Halo 2 Update On Monday

hollismb writes "Bungie has released all the details and set a date for the upcoming Halo 2 AutoUpdate, which includes a list of fixes to cheating and glitches. The update will also include changes to weapon balance, and you can look for it on Xbox Live on Monday, April 18th."

Comments

Whoa

[kushboy]

Sounds like a whole new game...kinda. Resetting the leaderboards sounds good (to me, at least). Now we just need some new maps!

Re:Whoa

[bigman2003]

Yeah...resetting the leader boards is a good idea.

My problem is that I played A LOT up until about 2 months ago. I was able to achieve a decently high level. Now I can't go on without getting cremated. Not fun...I probably need to drop down at least 5 or 6 levels.

So...I look forward to going back to being a level 1 guy...so I can kill SOMEBODY.

Re:Whoa

[EggyToast]

A lot of the people around your level have probably chosen to stop playing until these updates come out, as well, leaving only the very hardcore and the cheaters. I've noticed this -- when doing Matchmaking with my clan, we'll get our asses handed to us in Clan matches almost always, because the people playing clan matches are really 10 levels above us. If they don't win by superior skills, they win by cheating.

That's true in non-clan matchmaking as well, and has been for the last month. People who ranked up high will purposefully go into matchmaking and either quit right away or team kill, lowering their rank on purpose so they can get paired up against "noobs," which there are fewer and fewer of.

Personally I used to play very regularly until about the beginning of march, due to both the lack of playlist updates and the rampant cheating. I'm actually excited to play now.

Finally, when they do reset the rankings, they're also going to be adjusting the levels so people get paired up against others more accurately, rather than someone who is a 12 but should really be a 16 getting paired up against peopel who are 7's but should probably be a 6. So you'll probably move up and down in ranking a lot more quickly. After all, they have 50 levels, but realistically everyone's in the 10-25 range.

Oh my gosh!

[rlbond86]

I can't believe this. I hope they won't fix ghosting... :) Seriously, it's about time to reset the stats.

What we've been waiting for?

[AtariAmarok]

Hopefully, there are some new recipes in it. I mean, Master Chef is great and all, but souffle's only go so far.

Re:argh.

[Phudman]

Firefox has a hard time scrolling the pages. On IE it's a little bit better. Gee go figure.

I thought this wasn't allowed

[aztektum]

I didn't think they allowed what are essentially "patches" to fix bugs over Live. Does Bungie get a pass because they are owned by MS? Or is there precedent for this. I don't play on Live nor do I own Halo2, so I don't know all the politics.

Re:I thought this wasn't allowed

[IorDMUX]

This is simply bringing the XBox in line with the tried and true practices of PC multiplayer. The makers of games from Command and Conquer to CounterStrike: Source release patches to *improve* their multiplayer balance over time.

Even StarCraft, lauded for its balance, has had no less than twelve significant patches since its release.

Re:I thought this wasn't allowed

[Taulin]

They even announced they were fixing 'glitches'. Calling bugs as 'Glitches', is as bad as MS calling patches as 'Service packs'.

Re:I thought this wasn't allowed

[hollismb]

Yeah, they patch games all the time over Xbox Live. This isn't just a Bungie thing either. Pretty much every UBISoft game over Xbox Live has received some sort of patch to fix online bugs, glitches, and cheating. The resistance is to patching single play portions of games over Xbox Live.

Re:I thought this wasn't allowed

[gl4ss]

patches for xbox live games are allowed I think.

patches through the network to non-live games are not, I think.

Re:I thought this wasn't allowed

[bigman2003]

They are only supposed to fix the Live components. Repeatedly in the article, they mentioned 'this will not affect the single player campaign.'

They can UPGRADE single player games, but not patch them. (Ninja Gaiden for example)

I can't believe it's not sooner!

[jZnat]

Personally, I have been avoiding Halo 2 and its online play until this update came. I was sick of trying to compete with the endless cheaters; I was sick of getting suspended for exploring these cheats in unranked games (i.e. looking for new bugs); I was sick of the hostility caused by this, and I was definitely sick of its overall huge effect it had on gameplay and enjoyability.

w00t with me as we go back to Halo 2 this Monday!

