Long post warning. Ok so dedicated servers were a great idea and in theory would be great, but not how they did them with halo 5. I have a netduma router which shows where all potential servers are for halo 5. If you live on the east coast you’re in luck. There are plenty of servers to play on in reasonable distance. North west part of the u.s. you are screwed let me explain. So I live in Utah, the closest server to me is in San Diego so over 1000 miles away. The next closest is in the mid west near eastern Oklahoma about 1300 miles away. And then one in Texas about the same distance. There isn’t a single server north or west of me. So everyone in Idaho, northern cal, Washington, Wyoming, etc are even worse off. So the number 1 culprit for lag is obviously distance. I’d assume most people gaming are on a reasonable connection now days considering the advancement of internet providers in the u.s. So any time you connect to halo 5 you have to play on a dedicated server and you can’t change the distance to that server unless you move. So everyone that lives closer to the server than you is at a huge advantage. Now if there were so many servers available that the furthest you played on was say 200 miles, then it wouldn’t be much of an issue. But there aren’t enough servers. But if you play peer to peer you can connect to a player or players much closer to you and then distance isn’t a factor and the game plays well. For example I’ll play cod ghosts which is still on a host system. Even though thE population is only 1000 players I still get great connection games because host can be another player close to me so lag is virtually non existent cause the distance is minimal. But all of us forced to play against people living in cali 10 miles from the dedicated server and we are 1000 miles away literally experience 100 times more latency and no matter your internet speed you can’t bridge that gap. I would love to see a hybrid system where if your best connection is a dedicated server close to you then you connect but if you don’t have one close like all of us in the north west then a host is selected in the middle of all the connected players and we all enjoy a better game.
Be thankful you don’t live on a different continent. lol
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> Be thankful you don’t live on a different continent. lol
^THIS
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> > Be thankful you don’t live on a different continent. lol
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> ^THIS
Peer to Peer connection should at least be an option for everyone on the other side of the pond.
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> > > Be thankful you don’t live on a different continent. lol
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> > ^THIS
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> Pear to pear connection should at least be an option for everyone on the other side of the pond.
Really, what about lag switchers?
Welcome to the world of the non U.S. gamer. We’ve had this problem since day 1 and it hasn’t gotten any better. Josh Holmes did state we the players would be able to choose which servers we wanted to play on, this was changed just before launch with an announcement on a small site nobody has ever heard of. A lot of disgruntled players blame the ranking system and I honestly can’t blame them, if we didn’t have a top 200 champion worlds best it wouldn’t be a problem. In this day and age the consumer deserves choice, and, for 343i to remove that choice and force everyone on to a majority of U.S. servers is nothing but irresponsible and damaging to both the franchise and the loyal customer base. I pre-ordered my digital copy of H5 on the understanding that I could choose the dedicated server I want to play on. 343i in their arrogance believe that their match making algorithm is better choice than us being able to choose a better connection. I’ve been angry about this since day 1 and it’s one of the reasons why H5 is my least played Halo game.
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> > > > Be thankful you don’t live on a different continent. lol
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> > > ^THIS
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> > Pear to pear connection should at least be an option for everyone on the other side of the pond.
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> Really, what about lag switchers?
We dealt with it for most of Halo’s life span anyways, as for lag switching that would be an issue but that’s why it should be an “option” until they either get servers set up or decide they don’t care too do it.
Gonna crib from myself from the last time someone made a topic on this.
Yes, because host advantage, lag switching, black screen resets, host migration, unkickable host griefers, being slowed to a crawl because one kid that was half a world away with a horrible connection was so much better. Switching back to a P2P connection would do much more harm than good. The problems with P2P were and still are well known which is why H5 was marketed with dedicated servers as a selling point. Abandoning a potentially better system for something we know doesn’t work right, because of some issues that are being worked on (and ideally will be resolved) is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I would like for them to eventually allow P2P connections rather than shutting the game down when they shut the servers down, but until that point Servers are much better and less easily abused for multiplayer.
While there are those that have issues with the dedicated servers, a larger percentage of the player base benefits from them and is less hard done than by P2P. The solution is to learn from the problems people encountered in Halo 5 and address those issue before the next game comes out, not to abandon a superior system.
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> > > Be thankful you don’t live on a different continent. lol
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> > ^THIS
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> Pear to pear connection should at least be an option for everyone on the other side of the pond.
While I do think pears are tasty, I’m not sure what connecting them has to do with the issue. 
I know what you mean OP. In theory dedicated servers are a MUCH better idea, but after seeing them in action I’m mixed on them. I agree that the problem is there aren’t enough servers and we can’t choose which one we hook up too.
It would be nice to have the ability to which to peer to peer maybe. I had a great connection, then monitors bounty hit. I don’t know if it’s the servers or what, but ever since that update I get disconnected a pile!!! I’ve had this game since day 1 and before that update I got disconnected maybe once. I’m 100% convinced I’m connecting to a different server now then I was before. I’m in Canada where it’s “ok” server wise, but I REALLY feel for players not in North America 
This is a other reason why LAN should be in Halo again. If you can’t play this game online, it’s pretty much useless!!! LAN would at least let people play with there friends and yes, people still use LAN.
At least you don’t live in Europe.
