Gears of War 2 Online Multiplayer: Just Plain Broken?
I’m following up my initial Gears of War 2 review to cover some things that have come into focus as glaring issues that hopefully can be addressed by Epic Games. While there are many criticisms from GOW fans right now of certain aspects of the game play mechanics themselves, most of those are issues of taste and preference. Instead, I think the issues that are killing this game for me and many players is the entire online multiplayer system. Right now, my perspective is that it is a failure of epic proportions — no pun intended. Is it too broken to fix?
First, I’m not an Epic Games naysayer. I’ve been a huge supporter of Epic over the years, played their games religiously and spent three years running a modestly popular fansite devoted to the UT series. It would frighten the hell out of me to begin to calculate the amount of money and time I’ve spent on the Unreal/UT series alone and I am a huge believer in the power of the Unreal Engine and what it’s done for gaming.
I still believe that from the original Unreal Engine on up it’s proven to be the most solid and diverse platform there is. The support of the Epic team has been stellar over the years especially with patches and free content for their games years into their life spans. Part of the reason that Epic’s community is so unwaveringly critical is that Epic has set such high standards in the past that they are instantly attacked when there’s even the slightest perception that the support has degraded.
With that in mind, as a decade long Epic Gamer and often-time apologist, it pains me to say that Gears of War 2 arguably represents some of Epic’s worst design decisions and failures in the arena of online game design.
A little over a month into the life of the game the online community is already starting to lose patience with it and those sticking with it are paying for poor decisions of the multiplayer design. Let’s hit some of the issues that hopefully can be addressed, though it’s going to take a major overhaul. Glitches are easily patchable and game play, as I stated earlier, is fairly subjective, so there’s no intention of touching on any of those at this juncture, though I am not denying those issues exist as well.
Let’s start with the obvious things that rubbed fans wrong from the moment they booted the game at 12:05AM on November 7th.
No Choice of Gametype When Entering Online Play.
The current system divides all the gametypes into categories that are supposed to be similar. For instance, Warzone and Execution are in one list. King of the Hill, Annex, and Submission are in another. There’s a list just for the “add on” classic map pack (more on that later).
In any case, what I believe was an innocent attempt to diversify gameplay has turned online play into a frustrating nightmare. First, when you matchmake into a game, two of the game types in the list go up for vote and majority wins. Then two of the maps randomly go up for a vote. Amazingly, if there is a tie in either of these votes, the vote is completely thrown out and a map and/or gametype that nobody voted for is played. So, rather than starting a match with a map or mod that at least half of the players preferred, you switch to ones that absolutely no one in the server voted for. Poor design beginning to end.
While there is a logical “link” between all game types in the list categories you can choose, Epic utterly failed to understand their core community. Warzone and Execution for instance are both similar takes on team deathmatch, but as a long term Gears 1 player, it’s obvious that the communities were very much divided. You were either a fierce believer in one or the other. A very small overlap of regular players had no preference. Execution players in Gears 1 virtually always sought Execution matches, Warzone player always sought Warzone. Gaurdian, a new game type based on Execution allows the teams to respawn until the team “leader” is killed, at which point it turns into an Execution match. With no gametype selection there’s really no chance for this gametype gain a hardcore following. Likewise, Submission, a slant on “Single Flag” CTF where instead of a flag you have to take a hostage to a randomly chosen point on a map is lumped in with the “Territories” game list with King of the Hill and Annex. While the game type is based on working your way to a location, it just doesn’t seem to fit. I hate to go on, but on a side note, King of the Hill and Annex are so incredibly similar that making them two different game types at all seems odd. In Annex, the “Hill” changes at random intervals throughout the round, in King, it stays in one place throughout the course of one round. Pretty much the only difference. Worth the space and load time of an entirely separate game type?
