343 NEEDS TO ADDRESS LAG FOR HALO 5:

Games Other Halo
1

343 would be very wise to start talking about (months before the game actually is released) a new system in Halo 5 that will address a gamer’s connection. If I have absolutely no information whatsoever to give me a sense of what my ping is, then it can become pointless to play competitively online very quickly; moreover, if I am going to get my butt kicked because I am 3 seconds behind the host I’d like to have factual data reflecting what I know to be true (ie. a warthog on the other side of the map suddenly appears on top of me) just so that I can have an explanation as to why suddenly I can’t seem to make any decent kills; whereas, the day before I had several games in a row where I went 25-5, for example.

First off, in Halo 5, there should be a screen that displays numbers based on your console being pinged by a server near to the center of the United States to determine (a “ball-park” figure) of how good of a connection you have. I remember a Call of Duty game doing something like this a couple years ago and because a friend of mine who lives in the same town as me was getting a much higher “bandwidth” test result, and so I switched to his Internet Service Provider and was actually able to enjoy myself online because my actual skill was more often reflected in the gameplay (ie. the matches weren’t impossible to play due to an extremely poor connection). That information helped!

If 343’s “Searching for Best Compatible Host” system isn’t providing the gamer with some kind of data to determine connection quality, it’s pointless. Because of how bad lag is (how unpredictable it can be) in this game, there ought to be a separate lobby for “unranked” games so that when we can’t seem to break free of the lag we have some place to go and have fun and not be punished (ie. “WTF?? I shot that guy in the head seven times before he even saw me!!!” ← well, my friend, because his ping is 75 and yours is 325, you did not see him see you first and he already had 3 shots into you before you started to actually shoot at him! Yep. That’s not a fun situation in a ranked match.

We should all be able to press the back button and see an image that depicts connection strength [ie. "5 bars means a ping of 30 (awesome!), 1 bar means 240+ (bad!!)] AND THEN there should be an option to “LEAVE GAME” if you can’t get into the yellow or green (above 1 or 2 red bars).

A message should pop up saying, “AFTER LEAVING THIS GAME, PLEASE REBOOT YOUR MODEM IF YOU PLAN TO REENTER RANKED MULTIPLAYER. CONTACT YOUR ISP IF THIS PROBLEM PERSISTS. CHECK WAYPOINT FORUMS REGULARLY FOR UPDATES BEING IMPLEMENTED BY 343 TO IMPROVE CONNECTION PERFORMANCE…” etc., etc.,).

My point is that if NO feedback is given to us to give us a sense of what our ping really is, no one knows how good they are… if I can finish a match 9-9 when I’m 3 whole seconds behind the host (ie. a ping of 350 or so) then that’s like going 25-5 under reasonable connection conditions (ie. reflecting a ping of less than 100).

IF NOTHING IS DONE IN HALO 5 ALONG THESE LINES THEN 343 WILL COMPLETELY MISS AN EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITY TO EVOLVE ONLINE MULTIPLAYER GAMING ON CONSOLES AND WE WILL ALL SUFFER FOR IT FOR YEARS TO COME. This is the perfect time to engineer/create a system for providing gamers feedback concerning their connections so that playing online doesn’t have to be left to chance whether or not the experience will be enjoyable or extremely frustrating. If the game ADMITS that it’s laggy and providing me with a poor connection, I can accept that. I’d just go into unranked games for a bit and try later or the next day… and if it tells me I have a poor connection a lot, I know then to try to upgrade my equipment or change internet service providers and research other ways to improve the situation – at least I’ll have numbers to track if what I’m doing is working!

I don’t see why in Halo 5 there couldn’t be a whole section within the game’s menu that helps people track their ping numbers… so we can try to determine if there’s a time of day/time of week that it best to play and also to help diagnose where the connection slows down… does it start slow? – meaning it’s on our side and we need a better service and modem, etc… SOMETHING WITHIN THE GAME SHOULD TRACK PING-RELATED NUMBERS and form graphs for us. Giving us this information will allow the gaming community at large a fighting chance to correct (or at least drastically improve) our lag issues. This would improve the whole network, over time, as people would take this data and then educate themselves on ways to strengthen their own connections. Then you could see if things are better from the tracking data being recorded within Halo 5.

I WOULD LOVE TO SEE 343 RELEASE VIDEOS PRIOR TO HALO 5 SHOWING US SUCH IMPROVEMENTS THAT WE WILL SEE. THEY SHOULD BETA TEST SUCH A SYSTEM IN HALO 4 AT SOME POINT TO WORK THE BUGS OUT SO IT CAN GET PUT INTO HALO 5 WITHOUT TOO MANY HICCUPS.

