Online Gaming, why I am beginning....

[zhardoum]

To really hate it.


EXTREEMELY LONG POST WARNING!!!!


I tried over the weekend to play some online games, and it struck me just what a pain in the ass it has become..

I used to be on a modem, on a PII333, and had a few teething problems, but other than the ISP disconnecting my call, most of the time it was fine.

Today on my souped up 850 @ over 1Ghz, on ADSL, I am getting ready to say right sod you then.

The reason for such unwarranted anguish?

Playing over the weekend, I tried to join some old favourites, half life, and upgrade and try out the things like fireteams etc etc..

Well having waited for a server to become available to download the file, I then get hit with around 300MB of downloads to do..!!

Even on ADSL that isn´t pleasant, on Modem, forget it.

So, after this mamoth download session, fire up gamespy, off we go, but hold on, now after a short while, I decide to change games..

Onto..

Allegance, dan dan dah dahh....

Play game, crash,
play game, disconnect back to lobby,
play game, crash, fill in error report..
play game, disconnect, just as about to blow up attacking bomber, hit screen, cry, rejoin back in pod..

Play game, disconnect, as about to hit another bomber..cry again..
play game, crash, swear at fill in box, told this error reported..
play game, crash again as I am attacking bomber on bomb run, scream bast*** again, restart in pod,
play game, play for 11 uninterrupted mins, when..
WHOLE FRIGGIN GAME CRASHES AND ALL PILOTS ARE DUMPED!.

right says me, sod you then.

Off to play air attack whilst its still free..

Err no, unable to launch wireplay client, try for over half hour no joy, look up website, gameplay / Wireplay message: Yes, we have problems, Yes we know, Yes, its a free service, yes, you haven't paid us, so sod off..

Or words to that effect.. older people here lookup corporation speak, as in "due to current technical difficulties experienced by our online gaming division coupled to a current over subscription in our lines at the moment it isnt possible for all players to currently join in on the severs, please bear with us and try again later".

Ok,I dont know about you, I paid for WP / GP before, and then the service was bad, it became free, the service stayed consistent, but still crap, I am not paying for something I know is less reliable than a Hewlett Packard Brio PII 350.


So, me scratches head, thinks what now, I know Starcraft..

Load up starcraft, no problems here I say, ok off I go, load up, download auto update, np, in I go,

Join a game.
Speak " Hi" I say
"HI" comes the reply " You playing XXXXX mod, we play it all the time here now"
"whats Xxxxxxx mod, "

I get told where to look, off i go, another mega D/Load, load up game, game crashes using mod, load up game without mod, game now wont run at all....

Yah yer frigg** muppets, yah ***** (this continues for some time)

So, next game..
Play Quake III..

And manage to play it after only about 20MB of Downloads, for all of about 8 minutes till I realise that since i suffer from motion sickness unless I stop I am going to be dizzy and be throwing up all weekend.

So, what game now, <goes hunting through his CD collection which is bigger than most games shops>

find..

Flight Sim 2000, ((cough cough, in spanish))

load up game, again update, and.. No servers anywhere even on gamespy, give it up as a bad job..

Next..

look at C & C lovingly, but decide to leave it as as good as it was, its a little long in the tooth now,
look at..
Mig alley, but never was good at flying an exocet missile round corners without any steering..

look at..

every disk in my collection and end up playing pharoah on my own, as its,
a) stable, doesn´t want to make me throw up.
b) reliable, doesnt crash as its getting good..
c) straight forward, I dont need an advanced degree to remember how to play it after a year.
d) relaxes me.

Which the above does not apply to 90% of the online games available today..

I remember a time on a modem, when playing C&C, Touring Car, Starcraft, and a few other games, was simple and trouble free.

Now, what can I say, nearly every game has a forum, pages of help files, pages and pages of downlaods maps, updates, mods, etc etc etc..

All I want is a game, that :-
a) Works and is fun.

b) Is reliable and doesnt drop players every 2 minutes.

c) Doesnt need a PHD in Advanced theory of programming to join or set up a server.

d) has enough depth to make it interlectually challenging for those of us armchair generals who throw up every time we see the screen jitter or our character walks sidewards or gets stuck against an invisible object or against a door when we are at least 3 metres from it..

e) has enough depth so that people who do enjoy the mad dash side as well, can take part alongside those of us from section d:

f) Is free. (or at least I bought the game in the shop, the least the games company could do is set up some servers to allow us to play the game, without being forced to pay again for it, or be forced to use their servers based somewhere in the middle of the USA where the only people who play reliably are those within 50 miles of it.

