• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Halo: MCC might not use dedicated servers (update: p2p only as fallback, post #278)

Nowhere close to that level of disaster.

Damn, how bad was Driveclub? Never played it so I have no clue, but this has been pretty bad. Getting into like 1 game an hour for me and having it freeze and crash, playing 5v4, getting separated from my party and put on the other team, sound cutting out and not working. This shit is unacceptable.
 

BigDug13

Member
Consider the possible advantage in peer to peer though. There's nothing for Microsoft to shutdown. You'll be able to play online multiplayer on this game for years to come.
 

Skullface

Member
And several people have seen bigfoot? No proof? What about the several times you get the connecting to dedicated servers message?

Take from it what you will. I didn't quite believe it was true until I saw it for myself this morning. I don't have proof to present to you, but some of these theories I've read have been backed up by messages I've seen in game, particularly the host migration.

Go and play a few rounds your self and see what you come up with. I've only played three multiplayer rounds so far, all this morning, and it happened on both of the H2 classic games I played.

Edit: I should note that I'm of the opinion that P2P is a temporary fix while they solve the underlying problem.
 

Klyka

Banned
Those people who came into the CoD threads and were all "hurr durr MCC is true shooter king we got everything hurr durr" better think twice about trying to make fun of other games now.
 

Hatchtag

Banned
Those people who came into the CoD threads and were all "hurr durr MCC is true shooter king we got everything hurr durr" better think twice about trying to make fun of other games now.

Agreed, never doubt 343i's ability to completely fuck up something.
 

Skullface

Member
Those people who came into the CoD threads and were all "hurr durr MCC is true shooter king we got everything hurr durr" better think twice about trying to make fun of other games now.

If and when they have the Halo ship flying right, it will be the ultimate shooter experience. If...
 

Noobcraft

Member
Those people who came into the CoD threads and were all "hurr durr MCC is true shooter king we got everything hurr durr" better think twice about trying to make fun of other games now.
As someone who owns both, even with the crashes and slow matchmaking the Halo MCC is better than COD AW.
 

depward

Member
If they aren't using "the power of the cloud" and dedicated servers for, admittedly, their BIGGEST GAME in 2014 (and one of the biggest brands for Xbox) - good grief.
 

Woffls

Member
I find this difficult to believe given 343's importance to Microsoft, and the colossal server power that they have available. It would be unbelievably stupid of Microsoft or 343 to not use that resource.

Is there a chance they coded p2p into the game and that people are only seeing it whilst server code deployments are going on or something? Or perhaps the message is shown for just switching dedicated servers?
 

Klyka

Banned
As someone who owns both, even with the crashes and slow matchmaking the Halo MCC is better than COD AW.

See, that's an opinion though and it's absolutely fine that you say this.
But you didn't come into the CoD threads shouting about how MCC will have perfect dedicated servers, perfect matchmaking, perfect everything and making fun of CoDs problems.
 

Skullface

Member
I find this difficult to believe given 343's importance to Microsoft, and the colossal server power that they have available. It would be unbelievably stupid of Microsoft or 343 to not use that resource.

Is there a chance they coded p2p into the game and that people are only seeing it whilst server code deployments are going on or something? Or perhaps the message is shown for just switching dedicated servers?

Anything is possible. It would be nice to get an official comment on the matter.
 
Really don't know why people are getting up in arms about this. The real issue is the multiplayer is broken. Not connecting to dedicated servers all the time is probably just a side-effect of the brokenness. I'm sure they had to have some sort of fallback to P2P during development, because it'd be much quicker to test the game in a dev environment than having to fully deploy code to servers as well.

The other real issue is that there's no dedicated servers in Custom Games or for Campaign Co-op.
 

Bsigg12

Member
I find this difficult to believe given 343's importance to Microsoft, and the colossal server power that they have available. It would be unbelievably stupid of Microsoft or 343 to not use that resource.

Is there a chance they coded p2p into the game and that people are only seeing it whilst server code deployments are going on or something? Or perhaps the message is shown for just switching dedicated servers?

