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Halo |OT14| They call it Halo

broony

Member
Xbox live game dont even use that much.... In fact Im pretty sure it use less 3 mbps down and 1 mbps up. I have a 50 mbps down and 50 up connection and I dont see a single difference with the 60 down 3 up that I use to have. Its all about ping and how your network is setup.
Word. It's about making sure the traffic gets to where it needs to go.
 
343 needs to get their shit together and just give us the Halo CE pistol and a custom game browser. Co-op netcode would resolve itself. Fucking eggheads.
For some random reason I dreamt about this last night. New Xbox had a hybrid matchmaking system that allowed players to create their own custom lobbies and matchmaking would populate them.

Still think its only a matter of time.
 
It's more like the Halo 3 Brute Shot, just reskinned.

Idea for a weapon: The Gravity Gauntlet

It's shaped similar to the one of the Didact's gauntlets (hand/wrist armor) that wraps around the user's right hand, with four "nodes" floating around the hand; two in the back, two in the front. The back ones are tethered to the front ones by hard light.

Sandbox Role: Vertical map movement, enemy player stun, weapon control

The Gravity Gauntlet's primary role is grabbing weapons, grenades, and so on from a distance. The range is only about two and a half Warthogs parked bumper-to-bumper. The Gauntlet runs on a battery, with more charge being depleted depending on the distance of the weapon you grab. Your crosshair has to be aimed directly on the weapon, at which point you're prompted to switch. It flings the weapon at you, swapping your Gauntlet out for whatever weapon you picked up; however, you can cheat this by switching to your secondary weapon as the weapon gets close to you and then switch back to the Gauntlet.

A secondary role is stunning enemy players; if your crosshair goes red on an enemy, you can aim your hand at them with an open palm (similar to the Didact's force choke) and completely stun them. They can still fire, aim, and shoot grenades, but are stuck in the same physical position - even if they're in midair. Stunning a player eats up a whopping 5 battery per second - overheating after 5 seconds, the only instance where this weapon will overheat. It's mostly useless in 1v1 situations because you have to stay still to effectively maintain the charge (holding right trigger, looking, and moving would probably slip your crosshairs off the enemy) and you're setting up a perfect line of sight for your stationary enemy while you can't shoot, but has potential uses in team games. Examples include stunning a flag carrier, disabling someone being chased in midair so your teammate can assassinate them, preventing them from winning a race to a power weapon, rendering your enemy immobile so a teammate can splatter them, etc.

A tertiary role is vertical map movement, replacing the Jet Pack; on maps the Gauntlet is specifically designed for, "Hardlight Hooks" can be latched on to, allowing your Spartan to fly towards them as if you were using a grappling hook. These hooks can be placed in Forge and may vary if it's an objective gametype. Note that this hooking feature eats up battery.

Yep. Do you have Kickstarter, or?
 
Meltdown > Blood Gulch

Meltdown is what happens when Ice Fields invites Countdown and Boneyard over for brunch but Countdown and Boneyard decided to take a big, bubbling shit on Ice Fields' chest.

Yep. Do you have Kickstarter, or?

Yeah, I'm currently selling Costco muffins at twice the price to fund HALOGAF: The Movie of the Book of the Game of the Best-Selling Novel of the Critically-Acclaimed Game According to Vgcchartz.
 

Overdoziz

Banned
I played Spartan Ops in co-op once with some GAFfers from the US. After about a minute of having a button delay of around a second that was the end of that fairy tale.
 
Gravity Gauntlet sounds like the leash in Bulletstorm mixed with the ghostly grabby hand in Darksiders.

Would suck as a player to be stunned though. Always does.
 
I did. If Spartan Ops is lag free for me and my group every time, how can it just be something "that happens". Its not the game, and its not the code, its the individual connections.

That's the thing. Lockstep requires a low ping between all players in order to be relatively lag-free. Your group happens to have a low ping among its members. That doesn't mean that problems don't reside within the way the netcode is structured- especially when compared to other games that offer co-op modes.

My case in point would be the experience you're likely to have in SpOps matchmaking. Also known as: awful.
 
My case in point would be the experience you're likely to have in SpOps matchmaking. Also known as: awful.
Definitely. The population is small, so the chances of getting three other players with low pings is pretty remote. Its the low population that hurts it more than anything else.

