The Good and Bad of MNC.

First of all let me say that this is not a rant, flame or anything of the sort. This post is meant to help game developers in the future.

Before I get into the bad things you must know that I enjoy playing this game when I actually get into a game that works. The graphics and sound are great and the commentary is hilarious. Although I wish there were a few more phrases.

I think the game is solid. The idea of a third person shooter with tower defense is a great idea and it is a fun combination. However the game has some problems like games where over half the participants are assassins. The assassin glitch where they have super speed is annoying as well. To top off the assassin problem it seems like 99 percent of players who choose assassin are terrible players who do not know how to play the game.

Another problem is that most games just end up going into over time and the winner is determined by who can buy juice and attack the ball the fastest. In my opinion juice should not effect the ball in overtime. I think this would make the game better.

And one of the biggest problems of all is that the connection is unbearable. More than half the games I join are plagued by lag that renders the game unplayable. The game will be running fine and then all the sudden the lag is so bad it makes it impossible for anyone but the host to hit anything. Host will drop out of games and I am forced to wait 1 minute for the game to tell me the host could not be migrated. People will leave the game right when they loose and the host will migrate and I am forced to watch the game summary screen for 40 or more seconds. I will get kicked out of games for no reason. My friends and I join a game as a party of 5 and the game splits us up. I want to play with my friends that is why I am in a party with them.

The biggest problem I have with the game is that I paid 1200 Microsoft points for it and it has so many problems. If I went to the store and bought something that had this many problems I would take it back and return it. For some reason game developers or Microsoft think it is acceptable to slap a "there are no refunds for this item" on it. The core of the game is solid but there are to many bugs at this point to enjoy it. When I buy a product I expect it to work, I should not have to wait for some patch. And if your response it that you could not have foreseen the problems until after the game is running on Xbox live then I suggest you invest more time in testing the game running online. It is my understanding that a very small team worked this game and you were pressured to release it by a certain date. If I was in this position I would rather take the extra time needed to polish the game then put out a product that has so many problems and then slap my name on it. I take pride in my work and developers should as well.

Im not trying to slam on Uber but I am tired of this. Many developers do this and gamers are sick of it. Just a reminder to all our fans watching from home you have 15 minutes to get back to your assigned dwelling before government mandated curfews are in effect. I look forward to the update.

Really? I recall Call of Duty games where players would spam grenade launchers, purposely creating lag to favor them. This is just one example.

You must not have gotten the game at launch, because from launch up until about yesterday, most every game I played was stable and I didn't see too much "cheating"...the worst being the assassin who would stand on your spawn above the money ball so he could circumvent its' defenses (the bots should be the only ones who take down the shield and the ball shouldn't be damages until this is done).

The game has become more popular, and with any popular game, there will be glitchers and with any game that uses peer to peer hosting, lag is going to be an issue...it has been with almost every game that I've played that uses this.

Unplayable? Hardly. ...but there are some annoying issues that have cropped up that I hope Uber can deal with.

Lag will always be a issue, most of the time it won't even be the Dev's fault. Just the connection. Though the true Bad things about MNC is the random lag, the host rage quitting causing the Migration of Host.. that pretty much fails 90% of the time and certain assassin bugs.

But put all that aside and its a pretty fun game with a few elements of game play mixed in.

I'm glad we are not playing the same game. I live in the Midwest on DSL (pretty slow DSL) and i almost never get lag in any of my games. 1 out of 25 or so.

My biggest complaint about this excellent game is the matchmaking and host migration.

Playing with a full party of 6 last night, we would have to sit through the remainder of a game to get all on the same team, then hope that the host wouldn't quit out if we started stomping faces.

Often, the host would quit out in the match before we were all teamed up, quit out after the game was over, or quit out as their money ball was dropping. In several hours we only logged a couple full games and probably ended up with host migration fails at a 5:1 ratio of games played.

not sure if serious..

host migration is a bit spotty...

I have a laggy game in about 1 in 15-20... and that's just the host connection.

Not more or less than any other live game though.

I would check your ping....

Really, only 1200 ms points? Well worth IMO, I paid full "retail" price for this game and love it. How did I pay full retail you ask? After purchasing the game for a mere 1200 ms points I enjoyed it so much that I had to get my brother on line. He was strapped for cash so I purchased it for him, and I did the same for a friend who was also low on funds. Needless to say, great game and I will definately put up with a few minor issues for a fun experience. :mrgreen:

First off nick8807, amazing first post. All the points you bring up I have never heard of until now! /sarcasm

Gamers are never happy. First they complained that it took too long to get into a game, so what did they do? They dropped the timer and it takes only 6 players to starts a match. Now that they get into a match quicker they complain they have to wait the remainder of one game so they can all play together. So you want the 60 second timer brought back and require 8 players to starts a match? Any games that allows Join In Progress is going to have to split the "party" to keep teams even. Would you rather join a game half-way with your party possibly going 5v2?

Another thing people seem to misunderstand there is no party system in this game. It's just basically a pre-lobby where you can invite friends. If it was a party when the game disconnected we would all stay together and end up in the lobby. Instead we all individual go back to the main menu.

