has been able to support larger teams (25 vs 25 for frontlines: fuel of war...of course that was a so so game).

Part of this is the PC issues, think about how fucked up it is sometimes to get the FPS and games installed on a computer, setting up voice chat, all the other crap, then think how easy it is to set up the Xbox 360.  Then having to find a server and actually be able to play all the bells and whistles from the game (24 hour wake, dedicate wake 24 hour, hour 24 wake, ....god damn it! i wanna play some other maps!).

[tgr]

I'm not exactly thinking I'm entitled to more "because I'm a PC user", but I do get frustrated when games are obviously designed on the consoles and migrated to the PC. I was playing ArmA II for a while, then I figured I'd try out OpFlash: Dragon Rising, and the first thing that pissed me off was no lean. ArmA II was a PC-centric game and takes advantage of it, OpFlash obviously wasn't, and doesn't.

And shrugging off the "no lean" with "the game wasn't balanced for it" sounds to me like an exceptionally cheap throwaway reason for not including it. I'm thinking the reason they have is "aww but it would give the PC users an unfair advantage in MP vs the console users", which leads me to believe that there are OTHER measures in the mix to allow for a mixed PC/console environment as well. In short, the PC version is gimped not because of technical reasons, but because the consoles are crap for FPS games.

And this "the consoles are crap for FPS games" isn't strictly because of technical reasons either, since what we're talking about is f.ex MS saying "you can use a keyboard to chat in Live, but you can't use it in games. Why? Because that would make it too much like a computer". But providing guitars, steering wheels, flightsticks, drumsticks, dancing pads, etc etc etc, that's fine! It's a shitfest which provides both console gamers AND PC gamers with shittier games than what they could have been.

If they would only provide FPS/RTS/etc friendly control systems, and didn't keep on making super sucky UI design choices (yay radial menus!), then I'd probably be on the consoles like flies on shit. Doesn't even have to be a proper keyboard, a 20 key pad of some sort would probably suffice.

Not holding my breath, though.

[LK]

CallofDutyHacks.com already has an Aimbot out. Though, the preview video at EvilAvatar.com is run by someone who doesn't seem to be very fast on the trigger. Still, I'll avoid PC and its hacks, TYVM.

[01101010]

CallofDutyHacks.com already has an Aimbot out. Though, the preview video at EvilAvatar.com is run by someone who doesn't seem to be very fast on the trigger. Still, I'll avoid PC and its hacks, TYVM.

aimbots piss me off, but not nearly to the extent as aim-assist on consoles. Shitty controls give way to "helper code" which just leads to lazier games. I know its my opinion, but some games just don't work for me on a console - though gaming companies seem fine with designing with the intended use by consoles and pc ports are more an afterthought patch job. For me its like playing a game of backyard, friends and family volleyball game while starting for your college's team - its fun to goof around, but there is a time to get serious and get into it. meh... disappointed with this whole MW2 mess and prolly will wait for it to drop into the bargain bin before picking it up to play the single player game only.

[Cyrrex]

I, too, have managed to avoid giving them my money so far.  The pressure is significant, though.

[Engels]

Seems that for PC gaming, you need to port forward as well if you're going to host a game. From the Steam message boards sticky thread:

Required Ports for Modern Warfare 2

In addition to the required ports for Steam, Modern Warfare 2 requires the following ports for multiplayer:
UDP 1500 (outbound only, no forward needed)
UDP 3005 (outbound only, no forward needed)
UDP 3101 (outbound only, no forward needed)
UDP 28960 (inbound/outbound, must forward to act as a multi-player host, but no forward or inbound traffic needed to find and join games)

Configuring Your Router

If you do not have the original instruction manual for working with your router, please check your router for the manufacturer or brand name and the router's model number. You will need to run a search for your router manufacturer's website to find instructions for configuring your router to work with Steam and Modern Warfare 2.

PortForward.com is also a useful resource for router-specific instructions (please note that the information provided at PortForward.com may not reflect recent additions to the required ports for Steam).

[Amaron]

Dedicated servers not a huge deal for me since I'm on console.

