Oh I see. Yeah! Definately I have 8. They keep closing them for no reason and giving me the run around. What is the point in filling out tickets and such.
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Does that mean that big news break about that was a lie? When will it end lol
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Glassdoor would agree with you. Contractors not being hired on is one of their top “cons” listed for the company, multiple people have mentioned that in their reviews.
Sorry snickerdoodle I know your just trying to help. If I remember correctly you’ve been with the team for a long time and we appreciate the word from on high. We are just getting a little fed up. Me? I’m eventually not going to be able to play halo anymore on the account I have had for such a long time because my BandB playlist is getting my account banned perpetually. It’s not like I spend 300 dollars a month on internet or anything. Sry but yeah. We are just all fed up at this point.
If I was to empathize with the team at 343i I would say that no one wanted this level of feedback for the holidays. But I guess it couldn’t be helped.
Never been banned from a game before now though.
I agree, pegging everything that ‘doesn’t necessarily work out as intended’ as ‘willful malice’ (I.E. lies) is a very petulant way to address an evolving issue. I’m sure for ‘343’, fixing the technical aspects of ‘BTB’ is far more complicated than us forumgoers are aware of. I had someone absurdly claim just yesterday that my mere opinions were tantamount to ‘MiSiNfoRmAtIoN’ simply because I wagered ‘BTB’ would be fixed possibly at the latest by ‘mid-February’; they had a ‘mini-freakout’ because I had the pin hidden and didn’t see the update on the 18th. I mean, some folks just want to jump at the chance to be overly rude or condescending to others especially when it isn’t necessary.
Clearly, ‘343’ would love nothing more than to solve this issue, as they benefit from getting ‘BTB’ fixed as well (happy customers).
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It’s not hard to see why the average player count on steam has decreased 70% since launch.
My guess, because it CAN be patched post launch. Modern games aren’t subject to product recall, they can just be fixed. That’s not at all intended to be an excuse, but when you couple that realization with a consumer base that demands everything be better, cheaper, and immediately available and investment driven publishing that demands release windows match consumer demands as much as possible it does paint a clearer picture.
Modern games that seem better made are typically smaller in scope or rudimentary (relatively) in their design. While it’s true older games typically dropped in more complete packages, the last several years of reporting had shown that happened on the backs of hundreds of hours of mandatory (and sometimes unpaid) overtime to make development milestones, which is another thing vocal consumers boo and hiss about before turning right back around and demanding the same results those crappy working conditions produced.
It’s a mess, but at least it’s one that good dev’s stick with and rectify.
Yeah man. All the issues with servers.
People in the EU could do with some servers, same with Australia.
“Servers cost money”
Not when they’re owned by Microsoft, and Big Daddy just spent what…80 billion?
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Any chance of a big btb flight using insider?
There are so many ways to play infinite- pc, various xbox, and my og xbox, which at this point is hanging on by the force like Yoda.
I have a group of 8 for btb, and we all use something different.
Break it up by input?
It drives me nuts this game is like this
To quote the great Ian Malcolm… “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” 
But on a serious note, things are not better, especially in gaming. In fact they are objectively worse. Every AAA title released in the past year or two has been in horrific states, especially when compared with last gen counterparts. Its debateable to call them cheaper (for the consumer), with the advent of digital distribution and the lack of manufacturing costs games are now more expensive than ever before. Halo Infinite has been in the making for 6 years, eventually getting a release a year after it was intended… given its current state, i cant imagine how it would have been received with a years less development. To think we are looking at another year or more before its consistently playable is absurd.
I dont want anyone to think im dunking on the developers, im sure they would rather have the time required to put out a complete, polished and most importantly working product, they are just not given the time required given the scope of the projects these days by ever more greedy publishers.
Ive done my best to ensure i have the best possible experience on Halo, ive got the latest Intel CPU, the best Nvidia GPU, ive geo fenced my connection to get the best possible ping i can to their servers yet still, the shooting aspect of a shooting game is an absolute dice roll. Sometimes i can rain hell on a game, others i feel like i have no bullets.
Im no fan of regulation, but perhaps its time we seriously consider if its something the gaming industry needs, to both protect consumers from half finished, half working products and to protect the people making them from the predatory aspects of greedy publishers or clueless management.
Again, im not dunking on the men and women that put their heart and soul into developing a piece of art, im certain they do it not only for the paycheque but because its something they genuinely enjoy doing. Its the parasitic behaviour of publishers and upper management constantly chasing them dollars where the blame lies.
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I would instead prefer to analyze the problem through a consumer first perspective. Even if the engine was programmed by a different entity than 343 Industries, many other steps are done when developing a piece of code like documentation in order to make it easier for an outside or newcomer to understand the coding architecture and how different systems interact.
This issue is instead evidence of the complexity related to solving any of these issues. The first step is always to build a nuanced understanding over the scope of the issue and the general causes behind it. This step is usually far from trivial due to many systems interacting and the issue may only be present under some truly specific circumstances like playing the game on a specific devise, using specific settings or under some circumstances even related to some external factors like network settings, anti virus software and so on.