Respawning: Guardian, King of the Hill, and Annex are all game types that now allow for respawning, a new concept in the Gears universe. Respawning is fine. As an Unreal Tournament fan, it’s second nature. The problem is that the maps weren’t designed with this in mind. The spawn locations are static with no randomization. Why is this important? It’s important because in respawning game types the opposing team can now rape the opposing team’s spawn area. In a 5 on 5 King of the Hill match on one of the new maps “River” for instance, if one team gets the other two or three players down between spawn times, then that team can pretty much put two players on the “Hill” and station the other three a few yards in front of the wide open spawn areas and simply mow them down as they spawn in until they win the round. Perfectly legit strategy given the way the game was designed. No fun for either team though, really. In other maps, it’s a simple task for the team that goes up to simply plant the entire opposing teams spawn area with proximity grenades. Spawn, explode, spawn get stun/knocked down then chainsawed, spawn, explode…
Here’s a huge problem: There is no option to leave a game once it has started without exiting back to the Xbox dashboard. This is obviously a deliberate attempt by Epic to keep players not getting the game type they want voted in from just leaving the server. The problem is that a month in, players so dislike certain game types and maps that virtually every match starts 5 on 5 and has at least one player drop as soon as either the gametype or map is voted in. In the past week, a few dozen matches for me, at least 50% start round one at 5 on 4 or worse. At least 85% of the matches end up with a minimum of three players dropping out by time three or four rounds are on the scoreboard. A large percentage of games go into the final round 5 on 1. It’s utter insanity. In my opinion, this is the community saying in a loud clear voice to Epic that WE DESPISE THE LACK OF OPTIONS IN GAME SELECTION SO MUCH THAT WE’D RATHER SHUT THE ENTIRE GAME DOWN THAN HAVE TO PLAY THAT GAMETYPE/MAP THAT WE DON’T WANT TO. You HAVE to shut the game down or turn off the Xbox to leave a match. This is a powerful message from the players. This is all compounded by the next point.
You Can’t Switch Teams. Ever. I’m sure that seemed logical to Epic. If all games are ranked, you can’t have players switching teams mid-stream. Problem is, that those willing to stick the matches out have to play a completely devoid of fun 5 on 2 or 5 on 1 match. Generally, you’ll see the one man team/player just sit in the spawn area and let the other team end it quick. WOW. WHAT A FUN ONLINE GAME AT THAT POINT! Especially when it happens every 4th or 5th match.
No Player Matches vs Ranked Matches anymore. In Gears 1, it was simple. You could get online and play “casual” games. You could join mid game and come in for the next round, come and go as you please and just relax. Now, every match is a “Ranked” match. That limits online flexibility in a multitude of ways. First, every online game you go into has to start from the beginning, this slows the matchmaking process down considerably. Players of XBL games that play games that have ranked vs casual modes are used to this. If you’re going to play a game for real stats, you want a fair and even game start to finish. The majority of players that are just trying to hit 60 or 90 minutes of gaming before bed-time can’t stand this crap. Really. It’s annoying and completely destroys the casual gamer’s ability to play a few “quick” games.
Matchmaking is Painfully Slow Still After Epic’s first downloadable “Patch” for this. Epic’s initial communication was that because of the way the patch would fix the segmenting of players, we wouldn’t start to see a real increase in speed for 2 or 3 days. For me, the first 5-6 days it got noticeably slower every single day up until the point where I was almost back to where I was the first week, unable to play online. For the last 2 or 3 days though, I have noticed a considerable improvement, but still, only slightly better than it was prior to the patch. At this point, there is still a substantial percentage, more than 50% of the time, where I still have to wait 3-7 minutes to matchmake. The majority of the long waits usually start with it finding my 4 teammates within a couple of minutes, then a ludicrous amount of time “searching for opposing team of similar skill.” Just insanely slow,
You get booted back to the Multiplayer Lobby after EVERY SINGLE MATCH. What else is there to say to this. As a casual player, you are spending as much time in the “getting into the game” process as playing. This is simply an unacceptable aspect of the multiplayer system.
