Im thinking about getting Halo 2 for the PC, but my main concern is the population online. How does it work and would I have any trouble finding games?
I can never play a “matchmaking” game on an official Live server (or whatever). I always have to play on a custom hosted server. When I’ve been on recently, there has been 20-50 usually, with just over 100 being the absolute max I’ve seen. Not sure if there is any way to get these numbers to increase (some setting I can change on my end, maybe location or something).
There is no such thing as Matchmaking on Halo 2 Vista. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Maybe you’re confusing that with “Quick Match” which just slaps you into a random server.
I would put a screenshot of the current population, but the servers are currently down for some reason. Instead I’ll just leave you with one I took a few weeks ago.
If you like to play free for all snipers on Lockout with quite a few players or 4 Team Sniper CTF on Foundation you’ll be happy with Halo 2 Vista.
I still play it. The servers that are fan hosted, are great servers. I know people from the websites that own and maintain the servers, and they have a lot of things to combat hacks, hate speech, and team killing. I say, go for it. It’s actually surprising how many people still play it.
Is it surprising in a positive way or a negative way to you? If anything it should be negative. The fact that Halo 2 Vista has a max of about 85 players at one given time whereas Halo Custom Edition has over 1,000 at any given time should show you how bad that is. That’s just counting Custom Edition. If you bring in regular Halo: Combat Evolved PC you have over 1,500 easily.
If you never played Halo 2 before, I say go for it. It’s not much worth your money if you already own the Xbox version.
> Is it surprising in a positive way or a negative way to you? If anything it should be negative. The fact that Halo 2 Vista has a max of about 85 players at one given time whereas Halo Custom Edition has over 1,000 at any given time should show you how bad that is. That’s just counting Custom Edition. If you bring in regular Halo: Combat Evolved PC you have over 1,500 easily.
Positive. I don’t play CE, because I find that the servers don’t really have any anti cheat measures. H2V, has many tools to detect trainers, and hacks.
It’s normally around 50-150 each day.
> Positive. I don’t play CE, because I find that the servers don’t really have any anti cheat measures. H2V, has many tools to detect trainers, and hacks.
How can you possibly see positive in the fact that Halo 2 Vista has that amount of a population? The only people, other than you, that take joy in that are people who hate the game. A population that low for a game that released in 2007 is absolutely terrible. Definitely when the prior game has around 18x more players.
Shows you have no idea what you’re talking about. Halo: Combat Evolved did have Anti-Cheat similar to MonstrMoose’s. Your argument is invalid. Also, none of the servers that have Anti-Cheat are even populated due to it. The only way you can really play on them is through organized games.
> It’s normally around 50-150 each day.
When was the last time you have seen 150 players on Halo 2 Vista? For me it’s been at least 2 years. In fact, I haven’t seen over 100 in quite some time.
> > Positive. I don’t play CE, because I find that the servers don’t really have any anti cheat measures. H2V, has many tools to detect trainers, and hacks.
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> How can you possibly see positive in the fact that Halo 2 Vista has that amount of a population? The only people, other than you, that take joy in that are people who hate the game. A population that low for a game that released in 2007 is absolutely terrible. Definitely when the prior game has around 18x more players.
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> Shows you have no idea what you’re talking about. Halo: Combat Evolved did have Anti-Cheat similar to MonstrMoose’s. Your argument is invalid. Also, none of the servers that have Anti-Cheat are even populated due to it. The only way you can really play on them is through organized games.
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> > It’s normally around 50-150 each day.
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> When was the last time you have seen 150 players on Halo 2 Vista? For me it’s been at least 2 years. In fact, I haven’t seen over 100 in quite some time.
Was there really a need to be rude? Just because I prefer H2V over CE? Really? Real mature, bro. Real mature.
When I DO play CE. Its infested with hackers. My experience. Who are you to tell me what I did and didn’t experience it?
H2V > CE
Deal with it.