Re:I can't believe it's not sooner!

[Anonymous Coward]

... i'll translate what this person wrote.
I hated it when other people cheated. I hated it when i was banned for cheating.

Re:I can't believe it's not sooner!

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if there would be less cheating if they had more teeth, and ended up banning Xboxes from XBL.

But I can't see them doing it, due to the bad publicity, loss of revenue, and angry customers.

Re:I can't believe it's not sooner!

[theVP]

Here's an idea for you: Don't explore cheats? In order to explore cheats, you eventually will cheat. It doesn't matter if the game is ranked or not. If it is unranked, does that mean that it isn't a game anymore? And does a software company have to lock you out of cheating YOURSELF in order for you to enjoy a game? Since when were they responsible for your lack of self-control? Of course they're hostile with you. They're hostile with everyone who cheats. Kind word of advice: with the new patch, you would be wise to not try any of that anymore...

Re:argh.

[personman21]

I actually emailed bungie about this, I asked them why it was not firefox friendly, they said it was, then stopped returning my emails.

A basteon dies

[FidelCatsro]

One of the main reasons i love console Games is the total lack of patches .
When you buy a game for a console you expect a finished , polished product that you don't need to worry about lock-ups or crashs or anything , now im aware some slip out and they are rare (most of them dont hinder gameplay but give us something amusing to do when were bored, ala jumping through the level and walking around in nothing).
This is one of the many things i love about console games , let us hope this trend does not continue...

Re:A basteon dies

[jZnat]

I don't know when the last time you played Halo 2 online, but it was analogue to a PC online game's initial release. Seriously, without this update, Halo 2 was simply still in a public alpha: ridden with bugs and usability problems.

Now it would have been nice if they could've forseen these problems back in dev, but many of these issues were created by the mass community of players with the added online medium to alleviate the issues. Sure, the bugs still existed back in dev, but some were simply created by the variety of players (such as the weapon balancing).

Re:A basteon dies

[SetupWeasel]

That's not an excuse. We are talking about a company that bans players for replacing their broxen drives. Weapon balancing is one thing, cheating is another. If cheating occurs in the game without modification, they needed better and more thorough play testing. If people are modifying the game, they should check for that and ban them like they did with the console modifications.

Fact is that Bungie was going to have to release Halo 2 this past Christmas to get the big sales. They probably cut short that part of the development.

Re:A basteon dies

[Anonymous Coward]

Although console games are polished most of the time, you have to admit it REALLY sucks if a showstopping bug does sneak past. Best case you have to return the disc and wait for the new one in the mail. Worst case, they wont do jack shit about it and you just wasted your money. I remember when grand turismo had a bug that made it impossible to achieve above 99% completion. They didn't want to replace it at first because it didn't effect gameplay but they caved in after a loud up-roar. Although I dont agree with tactics the pc devs use (ie. ship the game and release a patch before the release date) I think it's better to have the option to patch over the net.

Re:A basteon dies

[FidelCatsro]

I didnt say the patch wasn't needed , i am saying it shouldnt of been

Re:A basteon dies

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep thats why i say It shouldnt be needed , not that it was not
FC--

Re:A basteon dies

[startled]

One of the main reasons i love console Games is the total lack of patches .

Online games will always require cheat fixes, balance tweaks, and so on. If it really bugs you, I recommend buying single-player games (Halo 2's single player is still fine and essentially unchanged with this patch).

The only online games that don't get patches and tweaks after release are the ones that are unsupported, and hence remain buggy, cheat-ridden, and unbalanced.