But in our experience Halo 4 has the best co-op performance out there, when we run private matches. I can't think of a game that has worked better, and we play a ton of co-op.

I thought people liked the stun effect of the CE plasma rifle?
Never played CE versus so I wouldn't know.

Hence shitty connection.
Yep.
 
That's the thing. Lockstep requires a low ping between all players in order to be relatively lag-free. Your group happens to have a low ping among its members. That doesn't mean that problems don't reside within the way the netcode is structured- especially when compared to other games that offer co-op modes.

My case in point would be the experience you're likely to have in SpOps matchmaking. Also known as: awful.

Hence shitty connection.

Gravity Gauntlet sounds like the leash in Bulletstorm mixed with the ghostly grabby hand in Darksiders.

Would suck as a player to be stunned though. Always does.

I thought people liked the stun effect of the CE plasma rifle?
 
What were you expecting?
An actual reason why you would prefer Legendary as opposed to Heroic, which I believe is a far more balanced difficulty level that promotes situational adaptation and experimentation instead of playing conservatively and memorization.

Your avatar also looks like an uglier version of Spartan Thorne.
 
Definitely. The population is small, so the chances of getting three other players with low pings is pretty remote. Its the low population that hurts it more than anything else.

Population's always a factor in matchmaking quality- but it still doesn't mean that everything's fine with H4's co-op netcode. If you jump out into MM and play a game of SpOps with 3 random people, your experience will range from OK to scary-bad. If you were to hop on with those same 3 people in a non-Halo co-op title, your experience in most cases would be considerably better.

I play with pretty much the same group of people across all games. Our collective experience playing Zombies in COD, Horde in GOW, Left4Dead, Dead Island, Borderlands 1&2, and on and on has been much better than what happens when we play co-op in H4 or Reach. Netcode's pretty much the only variable that exists in this example.
 

Plywood

NeoGAF's smiling token!
An actual reason why you would prefer Legendary as opposed to Heroic, which I believe is a far more balanced difficulty level that promotes situational adaptation and experimentation instead of conservatism and memorization.

Youe avatar also looks like an uglier version of Spartan Thorne.
Situational adaptation reads like "I threw myself in a bad situation, but it's okay because I can run away" and experimentation reads like "I want an excuse to use the shitty guns."

Legendary is about endurance, patience and sticking to what works. It's also about picking your best shots, saving every bullet and not making mistakes. As for balance, it's not supposed to be balanced, that's why it's called Legendary.
 

J10

Banned
Ping: 20ms. Input latency almost always significant, even with friends down the block/in the city using the same ISP.
 
For some random reason I dreamt about this last night. New Xbox had a hybrid matchmaking system that allowed players to create their own custom lobbies and matchmaking would populate them.

Still think its only a matter of time.

*cough* FyreWulff ;] *cough*

Limiting players to what the developers deem fun for online multiplayer is lame. The industry needs to advance MM already and a hybrid is definitely a step in the right direction.
 

Ghazi

Member
For some random reason I dreamt about this last night. New Xbox had a hybrid matchmaking system that allowed players to create their own custom lobbies and matchmaking would populate them.

Still think its only a matter of time.
Battlefield 3 on current consoles can do this.
 
Spops Co op is fine if you play with your friends who are relatively local. Playing across continents is going to lag.

Make some friends on your street and play with them. Problem solved.
 
Gravity Gauntlet sounds like the leash in Bulletstorm mixed with the ghostly grabby hand in Darksiders.

Would suck as a player to be stunned though. Always does.

It'd be the most rewarding feeling in the world being stunned and having the enemy get taken out, though. Like, you're inches away from a flag cap, get stunned, and your teammate assassinates him or something.

Also, cue inevitable idiot gametype with Gauntlet starts and unlimited ammo. Two people grapple in an endless struggle.

"I'VE GOT YOU IN THE PROMETHEAN SLEEPER HOLD"

"AS I YOU"

"NEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRR"

"HRRRRRRNNNNNGGGGGHHHHFFFFFFF"

"Goddamn it guys."

GAME OVER
 
Fucking right. I have played halo coop on and off for the last 6 years. Halo 4 has by far the best net code. This is no crazyness, it's the truth. If you are having problems, have a look at your network setup or look to switch / upgrade your provider. If you can't be arsed to do this, keep having shitty games and blaming everyone else.

