Minnesänger wrote:

regmcfly wrote:

Splatoon 2

I need to have my Splatoon piece. Probably the most fun I've had online in the past few years and this is consistently despite poor implementation across the board for what is primarily an online game. It's not even "oh, it's Nintendo bad", it's actively bad and at times took teeth grindingly long slogs to get online, let alone with people on here.
That I felt we had achieved some kind of wizardry when 3-4 of us were in a room together is a testament to this - but even then, that's not us being on the same party.
And then there was the chat app.

Such a weird choice for an MP focussed game to make getting matches with friends a struggle. I know they wanted to keep it super casual, but how exactly did it work?

The long and short is it didn't. Remember that the online service has no OS level partying up or invite idea so we were starting at a place of ensuring we were all online at the same time.

Following that you'd see that someone was online and in a group. You would then try to get into that group (limited to 8 ).
BUT it was only after the 3 minute march your friend was playing was up, and the people they were playing with got first refusal.

This was the only way to get more than 4 people together.

If you wanted to team play, you could only be in a 2 or 4 (THREE IS RIGHT OUT) and would be matched up accordingly but only in league battle mode.

Then the PvE Salmon Run mode, which, to make everything worse, is the best horde mode I've played since Gears 2, was only available at certain times of the day/week to make it desirable.

We talk a lot about things being Nintendo-ised, like friend codes and the like, but these were small fries compared to the cluster fuck of Splatoon 2. It's a testament to the quality of the game that it sold about 10 million copies and kept me playing weekly, if not daily at points. But Jesus - any chance you can let me play your game.

tigersgogrrr wrote:

Not convinced Halo 3s lobbies or matchmaking have been bettered, even now. Simple and effective.

Its fair. I mean it had issues related to being p2p, and for playing with UK folks in particular stuff like NAT settings were Waaaay too much of an issue, so some of the functionality of the lobbies was muted by more opaque online/modem background stuff, but in principle, the simple ability to party up, with a party lead, and presuming you had a convenient number of players (say 4), the ability just switch between literally every game mode seemlessly shouldn't be taken for granted.

Likewise trueskill. Very solid system, multi accounts though destined it for being gamed.

As far as other stuff goes, it's easy to forget a couple of little things.

1. While forge, as a level editor, wasn't up to a pc mod style standard, its limitations and the way you could test in real time, with a party in game, was pretty awesome in the way it made folks get creative.

2. Filesharing. Before pics, vids and other stuff where ubiquitous at a console level, bungie was doing it all in game. Pics, vids, GAMETYPES, and FORGE Maps all pretty easily sharable within the game and bungie.net ecosystem. It meant not only being able to share stuff between folks you knew, but easily accessing gametypes and maps you liked in mm and then being able to use them exactly in custom games. Or, alternatively, if you liked most of the rules, but wanted tweaks, you could do that too.

That all spawned stuff like forgehub, where a whole subset of players would make crazy maps, and you could just go to an external website, but still click a few buttons to have the map go to your Xbox next time you logged on.

In combination with gametype files, folks would create specific maps with specific gametypes in mind. There was a not insubstantial amount of trash, but there were some absolutely stellar efforts too.

There was a map gametype combo called flag push I recall which was awesome. Map name was red cell, I think. Great twist on ctf. Small map, perfect for 3v3. Many a cracking custom game.

And for badgers, who could forget teh awesum.

3. Game video. Because this was in game and not just a recording of the screen, a. file size was small, and b. You could switch players and also go complete free camera. This made for some pretty awesome clips. A real loss since the Xbox one era.

http://www.thebearandbadger.co.uk/discussion/18/halo-is-it-me-youre-looking-for/p1

I mean look at that op.

I'm not crying, you are.

https://youtu.be/wVfoJz9HeLo

Damn copyright issue with the h3 montage, but this highlights what I was talking about with vid and maps.

Mute.

Facewon wrote:

tigersgogrrr wrote:

Not convinced Halo 3s lobbies or matchmaking have been bettered, even now. Simple and effective.

Its fair. I mean it had issues related to being p2p, and for playing with UK folks in particular stuff like NAT settings were Waaaay too much of an issue, so some of the functionality of the lobbies was muted by more opaque online/modem background stuff, but in principle, the simple ability to party up, with a party lead, and presuming you had a convenient number of players (say 4), the ability just switch between literally every game mode seemlessly shouldn't be taken for granted.

Likewise trueskill. Very solid system, multi accounts though destined it for being gamed.

As far as other stuff goes, it's easy to forget a couple of little things.

1. While forge, as a level editor, wasn't up to a pc mod style standard, its limitations and the way you could test in real time, with a party in game, was pretty awesome in the way it made folks get creative.

2. Filesharing. Before pics, vids and other stuff where ubiquitous at a console level, bungie was doing it all in game. Pics, vids, GAMETYPES, and FORGE Maps all pretty easily sharable within the game and bungie.net ecosystem. It meant not only being able to share stuff between folks you knew, but easily accessing gametypes and maps you liked in mm and then being able to use them exactly in custom games. Or, alternatively, if you liked most of the rules, but wanted tweaks, you could do that too.

That all spawned stuff like forgehub, where a whole subset of players would make crazy maps, and you could just go to an external website, but still click a few buttons to have the map go to your Xbox next time you logged on.

In combination with gametype files, folks would create specific maps with specific gametypes in mind. There was a not insubstantial amount of trash, but there were some absolutely stellar efforts too.

There was a map gametype combo called flag push I recall which was awesome. Map name was red cell, I think. Great twist on ctf. Small map, perfect for 3v3. Many a cracking custom game.

And for badgers, who could forget teh awesum.

3. Game video. Because this was in game and not just a recording of the screen, a. file size was small, and b. You could switch players and also go complete free camera. This made for some pretty awesome clips. A real loss since the Xbox one era.

This is the sweet nectar that I wanted. Good stuff, thanks for the info. It’s interesting how big the whole pics / video social media stuff has become (dedicated screenshot and Share buttons, yo!) and it certainly seems Halo was the granddaddy of that in the AAA console space.

“gav” wrote:

It's also a series than absolutely cannot for the life of itself use common MP terms. Lobby? No. Its a Convoy. Private Room for you and yer pals? No. It's a Online Adventure or some shit. Years on and none of us FNFers have a true grip on it all. Some nights it'll just flake for the fuck of it.

Monster Hunter is also pretty bad at this, tbf. I didn’t mention it as it’s not stuff specifically related to MP - it’s general terminology used throughout the game. Go to the quest board and post a mission, your choices are:

Assignment (Main Mission)
Optional (Side-quest)
Investigation (A special set of side-quest you can pick and choose from for specific rewards...so, farming?)
Expedition (Free roam)
Special Assignment (Unique main missions / side-quests, but only rarely used).

There’s also:

Arena
Special Arena
Challenge Arena

Play the game long enough and none of this matters. But to beginners? Baffling.

That's why the old Monster Hunter is better, you do have the "Je Suis Monte" shoutouts, but not the silly tracks!