Lag? That's everywhere there is an internet. I have DSL and live in Florida I get little to no lag if I do it's only a brief second due to the amount of bots running around.

This was one of the best XBLA games I've bought. Period. I've gotten way too much pleasure out of this game. host migration sucks, but it does not make this a bad buy.

While I dislike the "no refunds" policy, you certainly were aware of it and should have known the biggest issues going in if you demoed it at all on Live. This is why I am hesitant to buy anything that's solely "digital" or "online."

Interesting that other 'shooters' never split parties and they seem to do just fine. I do understand that the goal is to get players into games quickly but when I party up with friends my goal is to play with them, not against them.

Yesterday another friend and I joined around 10 games, we only ended up on the same team 3 or 4 times in total. More often than not we would join a game in progress and get split onto different teams. Once the match was over the game would be dropped and we were forced to repeat the process again. At one point my friend told me that 'This just wasn't fun for him' and I would have to agree.

Seriously, the party system needs to be fixed. If that involves making different playlists then so be it. The fact that Private matches lack any options just shows how shortsighted Uber was in creating the online options for MNC. I still enjoy and love MNC but at some point the novelty will end and we will be left with a substandard online shooter with fewer and fewer players every day. Halo: Reach is only two weeks away and you know that Bungie will have an incredible online system ready to go.

So many problems? There are only a few bugs from what I have seen. The rest just seem to be YOUR problems.

I have played around 50 games in the past 2 days. I have seen horrendous lag in maybe 3 of them. That's pretty damn good if you ask me.

And about the host migrating, ya it sucks but no game is perfect. You make MNC sound like the classes are horribly imbalanced, there are constant glitches and bugs, nons of the menus work, etc.

In reality what you get is a steal for 15 bucks. The game is more well balanced and polished than a number of full $60 retail games. If MNC had some sort of campaign, another mode or two, and half a dozen more maps it could of EASILY been sold as a full retail game. Instead you get a very good product for the low price of 15 bucks.

I am sorry you are disappointed with your purchase. I am not sure what more you were expecting though?

Dead brings up this strange sense of entitlement gamers seem to be getting since the 2000s that did not exist in the 80s or 90s.

I've never understood where this sense of entitlement came from but it's been so prevalent since the 2005 or so. So you played 1200 (about $15) and have certain expectations, sure. But to be frank, your expectations of a small time dev group, compromised of 16 people, should have been low. But the general consensus on the game is that this game is quite remarkable for being $15 and from 16 people.

Ok, ok, so you've made it a point that you still love the game, you just need to get some things off your chest, fine. But I there are games out there with far more problems at launch then MNC and get away with it. World at War's map boundaries? MW2's glitch lobbies? Spawn trapping on Red Dead? What standard can we use here? Because I paid the fraction of the price of a normally full retail price game and feel like I've got the fun of said full price game with the same basket of problems most gamers should be used to. But I paid $15 instead of $60.

Eh, I'm a struggling writer, so I feel like I've lost the purpose of my post halfway through, but hopefully there's something in there as rebuttle.

I was asking a few buddies about this and the 'other' games I though split parties didn't. I'm not a big fan of Halo Multiplayer so I am not similar on how their party system but I do know their online is very solid.

I do agree the "party system" does need to be fixed. I haven't had as bad of an experience that you have but I have encountered it a couple times. Also I haven't played a player match yet. If and when I do join a match in progress my Xbl party usually stays there for a good 4/5 more matches. It is a pain in the behind, defiantly, having to keep look for room and few matches

Besides fixing that there should really be two different playlists imo. Teams/Parties and Solo. Also I think being able to look for 3v3, 4v4, 5v5, 6v6 Party matches would work great.

(I will be buying Halo:Reach mainly for Forge World!)

I live in bright and sunny Southern California with a 10mbit business line and I have lag more than 50% of the time.

So you try to play from work? There is your problem.

10 MB business line is fast by U.S. standards. So fast with a price to match that it's normally used by businesses.

I use Verizon DSL, very standard, and my dsl report says a typical speed is 1 MB/sec.

The lag he's experiencing is because of someone else, which is the problem Uber should be working on in the netcode.

Another night, another failed host migration, lag ridden experience with my friend on the other team over 50% of the time. It's just not any fun right now. Lobbies drop as soon as the game ends so it's not just host migration issues. In one game my friend and I joined late and it was 5v4, so it will put us both on the team with 4 to make it 5v6, right? Nope, it splits us to different teams even though my team had an open slot. Seriously, why even bother trying to party up when the net code automatically splits parties for no reason at all?

Fun game but every night I get a little more frutrated and sooner or later I, along with many other players, will have had enough and moved on to a game without these issues. Heck, I'm thinking of going back to MW2 because at least I know I can actually play with my friends and not get sent back to the main menu every 20 minutes.

What ever happened to games being released fully finished? Or at least being QA'd to the point that no major bugs existed.

Damn internets (allowing for updates) and producer pressure (causing games to be released before it is ready)!

I do like the fact that UBER chose to not hardcode values so that they could be tuned and not require a code release patch.

It's a myth? Totally broken games go back to the 80s? This was well prior to common online patches and publisher mandates? At least now they can be fixed, whereas before, you had to suck it up?