The Lack of dedicated servers..

BLITZ_Molloy

..is actually a good thing from a balance point of view. In CoD4 and loads of other FPS games the server admins always try and cram in as many players as possible. Something like Counter Strike is played in five a side teams in competitive tournaments because that's what's balanced. If you cram more players into a map than its designed for then it starts to play badly. That's why Quake Wars: Enemy Territory had a hardcoded player limit as well.

I feel sorry for the modders and mappers, but there weren't that many good ones for CoD4 that I saw anyway. For the most part I'm getting a better experience out of the sequel thus far.

NOGMaxpower

i hate to agree with you on that but yeh having dedicated servers on COD is working well. especially squadding up and getting everyone on level pings.

just makes the whole gaming experience stream lined imo.

only issue LANs, I love going to LANs and with MW2 you need an active internet connection to host a LAN = sux.

Hercule

I had a big long post which turned into an epic rant about why IW are lazy bastards - I deleted it all and instead I will just say this. (even if it is fairly long regardless)

Its good you are enjoying the game as they made it, But.......

the "balancing" changes they make/have made have nothing to do with improving the player experience - In your case that was just a lucky coincidence for IW, it was brought about by the technical restrictions imposed by IWnet. IW have shown that they know nothing of "balance"

Do not compare the balance of public play and the balance of competitive play - it took almost two years of the community modding before CoD4 got to the stage where it was considered "balanced" - even now less then a quarter of the maps in the game are used along with no perks, attachments and only the AK74/47, the deagle and the two bolt-action scopes are used in competitive games.

Im also not sure if they should be commended for hardcoding the player limits - why not just make bigger maps? BF2 and Quake Wars both have maps that scale depending on how big the server is - why didnt IW create some massive maps for 16v16 and then also make the mid sized ones for 6v6 etc

c0rk3r

What a ridiculous thing to say. This latest installment from the call of duty franchise, online multiplayer wise is abit of a joke. A fun filled joke but there are so many flaws. Things that could of been done differently to make the experience run a little bit more smoothly / more enjoyable

Firstly. I dont know about anyone one else but when i run MW2 from steam it loads up the screen which then freezes for about 10 seconds until a steam window opens up at the top right corner. Something about shift and tab to view the steam community while playing (if anyone knows how to disable this let me know). So when i run the game ive this frustrating, utterly avoidable wait. Why o why. Why cant i see a server list from steam like cs,dod / every other game...

Secondly. I cant stand 6v6 games. I enjoy huge amounts of players on huge maps so im limited in choice to ground war which is a combo of capture the flag or team death match. I play nothing else other than this scenario. Ive never played headquarters or any of the other game types because i find playing 6v6 tedious and boring. If one or two people are sniping/camping that only leaves 4 people to kill. You have to search the entire fecking map to find them. Not for me

Thirdly. As has been highlighted in a thread about 2-3 days ago there are a number of maps which people hate. You dont have a choice which map you play. Its completely random. I hate quarry, invasion, wasteland, underpass, derail. I dont want to play these maps yet i have no say in the matter

Fourthly. I spotted two blatant aimbots and one casual wallhacker. Theres nothing to be done about this. The only thing to do is quit out

Fifthly. lag. During the day it seems to be ok-ish but once it hits 18:00 and all the casual gamers come on its a mixed bag. The lag can be atrocious and what can you do about this ? Nothing. Try rejoin another pic'n'mix server. Theres nothing more frustrating than coming around a corner, seeing a guy for 1 second then firing about 4 shots into him then die. You watch the death on killcam and due to lag you see the guy 1 second late. he has time to pop 10 shots into you. What can you do ?

sixthly. Theres no restrictions on what id call "cheap kill" weapons, weapons with require no skill whatsoever, namely the grenade laucher. This weapon is rampant in the game. Theres nothing more annoying than getting killed by this weapon. Its was banned from most COD4 servers

Hercule

I agree with almost everything c0rk3r said - I wouldnt go as far as to say "a ridiculous thing to say" my f-off post on this covered some of these points as well.

