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shadow puppet of a posted:You expect an honest, hat-in-hand confessional from the same team that threw themselves a party and filmed a documentary about how wonderful a job they did making the game? Yup, that's exactly how it goes. Frank O'Connor is exactly the same, as are probably most of the 343 guys. Running up to MCC launch he was tweeting several times a day, building up hype. Then the game launches and he goes radio silent for a long time, then he retweets a couple things Dan Ayoub said about a patch and some forge maps and then back to radio silence. Last two tweets are him from a month ago saying "Wonky but useful matchmaking tip:" (quit lobby if it doesn't say the right thing and start over) followed by "New MCC update is live" and then not a thing since. Nobody can say anything because then they'll become the figurehead for failure.
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Dec 10, 2014 17:23
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Texibus posted:Yeah, I don't know poo poo on the coding end of things so not an ETA then, just some sort of state of the game type address, instead of what looks like an automated response from Bravo's twitter feed that says "Thanks, team is aware of the issue and looking into it." Pretty minimal and haven't done much since high school unless "Windows batch files" counts, admittedly, I've just worked with programmers to a degree getting server inter-communication happening and troubleshooting those sorts of things. 343 doesn't really have a winning PR move at this point as long as the issues aren't fixed. A list of "here is what we're working on" would be massive, people would cross-reference current issues with previous patch notes which pinky-swore the issue was fixed, any missing known issue from this list would be pounced on, and the honest answer is almost certainly going to be "our code is so hosed and it's taking a long time to make heads or tails about what's going on" which doesn't inspire confidence for the Halo 5 Beta or Halo 5 itself. And this is assuming that the public isn't full of people who don't know poo poo about troubleshooting or coding yelling about why they don't just do a few computer-y things and turn the servers on. Driveclub and Evolution Studios were able to have a clear "our things are hosed right now and here's the situation and why it's not a simple fix" message but were in a slightly better position. What happened there was an unfortunate situation due to a deeply-rooted coding oversight. Basically the structure of the code meant crossing a certain number of players sent the servers from "everything is peachy" to completely hosed, and said threshold was only crossed when they actually launched the game (they legitimately had no idea there was a problem prior to the game's official launch in Europe); beta testing didn't have enough people for this problem to show. Typically, special software which pretends to be tens/hundreds of thousands of people connecting at once is used for late-stage stress testing, and for some reason this test didn't reveal the problem and they legitimately thought everything would be more or less fine once the game launched. They were able to pretty quickly identify the root cause of everything in this case, but because of their code's structure it wasn't a simple fix, as other parts of the code had to be adjusted and rebuilt to accommodate this. However, they were able to come out, spell out exactly what the problem was, and although it took a while and the free version is still not out, the game is now otherwise fixed. Halo MCC's problems are much more severe, and the only technical problem with Driveclub was related to connecting to the servers, as everything else in the base game worked fine. There are a ton of problems in Halo MCC which aren't related to the matchmaking. Tons of campaign-related issues, problems with the game talking to Halo Channel, nonsensical design decisions impacting stability, falling through the map. There are enough issues apparent from the beginning that I am legitimately baffled that reviewers scored this collection as highly as they did. Testing seems to strongly suggest that the aiming bug is caused by Halo 2 Classic using the PC version's optimized-for-56k netcode. This is a problem because this code was written over 7.5 years ago (this is like being shown something at your University graduation that you wrote when you were a high school freshman), which is an absolute eternity in programming terms and even if they had someone on-staff currently who worked on it back in the day (which they likely don't) I could picture them looking at the code and thinking to themselves "what the gently caress is this idiot programmer doing?" They did this because they didn't have the resources to make proper fresh netcode and nothing that's happened recently will change that.