If you want to play on Lockout(Snipers/BR) or Coagulation(CTF) all day long then pick it up. If you actually plan on playing other maps just give up all hope on getting this game. I really don’t understand it. I can host 40 Coagulation games in a row and as soon as I decide I’m going to add variety and play better maps (Containment, Terminal, Relic) everyone leaves the game. What a bunch of d-bags… Their is no variety on H2V. Seriously … H2V makes me sick to my stomach. It probably doesn’t help either that I’m so dead set on getting a decent game on a decent map and my internet connection and laptop are both crap. My dedication on H2V fails so hard. -Yoink!- and 343 just needs to stop being such buttheads and give us H2 multiplayer on the arcade. They don’t want to split up the Halo Reach player population… -_-
i wanna buy halo 2 pc also but am vista but i dont now if my computer resist the game, it resist halo CE pERFECTLY but so much time already pass
I can’t tell you what your experience was, but I can tell you from my 8 years of experience with the game that there at least 3 times as many people claiming others are hacking rather than actual hackers. I, myself, being called a hacker every single game I play can tell you it’s mostly people who don’t even attempt finding actual evidence before accusing.
I didn’t mean to be rude in my post and if it seemed that way to you then I’m sorry. It’s just that what you were saying was wrong. It’s not up to opinion at all. It was simply false.
I understand that it’s your opinion to like Halo 2 Vista more than Halo: Combat Evolved PC/Halo Custom Edition, but what really supports the idea that it was a better port? Pretty much anyone that knows what they’re talking about thinks it’s an absolutely terrible port that stands to show Microsoft has absolutely no idea what they’re doing when it comes to PC gaming. That’s why there’s such a low population in the game. This isn’t me being rude, this is just me giving my opinion. Just to ad to that, these are opinions based on factual evidence.
To end all this, I go back to my original statement. A population of 85 max players at any given time is not a positive for a game that has only been out since 2007. For Christ’s sake, the original Counter-Strike, officially released in 2000 (Mod in 1999), has over 70,000 players max each day. Halo: Combat Evolved, the predecessor to Halo 2, has around 700 max at a given time. Halo Custom Edition, a free add-on to Combat Evolved, usually has over 1,200 max at any given time. The base game releasing in 2003 and the add-on releasing in 2004. How you can possibly consider Halo 2 Vista’s population to be impressive is beyond me.
With my opinion, along with around 22x the amount of players that play Halo 2 Vista, I say Halo: Combat Evolved/Halo Custom Edition beats Halo 2 Vista out of the water. You can’t argue with those numbers or amount of factual evidence supporting the fact that game was a terrible port. In fact, I’m willing to say Halo 2 Vista is a guide to how not to port a game, along with Modern Warfare 2. Keep in mind Combat Evolved wasn’t that great of a port either. Supporting this game in saying that it was a good port just makes things like this happen more often and I fully oppose that idea. It’s utter “fanboyism” to even think it was decent.
I respect that you can have a differing opinion than me, but that doesn’t change that your opinion is based on absolute non-sense and a complete lack of evidence.
Edit: I thought I would add this little tid-bit in here that I forgot about while typing this out before:
The last time I got on Halo 2 Vista by myself, I went onto a very popular server that apparently bans players for using hacks by forcing them to run Anti-Cheat if they find anyone suspicious of using hacks. While I was there, I found 3 people of that server’s official group using hacks to get to the top of Lockout and throwing plasma grenades like a machine gun. That was my personal experience.
HCE > H2V
Deal with it. 
(Disclaimer: This is not me hating on Halo 2. This is me giving my opinion about the porting job done by Microsoft and commenting on the status of Halo 2 Vista. I continue to love and support Halo 2 as a game on both the Xbox and PC platform. In fact, earlier tonight I had great fun in an organized game night on Xbox Connect. My opinions on Halo 2, specifically Vista in this case, come from a loving place. A very critical loving place. It’s not of hate in any regard.
When I discuss things through forums such as this I do not mean anything personal by it. In fact people have been taken back with how friendly I am with them personally after the only interaction they’ve had with me was on forums where I had long opposing discussions with them. I feel that one of the main points of a forum is to discuss and if I come off as rude/hateful, please forgive me. That is not my intent.)
> There is no such thing as Matchmaking on Halo 2 Vista. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Maybe you’re confusing that with “Quick Match” which just slaps you into a random server.
That’s why I put it in quotations. It says “Quickmatch, Custom Match, Browse Games, Create New Game,” however, when you click on the quickmatch option, it goes into a matchmaking scenario, and actually uses the words, which is why I chose to, but only with quotes, since you chose quickmatch beforehand. The process of pairing you up, however, is still matchmaking. Not throwing you into a random lobby. It may just appear that way now, because there is so few players.
No, it was always just Quickmatch. Ever since day one. The only reason it does the matchmaking screen is because they were too lazy to make a new one. 