What IW did is made the mp process "simplified" not "streamlined" - On PC you forget how much you took the customisation and adjustability for granted before it is taken away from you :mad:

Dcully

Fifthly. lag. During the day it seems to be ok-ish but once it hits 18:00 and all the casual gamers come on its a mixed bag. The lag can be atrocious and what can you do about this ? Nothing. Try rejoin another pic'n'mix server. Theres nothing more frustrating than coming around a corner, seeing a guy for 1 second then firing about 4 shots into him then die. You watch the death on killcam and due to lag you see the guy 1 second late. he has time to pop 10 shots into you. What can you do ?

Ive had little lag on the odd occasion nothing more, simply rectified by leaving the game and joining another.
98% of the time im seeing little difference between MW2 and any other fps in terms of smooth lag free gameplay.

Firstly. I dont know about anyone one else but when i run MW2 from steam it loads up the screen which then freezes for about 10 seconds until a steam window opens up at the top right corner. Something about shift and tab to view the steam community while playing (if anyone knows how to disable this let me know).

Well you must have one slow pc there mate? that pause is nothin more than 2 seconds for me and its simply logging into steam friends which is vital for inviting friends etc.


Everything else you say i agree with but im making the most of what the game offers right now which is a really great fun fps.
Then again i feel the player count for groundwar is perfect 9v9 on MW2 maps is just right imo which may assist my enjoyment.
You say they could have made larger maps maybe so but MW2 maps are similar in size to pretty much every game in the series with the exception of United Offensive expansion for COD when they introduced vehicles etc.
I dont know about you but in COD4,CODwaw i was sick of servers with 48 players packed onto COD size maps resulting in rubbish gameplay.

Id love dedi servers for MW2, it would cap off a great game which despite all the moaning and bitching [some justified some not] on every gaming forum from here to China MW2 PC has sold more than COD4s total over the years in just one week.
For me it boils down to this-
Id rather play a great fps in some form than not play a great fps at all- thats why i bought MW2.
Lastnight around 7pm there was 174,000 players on IWnet.

SeantheMan

I'm gonna say "You're wrong"

Simply you are wrong.

For Balance ??? It never balances teams !!1 It's sometimes 7v4 ...and it disables you from switching teams !! what kind of balance is that ??

By amount of players...if you mean server load/capacity. Well then at least with dedicated servers....you had a CHOICE !!
You could "BROWSE" the server list and "CHOOSE" whichever server you liked.
Choose the server by max capacity, or by ping, or browse the players on the server beforehand, or see what mod was on the server...or if it was a fave...be in the knowledge that there would be admins to kick lamers/cheaters

It's probably enjoyable for you so far..as you may play on your own.

Usually I'm in a party of 4-14 or so trying to get into 1 game...making it near impossible. We spent ages last night trying to get into any game.
Whereas had they'd released dedicated servers...we'd have already bought one and be able to host our own games, with whatever mod we saw fit, with whatever slot we saw fit, with little to no lag, and admin as we saw fit

IW.net => FAIL

TheHairyFairy

LOL at saying he is wrong, how can you expect your post to be taken seriously starting like that.

I have played the game now for a few weeks and there are plenty of plusses to be had from IW.net and a few negatives.

Smaller Games - I know loads of players to whom the allure of 32+ player servers is of no interest. The game becomes a spam fest with big numbers.

Map Choice - Yes this is a pain, however there is the somewhat limited ability to vote the next map in. Its not great this I agree with.

Lag - Havent had much of an issue with this. Sometimes its been terrible, but again this is something I've encountered with dedicated servers, simply disconnect and reconnect.

Weapon Restrictions - This is just silly on some COD4 servers. First its weapon restrictions, then its no jumping etc. Soon the hosting clan use these as reasons to kick players who are just better than them. Yes there are lots of nade launchers in use, so what, kill the other guy first and its problem solved.

Hackers - Yes this is a pain, however I've been on plenty of dedicated servers in different games with ramapant hacking and aimbotting for nothing to happen either. Very few servers have admins on all of the time so thats a mute point imo.