Re:A basteon dies

[FidelCatsro]

Honestly ,I just think that is an excuse for a lack of testing.
Cheats should be found with good testing and balance should also be achived-
I dont think you understand me , i said it shouldn't be needed , not that it wasn't...
And Dammed if i am going to accept a car that requires patches or any other complex piece of machinery or electronics and i dont see why software should get any special dispensation..
Remembering the incident with the pentium and the faulty fpu , A procesor is as complex as any game in its design ...Software has the excuse that it can be patched thus large companys use that as an excuse that it is resonible to sell us unfinished products.. fair enough on small scale development or something as complex as an OS , but a Game has no excuse except bar maybe for supporting new hardware or adding new levels and this really is no issue on a console

Re:A basteon dies

[drewmca]

Um, any multiplayer online game is going to need patches. Unless you're in development for 10 years, there's no way you can anticipate every cheat or exploit. The fact that patches are possible is actually a good thing. If they were patching the single player game, I'd be worried. But for multiplayer balancing, it's a VERY good thing. Hell, Blizzard is still patching Starcraft, and it's not because they didn't test it properly. So long as xbox games hold the same philosophy (which they have, so calm the f down), everything's peachy.

Re:A basteon dies

[EggyToast]

Plus the cheats are non-obvoius. They never took action against people who pulled flags through walls because that was a minor geometry glitch that was based more on giving the flag a wider and more powerful "pickup radius" than other objects. They're not taking action against people who fly up on top of the maps using weird jumps or hide the objective by "surfing" on a Banshee.

Really they're only fixing two "cheats," one being the standby glitch (and, really, why would a company test for people pressing the standby button on their DSL modem in order to suspend everyone who isn't the host) and an obscure "dummy" glitch that deals with the elite model and a warthog that, without hearing about how to do it from someone else, is pretty impossible to find.

Everything else that they're fixing are pretty much updates and changes to make the game more streamlined and fun, rather than fixing stuff that doesn't work.

After all, the game DOES play fine. There are just a couple of extremely annoying exploits that can be abused by a single person or pair of people that drastically reduce the enjoyment of the game for everyone, and since you only need one person to screw it all up, it affects the online game. You could still have played the past 5 months in custom games and never run into any of these problems, and similarly, you probably would not notice much of a difference in the other glitch fixes either -- except that certain parts of the game will now make a little more sense, like standing on a grenade will kill you ;D

So yeah, I'm pretty much right here with drewmca, these patches are making the game better, not just fixing a bug that crashes the game or proves that the game was shipped unfinished. These types of patches show that the developer is still involved in the game and, after seeing hundreds of thousands of people play the game, have the chance to make a few tweaks to coincide with their new content that they've been busy working on for the past few months.

oblig

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this one come with a real ending?

Re:argh.

[MBraynard]

Just like the CIA similarly stopped returning your emails about the aliens putting a transmitter in your tooth?

The damn site works fine in FF.

What next? Whining that Halo isn't Linux friendly?

Re:argh.

[Fred Or Alive]

Well, technically it does render perfectly well in Firefox. You could say quite easily that the site is Firefox friendly, as it's not like there's any rendering errors or anything. It just suffers the slight problem that the performance is kinda bad. Bungie might just complain that it's becuase Firefox is worse at rendering certain things vs. Internet Explorer, which is possible.

Personally I think it's a wonder of web coding, but it is a bit style over performance. Good webcoding should be designed around flaws and performance issues in various browsers, they should've made sure it actually worked reasonabley rather than just looked right...

How about the other 90% of gamers?

[TheSpeedoBeast]

Will this only be available to people with xbox live, or will it be downloadable to your a dvd, then to your hard drive somehow?

Re:How about the other 90% of gamers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wtf are you talking about? If you don't have xbox live why would you need this update which fixes problems that only effect play on xbox live?

Re:How about the other 90% of gamers?

[TheSpeedoBeast]

System link games?

Re:How about the other 90% of gamers?

[Fred Or Alive]

The disc version of the extra maps (due in June, at the same time the second batch of premium maps is added to Live) will also install these updates onto your Xbox. But you have to pay for the disc. So if you want the extra maps as well, that's your solution. Or you could find a mate who has the disc already.

The other solution is to borrow someone else's gamertag (you can copy them onto memory cards), sign in to Xbox Live with Halo 2 on your Xbox, and it'll download the patch automatically. You could also use this to get the maps when they're out, but I think Xbox Live may charge you for each download of premium maps.

Re:How about the other 90% of gamers?

[Anonymous Coward]

In that case, just punch cheaters in the face.