I still don't understand this argument.  It's still crap on consoles too.   Maybe you notice it a bit less since aiming with a gamepad isn't as fast but you still can't have decent size games.  You still have good players who are good with a gamepad walking all over you with their zero ping host advantage.   If you are good you still end up waltzing around a corner and blasting someone in the face only to find out the pings let your enemy get the drop on you and blow you away.

What's the point of domination 6vs6 too?  We might as well have capture the flag 1v1.  That's not even bringing up other possible interesting modes that just won't be fun without more people.

[caladein]

I'm beginning to think that IW drank their own Kool-Aid during MW2's development:

Their decision to dilute support for Party Chat is complex, but they claim it is to keep dead players from spotting in the service of a greater gameplay goal. They way they've managed it here isn't especially savvy, and consequently it leads to some bizarre user interface concerns, where parties can get split up over multiple types of chat. It's nothing you can't manage it, but I suspect that no-one would want to do so while using a piece of software which is ostensibly geared toward entertaining the user.

There are playlists that support Party Chat, identified by a black asterisk, but players who are just beginning to play don't have access to any gametypes that actually support multiple party members. it wasn't a dealbreaker, in that we could mute people (everyone) in either the lobby on the in-game roster, but anytime you take a process that involves zero inputs and substitute fourteen, it's something you should take pretty fucking seriously. Two years ago, Halo 3 allowed you to set a global policy of only chatting to friends, and if Infinity Ward is going to pulverize bedrock platform features in the service of some mostly ambiguous gains, they might do well to emulate that ancient software.

[NowhereMan]

I think the issue is less PC gamers feeling a sense of entitlement about FPSes than about seeing all the advantages that the platform has for this type of game get completely ignored because consoles don't have them. Effectively IW has gimped the PC edition for the sole reason that consoles don't have access to those same advantages (and in things like input system, console companies seem to have intentionally gimped their consoles as well) that really gets people annoyed. It's almost hard to tell which is worse, developers deciding not to bother releasing for the PC at all or releasing games for it that ignore everything that a PC can do when they release. In this case it's worse because you've got a game that used to a PC franchise that suddenly isn't a PC game anymore so you've got the disappointment of a crappy sequel combined with that clear lack of polish.

[LK]

Dedicated servers not a huge deal for me since I'm on console.

I still don't understand this argument.  It's still crap on consoles too.   Maybe you notice it a bit less since aiming with a gamepad isn't as fast but you still can't have decent size games.  You still have good players who are good with a gamepad walking all over you with their zero ping host advantage.   If you are good you still end up waltzing around a corner and blasting someone in the face only to find out the pings let your enemy get the drop on you and blow you away.

What's the point of domination 6vs6 too?  We might as well have capture the flag 1v1.  That's not even bringing up other possible interesting modes that just won't be fun without more people.

There are enough choke points and overwatches in the maps that anything more than this would be hella difficult. Some of the domination maps are big, I understand; that's why I play them on Ground War with 9.

Yes, Dedicated Servers would be nice, but you create an expectation that they'll always be around like Battle.net, and when the next version of COD comes around I'm sure they'd like to put those servers they are paying for to use for that instead of an outdated client base.

I'm not disagreeing per se, but I'm not going to fight for them to put in something that will burden them with significant costs when its apparent that's what this is: A cost-cutting, simplification measure.

So if I can't have the most possible pluses, I'd like to downplay the negatives, rationalize, and move on to enjoying what I can.

[Goreschach]

Yes, Dedicated Servers would be nice, but you create an expectation that they'll always be around like Battle.net, and when the next version of COD comes around I'm sure they'd like to put those servers they are paying for to use for that instead of an outdated client base.

I'm not disagreeing per se, but I'm not going to fight for them to put in something that will burden them with significant costs when its apparent that's what this is: A cost-cutting, simplification measure.

So if I can't have the most possible pluses, I'd like to downplay the negatives, rationalize, and move on to enjoying what I can.

You don't even know what this argument is about, do you?

[LK]

I guess not?

Is host advantage really that severe to get your panties into a bunch?