Chronique:BWWU 19/11/2004

In this week's Bungie Weekly What's Update, we answer all your pressing queries as usual, but Special Guest Stars Max Hoberman and Chris Butcher have been drafted in to answer questions that Frankie is too stupid to answer.

Chris Butcher on the AutoUpdate...

Game Hydra writes: The patch made the matchmaking faster, one of the positives right? Wrong... This made the game lag... horribly, worse than UC or Rainbow 3 (the laggest of them all). It felt like the server was run on 28.8k, come on, I really couldn't care waiting an extra 20 secs for the matchmaking, but give me my lag free Halo back!!!

We were a little surprised when we saw all of the complaints about the patch causing lag in games since we didn't change any code that would impact connectivity. A little detective work from our test team and engineers finally hit upon the cause of the problem. Halo 2's knowledge of who is a good host is not solely dependent on connection speed. A host actually builds a record for himself over time so that the best hosts end up being more likely hosts in the future. We need to do this because there is no reliable way to detect how fast your Internet connection really is, other than just hosting games and recording how good the experience was for the other players in the game. This record was reset by the autoupdate, so immediately after applying the patch host elections were being made based on connection speed alone because there was no history available. This problem will disappear within a few days as the best hosts start to build up their records again. It's interesting to note how big a positive impact this little historical record of host quality has had, as this is something you can only take advantage of if the game is able to select the best host automatically. If you also make note of how bad a little bit of lag can make the online experience you'll begin to better understand our motivations for continuing to support and refine our existing matchmaking system. More on that in a bit.

And now, his New Hotness, Max Hoberman on more matchmaking questions:

Gazmando asks: Am I doing something wrong? I want to play team slayer, but end up in ctf? or assault?. Why when I wanna play rumble pit, dont I get to pick any games or even the map?

No, you're not doing something wrong. When you join a matchmade Halo 2 game you're asked to choose a playlist up front. All other choices after this are made for you automatically. Minimizing the number of variables like this ensures that there are a good number of players for you to get matched with. Keeping this number large ensures that 1) your games have little if any lag and connection problems 2) you're playing good games on the right maps and with the right number of players 3) the players in your game are of a comparable skill level 4) no one on your team is working for the enemy. While the matchmaking system will become more flexible over time, it will always put a strict limit on how much control you have over map and game rules.

Of course, everything above refers to matchmaking. You can actually play any game you want, any settings you want, with friends. The way you do this is by creating a party and inviting other players, or by joining somone else's party. For a complete overview of the party system go here. Make special note of the following:

• You can invite players in your matchmade game to join your party from the Recent Players list in game or by selecting them on the Postgame Carnage Report (the postgame lobby).
• You can select friends and clan members that are in custom games or in the pregame lobby and choose to join them immediately.
• You can send out party invites to friends and clan members individually or en masse.
• If you're a party leader you can merge your party with another party.

iOwned suggests: Bungie, what about doing this. Say I made a game, and theres people looking for a unranked game. Why not toss them in my custom game?

There are two primary reasons why we don't toss them in your custom game. First, this is simply not the way our matchmaking system was designed. We do not have a way to search for or advertise custom games, and adding one would not be an easy feat. This might not seem very credible because other games implement game browsers, but it really is the case. Halo 2 does an extraordinary number of things for you automatically behind the scenes, everything from judging connection quality to choosing hosts. It was engineered from the ground up to support the existing playlist matchmaking system and all its incredible complexity. Designing and engineering custom game browser functionality that played nicely with the existing matchmaking and that handled the large number of Halo 2 players gracefully would be a big job.

The second reason we don't advertise your custom games to the public is because we like our matchmaking system and we want it to be successful. That's why we focused our development resources on it. Success is directly affected by how many people are using it. The larger your pool of potential opponents the better quality games we can find for you. Better hosts, better connectivity, more similar skill levels, and so on. Technical issues aside, if we were to give you a custom game browser a large number of people would use it simply because its comfortable and familiar, thus reducing the pool of potential matches.

All that said, as time goes on we will be providing you with more options in the form of new playlists, as well as tuning the games in the existing playlists to better suit the most common preferences. In fact, you can expect the first playlist update very soon, and it's going to be a good one.

