I’ve been spending a lot of time reading through these forums the last few days. I’m (again) considering walking away from Halo 4 because the online multi-player is a complete waste of my time. During 2 1/2 hours I got two decent games in-so-far as lag is concerned. I’ve read a lot of complaints about the upcoming weapons updates lately. I’m curious as to whether players consider the terrible matchmaking system (which results in the laggy games) as more of a priority, or nerf-ing/updating specific weapons.
Personally, I’d play this game at least once a day if I knew I didn’t have to play 10 games to get 1 game in which everyone wasn’t lagging, which results in rage-quitters, which results in black screens… all of which leads to players getting JIP’d, and then complaints on forums about JIP’s… on and on and on.
I can live with knowing you can spawn with Plasma Grenades, I can live with over-powered weapons, I can live with AA’s, and I can live with knowing that grenade spammers who go 20-38 get 1st place even though they lose the game for us, and everything else… the lag is more than enough to make me walk.
This is what has made me play alot less in recent months as when i have a spare 4-5 hours in the evening i dont wana waste a good hour or more before i get 1 decent game. Its such a hit of fresh water when your first game is a decent connection and they stay decent for atleast 5-6 games after.
So can not wait for Xbox one DEDICATED SERVERS, at long last
I agree that lag is more important than any other problem with H4.
Is this a difficult fix for them? If not, how can it still be bad?
I have 7-10 friends that play(ed) Halo (3 barely play so hard to count).
There is me and 1 other friend that still play. Lag was why all the others quit (3 casuals would have quit by now anyway, but still). And I’m not exaggerated.
The gameplay is fine (I didn’t say perfect, but still ‘have fun-able’)… but the lag ruins all fun regardless of the games current gameplay state.
If you’re having huge problems with lag all the time, it’s you or the people you’re partied up with. Do you always play with the same people or do you play alone? That’s what you need to think about. It’s not the game, it’s your internet connection or someone in your party.
I know I have the best connection experience when I play alone. It usually doesn’t lag. It’s when I party up with people that lag becomes much more common, not sure why, but I do notice a pattern. I think when you play alone it can match you up with better games that will run better. That’s just an educated guess.
Also, lag is the most common in BT because it has the most people, so there’s the most opportunity for something to go wrong.
I’m another person who consistently lags and rage quits. My download upload speeds are fairly average but completely normal - 6 down 1 up. In my experience over hundreds of games, it has nothing to do with the players you’re with. The host selection and network issues, along with an inability by 343 to put a Best Good Connection or Regional option in their playlists, results in me playing teams from regions nowhere near me. I regularly get setup with people from Canada and Mexico. My favorite was getting owned by a team of opponents who were all from Argentina/Chile/Columbia. Can you guess who won 600-120 and who had major lag problems?
Hitscan doesn’t work when you shoot a guy and they teleport away from your scope on every shot. Melee doesn’t work with lag. Close combat battles are a joke.
I’ve gotten teams together, groups of 4 who play well and communicate, and then we get in a game where the game just lags to sh*t and half the game is host switching black screens. I mean seriously if I go 2 games without a black screen and death mid game it’s like hallelujah.
And then surprise surprise once every 50 games or so I’ll get host and OMG I suddenly own everyone, all my shots are registering.
No, the game is simply broken. It almost seems to be a day to day thing. Some days it will work fine and I’ll get 2-3 hours of decent play. Other days it’s very obviously broken and I have 3 hours of eating the dirt, unloading full clips into guys and still going 6 and 17. On those days if I get one good game I’m lucky. There’s no rhyme or reason that I can find.
Please don’t waste our time with the 343 mantra " It’s your connection - not H4" as in 99% of the time it isn’t us - it’s H4.
The main lag is due to Host selection (Host History versus picking the person with best connection for each match), which I have described in detail in a real world example of how it’s broken here:
Also note that the host selection also affect Co-Op Spartan Ops and likely Campaign too.
The second issue is how it will toss people together from all over the world into a single game instead of applying regional filters to match up people by location. The closer you are to your opponent, the less likely distance lag will be a factor.
Both of these issues can be addressed by changing the game set up servers (the one that put people together and then selects a host while we are in the Lobby) - so they do not need to change the XBox game to solve this.
Although I have no URL proof, I remember reading peoples accounts of 343 representatives attending various Game panels (i.e. PAX, E3 etc.) where 343 stated they were happy with the networking and saw no need to do anything with it. That was several months ago - hopefully they have changed their tune with the massive drops in population.
And if you guys want to play Halo without lag, switch to Halo Reach which is what I now play for my Halo fix. Despite lower number of players in the lobby for BTB (500 to 1,500 nightly in BTB - Around 15,000 to 22,000 per night playing), I turn on the “Good Connection” filter in Reach, find a BTB game within a few minutes of waiting in the Lobby and 95% of the time have a LAG FREE Game! Even without that filter enabled, I might get 10 to 15% of my games having 0.5+ seconds lag. With H4 70% of my 1400 war games were lagged by 0.5+ seconds - and that is when there were 8,500+ in the BTIS lobby in June too.
The Sad part here is that 343 has access to the Reach game and server code, so they have ZERO excuse for not re-implenting it in H4.
