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This topic has moved here: Poll [79 votes]: Servers are needed to safeguard the future of Halo Multiplayer
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Subject: The Future of Multiplayer - Servers needed?
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Poll: Servers are needed to safeguard the future of Halo Multiplayer  [closed]
Agree:  72%
(57 Votes)
Disagree:  28%
(22 Votes)
Total Votes: 79

Please read this fully before responding. It is probable that any comment you have has been addressed somewhere within this post. If you feel that you have an issue with something I have posted, please feel free to challenge me on it. However, can I ask that anything you do challenge is done so with facts and figures showing your workings and calculation and backed up with links to external sources of information. Anything less will be met with the ridicule it deserves.

Are Servers needed for Halo 3 Multiplayer?

The answer is Yes.

Why are servers needed?

The answer is "Business Risk". Microsoft have moved into the Console Gaming Market with the xbox and have invested massive amounts of money in R&D, Technology, Branding, Marketing, Hardware, Software and so on. The huge success of the Xbox is down to Halo:CE. A phenomenal game which attracted millions of fans. Microsoft took this a stage further with the release of XBL and Halo 2. Halo 2 MP has been by a huge margin the most popular game on XBL. With this success has come unprecedented levels of cheating. Initially, these forms of cheating were the exploitation of errors in the code i.e. the Dummy Glitch, grabbing flags through floors/ceilings etc... These have subsequently been fixed and removed with the exception of superjumping which is an Engine problem and can not be fixed in Halo 2. There have also been other forms of cheating such as de-levelling, team killing, hiding the bomb, dropping the bomb into un-reachable areas which are basically forms of anti-social behaviour. These are addressed with the new matchmaking/feedback system which is already in place for 360 games. The last form of cheating began on day one with Standby and now incorporates Bridging (to get host) and IP Blocking (various uses). These forms of cheating are basically abuses of the design of the xbox host system and, although bannable offences, can not be proven and therefore can not be punished. It is this form of cheating that will hit Halo 3 and this is why servers are a fundamental requirement of Halo 3 MP. I will explain in detail and in easy to understand terms the different forms of host abuse cheating. It is vitally important that these are fully understood for you to fully appreciate the need for servers and the host system to be changed.

Standby

Some modems have a "Standby" button. Pressing this button "suspends" the internet connection. If you are the host, you can then do whatever pleases you within the game as all other players are frozen. The benefits are obvious and I'm sure we've ALL been on the wrong end of this button many times already. If you are not the host, the the effect is not as profound but still gives you advantages for short periods of time.

Bridging for Host

As the host, you get all the advantages this brings. No lag, no latency. Bridging. What is it? Try typing "network bridge" into Google and you will find that the first article is Microsoft's own description on their website. Bridging is a well established, completely legal form of networking. Home users, Small Business and Large Corporations use network bridging as fundamental parts of their networks. The use of Firewall programs such as Zonealarm is also completely legal. One of the "advantages" of "bridging" is that the host system, in order to accommodate you in matchmaking will give you host. It is not illegal and unless someone comes to your house can't be proven. Even if someone DOES come to your house (which I doubt Microsoft will do), and they CAN prove that have a bridged system, IT IS NOT ILLEGAL and neither is it against the Terms and Conditions. It would be like saying you can't use XBL if you are using Cisco hardware.

IP Blocking

Once you have host, there are many things you can do with it. One of them is to boot one or more of the other team from the game. By blocking an Xboxes IP Address, it is like them cutting them out of the game. It appears as though they have quit when in fact, their connection to the host has been blocked. This IS illegal. It is NOT however detectable. It is IMPOSSIBLE to detect that you have blocked an IP from your network. If someone wants to challenge this fact then please do so. If it can not be detected, it can not be punished.

Circle Boosting

Using IP blocking, you can tell your system to only allow IN your friends IP Addresses. Nobody in the world OTHER than your 7 friends. You then party up into 2 parties of 4 and enter MM. As MM can only match you with the other party of 4, it does so. You can then win/lose by agreement to boost your rank.