Then, when the the possible root causes has been found, a fix can be developed. However, this fix needs to be tested in order to ensure that the fix resolves the issue and that the fix doesn’t introduced other bugs to the system. In some circumstance, the most plausible explanation is that the devs haven’t been able to figure out the root cause of the issue at hand.
I like how they talk about a hotfix that took a month to release and still doesn’t fix anything but break the game even more, like more prevalent disconnects in arena modes.
343 has lied … But not over BTB.
The game is the result of contract work, and those contractors not working on fps titles before. So they gotta dig through various coding and server stuff. It will take awhile to find an appropriate fix. Same with desync… That one will take awhile
Is it unacceptable to have this level of service? I dont disagree with that at all.
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Microsoft spends almost 70 billion dollars on an acquisition and still uses such an amount of contract work like this. I feel like it isn’t really hard to figure out that stuff like this would occur with such a rotating door of people working on it. Very strange.
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It’s a mixture of 343 and Microsoft. They do not want to hire full time employees, and keep their studio smaller to save money. So when the game is done they give the Italy to their contractors. Another side effect of that type of work is laziness and corner cutting because they aren’t getting benefits or stable work.
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BTB works better for me now on Xbox One original. Never worked before
I’m
Taking what snickerdoodle says as he kinda told what more or less happened
Plus sometimes the fix thst gets put out on the devs side looks like it fixes it when it doesn’t happens sometimes I’m sure the issues with btb can be fixed but what I’m seeing here and the misinformation isn’t helping
I do also agree that 343’s communication has been a bit lacking, but I will say this. They have a lot of code to sift through, and a lot of potential causes. People really underestimate how much code is in a typical game.The thing is, fixing broken code can be really tricky. Because when it’s your own code, you are often completely blind to the issue. If you knew what was wrong with your code, you wouldn’t have written it that way. But if you’re fixing someone else’s code, you don’t even know how the heck it works until you read it over a couple billion times or have them explain it to you.
This is all exacerbated by 343’s rumored revolving door policy for some of their employees, which gives them even less time to understand the codebase. 18 month work cycles. People who understand how the game works are forced out and replaced by new people, who have to waste company time figuring it all out again. I don’t know who came up with this atrocious idea, but it certainly wasn’t an engineer.
Worst case scenario is that they have to rewrite almost the entirety of the netcode, which could potentially take a few months. It’s also possible that the people who wrote it originally aren’t even around to explain it anymore, which makes it even more frustrating.
Personally, I’d start by examining all changes that were made when they added those extra playlists, because BTB worked fine before that. But the problem isn’t guaranteed to be there. In fact, that’s probably exactly what they did with the hotfix, and the hotfix didn’t work. That would explain their initial confidence in the fix, and then their immediate disappointment when they realized it’s still broken. This may be a deeper issue, and if it is, it could be almost anywhere in the netcode or its implementation.
I could wait a few months for a BTB fix if it came with a desync fix. Let the network programmers do their thing for a few months, and have the other teams drop us little treats here and there. I legitimately think the community would be happier if we at least got some new content while we wait. Attrition ain’t enough. We need more. They should pull level designers and artists from the campaign DLC if they have to. We all want more maps, right?
I understand that they don’t want to push much of anything before BTB is fixed, because that’s what the community is mad about, but if it’s going to be a long wait, they need to give us some positive things to talk about instead of letting every single discussion be about how BTB and desync still aren’t fixed. Let us at least be like oooo, new maps! Assault is back! New weapons?? New vehicle!? Wowie!!
What 343 needs to do, besides get rid of that weird 18-month cycle, is communicate with us on a level that isn’t just, “Uh-ohs, fix didn’t worky!” Seriously. Guys. If any of you see this, please please try to include a couple of technical details next time something like this happens. Tell us the story. Some of us know that custom game engines are a nightmare, and we understand when your hotfix doesn’t fix the issue entirely. Unfortunately, the majority of people underestimate the work that goes into these things, and to them, game devs all look like a bunch of chimps smashing rocks together while their money burns in the fireplace. Give us more details and maybe they’ll understand that it’s complicated. If you do, I also think the developers in the community would be frothing at the mouth trying to help you narrow down potential causes.
EDIT: Somehow I didn’t notice the dev comment before writing this, lmao.
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Ironic.
I hope this isn’t your reaction to everything else in your life that happens not to work as intended. 343i has demonstrated more of an intentional effort to communicate with their community than any other developer I’ve seen.
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Ok, bad for you. Until today we have no road map for this game. They came up with the idea after the community was screaming for it. Good communication would have been road map at launch, maybe even before. But no even 1,5 months after launch. No road map.
Acknowledging BTB issues took 2 weeks. Acknowledging BTB challenges while BTB not working took like 5 weeks.
Complete silence for 2 weeks during holiday (I an get behind this one, but have seen better)
If this is your gold standard for customer communication i pity you!
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