(Unless you're looking to use xbconnect or something; and there's no reason for them to fix problems for people who are using an unoffical way of playing online instead of paying...)

Re:How about the other 90% of gamers?

[KDR_11k]

They also talk about balancing changes. It's not just cheating that gets patched.

Re:How about the other 90% of gamers?

[EggyToast]

You have to choose to pay for the premium content.

For the auto updates, yes, plugging in your Xbox and signing in under a friend's account *should* net you at least the auto updates and the upcoming free maps. Similarly, taking one of your likely numerous "Free 2 Month Trial" cards and using those to get the update and the free maps will work as well.

Finally, like most pay content on Xbox Live, after a certain time the pay maps will be completely free. Bungie says "At the end of summer," meaning likely August or September, and they'll probably be staggered. So yeah, you could plug in your Xbox now and get the pair of free maps that are coming out in about a week, or if you don't really play that often, just wait until the end of summer when they're all free and snag them all.

Of course, Bungie's plan is pretty clever, as those who actually play Halo 2 multiplayer will likely be more than happy to pay, rather than wait, and those who don't mind waiting probably don't play that often anyway.

Re:argh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox's DHTML/CSS performance is known to be terrible under certain conditions, and I guess this page with the fixed elements is one of them.

There's probably no "fix" except to throw out the design and start over, or serve downlevel pages to Firefox. Of course then FF users would bitch about getting an uglier page when the regular one works fine.

Re:argh.

[hunterx11]

They are owned by Microsoft, after all. Who else would run IIS and ASP.NET of their own free will?

Dear Microsoft, a request...

[TheHonestTruth]

[Yeah, like Bill et al read /.]

Dear Division responsible for X-Box Live,
I would sincerely appreciate it if you would implement a "foes" list. This past week I have encountered more and more players I never EVER want to play with again. Could you add a foes list (similar to the "friends" list) so that when matchmaking comes, I'm not paired with people I think ruin the experience? As these players continue to ruin the online experience, more and more people will add them to their foes list. As time goes by, the spoliers' matchmaking will be harder and hearder to satisfy, and the rest of us can actually enjoy the games we play. I think it is an effective way to segment those that choose to ruin the online experience from those that enjoy it. There will likely be abuses here and there, but overall I think people want to play games against people that aren't dicks. Adding a foes list to XBL is one way to ensure that your subscribers' experience isn't ruined. Thank you for your time.

-truth

Re:Dear Microsoft, a request...

[Chthonic_Miasma]

They won't do this, because of the same reasons they don't make playlists more specific, because it takes more time to find a match. exempting certain people from your availability would mean, for instance, if this "foe" was in a party of 4, you wouldn't be matched with any of them while this "foe" was with them. we can't get too picky. good idea though

Re:Dear Microsoft, a request...

[fyrewulff]

I have found that people I leave feedback on for screaming/cheating etc, I usually never see again. Except in clan matches. Also I WISH they would make it so you never go against the same team in a row! One time we went up against level 25s (we're ~12-14s) 4 times in a row. Needless to say, by the 4th match we just resorted to spinning around in circles.

Re:Dear Microsoft, a request...

[TheHonestTruth]

we can't get too picky

I understand. If it had happened once or twice, I would just chalk it up to me being grumpy. But I played team slayer the other night and one of my "teammates" at the start of the match said "watch this: I'm going to commit suicide" and he jumped into a hole and died. He repeated this two more times. Then he said "watch, I'm going to stand here the rest of the round and not do anything," which he did effectively leaving us with 3 players. My two other teammates, disgusted with this after about 3 minutes into the round, gave up and left. So it was me vs. 4 in team slayer. I'm annoyed my two teammates left, but I am baffled that someone would join a team slayer game and intentionally screw over his team.

I could stand longer matchmaking times, double even, if I could avoid playing with assholes.

-truth

Re:argh.

[assassinator42]

I asked in their forums a while ago about a lite version of their site, one of the reasons was to fix firefox scrolling. I don't remember if it was official or not, but I did get a response. It was something like "It's firefox's problem, it used to be even worse, but did something so at least it's usable"

from someone who knows

[Anonymous Coward]

You can patch whatever you want... there is a server side size limit to the patch (I won't say how much, but it's not enough to add much content).