Really, Honest to God, No Choice of Gametypes when Matchmaking Part 2: Okay, in the first section we talked about how you couldn’t pick a gametype, but could pick a “play list” with several game type and take your chances. Well, this is partially true. You see, slow matchmaking is so bad for a large number of players (my hand goes up) that the only way to get a match in anything resembling a reasonable amount of time that you have to pick the wide open “Player’s Choice” play list. This is basically the dice roll play list. Because you haven’t limited the search to a few gametypes, it generally matches you much faster.
The “Flashback” Bonus classic Gears Maps map pack. Okay, this is a nitpick, but a rather big one. When you buy the game, it comes with a code to download a pack of maps for online play. No problem, awesome. It also comes with codes for some special weapons models that give you “gold” weapons. Pretty, but NO IMPACT on game play, unlike the map pack. My son and I both have our own Gold Xbox Live accounts and as we anxiously tore out Gears 2 after it came out, we spent time entering the codes to download the maps and gold weapons. It just happens that my son downloaded the map pack with the controller signed into his profile. Same XBOX, Same Hard Drive. Different profiles. Now, I can’t use the Bonus Maps. Only he can use them. Okay, they want to gank me for a few bucks, I’ll have to pay and get them on XBOX marketplace. I’ll grit my teeth even though in the past, bonus content like this in other games was available to anyone on that Xbox. I’ll deal. No wait. The map pack is not going to be available through any other means than a game purchase. IF I WANT TO USE THOSE MAPS IT WILL COST ME $60.00 FOR A NEW COPY OF THE GAME. This is a flat out crime against Xbox owners. Now if we were on separate boxes or hard drives I could understand it, maybe. But same XBOX. We paid $70.00 for the Limited Edition Gears Disc. Basically, this is Epic and Microsoft saying “Fuck You.” In my mind no different than telling me that they expect that every member of the house who plays the game on that Xbox needs to buy their own copy of the game. I play Gears 2 at least every other night, usually some every day. My son plays a couple of times week. If I want to use the maps, I have to play under his gold account. This is ridiculous. On top of that, I’m sure that my “slow matchmaking” to some extent has to do with the game having to filter out players that are choosing the play list with the flashback maps. Really, I love the Unreal Engine. I have been given countless thousands of hours joy from Epic games, the Unreal Tournament series as well as many other games including Gears 1, but in this one case: Epic, Microsoft, you are straight-up thieves.
The new maps lean toward smaller and more confined designs, yet the new multiplayer structure forbids any public matches starting less than 5 on 5. Bass Ackwards, Epic. Make smaller maps, force larger matches, and to top it off, introduce heavy combat artillery weapons into these small maps. I don’t believe there’s anything else that needs to be said about this.
Let’s start Combining Some of the above Items together to create all new ones, shall we? First, add one pinch of “no choice of game type” and one pinch of “pre-match voting”. Add a teaspoon of “already painfully slow matchmaking” to get to that match. Now add a dash of “you can’t leave a match after it it’s started without turning off the game.” Next, a new ingredient: one tablespoon of “Every match ends with a forced 25 seconds static wait on the final score screen” while you still can’t exit the match without turning off the game. Now let’s see what this recipe makes.
A very optimistic 90 seconds per match to matchmake to teammates and an opposing team (way better than my average).
A 10-15 second “vote on the game type” pre-match process for EVERY MATCH.
A 10-15 second “vote on the map” pre-match process for EVERY MATCH
A Flat 10 seconds before every match for you to pick your player model and starting weapon.
About 5-10 seconds after the player model selection for the map to load
About 8-10 seconds per match for the pre-match countdown
A 25 second forced static sit on the score screen at the end of every match (I assume while GOW2 updates the global stats)
About 10 seconds per match adding the time you sit on the Gears of War 2 Splash Screen before you enter the host server and after you get booted to the lobby after every game.
About 5 seconds after you get booted back the lobby you have to wait for the game to finish “updating network settings” after each match.