Rumble Parties

Using IP Blocking, you can allow only your friend(s) IP addresses. You can then enter the rumble pit. MM only has 1 player it can match you with, and does so. When you get the yellow box, you know that your friend is matched with you and you can remove the IP restrictions. MM then matches 6 other players with you and, with your friend, you can team up during what is supposed to be a FFA game. You can do this with 1,2,3,4,5,6 or 7 friends. You play the game as a team slayer game and whenever you and your friends killcount differs one kills the other to even it up. This form of host abuse is already being seen in the Rumble pit playlists.

Lagging the game

It is possible to connect to XBL using a 56k connection. As host, with a terrible upload connection (either by 56k connection or limiting u/l on your router) all the other players will lag/bluescreen/wallwalk while you will not.

Lateral thinking

The most recent form of host abuse to be found is the Rumble parties with 2 or more friends playing the rumble pits. As time goes on, more inventive ways to fool around will be discovered and used and all because one of the Xboxes within the game is the host. I have thought of 3 more ways to abuse the host system which I will offer below. I do this not because I am a cheater but because they WILL come out when cheaters tire of the current fun they are having.

Traitors

We'll take Skirmish as the example. You party up with 3 friends. You block all IPs except your 3 friends AND another friend. This separate non-party friend will end up on the other team and when his yellow box appears, the IP restriction is removed. The game starts and one team appears to have a traitor who changes sides, team kills, hides the bomb/flag etc...

Sanctions

Consider what would happen were a section of the community to take offence at an ISP. Potentially, huge sections of the community could block the IP addresses of all, for example, British Telecom customers. The IP ranges are well known and a simple high level block of the "82." range would mean large numbers of players would struggle to find games. Expand this further and you could see an entire country segregated from the Halo 3 community. For example I'll pick China. What if the Halo 3 community took offence to China's human rights record and published the IP ranges of the Chinese ISPs. In theory, a whole COUNTRY could be excluded from the Matchmaking process leaving them to play within the borders.

Selective Matchmaking

If you suffer from Lag/Latency, you don't want to play Americans/Japanese/English etc... you can set up your system to only allow IP ranges that are geographically favourable for you. For example, I myself am a BT customer. I could PERMIT the BT IP range only and MM would match me with only BT Customers. Admittedly, search times would be increased but my goal would be realised and those poor unfortunates that got matched with me would have to suffer my long wait times as I waited for a full game.

Summary

All of the above forms of host abuse use the bridging/IP Blocking setup to alter the outcome of the Matchmaking process or the game directly. Most importantly, bridging and IP blocking CAN NOT BE DETECTED. It is IMPOSSIBLE to PROVE that IP Blocking has taken place. Again, I will for anyone who can refute this to do so. If the host system is allowed to remain as is, this cheating will infest Halo 3 as well. These problems are known, they are real, they exist. They can not be stopped with the host system as it is. THIS is why Servers must be introduced. The threat to Halo 3's Multiplayer is very real and is very high. The first days of Halo 3 will be a cheaterfest with every last game being spoiled by Bridging, IP blocking, Rumble Parties. With the new feedback system, people who have been blocked out of a game will get bad feedback as their team-mates will believe that they quit.

The question is, can Microsoft afford to take this risk with their flagship product?

The host system in it's current form is flawed in several ways and the exploitation of these flaws is profound. These flaws can not be countered, repaired, fixed, detected, proven or actioned. It is my belief that they can not take this risk. The community has been disaffected with Halo 2 because of cheating for a very long time. Should Halo 3 be released and cheating rampage through the first month, many will drop the game a lot more quickly than they have with Halo 2. Microsoft's whole xbox project could fail should Halo 3 fail.

  • 05.16.2006 8:47 AM PDT
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Solution

If the host system is to be changed, the question then becomes "What do we do?".

The first, and obvious, idea is Central Servers. The servers would act as host and control the game. Players would always have the same connection, lag/latency would hopefully be minimised and "host advantage" would not exist. So, are servers feasible/viable? There is much debate on this and in my previous thread, I went to great lengths to prove that servers were indeed feasible. I will, again, prove this below.

