Time taken for CSR, why?

Games Other Halo
1

While I appreciate how much work must be going on over at 343i I do not understand the time taken to implement the CSR. Being a web developer for almost 15+ years I understand what they’ll be coding to produce CSR. Here is some comments in point form:

  1. It is not in game so they have no game code, release, bugs etc to develop or test.

  2. They are not altering game code apart from playlists linked to CSR.

  3. Points 1 & 2 dictate they’ll simply be using data queries combined with true skill and anti-cheating systems to produce CSR results.

  4. The results are written out and formatted for the Waypoint website.

  5. So they have TrueSkill integration, Waypoint design/coding, algorithm(s) for the actual rank calculations, testing of the system overall, internal XBL live testing then iterative development/polish testing for the final public release.

I do not understand the time involved here at all. My company develops complex ecommerce websites that take no where near as long as building one website layout, data mining and results display with some browser testing. The browser testing is mostly complete as Waypoint already operates in a live environment.

Someone please explain this to me. I’m not really hating on CSR but it points to the slow wheels turning over at 343i. I hope they are able to produce what I would class as a small-medium feature and it’s been on the books for months now with another two months before delivery. Crazy IMO.

2

I don’t mean to sound patronizing when I ask this, but do you remember all the problems that went on when Bungie tried to show player models on their website during the Halo: Reach days? They essentially had to integrate parts of the Matchmaking servers, their own stats servers, and the forums (for avatar functionality). The service was down for months, never updating the website images it was designed to display.

I don’t know much about the innards of these sorts of things, but it seems apparent that linking and coordinating a web service with the Matchmaking servers is a very difficult affair.

3

> I don’t mean to sound patronizing when I ask this, but do you remember all the problems that went on when Bungie tried to show player models on their website during the Halo: Reach days? They essentially had to integrate parts of the Matchmaking servers, their own stats servers, and the forums (for avatar functionality). The service was down for months, never updating the website images it was designed to display.
>
> I don’t know much about the innards of these sorts of things, but it seems apparent that linking and coordinating a web service with the Matchmaking servers is a very difficult affair.

Firstly I am a fair person, I like Halo 4 and I enjoy a new game experience.

Player spartan models are already functioning so they have little to do with my post at hand. I completely agree with you regarding integration issues, servers, third party systems, load balancing and all the wonderful complex aspects of backend systems development.

I have 20+ years of IT experience and my own web development company for 15+ years. I understand exactly what they are dealing with in terms of third party systems, geolocation services, third party web services, in house code/servers, design elements, browser testing, backend databases and all the technology/resource elements that go into producing the CSR they outlined and had in the bulletin.

Now let us take a look at some statistics history with Halo. HaloCharts for example currently and they have no API support but the community is able to produce a statistics website with a clean UI and a fast performing service as well. Take a look at HaloTracker or any number of other community statistics websites over the history of Halo community websites too. You can see they can do it on a dime budget with limited access to official systems and players flock to those sites.

There is no need to over bloat this with crazy UI, no statistics really require integrating as Waypoint already has services for most of what is required and further TrueSkill and rank have been in the Halo engine and in game previously for Reach with Arena and Halo 3 with Ranked playlists as well as Halo 2 for ranked. That’s not entering into leaderboards that were present in Halo 2 or 3 either.

So again why reinvent the wheel here? Did 343i change so much of the engine that these sorts of features have been left out, removed from the engine or now have to be scotch taped on as a Waypoint website/app service rather than in game?

Something is off and it keeps adding up.

Unless they’ve reworked the engine and Halo 5 is a launch title for the next generation xbox later this year or early next year I just don’t see any reason features like CSR should take so long?

I’m positive for Halo 4 but the slowness for TU, playlists/settings flexibility and the arena style classic experience as well as in game rank are all just starting to add up.

4

> Player spartan models are already functioning so they have little to do with my post at hand. I completely agree with your regarding integration issues, servers, third party systems, load balancing and all the wonderful aspects of backend systems development. I have 20+ years of IT experience and my own web development company for 15+.

The player model thing was just an example to illustrate the difficulty. I was just providing my own perspective, not an official answer. :\

I certainly didn’t mean to take a shot at your experience or anything – judging from some of the posts I’ve seen from you in the past, you certainly do know your stuff.

5

> > Player spartan models are already functioning so they have little to do with my post at hand. I completely agree with your regarding integration issues, servers, third party systems, load balancing and all the wonderful aspects of backend systems development. I have 20+ years of IT experience and my own web development company for 15+.
>
> The player model thing was just an example to illustrate the difficulty. I was just providing my own perspective, not an official answer. :
>
> I certainly didn’t mean to take a shot at your experience or anything – judging from some of the posts I’ve seen from you in the past, you certainly do know your stuff.

I enjoy your well thought out and professional posts mate.

Perhaps it’s more a corporate prioritisation issue more than anything. So they do support this for the community but don’t go as far as in game because their priority is making Halo more accessible to a wider and newer audience.

Another words things like weekly updates, TU, map packs, SPOPS etc are more important and thus eating up the resources/schedule.

I just don’t understand some of the decisions when these features were already in the Reach engine. Give those features 1 month of 20 staff out of the 300+ staff and 6 months from launch until April and it seems to me things could have been better.

6

What’s the point in getting ranked for a broken game? Why agrivate myself trying to get a higher rank when the game is a random mess that was created for casuals?

7

> What’s the point in getting ranked for a broken game? Why agrivate myself trying to get a higher rank when the game is a random mess that was created for casuals?

I can understand that. I suppose I was building something up in my own mind around the new map pack in FEB, fileshare in game for 29th, TU for FEB and hoping the returning Slayer Pro V2 combined with CSR would sort of mark a turning point for Halo 4 and a refocus after 343i vision taking centre stage.

Given the latest information about CSR and playlist updates from the bulletin I think my perception of things has been smashed and it’s more casual friendly agenda on the cards (hopefully for now).

Supporting as many players and styles as possible is great but given the game settings and playlists at launch I would have thought some more weighting to the Arena style classic Halo for 1-2 playlists that tie directly into CSR would be more appropriate at this stage. This would go a long way to increasing the population too.

You know shine the light on each sub community for a bit. CTF still shining, Oddball still shining, -Yoink!- default tournament had its time and Griball is getting it’s time in the light next. Perhaps Arena classic style is still on the cards for late FEB or April? Who knows?

8

> What’s the point in getting ranked for a broken game? Why agrivate myself trying to get a higher rank when the game is a random mess that was created for casuals?

This opinion goes against that of about 99% of the forums.

9

> > What’s the point in getting ranked for a broken game? Why agrivate myself trying to get a higher rank when the game is a random mess that was created for casuals?
>
> This opinion goes against that of about 99% of the forums.

Ummm more than half the halo community left because they didn’t like the game. Everyone is/starting to give up on talking on the forums so yeah maybe 99% of the forum community still thinks halo 4 is good and disagrees with me. Why play a broken game for any longer?