> And if you guys want to play Halo without lag, switch to Halo Reach which is what I now play for my Halo fix. Despite lower number of players in the lobby for BTB (500 to 1,500 nightly in BTB - Around 15,000 to 22,000 per night playing), I turn on the “Good Connection” filter in Reach, find a BTB game within a few minutes of waiting in the Lobby and 95% of the time have a LAG FREE Game! Even without that filter enabled, I might get 10 to 15% of my games having 0.5+ seconds lag. With H4 70% of my 1400 war games were lagged by 0.5+ seconds - and that is when there were 8,500+ in the BTIS lobby in June too.
You post this same exact thing every time i see you posting, the whole 0.5 second lag stats and such, your ctrl + c and ctrl + v key combo must be quite worn out.
Yes we know you have Lag issues, we all have, blame that on the lack of local search filters that we used to have on previous games, sadly LAG wont be fixed in H4 and with the population dropping more and more the host selection becomes even worse, so yes Reach and even H3 are better options to play now.
> If you’re having huge problems with lag all the time, it’s you or the people you’re partied up with. Do you always play with the same people or do you play alone? That’s what you need to think about. It’s not the game, it’s your internet connection or someone in your party.
>
> I know I have the best connection experience when I play alone. It usually doesn’t lag. It’s when I party up with people that lag becomes much more common, not sure why, but I do notice a pattern. I think when you play alone it can match you up with better games that will run better. That’s just an educated guess.
>
> Also, lag is the most common in BT because it has the most people, so there’s the most opportunity for something to go wrong.
I experience lag on any playlist. I’ve since started playing Reach instead, and have yet to experience any lag whatsoever. I always play solo, unless my gf is playing split-screen with me, and either way the lag is the same. It’s not my internet (proven by EVERY other online game I play) and it’s not who I play with. It’s halo’s terrible host selection and netcode.
> > And if you guys want to play Halo without lag, switch to Halo Reach which is what I now play for my Halo fix. Despite lower number of players in the lobby for BTB (500 to 1,500 nightly in BTB - Around 15,000 to 22,000 per night playing), I turn on the “Good Connection” filter in Reach, find a BTB game within a few minutes of waiting in the Lobby and 95% of the time have a LAG FREE Game! Even without that filter enabled, I might get 10 to 15% of my games having 0.5+ seconds lag. With H4 70% of my 1400 war games were lagged by 0.5+ seconds - and that is when there were 8,500+ in the BTIS lobby in June too.
>
> You post this same exact thing every time i see you posting, the whole 0.5 second lag stats and such, your ctrl + c and ctrl + v key combo must be quite worn out.
>
> Yes we know you have Lag issues, we all have, blame that on the lack of local search filters that we used to have on previous games, sadly LAG wont be fixed in H4 and with the population dropping more and more the host selection becomes even worse, so yes Reach and even H3 are better options to play now.
Regardless of how many times he’s posted this, it only took me seeing it once to go out and buy Reach, and I can’t thank you enough BeserkWolf. My gf and I now play split-screen Reach exclusively and have yet to experience a laggy game.
It’s think it’s common knowledge now that Halo 4 net code probably isn’t as good as Reach but as long as the population is reasonable it tends to be bare able enough for me. I don’t think there is a great deal they can do about that now. Halo 5 should run a hell of a lot smoother for everyone with the network Microsoft is setting up though.
Lag. The weapons, etc are all okay in my book. (Not great in every case, but certainly not enough to make me stop playing). But the lag can be brutal sometimes.
> Dedicated servers will not help Gears of war 3 tried the dedicated and it failed so don’t keep your hopes up.
Dedicated servers on the 360 and on the X-Box One really aren’t the same thing. The X-Box One network will be much better than anything that could be set up on the old 360.
> It’s think it’s common knowledge now that Halo 4 net code probably isn’t as good as Reach but as long as the population is reasonable it tends to be bare able enough for me. I don’t think there is a great deal they can do about that now. Halo 5 should run a hell of a lot smoother for everyone with the network Microsoft is setting up though.
As a game developer myself, there is no excuse that 343 could give me to explain why the matchmaking hasn’t been fixed, other than it is somehow completely tied to the client rather than the server, and cannot be remedied with a downloadable update… and if that is the case, I have no faith in Halo 5 whatsoever. I will stick with tried-and-true, and spend my money on Destiny, since Bungie has proven themselves time and time again… otherwise, none of us would be here discussing 343’s screw up in these forums.
Have to go with the matchmaking connection issues here over weapons. There’s no use updating weapons when the player we’re aiming at is bouncing all over the screen because of lag.
> I will stick with tried-and-true, and spend my money on Destiny, since Bungie has proven themselves time and time again…
That’s cool. Personally I have respect for Bungie as a developer but they lost me at Reach for various reasons, so I will have to wait and see how Destiny turns out before I go back to them. Multiplayer isn’t the only thing that draws me to Halo.
> You post this same exact thing every time i see you posting, the whole 0.5 second lag stats and such, your ctrl + c and ctrl + v key combo must be quite worn out.
Just a point of clarification. I never “Copy and Paste” anything except long URLs. I force myself to type out my reply each and every time. If you compare them to previous postings, the numbers are the same, but the wording is likely be different. The why of that is self explanatory.
And I’m done with H4 and 343. I won’t be back on the H4 lists to “bother” you or 343 going forward. The only reason I did it was to try and shame 343 into responding - that obviously never will work.
Ya’ll do realize that separate teams work on optimization of the game (lag) and weapon balancing, don’t you? That means they [can] be worked on simultaneously. Nothing is “first”.