Anyone who has ever played with someone from another country knows how terribly laggy the game gets, people eating bullets, melees, skipping around, and so on. So much like the Preference settings where you can choose “good connection” or “language”, there should be an option to prefer to play with people in your own country. And perhaps in large countries like the U.S., another preference to play with East/West cost people.
What do you think?
YES!!!
Well, to anyone outside the US Halo is nothing short of a lag-feast.
That’s why EU gamers more or less are forced to play games with higher population (CoD) or games with dedicated servers (Homefront, Battlefield, Gears, Section 8 and just about all PC games).
Sure, in Halo 3 they had the option “language”, but since most of us EU players have UK English as default, we still would get matched across the EU, as well as with people from the rest of the world 
Every time I play Reach, and the last few active months of Halo 3, the teams were always composed of players from all over the world, even if you searched for “good connection”. Japan, Sweden, US, Australia, Mexico, and UK thrown into the same game?!
Lag, lag, blackscreen, lag, invisible opponents and random deaths!
Halo is supposed to be a game where “skill” matters and “teamplay”, not “connection” and “host”.
The best way to solve this issue would be dedicated servers, but 343i decided to pull a Bungie on us, somehow MS biggest exclusive is not worth offering the best lag-free MP experience possible, even if 3rd party games does.
All we can hope for is that they split the MM population, or at least lets you do a regional search. Let EU players play with EU players, Aussies with people near and US with US + Mexico or similar. They need to give us some option, they got to make p2p work despite CoD taking most of the population 1 week after release. Halo 4 needs region filters, needs to focus on getting hosts close to the user.
At least stop matching people from across the world all the time, and change the host if the game lags a lot! rage
No matter population, I think a Halo should be able to pull a few hundred players in any region at any time, at least for the bigger playlists. If the population is to low to create a game, well then tell the players and search for close-by players outside their territory to minimize the lag.
Halo Reach has too small a population spread out too thinly over too many playlists for this to be viable outside of major regions like the US and some European countries.
Most people wouldn’t use the preference so it’d be largely pointless.
I wish there was a playlist that matched players by latency and then let them select the gametype and map seperately.
> Halo Reach has too small a population spread out too thinly over too many playlists for this to be viable outside of major regions like the US and some European countries.
This is not about Halo Reach, this is a thread about Halo 4. No one knows how big the population will be, but we can hope that it will be on par or bigger then Reach. Anyhow, a smaller number of playlists would do a lot, the current population is to spread out anyhow…
Still, if MM fails to find players, it can always expand and search for players in any region, so it won’t be a problem.
> Most people wouldn’t use the preference so it’d be largely pointless.
First of all, you’re wrong. Many people would use a feature, I bet many would even pay to use a feature, that would ensure they got faster matchmaking and less lag/no foreign hosts. How many use the “language” or “chatty” options? are they pointless?
Even so, this should be a default feature that’s enabled, not a (pointless) option, since everyone would benefit from it.
> I wish there was a playlist that matched players by latency and then let them select the gametype and map seperately.
I wish there were a matchmaking system that did, oh wait, dedicated servers does just that. To bad Halo 4 won’t have them, so neither of our wishes will come true, maybe for Halo 5.
Still, latency is the most important factor in MM, even more then skill to me, since I rather play a game against better/worse players, then play against equal players with massive lag.
Connection should be latency, and MM should be able to provide a lag-free game if you which to.
Otherwise you could always choose “skill”, and MM prioritize skill over connection, and you’ll get very even teams even though slightly worse connection. Sadly, in no Halo has neither “skill” nor “good connection” had any visible effect, especially not Reach.
Going to be the first one to say no.
I can see why it’d be good, but I’d prefer NOT to play with people from my country purely because British people annoy me (even though I’m pure british) :S
> Halo Reach has too small a population spread out too thinly over too many playlists for this to be viable outside of major regions like the US and some European countries.
>
> Most people wouldn’t use the preference so it’d be largely pointless.
>
> I wish there was a playlist that matched players by latency and then let them select the gametype and map seperately.
If my memory serves me correct, I do believe 343 said that they were going to keep the playlist options simple in Halo 4 so as NOT to have people spread out too much.
And it’s not that it would ONLY search for people in your country, but rather it would search in your country first (hence “preference”), then if it cannot find any matches there it slowly spreads out further and further looking for matches.
no b/c it should be on by default.
This is a really good idea.
Maybe categorize it into time zones and hemispheres.
Something like “UTC-8 to UTC-5, Northern Hemisphere” etc.
Nothing worse than People talking Gobble-de--Yoink!-.