I did. If Spartan Ops is lag free for me and my group every time, how can it just be something "that happens". Its not the game, and its not the code, its the individual connections.

Not defending broony's attitude btw, just the substance.

And in terms of advice, whenever re run a private match of Spartan Ops, if there's enough lag for us to notice it, we all bounce out, reset our modems/routers and try again. 99% of the time the lag disappears. If not, a simple reset wasn't enough to fix one of the connections.

Spops Co op is fine if you play with your friends who are relatively local. Playing across continents is going to lag.

Make some friends on your street and play with them. Problem solved.

Anyone who supports this mentality is being silly. You can't justify a "sometimes shitty sometimes working" service by deducing it to something as simple as "nou."

There were millions of dollars put into this game, this was a problem that has existed since Halo 3 and has yet to be anywhere near fully fixed.
 

FyreWulff

Member
Ping: 20ms. Input latency almost always significant, even with friends down the block/in the city using the same ISP.

The input latency in lockstep is the sum of all the Xboxes in the chain

4 boxes in game

Lobby host who started game > 20ms > buddy 1 > 50ms > buddy 2 > 50ms > buddy 3 > 40ms from buddy 3 to the host = 160ms input latency on top of the latency the controller already has.

Campaign/FF/SPOPs sessions are entirely dependent on avoiding having that one player with the terrible connection, because they will bring everyone else down.

Or to put it in other terms, even on the same LAN, you have 1 frame of latency between input-> action in multiplayer, and 3 frames of latency from input->action for campaign/ff/spops because in campaign/ff/spops it has to send the button, wait for the button to be acknowledged from the other boxes, then recieved on your box and the action occurs
 

heckfu

Banned
The input latency in lockstep is the sum of all the Xboxes in the chain

4 boxes in game

Lobby host who started game > 20ms > buddy 1 > 50ms > buddy 2 > 50ms > buddy 3 > 40ms from buddy 3 to the host = 160ms input latency on top of the 100ms latency the controller already has.

Campaign/FF/SPOPs sessions are entirely dependent on avoiding having that one player with the terrible connection, because they will bring everyone else down.

Now I'm pretty clueless about hosts, lockstep etc, but is there a better system out there that would avoid having problems like that or is lockstep the best system out there?
 

zap

Member
The input latency in lockstep is the sum of all the Xboxes in the chain

4 boxes in game

Lobby host who started game > 20ms > buddy 1 > 50ms > buddy 2 > 50ms > buddy 3 > 40ms from buddy 3 to the host = 160ms input latency on top of the latency the controller already has.

Campaign/FF/SPOPs sessions are entirely dependent on avoiding having that one player with the terrible connection, because they will bring everyone else down.

Or to put it in other terms, even on the same LAN, you have 1 frame of latency between input-> action in multiplayer, and 3 frames of latency from input->action for campaign/ff/spops because in campaign/ff/spops it has to send the button, wait for the button to be acknowledged from the other boxes, then recieved on your box and the action occurs

When I played Reach MM, (or Spartan Ops) the host could ahve a lag free game, while the other player has a terrible connection - how does that work?

Now I'm pretty clueless about hosts, lockstep etc, but is there a better system out there that would avoid having problems like that or is lockstep the best system out there?

It seems that in order to keep a lot of enemies on screen, lockstep is the only way to do it (MS has bandwidth limits that would cap the number of AI very low using the model from versus multiplayer).
 

Karl2177

Member
Halo 4 campaign coop and Spartans ops coop has the best net code in any halo games's coop mode.

I've played a lot of halo coop in the last ten years. If you are getting bad lag in halo 4 coop you have a shitty connection or are clueless when it comes to home networking.

Halo4coop4life

I need to drink more.
 

FyreWulff

Member
Now I'm pretty clueless about hosts, lockstep etc, but is there a better system out there that would avoid having problems like that or is lockstep the best system out there?

Lockstep is the best for massive amounts of AI or units that would be undoable in asynch. For instances, RTSes are almost all lockstep. Halo Wars is lockstep. They have the benefit of the cursor being decoupled from the networking, so you don't feel the latency from the command -> action. You feel it in Halo badly because your 'cursor' exists in the game world as where your character/gun is facing and doing, instead of indirectly telling something else to do something for you.

