- RhythmKiller
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- Exalted Mythic Member
There’s not much that can be done. Latency, the delay which gives the ‘host advantage’, will always be a problem in online gaming. It can be minimised with more advanced network coding, like they have in Halo 3. But it’s really not viable to patch a nearly 3-year old game, native to a defunct hardware platform, that was never meant to be patched in such a way, especially when its sequel is now on the horizon.
The system does technically select the best host for the majority of players in each game. This is not a function of how much bandwidth we have though, not alone anyway. Where it fails us lies in the fact that you’ll have a game matched together with, say, 7 players from the US and 1 from the UK. Because of that distance, that UK player is never going to be considered the best host with respect to all the other players even if they have great uploa bandwidth. I think the real answer to the problem is to have matchmaking that is sensitive to your region, and so tries to put everyone in lower-latency games where they play people not too far away. At least as an option, at any rate.
Try not to blame the Americans. Most people who play aren’t really aware of how the system and the networking side of the game works at all. So it’s not most people’s fault that they’re unaware of how things are for us. Americans can suffer a bit from host advantage too. There’s some ignorant idiots out there but don’t tar everyone with that brush.
Finally, I wish I could have played on that cinema screen! I bet that was awesome.
Posted by: JROCK420
Look man, it's an American game and service. If you have such a problem with it, then go play a british game on a british service. Is there even such a thing? Don't blame your crappy broadband connection on America. The system (in theory) selects the best connection to host the game. I don't think it has anything to do with where you live. If it is as bad as you say it is, then just wait until September 25th. Oh wait, you will just have to wait an extra day.
Xbox Live is a worldwide service. Halo 2 is a global game. If Microsoft had intended it to be preferential to US customers in the way you are implying it should be, their sales would plummet and they would be beaten out by their rivals in every market except their domestic one. Which, take it from me, they do not want. They want to sell all over the world. So please, don’t make out you deserve preferential treatment because the game happens to be developed in the US. I’m sure if Project Gotham, Perfect Dark, Grand Theft Auto, Burnout etc favoured UK gamers people would -blam!- about it all day long.
He stated quite clearly he does not have a crappy connection. 20mbits down and 2.5mbits up is not crappy. I can only assume you are trying to be inflammatory with those remarks. You can have the best connection in the world but you still likely won’t get host if you’re outside the US.