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Dec 10, 2014 17:26
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Also, to add to what the 'bee said, spelling out the plan would mean they have something to be held to. Halo MCC is very likely to never be fully 'fixed', as its consuming a lot of resources right now from 343, other MS Xbox people and whoever is paying for the additional developer time the porting contractors are burning through. At some point those people all have other time-critical projects that cannot themselves be delayed for tweaking an old game that is out and 'playable'. Spelling out what is going to happen next will reveal which parts are specifically not going to be addressed. This creates a second firestorm of "What do you mean our broken $60 game is going to be broken forever?!?" Couple that with MS' case of NIH syndrome, or more likely, NLIH (No Longer Invented Here) and they are going to want to be able to very quickly wipe their hands of what are likely internally seen as "Bungie's problems"
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Dec 10, 2014 17:41
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Software Engineer here (posting from my job when I should get back to testing  )The real problem with the MCC is that each game is an entirely different codebase. Its not like you're running the same engine in single player and multi for the most part with a slightly different set of settings, or even some games like Medal of Honor which launched with a separate single player engine and multiplayer engine. The MCC is fully 5 different project codebases. Each completely different. That's a nightmare of support in and of itself. Even if things were mostly working that'd be a stressful environment to support. But things as broken as they are? Oh god. And then no one team of people has even seen all the code in this game? Its been made by several different studios patching it together? Uh-oh. univbee posted:Testing seems to strongly suggest that the aiming bug is caused by Halo 2 Classic using the PC version's optimized-for-56k netcode. This is a problem because this code was written over 7.5 years ago (this is like being shown something at your University graduation that you wrote when you were a high school freshman), which is an absolute eternity in programming terms and even if they had someone on-staff currently who worked on it back in the day (which they likely don't) I could picture them looking at the code and thinking to themselves "what the gently caress is this idiot programmer doing?" They did this because they didn't have the resources to make proper fresh netcode and nothing that's happened recently will change that. And this exemplifies the real issues here; we're dealing with an Xbox 1 game ported to PC, ported to Xbone. There's going to be so much old cruft in that code, artifacts from porting through different hardware environments and directx versions and all kinds of things. The worst feeling in the world as a developer is knowing that something that is really screwed up is already live. Even minor fixes in development can end up costing weeks because of all the testing and deployment involved. A major issue like this could require weeks of just research and testing just to correctly identify what the most severe problems are, then several more weeks of implementing and testing the fixes. They're probably scrambling to push fixes by Xmas but good luck. We'll see what happens, and exactly how deep-rooted into the codebase or how bad the porting job was is anybody's guess at this point.
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Dec 10, 2014 17:51
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Holy poo poo nobody cares. Stop writing those stupidly long posts
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Dec 10, 2014 17:52
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ethanol posted:Holy poo poo nobody cares. Stop writing those stupidly long posts Sorry people are discussing things on a discussion forum. I personally am finding the breakdown of where things went wrong quite interesting.
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Dec 10, 2014 17:57
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ethanol posted:Holy poo poo nobody cares. Stop writing those stupidly long posts Plenty of people care, piss off.
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Dec 10, 2014 18:04
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I enjoyed the insight, so thanks for the opinions.
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Dec 10, 2014 18:09
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shadow puppet of a posted:Also, to add to what the 'bee said, spelling out the plan would mean they have something to be held to. Halo MCC is very likely to never be fully 'fixed', as its consuming a lot of resources right now from 343, other MS Xbox people and whoever is paying for the additional developer time the porting contractors are burning through. At some point those people all have other time-critical projects that cannot themselves be delayed for tweaking an old game that is out and 'playable'. This is also a good point. They are probably waiting for most of the complaints to die down and will then quietly just stop patching the game.
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Dec 10, 2014 18:09
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ethanol posted:Holy poo poo nobody cares. Stop writing those stupidly long posts gently caress off with this goony poo poo
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Dec 10, 2014 18:10
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Given the resources and time, can they patch this thing to where it'd be completely functional or is that entirely impossible after software goes live? As in is the best case scenario without completely starting over going to be: This is as good as we can get it without issuing a whole new game.
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Dec 10, 2014 18:24
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Texibus posted:Given the resources and time, can they patch this thing to where it'd be completely functional or is that entirely impossible after software goes live? They certainly could, however it's very doubtful they'll keep up patching it past a certain point especially as Halo 5 nears.