Parties - Yes there is a problem here in that if your party is over 5 players then you are going to have a hard time finding games. If you do find a game then its going to be invariably going to be against a stacked clan, though some might want this the fun players may not.

In all the game is very good, but IW.net still has a way to go to improve. For me personally the positives far outweigh the negatives, the maps are pretty good, the game engine is good, the game modes are good and its great fun. I'm getting my moneys worth and so are the majority of other players being honest.

Genghiz Cohen

TheHairyFairy wrote: »

I'm getting my moneys worth and so are the majority of other players being honest.

'specially since I paid €45 for it.

ooPabsoo

The lack of dedicated servers....sucks,but tbh even if there was dedi servers no way could you compare this game to the rest of the cod games

BLITZ_Molloy

Of course its not all good. I just thought I might point out that in some ways it is an advantage. Public server play seems a lot less spammy than it used to be, which I think downplays the annoyance of the cheaper weapons a little bit. When you have 20+ players spawning and raining down a couple of grenades each in the direction of the enemy spawn. It's like an artillery strike every round.

I'm also inclined to think in the long term it can be a good thing if people don't get to play their favourite map 24/7. You do a search for Counter Strike maps and it's the same 3 maps on every server, every day, for the rest of eternity. It gets seriously monotinous. You enjoy the good maps more if you haven't played them to death. Most games and mods I've played have a couple of massively overplayed maps that you get sick to death of.

I've been playing multi FPS since Quake 2 but my hyper competitive streak has kind of fizzled out in the last few years. Pretty much every multiplayer game needs serious modding before it's really suitable for serious tournament play. The last major PC exclusive FPS was Crysis and feck all people bought it or played the multiplayer so from now on we're only going to get bodged PC releases geared towards console gamers. I found Team Fortress 2 massively slow, unfun and imbalanced, yet it got 9/10 from every magazine going because the reviewers these days are cretins. There's always mods though. Fortress Forever makes a nice proper sequel to Team Fortress Classic.

SeantheMan

Hypothetically - now knowing what the benefits etc are of IW.net


If the option for dedicated servers was there, would you stick with IW.net in its current format , or take traditional 'dedi servers + punkbuster'...with STEAM still being integrated ?

Grim.

SeantheMan wrote: »

Hypothetically - now knowing what the benefits etc are of IW.net


If the option for dedicated servers was there, would you stick with IW.net in its current format , or take traditional 'dedi servers + punkbuster'...with STEAM still being integrated ?

personally i would go with dedi servers everytime they are and always will be the better solution to hosting games. for me iw.net is one of this games only weak points.

Berns

Would be nice to have the option for your "party" to join a dedicated server so all get in together :rolleyes: Like the way on iwnet you can join matches together, but it does sometimes kick em half out which sucks imagine it on dedicated servers though

Blazer

IW sucks balls....it's a pile of fúcking junk that won't even allow players to join the same party let alone the same game...

Dcully

Berkut wrote: »

IW sucks balls....it's a pile of fúcking junk that won't even allow players to join the same party let alone the same game...

Seven of us were playing in a party lastnight for 3 hours or more.
We had a few dropouts but easily sorted by re-inviting.
IWnet is far from perfect and my only issue with the MP side of MW2 but its not all bad either.
As for IW sucking the roundy things, im not sure devs that suck could make such an epic multiplayer fps, single player aint too shabby either.

Blazer

Well you hardly think that the game devs created IW...it would have been another group...and my message to them is "your app sucks balls, your team sucks balls"..
It's a great pity as I love the multiplayer part...but when you spend about 30-40mins organizing parties and constantly having dropouts, having to re-invite them etc it's fair annoying.
It's gone to the stage now where I don't bother playing with the mates anymore,..it's too much hassle...
Left4dead2 or COD4 will suffice for playing with them.

weisses

Im very happy that there are no dedicated servers in MW2 ...it would only made it more disappointing ...the whole game is a failure and no dedi server can fix that imo