The questions that need to be answered are how many servers do we need, how much will these cost and where do we get the money from.

How many servers are needed?

In the last 24 hours, there have been 563294 games logged. If you take an average game length of 10 mins, that's 3911 games being played at any one time. An opposer on the thread in Zanzibar has claimed that a server could not handle 1000 games. I'm going to be VERY fair on this and take the number of concurrent games per server to 500. This then would require 8 servers to host Halo 2 servers. In order to head off any stupid objections I'm going to multiply this by 20. So, we need 160 servers to host Halo 3 which I believe would be a massive over-estimation. I'm going to double this figure for redundancy (that means spares). So, we need 320 servers.

How much do servers cost?

At a cost of $100,000 per server, which is not unreasonable for a decent IBM i-series server we have a cost of servers of £32,000,000.

Where do we get the money from?

I have put together a large number of ideas below to fund the servers project. I am NOT saying that any one of these is the RIGHT way to go. I am not saying that any ONE item here could, and should, fund the whole project. I am saying that a COMBINATION of these ideas can all contribute to the project to make servers a reality. Any contribution from these, however small adds to the funding. If want to object to an idea, then do so. If you feel my maths is awry, feel free to re-calculate my numbers. Do NOT, however, dismiss servers as unfeasible by purely opposing ONE of these ideas.

1. Microsoft.

This first option is that Microsoft fund the whole project. It is in their best interests that Halo 3 does not flop. If H3 Multiplayer were to fail, it could potentially bring XBL down with it. Very soon, Sony will have their competitor to XBL up and running and the failure of XBL could tip people in favour of the Sony platform rather than Microsoft. The issue here is known as "Business Risk". Microsoft will have to do a "Business Risk" Assessment for H3 and try to minimise the threats to their product at launch. This Project will, at some point, come to the server issue. If MS feel that the risk is too great to allow the current host system to be used in H3, they will have to go down the server route. Although they would probably prefer not to, should the worst happen, they would lose a lot of ground on the competition. Re-engineering the product could take months. All the while, revenue is going to Sony and the PS3 is running away from the 360. In this case, MS could just invest in the servers as an Insurance against the possibility of the failure of XBL because H3 fails. In it's first year of sales, Halo 2 sold 7 million copies worldwide (income @ $50/copy = £350,000,000) and still continues to sell. 3 years after it's launch, Halo:CE was 9th in the sales charts, still generating revenue for Microsoft (as is H2 currently). Adding together the income from Halo:CE, Halo 2 and Halo 3 would amount to a staggering sum of money and I haven't even included any income from XBL (whose interests are closely linked with the success of H3). It is not asking a lot for MS to fund the entire project from their own pocket.

2. Users

User could pay more for XBL. If you were to calculate how much XBL currently costs you, I'll bet it would be less than ANY other leisure activity you could mention (that you have to pay for). To demonstrate this, I will use myself in a worked example. I will point out that in the early days, I played quite a bit. Since the first update, I have not played as much at all. In the first year, I have 80 pages of games at 25 per page. That's 2000 games. I paid £40 for the game and £40 for XBL. As I only play H2 online, I will attribute ALL of the XBL fee to H2. It has therefore cost me £80 for 2000 games. That's £0.04 per game in the first year. A game typically takes around 10mins to play. That's therefore 6 games an hour at £0.04 per game. Hourly cost is therefore £0.24.

Going to the pub at 2 pints of lager per hour = £5 per hour.
Going to the cinema at £10 per film (call it a 2 hour film which is over the top estimate) = £5 per hour.
Playing Badminton at the sports centre at £5.60 per court (4 players) = £1.40 per hour.

I could go on ALL day with this but I think it's safe to say that Bungie could charge you £160 for H3 and it would still work out as the cheapest form of leisure for even an average gamer like me. Anyone care to dispute those numbers?

On that basis, the extra £120 per user could be put into servers. In the last 24 hours, there have been 312742 unique accounts on XBL in H2. The additional revenue from those alone would be £37,529,040. Is £37M enough to buy your servers and bandwidth and maintain it? The additional revenue from the other players who weren't online in the last 24 hours can go into Bill Pocket for all I care.

