I feel betrayed. Australia does have a very small community in comparison to the US, but Halo has always been huge here. Now it seems we have been forgotten because we are of no great value to Microsoft or 343i. I loved the campaign, spops is okay, i enjoy the achievements and the new implementations. But multiplayer is broken for Aussies. And all would be forgivable if there was a reasonable excuse but there isnt for a company like Microsoft and a budget like what was given to 343i.
Having a solid and consistant region filter is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT, especially when no local search preference is included. However the region filter for halo 4 is ridiculous. I must also comment on the fact that 343i excluded a local search option. Bungie included it for Reach and 3, so it makes it ever more apparant that Australians have been intentionally shunted out.
I have soooo much respect for Bungie, and as I started the campaign of Halo 4 I thought i would have the same respect for 343i over the years, but now i find it hard to appreciate all the good things because of this one very significant flaw.
If every Call of Duty and Halo in recent years can do this, why cant Halo 4 do it? Is this frustrating anyone else? Australians or anyone else living out of the US? It might even affect americans, im sure a few of you have been matched with aussies who had the luck of gaining host.
Clearly they aren’t going to have everything worked out in the first game people. if you start asking the right people or make a well written and nice thread, problems will get noticed.
> Clearly they aren’t going to have everything worked out in the first game people. if you start asking the right people or make a well written and nice thread, problems will get noticed.
I understand that, 343i is young and obviously they are going to make mistakes but you also have to remember that 343i didnt build Halo 4 from scrath and they’ve had plenty of expirence with the coding with Halo reach and CEA .
Halo 4 may be their first official game but it has many flaws and 343i rightly holds the blame .
> Clearly they aren’t going to have everything worked out in the first game people. if you start asking the right people or make a well written and nice thread, problems will get noticed.
As an Aussie, I back what the OP is saying completely, its hard for us, and any other foreign country to find a decent game that doesn’t cause lag so intense the game becomes unplayable.
Your objection makes no sense, yes for a new company of course there are going to be minor and major flaws, but the thing is. We haven’t heard ANYTHING about a regional filter at all. Meaning it is probably not simply a hiccup but a feature they thought was irrelevant during the development period.
By no means is Halo 4 a terrible game, but when a small factor such as a regional filter comes between a player and an enjoyable experience, I think a comment from the developers would not be to much to ask?
This thread isnt disrespectful, it is just me voicing my opinions. And im sorry but I cant take the excuse that it is their first game. They had plenty of time, they had bungies games to build on and bungie themselves incorporated these features.
Your excuse would be better suited for gameplay flaws. But theyve actually got all that nailed, halo 4 plays amazingly when the region filter works. I can see no major flaws in the actual game. Its the network filtering that is poor, and this is coming from a group of experienced professionals, some even ex-bungie.
It just looks like an intentional cut corner to me. Im still crossing my fingers that they improve it though. I remember MW2 has huge issues with region filter. The released a patch like 2 months later and it was PERFECT. And i mean PERFECT. Never had a laggy game again. I just hope 343i dont neglect the international community. It CAN be done, even post launch, so there are no excuses for it remaining in this state.
then you’ll understand why matchmaking is fundamentally broken in this game.
The idea of matching people based on geography is nice in theory but it dosn’t take into account that someone living a mile from you may have a really poor ISP & connection where someone 200 miles away would in fact be the better host due to how an ISP routes their traffic and the location of their central hub.
343’s system factors in player skill, and matchmaking may decide that players in China would be a better match for you, even though there is a local game needing one more player - because there is a perceived skill mismatch the system may dump you into another continent.
The system basically works on hypotheticals and estimates. And connection speeds/latency do not appear to be top priority. Host selection also appears to be out to lunch.
> > Clearly they aren’t going to have everything worked out in the first game people. if you start asking the right people or make a well written and nice thread, problems will get noticed.
>
> As an Aussie, I back what the OP is saying completely, its hard for us, and any other foreign country to find a decent game that doesn’t cause lag so intense the game becomes unplayable.
>
> Your objection makes no sense, yes for a new company of course there are going to be minor and major flaws, but the thing is. We haven’t heard ANYTHING about a regional filter at all. Meaning it is probably not simply a hiccup but a feature they thought was irrelevant during the development period.
>
> By no means is Halo 4 a terrible game, but when a small factor such as a regional filter comes between a player and an enjoyable experience, I think a comment from the developers would not be to much to ask?
> read this https://forums.halowaypoint.com/yaf_postst170354_How-Matchmaking-Works---A-Basic-Overview.aspx
>
> then you’ll understand why matchmaking is fundamentally broken in this game.
>
> The idea of matching people based on geography is nice in theory but it dosn’t take into account that someone living a mile from you may have a really poor ISP & connection where someone 200 miles away would in fact be the better host.
>
> 343’s system factors in player skill, and matchmaking may decide that players in China would be a better match for you, even though there is a local game needing one more player - because there is a perceived skill mismatch the system may dump you into another continent.
>
> The system basically works on hypotheticals and estimates. And connection speeds/latency do not appear to be top priority. Host selection also appears to be out to lunch.