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> Welcome to the world of the non U.S. gamer. We’ve had this problem since day 1 and it hasn’t gotten any better. Josh Holmes did state we the players would be able to choose which servers we wanted to play on, this was changed just before launch with an announcement on a small site nobody has ever heard of. A lot of disgruntled players blame the ranking system and I honestly can’t blame them, if we didn’t have a top 200 champion worlds best it wouldn’t be a problem. In this day and age the consumer deserves choice, and, for 343i to remove that choice and force everyone on to a majority of U.S. servers is nothing but irresponsible and damaging to both the franchise and the loyal customer base. I pre-ordered my digital copy of H5 on the understanding that I could choose the dedicated server I want to play on. 343i in their arrogance believe that their match making algorithm is better choice than us being able to choose a better connection. I’ve been angry about this since day 1 and it’s one of the reasons why H5 is my least played Halo game.
You’re blaming the wrong thing if you see the ranking system as the issue.
@OP: They got away from p2p for a reason, it was a wanted feature since H3 and personally I got tired of the host switching and constant black screen those games had. Dedicated servers are the way to go when implemented correctly, but I wouldn’t mind a fall back option if p2p as a last resort.
Dedicated servers didn’t ruin H5… lol
I prefer dedicated servers. The issue here is quality and the (Azure?) servers have not held up in that regard. I’m pretty understanding when there are occasional issues if they are resolved in a timely manner. Unfortunately the servers H5 uses have not been very reliable and have not improved in any visible way to the end user since launch a year and a half ago.
I’m a long time MMOer (Ultima Online was my first in the late 90s) and the vast majority of MMO servers stay up for a week with no downtime outside of the server maintenance. Sure they occasionally have issues but they are very rare and usually resolved within a few hours. H5 on the other hand has one issue or another on an almost daily basis whether it be issues loading REQs or player information or just crashing and going down. I’m not sure why that is, but I would think that MS would work tirelessly to ensure a smooth reliable service for everyone seeing as Halo is still its biggest IP (as far as I know).
There are few things more irritating (gaming-wise) than trying to play H5 multiplayer and having issues but being able to do everything else on xbox live including multiplayer for every other game that uses the service.
Data center or region selection would be nice and so would a p2p fallback option.
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> Gonna crib from myself from the last time someone made a topic on this.
>
> Yes, because host advantage, lag switching, black screen resets, host migration, unkickable host griefers, being slowed to a crawl because one kid that was half a world away with a horrible connection was so much better. Switching back to a P2P connection would do much more harm than good. The problems with P2P were and still are well known which is why H5 was marketed with dedicated servers as a selling point. Abandoning a potentially better system for something we know doesn’t work right, because of some issues that are being worked on (and ideally will be resolved) is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I would like for them to eventually allow P2P connections rather than shutting the game down when they shut the servers down, but until that point Servers are much better and less easily abused for multiplayer.
>
> While there are those that have issues with the dedicated servers, a larger percentage of the player base benefits from them and is less hard done than by P2P. The solution is to learn from the problems people encountered in Halo 5 and address those issue before the next game comes out, not to abandon a superior system.
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> > > > Be thankful you don’t live on a different continent. lol
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> > > ^THIS
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> > Pear to pear connection should at least be an option for everyone on the other side of the pond.
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> While I do think pears are tasty, I’m not sure what connecting them has to do with the issue.
**yoinking spell check XD I’m glad you pointed that out lol
Also I did mention for it to be optional regardless of how much worse it is, at least people over the pond can at least play Customs without to many issues.
Any of you played For Honor? Ha! Yeah, never P2P ever again.
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> Any of you played For Honor? Ha! Yeah, never P2P ever again.
I saw videos of the game, and I was shocked at how bad it was thanks to p2p.
Come and play a game like Destiny in Australia and see how bad connections get…
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> > Any of you played For Honor? Ha! Yeah, never P2P ever again.
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> I saw videos of the game, and I was shocked at how bad it was thanks to p2p.
Yeah. If one guy has a crappy connection to the server, everyone gets affected thanks to that 1 guy.
Dedicated servers is the way to go for the future of this franchise. It’s just that it hasn’t been implemented properly.
Wow a player in the U.S complaining about Dedicated servers? If this does not scream “first world problems” I don’t know what does.
Seriously mate, if i could get matches consistently at the same connections you do (I am in Australia) I would be playing Halo 5 everyday. Unfortunately, I cannot find matches at all, I am forced to play expanded. Which means in Arena I get matched with onyxes and I play with 2 seconds of lag between me and the player I am shooting. Seriously.
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> Come and play a game like Destiny in Australia and see how bad connections get…
I know the pain. Destiny is even worse. Only reason I play it over H5 atm is because I can find matches. Connection is always horrible though.
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> Be thankful you don’t live on a different continent. lol
This too. I wonder what OP would do it they were in Europe, Australia etc etc…
This “skill” driven matchmaking is the main reason for the absence of selectable data centers.
Is a classic priority problem:
- Build a matchmaking completely driven by connection quality where good connection and fast player searching is the first thing; only after that put some “skill” filter that will be, of course, much weaker than the actual one because it would not be the first priority; - Build a matchmaking system where skill is the main factor: people should be grouped only through their skill level (calculated by some algorithms) without taking into account connection, distance, latency etc. This will lead of course in fair matches, in the paper, completely ruined by connections, latency, lag and so on (so equal players would not be equal at all due to technical limitations).The point is and will always be to play fairly in terms of connection or to be match with equally skilled players: in a game counting millions of players every day achieving both is easy, but in a medium to low players base game, like Halo in the past few years, is very very hard.
343 made its choice unfortunately, and every Monday Josh Menke’s posts, always filled with skill alghoritms speeches and never talking about connection quality or ways to improve it leaves to me very little hope for H6.