If you object to this on the grounds that $160 for H3 would be a rip off, then perhaps we could split the game into 2 games. A H3 campaign game at $50 and a H3 Multiplayer Game at $110. I'd buy it!!!!

Please do NOT flame me for suggesting $160 as this is merely a demonstration of the "cost of living" impact on your pocket of Halo. Make the cost more, make the cost less, it's still a significant contribution to the servers project.

3. Authors.

See No. 1 but substitute Bungie for Microsoft.

4. Reduce Hardware cost by "Prestige" contracts i.e. Sponsorship.

Hardware companies could be "convinced" by MS that winning the supply contracts for the H3 project's hardware is a prestigious feather in their caps and they all "bid" low values to win the supply contract. I have personally built the servers that my Business runs on. The spec of these servers would probably have them retailing at £5k-£8k each. As it is, they cost only £2500 for both. This is with my (limited) buying power with the distributor. The hardware suppliers such as Dell, IBM, Hp etc... could all supply hardware at cost, cost + 1% etc... to win the contract. The lobbies, screenshots, blue screens etc... could then carry the manufacturers logos. Sponsorship happens everywhere. Companies like Vodafone, O2 and Emirates pay the likes of Manchester United and Chelsea tens of millions just to put their logos on their shirts and a few advertising boards.

5. Advertising.

As you log in, during the lobbies (pre-game and post), during the matchmaking screens, Companies can advertise their products. Anything can be advertised, Mortgages, Cars, Kettles, Games, ISPs, Routers, Fizzy Drinks, Clothes and so on. The cost of these adverts pays for the servers. This is not ideal for the gamers but hey, so what! Successful websites are already doing this. Although this option may not be enough to fully cover the cost, it could, nevertheless, contribute to the cost. You may not want adverts but at the end of the day, IT'S NOT UP TO YOU!

6. Usage basis.

Each game you play, the cost gets charged to your credit card. I don't need to go on about this one too much but in the last 24 hours 669,255 have been logged. Games per year (on this figure) would be 244,278,075 games per year. At £0.10 per game, the income in a year would be £24,427,807.50! Is this enough for your servers? I'd be happy to play a game at a cost of £0.10 per game, 6 games per hour, £0.60 per hour.

7. Limit certain playlists to server to reduce size of project.

Perhaps only certain playlists could be server based to cut down the traffic/cost. These could 4+ team games only (Team Slayer, BTB, 6v6 etc...). It could be just the ranked playlists that are server hosted and custom games are hosted by an xbox in the current manner, cheating being rare and irrelevant on Customs.

8. Premium Playlists.

Perhaps there could be 2 sets of playlists, the xbox hosted ones and the server hosted ones. You have to have a higher level of membership to play on the servers. Perhaps you pay as you play (see 6).

9. Don't use expensive servers at all, use xboxes!

I have shown that at any one time, there are around 4000 games being played. Each on is being hosted by an xbox somewhere in the world. The problem with this is that someone (other than Bungie) is controlling that Xbox. How much would it cost Bungie to provide several thousand xboxes to act as hosts? A re-write of the matchmaking code and hey-presto SERVERS!!!!!! I can buy an xbox 360 for £220 (trade price). Let's assume, after removing several mark-ups that an xbox would cost Bungie £150 (it will probably be MUCH lower but I'm erring on the expesive side). For launch day, let's say 80,000 xboxes. At £150/box = £12million. That's MUCH less than the IBM's. As demand for H3 MP dies down, these xboxes could be sold cheaply, give to charity etc... If demand increases, add more xboxes. They could EASILY be distributed around the world to provide "regional server farms". If one breaks down, SO WHAT, they're cheap, replace it. My numbers on this are based on hosting EVERY game on XBL, not simply the ranked playlists etc... Using xboxes could be a fantastic solution for everyone.