Divideby0 expounds: There is NOTHING worse than finally hooking up with a good group, having a great game and wanting to do a rematch and cant and wind up back all over again with your party in Optimatch. How hard could it be to give us an option for a rematch....dugh

We discussed adding a rematch feature several times during the game's development. This might be easier in clan vs. clan games, where each team is a party. It gets tricky in random matchmade games because some of the players may leave even though others opt to stick around for a rematch. Our party and matchmaking systems are both radically different from other console games, and making things work as well as they do took an enormous amount of work. Unfortunately this didn't leave us enough time to formulate and implement a solution for rematching. At this point the entire system is so complex that adding something like this would be a major undertaking. So, though I wish I could say otherwise, it's pretty unlikely you'll see a rematch feature for Halo 2.

While there's no official mechanism for replaying with the same players at the push of a button, it's certainly possible to do so if everyone in the game joins the same party and plays a custom game. That's one of the reasons we made it trivially easy to send party invites from the postgame carnage report screen. Also keep in mind that you don't have to wait until after the game, you can send invites during the game from the Recent Players list.

Carl G notes: I love the system that Halo 2 uses. I definately dont see what so many people complain about. The only flaw I can see is that the maps it puts you in and the game types it assigns dont seem to be random enough.

The upcoming playlist update will partially address this issue by evening out the weightings of the different maps. However, the system is choosing games for you randomly, and there's always a chance that you'll play the same game over again.

ig98 points out: Quickmatch is the most useless thing ever. It's not even friggin random, it just uses the last gametype you played and cuts out a 7 second countdown; what in GODS name is the friggin point there!?

You're right, Quickmatch is pretty useless. Originally it actually did more than this, it would choose a playlist for you and skip the pregame lobby. It turned out skipping the pregame lobby had some nasty consequences, but when that functionality got cut we left Quickmatch in hoping that we would come up with (and have time to implement) a more useful purpose. As you've discovered this wasn't the case, so Quickmatch ended up being a shortcut button that remembers your last selected playlist from Optimatch and starts your countdown at 3 instead of 10. Not entirely useless, but close. Sorry it ain't quicker.

milesahead states that: A two player ‘PARTY' should be able to join a RUMBLE PIT game...

If the Rumble Pit were unranked we would allow this, but we have a strict rule against allowing you to choose your opponents in a ranked game. This philosophy helps keep the lid tight on a whole enormous tub of abuses. Hmm, an unranked Rumble Pit, that could be interesting....

NiN82 expresses indignantly: You guys said in the whats update that team slayer playlists would be coming soon. We need Team Slayer on a regular basis for the love of all thats holy!

Hang in there, we're close to releasing an update for the playlists. And it might include team slayer, just for you.

Roguewarrior72 wants to know: Why no multi-team matches, or multi-clan match games?

We tested a multi-team playlist in the beta and had a lot of fun. We ended up cutting it for launch in order to keep the number of playlists to a minimum. There's a good chance we'll resurrect it at some point down the road if it still seems interesting.

Back to Frankie for miscellania!

Admaster asks: What types of downloadable content can we expect to see in the future?

Although other types of content are theoretically possible, it's safe to assume that multiplayer maps are what to expect from downloadable content in the future. We don't have a schedule at this time, but we'll keep you posted.

Icefire117 asks: Why can't you get on the jumpseats on the Scorpion tank?

A good question. Basically a gameplay balance one. Similar in a way to the reason you can't shoot plasma mortars on the Banshee in multiplayer games. But it also caused boarding issues - since you have to jump on a Scorpion to board, we felt it better to remove the less-used jumpseats rather than make boarding more awkward and bizarre. We know some people liked the jumpseats and we don't discount that opinion, but we have to do what we think is best for the overall gameplay experience.

Hella peeps asked: What is the February 9th date shown in the Legendary credits?

It is what we in the trade like to call nonsense. The credits on legendary are identical to the credits on easy. Go watch them yourself. This is what happens when internet trolls get picked up by legitimate websites. On February 9th, nothing terribly exciting will happen to the Halo universe.

SoloRecon7 asks: What happened to the E3 level?