Re:SHOVE A CARROT UP YOUR ASS

[Chthonic_Miasma]

alright you both make good points, although one is for analogical realization, and the other is technical. you both get a cookie. ya bungies site works fine on FF, i don't know what that guys smokin.

Game Examples?

[DeadScreenSky]

Please name a online multiplayer videogame that was fairly popular and didn't end up requiring a patch to fix something.

No matter how extensive your testing unit (and MS certainly has that for Xbox games), having 100,000+ players at nearly all times for months banging around in a reasonably complex competitive videogame is going to find unforeseen glitches. Sure it would be wonderful if this kind of thing didn't happen, but that seems to be an enormously unreasonable expectation on your part.

And why are you pretending online console games having patches is a new thing? Xbox, PS2, and IIRC even Dreamcast online games have all had patches of some kind. This thing happens.

Re:Game Examples?

[FidelCatsro]

jeesh , people i will say this for the last time , I am not saying that it wasn't needed I am saying it shouldn't be , and no im not being unresonible.
Can you name any other thing in the world that you would pay for if you were near 100% sure that it was going to be found to be broken in some way(new not second hand).
A procesor as i used in a previous example is every bit as complex , but how often do we hear about faulty units being shipped or quirks in the procesors computational units that need balancing . MMO or even just regular online games are given far too much slack , When i buy something that has gone Gold as it were and is not in beta testing , i expect a finished product.

Re:Game Examples?

[FidelCatsro]

I hate to reply to myself but i need to add this..
I am not blaming the developers , i am blaming Marketing and publishers who push these things out the door without proper testing.

Re:Game Examples?

[mink]

Magic Carpet 1 and 2.
The rest of my list is from the same era.
The problem I think is in the testing and release of todays games. Back in the 90's many games did not need patches to make the multiplayer playable(I will freely admit some did need patching). Balance should have been correct from the release, thats what testing is for in part.

Re:Game Examples?

[seaniqua]

Do you own a car? A house? When certain things are purchased, there is an assumption that there will be maintenance. Why should software be any different? Especially when it is costing you nothing to perform this maintenance? No matter how extensive pre-release testing is, things can be overlooked. These bugs are things that were only discovered after millions of hours of play testing. For a company to perform this much testing pre-release, there would be a substantial increase in development cost and time. Would you like to wait an extra year to pay $100 for your next game?

Re:argh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it doesn't work for me it stutters when scrolling then I tried with IE like the other guy said and it works smoothly.

Spawn System

[pbaer]

I'm disapointed that they aren't improving the spawn system. It has to be the worst spawn system of any fps I've played.

You spawn not away from people but away from people fighting. This means that you can spawn right to next to someone and be killed before you have a chance to do anything. This also means that in team games like CTF you can spawn way outside the base when the enemy is stealing your flag. Also there's no immunity timer so you can be chain spawn killed by a good sniper.

Re:Spawn System

[Anonymous Coward]

well, in CTF... the fact that you spawn a distance away from the action puts an emphasis on not dying. if you spawn'd close, then you wouldn't need to worry about dying too much because you could just try killing the guy again, after you weakend him with your previous life.

Re:Spawn System

[hollismb]

Well, the thing is that it balances out over the course of the game. Maybe if you're playing to five or ten kills, those couple bad spawns will hurt you, but the fact is that everying gets a few 'damn, that was the worst spawn ever' spawns pretty much every game. Sometimes, you'll get a great spawn, and sometimes, not. Better than always spawing in the same spot on an open map.

Re:Spawn System

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd have to agree there is also the fact that to many of the smaller levels don't need 8 people playing on them at once 6 would be good for beaver creek and lockout

Re:Spawn System

[pbaer]

That would be true if there was no respawn timer. But there is, so dying is a punishment. Plus you lose your weapons.

Re:argh.

[MBraynard]

Maybe you should stop using an inferior product, as demonstrated by it's ability to render a simple website?