The more I think about it and based on what I've played, it seems the game matchmakes using a P2P method to begin. The host is selected, players are brought in and a match is voted on. At that point, the game is connected to a dedicated server. Unlike Titanfall where you're dumped into a dedicated server to begin with and you can select the particular region you want, matchmaking seems to be done outside of that resource. I'm guessing it dynamically chooses the sever location based on player locations to try and get the most consistent latency and connection for everyone.

This is all speculation on my part though as someone who is studying networking and more directly cloud service deployment.
 

Skullface

Member
Really don't know why people are getting up in arms about this. The real issue is the multiplayer is broken. Not connecting to dedicated servers all the time is probably just a side-effect of the brokenness. I'm sure they had to have some sort of fallback to P2P during development, because it'd be much quicker to test the game in a dev environment than having to fully deploy code to servers as well.

The other real issue is that there's no dedicated servers in Custom Games or for Campaign Co-op.

Nice triple post... I don't see people up in arms about the possibility of p2p at the moment. I think most people would agree with you. What everyone seems to be trying to figure out is whether this is related to the brokenness(I.E. A band aid until they fix the server issue) or if it's outright deception.

Edit:coulda sworn I saw your post duplicated thrice
 

Sir_Vival

"I don't remember PEWPEWPEWPEWPEW being a part of the Star Wars movies."
We know that MCC has support for both dedicated servers (them talking about it, people seeing a message talking about connecting to them, etc) and P2P (custom games for sure).

We also know that there are serious server troubles on their end. To me, the most logical conclusion is that after players are matched up, if there's trouble connecting with a dedicated server, the game has an automatic fallback to P2P. I'd certainly do that; it'd shield the game from network outages or congestion, in theory. Heck, maybe it is and things would be even worse without that system.

Just my 2 cents.
 

Skullface

Member
We know that MCC has support for both dedicated servers (them talking about it, people seeing a message talking about connecting to them, etc) and P2P (custom games for sure).

We also know that there are serious server troubles on their end. To me, the most logical conclusion is that after players are matched up, if there's trouble connecting with a dedicated server, the game has an automatic fallback to P2P. I'd certainly do that; it'd shield the game from network outages or congestion, in theory. Heck, maybe it is and things would be even worse without that system.

Just my 2 cents.

Sounds about right to me.
 

Percy

Banned
So the biggest first party release the console has had to date doesn't even use those much hyped Azure servers? That doesn't make much sense at all unless this collection's development was incredibly rushed or something :/

This on top of the broken online says to me that whoever it was comparing this to Driveclub wasn't terribly far off the mark by all accounts.
 

Noobcraft

Member
See, that's an opinion though and it's absolutely fine that you say this.
But you didn't come into the CoD threads shouting about how MCC will have perfect dedicated servers, perfect matchmaking, perfect everything and making fun of CoDs problems.
Oh. Yeah I get what you're saying and I agree.
 

cakely

Member
Pretty fucking disgusting that people are being charged for an online monthly service fee, yet so many games are P2P.

The core of the online monthly service has always been: Authentication, Friends list, Party Chat, Matchmaking.

"Dedicated servers" was never part of that core offering.

Somehow it became ok for Microsoft (and now Sony) to charge a fee for those by putting multiplayer games behind a paywall.

And now, here we are.
 
The only reason I bought the game was for the dedicated server matchmaking, 60 fps.. I'm really hoping this is just the fallback for the server issues they're having.
 
Consider the possible advantage in peer to peer though. There's nothing for Microsoft to shutdown. You'll be able to play online multiplayer on this game for years to come.

some developers go with the hybrid solution. dedicated servers are the standard but when they go down for maintenance or are shut off for good, the game will revert to P2P. allowing the population to keep playing, even with less ideal connections.

EA sports games should have this but that's not going to happen. people would keep playing the better titles and not go out to buy the yearly releases.

I know Gears of War3 uses this solution but It's unknown if they still employ dedicated servers anymore.
 

Mahonay

Banned
We know that MCC has support for both dedicated servers (them talking about it, people seeing a message talking about connecting to them, etc) and P2P (custom games for sure).