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Dec 10, 2014 18:28
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Texibus posted:Given the resources and time, can they patch this thing to where it'd be completely functional or is that entirely impossible after software goes live? Resources and time are very variable though. If Microsoft decides this is going to screw up the xbone's bottom line, then they could push hard to get 343 on it or to get some of the teams who worked on different parts to take a look at it for serious, assuming they're not already busy with another project, or even bring in some outside team to clean it up. But 343i is pretty busy with Halo 5 right now (which is why MCC was so heavily outsourced, which probably lead to where we are today) they may not be able to really put much resources on this. Its really really hard to say especially since we know so little about the real core of the problems themselves. But it does look like the matchmaking glue is messed up as well as several of the individual games' networking, so that's not going to be super quick and easy at the very least. Is it possible that it gets fixed at ANY point in the future? Absolutely. How much will it cost? Really hard to estimate. Will 343/MS spend that much, or will they drop it and run? I have no earthly idea. Considering half the game wasn't even on-disc though there's never really a hard moment of "software is launched, can't be fixed without a new game sorry". If they want to, they CAN fix it. Its just a question of if its worth it or if MS/343i sees it as being cost-effective.
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Dec 10, 2014 18:33
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Texibus posted:Given the resources and time, can they patch this thing to where it'd be completely functional or is that entirely impossible after software goes live? A complete do-over post release isn't unheard of (see: Final Fantasy 14) but given what's been going on, I think the fixes are asymptotal, always approaching but never quite reaching 100% fixed. I think most of the by-now infamous bugs are going to always be present to a certain degree, like mysteriously ending up in another random party, trouble with matchmaking requiring a hard reset, stuff like that, but maybe not quite at the frequency they're at now. The unfortunate truth is that the resources required for a total fix are in the range of what would be required to completely start over, and I think the economic incentive just isn't there because not that many people raised a stink about getting a refund and a do-over at this stage isn't going to grant them much of an increase in sales (at least FF14 had monthly subscription fees as incentive for their do-over).
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Dec 10, 2014 18:34
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FF14 being an MMO which makes it pretty different (you expect a lifetime of support with those, and they have subscriptions to fund development) and part of why A Realm Reborn happened was because the Square higher-ups actually decided that it was tanking the franchise. MCC not being an MMO but a console FPS is much less likely to see that level of redesign and support. But again, if they see it as tanking the franchise, they could do anything. They could spend two years remaking MCC if they really want to. (not that it would take all that) But they didn't exactly redesign 4 after it was pretty meh. But I guess at least 4 was pretty playable, just not as fun.
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Dec 10, 2014 18:36
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I just wasn't sure if a game's code could be hosed up so bad no amount of patching is going to save it and you answered that, thanks! Now as you mentioned do they want to commit the resources to getting this thing right, that's a whole different ball of wax you're right. However, I'd be leaning towards they're going to push this pretty hard over the next couple of months and then taper off. My guess would be taking this thing seriously till March when that HCS poo poo wraps up because if they can get a competitive scene behind H2A that'll carry them cleanly into Halo 5's ship date. That's all speculation on my part obviously but it makes sense. Texibus fucked around with this message at 18:49 on Dec 10, 2014 |
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Dec 10, 2014 18:43
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Yeah the major issue with any ongoing patching for MCC is going to be "ok this is now impacting halo 5" at which point they are likely to just go "good enough" in order to make sure 5 doesnt have the same issues.
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Dec 10, 2014 18:50
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The Halo 2 hit detection isn't ever going to be fixed because it's not technically broken. It was written for a different environment and it can't readily cope with the environment it is being run in. It's not some bug they can patch out. edit. sunday at work fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Dec 10, 2014 |
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Dec 10, 2014 18:50
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They know after christmas they have the majority of sales they will ever get, and unless MCC has dlc then there is little reason for them to keep patching itsunday at work posted:The Halo 2 hit detection isn't ever going to be fixed because it's not technically broken. It was just written for a different environment and it can't readily cope with the environment it is being run it. This is just some bug they can patch out. Bundle 56k modems with MCC
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Dec 10, 2014 18:51
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Have they even acknowledged that they removed dedicated server support? I have a bad feeling they're only going to work on this until finding P2P matches is stable.