  • 05.16.2006 8:48 AM PDT
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Bandwidth

In the last 24 hours (data from several month ago), there have been 669255 games logged, thats 27885.63 per hour. At 10 mins per game, that's 4648 games in progress at any one time. If we assume a 2MB dl, 512KB ul connection is capable of hosting a game satisfactorily, that would be 9296MB (or 10GB down and 2.5GB up). Now I'm not an expert of bandwidth etc... but I have seen "OC-192" pipes (10GBPS) advertised for as much as $10,000 per month ($120,000 per year).

So let's times our bandwidth requirements by TEN. We have a potential cost of $1,200,000 per year. Let's times that by another TEN just to be safe! $12,000,000 per year gets us all the bandwidth we'd need. That figure is WELL within the £25M for item 6 or £37M from item 1.

Conclusion

So I've shown quite a few different methods of funding servers. I do not suggest that these are the ONLY ways to do it. Microsoft have shown over the years that they are the MASTERS of marketing and have probably a hundred more ideas. These are simpy SOME ideas that, between them using a combination of these funding sources, servers could be provided. In my opinion, it is both feasible to provide servers and the risk in not providing servers is too great a risk for Microsoft to take.

  • 05.16.2006 8:49 AM PDT
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[reserved]

  • 05.16.2006 8:50 AM PDT
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[reserved]

  • 05.16.2006 8:51 AM PDT
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Posted by: Nezzy_Bast
[In the last 24 hours, there have been 563294 games logged. If you take an average game length of 10 mins, that's 3911 games being played at any one time. An opposer on the thread in Zanzibar has claimed that a server could not handle 1000 games. I'm going to be VERY fair on this and take the number of concurrent games per server to 500. This then would require 8 servers to host Halo 2 servers. In order to head off any stupid objections I'm going to multiply this by 20. So, we need 160 servers to host Halo 3 which I believe would be a massive over-estimation. I'm going to double this figure for redundancy (that means spares). So, we need 320 servers.


You would need a lot more servers than that. Here is a quote from a Bungie employee.(I think it's from Shishka)

200 servers x 16 users per server = 3200 players are able to play at any one time.

If your game is like Halo 2, and sees a rough average of 100,000 users a day, that's 96,800 players that have to sit on their ass until their turn comes up. Guess what? Nobody's going to play your game. And for good reason; sitting for hours waiting for the chance to get matchmade, only to a) play a 10 minute game, or b) play less than that due to skill involved, or not play at all due to some technical or personal complication.





[Edited on 5/16/2006]

  • 05.16.2006 9:05 AM PDT
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Posted by: opogjijijp
Posted by: Nezzy_Bast
[In the last 24 hours, there have been 563294 games logged. If you take an average game length of 10 mins, that's 3911 games being played at any one time. An opposer on the thread in Zanzibar has claimed that a server could not handle 1000 games. I'm going to be VERY fair on this and take the number of concurrent games per server to 500. This then would require 8 servers to host Halo 2 servers. In order to head off any stupid objections I'm going to multiply this by 20. So, we need 160 servers to host Halo 3 which I believe would be a massive over-estimation. I'm going to double this figure for redundancy (that means spares). So, we need 320 servers.


You would need a lot more servers than that. Here is a quote from a Bungie employee.(I think it's from Shishka)

200 servers x 16 users per server = 3200 players are able to play at any one time.

If your game is like Halo 2, and sees a rough average of 100,000 users a day, that's 96,800 players that have to sit on their ass until their turn comes up. Guess what? Nobody's going to play your game. And for good reason; sitting for hours waiting for the chance to get matchmade, only to a) play a 10 minute game, or b) play less than that due to skill involved, or not play at all due to some technical or personal complication.



Congratulations, you are the first prat to post a comment. Just because you put something in quotes does not make it true! Do you have a likn for Shishka's comment? Erm no?????

why would you only have 16 sers per server??? An Xbox can handle 16 users per machine easily! If you're saying that if xboxes were used, you'd need more than 320, I AGREE. I even STATED THE FACT in my post! Read it again! You are an idiot, please do not post here again.

  • 05.16.2006 9:14 AM PDT
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WOW lots of type. LOL anyways I totally agree central servers are a must to help safeguard the online component of MultiPlayer not only that but it would also take out much of the lag from slow connections and no more blue screen of Waiting to Reconnect.