Asynch Firefight is possible, but the tradeoff is less AI to keep bandwidth usage down. They can solve this in multiple ways:

- Require minimum bandwidth before you can play in AI modes (possible to do, Reach has the option to block certain connections from joining playlists). Dedis could work but now you're depending on MS to run servers to play it. And we all saw what they're doing to Halo 2 Vista, where they're just running a list server..

- Dumb down the AI and dumb down the amount of AI to make it work in asynch (I believe this is what Gears does)

- Require minimum latency before a FF game starts. Tradeoff is that games could take forever to configure, but you would end up with a near flawless experience when you DO get a game..

Another benefit of asynch FF would be the ability to join-in-progress to a coop or firefight session. It's technically possible to do JIP for lockstep, it just requires bandwidth beyond what MS will let you use on console.
 
Situational adaptation reads like "I threw myself in a bad situation, but it's okay because I run away"
Why do you say that like it's a bad thing? Choosing to fight or flight is way more interesting to me than "DERP YOU DEAD TRY AGAIN." Heroic still punishes you for putting yourself in a bad situation, but has the right amount of leeway to allow you to correct yourself when you run into things you couldn't anticipate, ie. Jackal Snipers, Binary Crawlers, Knights with Incineration Cannons, basically anything that 1-shots you on Legendary. Simply memorizing where the 1-hit KO guys spawn is like playing a CoD campaign.

and experimentation reads like "I want an excuse to use the shitty guns."
In the case of Halo 4, no, they actually did a pretty good job of making most, if not all weapons have some use in Legendary. Don't even think about hijacking a Ghost or Banshee though.

Legendary is about endurance, patience and sticking to what works. It's also about picking your best shots, saving every bullet and not making mistakes.
And that has it's own kind of fun, but gets numbing after a while. "Sticking to what works" usually boils down to not utilizing the entire sandbox. Why am I playing a sandbox shooter if I can't effectively use the entire sandbox?

As for balance, it's not supposed to be balanced, that's why it's called Legendary.
Is that why you wussed out of Dark Souls?

PS. Your avatars are awful, pls stahp
 
Lockstep is the best for massive amounts of AI or units that would be undoable in asynch. For instances, RTSes are almost all lockstep. Halo Wars is lockstep. They have the benefit of the cursor being decoupled from the networking, so you don't feel the latency from the command -> action. You feel it in Halo badly because your 'cursor' exists in the game world as where your character/gun is facing and doing, instead of indirectly telling something else to do something for you.

Asynch Firefight is possible, but the tradeoff is less AI to keep bandwidth usage down. They can solve this in multiple ways:

- Require minimum bandwidth before you can play in AI modes (possible to do, Reach has the option to block certain connections from joining playlists). Dedis could work but now you're depending on MS to run servers to play it. And we all saw what they're doing to Halo 2 Vista, where they're just running a list server..

- Dumb down the AI and dumb down the amount of AI to make it work in asynch (I believe this is what Gears does)

- Require minimum latency before a FF game starts. Tradeoff is that games could take forever to configure, but you would end up with a near flawless experience when you DO get a game..

Can we just get Halo CE AI on shiny new enemy textures/models for asynch?
 

Plywood

NeoGAF's smiling token!
Why do you say that like it's a bad thing? Choosing to fight or flight is way more interesting to me than "DERP YOU DEAD TRY AGAIN." Heroic still punishes you for putting yourself in a bad situation, but has the right amount of leeway to allow you to correct yourself when you run into things you couldn't anticipate, ie. Jackal Snipers, Binary Crawlers, Knights with Incineration Cannons, basically anything that 1-shots you on Legendary. Simply memorizing where the 1-hit KO guys spawn is like playing a CoD campaign.

In the case of Halo 4, no, they actually did a pretty good job of making most, if not all weapons have some use in Legendary. Don't even think about hijacking a Ghost or Banshee though.

And that has it's own kind of fun, but gets numbing after a while. "Sticking to what works" usually boils down to not utilizing the entire sandbox. Why am I playing a sandbox shooter if I can't effectively use the entire sandbox?

Is that why you wussed out of Dark Souls?

PS. Your avatars are awful, pls stahp
In the end it boils down to preference. Are you a real wolf? Legendary. Are you a safe ass moist dude? Heroic.

Also I didn't wuss out of Dark Souls, I put that bitch on hiatus.
PS. Your avatars are awful, pls stahp
in6x1SunL9q36.gif
 
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