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Dec 10, 2014 18:54
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sunday at work posted:The Halo 2 hit detection isn't ever going to be fixed because it's not technically broken. That doesn't matter. Its broken as far as gamers care, so it should be patched. Nobody cares if their game is "technically correct". They care if it plays well and is a fair competitive environment. (And along those lines it is technically broken, yes) sunday at work posted:It was written for a different environment and it can't readily cope with the environment it is being run in. It's not some bug they can patch out. Uh, what? Yes you can. If you wanted to you could completely rewrite the network stack in a patch. But it won't take all that. You've heard of "ports", right?  You re-write software for another environment.Look at Quake versus QuakeWorld, okay? What do you think some code is "sacred" and can't be changed or something? The only question is how much is really broken, how much work it would take to fix it, and whether 343i or MS cares to put in that work.
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Dec 10, 2014 18:56
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Zaphod42 posted:That doesn't matter. Its broken as far as gamers care, so it should be patched. Nobody cares if their game is "technically correct". They care if it plays well and is a fair competitive environment. (And along those lines it is technically broken, yes) He meant the code was meant for 56k players, not built for broadband only.
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Dec 10, 2014 19:02
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Texibus posted:I just wasn't sure if a games code is hosed up, no amount of patching is going to save it, and I think you answered my question with yes you can un-gently caress the software with patches. Now as you mentioned do they want to commit the resources to getting this thing right, that's a whole different ball of wax. However, I'd be leaning towards they're going to push this pretty hard over the next couple of months and then taper off. The coding question depends on specifics of the code and its issues that people outside of 343 aren't privy to, we're just guessing based on experience with other, similar projects and issues. Some games have had crazy levels of post-release support, Diablo 3 is a good example. Rewinding back to Diablo 2 is also a good example, as some root issues allowing cheating were never fixable due to being a core part of the code. Diablo 1 was an absolute mess of cheaters and hackers because the game was essentially P2P, and being a PC game people had crazy levels of memory access and could tamper with all kinds of things. Diablo 2 improved on this but still had some localized calculations, especially things like drop rate of items, to the point that one phenomenally rare type of gem got "patched" by making it so two of those being in the same place at the same time destroyed them both (because the drop chances of that happening were basically impossible). Diablo 3 did away with all of this and made all of the game's calculations server-side; you are basically playing an MMO instance each time you play, and enemy A.I. and drops and everything are handled by Blizzard's servers and not your local client. They then remade the game in a big way because their original plan of balancing the game around the auction house fell apart spectacularly and the game plays far better now with a dynamic leveling curve for monsters, fairer difficulties, and adventure mode so you can stop having to listen to Leah complain about her mom. Although adventure mode requires the expansion, everything else was a free change for everybody. But that being said, Blizzard can hire a top-level coder for a year with only a single hour of their intake from WoW subscriptions. The problem with the competitive scene for Halo MCC is that the game is hosed for them too. Someone earlier in this thread is an MLG-level Halo player and he and his other MLG buddies gave up on MCC because of the aim issues, and live tournaments of the game have had tons of technical problems affecting match outcomes (or getting a match going) because playing a proper LAN game is no longer possible by design.
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Dec 10, 2014 19:02
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Haquer posted:He meant the code was meant for 56k players, not built for broadband only. I know it was. But you could change that, is my point. A game being designed around 56k doesn't mean "welp there's nothing we can do  "You go change the parts of the code that are optimized for 56k so they aren't. I don't get what he's saying. Quake was designed only really for LAN, but then they wrote code to handle 56K play, and that's how we got quakeworld. That's why I brought that up. Similarly you can update Quake to better handle on broadband (people already have), and you could do the same for halo.