  • 05.16.2006 9:17 AM PDT
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Yea... Halo 2 Multiplayer was a bust... noone played it.

  • 05.16.2006 9:18 AM PDT
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Thats a very long and well thought out post. I agree that you need servers. Other games do so why can't Halo 3? The money would be ok too. I like the idea of a campaign and a multiplayer disk.

  • 05.16.2006 9:22 AM PDT
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Posted by: opogjijijp
Posted by: Nezzy_Bast
[In the last 24 hours, there have been 563294 games logged. If you take an average game length of 10 mins, that's 3911 games being played at any one time. An opposer on the thread in Zanzibar has claimed that a server could not handle 1000 games. I'm going to be VERY fair on this and take the number of concurrent games per server to 500. This then would require 8 servers to host Halo 2 servers. In order to head off any stupid objections I'm going to multiply this by 20. So, we need 160 servers to host Halo 3 which I believe would be a massive over-estimation. I'm going to double this figure for redundancy (that means spares). So, we need 320 servers.


You would need a lot more servers than that. Here is a quote from a Bungie employee.(I think it's from Shishka)

200 servers x 16 users per server = 3200 players are able to play at any one time.

If your game is like Halo 2, and sees a rough average of 100,000 users a day, that's 96,800 players that have to sit on their ass until their turn comes up. Guess what? Nobody's going to play your game. And for good reason; sitting for hours waiting for the chance to get matchmade, only to a) play a 10 minute game, or b) play less than that due to skill involved, or not play at all due to some technical or personal complication.





The true fact is that a server can Host a whole lot of games since its running the same software anyways it should be no problem to get 500 games on a 2x Dual Core processor with like 8gb of ram. It depends really on connection speed of the server and also who says that all games have to be on central servers I say put ranked games on central servers and custom and unranked matchmade on regular xbox host.

  • 05.16.2006 9:22 AM PDT
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Posted by: Seventh Assault
Posted by: opogjijijp
Posted by: Nezzy_Bast
[In the last 24 hours, there have been 563294 games logged. If you take an average game length of 10 mins, that's 3911 games being played at any one time. An opposer on the thread in Zanzibar has claimed that a server could not handle 1000 games. I'm going to be VERY fair on this and take the number of concurrent games per server to 500. This then would require 8 servers to host Halo 2 servers. In order to head off any stupid objections I'm going to multiply this by 20. So, we need 160 servers to host Halo 3 which I believe would be a massive over-estimation. I'm going to double this figure for redundancy (that means spares). So, we need 320 servers.


You would need a lot more servers than that. Here is a quote from a Bungie employee.(I think it's from Shishka)

200 servers x 16 users per server = 3200 players are able to play at any one time.

If your game is like Halo 2, and sees a rough average of 100,000 users a day, that's 96,800 players that have to sit on their ass until their turn comes up. Guess what? Nobody's going to play your game. And for good reason; sitting for hours waiting for the chance to get matchmade, only to a) play a 10 minute game, or b) play less than that due to skill involved, or not play at all due to some technical or personal complication.





The true fact is that a server can Host a whole lot of games since its running the same software anyways it should be no problem to get 500 games on a 2x Dual Core processor with like 8gb of ram. It depends really on connection speed of the server and also who says that all games have to be on central servers I say put ranked games on central servers and custom and unranked matchmade on regular xbox host.


We don't know that. We have a quote from someone who works for Bungie saying that they would only be able to have 16 players per server. Even if they were to only host matchmade games, they would need a lot of servers.

  • 05.16.2006 9:29 AM PDT
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This is probably THE best post / poll i have seen in the last week.......
I voted YES (its in capitals for a reason).

  • 05.16.2006 9:32 AM PDT
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This whole poll is going to be skewed though, so it's results are going to be inconclusive. Think about it, the majority of people won't bother voting because this is the 56th poll about this already on this topic. So the only people who are going to bother voting are the people who like to complain. The average halo player gets online for about an hour and a half, this has been studied, plays a few matchmaking games, sees his friends plays either matchmaking or customs, then gets off. So of the 100,000 people that play online, just about ALL the ones who care about this are going to be on the boards, because they had to have somewhere to complain. So you're going to get all the people who actually give a -blam!- about this issue to vote yes, and the normal people who just play the game to have a good time with friends, won't vote. And the other 99,900 people who play Halo and don't even get on the boards could care less... which is why they don't get on the boards.