Other than that I am happy.

Rant over for now.

sympathy and suggestions please..

PS, I have half life TFC, see above.
I have starcraft see above
I have CC see above
I have UT and QIII see above
I have allegance see above
I have AOE and AOE II
I have FS 2000
I have Tiberian Sun
I have around now 70 games, of which nearly all suffer from the problems listed above.

[Joey]

Amen to that Zhar...

Having only just got into the FPS games, my online gaming used to be trouble free via WOL, battle.net and Wireplay for AOE and TA. Apart from he occasional download, everything would be peachy. Now I find that near enough every game is designed to be so flexible with people's "wonderful" mods (95% of which are total ****e) that the core game suffers reatly as a result. When I tried to play half life for the first time I was speechless at the claim that there was a 50MB download that was required before I could proceed. Now this causes people in my position a problem. BT Internet is slow a lot of the time. And the chances of getitng 50Mb in 2 hours are nil. So after finding a download manager that worked properley and didn't screw my system totally (the only one I found which didn't insist on trying things like downloading for 30 seconds from 50 different servers before making a decision was MyGetRight) I spent about 1 hour a day across 5 days downloading the update. Suddenly I understand why CS players are so stressed (joke).

[SquireMuldoon]

I sympathise with you mate.

I understand some of what you are feeling. Although I dont think I've ever managed to fall as far behind in patches/updates as you seem to have.
What gets me is the quality of on-line games at the moment. I've become tired of free for all FPS games and enjoy the more structured team based ones. Unfortunately, it seems that wherever you go you have to put up with pathetic script kiddies spouting crap about how l33t they are, and the get yer ass whipped cos they are using some sort of headshot cheat or whatever. Either that or there are no team tactics, cos everyone wants to be the glory boy.

Its soooo lame.

I've found that the only way I get to have a decent game of anything is to join a clan.

Right now theres very little I want to play on-line. Tribes is the exception, but its suffering from the same problems. I cant wait until Tribes2. I really want to get back into regular clan matches :)

[neo_ad]

best way to stay up todate or nearly is to go out and a buy a demo disk may a recomend DVD gamer has ALL paches for popular games and a few mods per game which change each month so if u stop playing a game say cs and when u come back to play its version 2.1 u will have v2 on a demo disk so only a small pacth to download.

i know how u feel i just had a format and i had to do same but all my updaes were on demo cd.

just an idea for u

Neo

[Cabe]

i may get lynched, but this is what Zhar wanted, with the exeption of Allegiance, every game by, wait for it....... those amoung us who are in the know will know the company im on about.... Microsoft, and thier Zone software. flawless every time, easy to use, it even starts the game for you! BTW Im playing Crimson Skies at the moment, but Motorcross and Midtown Madness still make a regular apperance.

[zhardoum]

yeah your right..

I will let you in on a BIg secret

I hate Microsoft.

For years loved 'em

then i worked in IT, and every time we loaded 1 program from Microsoft we had to load 1 more to make it oK, load another to make that ok, get 1 server to make the applications OK..

eventually your whole company everything is microsoft..

And I hate them

But, you have a point

allegance sucks, sorry but it does, as in reliabililty

The zone on the other hand is ok, BUT>>>

WHY IS THERE NO ZONE BASED SERVERS IN EUROPE?

simple question

answers on a postcard

[Cabe]

hehehe, no zone servers in europe cos that would requie the survers to run Windoze, i think somthing like 75% of servers are non-windows, around 30% are linux

[Craigath]

I have a simple answer to all your woes :)

Someone code a multiplayer version of frogger! :)

Not much bandwidth code cant be that hard.

No more headaches or motion sickness :D

[werewolf]

lol :)
I've seen multiplayer Bomberman online :)

[Wizzo]

2 years ago Microsoft were looking at creating UK servers. Didn't hear anything after that tho :(

[Chainsaw]

you can play tetris online through tetrinet.
Pretty damn good, I like the power-ups (not classic, but they can be turned off)
6-player tetris owns.

Cant remember the website
For servers I goto the #tetrinet channel on dalnet

[Big Giant Head]

Yeah we had some big games of that at i5 ;)

Nearly came to blows a couple of times I think when we all decided to pick on TGuyver :)

Haven't played it in ages though