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Gears of War 2 Patched To Fix Matchmaking Issues, Problems Persist

Posted by Soulskill on from the if-at-first-you-don't-succeed-you're-dead-rook dept.

When Gears of War 2 was released, one of the biggest complaints about the game was that its matchmaking system didn't work properly for multi-player games, leading to unreasonably long wait times. After trying to placate players with mostly useless suggestions, Epic finally released a patch to address the matchmaking issues. Unfortunately, now that players have had a chance to try it out, it seems a large segment of the Gears 2 population is still having problems.

34 comments

  1. Chaser by PincusJr · · Score: 0

    How much fat is too much fat?

    1. Re:Chaser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ten shitloads.

  2. SYN by SolidAltar · · Score: 1

    Epic, here's a pro-tip on how to connect people:

    SYN
    SYN-ACK
    ACK

    1. Re:SYN by illumastorm · · Score: 1

      RST

    2. Re:SYN by zolf13 · · Score: 1

      Don't forget correct sequence numbers and their acks!

    3. Re:SYN by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fucking Comcast!

    4. Re:SYN by tepples · · Score: 1

      Epic, here's a pro-tip on how to connect people:

      SYN SYN-ACK ACK

      But which source and destination IP addresses?

    5. Re:SYN by sgt+scrub · · Score: 1

      FYN ACK

      --
      Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
  3. Matchmaking? by bugbeak · · Score: 1

    I can get married by playing Gears of War 2? Sign me up!

    1. Re:Matchmaking? by TOGSolid · · Score: 1

      Matchmaker, Matchmaker,
      Make me a match,
      Find me some noobs,
      Pwn me a catch
      Matchmaker, Matchmaker
      Look through your list,
      And make me a perfect match



      And in other news, Epic Megagames continues their descent into being a pathetic shadow of their former self. More news at 11!

    2. Re:Matchmaking? by fastest+fascist · · Score: 1

      The question is: married to WHO?

    3. Re:Matchmaking? by Loibisch · · Score: 1

      Probably one of the grunts from within the game. Happy honeymoon.

  4. Griping by Aladrin · · Score: 1

    One of the blogs I read was noting this. Their statement was that the patch helped, but didn't cure the problem.

    So they chose to release a patch that would lesson the problem while they work on a true solution, and people just bitch about it as if they did nothing. Seriously, they're working on it. Give them a break.

    --
    "If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
    1. Re:Griping by wild_quinine · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So they chose to release a patch that would lesson the problem while they work on a true solution, and people just bitch about it as if they did nothing. Seriously, they're working on it. Give them a break.

      They get a break when they release software that does what it's meant to do out of the box.

      They don't get a break during the interminable time it takes them to fix the problem, after that ship date. They shipped it, and it doesn't work. Any patience at all is a gift to them from the unnecessary goodness of our consumer hearts. Watching them meet us halfway is no satisfaction when they have ALL our money. Maybe if we got half of it back, we could talk patience. Good will is not owed to these people - they do what they do for a profit, and they fucked it up.

      Just because there are a bunch of companies out there that would say 'Fuck the patch', take the money and run, does not mean that we should be grateful when a company doesn't do that, or that we owe them anything. We paid them for a complete, working product. They owe US. They have a responsibility to us, and they need to live up to that.

    2. Re:Griping by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That would mean something if Gears 2 multiplayer wasn't a MASSIVE leap backwards from Gears 1 which was far from ideal. It's bad enough that they had something pretty good and tweaked it to be much much worse, still using DooM era dead reckoning apparently. But they did it after watching many other attempts at various levels and flavors of success and failure. Yay party system, I give them due credit for implimenting the increadibly obvious and at this point essential. Yet they vastly reduced the options, granular control, and even information in matchmaking. They'll routinely match people up across third world internet. Here's a clue to all aspiring shooter writers. Multiculturalism is awesome and all, 500 ms of latency doesn't foster understanding and harmony. Give it up. I even realize it's a hard problem. All the more reason to give control and information over to the actual players.

    3. Re:Griping by IBBoard · · Score: 1

      We paid them for a complete, working product.

      I don't know how well it has been tested in court, but I think these days you pay for a CD/DVD in a box that contains some software that you have been sold a limited license to use. The license generally tends to try and disclaim any level of specific quality in any area.

      Not that I agree with it, but software companies do have a bit more of a "you get a license on it as-is" angle than companies that sell physical objects.

    4. Re:Griping by Aladrin · · Score: 1

      When was the last game that worked out of the box? I don't even remember it. They -all- get patches now.

      You didn't pay them for a 'complete, working product'. You paid them for a game that works well enough. All games for the last decade have been that way. You're lucky they -bother- to patch. They could just start working on their next game and ignore that one and it wouldn't hurt their sales hardly at all. They lose money fixing those bugs.

      --
      "If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
    5. Re:Griping by wild_quinine · · Score: 1

      I don't know how well it has been tested in court, but I think these days you pay for a CD/DVD in a box that contains some software that you have been sold a limited license to use.

      With the current state of legal affairs relating to software - DRM, unconscionable EULAs, patent trolling and what, to my mind, constitutes outright fraud with the banning of online accounts for trivial TOS violations (if anything) - I'm not sure we need to see cases testing. I'm starting to feel like we need new laws, written by sensible people, for the benefit of the consumers, not corporations.

      I know that in my country, the UK, there are many sensible laws written for the benefit of the people. I am starting to wonder when this all stopped happening.

    6. Re:Griping by wild_quinine · · Score: 1

      When was the last game that worked out of the box? I don't even remember it.

      The 'everything's fucked, so you don't deserve anything better' argument doesn't hold water with me, or with the law. Thanks for putting a pro-consumer angle on things, though.