I think all game developers would eventually follow suit because any game that has a competitive multiplayer aspect to it needs something like this. It makes no sense not to be providing us with this level of intel regarding our connections. I too, LIKE INTEL WITH MY INTEL! But 343 isn’t providing enough to help us wage war against an enemy more ruthless than anything known within the Halo Universe… … … LAG!!!

2

This post has been edited by a moderator. Please refrain from making non-constructive posts that do not contribute to the topic at hand.

*Original post. Click at your own discretion.

343 needs to address 343.

3

Hey guys!

I’m not very experienced with this forum. If you know a way to keep this post in a visible location for a couple weeks or know ways of bringing it some attention, please do so. I believe the moderators should tag something about this topic to the main Halo 4 forum page and try to talk to someone within 343 and see if this idea is something 343 has considered, already (the idea being of incorporating a data section concerning connection quality/ping within the main menu of Halo 5 with maybe a beta attempt in Halo 4 at some point). The moderators could then reply with an “Official Response” from 343.

Thanks!!

4

Didnt read post because daaaayum! Text wall.

But no, lag is the problem of customers with bad connections.

Only things they can do are

  1. local or regional search options

  2. dedicated servers, preferably multiple servers per continent

5

I have to respond intelligently because that’s all I am capable of. I don’t have a bad connection sometimes, but sometimes I do. For example, on a Saturday morning I can play 10 games of Swat and go 25-5 without breaking a sweat. Sunday morning I’ll play 10 games in which I am being splattered by Warthogs that from my point-of-view never come within 40 yards of my position. I put clips of this in my file share, you can watch it in playback.

Okay, so it’s not “MY” connection but the “BAD CONNECTIONS” of other players who join/host. There’s currently no method which allows these people to gauge their crappy connection – there’s nothing in the game that says, “HEY YOU JERK, YOUR JUNKIE–Yoink- MODEM/ISP IS RUINING THE GAME FOR OTHERS! DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!”

Having data to go by, they could do something, then check those numbers again to see if it has improved. This means that when HALO 12 comes out, I won’t still be here whining about lag.

FURTHERMORE, MICROSOFT and 343 has obviously spent millions developing code that hides the fact that most of us play on broken connections. Why not use that money to correct the problem instead of creating layers upon layers of script to mask the fact that most of us shouldn’t be wasting our time online. I think a lot of people think that they suck in multiplayer but it’s because their ping is almost always above 200.

6

There is a big thread for Dedicated Servers on Halo 5-6, post there to support that.

https://forums.halowaypoint.com/yaf_postst36861_DEDICATED-SERVERS-H5-H6---SUPPORT-US.aspx

7

Halo 5? How about they fix it for the game they just released that we all paid $60 for.

8

Bringing up Dedicated Server support is completely missing my point. Let’s face reality, here. Because gamers keep wanting MORE and MORE and MORE we are quickly going to face a situation where the “online component” to any game you purchase will “require a minimum connection speed/bandwidth” meaning that people who try to connect to the multiplayer who have very choppy/poor connections will not be allowed to play. This is because games are going to start to look very realistic and consoles will become extremely advanced pieces of hardware. Within 10 years you’ll either be on a fiber-optic line or you won’t be playing these games.

We’re 70% there, today!

All I’m saying is that we need diagnostic screens in all of these games so that we can upgrade our connections. We need to be able to contact our Internet Service Providers and tell them that their “service” is not good enough because “HALO TELLS ME MY AVERAGE PING IS 210, AND MY FRIEND DOWN THE ROAD GETS 120 – GET ME THAT OR I’M FINDING ANOTHER PROVIDER!” <— then ISP’s magically create a higher tier of bandwidth performance for those who want it and who no doubt will pay the extra $20/month to get it, or whatever.

That’s how this is going to play out, folks. People will call Microsoft and can report the info from these in-game diagnostic tools and then have support explain to them what they need to do in order to get lower pings/better online performance.

This is how online gaming (on consoles) is going to evolve. No diagnostics in games means we’re all blind and just walking in circles… which is probably what I do a lot in Halo 4 multiplayer without even knowing it (lag!!!).

I’m actually getting a new modem in the mail next week (going fiber-optic) from a different provider. It would sure be nice if I had some connection diagnostic tools in Halo 4 so that I could tell quickly if there’s an improvement. Finding this out by just playing online is stupid and a big waste of my time. I know I can run tests over my computer and that I’ll do, but why wouldn’t games like Halo already have stuff like that built into it? Like just a way to send a ping test to a Microsoft server that’s in Seattle or something… geeesh! Am I the only one that just wants to get my connection the very best I can? I have so many options available to me from different companies… some help from developers (in-game) would help me out so much as new technologies make themselves available to me from ISPs.