This adds up to about 3 minutes per match of set up, connect and disconnect. If the average match lasts 10 minutes (just a ball park guess) this means that over 23% of your time is spent NOT PLAYING. Okay, that’s fine, but there is a serious problem when a game is designed in such a way that just plain out of the box every day online play has almost ¼ of the game time built for set up and to get into a match. Basically, it’s a game where you don’t really get to play all that much. If you want to play for two hours, you have to spend a minimum of half an hour of the time dicking with menus, configs and waits. What’s wrong with this picture?
All this adds up to a massive failure of the Multiplayer System for Gears of War 2. It’s quite honestly one of the worst failures in this respect of any Xbox Live game as well as far and a way the largest mis-step I’ve ever seen Epic Games take in online multiplayer design.
My question for Epic is how much of this if anything is even realistically going to be able to be addressed in a title update? I’m not hopeful. This seems like a lot of serious basic ground up design issues that without some massive title overhaul will not be addressable beyond a couple of tweaks here and there.
I’m positively torn up by this. I still own and love Gears of War 1 and it has never even remotely crossed my mind to trade it in or sell it back, but I find myself at this point with Gears 2 seriously considering giving the game 1 more title update. If that doesn’t address some of the above issues in major ways, I think I’m gonna have to chuck this game back over to Game Stop. I simply don’t have the time to play a game where 25% of the time I don’t get to play.
To Epic Games, I apologize if I offend, but I am an old Epic war horse and a long time Epic Apologist in the forums going back to the early days of UT, through Midway, Atari…etc. It’s finally time to have to say that this is far beyond my ability to defend anymore.
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Tags: Game Reviews, Unreal Engine, Xbox 360, Xbox Live
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14 Responses to “Gears of War 2 Online Multiplayer: Just Plain Broken?”
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December 11th, 2008 at 7:51 am
Geezus, it sounds like they WANT it to fail. I have to say, if there is anything that astounds me about newer games it’s “Using” them. Between options (controller styles etc) being limited in newer games and these various screwups that are OVERLY easy to fix I just do not understand it.
It’s really NOT difficult to make something usable. Often while I’m using a menu system or something else I can picture in my head a more simple and easy way to do something in a game. What are these professionals thinking when they make this shit?
December 11th, 2008 at 11:57 am
It is because of these things you mention that I’ve been driven back to Halo 3. Epic has really, really dropped the ball with Gears 2 multiplayer.
December 11th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
When I first played Halo 3, I was horrified with this whole “matchmaking only” system of game play. I was in a state of “you gotta be kidding, this is the ONLY way I can get into a match?” But in the long term, Halo 3 matchmaking was fast. I could pound through match after match after match with no issues. I didn’t care for the system, but at least I got play to my heart’s content.
You can see this trend in the MP lobby for XBox Live games these days towards fewer options and matchmaking. Gears 2 has taken the success of Halo 3 and tried to pretty much duplicate the type of matchmaking/lobby system from that game. In Halo 3’s case, it was done right, and efficiency of the process far outweighed loss of choices and options. Gears 2 represents what Halo 3 COULD have been had every risk they took with the matchmaking interface failed.
Long term, the biggest risk for a Gears 2 player is that the system is just efficient enough to get you into games, albeit it very slowly. When the community starts to decrease in player counts (and that’s happening already quite noticeably) matchmaking is going to get slower and slower. When the community is down to a few hundred simultaneous players at any given time, the tight restrictions with no “Player Matches” is going to make the online/matchmaking experience even more painful if not nearly impossible.
I have always laid the hate on Halo 3 (well not hate, but it’s close to my last choice for an online shooter) but this crossed my mind this week. I just wanted to put in a game and go shoot some people. It’s JUST NOT THAT EASY with Gears 2. It’s like having to submit a urine sample to get a drink from a vending machine. I’ve actually reached for the Halo 3 box a couple of times and stopped, I’m guessing it’s going to be a couple more days before it actually comes off the shelf, though. Unless something happens fast, it’s going to happen.
