MS: “Halo 2 matchmaking should be in all games”

believeITorNOT · 02-15-2007

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People have been saying it for years: Halo 2’s matchmaking was the best ever seen in an online game and still is to date. Saints Row gave it a good go, but it just didn’t work quite as well. Even hardened Halo haters admit that the matchmaking does work well. And when an MS employee says himself it should be in all games for the 360, you know not everyone is wrong.

Speaking at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas last week, Microsoft’s Head of Game Development for Microsoft Game Studios Phil Spencer gave a couple of answers to a couple of questions on the issue of matchmaking:

“As a publisher, that’s our job, to take code, encapsulate it up and ship it off to other people, not because they can’t figure it out but because there are other things on the schedule and if we can help other people by handing out pieces of code, pieces of technology, we should. I think what we really do is create a baseline for what to expect from first party games”.

Bungie’s Halo 2’s matchmaking code hasn’t been shared amongst developers. Why not?

Spencer: “Bungie spent a lot of time working out their matchmaking system. Forget about what platform you’re playing on, when you play Halo 2, you understand how that matchmaking system works; you’re playing with your friends, ranked with the playlist. It’s a very innovative system and it should be across all 360 games…definitely all [applicable] first party 360 games,”

So what about Gears of War then? It could have been the perfect game for a matchmaking system.

“The Epic scenario and why we don’t have that code in Gears of War is really more of a scheduling issue than the will to share the code with them, or help them add that feature to the game, because it’s clearly a great feature in online shooting play. For us, it was just a matter of getting this game done in time in order to get the game to come out when it needed to come out.”

Personally I don’t have a problem with the Gears matchmaking system, but I know that for others, it simply isn’t good enough. If Microsoft can push this idea through and encourage more developers to include the Halo net code, then things could suddenly improve a lot for the online 360 games, in a very positive way.

Thanks geekinabox for submitting.

Well i personally agree with this.
What do you guys think?

I Snix I · 02-15-2007

Everyone wants this but it won't happen Microsoft is sticking with their TruSkill matchmaking, instead of Bungies, it sucks but thats why Halo is great, TruSkill just feels different because most people's first online game was Halo 2 so going to other games it feels weird, but almost all games were like this, personally I like servers, but what can ya do, Halo 3 is coming so we just got ot wait.

Brutal 4ngel · 02-15-2007

I hate matchmaking with a passion...

For basically 1 reason. Once you go into matchmaking, you are LOCKED into that game...and if you leave, no matter what, you are punished. Therefore, if you go into a game, and it's extremely laggy (either intentional or not) or if the other team is cheating...guess what, you're fucked. End of story. But wait, you can senf feedback...seeing as that works so well...O NOEZ...there goes my rep...

It's been proven by I think just about every PC game ever that server lists work...they worked in PDZ, they work in GoW.

02-15-2007

i dont like it i prefer to be able to host a game if i ant or to go and play off host i dont like the idea of going in wishing you get host and it rarely happening (fr moe anyway wat with all the yanks online)

Whistlerman · 02-15-2007

but, BUNGIE does not want to share their secret programming skills. We as the community have been saying this for years and with the leaked vid of the Halo Alpha/Beta it shows that it will be the same system as halo but with Rankes rarther then Numbers

Brutal 4ngel · 02-15-2007

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Originally Posted by Whistlerman

but, BUNGIE does not want to share their secret programming skills. We as the community have been saying this for years and with the leaked vid of the Halo Alpha/Beta it shows that it will be the same system as halo but with Rankes rarther then Numbers

Bungie has programming skills? Since when?

Last time I checked, their RTS has some pretty sweet ass programming...you know, when you tried to delete it, it dumped your HDD. Or maybe we can talk about Oni...that was a big success. Hell, the only reason Halo CE caught on competitvely was a mistake (pistol being overpowered). And their master programming did a wonderful job of stopping cheaters in Halo 2 matching making...

Ya man, these guys are uber 1337 programmers...

believeITorNOT · 02-15-2007

I personally think everygame should follow halo2s matchmaking system. It was amazing one of the reasons why i loved that damn game so much. Gears would be 3874734389x if ranked was just like halos.
but game designers are little bit retarted, so let them be.

F3AR ChaRLie · 02-15-2007

Of course the MM system was great. I loved MM. I do think they should bring it into every MP game.

But of course being able to take care of cheats so there wont be any problems

.

Te Master · 02-15-2007

Amen all games that can should. And this shouldn't just be MSFTS to use it should be used to further our lives as gamers.

WAN73D · 02-15-2007

I personally liked the H2 MM system. I don't really mind servers and whatnot, but the fact is that the H2 system was just more user friendly. Yeah you could get cheated on and yeah it can be laggy. But the same problems exist in servers but with less regularity. The only change I would make in the H2 system would be the addition of being able to search for custom games. It would basically be the same thing as the server system but it obviously wouldn't be ranked and would be better than the "Training" game categories in that it would offer more freedom.