So it tries to match skill, yet disregards location. Location is a factor of level playing field. If a system is based on skill matching over good connection then it completely contradicts itself because skill cannot win, only the host can. Extremely poor system if thats the case man.
> > Clearly they aren’t going to have everything worked out in the first game people. if you start asking the right people or make a well written and nice thread, problems will get noticed.
>
> As an Aussie, I back what the OP is saying completely, its hard for us, and any other foreign country to find a decent game that doesn’t cause lag so intense the game becomes unplayable.
>
> Your objection makes no sense, yes for a new company of course there are going to be minor and major flaws, but the thing is. We haven’t heard ANYTHING about a regional filter at all. Meaning it is probably not simply a hiccup but a feature they thought was irrelevant during the development period.
>
> By no means is Halo 4 a terrible game, but when a small factor such as a regional filter comes between a player and an enjoyable experience, I think a comment from the developers would not be to much to ask?
I really feel for you guys. I mean, if I’m in the U.S, and I have laggy matches with people within the U.S, then I can’t even imagine what you guys have to deal with. On top of that, for the month or so that I was really into Spartan Ops, whenever my best friend and I would play a game by ourselves, it would either be completely unplayable for one or the other, or we would be able to run a couple of Missions and THEN it became unplayable. The worst part? He only lives about 3 hours away.
I totally understand and support the concept of Worldwide gaming, but it’s hard enough to attempt it with dedicated servers, let alone p2p.
I see everyone has similar problems ey. And yes youre right in saying it is hard. But if this was some low level budget game from some no name company then it would be forgivable. But this is something they need to fix otherwise Halo 5 and Halo 6 WILL decline. Bungies Destiny might just save us all.
I’m in the UK so most days my connection is no worse than it ever was(though Americans still shoot round corners). There have been instances however, when the post game player search just stalls. On one occasion I decided to wait it out with the 5 other players. After 5-10 minutes I got bored an started viewing their gamer cards and was surprised to find I’d been matched with an Australian, Korean, Austrian, American and a Chilean. What sort of gameplay or search times are supposed to result from that? Regional filter = NEEDED
> Clearly they aren’t going to have everything worked out in the first game people. if you start asking the right people or make a well written and nice thread, problems will get noticed.
Given your name you are clearly no halo noob, however this response is nothing more than a halo 4 fanboy response.
They may not have written any MP games previously besides a few maps on CEA with reaches engine, but not only are most of them previous bungie employees they are also not noobs in gaming development either on top of the fact they have had 11 years of beta testing MP with the previous halos and the last few years to skip through the 2 million forum posts.
> Clearly they aren’t going to have everything worked out in the first game people. if you start asking the right people or make a well written and nice thread, problems will get noticed.
I’m sorry but I’m calling bull -Yoink- on that. Region and connection filters have been in Halo for 5 years and suddenly they take away a staple feature to push their -Yoink- matchmaking system and pathetic UI. They can’t even add it in when for the past 2 games it’s been there. It’s pathetic how shoddy of a job 343i gave to matchmaking. “ooh you can join in progress now and join games faster because of it.” BIG DEAL. I’d rather wait 2-5 minutes with a connection or region filter on and get a fresh game with a perfect connection to the host, than wait 15 seconds to join a game hosted on the other side of the world which is laggy as balls, and have my team losing 450 - 90.
> not only are most of them previous bungie employees they are also not noobs in gaming development either on top of the fact they have had 11 years of beta testing MP with the previous halos
There’s only a small handful of people at 343 who have worked for Bungie. I’ve asked it before and I’ll ask it yet again: where did this whole “343 is full of ex-Bungie employees” thing come from?
I currently still live in The Netherlands, but I’ll be migrating to Australia sometime in 2013. I better enjoy Halo while I can, because I have a feeling I won’t be enjoying it much once I get there. This thought alone is already a little off-putting though.
I wish there was a system where one team is all Americans, and the other team is all Australians. I like to shoot non-Americans with my American buddies. Having a British guy and a Japanese guy help me Team-DMR an American on the other team feels wrong. Hopefully in the future we can just do virtual proxy wars instead of real ones. 500 Americans on one team, 500 Australians on the other. Make it happen 343.
> I am from Australia and for most days for the majority of them days the game is pretty much unplayable for me.
I’m also Australian and, overall, it’s been fine for me. That said, problems became more frequent about three weeks ago. From release until then I had next to no Match Making issues. Now it seems to be an ever increasing thing.
@StallionR Being a new developer is a legitimate excuse. What isn’t excusable is Microsoft looking over their shoulders constantly and forcing them to release a game on a set in stone date, regardless of whether the game is ready or not.
@TheRealCavalier There’s a good idea wrapped in your terrible idea but for a game like Halo, that’s just wrong.
I don’t want to hear it anymore Australia. If the guys in Iceland can make EVE online and Dust 514. Then you can stop boxing Kangaroos and make your own damn space game, then the rest of the world has to deal with a crap connection and you can say that’s not a laser gun. Now this is a laser gun…pew pew pew…