December 11th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
My thoughts on GoW 2 is that it was a complete failure. They never tested this game outside of LAN and in house and it shows. Had this game been given a 3 map beta they would have caught all the bugs before it’s release and within a few weeks of it’s release could have had fixes for a lot of the issues. But their stubborness in wanting to use the same set up from the previous game (SSHD) which was so obviously faulty shows they’re unwilling to make lag as little of a factor as possible. When it comes down to it, almost all glitches in GoW 1 and GoW 2 are a result of lag. You can’t crabwalk on LAN, you can’t KFF on LAN. Why? Connections too strong. If you’re going to use SSHD rather than CSHD why not have dedicated servers? It would make it like playing on LAN. Over all, I feel that players choice should be just that, our choice of gametype and map. Not what they want it to be. If you want to play random, go pick the other playlists. I think this is a big slap in OUR faces from Epic. It’s arrogance and ignorance combined.
December 11th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Honestly, I have not played the game but this certainly does not make me want to run out and buy it. Is it on PC yet? I’ll certainly give it a go there.
I still just don’t understand how a company can fail this miserably at something that should be SIMPLE when it’s a really high profile game. Baffled!
December 11th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
true glitching can be patched. I haven’t had lag issues beyond what I had in Gears 1, but in BOTH games, the dedicated server issue has been a concern of mine. I just don’t understand it. Epic has no problem supporting all the games in the UT series, including UT3 on PC, PS3 and 360 with dedicated servers. What is it about the Gears series that makes them turn their backs on this system. LET US HAVE DED SERVERS. If you could release a Linux or Windows ded server app, there would be tons of high bandwidth fans and server farm admins that would host them no questions asked even if Epic chose not to.
The whole “mystery” host system in Gears 2 is perplexing and I can’t even guess at the reasoning behind it.
So many years for me playing and supporting Epic Games and I still just find it hard to use words like “arrogance” and “ignorance” with them. I really DO believe that they have real reasons for many of their decisions. However, I think that they invest so much time and effort into decisions that are risky or that they believe are going to be right, that they paint themselves into a corner when the decisions turn out to be poor they put themselves into positions where it’s going to be difficult or impossible to correct the issues through simple title updates and patches without long intensive work.
If Epic was an upstart company that had little to lose, I could be less forgiving, but long term, I think they have too much to lose to just release careless shit, not support it and expect to continually maintain a fan base. They really won’t.
I also believe, personally (albeit with no hard evidence) that they are being held to much harder and tighter deadlines with Microsoft contracts and Midway contracts than they were when they were a little smaller and more “outside” the establishment. UT3 was really the first game they ever released that I remember them setting a hard release date and sticking with it through hell or high water. Previously, even with console games, they were much more “when it’s done” ish. With Gears 2, the release date was set very very far in advance…very very unusual for Epic to set it that way and basically hold to it with no change or question at any point that it would be hit.
December 11th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
No PC version for Gears 2 according to Epic. They rushed Gears to PC as a port and it was buggy and they had no motivation to support it because they were deep into GOW2 development. They pushed enough patches out for it to get runnable and it did have a handful of levels that weren’t in the 360 version.
I would recommend picking up GOW1 though for the 360 if you don’t have it. I played tonight and there are still tons of people online playing (I honestly think that GOW1 online has picked up since GOW2 with some players disappointed from Gears 2)
December 13th, 2008 at 9:47 am
This is what happens when you outsource your games across seas.
GG Epic China GG.
December 14th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Interesting read, and I think you’ve mentioned many valid points regarding the multiplayer experience in Gears 2. I’ve also noticed the obnoxious amount of time you spend outside of actual gameplay myself. I enjoyed your style of writing and the way you’ve expressed your opinion; you’ve made your point quite effectively and I wouldn’t take you for an ignorant fan boy from the mainstream. I also think the Unreal Engine is win.
There were some things you state that I don’t agree. You said “glitches are easily patchable.” In the first game, it took them multiple patches before they finally eliminated free-directional weapon-sliding, and even though it’s limited in comparison, players still have the ability to slide into cover while picking up weapons. Going into other games, especially Halo 2, it was impossible for Bungie to fix significant button glitches such as the BXR, double-shot, double melee, etc. due to very real technical issues, but I’ll assume you were referring just to the Unreal Engine for this article when you said that.
