The Modern Warfare Problem
Mon, July 5th 2010 at 02:54pm
There has been a disturbing trend with online PC games recently, they have all been taking on the more console like multi-player model. This model involves matching players together, then on the fly picking one of the players to be the “host” of the game effectively turning them into an impromptu sever. Modern Warfare 2 was the first PC game I have seen to employ this so that is going to be my focus.
Modern Warfare 2 is a great game but their decision to use this model for multi-player gaming creates many problems vs the traditional server client model. I am going to go over some of them here.
Performance
My connection to the internet is current 35Mbs symmetric, and yet nearly half of the games I play have connections issues. Ranging from very high ping to dropped connections. These problems have nothing to do with my connection, it has to do with the fact that the game is choosing bad (for me) hosts for the game.
This is not a problem with the Dedicated Server model used by Counter Strike and other games, because I am able to choose the servers I visit. If a server is flaky, not local to me, or I just have bad connection to them then I can choose another server.
The lack of control given to the player when the game automatically chooses hosts can completely spoil the experience for users. And I can only imagine how bad this would be if my connection was bad already.
Cheating
Cheating is rampant in MW2 right now, nearly other game there is at least one person I am pretty sure is cheating, and one in four games there is a blatant cheater playing. What happens when we discover a cheater? Absolutely nothing. There are no vote kick mechanics, no vote ban, no reporting suspected players nothing. You basically just have to put up with them or leave. And if you leave and rejoin a “random” game you have good chance and being stuck back in the same gave after having lost all your kills for that round.
Counter Strike had many cheaters too, but I used to play on a handful of servers with people I grew to think of a friends. These servers had moderators and admins who were usually a IM away if there was someone abusing their server. If you could not contact an admin right then there was always the forums where you could report players and discuss problems.
So while in an ideal world cheating would be eliminated that is not going to happen. So the next best thing is to have a way to police the games and try to keep it clean.
Community
For me the biggest thing lost of the sense of community provided by dedicated servers. In Counter Strike I had two or three servers I would visit frequently. Overtime I got to know the regulars quite well, had meetups, communicated via forums, Instant Messaging etc. To this day there are several people I meet on these servers that I still play with today in other games.
After playing MW2 for several months I have made no new relationships like this. You basically get thrown in with completely random people almost every time. You just play the game like they are A.I. players and try to ignore the constant stream of profanity and insults coming at you over voice coms and chat.
Unless you group up with people you already know there is no teamwork, and little chance of forging any new relation ships.
For me the community was one of the most attractive aspects of playing Counter Strike, and what kept me playing for so long. MW2 however will be put on the virtual shelf as soon as the gameplay starts to feel a little stale.
Conclusion
For me I think the possible death of dedicated servers is one of the most disturbing trends in PC gaming. The PC has many advantages of Console gaming, but none are as important as the communities that are formed around games by all the forms of communication that are readily available on PC’s as you play.
While playing World of Warcraft you can easily have your guild forum open on another monitor, or in just in the background. Use any number of social tools to keep in touch with the people you play with when ever you want too.
What it comes down to is that people make these games special, MW2 would already be an distant memory if it was not for it’s multi-player. Counter Strike Source is still going strong despite it’s outdated graphics and game play because of the communities formed around it.
It seems that developers are loosing site of this and I really hope that they wake up and stop trying to make it harder for people to play the games they love how they want to play them.
Tags: Games, Modern Warfare 2, Multiplayer, Windows