      You didn't pay them for a 'complete, working product'. You paid them for a game that works well enough. All games for the last decade have been that way. You're lucky they -bother- to patch. They could just start working on their next game and ignore that one and it wouldn't hurt their sales hardly at all. They lose money fixing those bugs.

      This is just a diabolically stupid argument. I can't imagine how anyone could possibly come up with this and seriously place it on slashdot for consideration. I would offer a counterpoint, but looking back I see that I already did in my parent post, and you chose to dispute that.

    7. Re:Griping by Kaboom13 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      No, they make money fixing it. Gears of War 2 sold as well as it has because people like Gears of War 1. They supported the Gears of War 1 community, and those people were lined up to buy the sequel the day it came out, because they trusted the developer would give them another good experience. If they don't fix this, and say screw it, that community won't be there for their next game.

      Theres a reason a lot of gamers will buy anything Blizzard puts out (well non-mmo related anyways). They still patch Starcraft, and Diablo 2, and Warcraft 3. They still keep battlenet up and running. Yeah to the first year business grad, that must look terrible on the books, a big expense with no financial reward. Yet they realize that expense will garuntee d3 and Starcraft 2 will sell a shitload of copies the first week.

      Saying fuck it and moving on is how you become EA. Hated by gamers, who avoid their games like the plague. Sure they make their money off casual players who don't know EA from Valve, but as they have seen that's a fickle audience.

      Theres 2 basic strategies in game development, community development (Valve, Blizzard, Epic, Bunjie) and shovelware development (EA, a ton of others). The difference is the former produces fewer games, but those games are almost always runaway successes. Shovelware devs make a ton of titles cheaply, test them poorly, and shove them out the door, hoping well-meaning parents will buy them for their kids. Considering the amount of money and time Epic puts into their games, and the huge size of CliffyB's ego, I think they want to be in the former category. If they want to do that, patching the game and fixing these issues IS mandatory.

    8. Re:Griping by Justin+Hopewell · · Score: 1

      Great point quinine, and I'd like to further add that its easy for those of us with net-connected consoles to forget that not everyone is that fortunate. And to my knowledge, there is no way to update your game without an internet connection unless you could mail order DVD/CD patches from the developer, which is unlikely.

    9. Re:Griping by ADRA · · Score: 1

      False advertising applies in this case if the developers said there would be a feature, like on-line play, but in the end the feature wasn't implemented, or isn't functional. If developers were working on the fix, the courts would probably leave the issue alone, but lets say the devs did walk away and left an advertised feature unusable by mere mortals. I'd assume that would put said developer in an class-actionable state.

      PS: IANAL, nor am I a human being.. *ooooh*

      --
      Bye!
    10. Re:Griping by IBBoard · · Score: 1

      Surely that depends on how functional it is? I didn't read the article (it's a console game, not a real computer game) but "matchmaking issues" is entirely different to "no online play at all".

    11. Re:Griping by IBBoard · · Score: 1

      I'm starting to feel like we need new laws, written by sensible people, for the benefit of the consumers, not corporations.

      Unfortunately I think there's one problem with your suggestion, and it comes with the word "sensible". Given that a country runs on the money brought in by companies then any law is going to favour them to some degree. Even recent "corporate man-slaughter" laws in the UK were stripped of most of their power because companies were worried about the implications.

      I know that in my country, the UK, there are many sensible laws written for the benefit of the people.

      We have sensible laws in the UK? Wow, when did that happen? I must have missed those in amongst all the other crap the Government has done :D Or did you mean older ones? :)

    12. Re:Griping by powerspike · · Score: 1

      Oh come on, if apple does it, it must be trendy and cool...

  5. online issues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Yeah, if you remember GOW1 then it had tons of glitches. COD2,3 had plenty of glitches. How did games begin to fix these problems? Release online beta so they don't ship a garbage product you pay $60 for. Unfortunately, EA still cant do it right in some games as even when it ships its still messed up.

    EPIC screwed up on GOW2, They changed the entire system to a Halo like system. GOW1 online was the best. You could set what maps you want, see all the games playing that map and the custom options for that game. Now, in order to do that you have to play private match.

    PC Gaming imo is better than this, and the last PC game I really played was counter-strike. FILTERS. They should make online games that show the hosts PING, OR better yet let people host a server that appears on xbox live. EA has the ability to do this, not the end user?

    Sorry for ranting, I just wish they would do this. It would make the online experience so much better.

    1. Re:online issues by JimboFBX · · Score: 1

      GOW1 over xbox live was terrible. If you can't tell how then your pretty oblivious. I'd think you'd had realized that after the first game you played where the host gloated how much you suck and he doesn't, let alone the 90% of the games where that happened.

  6. The real problem with Gears2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hey, I wouldn't mind waiting if the game was worth playing. As an avid gears1 online gamer I can tell you they really screwed around with weapon damage levels. Pump 2 clips into your target with the Lancer and maybe you kill them. What kind of craziness is this?

    I played for 30 minutes, then went back to Gears 1.

    You have noticed that the only way to kill reliably now is the chainsaw, haven't you? And how often did that work in Gears 1? Point proven.

    Fix the weapon damage while you're at it, Epic.

  7. They have a right to bitch by HalAtWork · · Score: 1

    They bitch about it because it's an expensive game and they pay for the online service because it's supposed to be hassle-free and high quality.

    --
    Twinstiq, game news
  8. is fine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    works fine for me. quit bitching

  9. Best game yet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who friggin' CARES! The game rocks and delivers on so many other levels. This is just what I expect from all of us over thinkers....something to complain about. What's next...complaining that it doesn't come with an Autosuck mechanism?

  10. host list!!! by jciarlan · · Score: 1

    why they didn't just go with a simple list of games like in gears 1 is beyond me. I couldn't take the wait times anymore, so I switched back to the 1st