Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Hopes for Matchmaking in all 360 Games
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.
Seriously, their user base has been saying this for 2 and a half years now. Why are they just now coming to this realization? Microsoft keeps such tight control over XBL and has standards in place for just about every aspect of it. How is it then, that they certify so many games with flat out abysmal matchmaking systems? For a product that touts its online functionality as the primary feature over its competitors, Microsoft is essentially ignoring a huge portion of that experience.
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.'
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.
This guy's the limit!
Just in time for Valentine's Day, too. How thoughtful, Microsoft!
find me a find... catch me a catch...
Friends(TM)
The next target for Microsoft's embrace-and-extend strategy
It's only dumb if it's unsuccessful.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I'd like to disagree... on all accounts.
"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.
Collector's Edition
well, you get some very busy girls then....
or people pretending to be girls...
Nope. MS, and Sony simply went seperate routes. The 360 is Modular, where the PS3 is all inclusive.
Do you want HD-DVD? That's optional. Do you want online multiplayer? That's optional. Do you want a Harddrive? That's optional. Believe it or not there are people out there who do't want or need any of those...
Just like how the PS2 didn't have a HDD, a network adapter, multitap, etc... included. If you wanted it you paid extra. If you don't, you don't.
The PS3 simply went the other way and said 'You will have a Hard drive', 'you will have Blu-ray', etc... whether you want it or not and included it into the price.
The idea isn't to have lobbies.
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.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."