- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Well, the simple truth of the matter is that Bungie isn't doing enough, they know they're not doing enough, and as a result everyone who plays the game gets to deal with an endless drivel of cheaters. They say the cheaters bother them as much as they bother the players, but somehow I seriously doubt that. The truth is the game is simply out of hand at this point, no ones rank really means anything because the legitimate players are lower level than they should be (because of the cheaters) and the cheaters are higher level than they should be (I think you can figure out why). I really have stopped enjoying playing halo2, because no matter what gamelist I play in, inevitably I'll run into a cheater. It's gotten so bad that I've found people cheating the practice playlists.
Halo2 also has its fair share of glitches which can cause a large amount of frustration. For whatever reason the superjump is still in the game, which makes no sense because it can give one team a huge advantage over the other team (dual snipers on the roof of zanzibar anyone?). Another one that only began happening after the autoupdate was the invisible grenade phenomenom, where an enemy will throw a grenade, but the grenade will have no graphic, leaving you clueless as to where it actually is (oftentimes resulting in accidentally walking right over said invisable grenade). Another strange one that seems to have only begun after the autoupdate is grenades that are thrown and never explode. They bounce, they stick, but they don't blow up. What gives?
Then the granddaddy of them all is the de-leveler. These people only exist to ruin everyone elses fun. I won't get into the flagrant personality defects readily appearant in these people (they just ooze stupidity from every pore in their body) but the simple truth is they ruin the game for people who actually want to play, and they should be banned, along with however many other accounts they have. Their rational most of the time is "this isn't my account, so I can get away with it". Lovely. Just what everyone wants to hear.
When you add in that its still possible to standby another team into oblivion despite whatever changes bungie has made, Halo2 is really just no fun to play anymore. In the end, you can ban however many people you want, but mommy and daddy will likely pay for another copy. The real solution as with most things lies in prevention, and evidently Halo2 has nothing that prevents people from cheating. The last time their was word of an autoupdate, supposedly cheating was supposed to be cut down for good, but instead it has come back even worse than it was before. Somehow I don't have any faith left to keep me from thinking that this next autoupdate will be even worse. The current cheats will either stop or be put in check, but cheating will come back in different ways and even worse than before.
Bungie has lost control of its own game. Now 10 year olds with mod chips and a potty mouth reign supreme, or 18 year olds who like to pump their ego's with bandwidth modification. It takes a lot for me to get irritated enough to come onto a message board (which are notoriously pervated with endless whining and petty grudges) and actually post about a problem, though it does seem bungie at least reads these. I've played just about every bungie game in existence (Redneck Rampage doesn't really count... does it?) and am dismayed to find the state of the online play in such shambles. The only thing I can compare it to is the Myth TFL demo server, if anyone remembers that nonsense...
I can only hope that bungie learns its lesson and actively engages in building anti-cheat systems into their next game, because it has become obvious from this experience that whatever they have done simply does not cut the butter.
Fuert