That level was substantially reworked between E3 and Nov 9th. The bits we kept can be seen in the Metropolis level, but in the end, we felt that some of the plot changes and gameplay designs were better served by a giant Scarab battle than a Brute boarding sequence.

Tai Mai Sho asks: How do I make the bungie.net logo appear in my Gamertag?

Easy. Sign into Bungie.net. See where your name and Gamertag appear at the top of the page? Click on "My Settings" and then click on the "Web Settings" tab that appears beneath. Now click on the "Show Bungienet User Status in Halo2" button to activate that logo.

MilesCPO asks: What is your favorite snackfood at LAN parties?

To be honest, awesome hot dogs/links with mustard, ketchup and jalapenos. Guess how often that happens? So pizza.

Phore asks: Why wasn't there an invasion of earth like promised in all the trailers and stuff? The actual game didn't have an invasion at all!

SPOILER WARNING: If you pay attention to the plot, you'll note that the Covenant very distinctly did NOT have a full invasion force and seemed somewhat surprised to find the human Homeworld. Seems to me, from watching the cinematics, that the Covenant were in our solar system searching for something else...

Captain Loozer asks: Will bungie comment on the hidden skulls in the game? Were they there for us to find? What do they mean? What do they do? What will we get if we find them all?

Skulls? What skulls... etc. There are many hidden goodies in Halo 2. There are whole websites devoted to their locations and alleged effects.

Fizzguy47 asks: What's a Sharqoui?

Very freaking dangerous.

SPOILER WARNING: MC in Da House asks: What's the Gravemind. Flood possibly?

Well, it did seem to absorb creatures and organic matter in a very flood-like manner.

PerniciousJ asks: Will the fuel rod gun ever be available for multiplayer?

No. It is too powerful for MP play.

Smoki asks: When i went to create one of my Halo 1 fave Game Types I was at first happy to see the new game types; assault and teritories , but then noticed to my horror the lack of the race setting. This suprised me and I would like to know why this was not included especially with so many large vehicle orientated maps, destructable vehicles, hijacking and so on.

Although Race was cool (although to be blunt - the least-played variant), we removed it for a number of reasons. One of them, and not necessarily the most important one was that having your vehicle blow up mid-race, would suck. Then it would be called, "run around map slowly."

Kylearn asks: Any chance we'll get a download of the shields used by the Jackals/Kig-Yar, as part of our dual wield?

No chance at all.

Module7 asks: Will we see any Multi-Player maps from Halo 1 available in downloadable content? (such as : Sidewinder)

We have ruled out nothing. There are certain old maps I personally would LOVE to see return.

TLC asks: Why did you leave in dropping your weapon by pressing down on the dpad? Is that solely for Red vs. Blue (as well as Blind mode)?

That was mostly for Red Vs. Blue.

g0dfath3r24 asks: Someone said something about a Marathon MP level in Halo 2? Is it true? If so, whaddya have to do?

Download the autoupdate. The level is called Foundation. It is fun.

ZolnerMD asks: How long will the killtacular stats for our XBL games be kept on your servers online? Is there a way to keep copies of specific game's stats and photos before they get purged?

There's no hard limit, but we're watching carefully to see what makes sense. If I were you, I would archive my own data for historical purposes. You should be able to save the HTML archive or at worst, take a snapshot of the screen. It's possible we could build a tool for this purpose later. No promises.

UltimateHammer asks: How many questions about getting into the gaming industry do I have to ask in astoundingly general terms before I can get into the gaming industry?

Three more.

Halo2vscovenant asks: when is frankie answer us

Him am to be answer now.

Mac_Boy asks: i want horizontal on co-op and i'm not getting it!! Me and my friend r getting bugged. y o cruel world y?

Simply disable widescreen in your Xbox Dashboard. The display will then default to horizontal.

Trancekebab asks: How come you cant use your banshee fuel rod gun thing in multiplayer?

Because then the first person to get in a Banshee would win.

Petedotcom: What grenade-fearing girly man chose to release this game without an Infinite Grenade option in multiplayer?

Ladyboy McSoftington, our nerf-specialist. He's in charge of de-brutalizing weapons and smoothing off sharp edges in the game. Finally, here's a requested drawing of Mister Chief at the dentist.