Halo 5: Guardians is shaping up to be a stellar installment into the Halo Series. Campaign looks to be a deep, engaging experience that will greatly flesh out the Master Chief & Blue Team. Multiplayer seems to be engaging and highly competitive. Truthfully, this game is going to be a blast, for anyone that loves Halo; however, there is a problem. Anyone who wants to fully experience Halo 5: Guardians will need a high speed internet connection with minimal latency (ping) to be able to utilize dedicated servers, which is where every multiplayer/cooperative game mode will be hosted. This poses a problem for people - like myself - who have internet connections that are not fast enough to sustain a connection over an offsite server. Now, there is a relatively simple solution to this problem. Because internet speeds are too slow (slow is referencing the ping time, not upload/download speeds) to sustain a connection to an offsite server, users need an option to create a server that operates over a Local-Area-Network (LAN). Now this could take the form of an Xbox One acting as the host server, or 343 Industries could develop an app available to download onto a PC, that would allow a PC to act as the server and host games over a LAN.
I think that the ability to play peer-to-peer (i.e. over a LAN) would be a great addition to Halo 5: Guardians because it would be a solution for players with dismal internet connections who want to experience the co-operative aspect of campaign and for those who want to be able to play multiplayer. It might even be a means to satisfy people who would like split screen- I realize that it wouldn’t be the best of replacements for split-screen, but it would, at least, be some form of a substitute. To keep things simple game types like Warzone, or matchmaking wouldn’t be able to be played over an offsite server. Only Campaign, Custom Games, & Forge would be available over a peer-to-peer connection. Hopefully, with the aid of the Waypoint Community, enough support for this idea can be rallied, so that we can make Halo 5: Guardians an even more superb game, that is accessible to millions of additional players (A). Furthermore, I’d like to suggest that this feature be available in a future content update, or maybe as an optional one time transaction (The one time transaction might be better for the PC app, but it could probably also work for the Xbox One too).
Quick breakdown on ways to make peer-to-peer games happen:
Option 1:
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Add Peer-to-peer play through a content update. - This option would operate how system link on the Xbox 360 operates.Option 2:
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Develop an app for Xbox One that, when launched, allows a Xbox One to act as a Halo 5 server for a LAN. - The app, when active, would turn off most of an Xbox’s functionality off & other Xboxes, on the same network as the host Xbox, would be able to join the host Xbox as if it were a dedicated server.Option 3:
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Works like option 2; however, a PC would host the game instead of an Xbox one.Note about Functionality: All three of these options would still require you to be signed in to Xbox live. The difference between peer-to-peer mode & dedicated server mode would be that in peer-to-peer mode game related network traffic would not be leaving the LAN, the only traffic leaving would be data required to maintain a connection to Xbox Live.
Thanks for taking the time to read this suggestion. Any additional ideas & feedback that people would like to suggest are welcome. Constructive criticism, and debate on this topic is encouraged, as long as it is civil & follows forum rules. Also, if anyone could secure any solid information (speculation would work also- just make sure to mention that it’s speculation) on the necessary specifications (i.e. minimum RAM, CPU speed, etc.), for a PC to host a local Halo 5 server would be great. Another helpful piece of information would be the required amount of bandwidth for a LAN to support a co-op campaign match and a multiplayer match with the maximum player count (necessary speed to host each match individually, not at the same time).
(A) http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/01/satellite-internet-15mbps-no-matter-where-you-live-in-the-us/
As you can see in article A, Satellite internet has high download/upload speed, but it doesn’t have good ping time, which means that playing multiplayer, or campaign over a server is impossible for those with satellite internet. By including the above mentioned features, Halo 5: Guardians would be accessible to many more gamers.