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Dec 10, 2014 19:08
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OK, it's more work than they are going to do. It's not like just little bits of the code are designed for 56k. This was my original point: the code base is designed for slower speeds and acts wonky at higher speeds. There isn't just a slider for network speed somewhere in the game. They need a new code base and they aren't going to write one. Sure, it's not technically broken, but it doesn't work in the envriornment it is run in and that is just as good as broken to the player.
sunday at work fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Dec 10, 2014 |
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Dec 10, 2014 19:09
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But they wont. If they cared they wouldn't have ported the vista version to begin with.
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Dec 10, 2014 19:09
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If they cared they wouldn't have shut down the Halo 2 servers.
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Dec 10, 2014 19:14
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Don Lapre posted:But they wont. If they cared they wouldn't have ported the vista version to begin with. Vista version probably helped them get better resolution support, like I already talked about pages ago. It was probably the right call to use the vista version and not the xbox one version; they just should have put more work into the network side of the game. PC version also meant we got the PC-only maps and weapons, which they would have otherwise had implement and possibly modify to get them in. (Not that we couldn't live without them, but given extra maps and weapons for free or not, why not try?) You're assuming an awful lot by saying that xbox one version -> xbox live would be any better necessarily. If the team was just as lazy, it would probably be exactly as bad, having code that assumed the xbox one live environment. (when xbox live was just recently born) Either way somebody needed to put some more testing and work on the H2 multiplayer than they did. Switching build versions wouldn't fix that. sunday at work posted:OK, it's more work than they are going to do. It's not like just little bits of the code are designed for 56k. This was my original point: the code base is designed for slower speeds and acts wonky at higher speeds. There isn't just a slider for network speed somewhere in the game. They need a new code base and they aren't going to write one. Not a slider but there are probably some hardcoded constant variables which could be changed to help things. But no that I agree with, the problems do seem pretty fundamental. At this point its pure speculation on your part and mine, but I do agree that what we've seen so far from 343i doesn't give me confidence that this will eventually become the perfect and definitive true cross-halo experience we wanted it to be. But I've also been wrong before.
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Dec 10, 2014 19:14
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I keep forgetting that they are re-jiggering Halo 5's formula just to become the darling of the competitive gaming scene. What a mess. So much MS DNA in that. "When we finally release our version people will use that instead." is half of every marketshare strategy meeting. Its like how they dragged their feet on Games With Gold when Sony was using free games as a red carpet to ween people of paying for XBL and create a mental ledger account of the value of PSN instead. MS thought that an arms-length hasty port-a-palooza version of the game was doing enough to kindle reintrest in Halo which would go full tilt on the release of Halo 5. In their minds their products don't have to earn anything. Accolades and acceptance are supposed to be automatic. "What do you mean I have to do more than have dancing kids mean-mugging the camera with a snap-in keyboard to sell Surfaces? We priced it exactly the same as an iPad, that's good value!"
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Dec 10, 2014 19:16
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Sitting in matchmaking for 5 minutes, hit B to back out, now I'm just staring at "leaving matchmaking" and it isn't doing poo poo. They really can't get the B button to work at this point? Found a match. 6v3 on Heretic. They can't even cap the teams at 5 in their overcrowded 5v5 matches? This game has barely improved at all in a month. AdmiralViscen fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Dec 10, 2014 |
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Dec 10, 2014 19:29
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Halo also fails pretty hard in a way which goes beyond the technical issues, which is that "the casuals" see it as just old and tired at this point. The Halo 1 and Halo 2 content just reeks of really old FPS conventions and compromises for consoles that were acceptable in the days when your only console competition was GoldenEye, and was flawed in some key ways even back then like the repetitive nature of the levels. It's really difficult to get people excited when you load up the multiplayer to show them, and a Halo 1 or 2 classic map loads up looking like the bad Quake 2 maps Lowtax used to review back in 1999; even the remastered maps just look like a Windows 98-era PC game running at 1080p. The look of the game is just all over the place and not helped by the fact that many multiplayer modes have you jumping between these game generations pretty hard, and the dynamics of Halo's multiplayer have largely been abandoned in much the same way that you don't see Quake-and-Unreal-style multiplayer games where you can carry 10 weapons and 50 rockets anymore.