We also know that there are serious server troubles on their end. To me, the most logical conclusion is that after players are matched up, if there's trouble connecting with a dedicated server, the game has an automatic fallback to P2P. I'd certainly do that; it'd shield the game from network outages or congestion, in theory. Heck, maybe it is and things would be even worse without that system.

Just my 2 cents.
As an outside observer, this seems most likely.
 

shandy706

Member
Hmmm, it looks like some have no trouble at all.

I wonder if it has to do with location/speed of internet/servers near you?
 
J

JoJo UK

Unconfirmed Member
We know that MCC has support for both dedicated servers (them talking about it, people seeing a message talking about connecting to them, etc) and P2P (custom games for sure).

We also know that there are serious server troubles on their end. To me, the most logical conclusion is that after players are matched up, if there's trouble connecting with a dedicated server, the game has an automatic fallback to P2P. I'd certainly do that; it'd shield the game from network outages or congestion, in theory. Heck, maybe it is and things would be even worse without that system.

Just my 2 cents.
Get outa here that that common sense kind of attitude, we need more hur dur this is MS version of Driveclub quotes and oh so funny cloud based jokes ('cos they never get old) in this thread.

As justsomeguy said
Not really - it's a port of a legacy game. Rewriting the entire networking/hosting stack was probably a bridge to far.

If Halo 5 doesn't use dedis, THEN we'll have a reason to complain...
 

DopeyFish

Not bitter, just unsweetened
So the biggest first party release the console has had to date doesn't even use those much hyped Azure servers? That doesn't make much sense at all unless this collection's development was incredibly rushed or something :/

This on top of the broken online says to me that whoever it was comparing this to Driveclub wasn't terribly far off the mark by all accounts.

1) yes it does use dedis. out of the 30 games i've played, only 1 wasn't. Probably as a fallback.

2) it's not broken, it's just not functioning well... but it is functioning.

3) driveclub came out over a month ago, MCC came out 2 days ago... and has already seen some improvement.
 
Guys, this has already been answered by me and others on the previous pages: 343 indicated that P2P is used for Custom Matches. Regular matchmaking games are using dedicated servers.

I'm going to cling to this as the reason I got my ass kicked when playing with some friends from across the pond on launch night.
 
Damn, how bad was Driveclub? Never played it so I have no clue, but this has been pretty bad. Getting into like 1 game an hour for me and having it freeze and crash, playing 5v4, getting separated from my party and put on the other team, sound cutting out and not working. This shit is unacceptable.

Still isn't working properly. We're getting an update soon though based on the chatter in the OT, so maybe they've figured out what the problem was.

Anyone who claims it was as bad as DC isn't just engaging in hyperbole, they are wilfully trying to lie and mislead people.
 
The core of the online monthly service has always been: Authentication, Friends list, Party Chat, Matchmaking.

"Dedicated servers" was never part of that core offering.

Somehow it became ok for Microsoft (and now Sony) to charge a fee for those by putting multiplayer games behind a paywall.

And now, here we are.

it was complete bullshit last generation when a good number of PS3 first party titles had dedicated servers while the 360 had almost none for it's games. all while having to pay for XBLG.

things are different now but I'm actually very surprised that the majority of third parties don't use Azure. IMO it could be a game-changer but there has to be a reason why it hasn't happened yet.
 

Skullface

Member
1) yes it does use dedis. out of the 30 games i've played, only 1 wasn't. Probably as a fallback.

2) it's not broken, it's just not functioning well... but it is functioning.

3) driveclub came out over a month ago, MCC came out 2 days ago... and has already seen some improvement.

Up until this morning I haven't been able to play any multiplayer. They've clearly made some progress. Hopefully this continues.
 

Boston

Member
I hope somone sues 343i and in the lawsuit it states, all people who bought MCC, get a full refund and a complimentary free year of XBLive for microsofts blatant disrespect of there loyal customers.
 

gruenel

Member
Damn, how bad was Driveclub? Never played it so I have no clue, but this has been pretty bad. Getting into like 1 game an hour for me and having it freeze and crash, playing 5v4, getting separated from my party and put on the other team, sound cutting out and not working. This shit is unacceptable.

You couldn't play Driveclub online at all for the first few days, so I guess 1 game per hour is better :p
 
Top Bottom