  • 05.16.2006 9:37 AM PDT
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Posted by: opogjijijp
We don't know that. We have a quote from someone who works for Bungie saying that they would only be able to have 16 players per server. Even if they were to only host matchmade games, they would need a lot of servers.

Well games such as bf2 can cope with 24 online players. If EA can do this, im sure Bungie can host at least this much.

  • 05.16.2006 9:38 AM PDT
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Posted by: opogjijijp
We don't know that. We have a quote from someone who works for Bungie saying that they would only be able to have 16 players per server. Even if they were to only host matchmade games, they would need a lot of servers.


I know it isn't exactly known that is just an estimate but Bungie and Microsoft have plenty of money to accomplish this and the marketplace totally makes up for the little loss they would accuire. I baught both the theme and the picture pack which was like 2 bucks so if 40000 people got that thats 80000 dollars more than enough to cover half there cost to get 20 high end 8000 dollar servers which should be able to hold 100-500 games apiece in theory.

Now if they were to release a map pack then that would be about 400 gp and that comes to 3 or so bucks im guessing and if 50000 people bought that then they got 150000 which is enough to get servers and keep them maintained this is just my theory. Sorry for going off the topic a little and I don't doubt anyones ideas so far in here I just think that money is no issue for this subject since the game will make millions and Microsoft is one of the richest companies in the world.

P.S. They could put all the servers in India to save money on maintenance and other stuff. (pun intended)

  • 05.16.2006 9:40 AM PDT
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Posted by: Seventh Assault
Posted by: opogjijijp
We don't know that. We have a quote from someone who works for Bungie saying that they would only be able to have 16 players per server. Even if they were to only host matchmade games, they would need a lot of servers.


I know it isn't exactly known that is just an estimate but Bungie and Microsoft have plenty of money to accomplish this and the marketplace totally makes up for the little loss they would accuire. I baught both the theme and the picture pack which was like 2 bucks so if 40000 people got that thats 80000 dollars more than enough to cover half there cost to get 20 high end 8000 dollar servers which should be able to hold 100-500 games apiece in theory.

Now if they were to release a map pack then that would be about 400 gp and that comes to 3 or so bucks im guessing and if 50000 people bought that then they got 150000 which is enough to get servers and keep them maintained this is just my theory. Sorry for going off the topic a little and I don't doubt anyones ideas so far in here I just think that money is no issue for this subject since the game will make millions and Microsoft is one of the richest companies in the world.

P.S. They could put all the servers in India to save money on maintenance and other stuff. (pun intended)


Or they could not... keep the $80,000, and you'll still buy Halo 3 anyways... Which sounds like a better idea if you're trying to make money?

Besides... this money is going to the Xbox 360 fund, considering they are still losing money on every 360 they sell.

  • 05.16.2006 9:48 AM PDT
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This is a great idea.



If Counter-Strike, Crimson Skies, DOA Ultimate, and Unreal Champion can have a serverlist on XBL, then so can Halo 3 within the 360 XBL.

  • 05.16.2006 9:49 AM PDT
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I would like to thank you for posting what I believe is a very worth while topic. I haven't posted in ages due to mostly the lack of intelligence in topic(s) or at least the effort.

I agree that MS should pick up part of the tab. I don't believe that it should be charged by usage or even subscrition based meaning game(s) specific but add $10 to the membership fee (annual of course) and have that be directed to the game most played, by that membership, using dedicated servers. I thought and also agree with a small advertising window in the party pre and post game lobbies.

I don't believe using Xbox's would be reliable for using as mass servers. They could just use the servers for ranked games only and have custom games use Halo 2's host setup, but I think that would cause problems.