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Dec 10, 2014 19:39
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You son of a bitch! Ill kill you!
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Dec 10, 2014 19:43
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univbee posted:
I hope you're not talking about Calvin Johnson Jr. because while that dude was indeed a MLG level pro that was over a decade ago on Halo CE. It seems like the Orge's and Walshy (Coaching and Hosting Events) are getting in with this game as are some other top tier guys. And man do I wish more development companies gave as many shits as Blizzard does about it's products. Texibus fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Dec 10, 2014 |
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Dec 10, 2014 19:47
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Texibus posted:I hope you're not talking about Calvin Johnson Jr. because while that dude was indeed a MLG level pro that was over a decade ago on Halo CE. It seems like the Orge's and Walshy (Coaching and Hosting Events) are getting in with this game as are some other top tier guys. Fair enough about Calvin but his problems with the aim in the game are demonstrably an issue that needs addressing; are people really going to be happy playing a game where aim is borderline randomized when there's money on the table?
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Dec 10, 2014 19:50
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Oh christ you terrible terrible shits, I told you to shut up
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Dec 10, 2014 19:56
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univbee posted:Fair enough about Calvin but his problems with the aim in the game are demonstrably an issue that needs addressing; are people really going to be happy playing a game where aim is borderline randomized when there's money on the table? He was exclusively talking about Halo CE's hit registration, which is absolutely bjorked. But no one is clamoring or pushing for Halo CE to be competitive again (except me, I loving love that poo poo even broken). But you're right there are issues with the other titles too. Definitely not to the degree that Halo CE though. univbee posted:Halo also fails pretty hard in a way which goes beyond the technical issues, which is that "the casuals" see it as just old and tired at this point. The Halo 1 and Halo 2 content just reeks of really old FPS conventions and compromises for consoles that were acceptable in the days when your only console competition was GoldenEye, and was flawed in some key ways even back then like the repetitive nature of the levels. It's really difficult to get people excited when you load up the multiplayer to show them, and a Halo 1 or 2 classic map loads up looking like the bad Quake 2 maps Lowtax used to review back in 1999; even the remastered maps just look like a Windows 98-era PC game running at 1080p. The look of the game is just all over the place and not helped by the fact that many multiplayer modes have you jumping between these game generations pretty hard, and the dynamics of Halo's multiplayer have largely been abandoned in much the same way that you don't see Quake-and-Unreal-style multiplayer games where you can carry 10 weapons and 50 rockets anymore. Ooooh I don't know about that, counter-strike is probably the number one competitive FPS and it is loving the same thing with a few more grenade types and barely updated graphics, 1.6 was 11 years ago. I think fundamentally Halo is still solid, it's got the same recipe as CS and the right type of community. Texibus fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Dec 10, 2014 |
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Dec 10, 2014 20:02
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ethanol posted:Oh christ you terrible terrible shits, I told you to shut up  All of this discussion is on topic and relevant to the MCC's numerous issues, and I know that even though I don't have the game I'm sure as hell finding it interesting (And also disuading me from getting an Xbone and the game, which I had been considering before I started reading this thread). If you want to talk about something else,  don't sit there screaming that people are posting things you don't want to read.
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Dec 10, 2014 20:07
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I think he's just bored right now.
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Dec 10, 2014 20:09
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Acebuckeye13 posted:
Yeah, I'd hold off. But gently caress man, when you get going in this game and start having rounds back to back no issues with four of your bros time just disappears. Problem is that doesn't happen much. It is getting better though, just not sure how much longer they're going to keep making those improvements.
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Dec 10, 2014 20:15
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Acebuckeye13 posted:
I would agree with you if half the things said were true. Just a bunch of people like you who dont own the game and want to to wave the halo is dead flag and feel smart making that take a few paragraphs? No thanks. Id rather you shut up.
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Dec 10, 2014 20:26
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