Gears of War has plenty of glitches, but I’m glad you thoughtfully topped it off by saying you didn’t deny those issues existed as well (along with gameplay).
I’m nitpicking here, but respawning isn’t new to Gears of War. Annex was released for the first Gears of War, you know, and King of the Hill was released with the PC version, but either way, you’re right about the static spawns and the issues they caused; they were apparent in the first game just as they are now in the second.
Also, I would have to say King of the Hill deserves its recognition in comparison to Annex. You, having played Gears of War and being able to appreciate its nuances and subtleties, understand the difference between Warzone and Execution and the split in the player base between them. If I’m correct, doesn’t King of the Hill use execution-style settings, and Annex Warzone-style? (I’m not sure about this, but if I’m wrong, at the very least those in control of the Hill must be executed in order to be killed.) So, the fact that King of the Hill is focused on only one weapon spawn isn’t the only difference. Also, I think King of the Hill usually tries to focus on map-centric weapon spawns and the fact that it doesn’t change adds an important consistency to the flow of the game, whereas in Annex the hill location it’s left more to chance and is more inconsistent. For that reason, I think KOTH and Execution are the only gametypes I’m seeing being used for competitive-style gameplay.
The Flashback Map Pack is definitely an absurdity and I’m glad you told me that you can only use the maps for the account that the code is redeemed for; I play on two separate Gamertags, one with Silver, one with Gold, and I was thinking maybe if I downloaded the pack with my Silver, I could play with my Gold account on the same Xbox 360, so I haven’t used the Flashback code yet and am unfortunately denying myself the wonders of Gridlock in Gears of War 2. We’re in the same crappy boat here.
I wouldn’t consider myself a casual gamer, but I’m definitely one of those people trying to hit sixty-to-ninety minutes of game time before bed on weekdays and the lack of an unranked playlist automatically makes me dismiss the precision and consistency of the ranking system and its ability to effectively gauge the skill when it comes to the majority of players (even more than I do when it comes to most online ranking systems).
This was a well-written, well-thought out read, and I enjoyed it. Keep it up.
December 14th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Thanks for the comments. The more I’ve revisited Gears 1, the more disappointment I’m currently experiencing. I can live with the fact the gameplay pound for pound probably isn’t quite as fun as Gears 1, but flat out loss features and flexibility really kills me. After posting this, there were about half a dozen more things that I thought of that deserved additional attention. Ultimately, I wonder how much the local host issues impact the glitch exploits. Gears 2 is riddled with examples of things that probably seemed like really good ideas on their surface weren’t thought through enough before implementation. Lack of a beta…at least a large enough beta tested in a true internet environment I think is really biting them in their butts over at Epic.
December 15th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
If you haven’t tried it by now (you’ve probably already thought of it and don’t need me to tell you), why don’t you mess around with GOW PC? Yes, its community is practically non-existent, but you get to use a mouse and keyboard, improved visuals and more frame rate. I went over to a friend’s house and saw it for the first time and I was surprised by how smooth the frame rate was in comparison to the Xbox 360 version.
December 15th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
[...] My Gears 2 Multiplayer Bitch and Moan Article Thanks for reading. Don’t be the idiot I am. [...]
January 5th, 2009 at 4:50 am
Well put. After Halo 3 I wish Microsoft would tell any developer that wants to make a 360 multiplayer game that they will use Bungie’s matchmaking as mold. It’s just more refined than any other I’ve used.
I’m also holding out on buying the $10 map pack until they release the new patch, hoping that by then it will be faster to match and less crappy.
January 5th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Halo matchmaking blew me away coming from a PC perspective but man, you’re right Kurt, it really does work more often than not. It was, and still is, really easy to jump on by yourself or with a friend and just start fraggin for hours.
The thing that I don’t understand is that with how much success they’ve had with it why the hell wouldn’t a company just try to do things almost exactly the same, game permitting.