I know that the chances that anyone from 343 Industries actually reads this thread is slim, but hopefully someone who knows something can offer me some relief in this matter.
What sort of network testing are they doing for Halo 4’s co-op PvE* modes?
In Halo: Reach, unless I’m mistaken, their “network testing” involved people playing the game modes on a LAN connection, or at least using the very same modem. Granted, they improved the system compared to the previous titles, but it just wasn’t good enough. This led to a rather laggy online experience for the rest of us.
I can’t boast about having an excessive amount of knowledge when it comes to network issues, but I would suggest that they test their systems in different buildings using different modems, or preferably with colleagues that live in different continents using (possibly less than) average strength modems. I’m fortunate enough to have a very strong connection, but most of the people I, and you, play with will probably not be able to make the same claim, and that might very well affect our experience as well.
*By “PvE” I mean (as I’m sure you already know) gametypes where you fight the AI rather than the players, such as the campaign and Firefight (Spartan Ops).
They can’t improve it too much. Because of the synchronous network model used in Campaign modes, it’s always going to be dependant on everyone having a good connection. When someone is lacking, everyone will see the side effects.
> They can’t improve it too much. Because of the synchronous network model used in Campaign modes, it’s always going to be dependant on everyone having a good connection. When someone is lacking, everyone will see the side effects.
What’s the reason for why they can’t make the network model for the campaign modes to something similar to the network model the multiplayer uses?
> > They can’t improve it too much. Because of the synchronous network model used in Campaign modes, it’s always going to be dependant on everyone having a good connection. When someone is lacking, everyone will see the side effects.
>
> What’s the reason for why they can’t make the network model for the campaign modes to something similar to the network model the multiplayer uses?
I think the reasoning was that [Bungie] wanted the AI behaviour to be consistent between players, and to do that, a lot more code has to be exchanged between the host and players (Meaning more bandwidth usage).
Not sure of specifics, but if you shoot randomly in firefight, that action has to be sent to the host and and sent back to everyone else. If someone shoots and their connection is laggy, the game will wait until it receives the data before progressing.
If they were to try and use the multiplayer netcode, it would be a complete mess with the AI involved.