  • 05.16.2006 9:52 AM PDT

Q. What do you get when you add 1 man, 1 car, and 1 rocket built for a jet?

A. A black smudge on the side of a cliff.

Yes, they may be losing money. But, just imagine how much $$$ sony is loosing on the PS3!

  • 05.16.2006 9:52 AM PDT
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holy -blam!- you put alot of thoguht into this nice job although i did not read it all i read most and skimed the rest and i completely agree with you servers will solve most problems online

[Edited on 5/16/2006]

  • 05.16.2006 9:56 AM PDT
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Posted by: AWeafe
Posted by: opogjijijp
We don't know that. We have a quote from someone who works for Bungie saying that they would only be able to have 16 players per server. Even if they were to only host matchmade games, they would need a lot of servers.

Well games such as bf2 can cope with 24 online players. If EA can do this, im sure Bungie can host at least this much.

Starwars Battlefront could hold up to 32 players on central servers. I dont know if Starwars Battlefront 2 now has more or the same players playing but Starwars Battlefront can do it so it shouldn't be that hard for Bungie to run 64 or 108 players on cental servers provided and paid for by microsoft.

  • 05.16.2006 10:00 AM PDT
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xbox live will either be adapted to deal with the "current audiance" or die

  • 05.16.2006 10:02 AM PDT
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Posted by: Master Grim
xbox live will either be adapted to deal with the "current audiance" or die


Surely this is a joke. As a matter of fact, I think all of you are hilarious. You want microsoft to give us something FREE that the guys over at Blizzard are charging $15 a month for... You are seriously out of your mind. Ask away, be my guest... but you are living in a fantasy world... I'm sure before it's over, there will even be a couple people SWEAR that they won't buy Halo 3 if there aren't dedicated servers... and I'll take that bet.

Oh, and Master Grim, they've already adapted it. If you have a 360, you should have noticed. XBL was lightyears ahead of Sony, and I would imagine that Sony will be lucky to put out something as effective as XBL still, considering this is their first real try.

  • 05.16.2006 10:08 AM PDT
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Jesus, do you know any game that allows 128 players, or even 64?

You're all talking about something world of warcraft esque. Let's say that the Xbox 360 is similarly powerful to a good computer. I don't remember the exact specs, but it's nothing that can support 64 players.

Take the game now: you have 8 players. Each player has a specific location in the game. Everything the player does has specific locations in memory. The xbox doesn't have enough memory to hold 8x the current memory usage. I don't believe that the memory usage increase is linear. There are too many things going on, too many collision detections, too many calculations of grenade/bullet paths, to have the xbox 360 keep track of it all. You know how you can shoot a wall and the bullets leave holes? Well if you shoot the wall enough, the bullets stop leaving holes, because it reached some unknown number and quit making bullet holes. Eventually the holes disappear and you can create new ones, but with all the bullets fired, and all the blackened grenade explosion areas that would come from 8x the number of players, I have a hard time believing 64 people could play. It wouldn't be the server's fault, I don't think that the 360 could keep up.

The maximum I could see playing is 32. I don't know how much memory it would take and what the display would be like, because I can't remember the exact specs. Think about it, playing 32 people on Lockout would be INSANE, not fun because by the time you spawned, you'd spawn with other people fighting around you, spawn on a grenade, etc.. So that means that new maps would have to be developed. Maps at least as big as Waterworks, and some even bigger. That's another chunk of memory that would have to be devoted to displaying the map as well as the chars in it. I just don't think that the 360 could support that many people without cutting down on some features.



As to the money issue, whatever. Find a good host and play customs. Stop worrying about what "rank" you are. Play people that are good and you'll see how you'd do. And you wouldn't have to worry about being cheated.

EDIT: And SW: Battlefront was crap. As far as graphics go, the game was NOWHERE near Halo 2. Hell, I think Halo CE was better graphically than SW: Battlefront. The polygon count was too low in Battlefront. It's not hard to make an almost completely flat Hoth and put a couple of AT-ATs down on it and say 'PRESTO! The Battle of Hoth!'. There was nothing that stood out in the game. It was flat. It was simple. It sucked.

[Edited on 5/16/2006]

  • 05.16.2006 10:23 AM PDT

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